/ 14 Rod, Gun, and Palette in the High Rockies 



some distance before reaching Blackfoot, Idaho, the train ran 

 through the reservation of the Idaho Blackfoot Indians, whose 

 farm lands with their dwellings showed a good deal of care and 

 thrift. 



A bunch of tribesmen got on the train at Blackfoot, and 

 promptly congregated by themselves at the forward end of the 

 car. The artist, having some slight acquaintance with the Chi- 

 nook dialect, which at one time formed a universal language 

 over the northwest quarter of the continent, went forward, and 

 tried to open communication. With Indian taciturnity they 

 refused response. 



"The moments fly 

 And the hour is nigh 

 When thou and I must part. 

 My dear. 

 When thou and I must part." 



So sang the artist. 



"I'm sorry," remarked Art to the artist, "my right side is 

 going to feel pretty darn lonesome." The artist, throughout the 

 expedition had at meals sat at Art's right hand. 



"Pocatello!" 



"Good-bye, Jimmy. Tell 'em in Chicago we'll be home on 

 the twenty-second. You change at Ogden, and pick up the Los 

 Angeles limited for home if you can." 



And hence, William and Arthur going on to Spokane and 

 Seattle, the artist journeyed alone through the Idaho valleys. Be- 

 low Pocatello came a splendid succession of mountain ranges, float- 

 ing blue in the Indian summer air, across distant benches of hay 

 land and sage. Asters were still in bloom, and willows and cotton- 

 woods in full leaf below Pocatello. At Cache Creek, 4,425 feet 

 above sea level, and forty-nine miles from Ogden, stray butterflies 

 were still on the wing. 



A young Kentuckian, from Cumberland Gap, dropping into 

 the artist's seat, entertained him for a few miles with a tale of his 

 courtship of a belle of the district, known locally as the Queen of 

 the Cumberland Mountains. With circumstantiality of detail 

 it was set forth how other suitors had tried to run him out of the 

 country, with various pot shots from behind fences and rocks. 

 And further, how one evening he had gone calling upon the queen 



