ERS.

I spurred after, and soon overtook them. Regardless of the dust, I rode
close in the rear of the trackers, and listened to what they were
saying.

These "men of the mountains"--as they prided to call themselves--were
peculiar in everything. While engaged in a duty, such as the present,
they would scarce disclose their thoughts, even to me; much less were
they communicative with the rest of my following, whom they were
accustomed to regard as "greenhorns"--their favourite appellation for
all men who have not made the tour of the grand prairies.

Notwithstanding that Stanfield and Black were backwoodsmen and hunters
by profession, Quackenboss a splendid shot, Le Blanc a regular
_voyageur_, and the others more or less skilled in woodcraft, all were
greenhorns in the opinion of the trappers. To be otherwise a man must
have starved upon a "sage-prairie"--"run" buffalo by the Yellowstone or
Platte--fought "Injun," and shot Indian--have well-nigh lost scalp or
ears--spent a winter in Pierre's Hole upon Green River--or camped amid
the snows of the Rocky Mountains! Some one of all these feats must
needs have been performed, ere the "greenhorn" can matriculate and take
rank as a "mountain man."

I of all my party was the only one who, in the eyes of Rube and Garey,
was _not_ a greenhorn; and even I--gentleman-amateur that I was--was
hardly up either in their confidence or their "craft." It is indeed
true--with all my classic accomplishments--with my fine words, my fine
horse, and fine clothes--so long as we were within the limits of
prairie-land, I acknowledged these men as my superiors. They were my
guides, my instructors, my masters.

Since overtaking them on the trail, I had not asked them to give any
opinion. I dreaded a direct answer--for I had noticed something like a
despairing look in the eyes of both.

As I followed them over the black plain, however, I thought that their
faces brightened a little, and appeared once more lit up by a faint ray
of hope. For that reason, I rode close upon their heels, and eagerly
caught up every word that was passing between them. Rube was speaking
when I first drew near.

"Wagh! I don't b'lieve it, Bill: 'taint possyble no-howso-ever. The
paraira wur sot afire--must 'a been--thur's no other ways for it. It
cudn't 'a tuk to bleezing o' itself--eh?"

"Sartinly not; I agree wi' you, Rube."

"Wal--thur wur a fellur as I met oncest at Bent's Fort on the Arkinsaw--