Chief Mountain
Joe was gone five days, coming back over Gunsight and Piegan Pass, the
reverse of the route he had taken on his first trip. But this time, he
was getting so at home in the saddle that he could manage the packhorses
without worrying, could throw a diamond hitch as well as the next man,
and cook for a crowd without having too much left over, or not enough
prepared--not that there is ever much danger of having anything left
over in the Rocky Mountains! Everybody eats while there's food in sight.
But Tom was pretty lonely without him, especially as the Ranger was
away, too, for the first three days.
But on the fourth day Big Bertha called Tom up to the chalet office, and
told him something that made him very happy, though it didn't seem to
please Big Bertha at all.
"Tom," said he, "I've got to fire you."
(This isn't what made Tom happy. It made his heart drop into his boots
for a second, before he realized that the man was trying to get a rise
out of him.)
"Yes," the manager went on, "there's a party of men from Washington at
the hotel. They came over Piegan, and they've been up to Iceberg Lake
to-day, and now they want to climb Chief Mountain. Somebody's told 'em
about it, and nothing for it but they must go up there. There's no cook
for 'em till Joe gets back, and the Saddle Company is short on guides
anyhow, and hasn't anybody who knows Chief Mountain. Mills says he'll
lead the party, if he can have you and your rope. He won't go otherwise.
Now, that puts me in a hole, because I'll have to go short handed and
send one of my boys down to look after the tepees. But these Washington
guys are big bugs of some sort, and I suppose we gotter please 'em. So
day after to-morrow you start, if Joe gets back."
"Hooray!" Tom shouted. "Old Joey and I'll be on a trip together!"
"Yes, and what about me? You don't seem sorry for me at all," said Big
Bertha.
"I'm not," Tom laughed. "I'll cut up enough wood to-morrow for a week,
and clean the stove, and fix everything up. Guess you can worry along."
"You are a heartless, ungrateful creature," said Big Bertha, in his
funny, high voice. But Tom knew that he was really glad to give him this
chance to see Chief Mountain.
The next day Mills and Tom got together and made all the arrangements
for the trip, for they knew Joe would not get in till late, over the
twenty-two mile Piegan trail. It was to be a long expedition--probably a
week--and needed considerable planning, for they were going north, where
there were no chalets, no stores nor camps, and they had to carry
everything. Fortunately, there were only three men in the party, so
Mills, Joe and Tom were the only guides necessary. But it meant tents,
provisions, blankets, and that meant packhorses--good ones, too, which
were hard to pick, for the season was late, and the horses were all
getting thin and tired.
Joe came in late, as they expected, and though he, too, was tired after
the long ride over Piegan, he gave a whoop of joy at Tom's announcement.
Tom made him sit down, however, and got the supper himself.
"And you're going to bed early," he added. "This is the real thing ahead
of us now--Chief Mountain, maybe the Belly River Canon, and Mills says
maybe Cleveland, the highest mountain in the Park, if the weather is
good. He says, though, it's getting time for a storm again. Anyhow,
we'll see old Cleveland. Gee--it'll be great to be on a rope again!"
"You talk as if you'd climbed the Matterhorn all your life," Joe
laughed.
The next morning at six o'clock the Ranger and the two boys were at the
hotel, and beginning to pack the horses. For this trip they took but two
tents, one for the three men, one for themselves. Enough food was the
main requirement. They got everything, including blankets, on four
horses, saving a fifth horse for the dunnage bags, which the men
speedily brought out.
Of course, Joe and Tom looked at these men carefully. When you are going
to be on the trail and in camp with people for a whole week, you are
pretty interested to know what sort of folks they are, and whether you
are going to like them. One of these three was young, not over
twenty-two or twenty-three, the son of the oldest man in the party. The
father, whom Mills addressed as Mr. Crimmins, had gray hair, but he
looked hardy and strong, with a quick, sharp way of talking and quick
motions. He and his friend, Mr. Taylor, a man of about forty, were both
connected with the State Department at Washington, Mills said. The young
man, Robert Crimmins, was just out of college.
"They look good to me," Joe whispered to Tom.
"I ain't saying a word," Tom answered. "Not after Doc Kent. Wait and
see."
The fifth horse was now packed, and the expedition started.
But instead of turning up any of the trails toward the range, Mills led
the way straight down the automobile road, toward the prairie. It seemed
funny to Joe to be setting off on a trip in this direction, right away
from the high places, but the horses liked it. They liked the
comparatively smooth going, gently down-hill, and swung along at an easy
trot.
Down the road they went, mile after mile, until they emerged from the
lower end of the Swift Current Valley, out into the rolling prairies,
with the whole range behind them. Then, as the road swung up over a
knoll, Mills paused and pointed north.
"There's old Chief," he said.
Everybody looked. About twelve miles to the northwest, thrust out
eastward far from the Divide and with the wall which rose out of the
prairie growing steeper and steeper till the last two thousand feet were
sheer precipice, stood a magnificent tower of a mountain, shining
whitish in the sun as if it were composed of limestone. At the back, it
seemed connected by a spine with the range behind, but to the prairie it
presented an unbroken front, like some great Gibraltar of a tower, with
the prairie grass and forest beating like surf at its feet. All alone it
seemed to stand, like a sentinel of the range behind, a lone outpost.
"Is _that_ what we've got to climb?" the three men exclaimed, in one
breath.
"Well, we won't take you up the east wall," Mills laughed.
"Oh, couldn't we get up it?" Tom cried.
Mills looked at him, and grinned again. "About to-night you won't feel
like climbing _anything_," he said. "Remember, you're not saddle-broke,
the way Joe is."
They now turned north, away from the motor road, ate some lunch under
the shade of an aspen and willow thicket, amid the Persian carpet of
prairie wild flowers, and then all the afternoon pushed on toward the
great limestone tower, with the whole pile of the Rocky Mountain chain
beside them for company. Late in the day they reached a rushing stream,
which came down from a canyon just south of the big mountain. This was
the north fork of Kennedy Creek, and they turned up it by a trail, the
lowering cliffs of Chief now rearing up almost over their heads, and
went into the mouth of the valley, and up till the main tower of Chief
was east of them, and they were under the south wall of the spine which
connected the peak with the main range behind. Here they made camp, in a
little meadow beside the stream, with pine woods all about, and while
Tom and the Ranger pitched the tents, with Robert Crimmins giving
enthusiastic help, Joe built his fire pit and began to get supper. The
two older men, who were pretty sore after the thirty mile ride, hobbled
about snipping some boughs for their beds.
It was a good supper Joe gave them, however, and the camp was in as
delightful a post as a man could ask, and around the big fire, when the
food had all been eaten, the whole party sat or lay on the grass, in the
fine democracy of the open trail, the assistant Secretaries of State
beside the boy scouts from Southmead, and the jokes and stories went
around.
But Mills "sounded taps," as he called his bedtime order, very early, as
he planned a six o'clock getaway in the morning, and that meant getting
up at half-past four. The next day they were to climb Chief. The Ranger
looked long at the stars before he came into the tent he and the scouts
were using.
"Boys, a good day to-morrow," he said, "but it looks like a storm after
that."
"Well, let her rip, after to-morrow," Tom answered. "To-morrow, though,
I'm goin' up old Chief, even if I have to climb with nothing but my
hands, and I feel now's if I _would_ have to!"
"Poor old tenderfoot!" Joe laughed.
"Gee, it isn't my foot," said Tom, so comically that Joe and the Ranger
roared with mirth, as they rolled up in their blankets.