Page:Lost with Lieutenant Pike (1919).djvu/157

 more plainly. What a tremendous huge fellow he was, as he towered, shadow-flecked, into the floating clouds! The clouds veiled his top; he pierced them, and thus he sat gazing above the world.

"Gosh!" murmured John Brown. "He's a neck-cracker."

Toward evening the lieutenant and doctor, in advance and just crossing another of the many rolling hills, shouted back, and waved.

"Almost there, men!"

When the three others toiled up to the same place, they saw. A shallow valley lay before; at the farther edge the timbered slope of the Grand Peak commenced.

Hurrah!

Several buffalo were feeding, below. The lieutenant and the doctor made a dash for them—cleverly headed them off, shot rapidly, and downed two.

"Fresh hump for supper," cheered Terry. "I could eat a whole one, myself."

"Sure, I could drink a river dry, first," wheezed John. "Do you mind that we've struck no water since mornin'?"

"Water there," Stub hazarded, pointing at a line of lighter green near the foot of the mountain.

They arrived below in time to help butcher the buffalo while the lieutenant and the doctor rode on