“Don’t go too near the rim,” Barker warned the boys, as they ran ahead. “If you go over, you’ll get smashed on the rocks below.
“Here we’re going to camp for the night,” the trapper said, as he and Tatanka placed their packs on the ground.
“When are we going to hunt cranes?” Bill almost blurted out, but he checked himself just in time.
“It wouldn’t be any fun to sit alone all night at the boat,” he whispered to Tim, “with the rest of you camping on the grandest spot I have ever seen. I think Mr. Barker has some fun up his sleeve, but I can’t figure out what it is.”
“I can’t look over, I get dizzy!” Tim said to Bill. “Look at the river. It surely looks a mile below.”
“Lie down,” Bill told him. “Then you can’t tumble off.”
The boys amused themselves by dropping stones over the cliff and counting the seconds till they struck amongst the trees below. Tim claimed he could throw a stone into the river.
“Ah! you can’t do it, Tim,” Bill objected. “The river is a quarter of a mile away as the crow flies.”
“I’ll pick a good sailer-rock,” Tim persisted, “and you’ll see.”
But although Tim did his best, his rock seemed to come sailing back to the sloping bluff.
“Guess you are right,” admitted Tim, a little crestfallen; “the rivet is pretty far away.”
Tatanka stood gazing in silence over the sublime panorama. The river appeared to come like a broad glassy channel out of the blue hazy distance in the north. Just below the point it was half a mile wide and Tatanka could easily distinguish the deep dark channel from the light brown sandbars near shore.
Like a wonderful picture the valley spread out below the hunters. Dark groves of elms stood out clearly from long stretches of cottonwood in light gray. The swelling and bursting buds of the bottom maples showed great dashes of a dark ruddy red, while vast stretches of gray and brown marshes were dotted with brighter patches of orange willow and of bright red killikinnick.
“My people once lived here,” said Tatanka, at last. “They loved this land. It is rich and beautiful, and at that time many red deer and elk and black bear lived in these woods. The big game is gone now. The white settlers have too many guns and too many dogs. They drive the deer away.