HOPES AND PLANS
“I say let’s follow the road,” said Westy. “We’re pretty sure to come to
some kind of a settlement that way. If we follow the tracks we might
come to a place where we couldn’t go any farther, like a high trestle or
something like that. I wish we had a map. The road goes south for quite
a distance, you can see that. What do you say?”
“Just whatever you say, Westy,” said Ed.
“Same here,” said Warde.
“Only I don’t want to be blamed afterward,” said Westy, looking about
him rather puzzled and doubtful.
When he thought of Shining Sun, thirty miles seemed nothing. But when he
gazed about at the surrounding mountains, the distance between them and
the Park seemed great and filled with difficulties. He was already
wishing for things the very existence of which was doubtless unknown to
the Indian boy who had become his inspiration.
“Anyway,” said Westy, “let’s make a resolution. You fellows say you made
one and left me out of it. Now let’s make another one, all three of us.
Let’s decide that we’ll hike from here to the Gardiner entrance without
asking any help of any one. We’ll do it just as if we didn’t have
anything with us at all.”
“We haven’t,” said Warde.
“I mean even our watches and matches and things like that,” said Westy.
“Just as if we didn’t even have any clothes; you know, kind of
primitive.”
“Don’t you think I’d better hang onto my safety-pin?” Ed asked. “Safety
first. An Indian might—you know even an Indian might happen to have a
safety-pin about him.”
Westy could not repress a smile, but for answer he pulled his store of
matches out of his pocket and scattered them by the wayside. Warde, with
a funny look of dutiful compliance, did the same. Ed, with a fine show
of abandon and contempt for civilization, pulled his store of matches
out of one pocket and put them in another. “May I keep my watch?” he
asked. “It was given to me by my father when I became a back-yard
scout.”
“Back-yard scout is good,” said Westy.
“Thank you muchly,” said Ed.
“I mean all of us,” Westy hastened to add.
It was funny how poor Westy was continually vacillating between these
two good scouts who were with him and that unknown hero whose prowess
had been detailed by the engaging Mr. Wilde. He was ever and again being
freshly captivated by Ed’s sense of humor and whimsical banter and
impressed by Warde’s quiet if amused compliance with this new order of
things by which it seemed that the primitive was to be restored in all
its romantic glory.
It never occurred to Westy to wonder what kind of a friend and companion
his unknown hero, Shining Sun, would really be. What he was particularly
anxious to do, now that the chance had come, was to show that
cigar-smoking Philistine, Mr. Wilde, that boy scouts were really good
for something when thrown on their own resources.
Pretty soon the first simple test of their scouting lore was made when
they took their bearing by that vast, luminous compass, the sun. It
worked its way through the dull, threatening sky bathing the forbidding
heights in gold and contributing its good companionship to the trio of
pilgrims. It seemed to say, “Come on, I’ll help you; it’s going to be
nice weather in the Yellowstone.”
“That’s east,” said Westy. “We’re all right, the road goes south and if
it stops going south, we’ll know it.”
“If it’s the kind of a road that does one thing one day and another
thing the next day I have no use for it anyway,” said Warde.
“When it’s twelve o’clock I know a way to tell what time it is,” said
Ed. “Remind me when it’s twelve o’clock and I’ll show you.”
The sun, which had not shown its face during the whole of the previous
day, brightened the journey and raised the hopes of the travelers. To
Westy, now that they were started along the road and everything seemed
bright, their little enterprise seemed all too easy. He was even afraid
that the road went straight to the Gardiner entrance of the park. He
wanted to encounter some obstacles. He wanted this thing to have
something of the character of an exploit.
Poor Westy, thirty miles over a wild country seemed not very much to
him. It would be just about a two-days’ hike. But he cherished a little
picture in his mind. He hoped that Mr. Madison C. Wilde would be still
at the Mammoth Hotel when he and his companions reached there, having
traversed—_having traversed_—thirty miles of—having forced Nature to
yield up——
“We can catch some trout and eat them, all right,” he said aloud.
“Oh, we can eat them, all right,” said Ed. “When it comes to eating
trout, I’ll take a handicap with any Indian youth and beat him to it.”
“It’s going to be pleasant to-night,” said Westy. “We can just sleep
under a tree.”
“I hope it won’t be _too_ pleasant,” said Ed.
“You make me tired,” laughed Westy.