"I'm dog-goned if I know. I had reckoned to go down past Utah, and to go
out prospecting among the hills, say a hundred miles farther west; then
while I journeyed along with Tom I got mixed in my mind. I should like
to have handed him over safe to Harry; but if Harry had gone down to the
Ute hills with an idea of trying a spot I have heard him speak of, where
he thought he had struck it rich, he might not have cared to have had me
come there, and so I concluded last night it was best the lad should
wait here till Harry got back. Now the thing is altered; they are just
hunting and prospecting, and might be glad to have me with them, and I
might as well be there as anywhere else; so as you are going back there,
I reckon I shall be one of the party."

"That will be capital, Jerry," Tom said. "With you as well as the chief
we shall be sure to get through; and it will be awfully jolly having you
with us."

"Don't you make any mistake," the miner said, "I should not be of much
more use in finding them than you would. I ain't been up among the
mountains all these years without learning something, but I ain't no
more than a child by the side of the chief. And don't you think this
affair is going to be a circus. I tell you it is going to be a hard job.
There ain't a dozen white men as have been over that country, and we
shall want to be pretty spry if we are to bring back our scalps. It is a
powerful rough country. There are peaks there, lots of them, ten
thousand feet high, and some of them two or three thousand above that.
There are rivers, torrents, and defiles. I don't say there will be much
chance of running short of food, if it wasn't that half the time one
will be afraid to fire for fear the 'tarnal Indians should hear us. We
ain't got above a month afore the first snows fall. Altogether it is a