Mills laughed again, but said no more. Instead, he plodded steadily on, till the great cliff wall seemed about to hit them in the face, and Joe could hear the thunder of the white waterfalls as they leaped and plunged down from the melting glacier two thousand feet over his head.

Just as he had decided the Ranger was playing a joke on him, for surely nobody could get up those walls, the trail turned sharp to the right, and began to go up.

Then Joe learned what a Rocky Mountain switchback is.

A switchback trail can be put up almost any slope that is not actually perpendicular, and the slope they were climbing now was not quite that, though to Joe it seemed pretty near it. The trail was about four or five feet wide, and was dug right out of the side of the hill. It went up at an angle of about twenty degrees, for perhaps two hundred feet to the right, then it swung sharp left on a steep hairpin turn and ran another two hundred or three hundred feet, took another sharp hairpin turn, and so on up, and up. When Joe had made one of these turns, he could look right down on the top of the blankets on the packhorse below him.

“Say,” he called up to the Ranger, “what happens to you if your horse falls off here?”

“Your horse never falls off,” Mills answered. “If he did, you’d probably take to harp playing. But he won’t.”

They climbed up these switchbacks for two thousand feet or so, and then worked around a shoulder of the mountain so that they couldn’t see the glacier any more, but looking back down the cañon Joe could see a great, narrow hole, with the green lakes like a string of jewels at the bottom, and at the far end, as blue and level as the ocean, the vast prairie.

“The prairie looks just like the ocean,” he said.

“Does it?” said the Ranger. “I never saw the ocean. Must be fine.”

In a minute or two they reached the first snow-field. Joe did not want to appear too green and excited, but he was almost trembling with excitement, just the same. He had reached the level of summer snow! He was above timber-line, or almost above, and here in a great northern hollow was a vast drift, four hundred feet wide and thirty feet deep in the middle, which Mills said would not melt all summer! Little streams of water were gushing out from the lower side, and the snow was very soft and coarse, like rock salt. The trail went right across it, the horses picking their way carefully over the treacherous footing. They climbed but a little way more, and they were on the top of the pass.

When you think of a mountain pass, probably, you think of a deep valley or cañon between the hills, but a pass is not like that at all in the high Rockies. In order to get over the Continental Divide (which the Indians called “the backbone of the world”), you have to climb, and the pass is simply a point on this spine which is not quite so high as other points, and can be reached, moreover, from the base. Joe found himself in a little meadow which was full of stunted pine trees, the last of the timber, with snowdrifts, and with bright gold dog-tooth violets, some of them coming right up and blossoming through two inches of snow. On either side of him, the Divide rose up perhaps another five hundred or a thousand feet, in pyramids of naked rock. Ahead, to the west, he could see a great hole, where the Divide dropped down on the other side, and ten miles away across this hole a wonderful sharp-peaked mountain all covered with snow, and looking like the pictures of the Alps in his old geography.

“What’s that mountain?” he asked.

“Heaven’s Peak,” said the Ranger. “Good name for it, eh?”

“It sure is!” said Joe.

Mills stopped the horses in a little grassy glade, sheltered from the wind by a group of stunted pines, and unslung the packs.

“You’re going to make me some more of that coffee,” he laughed, opening one of his dunnage bags.

While Joe was building the fire, Mills pointed up the great slope of naked, tumbled rocks to the south. “Climb up there some day,” said he, “and down the other side, and you’ll get on top of the Divide above Swift Current Glacier. It’s narrow—just a knife blade, and all along the centre of it you’ll see a game trail.”

While they were eating lunch, Joe was amused to see the ground squirrels—hundreds of them, it seemed—come up out of their holes in the grass and look at the intruders. They sat up on their hind legs, pressed their front paws against their stomachs, and made a cheeping noise, almost like birds.

“Looks as if they were mechanical toys,” Joe laughed, “and had to squeeze their middles to get a sound.”

He put a piece of bread down side of him, to fill his cup again, and when he went to pick it up, it wasn’t there—it was vanishing into a hole!

“Mechanical toy, eh?” the Ranger grinned. “Pretty smart mechanism!”

Before they were through lunch, another party appeared from the west, coming up into the pass, and dismounting. This was a regular tourist party of men and women, with two cowboy guides.

“I thought they’d be along,” said Mills. “I’m going to send you back with them. And now here’s what I really brought you for—I’ll be gone three or four days, and somebody’s got to look after Popgun (that’s the horse you’re riding). How’d you like to feed him every day, and give him some water, and a bit o’ exercise, just around the lake, mind you. I don’t want you riding off alone on the trails.”

Joe gasped with surprise and delight. “You—you mean it?” he asked.

“Sure I mean it. Don’t take me long to size folks up. I like you boys, and maybe we can help each other. Pretty lonely in my cabin, you know.”

Mills gave him directions about the feed, and then went over and spoke to one of the guides. When he came back, he said to Joe, “Now, let’s see you throw a diamond hitch.”

Joe did his best, but he had to have help.

“I could get it with two or three more tries, I bet!” he cried. “Then I could get a job as cook with a party, maybe.”

“There’s a rope in the barn. You can be practicing,” the Ranger laughed. “So long.”

“Good-bye, sir,” Joe answered, as the lean Ranger swung into his saddle, called to his packhorse as if it were a dog, and disappeared down the trail to the west, the faithful packhorse plodding on behind.

The other party were a long time about their meal, and Joe climbed part way up the peak to the south, getting above the last timber, which consisted of tiny, twisted trees not over two feet high, and some of them growing along the very ground. Up here he found beautiful, tiny Alpine flowers in the rock crannies, he started up what looked like a big black and gray woodchuck, and which he later learned was a whistling marmot, and he came upon a bird, something like a partridge, but the same gray color as the rocks. This bird was followed by six little fluffy chicks, which went scuttering away with shrill little peeps into the maze of stones, and ten feet away couldn’t be seen, so like the stones were they.

“That’s protective coloring,” Joe thought. “Wonder why they are colored that way?”

He was later to learn that this was a ptarmigan hen and her chicks, the largest bird which lives above timber in these mountains. No doubt it is colored like the rocks to protect it from the eye of foxes, eagles, and other foes.

Joe didn’t dare climb any higher, though he longed to get to the top, which now rose steep above him. He felt perfectly well, too, and the climbing didn’t make him cough. But he saw the party was packing up again, so he hurried down and cinched up another notch in his saddle to make sure it did not slip on the descent. He mounted and fell in behind the procession, which immediately began winding its way down the steep switchbacks. Joe, from the rear, could look almost directly down on the head of the leader, a hundred feet below him. One or two of the women were screaming, and now and then a stone, loosened by a house’s hoof, would go bounding down the slope with a terrifying rattle. But the horses, carefully putting one foot ahead of the other, were as calm and sure as if they were on level going, and nothing at all happened, of course.

Once on the comparatively level trail below, the leading guide broke into a trot, and the whole cavalcade came bouncing on behind. Joe bounced at first as much as anybody, but by dint of much trial, he got into the swing a little, and began to ride more comfortably. When they were on the level trail in the woods at last, a mile from the lake, the leader gave a yell, touched his spurs, and leaped out at a gallop. All the other horses, without waiting for any command, started in to gallop also, including Popgun. Joe yelled with the rest, jammed his cap on hard, hung to the horn of his saddle to keep aboard, and felt the wind rush against his face. Still galloping and shouting, the cavalcade dashed past the Ranger’s cabin, and on toward the tepee camp.

Joe hoped Spider would be around to see. He wanted to stop his horse at the tepees, but whether he could or not was another question. Popgun didn’t appear to have any intention of stopping till the rest did.

As they dashed in sight of the camp, he saw Spider standing by the trail. Joe yelled, “Hi—Tom!” and began to tug at the reins. Popgun came down to a trot obediently—and also suddenly, very nearly sending Joe out over his head. Another tug, and a “Whoa!” brought him up short, though his ears were pricked up, and his eyes were following the galloping cavalcade now disappearing toward the hotel.

“Well—what are you doing?” exclaimed the astonished Tom.

“I’m a regular cowboy now, eh, what? Allow me to introduce Popgun, my gallant broncho. We’ve been on top of the Great Divide, we have, and seen the water going toward the Pacific, and, gee I know where there’s a game trail we can climb to, and I’m goin’ to have this horse to ride for three or four days, and feed him, and—and all.”

“I bet you’re sore to-night,” said Tom.

“I bet I am, too. You try him. Gee, he’s a fine old horse. You ought to see him come down a trail—just as careful. Wow! and some trail, too!”

Joe dismounted, stiffly, with an “Ouch!” and Tom climbed into the saddle. Popgun looked mildly around, to see what the change meant, and then trotted obediently off.

Joe watched, laughing. There was no doubt that Tom bounced. He bounced as much as the women. The harder he tried not to, the more he bounced.

“See, you got to do it this way,” said Joe, as the other scout came back. He started to mount again, with a leap, but his legs were so stiff they’d hardly work.

“Very graceful, very graceful indeed!” Tom taunted. “Why don’t you get a job in the movies, you’re so graceful?”

“Maybe I will,” Joe answered, finally getting into his saddle. “Now look—here’s the way.”

He hit Popgun with his heels, and started up the trail, but before he was out of sight a second cavalcade, with a cowboy at the head, came thundering past. Popgun turned, and in spite of Joe’s cries and tugs at the rein, insisted on galloping with it. Hanging helpless to his saddle horn, Tom saw Joe tearing past, in the middle of the crowd, and disappearing toward the hotel.

Five minutes later he returned, looking very sheepish.

“I see just how to do it,” Tom taunted. “Joe, you’ve got speed, but no control!”

“You wait! I’ll have old Popgun eating out of my hand yet,” Joe answered. “Guess I’ll put him up now, and feed him.”

“Yes, and then you come back and rest. You’ve been doing too much to-day,” said Tom.

When Joe got back, he found Tom busy at the camp. The first party of hikers had arrived—ten of them, men about thirty-five years old from Chicago, who were taking their vacation tramping through the Park. They all wore high, heavy boots with hobnails, flannel shirts, khaki trousers, and carried knapsacks on their backs. Tom was hustling around buying provisions for them at the chalet store, fixing their bunks, getting fresh water, making a fire in the stove, and so on, while two of the men, who acted as cooks, were getting ready to cook the supper.

“Can I help?” Joe asked.

“No, you go back to our tent and rest,” said Tom. “You can get our supper, after you’ve thought a while about how graceful you are.”

Joe went limping off, and was only too glad to lie down in the tent. He lay on his side presently. He began to realize acutely, and locally, that he had been riding horseback, fourteen miles, for the first time.

But he had supper ready when Tom came at six-thirty.

“How do you feel?” Tom demanded. “I bet you’ve been doing too much. Tired? Got a fever?”

He got out the thermometer.

“I’m sore, all right, but I’m not very tired, not half as tired as I used to get at home, just walking back from school.”

Tom answered by putting the thermometer in his mouth.

“No fever at all—and you’re all sweaty,” he said a minute later. “You really feeling better, old Joey?”

“Sure I am.”

But Tom wouldn’t let him help after supper in getting more wood for the camp. Tom did it all, while Joe sat at first outside the tepees and tried to hear the talk of the hikers about their trip, and later, when Tom was through, moved closer to the “council fire,” built in a ring of stones, at the invitation of the men, and heard them tell of their twenty-two mile hike that day over Piegan Pass from Upper St. Mary Lake. It was fine to sit there, by the warm fire, as the darkness gathered over the great, solemn wall of the Divide, as the lights in the hotel across the lake twinkled on, as the night wind whispered in the pines, and hear the talk of glaciers, and snow-fields, and ten-thousand-foot climbs. It made Joe and Tom long for the day when they could get out, with blanket and knapsack, over the high trails. They went back to their tent at last reluctantly, while the hikers bade them a cheerful good-night.

“Seems as if everybody in the Park was good-natured,” Joe remarked, as he crawled into bed. “Guess it’s the air.”

“I like everybody but the porcupines,” Tom answered, carefully folding what was left of his sweater under his pillow! “I wrote home for a new one to-day, but I’ll hang on to what I’ve got.”

CHAPTER VIII—Joe Gets a Chance at Last to Go Out on a Trip as Camp Cook

Then he laughed in such a way that Tom knew his job was safe.

Meanwhile Joe divided his day between cooking the meals for Tom and himself, building a lean-to kitchen and dining-room for rainy weather, rigging up a porcupine-proof pantry with some old chicken wire he found behind the hotel chicken yards, and feeding and riding the Ranger’s horse. Twice a day he took Popgun out for a spin, going down below the hotel to the level meadows where the packhorses and saddle-horses rented to the tourists were pastured at night, and there he galloped, trotted, and jumped logs till he felt sure of himself, and all his saddle soreness wore off. Sometimes, after the guests at the camp were gone, and no new party had yet arrived, Tom took a try in the saddle, too, and both of them, with packs made of their blankets and an old mattress, practiced throwing a diamond hitch, while Popgun, who was being used for the experiment, stood still, but looked around at them with a comical, grieved expression, as much as to say, “What do you think I am, just an old packhorse?”

The Ranger did not return for five days, and Joe was sorely tempted to ride Popgun up one of the trails again, to the high places which lured him—to Iceberg Lake, for instance, only six miles away, which everybody talked about as being so beautiful. But he remembered what the Ranger had said, and he never went more than a mile or two from camp. It was certainly hard, with a good horse under you, and a bright sky overhead, and the great towering red mountains all around, not to ride on and on, higher and higher, into those wonderful upland meadows, and then on some more to the sky-flung bridge of the Great Divide!

On the sixth morning, as Joe drew near the Ranger’s cabin to feed and water Popgun, he saw smoke coming out of the chimney. The door was open, and inside he saw Mills just getting breakfast.

“Hello,” he called.

“Oh, it’s you,” Mills answered, looking out. “Come make me some coffee, will you?”

Joe entered, and Mills shook hands. “Glad to see you,” he said. “I’d be glad to see anybody, so don’t get flattered. I’ve been five days alone in the woods, cuttin’ out fallen trees from the trail. Last winter was a bad one.”

“I s’pose there’s a lot of snow here in winter,” said Joe, as he set about making the coffee.

“Last winter there was ten feet on the level in the woods, and the drift piled up against Many Glacier Hotel out there till all you could see was the peak of the roof.”

“What!” Joe cried. “Why, that’s five stories high!”

“So was the drift,” said Mills

“What a chance for skiing!” Joe sighed. “Say, I’d like to spend a winter here.”

“Don’t let’s talk about it,” Mills suddenly said. “Makes me blue. The winters are too darn lonely. I see Popgun looks fat, and you’ve been groomin’ him, too. Where’d you get the curry comb? I don’t own one.”

“Made it,” Joe answered, “by punching holes with a nail through a tin box cover.”

“Can you ride yet?”

“Well, I can get around, without having to eat off the mantelpiece at night.”

“Want a job?”

“Sure, if it’s something I can do. You know, I’m a regular grafter now, just living off Spider. What is it?”

“Cooking mostly. Tastes to me as if you could do that,” the Ranger said, as he took a sip of Joe’s coffee, and a bite of the fried eggs and bacon Joe had also cooked for him, as they talked.

“I can cook all right—I learned that in the Boy Scouts,” Joe answered, eagerly. “Is it for a party?”

“Yes, it’s a special party—a couple o’ congressmen and their wives and families. The Park superintendent wants me to show ’em around the circuit a bit—have to be nice to congressmen, because Congress appropriates what little money we get to build trails with. All the camp cooks are out on trips now, and I’m up against it unless you’ll go along.”

“I’m your man!” Joe cried, eagerly.

“Well, you’re as good as a man when it comes to coffee,” Mills grinned. “I’ll get a guide to help out with the packing and the heavy work. We start to-morrow morning, early. Be up here at seven.”

“O.K.,” cried Joe, with a salute, and hurried back to tell Tom the news.

Spider looked grave. “I dunno about it,” said he. “You know what the doc said about overworking. I dunno whether I’ll let you go.”

“But it won’t be overworking,” Joe cried. “Gee, I feel great now, anyhow, and it’s just cooking, and the Ranger’s going to get a guide to do the heavy packing, and I’ll be on horseback all the time, and out in the air, and, gosh, but it’s a great chance to see the Park, and earn some money to pay you back——”

“Oh, forget that!” said Tom. “What’s your pay going to be?”

“Don’t know—didn’t stop to ask,” Joe laughed.

“You’re a great little business man, you are,” Tom said. “Well, you can try it this trip, if you’ll come over now to the hotel and get weighed, and have your temperature taken.”

The hikers had gone for the day, and the camp was vacant, so the two scouts went around to the hotel at once, and Joe climbed on the scales. Tom set them at a hundred and thirty, but the weight did not drop. He moved the indicator weight pound by pound till he reached a hundred and thirty-nine, before he reached a balance.

“Gosh,” cried Joe, “that’s almost ten pounds I’ve put on since I left little old Southmead!”

“Yes, and you haven’t coughed for a week,” Tom added. “You’re on the mend, all right, all right. But you got to stay so, and I dunno about letting you go on this trip—it’ll be hard work cooking for a whole lot o’ people.”

“Aw, please!” Joe pleaded. “I feel great now, honest I do. Besides, it’s all out in the open air.”

“Well, you can try it this once,” Tom finally said. “But if you have any fever, or have lost any weight, or are fagged, when you get back, or have any signs of a cold, or cough, no more trips for you!”

“Yes, doctor,” Joe answered, meekly.

They went back to the camp, and Joe spent the afternoon studying the government topographical survey map of the Park he had bought at the hotel, overhauling his personal equipment, and then, at the supply depot of the Glacier Park Saddle Company, which furnishes the horses, tents, guides, blankets, etc., for camping and horseback parties in the Park, selecting what he wanted in the way of cooking utensils and provisions for his party.

Mills said they would be out five days, and there were to be two men, two women, two girls and a boy in the party, besides Mills, Joe and two guides, for Mills had decided they’d need two. That made eleven people in all, or a hundred and sixty-five individual meals. Joe began to think, when he came to figure it out, that it was more of a job than it looked at first, especially when all the stuff had to be packed on horseback. He planned for canned soups, for coffee, tea and cocoa, served with condensed milk, of course; for plenty of bacon; for two or three meals of eggs, packed in a small crate; for two meals of beef (which, of course, would not keep, and would have to be served the first two days out); for pancakes and “saddle blankets” (a kind of pan-fried cake served with syrup, the syrup coming in cans); for bread, of course, if he had time to make any; and, finally, beans, sardines, crackers, some canned vegetables, and jam, marmalade and canned peaches. All these things could be carried easily, as they came in tins or jars. All that was needed were the horses. He got everything ready to be packed in the morning, and hurried back to camp to get Tom’s supper. Tom was busy with a big crowd of hikers, who had just arrived over Piegan Pass, and it was late before the two boys sat down to their meal.

“I sort of hate to go now,” Joe said. “I’ll be seeing all the Park, and you having to stick around here and make beds for the hikers. When I get back, I’m going to ask Big Bertha to let me run the camp, while you have a trip.”

“Yes you are!” Spider laughed. “You’re going to rest a whole week after you get back. You look tired already. Guess I won’t let you go, after all.”

“I’d like to see you stop me!” Joe answered, as he took a third helping of pancakes.

“Well, you eat like a well man, I must admit,” said Spider, reaching for what was left.

CHAPTER IX—Over Piegan Pass to St. Mary Lake, Underneath the Precipices

“Piegan Pass,” Mills answered, “and make camp to-night by the lake. That’s twenty-two miles. To-morrow we’ll go to Gunsight Lake—that’s only seven, and it’ll be all they’ll want after to-day—and rest up, and let ’em climb Blackfeet Glacier if they want to.”

At the hotel the two cowboy guides, one of them not very much older than Joe, were already on hand with the horses and Joe’s equipment of stores, and the cooking kit, and three tents, and innumerable blankets. It made such a pile of stuff that you’d have thought it would need a regiment of horses to carry it, but Mills and the two guides went about the task of packing it on to the backs of five horses, and so well did they stow it away, properly balanced on either side and made fast with ropes in diamond hitches, that the horses didn’t seem to mind it in the least, though they looked more like camels than horses. It was eight o’clock before this work was done, and by that time the tourists appeared, with their dunnage bags, which had to be packed on two more horses.

Joe had never seen a congressman before, except once when he went to a political rally and he could not help staring at the two men as they approached, and wanting to laugh. Beside Mills and the two cowboys, they looked so unfitted for this job of riding a horse over the high trails! They looked about as unfit as the cowboys would have looked in Congress. Both of them still wore long trousers and ordinary boots, though they had bought themselves flannel shirts and soft hats at the hotel store, and sweaters. Their wives were not very much better equipped, though both of them had bought khaki divided riding skirts (for nobody is allowed to ride a side saddle in the Park). Beside the two congressmen and their wives, there were two girls about twenty, and a boy about Joe’s age. One of the girls was the daughter of Congressman Elkins of New Jersey, the other two of Congressman Jones of Pennsylvania. All three of the young people, Joe noted, were better equipped. The girls had regular riding breeches and leather leggins, like a man’s, and the boy had khaki riding breeches and high boots.

As soon as their dunnage bags had been packed on two more horses, the job of getting the women into their saddles began, and then getting the stirrups adjusted right. The girls and young Jones were up and ready long before their mothers were, and making uncomplimentary remarks.

“Say, ma,” called young Jones, “if your horse bucks, grab his tail. That always stops ’em.”

“Father looks as scared as when he made his first speech in the House,” laughed Miss Elkins.

“Nonsense!” said that statesman. “I rode a horse many a time when I was a boy.”

“That was a long time ago, papa dear,” his daughter said.

“And pray when did you learn to ride?” her father asked, trying to get comfortable in his saddle.

“Oh, it’s just going to come natural to me,” she answered, with one of her rippling laughs that Joe liked to hear.

Mills walked through the little group of mounted riders, gave a testing pull to all the saddle girths, looked at the stirrups, and vaulted into his own saddle.

“You keep the two horses with the dunnage bags, and our own packhorse, in front of you, just behind the last rider,” he said to Joe. Then he touched his horse with his heel, and the animal jumped up the trail. The rest followed—first the party of tourists, behind Mills, then one of the guides to keep an eye on them, then three packhorses, then Joe to keep an eye on these three, then the five other packhorses, and finally the second guide to watch them. In all, then, there were nineteen horses strung out along the trail in single file, which made a considerable procession, as Joe looked forward and then back upon it.

The trail they were on did not go past the tepee camp, so Joe had no chance to call good-bye to Tom. It went along the other shore of Lake McDermott, sometimes on the little rocky beach, sometimes almost in the water, heading directly up the valley toward the great gray fortress of Gould Mountain and Grinnell Glacier, which Joe could see glistening like a huge white and green silk mantle flung along a high ledge just under the spine of the Continental Divide. Mills broke into a trot as soon as the party was well started, and ahead Joe could see the two congressmen and their wives bounding up and down, and noticed that Congressman Elkins, who said he rode when he was a boy, bounded quite as much as any one. Of course, the packhorses wanted to trot, too, and Joe saw the guide in front turning back and gesticulating to him. He gave Popgun a jab in the ribs, and rode past his three charges, getting in front of them, and then pulled Popgun down to a walk. If he had not, of course, the packs might soon have been shaken off. The tourists were soon out of sight up the trail, in the woods, and Joe and Val, the young cowboy, were left alone, with the eight pack animals.

It looked like an easy job they had, too, but Joe soon found it was not so easy as it looked. Some one of the eight was always wanting to fall out of line and eat a particularly tempting bunch of grass, or else took it into his silly head to make a détour into the woods, and then he had to be yelled at, or chased and driven into line again. Joe found himself fairly busy most of the first four miles of the trail, till they reached Grinnell Meadow, where the rest of the party had halted and were waiting for them.

Grinnell Meadow, Joe thought, was the most beautiful place he had ever been in. It was a grassy glade of twenty acres, at the foot of Grinnell Lake, and was studded with little fir trees and carpeted with great white chalice cups, which are a kind of big anemone. The lake itself was green in color, and maybe half a mile across. The far side lay right under a two thousand foot precipice which sprang up to the glacier, and down this precipice, from under the lip of the glacier, were pouring half a dozen very slender waterfalls, like long white ribbons let down the rocks. Just to the left the vast cliff wall of Mount Gould shot straight up to the almost ten thousand foot summit. (Of course, the meadow being five or six thousand feet above sea level, this wall of Gould wasn’t ten thousand feet high, but only about four thousand.)

As soon as Mills saw the packhorses appear, however, he gave the signal to proceed, so Joe did not have time to look about much. The trail crossed the meadow, the ground squirrels peeking out of their holes and chattering angrily at the disturbance, and then turned left, and began at once to climb, alongside of the great cliff of Gould Mountain. They climbed beside a roaring brook, and Joe soon realized that they weren’t going up Gould at all, but up the side cañon to the east. They hadn’t gone a mile before this brook was far below them, and they looked across the deep hole it had made to the towering cliffs of Gould. Gould is a part of the Great Divide, and Joe could now see more plainly than ever before the strata of the earth crust—layer on layer of different colored stone, like the layers in a gigantic cake. All down the precipices were coming waterfalls, from the snow-fields above, and Joe and Val reckoned that one fall took a clean jump of twenty-five hundred feet. They could hear the thunder of it, across the cañon, though it was not nearly so loud as you might think, because most of the water turned to mist before it reached the bottom.

Now the trail began to get into the region of switchbacks, and Joe could see the horses of all the party strung out far ahead, and then suddenly doubling on their tracks so Mills would pass almost over his head, and speak to him as he went by. Before long, he saw Mills halt, where the trail went close to a beautiful waterfall, and as he came up, he heard the Ranger telling the party that it was Morning Eagle Falls.

“What a pretty name—it must be Indian, of course?” Miss Elkins said.

“Named for some Blackfeet chief, I suppose,” Mills answered.

“Say, dad, what’s the matter with you?” laughed the Jones boy. “Why don’t you christen it Congressman Peter W. Jones Falls? What’s the use of being in the House of Representatives if you can’t name a dinky little waterfall after yourself?”

“My boy, he’s waiting till he reaches the biggest mountain in the Park, to name that after himself,” the other congressman said, while every one laughed, and the procession started up again.

They were climbing an ever steeper trail, now, and the trees began to grow smaller and smaller, while, looking back, Joe could see Grinnell Meadow far below him and the great cliff of Gould shooting up out of it. Ahead, they began to get into snow-fields, and then they crossed timber-line, where the trees were twisted and bent and even laid over flat by the wind, and sometimes an evergreen a foot thick would be only eighteen inches tall, and then, for twenty feet, bend over and lie along the ground like a vine, sheared by the wind. Beyond timber-line they came into a wild, naked, desolate region of broken shale stone, with tiny Alpine flowers growing in the crannies, snow-fields lying all about, and to their right, quite near, the southern end of Gould Mountain where it dropped down a little to the Continental Divide level, to their left the bare stone pile summit of Mount Siyeh, which is over ten thousand feet high. A few more steps, and they stood on top of the pass, and looked over the rim, on the tumbled mountains to the south, with the great blue and white pyramid of Jackson (ten thousand feet) rising a dozen miles away or more, over what looked like a vast hole in the earth.

“This is Piegan Pass,” said Mills.

“Why Piegan—and why a pass?” one of the congressmen asked. “I thought a pass was a place where you went between things, not up over their backs.”

The Ranger laughed. “You’re only seven thousand feet up here,” he said. “That mountain to the east, Siyeh, is ten thousand.”

“Why, it looks as if I could just walk across these stones and get to the top of it in twenty minutes!” cried Bob Jones.

“Try it,” said Mills, laconically. “We’ll be having lunch down in the pines below.”

Joe thought of the story of the Englishman, and hoped Bob would try it.

“You haven’t explained the Piegan,” Miss Elkins said.

“Why, the Indians that owned this reservation were the Piegan tribe of the Blackfeet,” said Mills.

“Dear, dear, another lost opportunity for dad!” sighed the irrepressible Bob.

The cavalcade now began the descent on the south side of the pass, with the Divide on their right, across a cañon, and the trail itself dug out of the vast shale slide which was the south wall of Siyeh. It was a steep, narrow trail, nothing but loose shale, and the horses had to pick their way slowly and carefully, while the riders had to lean well back and brace in their stirrups to keep from sliding forward on the horse.

“Say, Mr. Mills,” Joe heard Bob call, “has this horse of mine got strong ears?”

“Why?” asked Mills.

“Nothing, only if he hasn’t, I’m going to take a toboggan slide down his nose.”

“Try walking,” Mills called back.

Joe saw Bob dismount, and as he was feeling saddle stiff, he got off his horse, too, and led him down by the bridle. The poor packhorses had to tread on the very outside edge of the trail, because if they didn’t, their packs would knock the wall on the inner side, and what kept them from slipping off was hard to see.

The trail down seemed endless. Far below, Joe saw a party coming up, looking about a quarter of a mile away.

“I suppose we’ll meet ’em day after to-morrow,” Bob said.

As a matter of fact, it was half an hour before the two parties met. They had to pass on this narrow path, and Mills, the two guides, and Joe held the horses of their party while the ascending riders squeezed past, and then led the packhorses, one by one, to a spot where they could make room for another horse to get by. It seemed ticklish work to Joe, but the horses were as calm about it as if they had been on level ground.

It was long after one o’clock when the nineteen horses of the procession finally stepped off the last of the shale upon the green grass of a little meadow, and then into a level strip of woods. With a yell, Mills hit his horse, and went forward at a smart trot, everybody following, even the weary packhorses. Out of the woods on the other side they trotted into the most beautiful spot Joe had ever seen in all his life, and when Miss Elkins cried, “Oh, is this Heaven?” he felt like saying, “Me too!”—but remembered that, after all, he was only the cook, and kept silent.

“This is Piegan Pines,” said the Ranger. “All off for lunch.”

He sprang from his saddle, and he and the forward guide helped the two older women to dismount—and they certainly needed help.

“I can never get back there again,” wailed poor Mrs. Jones, as she flopped down on the grass.

While the party were dismounting, Joe had just time for a quick look about him. They were in a little meadow, maybe half a mile wide, with towering rock walls on both sides, hung with snow-fields and a glacier or two, and, behind, the great shale slide down which they had just come. Only one side, to the south, was open—and there the meadow just dropped off into space. Across the hole, far off and blue, was the great blue mass of Mount Jackson, covered with snow, and the great white and green slopes of Blackfeet Glacier, the largest in the Park. The meadow was full of little limber pines, golden with millions of dog-tooth violet bells, and criss-crossed with tiny ice-water brooks, running in channels over the grass—made, of course, by melting snow on the cliffs above.

“Golly,” thought Joe, “if old Spider and I could only come and camp here!”

But now Mills was telling him to get a quick, cold lunch, and he and the other guide sprang for the packhorses, and got out what was needed, while Mills made a camp-fire beside one of the brooks.

As Joe was making his preparations, he felt Miss Elkins standing beside him, and looked up.

“Are you the cook?” she asked.

“I—I believe so,” Joe stammered, getting red.

“You don’t look very old to be a cook,” said she. “Have you got lots and lots to eat? I could devour a whole butcher shop, I think.”

“Cold lunch,” said Joe, grinning. “Ranger’s orders.”

“Oh, not a cold lunch! Mr. Mills—Mr. Mills—cook says you say a cold lunch. You didn’t say that, did you?”

“Sure, ice water and a cracker,” the Ranger grinned. “Can’t stop to cook.”

“Oh, please, just coffee—mother will never get back on her horse without a cup of coffee.”

“I’ll never get back without two cups,” groaned Mrs. Jones.

“Well, Joe, make ’em coffee,” said Mills, with a wink at Joe, who had been intending to make coffee all the time.

He filled his kettle at the little brook, and while the coffee was boiling, opened a small can of sardines apiece, some boxes of crackers, a can of beans, and two or three jars of jam. For the jam, he carefully whittled some dead pine limbs into rough spoons, to save dish washing, and sweetened the coffee, when ready, in the pot, for the same purpose.

By the time he had this very simple lunch spread out on a bit of level ground, with no plates or spoons except for the beans, which he had heated while the coffee was boiling, the party had scattered, all but Val, the young cowboy.

“Ready?” Val asked.

“All ready.”

Val picked up a piece of wood and a frying-pan, which lay on the opened pack. Pounding the pan with the stick like a drum, he yelled,

“Come and get it!”

“That’s the word that brings ’em in these parts,” he added to Joe.

It did.

“That’s the most eloquent speech I ever heard!” exclaimed Mr. Jones.

In about one minute, they were all gathered around the fire. Val passed the food and Joe poured the coffee.

“Say, what do you take these sardines out with?” demanded Mrs. Jones.

“Fingers were made before forks, mother darling,” said Bob. “See—watch your little son.”

He picked up a sardine by the tail, and dropped the whole of it into his mouth.

“Well, I must say, I’d like a fork——” she began, and Joe turned red, for he had forgotten the forks for the sardines.

But Miss Elkins spoke up before Mrs. Jones could finish.

“Cook hasn’t time to wash dishes this noon,” she said. “We’ve got to make camp before dark. Besides, we’re roughing it. I think it’s great!” and she, too, picked a sardine out of her tin by the tail, and dropped it upon a cracker.

Joe cast her a grateful glance, and she smiled at him sweetly. He decided then and there, as he put it to himself, that she was “all to the good.”

Meantime Mrs. Elkins, her mother, was watching Val, with fascinated eyes.

“What are you looking at, mother?” her daughter demanded. Bob’s eyes followed hers, and he gave a hoot of glee.

“A Charlie Chaplin sandwich!” he cried.

Then everybody looked at Val, who was grinning amiably, as he sat on a fallen log, making himself a sandwich, between two crackers, of the entire bill of fare—sardines, jam, and baked beans. This he consumed in exactly three bites, and proceeded to concoct another one.

“Well,” he said, as he made this second, “you mix ’em all inside, don’t you? Why not first? Saves time.”

“Ugh!” said Mrs. Jones. “I’m afraid I wasn’t born to rough it.”

“Efficiency, I call it,” said her husband. “Why not, as he says. Think I’ll try it.”

“Me, too,” said Bob.

“Me, too.”

“Me, too,” from each of the girls. They all did try it—once—much to Mrs. Jones’ disgust.

It did not take long to clean out the sardine tins and the jam jars. Then Joe produced a piece of sweet chocolate apiece, while the girls called him “a darling thing,” and the congressmen lit their cigars and lay back on the grass, while Joe and Val packed up again.

“You go along right away, with the pack-train,” said Mills to them, “and when you reach the lake, turn toward Sun Camp, till you come to the point of land. Start making camp by that. We’ll come slower.”

So Joe had to climb back on Popgun—reluctantly, for he hated to leave this beautiful upland meadow, and led the way down the trail, with the eight packhorses behind him, and Val bringing up the rear. Of course, he and Val were thus so far apart they could not talk, and with nothing in front of him, it seemed almost as if he were alone, plunging into the unknown wilderness.

The trail immediately fell over the edge of the meadow, into timber, and began to descend steeply, the woods growing more dense and the trees much larger as the trail dropped down, till, after a mile or two, they were in a heavy forest of big fir trees. As they neared the bottom land, the footing got heavy, too, and finally the trail was mostly black mud. They plodded through this for a mile or more, and then, through the great tree trunks, Joe began to see light, and, high up, the red and white and gray tops of mountains, and finally, after they had turned to the left by a rushing stream, and followed down it a ways, he saw the dancing waters of a green lake. A short distance now, and they were beside this lake. It was, Joe knew, St. Mary Lake, the upper end of the same lake he had seen on the trip in from the railroad on the motor bus.

As he came out on an open headland on the shore, he could not help pulling up his horse, and looking at it. Val trotted up beside him.

“Some pond, eh?” said the cowboy. “I like this puddle. Good fish in it, too.”

But Joe was not thinking of fish then. He was thinking—well, he could not have told you what he was thinking; maybe he was just feeling. It was all so huge, and awe-inspiring, and yet so beautiful! The lake was two miles wide, he fancied, and went out of sight around a headland to the east. To the west, it seemed to run right up into a big cañon that ended bang against Blackfeet Glacier, Mount Jackson, and the sawtooth peaks of the Great Divide. Directly opposite, two huge rock pyramids came sheer down into the water.

“Those are Red Eagle and Little Chief Mountains,” said Val. “See that house over on the one little island? That’s where the president of the Great Northern Railroad lives in summer. Come on, though, we can’t look at the pretty pictures. We’ve got to get tents up for the others. She doesn’t like to rough it, Mrs. Jones don’t. Say, I bet she asks you to heat her curling irons to-night.”

Joe laughed.

“Why didn’t you remind me of the forks?” said he. “I’m green, you know, and get rattled.”

“Forks, what for? Let her use her pickers. It’ll do her good,” said Val.

Joe laughed again. Val was just what he wanted a cowboy to be—jolly, reckless, without any reverence for any one or anything. He liked him especially because when it came to doing any job, he went right at it cheerfully and did it.

They now trotted east, along the border of the lake, directly in front of them towering up the huge and beautifully shaped pinkish-gray pyramid of Going-to-the-Sun Mountain. After a mile or so, Val called out for Joe to turn off the trail, and he obeyed, going down through the woods to a long spit of rocks and earth and little trees which had been pushed out into the lake by a roaring brook, which now flowed through the middle of it. Here they dismounted and unloaded the horses, which Val led back to the trail, and then took somewhere up the slopes to their night feeding.

Meanwhile Joe set about making camp. He first picked out a good place for the fire pit, and built that. He got out what he was going to need for supper, and then set about collecting dead wood for his fire. He did not have to go far, either, for the whole rocky beach of the lake was lined with driftwood, and he cut up a good supply, made a fire, and put on two kettles of water to boil, one with some of the beef in it for a stew, one for soup. Then he went at the task of setting up the tent the Ranger had packed, in which he and Mills would sleep, and in which he would keep his provisions.

He had hardly finished, and had the stuff stowed into it, when up the trail he heard voices, and a moment later the party came in sight. They were mostly silent now—only Bob and the girls were doing any talking. Their mothers were hanging forward over the horns of their saddles, thoroughly tired out, and the two congressmen looked nearly as fagged as the women.

“Can I help?” Joe asked the Ranger, after the party had dismounted, and the older people had flopped on the ground.

“No, get supper as soon as you can, that’s all. Dick and I will pitch the tents. Where’s Val?”

“He took the horses somewhere.”

“Good. He can take these, too, when he gets back. That’ll please him a whole lot! Why didn’t he wait till he had the whole bunch?”

Joe looked quickly at Mills’ face, for he had never seen the Ranger cross before.

Mills managed a grin, when he saw the look. “Yes, I got a grouch,” he said, in a low tone. “It’s that Jones woman. You’d think she wanted a twin-six limousine to bring her over Piegan Pass! What’ll you take to throw her in the lake?”

“Wait for Val. He’ll do it for nothing,” Joe laughed. “She’ll feel better soon. I’m goin’ to give her two forks.”

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. Meanwhile, the two girls came over to Joe’s fire, and watched him work.

They sniffed at the kettle of stew.

“Are we going to have meat, really, truly meat, for dinner, Cookie?” asked Miss Jones.

“Alice, if you call him Cookie, he’ll poison you, won’t you—Joe?” said Miss Elkins.

Joe looked up and met her twinkling eyes. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll put a Charlie Chaplin sandwich in it.”

“Mercy, Mr. Cook, Sir Cook, My Lord Cook, Reverend Cook!” cried Alice.

“All right, s’long as you don’t call me Dr. Cook,” said Joe, peeping in the stew kettle to see how it was coming along.

“Here, no flirting with the cook,” Mills called out. “You girls have got to make the beds.”

“All right,” laughed Lucy Elkins. (Joe thought to himself that Lucy was a nice name.) “Where are the sheets and pillow-cases?”

“You’ll find ’em in the linen closet, next door beyond the bathroom,” Mills grinned.

Then she and Alice grabbed armfuls of blankets from the packs, and disappeared into the tents.

Meantime Val arrived, and the Ranger asked him why he didn’t wait and drive all the horses up together.

“’Cause I’m a natural born mut, and didn’t think of it,” said Val.

The Ranger growled, and turned away. “Because he’d rather do that than pitch tents,” he muttered. “All cowboys are lazy.”

The two weary congressmen and Bob now reappeared, with armfuls of evergreen boughs, and the Ranger went to show them how to lay their beds. The sun was getting well down toward the tops of the peaks on the Great Divide to the west. Already it was getting colder, and the women had put on their sweaters. The green waters of the lake were lap-lapping against the shore, and the smell of Joe’s stew was rising with the smoke of the fire. When he saw it was about done, he made a big pot of coffee, then opened his cans of soup, and poured them into the other kettle of boiling water, and mixed it to the right consistency. As soon as this was ready, and Val appeared down from the woods above, he pounded a frying-pan and yelled,

“Come and get it!”

In a second he was surrounded. Sitting on large stones, or logs washed down by the spring floods in the brook, with their laps or other stones as tables, every one except Joe ate the piping hot soup. Then they had stew, on tin plates, with bread and coffee and jam, and while the stew was being eaten Joe tossed over the “saddle blankets” in his frying-pan.

“Why don’t you go into vaudeville with that act?” Bob called to him, as he flapped a cake up with the pan, and caught it neatly, other side down.

These they ate with butter from a jar and syrup from a tin can, which Joe had stocked at the Many Glacier store. Finally, he gave them preserved peaches for dessert.

“Poor Joe,” said Lucy, as he passed her dessert to her. “I don’t believe we’ve left a thing for you.”

“Don’t you worry about me,” Joe answered. “I have the supplies in my tent!”

She laughed, but he saw that she was watching to see if there really was any supper left for him, and it seemed very good to have some one thinking that way about you.

As a matter of fact, there was a little soup left, and a good big plate of stew, and all the jam he wanted, so Joe had no complaint. He sat behind his fire and devoured his supper hungrily, before he tackled the final job of cleaning up all the dishes.

It would have been quite dark at home by this time, for it was eight o’clock, or more, but up here it was still light enough to read, and as Joe took the dishes down to the brook to scour them with clean sand before he poured boiling water over them, he looked up into the west, and saw the great, towering pyramids of the mountains, blue against the sunset sky, with their snow patches and glaciers all rosy pink. The two girls were standing near him, and when they saw him looking, they said, “Isn’t it lovely?”

“I never saw anything so beautiful,” Joe answered, simply. “I like mountains, but these are such big ones, and there are so many colors in ’em!”

“Joe, I believe you’re a poet,” Lucy said.

“Well, if your poetry is as good as your coffee, Shakespeare will have to watch out,” Alice laughed.

Joe turned red again, and nearly dropped his stack of plates.

When he had the dishes washed and the fire-wood ready for morning, he found that the Ranger had built a big camp-fire in front of the tents, and placed some logs about it, to lean against, while sitting on the ground. Everybody was sitting in a ring, glad of the warmth now that the cold night chill was falling from the peaks—all but the two cowboys, who had disappeared.

“They’ve gone to the Sun Camp chalets, half a mile down the trail,” said Mills, when somebody asked where they were.

“And where’s Joe?” said Lucy. “Oh, there he is. Come on in the house, Joe, where it’s warm. Mr. Mills is going to tell us a bedtime story.”

She made room for Joe to sit beside her, and he sank down, weary and sore, for they had ridden twenty-two miles that day, and he had cooked for eleven hungry people.

“Now Mr. Mills—begin!” she commanded.

The poor Ranger turned red in his turn.

“Gosh,” he said, “I couldn’t tell a story. I don’t know any stories.”

“Oh, yes you do—you must.”

“Tell us a bear story.” cried Bob. “And tell it quick, or dad’ll be telling one of those he gets off in after dinner speeches, and we’ll all be asleep.”

“Bob, I’m too sore and tired to thrash you,” laughed the congressman.

“But you’re never too tired to tell a story, dad. Hurry, Mr. Mills, I can see one coming now!”

“If I had a child like that, I’d—I’d——” Mr. Elkins began.

“You’d send him to Congress to listen to all the speeches there for punishment,” chortled the irrepressible Bob. “Please, Mr. Mills, a bear story.”

“Yes, a bear story!”—from the men.

“A grizzly bear story!”—from Alice. “A great, BIG grizzly bear story!”—from Lucy. “And put in the middle-sized bear, and the little weeny bear, too, if you want to.”

The Ranger laughed. “Well,” he said, “I can tell you a bear and a lion story, if that’ll do.”

He threw another driftwood log on the fire, and began.