The temptation was irresistible.  I threw off my clothes, leaped in, suffered myself to be borne once round with the current, and then, seizing the strong root of a water plant, drew myself to the shore.  The effect was so invigorating and refreshing that I mistook it for returning health.  “Pauline,” thought I, as I led the little mare up to be saddled, “only thrive as I do, and you and I will have sport yet among the buffalo beyond these mountains.”  But scarcely were we mounted and on our way before the momentary glow passed.  Again I hung as usual in my seat, scarcely able to hold myself erect.

“Look yonder,” said Raymond; “you see that big hollow there; the Indians must have gone that way, if they went anywhere about here.”

We reached the gap, which was like a deep notch cut into the mountain ridge, and here we soon discerned an ant-hill furrowed with the mark of a lodge-pole.  This was quite enough; there could be no doubt now.  As we rode on, the opening growing narrower, the Indians had been compelled to march in closer order, and the traces became numerous and distinct.  The gap terminated in a rocky gateway, leading into a rough passage upward, between two precipitous mountains.  Here grass and weeds were bruised to fragments by the throng that had passed through.  We moved slowly over the rocks, up the passage; and in this toilsome manner we advanced for an hour or two, bare precipices, hundreds of feet high, shooting up on either hand.  Raymond, with his hardy mule, was a few rods before me, when we came to the foot of an ascent steeper than the rest, and which I trusted might prove the highest point of the defile.  Pauline strained upward for a few yards, moaning and stumbling, and then came to a dead stop, unable to proceed further.  I dismounted, and attempted to lead her; but my own exhausted strength soon gave out; so I loosened the trail-rope from her neck, and tying it round my arm, crawled up on my hands and knees.  I gained the top, totally exhausted, the sweat drops trickling from my forehead.  Pauline stood like a statue by my side, her shadow falling upon the scorching rock; and in this shade, for there was no other, I lay for some time, scarcely able to move a limb.  All around the black crags, sharp as needles at the top, stood glowing in the sun, without a tree, or a bush, or a blade of grass, to cover their precipitous sides.  The whole scene seemed parched with a pitiless, insufferable heat.

After a while I could mount again, and we moved on, descending the rocky defile on its western side.  Thinking of that morning’s journey, it has sometimes seemed to me that there was something ridiculous in my position; a man, armed to the teeth, but wholly unable to fight, and equally so to run away, traversing a dangerous wilderness, on a sick horse.  But these thoughts were retrospective, for at the time I was in too grave a mood to entertain a very lively sense of the ludicrous.