CHAPTER I

A COUNCIL OF WAR

"Well, Jack," said Mr. Sturgis, "I am glad to see you back again."

"Indeed, Uncle George, you can bet I am glad to get back," replied Jack. "I tell you it just made my heart rise up to ride over the prairie to-day; it seemed to me that I never smelt anything so good as the odor of the sage, and the little birds that kept getting up out of the road and flying ahead of the team and alighting again, seemed like old friends. Then we saw some antelope and a coyote or two. I tell you it was bully. It seemed mighty good, too, to see Hugh after all these months."

"Well," said Mr. Sturgis, "it is good to get you back, and I hope you will have a good summer. Have you thought of what you want to do?"

Jack shook his head. "No," he said, "I have not; it is good enough to be back. As soon as this storm is over I want to go out and take a ride and see the country again."

"Oh, this snow won't last long, though it's a pretty rough night now. Where were you on the road when it began to snow?" asked Mr. Sturgis.

"We were just about half through the Little Basin," said his nephew. "Hugh had been looking at the sky for quite a little while back, and said that it was going to snow. We drove pretty fast from the Troublesome until we got into the Big Basin; the snow didn't get very deep until about three or four miles back from here. From there on we had pretty slow driving."

"Well," said Mr. Sturgis, "suppose you go out and see if you can find Hugh, and ask him if he will come in here and sit with us for a little while; I want to talk with you both."

"All right," replied Jack, and he disappeared in the direction of the ranch kitchen.

It was about the middle of the month of May, and Jack Danvers, after a winter of hard work at school in the East, had come out by the Union Pacific Railroad to spend the summer at his uncle's ranch. His old friend, Hugh Johnson, had met him at the railroad station with a team of horses hitched to a spring-wagon, and the greater part of the drive of forty miles out to the ranch had been made in record time. Then it had begun to snow and blow furiously, and the last few miles of the distance had been passed over much more slowly. In these high altitudes in the Rocky Mountains, snowstorms are common in May and June; yet, though the snow may fall deep at such times, it lies on the ground for but a short time.

Jack and his uncle had been talking after supper in the comfortable sitting room of the ranch; a fire of dry aspen logs burned merrily in the large, open fireplace, and their cheerful crackling contrasted pleasantly with the howling of the wind without.

As Mr. Sturgis sat filling his pipe in front of the fire, he looked back over the years which had elapsed since he first began to take an active, vivid interest in this nephew of his. He remembered him as a small, pale, shrunken slip of a boy, who spent all his time curled up in a chair, devouring books; a boy seemingly without vitality and without any special interest in life. He remembered how the boy woke up and became alert when he had first spoken to him of the possibility of a trip to the West. How the little fellow had wondered at and enjoyed all the different incidents of life on a cow ranch; and how Hugh Johnson had taken to him, and instructed him in the lore of the prairies and mountains, in which Hugh was so well versed; and how year after year the boy had grown and strengthened, until now he was a young fellow of great promise. Within a few years the boy had changed from a child to something very like a man. While he was going over these years in his mind, Mr. Sturgis heard steps in the passage without, and then Jack's voice, and a moment later the door opened and Hugh Johnson and Jack stepped into the room.

"Sit down, Hugh," said Mr. Sturgis, "and fill your pipe; I want to talk with you. You sit down, too, Jack. We have matters to discuss which will be interesting to both of you, I think. It was pretty hard hauling this afternoon, wasn't it?" he continued, addressing Hugh.

"Well, yes, Mr. Sturgis, it was so"; said the old man. "The snow finally got so deep that I would not force the horses. They are strong, and are willing, and they might have trotted, but we wasn't trying to catch a train, and they balled up pretty well in this wet snow, and I was afraid that they might slip and strain something. I reckon I told you that I had shod both of them, didn't I, when you said that you wanted me to go in for Jack?"

"No," said Mr. Sturgis, "I don't