148 MY SPORTING HOLIDAYS 



* Now the Four-way Lodge is opened, now the Hunting Winds 



are loose ; 



Now the Smokes of Spring go up to clear the brain ; 

 Now the young men's hearts are troubled for the whisper of 



the Trues, 

 Now the Red Gods make their medicine again P 



Who hath tracked the antlered monarch thro 1 the forest's leafy 



mazes ? 



Who hath heard the bull elk calling ere 'tis light ? 

 Who hath chased the shaggy bison met the savage charging 



grizzly. 

 With the soft-nosed bullets swift death-dealing flight ? * 



' Who hath smelt wood-smoke at twilight ? Who hath heard 



the birch-log burning ? 



Who is quick to read the noises of the night ? 

 Let him follow with the others, for the young men's feet are 



turning 

 To the camps of proved desire and known delight P 



From start to finish our four months' trip was a 

 glorious kind of school-boy picnic, one of those alas ! 

 too few episodes of one's life in which the realiza- 

 tion fully came up to anticipation, and the pleasant 

 flavour of which has never faded from my mind. 



We slipped across the Atlantic in the then record 

 time of nine days, making love to some charming 

 American girls on the way; spent a panting, per- 

 spiring twenty-four hours in a hot August wave in 

 New York ; thence travelled by the Pennsylvania 

 Eailroad to Chicago ; by the Chicago, Burlington, 

 and Quincy Railroad to Omaha, and thence by the 

 Union Pacific Railroad across the Missouri River 

 and gradually up through Nebraska into Wyoming, 

 at the giddy pace of seventeen miles an hour, until 

 we reached Fort Steele, on the North Platte River, 

 6,000 feet above the sea and 5,000 miles from home. 



* My apologies are due to Mr. Kipling for inserting these 

 four lines of my own between the two quoted verses of his. 



