“The mountains, men! You see the Mexican mountains――the Great Stony Mountains. Three cheers, now, for the Mexican mountains!” Everybody cheered three times: “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!” Only the horses stood with heads drooping; they did not care. “How far, would you think, cap’n?” Sergeant Meek queried. “We ought to reach their base day after to-morrow.” “Hooray!” But although they all marched ten more miles to-day, and more than eleven miles the next day, and more than twenty-three miles the next day, from camp on the third evening the big chief mountain and the lesser mountains seemed no nearer than before. “Sure, they’re marchin’ faster’n we are,” said John Sparks. “Spirit mountains,” Stub decided. “See ’em, no get ’em.” Another horse was about to die. There were fresh Indian signs, again. The Spanish trail had been found――it led onward, toward the mountains. The country was growing more bare, the air thinner and chillier. Through the spy-glass the mountains looked bare. When the next herd of buffalo were seen, the lieutenant ordered camp made, and sent hunters out to kill meat enough for several days. There might be no buffalo, farther on. It was a poor country. He himself did not hunt. He went up on a hill and drew pictures of the mountains, on a piece of paper. Stub did not hunt, either; he was almost out of arrows. He followed Lieutenant Pike to the hill, and watched him. But the pictures were only crooked lines, like Indian pictures. The lieutenant glanced aside at him, and smiled. His smile was sweet, when he did smile. “Would you like to climb that big blue mountain?” he asked. Stub had to think, a moment. The big blue mountain! Yes, big and blue it was――and white; and very far. The thunder spirit might live there. Winter lived there. Could anybody climb it? It never was out of sight, now, except at night (and it never was out of sight, for days and days afterward), but it seemed hard to reach.[A] [A] This was the celebrated Pike’s Peak, of Colorado, later named for Lieutenant Pike, first white man to tell about it. “Top?” “Yes, clear to the top,” smiled the lieutenant. Stub’s eyes widened; and he smiled also. “Sure. No afraid, with you.” “Good!” the lieutenant praised. “We’ll see.” The hunters killed seventeen buffalo, and wounded many more. When the best of the meat had been smoked, there were nine hundred pounds of it, and one hundred and thirty-six marrow-bones. The camp finished off the marrow-bones in one meal, as a feast before marching on to storm the big blue mountain. VIII BAD HEARTS IN THE WAY “Des sauvages (Indians)!” Thus Baroney shouted, pointing, from where he had checked his horse on the edge of a little rise overlooking a dip in the trail.