84 Rod, Gun, and Palette in the High Rockies 



Jay stopped his horse, looked at the ground beside him, 

 and pointed down. WilHam rode up, and inspected Hkewise 

 with interest. The artist and Art, curious, followed suit. Elk 

 tracks. Constantly through the afternoon were the guide's 

 eyes upon the ground he traversed. Elk tracks were seen con- 

 tinuously. Some of them, cautiously allowed the guide, might 

 have been made the night before. Trees were shown the artist 

 where the bark had been rubbed clear down to the bare wood, 

 over a span a foot or two in height. These were where some bull 

 elk had rubbed his horns. In the height from the ground at 

 which the rubbing started, and the extent of the abrasion was 

 possible evidence of the height and spread of horn of the animal 

 making it. To himself the artist quoted Scott: 



"We can show you where he lies 

 Fleet of foot and tall of size. 

 We can show the marks he made 

 When 'gainst the oak his antlers frayed." 



Presently, upon a noble height, the party looked down 

 upon and across a veritable sea of mountains. Yonder was the 

 Gallatin range. This was Electric Peak. That yonder, in- 

 dicating a faint blue, silverlaced splendor on the far horizon, 

 seen between the parting of the clouds, was Emigrant Peak. 

 To the south, crowning the blue band that girdled the field of 

 vision, was old Twotop, the mountain the artist had painted at 

 evening but the other day on Madison river, whose peak marked 

 the height of the Continental Divide and the parting of the 

 waters, flowing respectively to the Gulf and the Pacific. Directly 

 in front, seeming near at hand, but miles away through the 

 clear air, rose a tremendous hog-back, its top sere and yellow, 

 with a few dwarf firs and spruces in sheltered spots, its length 

 to be computed in miles, its sides dropping in torn and jagged 

 ribs of rock that rose up from titanic slides, emerging from a 

 forest of fir and pine lost in blue depths that only an eagle's eye 

 might fathom. Along its crest ran the boundary line of the Gal- 

 latin Game Preserve, set apart by the State of Montana, the 

 line continuing along the ridges to the west, and bisecting the 

 great peak that dominates Tepee valley, Baldy, whose crown 

 rose another fifteen hundred feet above the ridge, five miles to 

 the west. 



