The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail | Page 8

gravel trains, with
congratulations of railroad officials and of the doctor, with the tearful
smiles of the little nurse, and with grudging but finally hearty good
wishes of the Superintendent, they had ridden off down the Kootenay
Trail for their honeymoon, on their way to the Big Horn Ranch some
hundreds of miles across the mountains.

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.
"How beautiful! How did they get this particular bit?"
"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