They Might Carry
It, He Said, Who Needed It; For His Part, He Could Provide His
Daily Bread With His Rifle.
He concluded by flinging off from the
party, and keeping along the skirts of the mountain, leaving
those, he
Said, to climb rocks, who were afraid to face Indians.
It was in vain that Mr. Stuart represented to him the rashness of
his conduct, and the dangers to which he exposed himself: he
rejected such counsel as craven. It was equally useless to
represent the dangers to which he subjected his companions; as he
could be discovered at a great distance on those naked plains,
and the Indians, seeing him, would know that there must be other
white men within reach. M'Lellan turned a deaf ear to every
remonstrance, and kept on his wilful way.
It seemed a strange instance of perverseness in this man thus to
fling himself off alone, in a savage region, where solitude
itself was dismal, and every encounter with his fellow-man full
of peril. Such, however, is the hardness of spirit, and the
insensibility to danger that grow upon men in the wilderness.
M'Lellan, moreover, was a man of peculiar temperament,
ungovernable in his will, of a courage that absolutely knew no
fear, and somewhat of a braggart spirit, that took a pride in
doing desperate and hair-brained things.
Mr. Stuart and his party found the passages of the mountain
somewhat difficult, on account of the snow, which in many places
was of considerable depth, though it was but the 1 st of October.
They crossed the summit early in the afternoon, and beheld below
them, a plain about twenty miles wide, bounded on the opposite
side by their old acquaintances, the Pilot Knobs, those towering
mountains which had served Mr. Hunt as landmarks in part of his
route of the preceding year.
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