Promptly at seven, Joe was at the Ranger's cabin. He had already cooked
Tom's breakfast, and Tom was over at the camp, helping the hikers to get
theirs. The sun had long been up, and the day was clear and perfect. In
fact, there hadn't yet been a rainy day since the scouts reached the
Park. But Mills had told Joe to bring his rubber poncho, so he had it
with him. He was to ride Popgun, of course, and the Ranger and he put
their personal equipment of blankets, tent, extra clothing, ponchos,
axes, and the like, on the Ranger's packhorse, and started for the big
hotel.
"I've got hold of a good extra man," Mills said. "With so many skirts in
the party, we'll have a big pack-train, for they insist on sleeping out
instead of going to the chalets. I was over last night to see 'em."
"Where are we going to-day?" Joe asked.
"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 detour 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 canyon 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 canyon, 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 canyon, 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.
[Illustration: Trail up Piegan Pass Showing Continental Divide and Mt.
Gould]
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 canyon 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.