might have been hereabouts in summer; it was very different in winter. His head hurt, too. So he could not help them.
From the old camp, which seemed to have been a hunting camp, a regular village, and extended six miles long and two miles wide, covering the valley bottom, a trail led out, up stream again. In killing two buffalo (the first fresh meat since leaving the Arkansaw) another gun had burst—the third in the march. Its muzzle had got stopped with snow, and its barrel was very brittle from the frost.
John Sparks cut the burst end off, so that the gun might be used. Hugh Menaugh had no gun at all, and was marching with the lieutenant's sword and pistols.
The trail westward was not made by the Spanish. The Spanish trail (if there had been any Spanish trail) was swallowed up, in the big camp. But the trail out was better than none at all. It led through still more old camping places, where there were empty corn-cribs. There were no old corn-*fields, though, and this set the men to wondering whether these Indians might not have got corn from the Spaniards, after all.
Then, on a sudden, the trail quit. It left them stranded, amidst the mountains. That had occurred this morning. The lieutenant had sent out searching
