CHAPTER VIII
Rising abruptly from the prairie was a frowning precipice a thousand ormore feet high and above and beyond the top of this cliff, themountains.
When Big Pete told me that his park was "walled in" he told me themildest sort of truth; the prairie is the bottom of a wide canyon, infact everything seems to indicate that the whole park had settled,sunk--"taken a drop" of a thousand or more feet; forming what minerswould call a fault.
From the glaciers up among the clouds numerous streams of melted icecame dashing down the sides of the mountain range, fanciful cascadesleaping without fear from most stupendous heights spreading out in longhorse-tail falls over the face of the cliff, doing everything butlooking real. At the foot of each of the falls there was a pool of deepwater, in one or two instances the pools were smooth basins hollowed outof solid rock in which the water was as transparent as air and but forthe millions of air bubbles caused by the falling water every inch ofbottom could be plainly seen by an observer at the brink of the pool.
The trout in these basins were almost as colorless as the water itself(the light color of the fish is due to their chameleon-like power ofmodifying their hue to imitate their surroundings)--this mimicry is soperfect that after looking into one of these stone basins, the roundedsmooth sides of which offered no shade or nook where a trout might hide,I was ready to declare the waters uninhabited but no sooner had my brownhackel or professor settled lightly on the surface of the pool than outfrom among the air bubbles a fish appeared and seized the fly.
My sprained ankle was now so much improved that upon discovering adiagonal fracture in the face of the cliff, which looked as if offeringa foot hold, and feeling reckless, I determined to make the effort toscale the wall at this point.
If the giant "fault" is of comparatively recent occurrence, geologicallyspeaking, it seemed reasonable that there would be trout in the streamsabove the cliff and the memory of the fact that Pete had reported thatboth Rocky Mountain sheep and goats were up there decided me to attemptto scale the wall by the fracture. It was a long, hard climb and morethan once while I clung to the chance projections or dug my fingers intosmall cracks and looked down upon the backs of some golden eagle sailingin spirals below me, I regretted making the fool-hardy attempt, but whenthe top was reached and I saw signs of sheep and had a peep at a whiteobject I took to be a goat, I felt repaid for my arduous climb.
The elevated prairie or table-land on which I found myself correspondedin every important particular with the park below; there were the samenatural divisions of prairie and forests, the same erratic boulders, buton account of the difference in elevation there was a correspondingdifference in plant life, and most interesting of all to me, there werethe trout streams. The tablelands above the park were comparativelylevel in places where the stream ran almost as quietly as a meadowbrook, but these level stretches were interrupted at short distance byfoaming rapids, jagged rocks and roaring falls.
My angler's instinct told me that the biggest fish lurked in the deeppools, to reach which it was necessary to creep and worm myself over theopen flats of sharp stones and patches of heather, but once on thevantage ground the swish of a trout rod sounded there for the first timesince the dawn of Creation.
More than once while I clung to the chance projection... I regretted making the fool-hardy attempt]
There was an audible splash at my first cast. My, how that reel didsing! Before I realized it, my fish had reached rapid water and takenout a dangerous amount of line; still I dared not check him too severelyamong the sharp rocks and swift waters, so I ran along the bank,stumbling over stones, but managing to avail myself of every opportunityto wind in the line until I had the satisfaction of seeing enough lineon my reel to prepare me for possible sudden dashes and emergencies.
Ah! that was a glorious fight, and when at last I was able to steer mytired fish into shallow water I saw there were three of them, one lustytrout on each of my three flies. I had no landing net so I gently slidthe almost exhausted fish onto a gravel bar and as I did so Iexperienced one of those delightful thrills which comes to a fellow'slot but once or twice in a life-time. But it was not because I hadcaptured three at a strike, for I have done that before and since, but Ithrilled because they were not only a new and strange kind of trout, butthey were of the color and sheen of newly minted gold. Never before hadany man seen such trout.
I have since been informed that I had blundered on to water inhabited bythe rarest of all game fish, the so-called golden trout, which has sincebeen discovered and which scientists declare to be pre-glacier fish leftby some accident of nature to exist in a new world in which all theiroriginal contemporaries have long been extinct.
Think of it! Fish which had never seen an artificial fly nor had anyfamily traditions of experiences with them. It is little wonder thatthey would jump at a brown hackle, a professor or even a gaudy salmonfly. Why they would jump at a chicken feather! They were ready and eagerto bite at any sort of bunco game I saw fit to play upon them. They wereveritable hayseeds of the trout family, but when they felt the hook intheir lips, the wisest trout in the world could not show a craftier norhalf as plucky a fight. They would leap from the water likesmall-mouthed bass and by shaking their heads, try to throw off thehateful hook.
The constant vigorous exercise of leaping water-falls and forging upboiling rapids had developed these sturdy mountaineer trout intoprodigies of strength and endurance. Even now my nerves tingle to thetips of my toes as in fancy I hear my reel hum or see the tip of my fiveounce split bamboo bend so as to almost form a circle.
I fished that stream with hands trembling with excitement and had filledmy creel with the rare fish before I began to notice other objects ofinterest. Suddenly I became aware of the presence of two birds hoveringover and diving under the cold water. They were evidently feeding onsome aquatic creature which my duller senses could not discern.
Although they were the first of the kind that I had ever seen alive, Iat once recognized the feathered visitors to be water ouzels. The birdspreceded me on my way along the water course towards camp, and werenever quiet a minute. They would hop on a rock in mid-stream and bob upand down in a most solemn but comical manner for a moment beforeplunging fearlessly into the cold white spray of the falls or the swiftdashing current, where they would disappear below the surface only toreappear once more on another rock to bob again.
A ducking did not trouble the ouzels, for as they came out of the waterthe liquid rolled in crystal drops from their feathers and their plumagewas as dry as if it had never been submerged. The wilder and swifter thecold glacier water ran the more the birds seemed to enjoy it.
The nearer I approached the edge of the precipitous walls, enclosing thevalley comprising Big Pete's park, the rougher grew the trail, and as Iwas picking my way I paused to gaze at the distant purple peaks andwatch the sun set in that lonely land as if I was witnessing it for thefirst time. As my eyes roamed over the stupendous distance and unnamedmountains I felt my own puny insignificance, as who has not whenconfronted with the vastness of nature.
I turned from my view of the sunset to retrace my steps to the valley,and peeping over the top of a large boulder, saw seated upon aninaccessible crag directly in front of me, a gigantic figure of a manclad in a hunter's garb, and he was smoking a long cigar!
When I thought of Big Pete's description of how the Wild Hunter was wontto sit with his long legs dangling from some rock while he smoked one ofthose unprocurable cigars, and when I realized that the figure before mewas fully sixty feet tall, I must confess to experiencing a queersensation.
It was a shadowy figure yet it moved, arose, held out one hand, and abird as large as the fabled roc alighted on the wrist of theoutstretched hand.
A slight breeze sprang up, the white mists from the valley rolled up themountainside and drifted away and the man and bird disappeared fromview.
It was long after dark when I reached camp and was greeted by my friendand guide with "Gol dur
n your pictur tenderfut, if it hain't tuk youlonger to get a pesky mess of yaller fish than it orter to kill a bar."
"Little wonder," thought I, "that the Wild Hunter used golden bullets ina land where even the fish's scales seemed to be of the same preciousmetal"; but I said nothing as I sat down to clean my "yaller trout."
The Black Wolf Pack Page 8