n," I snapped at him disgustedly, "and you don't keep
small ones while I'm around." With that I tossed the trout into the
lake.

Just as I finished, the boat mysteriously upset, and "Lanky" and I
followed the fish.

The early trips I made with parties were mostly short ones for game or
fish, but as more and more visitors came each succeeding summer, longer
trips became popular. From fishing, the summer guests turned to trail
trips, camping en route and remaining out from five to ten days. To
cross the Continental Divide was the great achievement. Everyone
wanted to tell his stay-at-home neighbors about trailing over the crest
of the continent, and snowballing in the summer.

The route commonly chosen was the Flattop trail to Grand Lake, where
camp was pitched for a day or two; then up the North Fork of the Grand
River (known farther south as the Colorado River) to Poudre Lake, where
another camp was made. From here they made a visit to Specimen, a
mountain of volcanic formation which rises from the lake shore. This
peak has ever been the home of mountain sheep. One can always count on
seeing them there, sometimes just a few stragglers, but often bands of
a hundred or more.

However interesting the day's experience had been, the climax came
after camp was made, supper served and cleared away, when a big bonfire
was lighted and all sat about it talking over the happenings of the
day, singing and putting on stunts. In the tourists' minds the guide
and the grizzly were classed together; both were wild, strange and
somewhat of a curiosity. Nothing delighted them more than to get the
guide to talking about his life in the wilds. Most of them looked upon
him as a sort of vaudeville artist.

When several parties were out on the same trip they all assembled
around a common campfire. The guides were given the floor, or ground,
and they made the most of the occasion. Such competition as there was!
Each, of course, felt obliged to uphold the honor of his party and
out-yarn his fellows. Their stories grew in the telling, each more
lurid than the last. There were thrilling tales of bear fights; of
battles with arctic storms above timberline; of finding rich
gold-strikes and losing them again.

At first the guides stuck to authentic experiences. But as the demand
outgrew their supply, they were forced to invention. They had no mean
imaginations and entranced their tenderfoot audiences with their
thrilling tales