Where Stillwater Runs Deep

by B. M. Bower

Each branch bears a name which grew out of its most conspicuous characteristic, and little timber grows in the valley but crowds close to the base of the mountains. So the broad plateaus that lie between the tributaries of the Stillwater make wonderful grazing ground, while the creeks running down the cañons are bordered with willows and quaking aspen groves that give shelter to the cattle and horses that tread down the trails from higher ground to water.

Before the national forest reserve brought this fine cattle country under its supervision and allotted to each settler certain well-defined grazing grounds for which he must pay an annual fee based upon the number of animals which feed thereon, Stillwater Valley saw many a range battle waged between rival ranchers. Now that the national forest service held all the range—or at least the best of it next the mountains—the fight went much the same, except that the policing of the forest injected a new factor into the struggle. Isabelle Boyce was right, and Ranger Cushman also summed up the situation rather accurately. The stockmen were ready to fly at each other’s throats for little cause, but they stood as one man against the forest service.

“And it’s man by man that I must take them and make them see sense, if I have to crowd it down the throats of them with my fist!” mused Patrick O’Neill, as he reined his horse into the trail that led with steep and devious turnings down into Bad Cañon, which he must cross in order to reach Peterson’s home ranch.

“I’ll talk to him fair,” Pat promised himself. “No man shall ever say that Ranger O’Neill rushed into a fight for the pure love of the scrimmage, without first giving the enemy a chance to eat his words and go in peace. I’ll first reason with the big bully—should it so happen that I have time enough for that. Then if he comes at me—which he will!—I’ll use the fists God gave me for the purpose, and drive my meaning home to the point of his jaw.

“For to teach a dog new tricks you must first convince him that you’re the master of him—and faith, I shall point that out to Queen Isabelle, should some rumors of what is to take place to-day reach her before next Thursday. They’ll likely be out riding, since it’s the round-up time, and he’ll have his friends about him, so that none can say I took an unfair advantage of the man.”

So, thinking piously of his duty to Peterson, he rode splashing into Bad Cañon Creek. A mountain trout the length of his forearm slid from under the very feet of his horse and, with one flip of his tail, darted into the shadow of a still pool sheltered by a mossy boulder, and Ranger O’Neill forgot the duty which brought him there and pulled back to the gravelly bank, dismounting in haste. For fishing stood close to fighting in his Irish heart, and there were other trout lying like slaty, living shadows in the depth of that pool.

To cut a short, pliable willow row and take a white miller from the fine assortment of flies hooked into his hatband was the work of two minutes, with another spent in unwinding trout line and leader from a small card in his breast pocket, where he kept his book of cigarette papers. Then O’Neill led his horse into the shade and tied him there against wandering, pulled his hat low over his eyes to shield them from whipping brush and sun glare alike, and stepped catwise to the brink of the pool.

His tutelage of Peterson could wait, while the trout stream called to the sporting blood of him. He got two trout from that small pool, threaded their panting gills on a bit of line which he tied to his gun belt—on the left side of him, since he was no fool after all—and began fishing upstream, going stealthily from riffle to pool, oblivious to all else for the time being, like all born anglers held entranced with the whipping of a fly out over a mountain stream, skittering it above the water to tempt the king of all wiliness from his dusky retreat beneath a rock.

Any trout fisherman knows the lure of the next pool above, and the next, and yet another. Patrick O’Neill crept warily upstream, parting the bushes with care, landing each trout in silence and putting back all but the largest of his catch. Just one more pool would he whip before he turned back, he promised himself, and stole up to a willow-bordered spot, where the slack water lay enticingly under a high bank grown thick with bushes.

He stopped to reach forward, poised for the cast, then froze in his tracks as some one beyond the bushes spoke his name. He turned his head and stared upward, but could see nothing save the yellow-leaved thicket.