t Yellowstone, and there he readily agreed, when
they asked him, to take the letters and packages and go on farther to
the Canyon Hotel. Thus it was that on the 20th day of November 189-,
Josh Cree, sixteen years old, tall and ruddy, rode through the snow to
the kitchen door of the Canyon Hotel and was welcomed as though he were
old Santa Claus himself.

Two Magpies on a tree were among the onlookers. The Park Bears were
denned up, but there were other fur-bearers about. High on the wood-pile
sat a Yellow Red Fox in a magnificent coat. Another was in front of the
house, and the keeper said that as many as a dozen came some days. And
sometimes, he said, there also came a wonderful Silver Fox, a size
bigger than the rest, black as coal, with eyes like yellow diamonds, and
a silver frosting like little stars on his midnight fur.

"My! but he's a beauty. That skin would buy the best team of mules on
the Yellowstone." That was interesting and furnished talk for a while.
In the morning when they were rising for their candlelight breakfast,
the hotel man glancing from the window exclaimed, "Here he is now!" and
Josh peered forth to see in the light of sunrise something he had often
heard of, but never before seen, a coal-black Fox, a giant among his
kind. How slick and elegant his glossy fur, how slim his legs, and what
a monstrous bushy tail; and the other Foxes moved aside as the patrician
rushed in impatient haste to seize the food thrown out by the cook.

"Ain't he a beauty?" said the hotel man. "I'll bet that pelt would fetch
five hundred."

Oh, why did he say "five hundred," the exact sum, for then it was that
the tempter entered into Josh Cree's heart. Five hundred dollars! just
the amount of the mortgage. "Who owns wild beasts? The man that kills
them," said the tempter, and the thought was a live one in his breast as
Josh rode back to Fort Yellowstone.

At Gardiner he received his pay, $6.00, for three days' work and,
turning it into groceries, set out for the poor home that soon would be
lost to him, and as he rode he did some hard and gloomy thinking. On his
wrist there hung a wonderful Indian quirt of plaited rawhide and
horsehair with beads on the shaft, and a band of Elk teeth on the butt.
It was a pet of his, and "good medicine," for a flat piece of elkhorn
let in the middle was perforated with a hole, through which the distant
landscape was seen much clearer--a well-known law, an ancient trick, but
it made