Book Description

On August twenty-third we started in two buckboards for the foothills, some fifteen mileswestward, where Teague's men were to meet us with saddle and pack horses. The ride was notinteresting until the Flattop Mountains began to loom, and we saw the dark green slopes of spruce, rising to bare gray cliffs and domes, spotted with white banks of snow. I felt the first cool breath ofmountain air, exhilarating and sweet. From that moment I began to live.We had left at six-thirty. Teague, my guide, had been so rushed with his manifold tasks that I hadscarcely seen him, let alone gotten acquainted with him. And on this ride he was far behind with ourload of baggage. We arrived at the edge of the foothills about noon. It appeared to be the gateway ofa valley, with aspen groves and ragged jack-pines on the slopes, and a stream running down. Ourdriver called it the Stillwater. That struck me as strange, for the stream was in a great hurry. R.C.spied trout in it, and schools of darkish, mullet-like fish which we were informed were grayling. Wewished for our tackle then and for time to fish.Teague's man, a young fellow called Virgil, met us here. He did not resemble the ancient Virgil inthe least, but he did look as if he had walked right out of one of my romances of wild riders. So Itook a liking to him at once.But the bunch of horses he had corralled there did not excite any delight in me. Horses, of course, were the most important part of our outfit. And that moment of first seeing the horses that were tocarry us on such long rides was an anxious and thrilling one. I have felt it many times, and it nevergrows any weaker from experience. Many a scrubby lot of horses had turned out well uponacquaintance, and some I had found hard to part with at the end of trips. Up to that time, however, I had not seen a bear hunter's horses; and I was much concerned by the fact that these were a sorrylooking outfit, dusty, ragged, maneless, cut and bruised and crippled. Still, I reflected, they werebunched up so closely that I could not tell much about them, and I decided to wait for Teaguebefore I chose a horse for any o