Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/366

 overhanging boulders and widely-branching trees. The dark-green water in front rushed swiftly and almost noiselessly by, but not more than five or six yards below our position several sharp-toothed fragments of granite barred the progress of the current, which grew white with rage as it hissed and roared on its downward course.

We disrobed and entered the bath, greatly to the astonishment of a school of trout of all sizes which circled about and darted in and out among the rocks, trying to determine who and what we were. We were almost persuaded that we were the first white men to penetrate to that seclusion. Our bath was delightful; everything combined to make it so—shade, cleanliness, convenience of access, purity and coolness of the water, and such perfect privacy that Diana herself might have chosen it for her ablutions! Splash! splash!—a sound below us! The illusion was very strong, and for a moment we were willing to admit that the classical huntress had been disturbed at her toilet, and that we were all to share the fate of Actæon. Our apprehensions didn't last long; we peeped through the foliage and saw that it was not Diana, but an army teamster washing a pair of unquestionably muddy overalls. Our bath finished, we took our stand upon projecting rocks and cast bait into the stream.

We were not long in finding out the politics of the Big Horn trout; they were McKinleyites, every one; or, to speak more strictly, they were the forerunners of McKinleyism. We tried them with all sorts of imported and manufactured flies of gaudy tints or sombre hues—it made no difference. After suspiciously nosing them they would flap their tails, strike with the side-fins, and then, having gained a distance of ten feet, would most provokingly stay there and watch us from under the shelter of slippery rocks. Foreign luxuries evidently had no charm for them. Next we tried them with home-made grasshoppers, caught on the banks of their native stream. The change was wonderful: in less than a second, trout darted out from all sorts of unexpected places—from the edge of the rapids below us, from under gloomy blocks of granite, from amid the gnarly roots of almost amphibious trees. My comrades had come for an afternoon's fishing, and began, without more ado, to haul in the struggling, quivering captives. My own purpose was to catch one or two of good size, and then return to camp. A teamster, named