We finally caught a glimpse of a bit of the White River Valley through the gorge toward which we were moving: a beautiful stretch of meadow-like land reaching up to timber-clothed mountains. The view continued to expand until we arrived at the border of the stream. The way wound among willows and mountain beech, with a few scrub oaks, now and then an alder bush, and what Joshua termed haw bushes, bringing us suddenly to the margin of the river. The water was perfectly clear and cold, with the brush growing close down to the edges of the banks; just above the ford was a pool in which the Major was as sure there were trout as that the sun shone. It did seem, indeed, that the fish must find delightful habitation in every foot of water in sight. We crossed and made camp, and it was not long before the Major verified his prediction. From that same pool, within a hundred feet of the ford where people were crossing nearly every hour of the day, he brought in two trout that more than sufficed for our supper.
"The stream is just alive with them, my boy—you will have trouting such as you never had before."
On the Frying Pan.
CHAPTER VI.
ON WHITE RIVER.
Two miles, about, below our camp is that part of the valley where the Ute Indian Agency was situated a few years ago. Here it was that the pot-bellied potentate Colorow and his horde of tatterdemalions cruelly murdered agent Meeker, captured and carried away women and children, and committed other unprovoked atrocities—receiving, as an inducement for further outrages, additional government subsidies and comfort. The soil which these "red brothers" refused to cultivate now glitters in a garb of golden grain; they killed their best guide and friend, who never had for them other than kind words and fatherly admonitions, because it required work to change the product from sage brush to wheat. If a man should undertake to harness an adult grizzly to a plough the world would consider him weak and fail to mourn his death, though he would be on a par with the governmental "policy" touching the Indian. A century of failure should, it would seem, convince even a nation that there were defective cogs in its policy wheel.
But the Major suggests that I drop the subject, unless I desire to write a volume on a disease that I cannot cure. He says it is like any other botch, spoiled in the beginning of its existence, and it would be impossible now "to lick into shape."