So they continued
to plod on.
It was fully three o'clock when they attained to the bank of the
Powder, and crouched among the rocks to wait for the shades of night to
shroud their further advance. Murphy climbed the bluff for a wider
view, bearing Hampton's field-glasses slung across his shoulder, for
the latter would not leave him alone with the horses. He returned
finally to grunt out that there was nothing special in sight, except a
shifting of those smoke signals to points farther north. Then they lay
down again, Hampton smoking, Murphy either sleeping or pretending to
sleep. And slowly the shadows of another black night swept down and
shut them in.
It must have been two hours later when they ventured forth. Silence
and loneliness brooded everywhere, not so much as a breath of air
stirring the leaves. The unspeakable, unsolvable mystery of it all
rested like a weight on the spirits of both men. It, was a disquieting
thought that bands of savages, eager to discover and slay, were
stealing among the shadows of those trackless plains, and that they
must literally feel their uncertain way through the cordon, every sound
an alarm, every advancing step a fresh peril.
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