Convoying Government-trains through a region where were assembled in their war-paint thousands of Indians from the wild tribes of the plains and hills was venturous work enough, but it was not that to which Ray aspired.  He must be one of those cherubim who on God’s bidding speed; he could not serve with those who only stand and wait.  His hot soul grew parched and faint with longing, and all the instincts of his battling blood began to war among themselves.  At length one night there was hammering and clinking at the red field-fires, and by daybreak they were off for a mad gallop over plain and mountain, down river-banks and across deserts into New Mexico.

Fording the shallow Arkansas, trailing their way through prairie and timber,—­reaching and skirting the scorching stretch,—­riding all day, consumed with thirst, from green-mantling pool to pool, till the last lay sixty miles behind them, and men and horses made desperately for the stream, dashing in together to drink their fill, when they found it again foaming down the centre of its vast level plain, that receded twenty miles on either side without shrub or hillock,—­finally their path wound in among the hills, and a day dawned that Ray will never forget.

The stars were large and solemn, hovering golden out of the high, dark heaven, as the troop defiled into the canon; they glinted with a steely lustre through the roof of fallen trees that arched the gorge from side to side, then a wind of morning blew and they grew pallid and wan in a shining haze, and, towering far up above them, vaguely terrific in shadow, the horsemen saw the heights they were to climb all grayly washed in the night-dew.  So they swept up the mountain-side in their gay and breezy career, on from ascent to ascent, from abutment to abutment, crossing shrunken torrents, winding along sheer precipices, up into the milky clouds of heaven itself, till the rosy flare of dawn bathed all the air about them.  There they halted, while, struggling after them, the first triumphant beam struck the bosses of their harness to glittering jewel-points, and, breaking through layer on layer of curdling vapor at their feet, suffused it to a wondrous fleece, where carnation and violet and the fire that lurks in the opal, wreathing with gorgeous involution, seethed together, until, at last, the whole resplendent mist wound itself away in silver threads on the spindles of the wind.  Then boot in the stirrup again, onward, over the mountain’s ridge, desolate rook defying the sun, downward, plunging through hanging forests, clearing the chasm, bridging ravines, and still at noon the eagles, circling and screaming above them, shook over them the dew from their plumes.  Downward afresh in their wild ride, the rainbows of the cascades flying beside them, their afternoon shadows streaming up behind them, darkness beginning to gather in the deeps below them, the mighty mountain-masses around rearing themselves impenetrably in boding blackness and mystery against the yellow gleam, the purple breath of evening wrapping them, the dew again, again the stars, and they camped at the foot of a spur of hills with a waterfall for sentry on their left.