Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/97

 the confluence of the two rivers he followed up the ridge between them. When well up toward the head he looked far across to the main divide. There were many brown specks on the white slopes of the Rampart Pass. They were strung out in scattered bands as far as his eye could reach; they were coming his way, and Flash went to meet them. The famine was broken. A few more hours and the Land of Many Rivers would once more be the land of plenty. The elk herds which wintered in the low valleys of the Shoshone were coming back to the upland meadows of the Yellowstone, the summer paradise of the elk.

Flash met the first few leaders of this migration and pulled down a cow. Great droves streamed down into the bottoms and traveled on toward the Yellowstone. The valley was a veritable thoroughfare for migrating elk—from which fact comes its name.

For a week they came in scattered bands. The big herds that had wintered in Jackson’s Hole were now coming from the south and mingling on the meadows with those from the Shoshone.

There was now food in abundance and in a few days Flash regained his usual fullness of form.