He looked up at the dark slopes, but he could see only the black masses of foliage and the thin sheets of driven rain.  For a little while, at least, his mind reproduced the wilderness.  It was there in all its savage loneliness and majesty.  He could readily imagine that the Indians were lurking in the brush, and that the bears and panthers were seeking shelter in their dens.  But his own feeling of safety and of mental and physical pleasure in the face of obstacles deepened.

“I’ve been just that way myself,” said Sergeant Whitley, who was riding beside him and who could both see and read his face.  “On the plains when we were so well wrapped up that the icy winds whistling around us couldn’t get at us then we felt all the better.  But it was best when we were inside the fort and the winter blizzard was howling.”

“A lot of us were talking a little while back about what they were going to do after the war.  What’s your plan, sergeant, if you have any?”

“I do have a plan, Mr. Mason.  I was a lumberman, as you know, before I entered the regular army, and when the fighting’s done I think I’ll go back to it.  I can swing an axe with the best of ’em, but I mean after a while to have others swinging axes for me.  If I can I’m going to become a big lumberman.  I’d rather be that than anything else.”

“It’s a just and fine ambition, sergeant, I feel sure that you’re going to become a man of money and power.  Mr. Warner means to become president of Harvard, twenty or twenty-five years from now, and my cousin Harry Kenton, a reconstructed rebel, is going to deliver an address there to the new president’s young men, while Mr. Pennington and I, as the president’s guests, are going to sit on the stage and smile.  Right now, and with authority from Mr. Warner, I’m going to invite you as the lumber king of the Northwest to sit on the stage with us on that occasion, as the guest of President Warner, and smile with us.”

“If I become what you predict I’ll accept,” said the sergeant.

The chances were a thousand to one against the prophecy, but it all came true, just as they wished.

The rain increased a little, although it was not yet able to penetrate Dick’s heavy coat, but they were compelled to go more slowly on account of the thickening darkness.  They reached very soon the crest of the pass and halted there a little while to see or hear any sign of a human being.  But no sound came to them and they resumed the scout in the darkness, riding now down the slope which would end before long in a great valley.

The ground softened by the rain deadened the footsteps of their horses, and they made little noise as they rode down the narrow pass, examining as well as they could the dripping forest on either side of the road.  Shepard was a bit ahead, and Dick and the sergeant, riding side by side, came next.  Behind were the troopers, a small picked band, daring horsemen, used to every kind of danger.