Walter Prichard Eaton

“ Joe laughed.
The road was not what would be called a good road, or even a decent road, in the East, as it was only a track in the grass, full of sand and sharp little stones; it did not lead into the mountains at all; it ran along just to the east of the great range, over the bare, rolling hills of the prairie, so that from the motor bus you could see the entire mountain wall, mile after mile. ”

“ But half an hour before they got to the Divide they were in the clouds, in a thick, damp, chilling fog, that was not rain and yet covered their clothes with drops of moisture, made their hands wet and cold, and of course obscured every vestige of a view.
“Well,” said the Ranger, “here we are on the backbone of the world. Over there is Heaven’s Peak. Just to the left, only a mile away, Tom, is the top of the Iceberg Lake head wall. If it was clear, you could take Joe over and show him where you climbed. But I guess as it is we’ll get down as fast as we can, and not even wait for lunch.” ”

“ The horses, being considerably longer legged than men, climbed faster up the high steps than a man could do alone, but with the horse’s tail to hang on to, you could manage to keep up. Everybody laughed at first, yelling at one another, but in three minutes the yells had ceased, and in five, the laughter. No one had any breath left for that. If Joe had thought, he probably would have been frightened, for he was certainly disobeying the doctor, but he was having too good a time to remember doctors, and as even the lack of breath did not make him cough, he had nothing to remind him. ”

“ Let the lion get in close before you fire, and let him have it in the heart and head. There ought to be light enough to-night. Better have your guns in rest, pointed at the carcases, so you won’t have to make any noise lifting ’em.”
The Ranger and the scouts now separated, and Joe and Tom, making a wide circle to get sharp to leeward of the yard, moved silently over the deep snow, in the cold, clear, almost Arctic moonlight, with the great peaks of the Divide rising up like silvery ghosts far overhead. ”

“ It was too much fun telling and hearing about the wonders of the Park.
“And you’ve just had to stick around here, old Spider, working for me,” Joe exclaimed, penitently. “To-morrow, I’m going to see Big Bertha, and get him to let me run the camp for a while, so’s you can take a trip.”
“Yes, and who’ll go with me?” said Tom. “Can’t go alone. Besides, didn’t we come out here for you to get well? Forget it, wifey.”
“Oh, I don’t care what you call me to-day,” Joe laughed. “I’ve had too good a time—and I’m going to find a way for you to, now. You wait—something will turn up.” ”

“ Meanwhile some boy or young brave would spring out into the fire-light, in the centre of the ring of braves and squaws and children squatted or standing around, and dance to the music, going through strange gestures, brandishing a decorated spear, stooping, bending, circling around, but always, the boys soon detected, adhering to some formal plan, although they didn’t know what this dance might signify, and always surprisingly graceful. ”

“ Even as he spoke, they heard a noise above them, and the Ranger yelled, “Jump for shelter!”
All three sprang to one side of the gully, below a projecting shelf of rock, and past them, thundering down the chute, went a stone as big as a bucket, just loosened by melting snow above.
Tom watched it go past, and began to think the last place on the rope was not the softest berth he could imagine.
The doctor now turned to him. “You see what you’ve got to look out for, Tom,” he said. “For each fresh climb, we’ll pick a place where there is shelter for the man waiting below. ”

“ In a second, they were on the tail of the big slide, riding on top of fifty feet of boiling, churning, racing snow, that was by this time going down-hill at close to a mile a minute. If you have ever run logs on a river, you know what a slippery job that is. But imagine the logs leaping up and down as well as rolling around, and traveling a mile a minute down-hill into the bargain, and finally casting up a deluge of powdered snow-dust into your face, and you will have some idea of the job that confronted Mills and Tom and Joe. ”

“ Don’t you want to see the Rocky Mountains?”
“Oh, quit your kidding,” poor Joe answered. “The only way I’ll ever see the Rocky Mountains is in the movies.”
“Don’t you fool yourself. Mr. Rogers and I’ll dope out something yet, won’t we, Mr. Rogers?”
“We’ll put our heads together hard, anyhow,” the scout master answered. “But first, Tom, we must get the scouts together and find a way in which we can all help Joe’s mother, now Joe can’t haul wood and do heavy work.” ”

“ There was no noise in all the world, and no living thing except themselves, except once when a startled snow-shoe rabbit leaped across an opening, white as the snow he was half wallowing in.
“Say, this is spooky!” Joe whispered.
“You bet,” Tom whispered back. “The little old electric lights in Southmead Main Street are some way off!”
They drew near the wood where the yard was, and crept stealthily into the dark shadows of the 297 pines. The dead deer lay in a tiny opening, five black objects on the moonlit snow. ”

“ But the sun was now up, the air was rapidly warming, and while Joe got the breakfast, Mills and Tom waded out through the snow in search of the horses. They had to go a long way, too, for the wise beasts had simply wandered down the trail into the woods, and kept on descending until they had got below the snow line into rain, where the grass was not covered and they could feed. It was almost two hours later that the Ranger and Tom came driving them back, cross, hungry, and with boots soaked by the snow and clothes soaked by the wet bushes. ”

“ It is peculiarly fitted to be a summer playground, both for men and women who prefer to travel on horseback and “rough it” by putting up at a hotel at night, and for the true mountain lovers, who delight to use their own legs in climbing, and to sleep under the stars. This book has been written primarily to show Young America just how interesting, exciting, full of outdoor adventure, and full, too, of real education, life in this National park can be. ”

“ Southmead lay below them, with all its roofs and steeples gathered in the snowy fields like a herd of cattle. The woods were still.
“It’s not the Rockies,” said Tom, “but it’s pretty nice at that, and we’ll get out the old rope on this baby cliff in the spring.”
“It’s home,” said Joe, “and I’m well again, and can go to school, and help mother, and study for the forestry service with you, and—and—oh, Spider, you’re the best friend a fellow ever had!”
“No,” Tom answered, “you’ve got the wrong dope. I’ve got the best friend to be a friend to a fellow ever had. ”

“ They rowed in to the heavily wooded shore, built a fire right by the lake, cleaned the fish, and Joe fried the choicest parts, with a few thin strips of bacon, coffee and biscuits.
Then they fell to. The grizzly, the restless night, the early rise—they’d really had only four hours of good sleep—were all forgotten while that hot, sizzling, delicious breakfast lasted.
“Say,” Bob remarked, as he swallowed his last mouthful, “I feel like licking my chops, the way our old cat does! You sure are some cook. I’m going to learn to cook, too, and go camping every summer. This is the life!” ”

“ Until the snow got well down toward the valleys, Tom and Joe used to go off for a day at a time, also, with the rope, climbing up cliffs for practice and still oftener, with their cameras, seeking out the upland slopes where the wind kept the snow blown off, and lying in wait for sheep, to photograph them. The sheep, they found, came to such places to feed. But it was cold work waiting, so they finally hit on the idea of packing up their sleeping-bags on their backs, and lying in them, under the shelter of some rock or timber-line pine. ”

“ When supper was over, they built the fire up afresh, laid in a big supply of wood, and crawling into their sleeping-bags, under the shelter of the tent, itself sheltered by the evergreens, with the flap facing the fire left wide open and the rock reflecting the heat in to them, they were surprisingly warm, when you consider that they were sleeping on snow, with the mercury in the thermometer outside playing tag somewhere below the zero mark—or it would have been, if there had been a thermometer outside. ”

“ After lunch, everybody wanted to sit around for a bit, and enjoy the view of Lake Ellen Wilson and Mount Jackson, and Joe and Lucy got their cameras from their packs, and took pictures of each other on horseback, of the party, of Bob and Alice climbing down over an edge of the cliff beside a waterfall, and finally of a wonderful, twisted pine.
“I love the old trees at timber-line,” Joe said. “They look so sort of—of heroic.” ”

“ Joe answered, climbing into his cot, and pulling the puff up about him.
Tom took a last look at the fire, at the still woods, at the lake glimmering down through the trees, picked up his sweater, which he had dropped on the ground, and hung it idly over a log by the fire, pulled the tent flap together, blew out the candle in the camp lantern, and also crawled in.
“Well, Joe,” he said, “we’ve begun our life five thousand feet up, at the feet of the glaciers.” ”

“ Joe cried.
“I mean you can’t play second for a long time,” said the doctor, gravely.
“Is—is there something the matter with me?” Joe cried, growing a little pale.
“There isn’t much yet, but there will be, if you don’t do what I tell you,” the doctor answered. “You have a case of incipient tuberculosis, that hasn’t developed enough yet so we can’t cure it, and make you weigh a hundred and eighty pounds by the time you are twenty, or even nineteen. You ought to be a big man, you know. But it will all depend on you.” 23
Tom was leaning half out of his chair to listen. ”

“ Joe was gone five days, coming back over Gunsight and Piegan Pass, the reverse of the route he had taken on his first trip. But this time, he was getting so at home in the saddle that he could manage the packhorses without worrying, could throw a diamond hitch as well as the next man, and cook for a crowd without having too much left over, or not enough prepared—not that there is ever much danger of having anything left over in the Rocky Mountains! Everybody eats while there’s food in sight. ”

“ The three drummers stood in the middle, pounding their sheepskin drums, and around them, in a ring, holding hands or linking elbows, everybody facing inward, the Indians revolved by a curious little side step with a bend to the right knee, in time to the TÚM-tum, TÚM-tum, of the drums. Every moment or two a couple of chiefs or braves would dart out of the circle, seize some white woman or girl, and drag her laughing back into the ring. Then the young squaws began to run out and grab white men. Two Indian maidens seized Joe, while Tom got his camera hastily into action. ”

“ Except for the tourists who had come down from the hotel to watch, and the one Indian automobile parked near by, the camp might have been an Indian village of two hundred years ago, before the white men ever came. Tom and Joe were reluctant to leave, it all seemed so like a picture out of the past, the picture of a life and a race now fast vanishing from the earth. They took many pictures of the camp before they finally went back to their own camp, to see if any hikers had arrived. ”

“ On three sides of them, sweeping around in a semicircle at the end, was a vast precipice, seemingly perpendicular, except for the big shale piles at the base. The top of this cliff was a “castellated ridge,” the term mountaineers give to a summit which is long and level, but broken into little depressions and towers, like the battlements of an ancient castle. At the upper end of the amphitheatre lay a round lake, about half a mile across, and at the upper end of that, right under the shadow of the head wall, was the glacier. ”

“ A steep precipice, covered with snow, would suddenly show signs of life, the snow high up would start slipping, and as the mass descended it would grow in volume, sweeping the slope beneath it and sending up a comet’s tail of snow-dust, till it ran out with a boom and a roar upon the less steep slopes below. ”

“ They now entered the great lobby of the hotel, which, like the outside, was all made of fir logs, with tremendous trunks, bark and all, used as the columns clear to the fourth story. Hunting out the manager, they learned that they were to take the motor bus for Many Glacier Hotel in fifteen minutes, and they just had time to go to the news stand and secure a government map of the Park and a government report about its geology, before turning in their baggage checks and climbing aboard the bus, a four-seated motor something like a “Seeing New York” automobile. ”

“ Joe went back to his preparations for supper, keeping the fire roaring under his stew to hasten the cooking, and mixing up a batter of flour, condensed milk, one of his precious eggs, and some baking powder, for cakes. The Ranger and Dick, the other guide, were busy with the tents, one for the three men, and two smaller ones for the four women. The women’s tents had little folding cot beds, but the men’s did not, and Mills, with a wink at Joe, gave Bob and the two congressmen axes, and told them to go cut themselves boughs to sleep on, from a big evergreen which had blown over. ”

“ The trips we tell about are all real trips, and if you go to Glacier Park you can take them all—all, that is, except, perhaps, the climb up the head wall of Iceberg Lake. You have to have a real mountaineer as a guide, with a real Alpine rope, in order to make that trip. It was fortunate for Tom that one came along. Then, too, unless you stay in the Park over the winter, you haven’t much chance of riding down a mountain on a snow-slide. ”

“ Mills, you’re a good climber—you don’t talk.”
Mills smiled. “Never knew a safe mountain man who did talk on a cliff or a glacier,” said he.
“No, you can’t watch your footing and gabble at the same time. Bah! how I hate a talker on a climb!”
“A man came out here once in a big party,” said the Ranger. “I took ’em up Cleveland. When we hit the real climb, he fetched out a sign from his pack, and hung it on his back. It read, ‘I’m not very sociable when I’m climbing.’”
The doctor and Tom laughed, and the former added, “There’s a wise man!” ”

“ They were to meet at one o’clock on the shore of the lake.
Joe was soon out of sight and sound of the others, and as he was lowest down, close to the brook at the bottom of the cañon, he was also in the thickest woods, where the fir-trees, covered with snow like Christmas cards, shook their “frosty pepper” into his nose as he pushed through. The brook was partially frozen, and he often found it easiest to walk on the snowy edge. Presently he came on deer tracks leading into the open water, and not emerging. The deer had walked up-stream, in the water, evidently—several of them, and recently. ”