“That must have been a close call, White Bull,” said Joe.
“Yes,” answered Hugh, “it was close enough. I don’t want one any closer.”
“Now, White Bull,” Joe went on, “can we climb this point of the mountain over here? If we do we’ll go up pretty near to the head of that big river you speak of and cross it where it is only a little small stream.”
“I don’t know yet whether we can get up here or not. We’ll tell in the morning,” Hugh replied, “but if we can, I think we’ll find good traveling right up over the snow banks and we may find a place up there where we can camp. I don’t feel any way sure that we’ll find a place where we can get feed for the horses. We’ll know more about that when we get up there. If we can’t find feed, why, then we’ll have to come back and camp here or else find another trail down into the valley of the main river, and take the horses down there over night.”
When Jack went down to the shore of the lake the next morning, he was interested to see a pair of little harlequin ducks swimming close to the beach. He recognized them from colored pictures that he had seen of the species, and felt sure that the birds must be breeding somewhere about. Looking at them a second time, however, he saw that both birds were males. They made him think of the time of the year, and he realized that now, of course, the females would be sitting on their eggs, while the males would be enjoying a bachelor existence and getting ready to shed their winter plumage and to put on their brief summer dress.
As Jack squatted on a rock, rubbing his hands, face and head with the icy water, his eyes were busy searching the mountainside for signs of living creatures. With the naked eye he could see no game high up on the mountain, but just as he was about to turn from the shore, he happened to look up the lake and there, lying in a sort of cave in the rocks, only a short distance away, was a white goat. The same impulse to shoot that he had felt yesterday assailed him, but he did not yield to it. Instead, he felt rather ashamed of his desire to kill.
At breakfast he told Hugh about the goat, and his friend rather laughed at him and said, “Wait until you have been out a few weeks and then you won’t be so anxious to kill things, unless you need to. I have seen that every time you go back East you catch a little of the pilgrim fever, and you have to be out here for a week or two before you can shake off the disease.”
“Maybe you’re right, Hugh,” said Jack. “It does seem pretty silly to want to kill every wild thing I see.”
“Well, yes,” rejoined Hugh, “there’s no reason for killing anything without you’ve got some use for it. If you need a shirt or a pair of buckskin pants, kill what hides you need and have your clothing made, or if you need food, kill what you want to eat, but don’t shoot at things just to see whether you can hit them or not. That’s just a pilgrim trick, and you’ve been out here too long to be guilty of things like that.”
“Now, I tell you what, boys,” said Hugh, after breakfast was over, stooping over the fire to pick up a brand with which to light his pipe, “we don’t know what there is up above us here. We don’t even know that we can climb this hill. Now, what do you say to leaving the pack horses here and taking the saddle horses and going off to prospect? It isn’t very far, and if we can find a good camping place we can come back here and get the horses and take them up there.”