Only those persons who have made solitary trips over snow-capped
mountain ridges can appreciate the overwhelming feeling of solitude that
I felt on looking about me. To whatever point of view I turned my eyes
were greeted with a tumbled sea composed of stupendous petrified
billows.
The occasional fields of snow were the white froth of the stony waves
and the turquoise colored glacial lakes between the crags rather added
to the effect of an angry ocean than detracted from it.
On a closer examination, some of the rocks appeared to be rough bits of
unfinished worlds still retaining the form they had when poured from the
mighty blast furnaces of the Creator. It was God's workshop strewn with
huge fragments, still bearing the marks of His mallet and chisel; yet
these cold barren wastes were the pasture lands of the shaggy-coated
white goats and the lithe-limbed bighorned sheep.
Suddenly a shrill whistle pierced the air and with a jump I
instinctively looked for a vision of the Wild Hunter, but a moment later
realized that the sound I heard was but the warning cry of a whistling
marmot. Again the silence was broken, this time by a low rumbling sound
which increased in volume until it roared like a broadside from an old
forty-four-gun man-of-war, each crag and peak taking up the sound and
hurling it against its neighbor, until the reverberating noise seemed to
come from all points of the compass.
Away in the distance I could see a white stream pouring from the
precipitous edge of an elevated glacier; this seeming mountain torrent I
knew was not water, but ice, thousands of tons of which having cracked
and broken from the edge of the glacier, were now being dashed over the
hard face of the rock into minute fragments.
The white stream could be seen to decrease perceptibly in size, from a
broad sheet to a wide band, a narrow ribbon, a line, a hair and then
disappear altogether. While the distant mountains were still growling,
mumbling and playing shuttlecock with the echoes a timid chief hare went
hopping across a green half-acre of grass at the damp edge of a melting
snow patch in my path. Overhead a golden eagle sailed with a small
mammal in its talons; strange reddish-colored bumblebees busied
themselves in a bunch of flowers growing in a crevice in the rocks at my
feet.
But my eye could discern no larger creatures in this Alpine pasture
land; not only could I see no sheep or goats, but not a sign of my
friend. He had vanished from the face of the picture as completely as if
the master artist had erased him with one mighty sweep of his paint
brush.
When I viewed the lonely landscape with no human being in sight, I
confess to experiencing a creepy sensation and a strong inclination to
flee, but I knew not in what direction to run. I was in a rough
basin-shaped depression among the mountain peaks, and I sat on a large
rock with my back to a black chasm. From my elevated position I could
see a long distance. Strange fancies creep into one's head on such
occasions and play havoc with previous well-founded beliefs. To me, poor
fool of a tenderfoot, Big Pete had melted into the thinnest of thin air,
such as is only found in high altitudes, and somehow I wondered whether
the Wild Hunter had had anything to do with it.
How could I tell that I myself was not invisible?
I hauled myself up short there for I realized that such folly was not
good to have tumbling around in my brain. I figuratively pulled myself
back to earth, and to steady my nerves reached into my pack and brought
out several hard bits of bannock that I had stored there. I was
dreadfully hungry and I munched these with enthusiasm, meanwhile
keeping a sharp eye out for Big Pete, and between times making the
acquaintance of the little chief hare who, as he scuttled about among
the rocks, looked me over curiously.
A short distance to my left was a huge obsidian cliff, the glassy walls
of which rose in a precipice to a considerable height. On account of its
peculiar formation, this crag of natural glass had several times
attracted my attention, and on any other occasion I would have been
curious enough to give it closer inspection. Once, as I turned my head
in that direction, I thought I heard a wild laugh and later concluded
that it was only imagination on my part, but now, as I again faced the
cliff, I unmistakably heard a shout and was considerably relieved to see
silhouetted against the sky the figure of Big Pete.
"Hello, Le-loo," he shouted. "Through chasin' that 'ere spook Indian kid
be you? It's about time. Gosh-all-hemlocks! I been breakin' my neck
tryin' to keep up with you, doggone yore hide," shouted the big guide as
he started to climb down toward me.
"Hello, Pete! You bet I'm through and I'm blamed near all in. Where are
we, do you know?" I called to him.
"Top o' the world, my boy. Top o' the world, that's whar we be," he said
with a grin.
I had seen no game since I had lost the bighorn, and the sunball was now
hung low in the heavens. It appeared to me that there was every prospect
for a supperless night, too. But Big Pete evidently had no such idea,
and he "'lowed" that he would "mosey" 'round a bit and kill some
varmints for grub.
There seemed to be plenty of mountain lion signs, and I was surprised
that they should frequent such high altitudes, but Pete told me that
they were up here after marmots, and were all sleek and fat on that
diet. I would not have been surprised if my wild comrade had proposed a
feast on these cats. But it was not long before Pete's revolvers could
be heard barking and in a short time he returned with two braces of
white ptarmigan, each with its head shattered by a pistol ball, and I
confess these birds were more to my liking than cat meat. Up there 'mid
the snow fields the ptarmigan apparently kept their winter plumage all
year round, and their natural camouflage made them utterly invisible to
me, but to Pete, a white ptarmigan on a white snowfield seemed to be as
easy to detect as if the same bird had been perched on a heap of coal. I
had not seen one of these grouse since we had been in the mountains and
was not aware of their presence until my companion returned with the
four dead birds.
Without wasting time, Pete began to prepare them for cooking. He soon
built a fire of some sticks which he gleaned from one or two twisted and
gnarled evergreens that had wandered above timber line and cooked the
birds over the embers. He gave a brace to me, and sitting on a boulder
with our feet hanging over the edge we ate our evening meal without salt
or pepper, and then each of us curled up like a grey wolf under the
shelter of a stone and slept as safely as if we were in our bed rolls
down in the genial atmosphere of the park in place of being in the
bitingly cold air of the bleak mountain tops.
I, at least, slept soundly, and, thanks to the clothes Pete had so
kindly made for me, I do not remember feeling cold. When I awoke again
it was daylight and I could scarcely believe that I had been asleep more
than five minutes since my friend bade me good-night. Big Pete was up
before me, of course, and when I opened my eyes I found him cooking
breakfast and making tea in a tin cup over those economical fires he so
loved to build even when we were in the park where there was fuel enough
for a roaring bonfire. It's queer how difficult it is to make water boil
on a mountain top.
"Well, now fer the witch-b'ar track agin," said Big Pete, wiping his
mouth.
"Witch-bear!" I exclaimed. "Oh--yes--you don't mean to tell me you kept
following the track of that two-legged bear this far, Pete?" I
exclaimed, suddenly recalling that we had started out following a
mysterious moccasin trail that had later turned into bear tracks.
"Sartin' sure. Didn't you figger out that that tha' b'ar war the Injun
or tha' Wild Hunter who put on moccasins made o' b'ar feet when he
thought we'd foller him?" asked Pete.
"Yes, I did, but I forgot--maybe that ram was the Wild Hunter
himself--blame it. Nothing will astonish me in this country."
"Yes, you fergot everything, even yore head when you started to foller
that tha' ram yesterday. But I didn't. I jest kept peggin' away at them
tha' rumswattel b'ar tracks and I followed 'em right up to yonder cliff.
They go on from tha', but I left 'em last night to come over by you.
Come on, we'll pick 'em up agin." And off he started.
It was soon evident that it was an exceedingly active bear which we were
following for it could climb over green glacier ice like a Swiss guide
and over rocks like a goat. It led us a wild, wild chase over crevasses,
friable and treacherous stones covered with "verglass," over dangerous
couloirs and all the other things talked of in the Alps but forgotten in
the Rockies, to high elevations, where frozen snow combed over the
beetling crags, and the avalanches roared and thundered down the rocks,
dashing the fragments of stone over the lower ice fields. We were not
roped together like mountain climbers in the Swiss or Tyrolean Alps; we
got the real thrills by using our own hands and feet without ice pick,
staff or hobnailed shoes.
But Big Pete never hesitated and I followed him without a word, and when
the trail led along the edge of a dizzy height I could look at the
middle of Big Pete's broad back and then my head would not swim. It
required quick and good judgment to tell just how much of a slant made a
loose stone unsafe to step upon. It was exciting and exhilarating work,
and the violent exercise kept me so warm that I carried most of my
clothes in a bundle on my back. Presently our path led us into a goat
trail, one of those century old paths made by shaggy white Alpine
animals, and used by them as regular highways. There were plenty of
fresh goat signs, and the broad path led us over a saddle mountain to
the verge of a cliff, beyond which it seemed impossible for anything but
birds to pursue the trail. Here we sat down to rest and to make a cup of
tea over a tiny fire, although wood was plentiful at this place, it
being in the timber line.
Below us lay a valley, into which numerous small glaciers emptied their
everlasting supply of ice and blocks of stone, and horse-tail falls
poured from the melting snow fields. It might have presented enchanting
prospects to an iceman or a bighorn, or a Rocky Mountain goat, but for
two tired men it was a gloomy, dangerous and desolate place and I felt
certain that even a witch-bear would not choose such a dangerous place
as a camping ground. We had finished our tea and I was feeling somewhat
refreshed when I noticed a peculiar stinging sensation about my face; I
felt as if I had been attacked by some peculiar form of insect. But
there were none in sight.
Pete, at this time, was some distance away prospecting the "lay of the
land." I saw him suddenly pull the cape of his wamus over his face, and
reasoned that he also had been attacked by these invisible insects.
To my surprise, the big fellow seemed very much alarmed, and every time
I shouted to him it greatly excited him. As he was hurrying to me as
rapidly as possible, I desisted from further inquiry. When Big Pete
reached my side he pulled a handkerchief from around my neck and put it
over my mouth, making signs which I did not comprehend. At last he put
his muffled mouth to my ear and shouted through the cape of his wamus.
"Shut yer meat-trap or you're food for the coyotes. It is the WHITE
DEATH!"