The Man from the Bitter Roots

ame Bu

nding on a narrow shelf of rock, with the sheep's hind quarters on his ba

wer. T. Victor Sprudell was looki

ever was a white man's foot on, and they say that the West has b

n awful world, and the swift glance he had of it as he raised his eyes from the toes of his boots and looked off across the ocean of peaks gave him the feeling that he was abo

e, with these young bucks doin' all their prospectin' around some sheet-iron stove. There's nobody around the camps these days that ain't afraid of work, of gittin' lost, of sleepin' out of their beds of nights. Prospectin' in un

man's, rose and fell quickly with his hard breathing, and the barrel of his rifle where he clasped it was damp with nervous perspiration. His small mouth, with its full, red lips shaped like the traditional cupid's bow, wa

as a credit to the sporting house that had turned it out. His cartridge belt was new and squeaky, and he had the last patents in waterproof match safes and skinning knives. That goneness at his stomach,

ally he should step on a rolling rock what a gap there would be in the social, financial, and political life of B

t take care. Hello," he said to himself, staring at the river which lay like a great, green snake at the base o

eyes became a sha

can full to make a cent and there'

in his neighbor and his neighbor's business is a strong characteristic of the miner and prospector in these, our United States, an

to me and keep a-comin', for we don't want to get caught out 'way off from camp. We've stayed too

oing?" Sprudell

ll shifted the meat to the other shoulder, and travelled along the s

train in months, for, after all, Sprudell was fifty, and such experiences told. Never-never, he said to himself when a rolling rock started by his feet bounded from point to point to remind him how easily he could do the same, never would he t

place; you'd better

en he'd been frisking o

extended from the mountain top to a third of the

h a gun and half a sheep on my back you can make it empty-handed. Step eas

thirty with his winter tallow on, skimmed the surface like a water spider, scarcely jarring loose a rock.

've no time to lose. Dark's goin' to ketch us su

s he could; but in spite of his best efforts his feet came

him anxiously, an

sy er you're goin' to start the whole darn works

to move, slowly at first, with a gentle rattle, then faster. He gav

an danced

heels and r

p. Then he turned over and scrabbled madly with hands and feet for something that would hold. Everything loosened at

y dude!" Uncle Bill wru

id. His body, moving slower than the mass, acted as a kind of wedge, his head serving as a separator to divide the moving bank. He was conscious, too, of a curious sensation in his spine-a feeling

cial Club-Abe Cone-and then Mr. Sprudell hit something with a bump! He had a sensation as of a hatpin-many hatpins-penetrating his tender flesh, but that was nothing

d saved his life? The answer was before him. When he came down the slide in the fortunate attitude of a clothespin, the Fates, who had other p

ed Griswold. "I'll

the thick, sharp thorns like a naturalist's captive butte

when Griswold, at no small risk to himself, had sna

it were; and," with an anxious glanc