第110章

In the afternoon we saw the mountains rising like a gigantic wall at no great distance on our right."Des sauvages! des sauvages!"exclaimed Delorier, looking round with a frightened face, and pointing with his whip toward the foot of the mountains.In fact, we could see at a distance a number of little black specks, like horsemen in rapid motion.Henry Chatillon, with Shaw and myself, galloped toward them to reconnoiter, when to our amusement we saw the supposed Arapahoes resolved into the black tops of some pine trees which grew along a ravine.The summits of these pines, just visible above the verge of the prairie, and seeming to move as we ourselves were advancing, looked exactly like a line of horsemen.

We encamped among ravines and hollows, through which a little brook was foaming angrily.Before sunrise in the morning the snow-covered mountains were beautifully tinged with a delicate rose color.Anoble spectacle awaited us as we moved forward.Six or eight miles on our right, Pike's Peak and his giant brethren rose out of the level prairie, as if springing from the bed of the ocean.From their summits down to the plain below they were involved in a mantle of clouds, in restless motion, as if urged by strong winds.For one instant some snowy peak, towering in awful solitude, would be disclosed to view.As the clouds broke along the mountain, we could see the dreary forests, the tremendous precipices, the white patches of snow, the gulfs and chasms as black as night, all revealed for an instant, and then disappearing from the view.One could not but recall the stanza of "Childe Harold":

Morn dawns, and with it stern Albania's hills, Dark Suli's rocks, and Pindus' inland peak, Robed half in mist, bedewed with snowy rills, Array'd in many a dun and purple streak, Arise; and, as the clouds along them break, Disclose the dwelling of the mountaineer:

Here roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak, Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear, And gathering storms around convulse the closing year.

Every line save one of this description was more than verified here.

There were no "dwellings of the mountaineer" among these heights.

Fierce savages, restlessly wandering through summer and winter, alone invade them."Their hand is against every man, and every man's hand against them."On the day after, we had left the mountains at some distance.Ablack cloud descended upon them, and a tremendous explosion of thunder followed, reverberating among the precipices.In a few moments everything grew black and the rain poured down like a cataract.We got under an old cotton-wood tree which stood by the side of a stream, and waited there till the rage of the torrent had passed.

The clouds opened at the point where they first had gathered, and the whole sublime congregation of mountains was bathed at once in warm sunshine.They seemed more like some luxurious vision of Eastern romance than like a reality of that wilderness; all were melted together into a soft delicious blue, as voluptuous as the sky of Naples or the transparent sea that washes the sunny cliffs of Capri.

On the left the whole sky was still of an inky blackness; but two concentric rainbows stood in brilliant relief against it, while far in front the ragged cloud still streamed before the wind, and the retreating thunder muttered angrily.

Through that afternoon and the next morning we were passing down the banks of the stream called La Fontaine qui Bouille, from the boiling spring whose waters flow into it.When we stopped at noon, we were within six or eight miles of the Pueblo.Setting out again, we found by the fresh tracks that a horseman had just been out to reconnoiter us; he had circled half round the camp, and then galloped back full speed for the Pueblo.What made him so shy of us we could not conceive.After an hour's ride we reached the edge of a hill, from which a welcome sight greeted us.The Arkansas ran along the valley below, among woods and groves, and closely nestled in the midst of wide cornfields and green meadows where cattle were grazing rose the low mud walls of the Pueblo.