Explore "The Prairie Flower" by Gustave Aimard on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The night was black, gloomy, and storm-laden. The wind howled with a mournful murmur through the branches; at each gust the trees shook their damp crowns, and sent down showers, which pattered on the shrubs. The sky was of a leaden hue; so great was the silence in the desert, that the fall of a withered leaf, or the rustling of a branch touched in its passage by some invisible animal, could be distinctly heard.
Ivon and his guides advanced cautiously through the forest, seeking their road in the darkness, half lying on their horses, so as to avoid the branches that lashed their faces at every moment. Owing to the endless turns they were compelled to take, nearly two hours elapsed ere they left the forest. At length they debouched on the plain, and found themselves almost simultaneously on the banks of the Missouri. The river, swollen by rain and snow, rolled along its yellowish waters noisily. The fugitives followed the bank in a south-western direction. Now that they had struck the river, all uncertainty had ceased for them; their road was so distinctly traced that they had no fear of losing it.