The report of guns.

And now comes a change of scene and incident.

Hugh Whitney returned to his Maine home a few weeks after the stirring adventures of his children and Monteith Sterry with the wolves.  He was so pleased with the western country that he made his decision to remove thither.  He met with no difficulty in selling at a fair price his little property in the Pine-Tree State, and with a portion of the proceeds he bought a ranch near the headwaters of Powder River, to which place he removed, with his family, in the spring of 1890, directly after the incidents related in the preceding chapters.

One of the pleasures of this radical change of residence and occupation was that it was pleasing to his son Fred and his twin sister Jennie, now about nineteen years of age.

Whether the wife shared in the desire to make her home in that new country, or whether she expressed the wish to do so because she saw it would gratify her husband, cannot be said with certainty.  There was no doubt, however, about the eagerness with which the brother and sister took part in the removal.

Young, ardent, and of sturdy frame, with all the natural yearning of imaginative youth for adventure, the prospect was an inviting one to them.  Their father’s glowing accounts of the magnificent scenery, its vast resources and limitless possibilities, caused a yearning on their part probably deeper than his own.

It is rare that such expectations are fully realized in this life.  It cannot be said that those of the brother and sister found more than a partial fulfilment, but, though the fateful day came when they regretted the change beyond the power of language to express, yet it was many months before it dawned upon them.

Hugh Whitney’s herd of cattle numbered several thousand, and, on the day when we take up the eventful history of the family, they were grazing on the open ranges along the spurs of the Big Horn Mountains.

The two cowmen engaged by Whitney to assist him in the duty of looking after his property were Budd Hankinson and Grizzly Weber.  They were veterans in the business, brave and true and tried.  Under their tuition, and that of his father, Fred Whitney became a skilful horseman and rancher.  He learned to lasso and bring down an obdurate steer, to give valuable help in the round-ups, to assist in branding the registered trademark of his father on the haunches of his animals.

This brand consisted of a cross, with two stars above, one below, the initial letter of his given name on the left, and that of his surname on the right.  When this was burned into the flesh of the yearlings, it identified his property, no matter where wandering, and the honest rancher would no more disturb it than he would enter another’s home and rob him of his clothing.

The first year was an enjoyable one to Jennie.  Her father presented her with an excellent animal, of which she became very fond.  A good horsewoman when in Maine, in Wyoming she acquired a skill which compelled the admiration of the cowmen themselves.