“I reckon, son, if you tell them all the things you have seen out in this country that if they don’t call you crazy they’ll at least call you a liar.”
“That is sure so, Hugh,” said Jack. “I’ve seen people turn their heads away and laugh when I was telling them some common enough story about things out here. You see they don’t understand anything about it, and so when they hear anything that is outside of the range of their own experiences they think I’m lying to them; but this holding Mass in a Kootenay Indian camp beats me. It’s hard to believe that I’ve seen it.”
“It does seem mighty queer, that’s so, son,” replied Hugh, “but we all know what great fellows the Indians are for hanging on to anything that they ever get hold of. They are a great people for old customs, and accept and stick to what their old people have told them. Of course, in these days they are changing all the time. The young fellows around the agencies are becoming civilized in spite of themselves, but take these old fellows that live out in the camps, the old buffalo hunters, and others of that sort, and they haven’t changed much, and they never will change much either. They’ll die old buffalo hunters.”
Early the next morning the little party left their Indian friends and started up the lake. By ten o’clock they had crossed the inlet and were on their way along the upper lake. The packs, well put on in the morning and constantly watched, gave them no trouble and there were no delays. Not long after noon they passed their previous camp just below the Point of Rocks, and climbing that steep ridge, kept on their way along the mountainside.
They traveled until after sunset and at last camped in a little park in the narrow valley, and by noon the next day had reached the old camp at the little lake where they had killed the bears.
Here the aspect of the mountains was greatly changed. Much of the snow had melted, the grass was well started, and the landscape looked more like summer.
CHAPTER XVIII
AMONG THE ICEFIELDS
THE next morning they rose late, for the previous day had been long and hard. At breakfast Hugh said, “Now, to-day, let’s picket the pack horses and ride up on the mountains prospecting, and see whether we can camp over there where that big snow bank lay when we were here last. I have an idea that we’ll find most of the snow gone and that we’ll have dry ground to camp on and some little feed near by for the horses.”
Soon after breakfast they made ready to start.
“They say lightning don’t strike twice in the same place,” remarked Hugh, “but then it might, so I’m going to hang up all our stuff in one of these trees, where it will be out of the reach of the bears. If they get to mixing up our things once or twice more, we won’t have anything to eat, and we’ll have to go back to the Agency for grub. They’d like mighty well, I reckon, to get at this sheep meat, and if they could ever get hold of that sheep head of yours, son, they’d carry it off in the brush, and you never would find it.”