But the tracks still multiplied, and we began to think the platoon of
soldiers was miraculously expanding into a regiment--Ballou said they had
already increased to five hundred! Presently he stopped his horse and
said:
"Boys, these are our own tracks, and we've actually been circussing round
and round in a circle for more than two hours, out here in this blind
desert! By George this is perfectly hydraulic!"
Then the old man waxed wroth and abusive. He called Ollendorff all
manner of hard names--said he never saw such a lurid fool as he was, and
ended with the peculiarly venomous opinion that he "did not know as much
as a logarythm!"
We certainly had been following our own tracks. Ollendorff and his
"mental compass" were in disgrace from that moment.
After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again,
with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall. While
we were considering what to do, the young Swede landed from the canoe and
took his pedestrian way Carson-wards, singing his same tiresome song
about his "sister and his brother" and "the child in the grave with its
mother," and in a short minute faded and disappeared in the white
oblivion. He was never heard of again. He no doubt got bewildered and
lost, and Fatigue delivered him over to Sleep and Sleep betrayed him to
Death. Possibly he followed our treacherous tracks till he became
exhausted and dropped.
Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding stream and
started toward Carson on its first trip since the flood came.
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