On a rising ground where we halted to lunch a note was found stating that Dr. T., failing to find game at the salt-lick, had gone on ahead. While lingering over our lunch in leisurely fashion, encircled by this great mass of snow and blackness, an orderly suddenly rode up to hasten us to camp, as Indian signs had been seen down the valley. In a moment we were running our horses over a sage-plain, and were soon in camp, which was pitched on the West Branch in the widening valley. Dr. T. and George Houston, it appeared, had seen a column of smoke four miles below on a butte across the river. As the smoke was steady and did not spread, like an accidental fire, it seemed wise to wait for the party. There being no news of Indians, and no probability of white travellers, it was well to be cautious. It might be a hunters' or prospectors' camp, or a rallying-signal for scattered bands of Sioux, or a courier from Fort Custer. The doubt was unpleasant, and its effect visible in the men, two of whom already _saw_ Indians. "See 'em?" says Jack. "Yes, they're like the Devil: you just doesn't see 'em!" While we pitched camp sentinels were thrown out, and two guides went off to investigate the cause of the fire. Houston came back in two hours, and relieved us by his statement that no trails led to the fire, and that its probable cause was the lightning of the storm which had overtaken us in camp the day before. As the day waned the tints of the great mountains before us changed curiously. Of a broken chocolate-brown at noon, as the sun set their eastern fronts assumed a soft velvety look, while little purple clouds of haze settled in the hollows and rifts, fringing with tender grays the long serrated ridges as they descended to the plain. As the sun went down the single huge obelisk of Pilot Mountain seemed to be slowly growing upward out of the gathering shadows below. Presently, as the sun fell lower, the base of the mountain being swarthy with the growing nightfall, all of a sudden the upper half of the bleak cone yet in sunshine cast upward, athwart the blue sky, upon the moisture precipitated by the falling temperature, a great dark, broadening shaft of shadow, keen-edged and sombre, and spreading far away into measureless space--a sight indescribably strange and solemn.