ias_!"
(Let us travel in stockings!)

The idea was not new to me; and without further hesitation, we proceeded
to carry it into execution. With pieces of blanket, and strips cut from
our buckskin garments, we muffled the hoofs of our shod horses; and
after following the waggon-trail, till we found a proper place for
parting from it, we diverged in an oblique direction, towards the bluff
that formed the northern boundary of the pass. Along this bluff we
followed the guide in silence; and, after going for a quarter of a mile
further, we had the satisfaction to see him turn to the left, and
suddenly disappear from our sight--as if he had ridden into the face of
the solid rock! We might have felt astonishment; but a dark chasm at
the same instant came under our eyes, and we knew it was the ravine of
which our guide had spoken. Without exchanging a word, we turned our
horses' heads, and rode up into the cleft. There was water running
among the shingle, over which our steeds trampled; but it was shallow,
and did not hinder their advance. It would further aid in concealing
their tracks--should our pursuers succeed in tracing us from the main
route. But we had little apprehension of their doing this: so carefully
had we concealed our trail on separating from that of the waggons.

On reaching the little _vallon_, we no longer thought of danger; but,
riding on to its upper end, dismounted, and made the best arrangements
that circumstances would admit of for passing the remainder of the
night. Wrapped in buffalo-robes, and a little apart from the rest of
our party, the sisters reclined side by side under the canopy of a
cotton-wood tree. Long while had it been since these beautiful forms
had reposed so near each other; and the soft low murmur of their
voices--heard above the sighing of the breeze, and the rippling sound of
the mountain rills--admonished us that each was confiding to the other
the sweet secret of her bosom!

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOUR.

UN PARAISO.

We come to the closing act of our drama. To understand it fully, it is
necessary that the setting of the stage--the _mise-en-scene_--be
described with a certain degree of minuteness. The little valley-plain,
or _vallon_, in which we had _cached_ ourselves, was not over three
hundred yards in length, and of an elliptical form. But for this form,
it might have resembled some ancient crater scooped out of the mountain,
that on all sides swept upward aro