LITTLE DABS OF GRAY
So at last they cooked the fish. Warde cleaned them with his jack-knife
on a flat stone while Westy and Ed gathered enough wood for a little
fire. Westy was now so affluent in heroism, and had so far regained his
poise in consequence, that he could stand calmly by and witness the
civilized proceeding of lighting a fire with a match. Or perhaps he was
too weary and hungry to experiment with any of those primitive devices
for striking a spark with Nature’s raw materials.
And it might be observed that if you should happen to have escaped from
train robbers in the Rocky Mountains and have walked a dozen miles more
or less in the night, a mess of fish cooked loose upon a wood fire is
not half bad. You will find them charred and tasting of smoke (which is
well) and elusive when subjected to the rules of table etiquette. They
crumble and fall apart and have to be sought for in the glowing
fastnesses of consuming wood and extracted like the kernels of hickory
nuts. They have to be caught all over again. But they are delicious—if
you have lately escaped from train robbers in the Rocky Mountains.
In such a country as they were in one is much less likely to suffer from
cold and exposure at night, notwithstanding the biting air, than in some
tamer woodland where the ruggedness of Nature offers no natural shelters
and wind-breaking rocks.
The boys, refreshed by their meal, but staggering from fatigue, walked
around the little lake in search of a shelter along the precipitous
shore. They found a place which seemed to have been made for three weary
scouts, a place which, as Ed remarked, any boarding-house keeper in the
East could get ten dollars a week for. It was not high enough to sit up
in, but none of them felt like sitting up. Only a few pine branches were
necessary to transform this little recess into a dormitory. And here the
three award boys slept with a profundity which there is no word in any
language capable of describing.
It was midmorning when Westy awoke, finding his companions still
sleeping soundly. His joints were stiff and he found it soothing to his
knees to hold his legs out straight. But he was not exactly tired. It
was the aftermath of fatigue.
The sun was well up over the little mountain lake, glinting the water as
it made its slow progress across the blue sky. How cheering it was! It
seemed to radiate hope. How companionable—like a friend from home. The
same genial sun that rose over the hills at Temple Camp and flecked the
lake there with its glinting light. And here it was in the Rocky
Mountains! What a change it wrought in the country and in the award
boy’s spirit. Oh, he could do anything now, and all was well!
He stretched one leg out stiff and held it that way and lingered upon
the ineffable relief that this afforded his knee.
Westy did not know how far they had walked in the brook during the
night, nor in what direction, but the great mountains seemed still to be
far away. He tried to identify the landscape with that he had last been
able to see, which was from his vantage point in the big elm, but there
was nothing recognizable now, only the brook.
He had thought that perhaps daylight would find them amid the wild
fastnesses they had seen from a distance. But as he looked about he saw
that the immediate neighborhood was not forbidding though it was wild
and unpeopled. Could it be that he was in the heart of the Rockies? In
such a place as Lewis and Clark, for example, had camped in their
adventurous journey of exploration? The Rockies that he had dreamed of
were always in the distance, holding themselves aloof as it seemed, from
these hapless pilgrims. It was strange. Was he, in fact, _in the
Rockies_?
He was, indeed, only the Rockies were too big for him. He had expected
to find them under his feet. He had thought of them as something quite
limited and distinct. Of course, there were dizzy heights and remote
passes, terrible in their primeval wildness, and these it was not
vouchsafed him to visit. But he was in the vast, enchanted region, just
the same. Had he not escaped from train robbers in these very wilds? He,
Westy Martin?
He felt in his pocket and made sure of the precious wallet of which he
was the proud custodian. It was there, smooth and bulging; the whole
thing was real. He had slept and awakened and the whole thing was real.
If he had shot a grizzly, as _Dan Darewell in the Rockies_ by Captain
Dauntless had done, he could hardly be more incredulous of his own
achievement. He began to reflect how it had all happened.
He was glad that the others were not yet awake. Their sprawling
attitudes bespoke rest rather than grace. There seemed no danger of
their rousing. He did not know whether they were farther from the
Yellowstone Park than they had been the day before or nearer to it. If
their journey of the night had tended in a fairly straight course toward
it then they might be now within four or five miles of it, perhaps even
less.
There was no particular direction which attracted Westy’s gaze; he just
gazed about. Mountains, mountains, mountains! They appalled him. He
could see the mountains, but not the way through them. And they seemed
impenetrable. One thing did attract his attention; this was a great tree
far off, one of those big, lonely trees which serve as landmarks. From
the position of the sun he thought this was south. But this fact
afforded him no enlightenment. East, west, north, south, were all the
same; there was no telling where Yellowstone Park was.
Then suddenly, he noticed something else which did arouse his interest.
Beyond the tree was a little dab of gray in the clear sky. He thought it
a tiny cloud, but it dissolved even as he watched it. Immediately
another appeared a short distance from where it had been and likewise
dissolved. Then another.
“Those aren’t clouds,” said Westy. “They’re—— I bet it’s a train.”
He listened, but could hear nothing. But a little farther along, in line
where the little dabs of white had appeared and disappeared, there
straggled up a faint, half-tangible area of flaky whiteness which was
gone instantly it was discernible.
“It’s a train all right,” Westy said, delighted. “I bet—I know it is.”
Beyond the point where he had been looking, the rugged landscape rolled
away, magnificent, majestic, endless. Here and there among the crowded
mountains some mighty peak pierced the sky. No touch of human
contamination was there, no gray streak imaginable as a road, no
steeple, no green area of farm-land, with thin lines scarce discernible
as fences. So it might have been a hundred thousand years ago. If man
were there with all his claptrap he was swallowed up in the distance and
vastness and all unseen by the scratched and tattered boy who stood
barefooted in his wild refuge and gazed and gazed.
It was only scenery that he saw, and it would have been about the same
had he glanced in another direction. Only the little, gray, dissolving
specks had drawn his gaze there, and he looked long and wonderingly on
the stupendous glory that was spread before him. He knew not what it
was, in particular, that he was looking at.
Thus, Westy Martin, award boy, saw the Yellowstone National Park for the
first time. Saw it as a scout should see it, divested by the kindly
distance of every vestige of human handiwork or presence that it has.
Saw it in all its awesome grandeur, and saw not its boundaries or its
artificial comforts, only its primeval magnificence extending mile upon
mile and not distinguishable from the vast, mountainous country in which
it lies.
Westy did not know that the area he was gazing at was within the
boundaries of Yellowstone Park. His interest was centered in the little
flickers of smoke that he had seen. If these indicated the railroad it
would not be difficult to reach it, and from there on the way would be
easy and perhaps short. For the hundredth time since he had become its
custodian, he felt in his pocket to make sure the wallet was safe.
Then for a few moments he thought, standing there alone. He had always
liked, at times, to be alone; he was that kind of a boy. But now he
could not bring himself to end this romantic, musing loneliness. Well,
fate had been kind to him (he gave all the credit to fate) and he had
done something, something worth while. To be sure, there was nothing so
very primitive about it, he mused. Shining Sun doubtless could have made
Nature yield him up a hundred various delectables out of which to make a
feast. Poor Westy knew nothing about herbs and edible roots nor other
commissary stores which the forest holds for those who know her secrets.
Again, he felt his pocket to make sure the wallet was safe. “I—I bet
Shining Sun never even saw a wallet,” he said. “I bet he doesn’t even
know how valuable money is.” Poor Westy, he could not hope to be a
scout, free of all the prosaic contaminations of civilization, like
Shining Sun. But at least no one could say now that he and his friends
were just parlor scouts playing games in a backyard. . . .
He lingered just a moment more, gazing upon the vast, rugged panorama as
if it were _his_, something he had won. Then he looked, not ruefully but
with a thrill of pride, on his scratches and tattered raiment. Well, at
least he could look Shining Sun in the face, and Mr. Madison C. Wilde,
too, if he should ever encounter that jarring personage again.
Then he went over and aroused his friends. If the money in the wallet
had been his, he would have given it for a cup of hot coffee. “Come on,
get up,” he said; “we’ll have to catch some more fish if we can, but
anyway, I think we’ll get there this morning; I think I know where the
railroad tracks are. Have—I hope—have you got any matches left, Ed?”
“Absolooootly,” said Ed, sitting up refreshed and cheery as always. “And
my trusty safety-pin is always at your service, Scout Martin. Where do
we go from here?”