786 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 109, 1906. 

mountain, which I named Rising Wolf, in honor 
of the greatest plainsman of us all, my friend 
Hugh Monroe. Beyond that, hemming in a 
vast amphitheatre of lake and forest, rose 
more mountains, cliff-faced and needle-pointed, 
forming the divide of the great range. Rose and 
gold they were in the rising sun, jet black when 
silhouetted against the evening sky. We never 
tired of gazing at them, their shifting colors, 
the fleecy clouds of a morning banding their 
splendid heights. . 
The camp site selected, Ashton and I jointed 
the rods he had brought out from the East, set 
reels, strung lines, and attached the moistened 
leaders and flies. Then we walked down to the 
outlet of the lake, only a hundred yards or so 
distant, followed by every one in our camp, in- 
cluding the children. I had talked about the 
pleasures of fly-fishing. The Indians were 
anxious to see this to them new phase of the 
white man’s arts. Ashton made the first cast, 
and his artificial flies were the first that ever lit 
upon the waters of the Two Medicine. The 
response was generous. The placid water 
heaved and swirled with the rush of unsophis- 
ticated trout, and one big fellow, leaping clear 
- from the depths, took the dropper with him in 
his descent. The women screamed. ‘“Ah-hah- 
hai!” The men exclaimed, clapping hand to 
mouth, “Strange are the ways of the white 
man. Their shrewdness has no end; they can 
do everything.” 
The big trout made a good fight, as all good 
trout should do, and at last came to the surtace 
floating on its side, exhausted. I slipped the 
landing net under it and lifted it out, and again 
there were exclamations of surprise from our 
audience, with many comments upon the success 
of it all, the taking of so large a fish with such 
delicate tackle. Trout we had in abundance, 
rolled in yellow corn meal and fried to that 
delicate brown color, and unsurpassable flavor 
which all true fishermen appreciate. 
The sandbars along the inlet to the lake were 
all cut up with tracks of elk and occasional 
moose. Once upon a time the beavers had con- 
structed a huge dam clear across the valley and 
parallel with the shore of the lake, but the 
stream had broken through it, and the erst- 
while bed of the great pond was now an almost 
impenetrable thicket of red willow, a favorite 
food of the moose. Ashton said that he wanted 
to kill one of the great animals, and requested 
us to let him have that especial part of the val- 
ley for his hunting ground. Thither he and 
Diana wended their way every afternoon to wait 
and watch for some unwary game to appear, 
often remaining so late that they had no little 
difficulty in finding their way home through the 
dark forest. Thus day after day was passed, 
but no shot was ever heard from their retreat, 
and each night they had to report that they 
hadn’t seen a living thing larger than a passing 
mink or beaver. 
“The newly married man,’ Bear Head ‘re- 
marked, “can only get meat by leaving his 
woman in the lodge and going away to hunt 
alone.” 
“Ai, that is true,” Weasel Tail agreed. “They 
cannot sit quietly together. They have so 
much to say: ‘Do you love me? Why do you 
love me? Will you always love me?’ Such are 
the questions they ask each other, over and 
over again, and never tire of answering. I 
* Rising Wolf! 
know all about it; we were that way ourselves 
once, hah, my girl?” 
“Ai!” his wife replied, “that you were, and 
you still keep asking those questions. How silly 
you are.” 
Of course, we all laughed at Weasel Tail, and 
in truth he looked rather sheepish over his 
wife’s frank disclosure. He hurriedly changed 
the subject by saying that he would himself go 
with the hunters in the afternoon, and try to 
get them a shot at the desired game. 
They returned quite early that evening, and 
asked Weasel Tail to eat supper with us. ‘‘Well, 
what luck had you?” I inquired. 
Neither Diana nor Ashton seemed inclined to 
answer, bending over their plates after a quick 
glance at each other, and becoming very much 
interested in their food. I repeated the ques- 
tion in Blackfoot, and Weasel Tail laughed 
heartily. “It is as I suspected,” he replied. 
“There are many tracks on the sandbars of elk 
and moose, and deer, but they are very old; 
no game has been along there these many days. 
Out on the point of a sandbar lies a big log, 
from which one can see far up and down the 
river. There they have sat, and the game, com- 
ing to water, have seen them first, looking cau- 
tiously through the bushes, before stepping out 
in the open. They have talked, too, very low 
they say, but a moose can hear even the fall 
of a distant leaf. Also, the winds have blown up 
and down and across the valley, and told of 
their presence, and one by one the animals have 
left, sneaking away with careful footfalls to 
distant places.” 
“Well, it doesn’t matter,’ said Diana, in 
Blackfoot, ‘““We have sat and looked at the 
grand old mountains, and the clear streams, 
the feeding trout and prowling minks, and. our 
tramps have given us health and strength. After 
all, that is better than killing things. Isn’t that 
true, Chief?” she asked, repeating to Ashton in 
English what she had said. 
“We have certainly had a pleasant time, my 
dear,” he replied, smilingly; “but we have not 
contributed our share; we must try some other 
place to-morrow, and bring home meat.” 
Nat-ah’-ki and I went with them the following 
morning, riding up the valley to the shore of 
the upper lake on the way. We stopped to view 
the falls, which are certainly interesting. The 
river disappears in a mass of large boulders a 
short distance below the lake, and a mile further 
down gushes from a cafion in a high cliff into 
a lovely foam-flecked pool. The cliff itself is 
at least a hundred feet in height, and the fall is 
about a third of that. There are no trout above 
the pool. 
Seen from a distance, the mountain I had 
named Rising Wolf was grand and imposing; 
from a nearer view, it proved to be a truly 
stupendous mass of red and black, and dark 
gray slate. It rises steeply from the depths of 
the lake in a series of reefs and cliffs, cut by 
streams of talus, and tapers to a sharp, walled 
dome. High up on its eastern side, in a deep 
and timbered pocket, lies a field of perpetual 
snow and ice. There are grassy slopes, and 
groves of pine, thickets of servis and blue berry 
here and there, clear up to the foot of the dome. 
“Mah-kwo’-i-pwo-ahts! Mah-kwo’-i-pwo- 
ahts!”’* said Nat-ah’-ki, softly. “Truly, his 
name will never die.” 
Rising Wolf! 
I know not what life there may be now upon 
the mountain’s grassy slopes and beetling cliffs, 
but on that day the wild creatures were cer- 
tainly in evidence. On the lower part several 
bands of ewe bighorn and their young; higher 
up, singly and two and three and four together, 
some old rams, lazily feeding or lying down, 
but always watchful of their surroundings. And 
then, up on the higher cliffs there were goats, 
numbers of them, the snow white, uncouth, long- 
haired alpine creatures which the naturalists tell 
us are really antelope. 
“Always Laughing,” said Nat-ah’-ki to Ash- 
ton—she had given him a new and_ happier 
name, you perceive—‘remember your words of 
yesterday! Across up there is plenty of fat 
meat; go and kill some, lest we starve.” 
“Oh,” he said to Diana, “tell her that it would 
be a sin to kill the pretty things. We cannot 
starve, for there are always plenty of trout to be 
caught in the pool below our lodge.” 
“In other words,’ I remarked, “he is too 
lazy to climb. Well, I will not go. I have 
killed my share of the provisions, and we’ll do 
without meat until he provides it.” 
Just then a big bull elk appeared on the fur- 
ther shore of the outlet, and Ashton, crawling 
slowly back into the timber behind us, went 
after it. We sat as still as possible, anxiously 
watching the animal and our horses, fearing 
that it would take fright at them. The women 
were so excited that they could scarcely contain 
themselves. “Oh,” one would whisper, “why 
doesn’t he hurry?” And then the other, “It is 
going away, he’ll never get a shot at it. Isn’t 
it too bad?” 
The bull was in a happy mood. He drank 
standing belly deep in the water, walked out 
and kicked up his heels, raced up and down the 
beach several times, sniffed and pawed the 
sand. And then a rifle cracked, and he fell 
limply, instantly, and never even kicked. We 
went over with the horses, and I cut up the 
animal, taking all the best of the fat and juicy 
meat. 
Thus the days passed in peace and happiness. ° 
Before we left, the skins of bear and moose 
and elk, deer and goat and beaver adorned our 
camp, killed mostly by the Indians. Ashton 
hunted little. He preferred to sit and gaze 
into Diana’s splendid love-lit eyes, and I—had 
I not Nat-ah’-ki, faithful, true and tried com- 
panion? Her gay laughter and happy chatter 
is still echoing in my ears. Alas! alas! Old 
Time you have done me grievous wrong. 
WALTER B. ANDERSON. 
[TO BE CONTINUED. ] 
Houseboats South and North. 
Mr. Hunv’s beautiful volume, “Houseboats and 
Houseboating,” tells much about the joys of this 
method of living as practiced in Florida, whence 
the shoals of northern visitors are just now re- 
turning. Of these many who know the pleasures 
of houseboat life will, in the course of the next 
month or two, transfer themselves to comfortable 
and convenient houseboats afloat on Canadian 
lakes. 
In the Middle West houseboating on the 
greater rivers has become a recognized form of 
summer pleasuring, and, indeed, it is hard to 
imagine a more attractive way of passing days or 
weeks or motiths than to float down the current 
of some stream great of small amid constantly 
changing scenes. The sport of houseboating is 
constantly growing in popularity, and is sure to 
become more and more firmly established north 
and south, 
