There was nobody easy on the West End: and least of all Hailey, for that spring, ahead of the suns, ahead of the thaws, ahead of the waters, came a going out that unsettled the oldest calculator in the Wickiup. Brodie's old friends began coming out of the upper country, out of the Spider valley. Over the Eagle pass and through the Peace cañon the Sioux came in parties and camps and tribes--out and down and into the open country. And Bucks stayed them and talked with them. Talked the great White Father and the Ghost dance and the Bad Agent. But the Sioux grunted and did not talk; they traveled. Then Bucks spoke of good hunting, far, far south; if they were uneasy Bucks was willing they should travel far, for it looked like a rising. Some kind of a rising it must have been to take the Indians out of winter quarters at such a time. After Bucks, Hailey tried, and the braves listened for they knew Hailey and when he accused them of fixing for fight they shook their heads, denied, and turned their faces to the mountains. They stretched their arms straight out under their blankets like stringers and put out their palms, downward, and muttered to Hailey. "Plenty snow." "I reckon they're lying," said Bucks, listening. "There's some deviltry up. They're not the kind to clear out for snow." Hailey made no comment. Only looked thoughtfully at the ponies shambling along, the squaws trudging, the braves loitering to ask after the fire-water chief who slept under a cairn of stones off the right of way above the yard. Bucks didn't believe it. He could fancy rats deserting a sinking ship, because he had read of such things--but Indians clearing out for snow! "Not for snow, nor for water," muttered Bucks, "unless it's fire-water." And once more the red man was misunderstood. Now the Spider wakes regularly twice; at all other times irregularly. Once in April; that is the foothills water: once in June; that is the mountain water. And the June rise is like this [image: round mound]. But the April rise is like this [image: peaked mound]. Now came an April without any rise; that April nothing rose--except the snow. "We shall get it all together," suggested Bucks one night. "Or will it get us altogether?" asked Hailey. "Either way," said Callahan, "it will be mostly at once." May opened bleaker than April; even the trackmen walked with set faces; the dirtiest half-breed on the line knew now what the mountains held. At last, while we looked and wondered, came a very late Chinook; July in May; then the water. II