summer
noon
`` He is too well acquainted with their ways to be caught , '' observed Kepenau . I remembered , however , the eagerness the old man had shown to overtake the train , in order that he might ascertain whether Lily was , as he had hoped , his grand-daughter ; and he might thus push forward , when his usual prudence would have induced him to remain concealed , or to have retreated from his foes . We advanced like an army in an enemy 's country -- with scouts ranging on either side , so that there was no probability of our being taken by surprise ; while our main body was too numerous to have invited an attack . We had made good progress for several days , when the sound of rifle-shots reached our ears through the still air of a warm summer noon . Directly afterwards the scouts came in with the intelligence that a large number of Indians were collected in the neighbourhood of what looked like a log-hut , on the bank of a stream in the plain below us . We were , at the time , approaching the edge of a plateau over which we had been travelling . In the far distance rose some blue hills , spurs of a still more lofty range of mountains .