orning.

But Ned's answers were not encouraging. There was no romance in them;
they were too near the truth to suit Chris, and he liked them the less
because at heart he felt that they must be correct and his own hopes too
sanguine. But all the same he clung to his own ideas--they were so
tempting. They were that with daylight they should have reached the end
of the wild desert, and that from high up on some sunlit slope they
would be gazing down into a broad green valley--some natural paradise
through which flowed a rippling stream.

He described his notions to Ned, who seemed to be listening attentively
in the darkness, and now and then said "Oh," or "Ah, yes;" but all the
time he was clinging involuntarily to his saddle, his head nodding
forward again and again, only to be brought back to the perpendicular
with a jerk, while Chris was too drowsy himself to notice it, as he went
muttering on.

"It won't be the place where the gold city and temple are, Ned," he
said; "but it will be just the spot where we can rest for a few days."

"Ah!" said Ned.

"There'll be fish in that river, you know," said Chris--"salmon that
have come up out of the Pacific; and we can spear them after we've drunk
all we want, and bathed till we've soaked all this horrible dryness out
of our skins. All along by the river too there'll be park-like
meadows--meadows--green meadows. Do you hear?" Ned grunted.

"And in those park-like prairie places there are sure to be droves of
buffalo. Beef--do you hear?--beef!"

Chris's head bowed down as if he were going to lay his forehead upon his
mustang's neck; but the thought of roast beef woke him up again, and he
clung a little more tightly with his knees and kept on with his
muttering.

"I say, don't go to sleep, Ned," he said, as he saw his companion follow
his own example and bow low. "I feel as sure as sure that's the sort of
place we shall come to. There'll be great spreading fir-trees too, such
as Griggs talked about seeing up north in the Rockies--trees with boughs
that will keep off the sun and rain, eh?"

"Ah!" grunted Ned.

"It will be just the place that we want, to give the horses and mules a
good long rest for a few days, to feed up well on good pasture while we
shoot, and amuse ourselves, and kill buffalo, and eat hot roast beef--
hot roast beef. And drink beautiful, clear, cold water--and you can lie
down upon your chest with your face over the running stream, and drin