The news of the segregation of these hills and valleys he loved had brought to Mart Woodson another of those rare moments of exaltation. The invariable theme of his childhood tales had dealt with the near-serfdom of the inhabitants of far countries and had built up in his mind the belief that the people of other lands were chattels. Now, as if in direct refutation of those ancient policies which decreed that the land was God-given for the benefit and pleasure of the few, his country had set aside the wonder-spot of the world for the enjoyment of the many. This vast reservation, more than three thousand square miles of it, belonged to the people as a whole, a joint estate to descend to unborn generations for a thousand years to come. Never a foot of it could come into the possession of individuals or concerns. What more could a man ask than to live his life upon his own estate comprising hundreds of square miles? This belonged to him. A thousand might share it, or ten thousand, but his own rights would ever remain the same. He could make his night fire on the shores of some stream, leave it the next morning and never look upon it again till the last day of his life, but always with the certain knowledge that on that day he could return and say, “Here is my camp,” and no man could wave him off. But a man should know his own property,--so Mart Woodson set forth to explore every nook of this vast estate which had so unexpectedly been willed to him. His wants were few. He killed his meat as he needed it and when he felt the necessity of gaining a few dollars with which to buy supplies he worked with the construction gang that had been sent here to hew out a primitive road system through the People’s Park while the nearest railroad point was yet five hundred miles away; but mostly he roamed the hills and whenever seen was mounted on a bay mare that mothered a mare colt. He scoured the hills for gold in summers and panned the streams from the Flathead to the Green, prospected the ledges for quartz from Big Wing River to the Gallatin. When a party of explorers verified the existence of the stream which flowed to both seas and heralded to the world their find of Two Ocean Pass, they found also a low mound of earth surmounted by a headboard slabbed out with an ax and rudely carved with the words “Tom North,” testimony that in this spot men had lived and died before they came.