CHAPTER X
WILD HORSES
"If I could believe in God and a heaven I'd ask nothing more of life except a good saddle-horse."
AND so another long winter was upon Lost Chief. It was much like other winters for Douglas except for the fact that he began systematically to trap for pelts. It was a heavy winter and game was plentiful, with pelts of exceptionally fine quality for which there was a good market in St. Louis. Douglas worked hard and began the accumulation of a sum of money which he planned to use eventually to start his own ranch on the old Douglas section, which was to be his when he came of age.
But although to the young rider the money earned seemed the main aspect of the winter's work, the important result really lay in the deepening it gave to his appreciation of the beauty and mystery of this mountain valley.
Lost Chief was lovely in the summer with its crystal glory of color on hill and plain. But Lost Chief in winter was awe-inspiring in its naked splendor. Dead Line Peak and Falkner's Peak, barren save for the great blue snows and for the black shadows that crept up and down their tremendous flanks, were separated from each other by a long, narrow, slowly rising valley. Down this valley rushed a tiny brook whose murmur the bitterest weather could not quite still. Along this brook grew
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