In this way it was believed that they could finish within a couple of
weeks, bidding good-by to the Indians, and quickly reach the States
and give up their dangerous pursuits altogether, whereas, if compelled
to do duty themselves as sentinels, their stay would be doubly
prolonged.

This arrangement suited the boy very well, who was thereby given
opportunity to exercise his steam man by occasional airings over the
prairies. To the east and south the plains stretched away till the
horizon shut down upon them, as the sky does on the sea. To the west,
some twenty odd miles distant, a range of mountains was visible, the
peaks being tinged with a faint blue in the distance, while some of
the more elevated looked like white conical clouds resting against the
clear sky beyond.

From the first, young Brainerd expressed a desire to visit these
mountains. There was something in their rugged grandeur which invited
a close inspection, and he proposed to the trapper that they should
make a hunting excursion in that direction.

'No need of goin' so fur for game,' he replied, 'takes too much time,
and thar's sure to be red-skins.'

'But if we go with the steam man we shall frighten them all away,' was
the reply.

'Yas,' laughed Baldy, 'and we'll skear the game away too.'

'
But we can overtake that as we did the poor Indian the other day.'