“Bravo! then we’ll ride together, instead of squatting together. Instead of your teaching me quartz-mining, I’ll guide you across the Rockys.”
“You know the way, then.”
“Every foot of it. Last fall I hunted up from Mexico and New Mexico with an English friend. We made winter head-quarters with Captain Ruby at Fort Laramie, knocking about all winter in that neighborhood, and at the North among the Wind River Mountains. Early in the spring we went off toward Luggernel Alley and the Luggernel Springs, and camped there for a month.”
“Luggernel Alley! Luggernel Springs! Those are new names to me; in fact, my Rocky Mountain geography is naught.”
“You ought to see them. Luggernel Alley is one of the wonders of this continent.”
So I think now that I have seen it. It was odd too, what afterward I remembered as a coincidence, that our first talk should have turned to a spot where we were to do and to suffer, by and by.
“There is something Frenchy in the name Luggernel,” said I.
“Yes; it is a corruption of La Grenouille. There was a famous Canadian trapper of that name, or nickname. He discovered the springs. The Alley, a magnificent gorge, grand as the Via Mala, leads to them. I will describe the whole to you at length, some time.”
“Who was your English friend?”
“Sir Biron Biddulph,—a capital fellow, pink in the cheeks, warm in the heart, strong in the shanks, mighty on the hunt.”