THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE GOOSE 



By DAN BEARD 



CHAPTER VI. 



{Continued) 



A MESS OF GOLDEN TROUT 



ISING abruptly from the 

 prairie was a frowning 

 precipice a thousand or 

 more feet high and above 

 and beyond the top of this 

 cliff the mountains. 



When Big Pete told me 

 that his park was "walled 

 in" he told the mildest sort 

 of truth ; the prairie is the 

 bottom of a canyon, in 

 fact everything seems to indicate that 

 the whole park has settled, sunk, taken 

 a drop of a thousand or more feet ; it 

 is what miners would call a fault. 



From the glaciers up among the 

 clouds numerous streams of melted ice 

 come dashing down the sides of the 

 mountain range, fanciful cascades leap- 

 ing without fear down from most stup- 

 endous heights, spreading out in long 

 horse-tail shaped falls over the face of 

 the cliff, doing everything but looking 

 real. This is a place where Nature let 

 her imagination run and put in any- 

 thing which would add to the fanciful 

 aspect of the scene. At the foot of each 

 of the falls there is a pool of deep water, 

 in one or two instances the pool is a 

 smooth basin hollowed out of solid rock 

 in which the water is as transparent as 

 the air itself, and, but for the millions 

 of air bubbles caused by the falling 

 water, every inch of the bottom could 

 be plainly seen by an observer at the 

 brink of the pool. The rainbow trout 

 in these basins are almost as colorless 

 as the water itself — the light color of 

 the fish is due to their chameleon-like 



power of modifying their hue to imitate 

 their surroundings — this mimicry is so 

 perfect that after looking into one of 

 these stone basins, the rounded smooth 

 sides of which offered no shade or shel- 

 ter, no crevice or nook where a trout 

 might hide, I was ready to declare the 

 waters uninhabited ; but no sooner had 

 my brown hackel or professor settled 

 lightly on the face of the pool than out 

 from among the air bubbles a fish ap- 

 pear and with a splash seized the fly. 



Coming out of water but a few de- 

 grees higher in temperature than the 

 snow from which it springs, these fish 

 feel as cold to one's hands as if they 

 had been kept on ice. Pale and glisten- 

 ing as silver sheen when lifted in my 

 landing net, but when laid on the green 

 ferns in the creel a beautiful red blush 

 would creep over their bellies and gills 

 so that they appeared to belong to a 

 different species than those still in the 

 pools. 



My sprained ankle was now so much 

 improved that upon discovering a diag- 

 onal fracture in the face of the cliff, 

 and feeling reckless, I determined to 

 make the effort to scale the wall at this 

 point. 



If the giant fault is of comparatively 

 recent occurrence, geologically speaking, 

 it seemed reasonable that there would 

 be trout in the streams above the cliff, 

 and the memory of the fact that Big 

 Pete had reported that both Rocky 

 Mountain sheep and goats were up 

 there decided me to attempt to scale 

 the wall by the fracture. It was a long, 

 hard climb and more than once I clung 



4Z 



