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 other exploring parties were out of sight. It was a dead country.

The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders.

"Not very promising, eh?" the doctor queried anxiously.

"It does not promise success. Our course up this river should be abandoned. We are constantly making farther and farther northward, separated from the Red River by the mountains; game is getting less, the trail is unreliable, and we shall depend upon it no longer."

He gazed southward. The hills rose to mountains here also. He used his spy-glass intently. He handed it to the doctor.

"You'll see a great white mountain range, appearing through a gap almost directly south."

"Yes, sir. A thundering way off."

"It seems to be the end of a long chain extending westward from it. That chain, I believe, is the divide draining on this side into the Platte, on the other side into the Red River. We're on the wrong side. We should march southwest, to cross the nearer portion of the chain, and eventually come out upon the head of the Red River. At all events, we'll try it, while we can. But our march through here has not been wasted, for our Country. We can lay down on our map the sources of the Platte, which no