to be too much pitied! It brings the tears into my eyes—miserable solitary mourner that I am to try to do so much barbarity justice. Heaven knows that I came out here with no prejudice against the red man. This same Indian who enlisted merely to lure the expedition to destruction, accepted my courtesies with a grateful mien. And yet he was a monster! I glory to have profaned his resting place—to rob the robber of the weapons with which, God aiding me, I shall avenge my massacred comrades!"

He perambulated the valley of death till sunrise. He called and examined every spot with care; but all the time no response was given him. Then, having made a meal on the height, where the same fatal tale was displayed in the bones with which the wolves sported, he doggedly took up the trail of the victors.

But at the woods, where the snow presented a different aspect and was absent in tracts, he found that the wily savages were not to be followed by an inexperienced man, however brave, vigorous, and determined.

 CHAPTER III.

THE MOUNTAINEERS' SNUG CABIN.

The two hunters, red and white, who had taken eight days to ascend the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, were only one reaching a reasonable approach to the level of the plateau of the Yellowstone Basin.

A little above them shone the snow line belting the giants of granite, and here the timberline spread in brown. The breath of numberless icy caverns murmured of the stupendous crystal founts, sources of powerful streams which would be on their way to enrich regions remote.

The declining sun glimmered along the smooth steeps and glittered on the jagged ones, reflected from ice, softened by snows, sparkling in torrents as the scattered diamonds leaped so far that finally they were dissipated in humid dust.

Through all the difficulties of the way, where no trodden way existed, the two guides and guards of the little train proceeded with the perfection of experience to be acquired only by bearing fatigues and danger with which that magnificent mountain chain abounds.

In fact, it was impossible, even among the host of Western pioneers, more numerous than those imagine who never can see them collected, to find two mountain men more keen, skilled, and resolute than "Old Jim" Ridge and "Cherokee Bill."

Ridge was a taller man than ordinarily 

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