"What you keep behind your teeth," was a favorite maxim with the Superintendent, "will harm neither yourself nor any other man." They were on the old Kootenay Trail, for a hundred years and more the ancient pathway of barter and of war for the Indian tribes that hunted the western plains and the foothill country and brought their pelts to the coast by way of the Columbia River.

Along the lower levels the old trail ran, avoiding, with the sure instinct of a skilled engineer, nature's obstacles, and taking full advantage of every sloping hillside and every open stretch of woods.

Now and then, however, the trail must needs burrow through a deep thicket of spruce and jack pine and scramble up a rocky ridge, where the horses, trained as they were in mountain climbing, had all they could do to keep their feet.
Ten miles and more they followed the tortuous trail, skirting mountain peaks and burrowing through underbrush, scrambling up rocky ridges and sliding down their farther sides, till they came to a park-like country where from the grassy sward the big Douglas firs, trimmed clear of lower growth and standing spaced apart, lifted on red and glistening trunks their lofty crowns of tufted evergreen far above the lesser trees.
As they approached the open country the Superintendent proceeded with greater caution, pausing now and then to listen.
"There ought to be a big powwow going on somewhere near," he said to his Sergeant, "but I can hear nothing.

Can you ?" The Sergeant leaned over his horse's ears.
"No, sir, not a sound." "And yet it can't be far away," growled the Superintendent.
The trail led through the big firs and dipped into a little grassy valley set round with thickets on every side.

Into this open glade they rode.