"Well, caution every one to be careful. I'm particularly anxious just now, on account of our visitors."
"I don't think you need to be, Major. You take your trip with your friends. I'll guarantee nothing serious happens down here. And as you are not to leave the reservation, I don't see as the department can have any roar coming."
Nevertheless, it was with some misgiving that Curtis made his final arrangements for the start. Crane's Voice and Two Horns had interested Elsie very much; therefore he filled their places with other men, and notified them to be in readiness to accompany the expedition, an order which pleased them mightily. Mary, the mother of Crane's Voice, was to go along as chief cook, under Jennie's direction, while Two Horns took general charge of the camp.
Elsie burdened herself with canvases. "I don't suppose I'll paint a picture while I'm gone, but I'm going to make a bluff at it on the start," she said, as she came out and took her place with the driver amid the mock lamentations of Lawson and Parker and Jennie.
"Can any of you drive—no!" replied Elsie, in German fashion. "Then I am here."
"I like her impudence," said Lawson.
As they drove up the valley, Curtis outlined his plan for using the water on a huge agency garden. "I would lay it out in lots and mark every lot with the name of a family, and require it to be planted and taken care of by that family. There are sites for three such gardens, enough to feed the entire tribe, but so long as a few white men are allowed to use up all the water nothing can be done but continue to feed the Tetongs in idleness, as we are now doing."
As they rose the grass grew greener, and at last Elsie began to discover wild roses growing low in damp places, and at noon, when they stopped for lunch, they were able to eat in the shade of a murmuring aspen, with wild flowers all about them. The stream was swift and cold and clear, hardly to be classed with the turbid, sluggish, discouraged current which seeped past the agency.
"It is a different world up here," Elsie said, again and again. "I can't believe we are only a half-day's drive from the agency. I never saw more delicious greens."
Mrs. Parker, being an amateur botanist, was filled with delight of the thickening flowers. "It is exactly as if we had begun in August and were moving backward towards spring. I feel as though violets were near. It is positively enchanting."