PART THIRD
"PRINCE CHARLIE"
CHAPTER I.
IN THE KOOTENAI SPRING-TIME.
In the spring that followed, what a spirit of promise and enterprise was abroad on the Hardy ranch! What multitudes of white lambs, uncertain in the legs, staggered and tottered about the pasture lands! and what musical rills of joy in the mountain streams escaping through the sunshine from their prisons of ice! The flowers rose from the dead once more—such a fragrant resurrection! slipping from out their damp coffins and russet winding-sheets with dauntless heads erect, and eager lips open to the breath of promise. Some herald must bear to their earth-homes the tidings of how sweet the sun of May is—perhaps the snow sprites who are melted into tears at his glances and slip out of sight to send him a carpet of many colors instead of the spotless white his looks had banished. It may be so, though only the theory of an alien.
And then the winged choruses of the air! What matinees they held in the sylvan places among the white blossoms of the dogwood and the feathery tassels of the river willow, all nodding, swaying in the soft kisses sent by the Pacific from the southwest—soft relays of warmth and moisture that moderate those western valleys until they are affronted by the rocky wall that of old was called by the Indians the Chippewyan Mountains, but which in our own day, in the more poetical language of the usurper, has been improved upon and dubbed the "Rockies." But all the commonplaces of those aliens can not deprive the inaccessible, conservative solitudes of their wild charms. And after those long months of repression, how warmly their smile bursts forth—and how contagious it is!
Laugh though the world may at the vibrations of poet hearts echoing the songs of the youngest of seasons, how can they help it? It is never the empty vessel that brims over, and with the spring a sort of inspiration is wakened in the most prosaic of us. The same spirit of change that thrills the saplings with fresh vitality sends through human veins a creeping ecstasy of new life. And all its insidious, penetrating charm seemed abroad there in the Northern-land escaped from under the white cloak of winter. The young grass, fresh from the valley rains, warmed into emerald velvet in the sunshine, bordered and braced with yellow buttons of dandelion; while the soil was turned over with the plows, and field and garden stocked with seed for the harvest.
Energetic, busy days those were after the long months of semi-inaction; even the horses were too mettlesome for farm drudgery—intoxicated, no doubt, by the bracing, free winds that whispered of the few scattered droves away off to the north that bore no harness and owned no master. All things were rebellious at the long restraint, and were breaking into new paths of life for the new season.