“The first thing you want to remember about old Mr. Silver Tip,” said the Ranger, “is that he’s a good deal like a lot o’ big, strong men, he’s too powerful to be scrappy. You hear a lot o’ stories about grizzlies bein’ terrible fighters, and they sure can fight when they’re cornered, or when old mother bear thinks her cubs are in danger. But if a silver tip can possibly get away, he gets. That’s not because he’s afraid, either, of anything on earth except a high power rifle. It’s because he ain’t lookin’ for trouble. Mr. Silver Tip is afraid of a rifle, all right, and he’s about the smartest of all animals in keeping away from it, too. But there’s nothing else he’s afraid of, and before man came into these mountains to shoot him, he just wandered around here, the king pin, and nobody bothered him a bit, no sir.”
“But don’t grizzlies have to fight to kill anything as big as a moose?” asked Bob.
“They don’t kill anything as big as a moose,” the Ranger said. “Oh, once in a blue moon an old bear will go wrong, and take to killing cattle. Down in Wyoming there was a silver tip used to kill cattle, and two hundred men and dogs hunted him a month, and never did get him. But mostly they live on roots and berries and mice and ground squirrels and dead birds and animal carcases something else has killed. Why, I’ve seen a grizzly digging out a ground squirrel in the early spring, just after he’d come out of his winter nest, not far from my cabin, and a lot of sheep, down there to get the early grass, walking right up close to him to see what he was up to. When they got too close—sheep are kind o’ curious, like kids and women—he just woufed at ’em, to drive ’em off. They weren’t afraid of him eatin’ ’em, though, at all, and he could have cleaned out the flock with about two bites.
“Well, this is just to show you how little fear Mr. Silver Tip has that anything but a man can do him any harm, or will dare try it. I was hunting once over west of the Flathead River, in bear country, and I had a dead horse out in a clearing for bait. Up in a tree on the edge of the clearing I’d built myself a kind of blind, where I could watch. You see, most bears can climb trees, but the grizzly can’t, so when one comes after you, Bob, you just beat it up the nearest trunk.”
“Thanks for the tip—the silver tip, as you might say,” the boy laughed.
“Well,” Mills went on, “by ’n’ by along into the clearing come two lions, long, lean, hungry lookin’, sneaky beasts they are, too—I hate ’em—and they fell to on the carcase, and began to eat. Thinks I, I’d wait and see what happened, instead of killin’ ’em and maybe scarin’ off the bear with the shots so’s he’d never come back. Sure enough, the old boy came galumphing along presently, and went up on his hind legs when he saw the lions at his festal board, as you might say. Then he dropped down again, and just walked right up, stuck his big shoulders in between the two lions, shovin’ ’em apart, and began to eat.”
“That’s no way to treat a lion,” said Lucy.
“No, specially as one of ’em was a lady lion,” Mills laughed. “But that’s what old Silver Tip did. The lions naturally didn’t like it, and one of ’em snarled, and up with his paw and fetched the bear a nasty swipe. Then I expected to see trouble.
“But what do you think the old bear did? He just kind of side-cut with one of his big paws and caught that lion a blow that sent him spinning head over tail twenty feet down the slope. Then he went right on eating. He didn’t look at the other lion, he didn’t even look around to see what the first one was goin’ to do. ’Peared as if he was quite certain what they’d both do, and they done it. They both took a quick sneak into the woods, and left Mr. Silver Tip to his feast. You couldn’t have brushed off a mosquito more calmly. I says to myself then that it showed how sure of himself the grizzly is—he’s king of the forest, all right.”
“And did you shoot him after that?” Lucy asked.
“Sure I shot him.”
“I think you were real horrid,” she said.
“Maybe,” Mills answered. “But I’m still wearin’ his skin in winter.”
“How many shots did it take?” asked one of the congressmen. “I’ve always heard you have to pump a grizzly full of lead, and then use a knife to defend yourself, after your last shell is emptied.”
“The feller that told you that was a bum shot,” said the Ranger. “’Course there are a lot of bum shots come out here huntin’. One bullet, in the brain, the upper part of the heart, or the right place in the spine, will drop a silver tip like a sack o’ grain. You’ve got to know where to hit, and you’ve got to hit there, naturally. Trouble is, green hunters get scared or rattled, and don’t aim right, and half the time when they think they’re plugging the bear they’re really peppering the rocks behind him. I wouldn’t want to hunt ’em myself with a single shot rifle, but I could if I had to. A city chap in one of our parties once, over in the Blackfeet forest, smashed all four of a bear’s legs with bullets, and then the bear, tryin’ to get away, fell into a stream and drowned to death. Our cook asked the feller why he didn’t chuck him in to start with, and save shells.”
“When you going to show us a bear?” Bob demanded.
“Mercy, I do hope it isn’t very soon!” cried Bob’s mother. “I’m sure I don’t want to meet one. I don’t suppose there are any in the Park any more.”
“Oh, yes, more ’n ever,” said the Ranger, managing a secret wink to Joe. “Why, there was two women from Boston once, sitting in broad day on the steep cut bank of a stream, and they heard crashings in the bush, and looked back and seen a big grizzly coming right toward ’em, and they yelled like Comanches and fell right down the bank into the water, and waded across up to their necks and beat it back to camp.”
“Better stick close to brave little Bobbie, ma,” laughed her son. “I won’t let the naughty big bear bite you. But when are you going to show me one, Mr. Mills?”
“Day after to-morrow,” said the Ranger.
Joe pricked up his ears. It sounded as if Mills meant it.
“Is that a threat or a promise?” Lucy asked.
“Promise for Bob, a threat for Mrs. Jones, I guess,” said the Ranger, rising from the ground, and adding, “Who’s ready for bed?”
“Better ask who isn’t,” somebody laughed.
Joe went as far out on the rocky spit into the lake as he could get; he could see the dying camp-fire gleaming red back under the trees; and all around him, over the dim, starlit water, rose the majestic mountains, great walls of shadow rearing up half-way to the top of the sky. It was a still, solemn scene, and he felt very small as he crouched by the lake and cleaned his teeth in water that was almost as cold as ice.
When he got back to camp every one was abed, and he crawled into the tent with Mills and wrapped himself up in his blankets, with only his poncho for a mattress, and almost before he had got his body fitted into the unevennesses of the ground he was fast asleep.
The Ranger was the first up in the morning. He gave Joe a shake by the shoulder, and Joe half opened one sleepy eye and said, “Aw, ma, it ain’t time to get up yet.”
Then he heard Mills chuckle, and he realized where he was. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was almost six. Outside, it was broad daylight, and the sun was flooding up the lake.
Joe sat up and threw back the blankets. “Golly, I’m sore and stiff,” he said, rubbing himself. “Been sleeping on a cot, and I’m soft, I guess.”
“You also did twenty-two miles yesterday,” Mills remarked. “Well, I haven’t told ’em yet, but we’re going to do only seven to-day, and then have a side trip for the young folks. Guess Mother Jones will want to stay in camp and help you get supper.”
“She’d better try!” cried Joe, springing up at the word “supper,” for it reminded him that it was his job to get breakfast. He had a quick wash in the brook which ran past the camp, and set about making some biscuit, bacon and eggs, coffee and flapjacks. His fire was going merrily, and in its heat he had begun to get warm (for the night chill was still in the air, and you could almost see your breath), when he saw Congressman Elkins poking a sleepy face out of the men’s tent flap, with his hair all tousled, and his body bent half double. He spied the fire, and made a hobble for it.
“Say, Joe, let me get some of that heat, will you?” he said.
“Sure,” Joe laughed. “Didn’t you have blankets enough?”
“I had five—ought to be enough, in the third week of July, you’d think. But I shivered all night, and every time I shivered a new branch in our wonderful bough bed found a fresh spot on my anatomy to puncture. I’m beginning to think Mrs. Jones is right about this roughing it stuff.”
“No, sir, she isn’t,” Joe answered, as he set his batter of biscuit over the fire. “Only you have to learn how to do it, and get hardened to it a bit, too. How’d you have the blankets?”
“How’d I have ’em? Over me, of course.”
“That’s the trouble,” said Joe. “The secret of sleeping warm is to have ’em under you, too. That’s where as much cold comes as from above, even in a bed. You roll yourself up in ’em to-night and see if you’re not warm.”
“Where’d you learn all this?” the congressman asked. “You look pretty young to be a camp cook. Live around here?”
“Oh, no, sir, I live in Massachusetts. I learned how to camp as a Boy Scout. My chum—another scout—and I came out here this summer, because I was—I wasn’t very well. He’s got a job at Many Glacier tepee camp, and I’m getting so well now Mr. Mills got me to go as cook, ’cause I’d made coffee and things for him and he knew I could cook.”
“I suppose you learned cooking as a scout, too, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” Joe answered, pouring out the ground coffee into the pot. “I worked to get a merit badge in cooking. You see, I could help mother with it, too, when she was sick, or anything.”
“Well, I’m beginning to have a better opinion of the Boy Scouts every minute,” the man laughed, sniffing the food and warming his hands by the blaze. “I thought it was just a kind of fad.”
“Oh, no, sir!” Joe cried. “Why, all our little scouts, after a year, are lots better boys, and everybody says it’s been a fine thing for the town!”
“Here, daddy, you stop bribing the cook to give you breakfast in advance!” a laughing voice interrupted them. Joe turned, and saw Lucy Elkins coming from her tent. Her hair was down her back, in brown waves, so that she looked almost like a little girl, and she was smiling and bright and gay as the morning sun.
“I suppose you slept well,” her father said, “weren’t cold and no pine boughs in your ribs.”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I slept so hard I can’t tell whether I was cold or not. But I know I’m hungry. Why don’t you wake everybody up, Joe, and let’s get to business.”
She went off up the brook with her tooth-brush and towel, and the Ranger, taking a pan, beat reveille on it with two sticks. Other sleepy heads emerged, Mrs. Jones last of all, looking very cross and shivery. By the time they had all got fully dressed and washed, and the girls had braided their hair (letting the braids hang down their backs), the two guides appeared. They had spent the night just down the lake at the Sun Camp chalets, with other guides, friends of theirs.
Joe set his eggs to cooking last of all, got the dishes ready, poured the coffee, and then gave the now familiar yell,
“Come and get it!”
That is a call in Glacier Park no one has to hear a second time. Even Mrs. Jones perked up, and stopped complaining about how cold she was, and how she hated to clean her teeth in ice water, and how she missed her morning bath, and silenced her own tongue with a bite of bacon that was more nourishing than ladylike in size. The breakfast disappeared in double quick time, and Val went up the hill for the horses, while Mills and Dick began to strike the tents and arrange the packs, and Joe cleaned his dishes and packed his provisions.
At half-past eight, the party was in the saddle again, Mills at the head, and started up the trail, along the lake shore, toward the gleaming white field of Blackfeet Glacier and the red, snow-spangled cone of Mount Jackson.
“Where are we bound to-day?” some one asked.
“Only seven miles, to Gunsight Lake,” the Ranger answered. “I thought maybe you’d like an easy stage to-day, and this afternoon those that wanted to could go up on the glacier.”
“The man is almost intelligent!” Mrs. Jones exclaimed. “Only seven miles—that sounds more reasonable to me.”
They were seven easy miles, too, up a streamside by an easy grade, a good deal of the way through tall timber, and past a beaver dam, the first one Joe had ever seen. It was made of small logs, twigs and grasses, all matted together, and plastered neatly and tightly with mud, and must have been a hundred feet long and perhaps three feet high, so that a considerable little pond had backed up behind it, in which, rising above the water, were the huts, which looked like larger and better built muskrat huts. Joe pulled down his horse to a slow walk as he passed, and saw the little canals the beavers had made, leading from the bed of the stream back into the willow and aspen swamp. He figured out that the chief reason the beavers build dams is so they can flood such a grove of young willows, aspens, etc., and float out the tiny logs they cut (the young shoots, with tender bark), to their houses, where they store them for winter food. Later he asked Mills, and found he was right. When the beavers can find deep water, with food trees right on the bank, they will not bother to make dams.
Joe lingered till Val yelled at him to “get a move on,” hoping he might see one of the little animals at work, but the beaver works mostly at night when he has to be above water, and not one was now to be seen.
It was a short, easy trip to Gunsight Lake, and they reached the open meadow at its foot by eleven o’clock. The lake, a smallish one, lay at the bottom of a great horseshoe amphitheatre. If you will imagine the Harvard stadium two or three miles long instead of two or three hundred yards, with sides almost precipitous and three thousand feet high, and a green lake where the football gridiron is, you have a picture of Gunsight. The closed end of the horseshoe was the Divide, and that was where the Gunsight Pass lay, over which they would climb to-morrow. The north side was Fusillade Mountain, the south side was the great shoulder of Mount Jackson (the summit being invisible from this point). The meadow where they were to camp was just out at the open end, where they could see around the shoulder of Jackson to the glittering field of Blackfeet Glacier, the largest in the Park, hung on the upper slopes of the Divide, to the southwest, and where, behind them, rose the huge cliffs of Citadel Mountain, which is exactly like old Fort Sumter or the old fort on Governor’s Island, enlarged to the “nth” power. (If you don’t know what “enlarged to the nth power” means, it’s either because you have not studied your algebra, or have not reached algebra yet.) The floor of the meadow was full of wild flowers, especially the great, tall white spikes of the Indian basket grass, and full, too, of low balsams and pines.
Close to the shore of the lake lay a big pile of lumber, old, twisted iron beds, half a cook-stove, and the like.
“What on earth happened here?” asked Mrs. Elkins.
“Avalanche,” said the Ranger. “Was a chalet here—Gunsight chalet. In the winter of 1915-16 a snowslide started down Jackson, and this is what’s left.”
“Oh, heavens!” Mrs. Jones cried, looking up the red precipices of Jackson to the snow-fields far above, “do you suppose there’ll be another one?”
“We don’t often have ’em in July, marm,” said Mills briefly, “but you never can tell,” and he winked at Joe.
They now pitched tents near the lake, and Joe set about cooking a hot lunch, for he had plenty of time. While the water was heating, he got some boards from the pile of wreckage, and made a rough table and benches. Then he started out to gather some flowers. Lucy and Alice saw him, and came to help. The three of them, in ten minutes, found thirty different kinds of flowers, all in a space of two or three hundred feet, and made three bunches, which they stood in tin cans on the table, and then put little pine boughs around the cans “to camouflage them,” as Joe said.
“I told you Joe was a poet,” Lucy said to Alice. “I’ll bet he’ll produce a table-cloth in a minute.”
“Can’t do that,” Joe laughed, “unless you’ll climb up and get me one of those up there——” and he gestured toward the white snow-fields far up the cliffs, which did, indeed, look like huge sheets, or table-cloths, flung on the rocky ledges to dry.
As soon as the tents were pitched, and lunch was over, Mills said:
“Well, who wants to go up to Blackfeet Glacier?”
“I do!” from Bob.
“I do!” from Lucy.
“I do!” from Alice.
“I do, if I can go on horseback,” from Mr. Elkins.
“Same as Elkins,” from Mr. Jones.
“I want to sit still,” from Mrs. Jones.
“I couldn’t leave Mrs. Jones all alone,” from Mrs. Elkins.
“You haven’t spoken, Joe,” said Lucy.
Poor Joe—how he wanted to climb up and see a real glacier! But he smiled bravely and cheerfully.
“I shall have to stay and get dinner,” he answered.
“Oh, that’s too bad! I just know you’re dying to see the glacier. Mr. Mills, wouldn’t we be back in time for Joe to get dinner, if he went?”
“Well, we might be, if dinner was a bit late, and you didn’t have a roast turkey,” the Ranger said.
“Well, I move we have late dinner, and take Joe along. All in favor, say aye.”
Bob and Alice yelled “Aye!” and Mr. Elkins said, “Jones and I are paired, so it’s a vote.”
Joe tried to say some word of thanks to Lucy, but he couldn’t manage it. Besides, he had no time, for Mrs. Jones broke in:
“Well, I’d like to know if you expect Mrs. Elkins and me to stay here all alone?”
“You might be getting the dinner, Martha,” her husband grinned.
“Val will stay in camp,” Mills said. “He’s fed up on glaciers, anyhow, ain’t you, Val?”
The young cowboy nodded. “You can have ’em all,” he said, “and welcome.”
So Joe found himself in the small party headed for Blackfeet Glacier, as soon as he had put his stew to simmer over a small fire, which Val promised to keep going. Mills took three of the strongest ropes from the packs, and they set off up the steep, rough trail climbing the shoulder of Jackson. They soon had a superb view below them, first of the meadow, with their own tents like white dots in it, and then back down the cañon to St. Mary Lake, and the great pink and gray pyramid of Going-to-the-Sun Mountain. But it was not long before every one stopped looking at the view, and paid entire attention to the trail. This was a side trail, not one of the regular tourist highways, and it was not built for comfort. It was tremendously steep, and very rough, more like a flight of high, irregular stone steps than a path.
“Oh, I think this is terrible on the poor horses!” Lucy said, as her horse scrambled up a rock, and she had to cling to his mane to stick on the saddle.
“Get out and walk, then,” Mills called back. “Grab hold of your horse’s tail, and let him pull you up.”
“Say, what you giving us?” said Bob. “Think I want to go down the hill again backwards?”
Mills laughed. “Think these horses are mules?” he answered. “See, this is the way.”
He got off his horse, grabbed it by the tail, and to everybody’s surprised amusement, the horse started up, with the Ranger scrambling behind him, half climbing, half being pulled along.
Every one else got off, too, and in single file, each person clinging to his horse’s tail, they began the ascent again. 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. Panting, covered with perspiration, the two congressmen were about ready to quit. They presently reached a more level place, a high upland meadow covered with flowers, and mounting again rode up and across this, and came at last near the lower edge of a great snow-field, which stretched away southward for three miles, broken here and there by peninsulas and islands of rock, and stretched upward clear to the summit of the Divide over their heads, at an angle of about forty-five degrees at first, but much steeper near the top.
“The biggest glacier in the Park,” said Mills.
“Where?” said Mr. Elkins. “All I see is snow.”
“I know it—too bad, but we had so much snow last winter it’s not melted off yet. But take my word for it, that’s all ice underneath.”
“Hooray, let’s climb out on it!” Bob shouted.
“Not for me—I’ve climbed enough to-day,” his father said, still puffing.
It ended with the two congressmen resting in the meadow, while Mills, Dick the guide, Joe, the girls, and Bob, climbed up some way over the rocks without any trail, and reached at length a place where the vast snow-field seemed to be sliding down past them, like a huge, silent river. Of course, it did not move, but it gave that illusion.
“What a place to ski!” said Joe.
“Wow!” yelled Bob, “you bet! You’d get some jump at the bottom, too.”
Mills grinned. “About as far as whichever place you’re going to when you die,” he said, as he began to uncoil his three ropes, fastening them together.
“What’s the big idea?” asked Bob. “That snow’s soft; you wouldn’t slip in that.”
And, to prove it, he started down the rocks, and out on to the snow-covered glacier.
Mills suddenly spoke with a sharp note Joe had never heard him use.
“Come back here!” he said.
“Now, Joe,” he said, “you go first on the rope, because you’ve got spikes in your shoes. We’ve got to look out for crevasses. Sound your footing when it looks suspicious. We’d need Alpine stocks to go far.”
He fastened one end under Joe’s arms.
“You next, Dick, to brace if Joe goes under. Then the rest of you, and I’ll be the rear anchor.”
He made the rope fast around Dick, twenty feet behind Joe, then told Bob and the girls to hold it fast at equal intervals, and fastened the rear end around his own waist
“Now, Joe, let her go,” he said.
Joe went down the rocks, and out on the great snow-field, tilted like the roof of a house. It was soft, as Bob had said, but not like ordinary soft snow. It was more like walking in cold, wet, rock salt, and the footing was anything but sure. Joe went cautiously, slowly climbing upward and outward at the same time, and as he looked below him, down that smooth, glistening, white slope, and realized that if he once got started sliding he would probably go half a mile and shoot off the lower edge into space, he felt his heart, for a minute, go down somewhere into his boots. So he looked up, instead of downward, and felt better.
Everything went well for some hundreds of yards, and the whole party, on their rope, were well out on the great snow-field, when Joe saw just ahead of him a very slight depression in the snow. Bracing with his right foot, he put his left forward, and hit this depression smartly. It caved in! He tried to spring back, yelling to Dick to brace, but his right foot, with nothing but snow for the spikes to hold in, slipped, and he felt himself going down. He had no time to think, only just a terrible flash in his brain of accidents he had read about to Alpine climbers, before the rope caught him under the armpits with a cruel yank; he hung for a minute surrounded by the wet, cold snow which was falling down his neck, and then he felt himself being tugged up again by Dick.
Mills had come up, bringing the rope around Bob and the girls in a loop, by the time Dick had him out.
“Hurt?” he asked.
Joe was poking snow out of his neck, and loosening the grip of the rope under his arms.
“I—I guess not!” he panted. “Gee, that gave me some surprise, though. I thought something was coming, and tested it with one foot, but the other slipped.”
“We ought to have ice axes,” Mills said. “The snow’s getting too thin. Back’s the word.”
Joe looked around at the rest of the party, and saw that Lucy and Alice had turned deadly pale, and even Bob was looking sober.
“Are you sure you aren’t hurt, Joe?” Lucy asked.
“I’ll get dinner, O.K.,” Joe answered.
Meanwhile Mills had approached the hole where Joe went under, and called the rest to come and look, one by one, while he and Dick braced the rope.
Joe looked, too. His fall had collapsed a snow bridge over a crevasse, and through the hole, which was six feet wide or more, they could see down through a layer of snow into what looked like a bottomless slit between walls of dirty green ice. A cold, damp, chilling breath came up from the hole, and far below they could hear water running.
“Now you get the big idea, Bob, eh?” said Mills. “See why we had the rope?”
“Yes, and I bet old cookie’s glad it was a strong one,” Bob replied. “Say, I wish it had been me’d been ahead!”
“Oh, do you?” the Ranger laughed. “Want to be lowered down?”
“Oh, no—Mr. Mills!” Alice cried.
“Cheer up, he wouldn’t let me,” Mills grinned. “Besides, he’s too fat and heavy to pull up again.”
“If a feller fell down there, and they didn’t get him up, and he froze into the ice, would he come out some time at the bottom of the glacier?” Bob asked.
“I guess he would,” said Mills, “but his widow might get tired waiting and marry again.”
“Mr. Mills, you’re perfectly awful” said Lucy, with a shudder. “Take us back from this horrid place.”
They went back carefully in their own tracks, and rejoined the congressmen, who, it seemed, had climbed where they could watch, and had seen the whole thing from a distance. There was much excited talk about Joe’s experience all the way down (on the down trip they led their horses over the steep part, needing no help on the descent), and Joe, sore as he was under the arms and rather shaky from the shock, began to feel like quite a hero. In fact, by the time they reached the level meadows at camp, it did not seem terrible at all, and every one had begun to enjoy it.
“Except me,” said Lucy. “I shall dream all night of the way poor Joe’s head went suddenly out of sight, and I saw Dick bracing on that rope and wondered if it would hold!”
“The moral is,” said her father, “have a good rope.”
“I should say the moral was, don’t climb in foolish places,” Mrs. Jones declared, for the two women had of course been told the story at once.
“Gee, ma,” Bob declared, “if everybody was like you, we wouldn’t know there were any Rocky Mountains. Somebody’s got to take a chance!”
Mills had said nothing. Now he spoke, in his brief, quiet way.
“It was a sound rope. Nobody took a chance,” he said. “We don’t let ’em in the Park.”
There did not seem to be any reply to this. The girls went into their tent to rest, Joe changed his wet boots—which were soaked with the snow—and his wet shirt, and set busily about getting dinner. After all, he was the cook, and there was no further time for being a hero.
There was no story telling that night. Dinner was late, and afterwards the dusk came earlier up here under the shadows of the great cliffs, and every one except the two women was glad enough to crawl in early. Joe was gladdest of all. He had to confess that he was tired, as well as sore—and now he realized that he had disobeyed all orders not to climb and take strenuous exercise. But he felt of his head, as his mother used to do, and could detect no fever, and he had not coughed once, so he did not worry enough to keep himself awake more than one minute and a quarter. In the morning, he was awake almost as soon as the Ranger, and sat up feeling fine. Lucy was the next up, as usual, and once more her cheerful self. She gathered fresh wild flowers—a great bunch of yellow columbine and blue false forget-me-nots, for the “table,” while Joe was cooking, and asked him how he felt, and sang softly to herself, and then asked him again if the fresh, clear, morning air way up here in these high mountains was not the most wonderful thing in the world.
“It’s medicine to me, all right,” Joe answered, looking up and watching the sun come over the rock bastions of Citadel and turn to pink and gold the snow-fields on Fusillade. “Gee, I think mountains—big mountains—are just the best ever!”
“The best ever, that’s what they are, Joe, and you’re going back East so big and strong that your own mother won’t know you. You must write to me and tell me about it, won’t you?”
“You bet I will,” Joe replied, turning red over his fire. It certainly was almost like being home to have some one like Lucy Elkins be so interested in him, and kindly and sweet. The fire was very smoky, and got into Joe’s eyes, and he had to wipe them—but Lucy did not see, or, if she did, she pretended not to.
“Well,” said Mills, after breakfast, “everybody pack. We’ve got a long day ahead of us, if we stop any time to see the sights.”
“And where are we going?” somebody asked.
“Over Gunsight Pass, and down to Lake McDonald,” the Ranger answered, pointing up to the Great Divide at the head of Gunsight Lake.
“Do you mean to tell me we are going over that place?” demanded Mrs. Jones.
“Why not?” said Mills.
“Why not? Well, I’m not one of these Rocky Mountain goats I hear about.”
“Your horse is,” the Ranger laughed.
As soon as camp was struck, and the horses brought from the upper meadows, where they had wandered in the night, and packed, the party started up the trail.
“Gunsight Pass—I like that name,” said Bob. “But how did it get the name?”
“You’ll see when we reach it,” Mills replied.
The trail over Gunsight is one of the most interesting in the entire Park. The head wall of the horseshoe of rocks which holds the green lake is too steep to climb, so the path gets to the summit by working up the shoulder of Jackson, in a long series of inclines, with sharp, steep switchbacks every little way, to boost it a little higher up the steep slope.
After climbing for, perhaps, two miles, they reached what appeared to be the level of the Divide ahead of them, but they were still around on one side of the horseshoe, and had to make their way along the tremendously steep wall of the mountain till they got to the pass at the centre. Between them and this pass lay a huge snow-field, two hundred yards wide, and extending half a mile up the slope, and as far down, and ending at the bottom right on the top of a precipice, which dropped off into the lake. They could hear the melting water from this snow-field falling down far, far below, over the precipice.
Mills stopped his horse, and studied the ground, while the two women looked at the steep, gleaming, slippery field of snow, steeper than a house roof, at the yawning hole at the bottom, and declared in loud tones that they would not go across.
But other parties had been across, and somebody had shoveled out a path, about three feet wide, to make level footing for the horses. Still, even so, it was a ticklish place, for if a horse once slid off, there would be no stopping him short of the lake two thousand feet below.
“Everybody off!” Mills ordered.
“Joe, Dick, Val,” he commanded, “lead all the horses over, one at a time, and then two of you come back.”
After the horses were across—and they did not have the least fear, even when one of their feet would cut through the soft snow, and they appeared to be in danger of slipping—Joe and Dick returned, and, with Mills, led the two women and the girls over, and helped them back into their saddles. Bob and the two congressmen came alone, and in the centre of the slide, Bob made a big snowball, and let it roll down. Inside of a hundred feet it appeared to be traveling a mile a minute, growing bigger all the time, and finally it hit a rock at the bottom with a loud report, and the broken pieces flew out over the hole below.
“Say, Joe,” he called, “great place for skis, eh?”
Joe laughed, but not very mirthfully. The thought of going down that slope on skis made you sick in the pit of your stomach.
It was but a few steps now, around a hanging ledge, to the pass, and as they came out into the small level space on top of the Divide, they saw in front of them, forming the northern gate-post of the pass, as it were, a big rock pile shaped exactly like the front sight of a rifle—a sight several hundred feet high.
“Now you see why it’s Gunsight Pass,” said Mills to Bob.
“Some gun!” the boy answered.
Those ahead moved to the western side of the Divide, and suddenly Joe heard the girls screaming with delight. As soon as he got there, he realized why, for never before had he seen anywhere such a wonderful view.
Right below them, eight hundred or a thousand feet, lay the loveliest little lake in all the world, oval in shape, a beautiful green in color, possibly half or three-quarters of a mile long. Out of one side sprang up the red precipices of Mount Jackson, from the upper end rose the wall of the Divide to their feet, on the other side, sweeping around in a circular curve carved by some ancient glacier as smooth as a drill hole, was the precipice of Gunsight Mountain. At the farther end of the lake the land just dropped away out of sight, and far off in the distance they could see range after range of purple mountains. Right at their feet, almost at the top of the Divide, was a pine tree, the only one, the very outmost sentinel of timber-line. It was only eight feet tall, though the trunk was two feet thick, and it was torn and twisted and gnarled by the winds till it looked like a grim old fighter who had left all the rest of his company far below and battled his way on up, almost to the top.
Even Mrs. Jones stopped her horse and admired this view.
“It’s really worth coming for,” she said.
“And how she hates to admit it,” Val whispered in Joe’s ear, for the whole party was now gathered together on the edge, looking at the prospect.
“What’s the name of that heavenly little lake?” Lucy asked.
“Lake Ellen Wilson,” Mills answered.
“Oh, dear, it shouldn’t be—it ought to have a beautiful Indian name, like Eye-of-the-morning, or something,” said she.
“Let’s name it Lake Lucy Elkins,” Bob suggested. “Seems to suit you.”
Joe thought so, too, but he did not say anything.
Lucy laughed. “If we only could rename it,” she answered, “I certainly would find a pretty Indian name. I think it’s terrible, the way we take the land away from the Indians first, and then give everything new names, in the bargain.”
The trail now descended in switchbacks to the very shore of the lake, for, although it had to climb up again at the lower, west side, the precipices were so steep in between that the only way to get from one point to the other was to descend to the shore.
“And this water is really going to the Pacific Ocean,” said Mr. Jones, as they reached the lake. “We are over the Great Divide, Bob!”
“Yes, I feel a change in the climate,” the irrepressible Bob answered.
“That’s not such a joke as you think, at that,” Mills said. “The climate is different over here, as you’ll see presently.”
They had still another pass to go over—Lincoln Pass (not a part of the Divide) before they could begin the final descent to Lake McDonald, and from the lake shore they began to climb again, with the green water between them and the tremendous red walls of Jackson, where long, narrow snow-fields clung in the hollows. At the top of Lincoln Pass was a meadow, on the edge of a precipice, a meadow full of snow-fields, wild flowers, and a few stunted, twisted pines, for it was on the very edge of timber-line. Here Mills ordered a halt for lunch.
“Charlie Chaplin sandwiches again, Joe,” he said. “You can make tea if you want to, and can find any wood.”
Joe and Bob and the girls between them managed to scrape together enough dead wood to make a small fire, and the water Joe got from the little brook flowing out from under a snow-field and starting on its long journey to the Pacific Ocean.
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.”
“Guess they are, all right,” Bob laughed. “I’d feel heroic if I stood up here in winter!”
Almost as soon as they started again, they began to drop down a steep, rocky trail to the Sperry camp, a chalet built up on the slopes to accommodate the people who want to climb over the Divide just behind it to Sperry Glacier; and then to drop, by a wide, good trail, past rushing brooks, into the first real forest Joe had seen. The climate certainly was different over here—he began to feel it. It seemed warmer, and the air wasn’t quite so vividly clear. There was a faint suggestion of haze over the lower blue ranges out to the west. It must be different, he told himself, there must be more rainfall, anyhow, and less severe winter cold, or the trees wouldn’t be so much larger.
Down and down they dropped, through spruces and pines and larches, growing ever taller and larger, till suddenly the trail went into the most wonderful forest Joe had ever seen. It was entirely composed of one kind of tree, tall, straight, ghostly gray trees, with a thin bark that shredded in strips on the smaller trunks; and these trees grew so thickly together that their tops made a solid canopy over the ground below, shutting out all sunlight, so that it was almost twilight deep in the heart of the forest. Not a living thing grew on the forest floor; it was simply a carpet of brownish, tiny needle-like dead leaves, and of dead sticks and fallen tree trunks.
Joe heard Lucy, ahead of him, saying it reminded her of the woods that Hop-o’-my-thumb and his brother got lost in. It reminded him of some great forest he once dreamed about in a nightmare; and yet it was beautiful, because of the ghostly gray of the tall trees, and the utter hush and silence of its dim recesses.
“What kind of trees are these?” he called back to Val. “They look like some sort of cedar.”
“You can search me,” Val answered. “I couldn’t tell a tree from a cauliflower. Great place for bears, though.”
The trail here was so wide that Joe could trot ahead and ask Mills.
“Yes, they are cedars,” Mills said. “They call ’em white cedars, I believe. The wood is much softer than your slow-growing cedar in the East. It’s a great forest, isn’t it?”
“Makes me sure I want to be a forest ranger,” Joe answered. “Val says it’s a great place for bears.”
“Hi, bears, ma!” yelled Bob. “Val says there’s lots of ’em here. Say, Mr. Mills, how soon are you going to show us that bear? You know you promised one to-day.”
“You’ll see it yet—I never break a promise,” the Ranger answered.
They rode on, down through the cedar forest, for a mile more, and suddenly saw light through the trees ahead, trotted into a clearing, and almost immediately found themselves by a good-sized hotel, built out of this very cedar lumber, and on the shore of a big lake.
“Lake McDonald,” said the Ranger.
“And a hotel!” cried Mrs. Jones. “You can all camp where you like, but I’m going to have a room with a bath to-night.”
“I wouldn’t mind one myself,” said her husband.
“Me, too,” the other congressman put in.
“Well, I suppose that means we have to sleep in a stuffy old room to-night, Alice,” said Lucy, “and eat in a dining-room with a lot of people. Oh, dear, I prefer Joe’s cooking!”
“Looks as if you were going to have a snap to-night, Joe,” said Mills. “You want a room with a bath, too?”
“Oh, no,” said Joe. “I’m going to take my blankets up into those cedars and sleep.”
“You are?” Bob cried. “Then I’m with you. We won’t be quitters, anyhow. Us for the rough life—and the bears.”
“No, Bob, you’ll come to the hotel with the rest of us,” said his mother.
“Aw, no, ma, let me go with Joe! Gee whiz, here we come three thousand miles to rough it in the Rocky Mountains and you go and bunk up in a flossy hotel—roughing it with hot and cold water, and a valet to black your boots!”
Everybody laughed, and Mr. Jones said, “Let the boy have a good time, mother. I guess he’ll fare as well with Joe as he would in the hotel. Joe’s a Boy Scout, aren’t you, Joe?”
“Yes, sir,” Joe answered.
It was finally settled that way, and while the party went into the hotel to get their rooms, Joe, the guides and Mills unpacked the horses and stabled them, took the dunnage bags of the party to the hotel, and all but Joe found their quarters in the annex. Joe picked out blankets for two, an axe, some grub and a few cooking utensils, and as soon as Bob came back, the two boys carted them back a few hundred yards into the deep woods, in a wild spot well off the trail, made themselves a fire pit against a big stone, which was so covered with green moss they first thought it was a stump, spread Joe’s poncho for a bed, on a raked up and smoothed heap of the dead needles, and then went back to have a look at the lake before supper.
It was still early, and the girls were out on the pier in front. Bob spied a canoe for hire, and promptly engaged it. They all four got in, with Joe as bow paddle and Bob as stern, and paddled straight out into the lake, which was quiet now as the wind died down with the setting sun. As they drew away from the shore, they began to realize what a big lake it is—ten or twelve miles long, with great, dark cedar and evergreen forests coming right down to the water’s edge, and by the time they were near the middle, they saw how above these forests here at the upper end rose peak after snow-covered peak, piling up to the Great Divide.
“It looks like a lake in Switzerland, doesn’t it?” said Alice.
Joe, of course, had never been to Switzerland, so he looked all the harder.
“Only I like it better,” Lucy answered, “because here, except for the hotel and those few cottages near it, you don’t see anything but forest and wilderness. It’s so wild and lonely! Oh, dear, I’d like to live here!”
“I’d like to sail an ice boat here in winter!” said Bob.
“And I’d like to fish here now,” said Joe, as a fish jumped half out of the water just ahead of the canoe.
“Fish! Hooray! Say, Joe,” Bob called, “if I get a fish early to-morrow, will you cook him for breakfast?”
“You bet!”
“You horrid things,” said Alice. “We’ll probably be eating breakfast food and canned peaches in the hotel. I hope you don’t get your old fish.”
“Ain’t that just like a girl!” said Bob.
They paddled slowly and reluctantly back, as the sunset lit the snow-fields on the great peaks to the east, and turned them pink. The supper gong rang as they landed.
“Now, Bob, be back right after supper, if you want to see that bear,” Mills called, and Joe and Bob hurried to their camp to get a quick supper.
All they bothered with was soup, some fried ham, and pancakes, with tea. They had large quantities of those things, however, and didn’t stop to wash the dishes.
“This is no time to be fussy,” Bob said. “I’ll never tell. We gotter see old Mr. Bear.”
So they hurried back to the trail, where Joe took out a handkerchief, and tied it to a branch.
“What’s the big idea?” Bob demanded.
“Well, it’s so dark here now you can just barely see the trail,” Joe said. “We could never tell where to turn off by the time we get back. Don’t want to be hunting all night for our camp.”
“I get you, Sherlocko,” Bob replied. “Now for the bear. Hurry up!”
The entire party was waiting when they reached the hotel, and Mills led the way, back by another road into the cedars, which were now very dark. A lot of other guests were moving in the same direction. After a way, a strong smell began to assault the nose.
“Smells to me like swill,” said Bob.
“Garbage, Robert, is a nicer word,” said his mother.
“Well, it doesn’t change the smell any,” he answered.
Mills said nothing, but walked on, while the smell grew stronger, and in a moment, by the dim light, they saw that the hotel garbage had been dumped on both sides of the roadway. Just ahead a group of people had stopped, and Mills led the way up to this group.
“There,” said he, “I promised you one, but I see five.”
“Where? I don’t see anything,” said Congressman Elkins.
He was standing on the extreme edge of the road, and just as he spoke something big and dark and mysterious gave a grunt and with a crash of broken sticks reared up not six feet from him.
The congressman jumped back and nearly upset Mrs. Jones, who screamed.
At her scream, two other dark forms close to the road moved, and in the dim light the party could see one of these forms go ten feet up the trunk of a half fallen tree. Peering into the dark of the woods, Joe could at last count, as the Ranger said, five bears, two of them huge ones, three smaller (including the one up the tree), and not one of them more than fifty feet away.
“The two big ones are silver tips?” he asked.
“Sure,” said Mills. “Want to pat one?”
“No, thanks.”
“I must say, bears are dirty animals, if this is what they eat,” Mrs. Jones put in, sniffing. “I don’t think I like them so near me.”
“I’m sure I don’t,” Mr. Elkins laughed. “Of course, I know these are tame, and all that, but—well, it’s like the dog the man said wouldn’t bite. ‘I know it, and you know it,’ said the other fellow, ‘but does the dog know it?’”
Just then the big grizzly nearest them, which was standing on his hind legs, gave a low, snarling growl, as if he was mad at being disturbed at supper, and Mrs. Jones announced determinedly that she was going back.
And she went. Joe, Bob, and the girls wanted to linger, but the older people called them, and they had to go.
“Well, that wasn’t very exciting!” Bob complained. “Gee, you could have patted ’em, ’most. I wanted to see you shoot one, Mr. Mills.”
“I’d as soon shoot a cow as a tame bear,” the Ranger told him. “You can’t shoot anything but lions and coyotes in the Park, and only Rangers can shoot them. We’re protecting game here, not killing it.”
“Wouldn’t you kill a bear if it came for you?”
Mills laughed. “I’d try a tree first,” he said.
But Joe had noted that all the time he stood near the bears, he had his hand on his hip, where his big automatic rested in its holster; and the scout suspected that he wasn’t quite so sure about the bears being entirely tame as he pretended.
Back at the hotel, the first thing they saw was Val, in the lobby, with a clean shave, his hair cut and plastered down in a smooth part, a clean shirt and a bright red necktie on, and his best white fur chaps, with silver buckles, on his legs.
“Oh, look at Val, all dressed up like Astor’s horse!” Bob shouted.
“Where are you going, Val?” the girls demanded.
“Oh, down to the big struggle,” said the young cowboy.
“The what?” they asked.
“The big struggle—the dance,” said he.
“A dance? A dance? Where?”
“Down to the hall. Better come.”
“Sure—come, Joe, come, Bob,” Lucy cried, and grabbing poor Joe by the hand—for Joe was scared stiff at a dance, being a poor performer, and besides, he had on his worn scout suit and heavy boots—she led him off, while Alice grabbed her equally reluctant brother.
The hall was a little annex to the hotel, and when they got there the piano was going, and a lot of people, cowboy guides, waitresses, guests, everybody, was dancing. Almost nobody was dressed up for a party as we dress in the East—any kind of rough clothes and stout boots went here, alongside of silk dresses and satin slippers, worn by some of the hotel guests.
“Gee, I can’t dance any more ’n a cow,” Joe stammered to Lucy.
“Nonsense,” she said, “I’ll bet you can dance very nicely. Anyhow, you’ve got to try just one with me.”
So they danced a one-step, and Joe managed to get through it without treading on anybody’s toe.
“There—what did I tell you!” Lucy laughed. “Of course you can dance. I don’t know why it is boys always say they can’t.”
“I got around with you all right,” Joe answered. “But with most girls I feel ’s if I had about twenty pair o’ feet.”
“All you need is practice,” said she.
“Hi,” called Bob, who had been dancing with his sister, “come over here and pipe the pantalettes!”
Joe and Lucy went into the alcove where he and Alice were, and there they saw a stuffed and mounted mountain goat—the first Joe had ever seen except in pictures. It stood about three feet high, with long, pure white hair, hanging down in a beard under its chin, and hanging down its legs to a point, as Bob said, “just above the tops of its boots, if it wore boots.” This hair on its legs did look exactly like the pantalettes you see in pictures of little girls back in the days before the Civil War.
“There ain’t no such animal!” Lucy laughed.
“I wish we could see one, alive,” said Bob.
“I’m going to hunt one later with a camera—me and Spider—he’s my chum up at Many Glacier.”
At the other end of the dance hall was a mounted sheep—a big old ram, almost six inches taller than the goat, with a magnificent pair of horns which curved up, back, and around till the points touched the base, making a complete circle. Even stuffed and mounted, he was a magnificent creature, proud and alert.
“Oh, I think it’s a crime to kill such beautiful animals!” Lucy exclaimed.
“Me, too,” said Joe. “I’d rather hunt ’em with a camera, get a picture, and leave the animal alive for somebody else to see.”
“Well, I’d like to have a head for my den,” said Bob. “Wish they let you hunt in the Park.”
Joe and Bob were both so sleepy that they soon left “the big struggle,” and started back for the camp. It was almost pitch black now in the cedars, and after they had walked up the trail as far as they thought was right, they had to hunt some minutes before they found the handkerchief. Turning off from the path, they stumbled through the woods till they caught the glimmer of red coals from their fire, threw on some fresh wood to get light, and prepared for bed. Rolled up tight in their blankets, they were soon fast asleep.
It was still pitch dark, and it seemed as if he’d just gone to sleep, when Joe was awakened by a noise close by. He felt as much as heard the presence of somebody or something. The fire had again died down to a heap of coals, and only a faint red glow dimly lit the base of the great, ghostly tree trunks close around. Joe sat up, straining every nerve of eye and ear. Suddenly a dead stick broke with a loud snap not far away, on the side toward the provisions, which had been placed in the fork of a half fallen tree trunk. Bob woke up at this, with a jump that brought him, too, into a sitting posture.
“Wha’s ’at?” he exclaimed, in the startled voice of one half awake.
The answer was another crash of broken sticks and a deep, guttural growl. At the same instant, by a sudden flicker of flame from the fire, a ray of light shot between the trees and in a flash that was gone almost as quickly as it came, the two boys saw a gigantic shadowy form rear up, it seemed to them ten feet into the air.
“It’s a grizzly!” Bob yelled.
“Shut up!” Joe commanded. He reached over to the bare ground beside him and grabbed a fistful of dry needles and flung them on the fire. The blaze jumped up again brighter, and for just a second they caught a flash of reflection like two sparks, from the bear’s eyes, and then the great shadowy bulk dropped down and they heard a crashing through the woods, receding rapidly.
Joe threw off his blankets and piled wood on the fire till it blazed brightly. Then he looked at Bob, and laughed. The boy was still sitting up on the poncho, his blankets half off, his mouth half open, and his eyes big with fright.
“Brace up,” Joe said. “He was only after our grub. They’re tame around here.”
“Tame your grandmother!” Bob retorted. “I don’t care if they are. Do you think I’m goin’ to sleep with a grizzly bear ’most under my bed?”
He began to get up.
“Where you going?” said Joe.
“Back to the hotel.”
“What good’ll that do? Nobody’ll be up to let you in.” He looked at his watch. “It’s two o’clock,” he added.
“Well, there’s a couple of hammocks on the veranda. That’s good enough for yours truly.”
“Going to leave me here alone?”
“I don’t give a hang what you do. You can let the old bear sleep with you if you want to. It’s me for the hotel.” And he began lacing up his boots.
“Well, I’m not going to stick around here all alone—besides, you’d never find your way back alone in the dark.”
“That’s a good alibi!” said Bob. “Guess you don’t want to stay much yourself.”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t—not alone,” Joe admitted.
They gathered up their provisions and blankets, poured the water for their morning coffee on the fire, and started back for the trail. It was hard work finding it, in the inky dark, and every time they heard a noise in the blackness around them Bob yelled, “Beat it, you bear!” with the evident idea that would drive the creature away. They knew when they reached the trail only by the feeling of hard, even ground under their feet, but at the hotel the starlight over the lake was clear and comforting, and sneaking up on the veranda, they spread their blankets in the hammocks, and went to sleep again, with the soft lap, lap, lap of the water on the beach just below as a lullaby.
Joe woke early and roused Bob.
“Say, if we don’t want to be guyed for the rest of the trip, we’ve got to beat it from here now, ’fore anybody spots us, and get our breakfast up the shore some place.”
“I know!” Bob whispered. “We’ll take a fish-pole and a boat from the boat-house and catch a breakfast! We can pay for the boat when the man gets up. What time is it?”
“Four o’clock.”
“Only four? Gee, it’s day already, too. Come on.”
They piled their stuff into a boat, took a fish-pole from the eaves of the boat-house, found some bait in a pail, and rowed out as noiselessly as they could, and up along the shore. Joe rowed, while Bob kept casting from the stern. Finally he gave a yell, and Joe saw his line go under, and stopped rowing to watch the sport. He had a big one, all right, and it fought well. Bob was fifteen minutes in landing him, but had him in the boat finally, and hit him over the head.
The fish was as much as eighteen inches long, or more, and must have weighed four pounds.
“What’s it, anyhow?” Bob asked.
“Cut-throat trout,” said Joe. “I saw a man catch two or three at Lake McDermott. I’ll bet it’s good, too. Come on—we’ll have some breakfast! Good job you did landing him, too, without a reel. I thought your old line would bust two or three times.”
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!”
“Bears and all,” Joe laughed.
“Aw, forget the old bear! Don’t seem so bad, now it’s daylight. Say,—not a peep, remember, about that old bear.”
“I won’t say anything if you don’t,” Joe promised.
They rowed back now, and found the boat-keeper up. Bob explained why they took the boat, and paid the rental for it, and for the fish-pole. The man was good-natured and made no complaint.
“Guess it’s all right,” he said. “’Course, if you hadn’t got a fish I’d had to charge you more.”
“I suppose if we’d got two fish you’d have given us the boat free,” Bob laughed.
They carried their stuff back to the stable, where the rest of the packs were, and had returned to the hotel lobby and were busily writing souvenir postcards to all their friends back at home when the party came down to breakfast.
“Hullo, boys!” everybody said. “Where’s that fish?”
Bob rubbed his stomach.
“Did you really get one?” Lucy demanded. “And you’ve eaten it all yourselves? Oh, you mean, greedy things!”
“Well,” Bob declared, “you folks wouldn’t camp with us. Go in and eat your old canned peaches and hunks of whisk broom and condensed cream. Gee, Joe ’n’ I have had some night, all right! Old Big Ben woke us up——”
“Careful!” Joe cautioned.
“What do you mean—Big Ben?” asked Bob’s mother.
“Oh, just our name for a pet bear we’ve acquired,” Bob laughed, ignoring Joe’s caution. “A dear, pretty, tame old silver tip who came right into camp and tried to kiss old Joe, but Joe slapped his face and said, ‘Naughty, naughty,’ and he got real cross.”
“What do you mean? Did a bear come into your camp? Oh, how lovely!” Alice cried.
“Lovely! Well, I must say——” Mrs. Jones began.
“What really happened?” Bob’s father demanded.
“Yes, tell the truth, Bob, now you’ve put your foot in it,” Joe laughed.
“Oh, gosh, I can’t keep an old secret,” said the boy. “Me and Joe—Joe and me——”
“Joe and I——” said his mother.
“Well, Joe and I were snoring away like a couple o’ buzz saws, when snap went a stick, and woke me up, and Joe was sitting up already, and gosh all hemlock, but it was dark! And then the fire flickered, and we saw old Big Ben on his hind legs not two feet away——”
“Oh, six feet, make it six!” Joe laughed.
“Well, six, and he was ten feet tall, and growling like anything, or sort of snarling, and I said, ‘Go ’way, you spoiled my dream’—just like that, and he went, and then Joe said he wouldn’t stay there any more, ’cause he didn’t like to be disturbed that way, so——”
“I said it! Well, I like that!” Joe cried.
Bob grinned. “Well, anyhow, you wouldn’t stay after I went, you know you wouldn’t,” he said. “So we beat it for the hotel, and slept in the hammocks on the porch till four, and then we got a boat and I caught a four pound trout——”
“How do you know it was a four pounder?” his father asked.
“Weighed him by his own scales,” Bob replied. “And then Joe cooked him, and we had some breakfast. Thank you all for your kind attention, ladies and gents. This concludes our portion of the entertainment.”
Everybody laughed but Mrs. Jones. She couldn’t get over the idea that her son had really “been exposed to a bear,” as she put it.
“Was Bob as gay as this last night?” Lucy asked Joe, as the party headed toward the dining-room.