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The route by which the brigands usually passed to and from their fastness was at a spot near the river, where rude ladders of wood and rattan had been fixed to facilitate the ascent and descent of the precipitous foot of the hill.
Winter's storm rolled the rough waves. In realm of sea a sennight strove ye. In swimming he topped thee, had more of main! Him at morning-tide billows bore to the Battling Reamas, whence he hied to his home so dear beloved of his liegemen, to land of Brondings, fastness fair, where his folk he ruled, town and treasure.
To the right the well-known Chilkoot Pass extended up into the mountain fastness, the pass that had been traveled by so many in the early rush for the gold fields. Chilkoot a long distance to the northeast intersects the White Horse Pass. It is a rugged trail, but an easier one to travel than the one chosen by the Pony Rider Boys for the first stage of their journeyings.
A fitting refuge, it might be, for a great spirit heavy with the sins of the world below. Such a place might have been chosen, in the olden time, for a monastery a gray fastness built against the black forest over the crag looking down upon the green clumps of spruces against the snow.
At the faintest sound of inquisitive footsteps he would retreat, hiding himself in some place, or, more frequently, in some manner, whither it was almost impossible to follow; and if, as sometimes happened, his pursuers pressed hard and sought to drive him out of his fastness, he would break out upon them in a way for which they were not prepared, and give them a shock which effectually forbade all further attempts.
It was the May Fair a district not without a shade of Bohemianism, a certain fastness of tone. The wildest girls in the school were to be found in the butterfly-room. It was a pleasant enough room in itself, even apart from its association with pleasant people.
The pursuers well knew what they might expect at his hands, driven to his last fastness, with the spear of the hunter at his throat. Did he sleep, then the man who never slept, according to the notion of his followers, or with one eye always open! He did sleep, and never more soundly than now, when safety required that he should be most on the alert.
Not infrequently in the early camp-meetings of Kentucky and Tennessee there were stalwart men keeping guard over these religious gatherings, who had in their younger days hunted the savage foe from his fastness, faced Tecumseh at Tippecanoe and the Thames, possibly been comrades of "Old Hickory" through the Everglades and at New Orleans.
A small war party could thus work untold harm in a district precisely as a couple of man-eating jaguars may depopulate a forest village in tropical America; and many men and much time had to be spent before they could be beaten into submission, exactly as it needs a great hunting party to drive from their fastness and slay the big man-eating cats, though, if they came to bay in the open, they could readily be killed by a single skilful and resolute hunter.
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