the Timber-Line Trees Are Only Three Feet Tall
It was now September, and already a rain in the valleys meant fresh snow
on the peaks and high passes. The hotel was still full, however, and Tom
was busy at the tepees, while Joe had steady work as a camp cook, once
on a fishing trip, when, in three days, he cooked so many trout he said
he should be ashamed ever to look a fish in the face again, and sick if
he ate one.
"I didn't think it was possible to get fed up on trout," he declared.
"Wait till next April, and you'll be out whipping up Roaring Brook, all
right, all right," Tom laughed.
Of course school had begun back in Southmead, but Tom did not feel like
quitting his job before the season was over, and, besides, after long
talks together, and consultations with the Ranger, and letters home to
their parents and Mr. Rogers, the boys had decided to stay on with
Mills, in his cabin (paying for their own food, of course, which would
be a very small item), until Christmas. It would mean that they'd lose
the whole school term instead of a month, but, in return, Joe would have
that much more outdoor life, they could do a lot of reading evenings,
and, above all, they could learn from Mills some of the duties of a
forest ranger in winter, and learn how to handle themselves in the
mountains and big woods after all trails were closed, all tourists
departed, and the Park had gone back to its primitive wildness.
Mr. Rogers agreed with them, and evidently persuaded their parents.
"After all," he wrote, "you'll really be taking a term in practical
field forestry, and Joe can never hope to get a position as a forester
if he hasn't fully recovered his health. The government won't take a
sick man on the job. Learn all you can, especially how to take care of
yourselves."
So the boys sent home for their very warmest winter clothes, mittens,
pull down hats, ski boots and skis and some school books and stories to
read evenings. Mills said he could get them real Indian snow-shoes in
the Park, and elk skin sleeping-bags. He was even more delighted at the
prospect of having them than they were at staying. It meant he would
have company till nearly Christmas, and the scouts knew how lonely he
usually was in the winter, because that was one thing he had never
talked about.
The tepee camp closed about mid-September, when it got too cold for many
hikers to come over the high passes, and the next two weeks Tom worked
as a regular guide, with a license badge from the Park superintendent.
Joe also had a couple of jobs with camping parties, but he had had his
badge from the start. All the hotels and chalets closed on October
first, and then the boys moved into the Ranger's cabin.
They were glad to move, too. Already winter had begun to come, up on the
Divide. The snow that fell did not melt, and the line of it was creeping
down the bare, rocky slopes of Gould. The nights were cold, and water
froze in a kettle, and ice formed on the edge of the lake on a still
night. Before the last bus had departed, all three made a trip out to
Glacier Park station and laid in supplies for the winter.
"The next trip we make may be on snow-shoes," the Ranger said. "That's
fifty miles afoot, packing your sleeping-bag on your back."
The horses presently were sent down to the prairie to winter, and Joe
got some of the hens from the hotel, which otherwise would have been
killed or taken away, and installed them in the stable.
"We'll have fresh eggs for a while, anyhow," he declared.
"What you going to feed 'em with?" the Ranger asked.
"I got two barrels of feed," said Joe, "and our table scraps. When the
feed gives out, we'll live on fricasseed chicken. Anyhow, I'll keep one
good one alive till Thanksgiving, and we'll have some fresh meat that
day."
In the weeks that followed, Tom and Joe lived a hardy, active life
afoot, sometimes going with the Ranger up the high trails to inspect
where the early snows first slid, so that he could get a line on the
spots in which the most danger to the trails lay.
"My idea is," he said, "that in some places where we have trouble,
making us a lot of work in the spring, the government could plant Arctic
willow or limber pines, to hold the snow from sliding, and save a lot of
money. I'm going to study snowslides this winter, and make a report."
Sometimes, too, the scouts went hunting with him, not for sheep or goats
or deer, of course, but for the animals which prey on the sheep, goats,
deer, etc. The worst pest, perhaps, is the coyote, which is a sort of
cowardly fox-wolf, and as the snow gradually pushed down the slopes and
drove many animals with it, the coyotes grew more numerous around the
cabin, so the boys could hear them barking at night. Now all the
tourists were gone, Mills gave each boy a gun, making them his
assistants, and especially on moonlight nights, when they heard the
coyotes barking, they would go out where some bait had been placed and
shoot two or three.
"Every one you bag saves the life of a dozen ptarmigan hens, and
probably a lot of lambs and fawns," said Mills.
It wasn't long before the side of the barn was covered with coyote
skins.
"But what you really want is a lion's skin," said Mills.
"What _I_ want is a silver tip skin," said Tom. "I want a coat like
yours."
"Nothing doing," Mills laughed. "Mr. Silver Tip is protected now."
"Well, then, bring on your lion!" Spider replied.
"We'll get one yet," Mills answered.
Until the snow got well down toward the valleys, Tom and Joe used to go
off for a day at a time, also, with the rope, climbing up cliffs for
practice and still oftener, with their cameras, seeking out the upland
slopes where the wind kept the snow blown off, and lying in wait for
sheep, to photograph them. The sheep, they found, came to such places to
feed. But it was cold work waiting, so they finally hit on the idea of
packing up their sleeping-bags on their backs, and lying in them, under
the shelter of some rock or timber-line pine. In this way, they got
several photographs at close range.
They got something else, too; they got a real idea of why the trees at
timber-line are only a few feet high. It was mid-November when they had
gone up a shoulder of Mount Wilbur, early in the morning, to a bare
upland pasture where they believed that sheep would come to feed. The
sun was shining when they left, and there was no snow to speak of down
in the valley. But they took snow-shoes, to keep their feet dry up
above, and their sleeping-bags.
Before they reached the pasture, however, which was at the extreme upper
edge of timber-line, the sun was overcast, and the wind was rising to a
gale. They kept on, in spite of it, and picking out the lee side of a
rock, where a tree grew about three feet tall, till it got above the
rock and then turned at a right angle and trailed out parallel to the
ground, they got into their bags to wait. No sheep came that morning,
but as the wind rose and shrieked and howled, and snow began to fall,
they were too interested to go back down.
If they raised their faces the least bit above this rock, smash! came
the gale to hit them, and the snow particles cut like ice, while in the
wind they felt little stinging particles of rock dust that actually hurt
when they hit you.
"I don't blame this tree for not growing any higher!" Joe exclaimed.
"It's like us--just cuddles down behind the rock."
"Sure," said Tom. "If a branch does grow up over in summer, a wind like
this the next winter just cuts it off like pruning shears."
The scouts were now beginning to get covered with snow, and in spite of
the fascination of lying up here with the storm howling over them and
feeling why it is the trees at timber-line grow only a few feet, or even
in some cases a few inches, tall in a hundred years, they realized it
was time to be getting down.
The instant they stood up, and got the full force of the gale, they were
almost knocked off their feet. The snow was coming fast now, and it was
all they could do to keep their footing over the treacherous rocks. They
had no rope, as they had not supposed they would need it, but when Joe
was suddenly bowled over, and went nearly fifty feet down a long drift
before he could dig in his heels and stop, it began to look grave.
As soon as they got off the partially bare shoulder, into a trifle less
windy reach, they put on their snow-shoes, and fought along toward the
Swift Current trail, almost blindly in a brief time, for the snow was
increasing till it shrouded them like a cloud.
"Say, I'm getting nervous!" Joe cried. "We ought to be at that trail by
now."
"Shut up," Tom said. "If you get a funk, it lets down your vitality, and
then you'll get cold and freeze your ears or feet or something. We can't
miss it; we got the pitch of the slope to go by."
"That's so," Joe answered. And as he realized that the slope would guide
them, so they couldn't go in a circle, he suddenly felt warmer. He
realized how important it is to keep your head.
Once on the Swift Current trail, which, though snow covered, showed
plainly, they descended rapidly on their snow-shoes, which gripped well.
There was not yet snow enough here to start a slide, but they weren't
sure there might not be, and they kept an anxious eye above them all the
way down. Once in the woods at the bottom, they hurried on to the cabin,
not even stopping to make tea.
"Say, you poor boobs," Mills exclaimed, "I was just coming after you.
Why don't you pick a wild, windy, stormy day to go climbing Wilbur? What
are you trying to do, commit suicide?"
"No," said Tom, "to see why the timber-line trees are so dwarfed."
"Yes, and we found out," Joe added.