The Ascent of Chief Mountain 



For more than a year we had been num- 

 bered with the Chief's subjects. During the 

 previous summer we had been seeking the 

 acquaintance of the mountain goat; not the 

 shorn degenerate which throngs the slopes of 

 the Cascades and straggles among the southern 

 peaks of Montana, but the true snowy buffalo 

 of the northern Rockies ; and from the ledges 

 of the St. Mary Mountains, where we had 

 sought him, could be seen still further to the 

 northward the Piegans' Chief. Of the range, 

 yet not in it, like a captain well to the front of 

 his battle-line, he pressed out into the broad 

 prairie, as if leading a charge of Titans toward 

 the far distant lakes. And through the long 

 months of an Eastern winter, and the still 

 longer months of an Eastern summer, above 

 all the memories of that wondrous land where 

 every butte and mountain peak teems with 

 legend, and where every bison skull on the 

 prairie tells its story, had towered the clear-cut 

 image of that Northern mountain, a worthy 

 sovereign of any man's allegiance. Now, as 

 inevitably as an antelope returns to its lure, we 

 had returned for a closer look at our moun- 

 tain. Down deep in our hearts, battling with 

 the awe which we felt for him, was the almost 



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