Page:Lost with Lieutenant Pike (1919).djvu/159

 "Yes, sir. The Government will be enabled to revise its atlases with accuracy, according to our new data as to the course of certain rivers, and the National boundary between the United States and the Mexican territory westward. And we may perceive a route that will take us directly from the Arkansaw to the head of the Red River and the Comanche country."

The long slope of the mountain rose dark and brooding right above them. They were so close in that from the campfire they could not see the top, but they felt the snow whitely waiting, up toward the black sky beyond the million stiffly marshalled, sighing pines.

Yes, cold it was, even here at the base; much colder than last night, out on the plain. In spite of the fire, their coverings were all too thin. At breakfast, before sun-up in the morning, the lieutenant's instrument by which he read the cold said nine degrees above freezing. In his moccasins, made from a piece of his buffalo-robe, Stub's feet tingled. Several days back John Sparks had given him an old pair of cotton trousers, cut off at the knees, but these did not seem to amount to much, here. Still, Terry Miller and John Brown had nothing better, and their bare toes peeped through the holes in their shoes.