“He’s the only one I ever heard about,” replied Hugh. “And I never felt quite sure that he got as far as he thought he did. At all events it won’t be a bad trip to make, unless the flies are too awful bothersome, and by the way, son, to-morrow morning before we start, we’d better get out that strip of mosquito bar that you put in. If the mosquitoes are bad we’ll need it before very long.”
“I’ll do that, Hugh,” said Jack. “But what do you suppose we’ll find up there at the head of the river?”
“It’s pretty hard to say,” Hugh answered. “I expect we’ll find lots of rocks and stone and ice, probably lots of game, and we’ll surely see some mighty pretty scenery; high peaks and big snow fields. There sure ought to be lots of sheep and goats up there, some elk, maybe a moose or two, and of course some bears, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to get all this game. It only means maybe that we’ll see some of it; perhaps only some signs of it. Just how far we can take the horses, of course, I don’t know. We’ll have to try and do the best we can. Likely enough, we’ll know a lot more about it three or four days from now.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I’ll be mighty glad to get up there and see what there is.”
“Yes,” agreed Joe, “that will be good. I shall have plenty of things to tell the people when I get back to the camp after this trip.”
CHAPTER IX
A BLACKFOOT LEGEND
FOR a time all sat silent, and then Joe asked, “White Bull, did you ever hear that the people once lived on the other side of the mountains; that there is where they came from?”
“No,” said Hugh, “I don’t know as I have. I seem to remember something about such a story, but I can’t remember what it is.”
“Tell it to us, Joe,” said Jack.
“Well,” said Joe, “it’s a story I heard my uncle tell a good many years ago, when I was a little fellow, but I don’t believe it’s true. He didn’t know whether it was true or not. It was just something that he had heard from some older person. You know the Piegans believe that they used to live far up northeast, in the timber by some big lake, and that they came this way looking for some place where life was easier, where there was more game and it was easier to get close to the animals. I guess that is true, because there are old people still living whose fathers and grandfathers can remember old Piegans, who said that they had made that journey. This other story is about some of the people having lived across the mountains. It’s a long story, but I’ll tell it to you if you want me to.”