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 But our number is too small to risk failure of our plans. Now for the mountains."

"By gar, once more my scalp was loose," said Baroney, to Stub.

"Yes. They had black hearts, those Grand Pawnee," Stub gravely agreed.

This day they marched seventeen miles, and the next day nineteen miles. In all they had come more than one hundred and twenty miles, their eyes upon the Big Blue Mountain, as the lieutenant called it. And at last they had just about overtaken it.

From camp, here where the river split into two large forks, one out of the west, the other out of the south, the Big Blue Mountain looked to be quite near, up a small north fork.

"Le Grand Mont," Baroney called it. "The Grand Peak." And the men called it that, too.

"Sure, it can't be more'n one day's march now," John Sparks declared, as from camp they eyed it again. "We can be there to-morrow at this time, with ease, in case those be the orders."

In the sunset the mountain loomed vast, its base blue, but its top pinkish white. After everything else was shrouded in dusk, its top still shone.

"How high, d' ye think?" queried soldier Freegift Stout.