FROM the hour of George's decision the Judsons joined the Hicksons and the Traceys in spending every spare moment of daylight in the slaughter of imaginary big horns on an improvised range on the shore of Lake St. Clair, and one week later the three couples entrained for the journey westward. On the fourth day after, Sir Brian Hook, as host of the camp and the hunt, was receiving them in a tiny fold of the mountains so deep and narrow that the sun could be seen only at noonday and there seemed a perpetual chill in the air. There were tents; there were horses and horse wranglers; there was Charlie Waterbucket, the Cree guide and hunter, and there was Wah Sing, an expert cook, while above and beyond them was the Big Horn range, only a few thousand feet higher than their camp in a perpendicular direction but astonishingly distant and astonishingly inaccessible for all its proximity.
The second day Sir Brian not only saw a sheep but killed him. There was clamor of the ladies thereafter to be taken under Sir Brian's especial wing. They drew straws for the honor, and
