[Illustration: THE GRASSY UPLANDS, WITH WHITELEY'S PEAK IN THE
DISTANCE]

On August twenty-third we started in two buckboards for the foothills,
some fifteen miles westward, where Teague's men were to meet us with
saddle and pack horses. The ride was not interesting until the Flattop
Mountains began to loom, and we saw the dark green slopes of spruce,
rising to bare gray cliffs and domes, spotted with white banks of
snow. I felt the first cool breath of mountain air, exhilarating and
sweet. From that moment I began to live.

We had left at six-thirty. Teague, my guide, had been so rushed with
his manifold tasks that I had scarcely seen him, let alone gotten
acquainted with him. And on this ride he was far behind with our load
of baggage. We arrived at the edge of the foothills about noon. It
appeared to be the gateway of a valley, with aspen groves and ragged
jack-pines on the slopes, and a stream running down. Our driver called
it the Stillwater. That struck me as strange, for the stream was in
a great hurry. R.C. spied trout in it, and schools of darkish,
mullet-like fish which we were informed were grayling. We wished for
our tackle then and for time to fish.

Teague's man, a young fellow called Virgil, met us here. He did not
resemble the ancient Virgil in the least, but he did look as if he had
walked right out of one of my romances of wild riders. So I took a
liking to him at once.

But the bunch of horses he had corralled there did not excite any
delight in me. Horses, of course, were the most important part of our