Spread Horn knew them all. They were his neighbors. Also he knew the people that lived in the cataract at the bottom of the gorge. Sometimes, when he paused to drink, the salmon rushed past him in their mysterious journeyings,—their fourth-year migration to the waters in which they were born. They come to spawn in the waters where they were themselves spawned before they go down to the sea, and after they spawn they die. To the naturalist there are strange significances in this repatriation of the salmon. There is a sense of curious relationships,—for strong men, too, always try to return to their homeland for their last days. After four years, almost to the day, the salmon come fighting their way back through the riffles, into dreadful gorges, up cataracts, and high is the waterfall that holds them back. The salmon were not the only water people that Spread Horn knew. He had seen the trout, too (of course the salmon himself is just an overgrown trout that has taken up a seafaring life) and some of them, like the salmon themselves, took an occasional thousand-mile jaunt to the ocean. These were the great steelheads and such seagoing people, and sportsmen say that a five-pounder at the end of a silk line will permit, for ten tearing, fighting, breathless moments, a glimpse into the Promised Land. But you can imagine the mighty salmon, who have spent four years in the sea and who have swum about the reefs of Kamchatka, regarding them with some patronage. Then there were the little trout: quivering, timid, sparkling creatures that, although great stay-at-homes and never going to sea, still look very beautiful in a creel. It seems to be one of Nature’s aims to make life interesting and exciting for all her creatures, so she had provided certain other river-folk to entertain these finned people. Their method of entertainment was to take a sudden leap into a riffle or trout pool with glittering, gleaming razor-edged teeth all set and ready. One little instant’s delay in darting to safety, one little clasping of those wicked teeth into the beautiful silver shoulder,—and the trout leaped no more for flies in the cool of the evening. These were the otter and mink and such fur-bearing people, and they existed in plentiful numbers because in this region the trapper had not yet made himself particularly manifest. Then there were plenty of mergansers and other feathered fishermen to take care of the fingerlings. The cattle herds fed through the region, and sometimes sportsmen penetrated its fastnesses, but mostly Smoky Land was simply the wilderness, primeval and unchanged. The venerable grizzly still dug for marmots on the high ranges,—the great killer that shared the mountain monarchy with the bull elk. The Rocky Mountain goat, white-whiskered as a patriarch, had a range just adjoining that of the bighorn. The wolf pack sang of death and hunger when the ridges were swept with snow. * * * * *