There on the Big Horn Ranch through the long summer days together they rode the ranges after the cattle, cooking their food in the open and camping under the stars where night found them, care-free and deeply happy, drinking long full draughts of that mingled wine of life into which health and youth and love and God's sweet sun and air poured their rare vintage.The world was far away and quite forgotten.
Summer deepened into autumn, the fall round-up was approaching, and there came a September day of such limpid light and such nippy sprightly air as to suggest to Mandy nothing less than a holiday.
"Let's strike!" she cried to her husband, as she looked out toward the rolling hills and the overtopping peaks shining clear in the early morning light."Let's strike and go a-fishing."Her husband let his eyes wander over the full curves of her strong and supple body and rest upon the face, brown and wholesome, lit with her deep blue eyes and crowned with the red-gold masses of her hair, and exclaimed:
"You need a holiday, Mandy.I can see it in the drooping lines of your figure, and in the paling of your cheeks.In short," moving toward her, "you need some one to care for you.""Not just at this moment, young man," she cried, darting round the table."But, come, what do you say to a day's fishing away up the Little Horn?""The Little Horn?"
"Yes, you know the little creek running into the Big Horn away up the gulch where we went one day in the spring.You said there were fish there.""Yes, but why 'Little Horn,' pray? And who calls it so? I suppose you know that the Big Horn gets its name from the Big Horn, the mountain sheep that once roamed the rocks yonder, and in that sense there's no Little Horn.""Well, 'Little Horn' I call it," said his wife, "and shall.And if the big stream is the Big Horn, surely the little stream should be the Little Horn.But what about the fishing? Is it a go?""Well, rather! Get the grub, as your Canadian speech hath it.""My Canadian speech!" echoed his wife scornfully."You're just as much Canadian as I am.""And I shall get the ponies.Half an hour will do for me.""And less for me," cried Mandy, dancing off to her work.
And she was right.For, clever housekeeper that she was, she stood with her hamper packed and the fishing tackle ready long before her husband appeared with the ponies.
The trail led steadily upward through winding valleys, but for the most part along the Big Horn, till as it neared a scraggy pine-wood it bore sharply to the left, and, clambering round an immense shoulder of rock, it emerged upon a long and comparatively level ridge of land that rolled in gentle undulations down into a wide park-like valley set out with clumps of birch and poplar, with here and there the shimmer of a lake showing between the yellow and brown of the leaves.
"Oh, what a picture!" cried Mandy, reining up her pony."What a ranch that would make, Allan! Who owns it? Why did we never come this way before?""Piegan Reserve," said her husband briefly.
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"They gave up a lot for it," said Cameron drily.
"But think, such a lovely bit of country for a few Indians! How many are there?""Some hundreds.Five hundred or so.And a tricky bunch they are.
They're over-fond of cattle to be really desirable neighbors.""Well, I think it rather a pity!"
"Look yonder!" cried her husband, sweeping his arm toward the eastern horizon.From the height on which they stood a wonderful panorama of hill and valley, river, lake and plain lay spread out before them."All that and for nine hundred miles beyond that line these Indians and their kin gave up to us under persuasion.There was something due them, eh? Let's move on."For a mile or more the trail ran along the high plateau skirting the Piegan Reserve, where it branched sharply to the right.
Cameron paused.
"You see that trail?" pointing to the branch that led to the left and downward into the valley."That is one of the oldest and most famous of all Indian trails.It strikes down through the Crow's Nest Pass and beyond the pass joins the ancient Sun Dance Trail.
That's my old beat.And weird things are a-doing along that same old Sun Dance Trail this blessed minute or I miss my guess.Iventure to say that this old trail has often been marked with blood from end to end in the fierce old days.""Let's go," said Mandy, with a shudder, and, turning her pony to the right, she took the trail that led them down from the plateau, plunged into a valley, wound among rocks and thickets of pine till it reached a tumbling mountain torrent of gray-blue water, fed from glaciers high up between the great peaks beyond.
"My Little Horn!" cried Mandy with delight.
Down by its rushing water they scrambled till they came to a sunny glade where the little fretful torrent pitched itself headlong into a deep shady pool, whence, as if rested in those quiet deeps, it issued at first with gentle murmuring till, out of earshot of the pool, it broke again into turbulent raging, brawling its way to the Big Horn below.
Mandy could hardly wait for the unloading and tethering of the ponies.
"Now," she cried, when all was ready, "for my very first fish.How shall I fling this hook and where?""Try a cast yonder, just beside that overhanging willow.Don't splash! Try again--drop it lightly.That's better.Don't tell me you've never cast a fly before.""Never in my life."
"Let it float down a bit.Now back.Hold it up and let it dance there.I'll just have a pipe."But next moment Cameron's pipe was forgotten.With a shout he sprang to his wife's side.
"By Jove, you've got him!"
"No! No! Leave me alone! Just tell me what to do.Go away!
Don't touch me! Oh-h-h! He's gone!"
"Not a bit.Reel him up--reel him up a little.""Oh, I can't reel the thing! Oh! Oh-h-h! Is he gone?""Hold up.Don't haul him too quickly--keep him playing.Wait till I get the net." He rushed for the landing net.
