Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/116174
gentle warm wind blowing off the peaks. I led the way up a winding trail into the mouth of Yarrow Creek Canyon, the best bighorn sheep range in the country at the time, for it wasn't hunted by the Indians. The Stoneys, a mountain tribe, weren't confined to a reservation then; they wandered through the Rockies of western Alberta, living off the country. Armed with ancient .44/40 and .30/30 rifles, they used a driving system that was deadly. The men would hide on the game trails on the high shoulders and passes surrounding a canyon while the squaws, youngsters and numerous dogs beat out the bottoms and side basins with ungodly howling and barking. Deer and sheep would sometimes be slaughtered in piles on a restricted pass. I once saw a train of 40 packhorses loaded with buckskin and dried jerky that these Indians had bagged this way. But Yarrow Creek Canyon was taboo with the Indians. They feared the grizzlies. One spring years before, a Stoney band had camped there on a meadow. They were trying to run from smallpox, which had struck their winter camp on the Bow River near Banff. When spring came, a bunch of survivors stampeded south, trying to escape from the mysterious evil. But they brought it with them and soon the camp on Yarrow Creek was rotten with smallpox. The Indians were S P O R T I so demoralized that they merely dragged their dead into the nearby willows. In the spring grizzlies are ravenous and like nothing better than carrion. The sun was warm and the valley reeked of rotting flesh; the big bears started feeding on dead Indians. When they ran out of dead ones, one or two bolder grizzlies began eating sick Indians and even went for the few healthy ones. These panicked and left the camp. To this day, no Stoney has ever set foot in any part of that canyon. That's why the Yarrow country was a sheep hunter's paradise. I n midafternoon we pulled into a little flat by a spring-fed pond at the head of the creek nine or ten miles up the canyon and just under the summit leading over into Castle River. As I set up camp, Proctor was busy with his glasses. "Maybe I'm imagining things," he said, "but every once in a while I think I smell sheep." I assured him he was smelling sheep, for I'd also noticed the heavy smell of bighorns. It's possible to detect this unmistakable odor in country heavily used by mountain sheep. After staking the horses out to graze, we left the flat to climb through a thick belt of timber to the lower rim of a basin behind camp. From a fringe of scrubby firs at the bottom of a big, open slide, we immediately N G C 34 L A SSICS