Indeed, having eaten in one scant meal all the meat we had found heart to take from the injured men, we again suffered a famine, this time of three days' duration. It was then, for the first and only time during all our privations, that one of the men murmured openly. So evident was it that his outcry had been wrung from him by anguish and despair that the Lieutenant, instead of shooting him down in his tracks in accordance with the usual rigor of military discipline, chose to pretend that he had not heard the mutinous words. A few hours later we were the second time saved from starvation by a fortunate kill of buffalo, and it was then, after we had feasted to repletion around a roaring camp-fire, that Pike called the mutineer before him and reproved the repentant man for his conduct. At this camp we left the greater part of the meat of the four buffaloes killed, in the charge of Hugh Menaugh, one of the two men who, aside from Sparks and Dougherty, had suffered the worst from the frost. This time, however, meat being so abundant, we did not fail to take with us on our onward march enough of provisions to last us for several days. Though recuperated by two days of feasting,--for we had lingered that length of time with Menaugh,--our first march out of his camp proved one of the very hardest we had yet made. We were by now near the top of a high plateau, where the travelling was even more difficult than in the lower valley; yet we could discover no break in the white barrier, which, despite our high altitude, still towered up many hundred feet above us. It was almost nightfall, and Pike and I--as usual in the lead breaking a way through the drifts for the others--were beginning to look about for a favorable camp-site, when, topping a knoll, we found ourselves staring down upon a little stream whose course ran to the westward. "Look!" I shouted. "A pass! That brook flows to the mountains--into the mountains!" "It may twist about again to south and east. We have reached the top of a divide," cautioned Pike. "No, no! it cannot be!" I cried, wild with delight. "I see a cleft in the mountain side! The sun dazzles our eyes, but look beneath, in the shadow." "Thank God!" he sighed. "It is a cleft! It must be that the stream flows through the mountains. If only we can find a way down its bed!" "We can--we must!" I wheeled about to the weary men. "Hurrah, lads! Stiffen your knees! We've found our pass! Another day will see us beyond the mountains!" The brave fellows answered with a ringing cheer. Drooping heads straightened; tottering steps gave place to firm, eager strides. Buoyed up by renewed hope, we hurried down the hillside and along the stream bank until in the gathering twilight we could see with certainty where the stream wound its way into the mountain cleft. Assured of this all-important fact, we made our bivouac in a grove of pines, and settled down to the happiest night we had known in weeks.