"You just can't prove it by me," said Hugh; "but I've always believed that they came from the other side of the mountain, over the range. How they got over to this side, I do not know, but I reckon that there are ways for fish to move about and get scattered over the country, that maybe you and I don't know anything about. There's one place up north of here where there's a little spring right on the crest of the mountain, from which the water flows both ways. That is to say, it flows down into the Yellowstone on one side and into the Snake River on the other, and so from this same spring water goes to the Atlantic Ocean and to the Pacific Ocean. Now, of course, it might be possible for a trout from the west side of the range to push his way up a western stream until he got into this little spring, and then he might push his way down the stream, which runs east, and where one fish went another might follow; and so that stream might get stocked. It may be that in times past there have been a number of places like that where a fish could climb over the range. Mind, I don't say that is the way that it happened, but it seems to me it might have been that way."
"That's mighty interesting, Hugh," said Jack; "I never heard of that place before. What do they call it?"
"Why," said Hugh, "they have a good name for it, they call it 'Two Ocean Spring.' Long ago I heard of it from mountain men a great many times, and I have been there once or twice. It's in the right high mountains just east of that Yellowstone Park that we came down through two years ago. They call the two little creeks that run out from it, Atlantic Creek and Pacific Creek, and these seem to me to be very good names for them, too. I heard that not very long ago a government outfit crossed over there and made a map of the country."
"Jerusalem!" said Jack; "that's one of the places I'd like to go to."
"Well," said Hugh, "you're likely to see just as pretty places as that in these mountains this summer. The little pool up there, that these two streams run out of, is just like any other little shallow lake on top of a divide, and there isn't any wonderful scenery there. It's a good game country, though not any better, I think, than what we came through when we made that trip with Joe two years ago; but it is a pretty country to travel through; open parks and quaking aspen groves and high peaks of mountains sticking up every little while. Oh, yes, it's a real nice country."
"Well," said Jack, "I would like to go there, but dear me! what a lot of country there is out here, and how much time it would take to visit all of it!"
"That's so," said Hugh, "there's a right smart of country that I have never seen, and I have been out here a pretty considerable time."
For a little while both sat silently looking into the fire, and listening to the sharp barks and the shrill wailings of a coyote perched on a hill not far from them. The noise made seemed to Jack to be enough for a half dozen animals, and yet he suspected that very likely it was all made by one. At last he spoke to Hugh about it, and said, "How many of those coyotes do you think there are yelling out there, Hugh?"
"Well, I don't know," said Hugh; "there must be at least one; he makes plenty of noise, doesn't he?"