Long Trip To Get Your Mail
The next morning Mills was up at the usual time, but he let the boys
sleep, and it was the sound of the breakfast dishes that woke Joe, who
was usually first up to do the cooking and get the stove red hot. Joe
himself slept in a separate little room partitioned off at the back, so
he could have his window wide open without freezing out the whole cabin.
He got up now and hurried out, still sleepy.
"I had a funny dream last night," he said. "I dreamed we were bringing
the lion home on the sledge Peary took to the North Pole."
"Not a bad idea!" the Ranger exclaimed. "We might make a sledge to get
the deer meat home on. Suppose we do that to-day, and to-night we'll
take turns guarding the yard from possible wolves."
In the Ranger's cabin was a kit of tools, and outside was plenty of
wood. A sled like Peary's, however, was impractical in the soft snow,
and, moreover, they soon found that without small hard woods to work
with it would be impossible to build any kind of an enduring sledge.
"Why don't we make a toboggan?" said Tom.
"You need hard wood for that, too, to curl the end--and it takes time to
steam the wood and get it bent, anyhow," Mills replied.
"Wait--I have it!" Joe cried. "You folks be getting three or four strips
of board ten feet long planed down thin, with the under side smooth.
I'll come back presently."
He put on his skis and vanished down the trail, with a shovel over his
shoulder.
While he was gone Tom and the Ranger took two boards left over from the
stable, each about six inches wide, and made another by hand-hewing it
from a fallen log close to the cabin. Before this was done, Joe had
returned, bearing triumphantly a twenty-five pound butter box.
"I saw it behind the hotel, on the trash pile, when I got the hens," he
said. "I went down there and dug where I thought it was. Had to make
three holes and a tunnel before I got it--but it's hard wood, and all
curled."
When the third board was hewn out, and all three planed smooth and thin,
they were laid side by side and connected with light crosspieces. Then
the bottom was removed from the big butter box, the side drum severed,
and one end securely fastened under the front end of the toboggan
bottom. Thus the butter box curled up and around like the front of a
real toboggan. The loose end was secured with thongs, and rings were put
on either side of the boards, to run ropes through to hold on a load.
Finally, a rope to pull it by was made fast.
"There!" Tom said. "That's a regular toboggan, and she'll ride on top of
the softest snow."
"I wonder if she'll buck when we throw a diamond hitch?" Joe laughed.
As soon as supper was over, Joe went alone, with his rifle, up to the
yard, and watched over the dead deer till eleven o'clock, when Tom
relieved him. Tom watched till three, and then the Ranger guarded till
daylight.
But before daylight Joe was up, cooked some breakfast, roused Tom, and
taking food for Mills and pulling the toboggan, they hurried over the
snow, now well packed into a trail by their frequent trips to the yard.
All that morning they worked skinning the deer, to save the valuable
hides for moccasins, thongs, and similar uses, and quartering the
carcases which the lion had not molested after killing them. The meat,
of course, was frozen now, and would keep indefinitely. It was a great
load of skins and meat they finally packed upon the toboggan, piled high
and fastened securely on, but a very dirty, bloody, tired lot of people
to drag it home, and they were glad enough that the yard was above the
cabin, not below it.
But that night, after they were washed, they sat down to a fresh venison
steak, and forgot their weariness, as only men can who have lived
largely on canned goods for many weeks.
"M-m, m-m!" said Tom. "This is good! Somehow I ain't so mad at that old
lion as I was!"
"What did you kill him for, then?" Mills laughed. "You might have had
eleven other deer to eat if you'd let him go."
"Kind o' mixed, isn't it?" Tom confessed. "I sure would kill him every
time--but I'd rather eat the deer than leave 'em for the wolves, just
the same."
"If you want something good to eat, get one of your lion friends to kill
a sheep for you, and bring us some mutton," said the Ranger. "I haven't
had a piece of mutton for ten years, I guess. Before this was a Park,
and we used to hunt here, my! the feasts I've had!"
"Well, I could stand tinned beef all my life, to see the sheep alive,"
Joe declared. "I'm glad it's a Park now."
The next day the hides were spread to cure, and the meat was all cleaned
and hung, and the three then overhauled their equipment and packed up to
make a start the next day for Glacier Park station. No mail had come to
anybody since October, they had been able to send no letters to their
parents, and the Ranger had not even been able to report to the Park
superintendent, or the boys to send telegrams since the storm before
Thanksgiving, because the telephone wire between Many Glacier Hotel and
the railroad had been broken. As a rule, Mills used this wire in winter.
One of the objects of their trip was to see about this break.
The trip out to the railroad, which was about fifty-five miles by
automobile road, could now be reduced to about forty-five, because they
could cut cross lots, over the deep snow, shaving the end of Flat Top
Mountain (not the Flat Top of the Valley Forge camp, but another on the
eastern edge of the overthrust), and by good hiking reach Glacier Park
station in two days. They planned to take the toboggan, loading on it
their provisions, sleeping-bags, a small tent, axes, and the scouts'
snow-shoes. The boys planned to wear skis for a good part of the trip,
and to put Mills on the toboggan on the down grades, thus saving time.
He laughed at the idea, but as the shoes were light made no objection.
That night was clear and cold, and the next day promised to be fair. Joe
and Tom sat up late, getting letters ready to send home, and Joe spent
an hour on a letter to Lucy Elkins, telling her about his life in the
Park, and promising to send snow pictures as soon as he could get them
developed. But they were up long before the sun in the morning, and set
off by starlight, all three on the ropes of the toboggan, down the
trail.
When they came to the first long, snowy slope, Mills said, "Let me see
one of you go down it on your skis."
Tom dropped the rope, and ran, gaining speed as he went, the snow flying
out from under the prow of his skis, and a moment later was waving his
hand from the bottom.
"Saves time, all right," the Ranger agreed, "but what's to become of
me?"
"Get on the back of the toboggan, let one foot hang out and steer with
it, and come along," Joe laughed. "It's easy."
"I never steered one of the blamed things," said Mills.
"Here, you sit on top of the bags, and hold my skis. I'll show you."
Joe took his skis off, put Mills on the front, and pushed the toboggan
over. A cloud of snow rose over the curl of the butter box prow,
powdering the Ranger in the face, and they flew down the hill in Tom's
tracks, and stopped at his side.
"Well, I'll be darned--here we be!" was all Mills said, as he brushed
off the snow.
"Tom, I believe there's something we can teach Mr. Mills!" Joe laughed.
"I believe he was afraid of a toboggan!"
Mills' blue eyes twinkled a little.
"By gosh, I'll go down the next one on your skis, just for that!"
They pushed on steadily down the Swift Current Valley, taking the
easiest way over the frozen lake, into the sunrise, and then, at the
valley's mouth, swinging south and cutting across toward the end of Flat
Top. Mills did put on Joe's skis at the next favorable slope--and the
scouts had to dig him out of the snow half-way down!
"Take your old skis," he spluttered, grabbing for his snow-shoes again.
"I'll stick to what I'm used to--and the toboggan. I don't have to
balance the toboggan."
After that, he steered the toboggan down the hills, while the scouts ran
on skis.
For the up grades, the boys put on their snow-shoes, also, because even
on a gentle slope you back-slide with skis if you are pulling a load.
They reached the ridge over Lower St. Mary Lake at noon, ate lunch,
lowered the toboggan down the slope to the lake, and then ran on the
white, level snow surface above the ice inshore, due south, till at
evening they had passed St. Mary Chalets at the foot of Upper St. Mary
Lake, and went on into a stand of thick woods, where they decided to
camp.
The tent was pitched in the most sheltered spot, on packed snow, facing
a rock, and on logs laid across the snow packed in front of the rock
they built a roaring fire. With the heat of this fire, Joe was able to
cook supper without his mittens on, though he could not go far away from
it without them. When supper was over, they built the fire up afresh,
laid in a big supply of wood, and crawling into their sleeping-bags,
under the shelter of the tent, itself sheltered by the evergreens, with
the flap facing the fire left wide open and the rock reflecting the heat
in to them, they were surprisingly warm, when you consider that they
were sleeping on snow, with the mercury in the thermometer outside
playing tag somewhere below the zero mark--or it would have been, if
there had been a thermometer outside.
It was "anybody's job," if he woke up, to crawl out and throw more wood
on the fire, and Joe twice did this. Both times, however, must have been
long before morning, because when he finally woke up there was a faint
hint of dawn in the sky, and the fire was practically out--only the logs
they had placed on the snow for a fire base were smouldering.
He crawled out again, and built a new fire. Then he took a kettle and
went to see if he could find any brook open, it was such a slow job
melting snow. When he got back, the others were up, stretching and
warming themselves by the blaze. The coffee certainly tasted good that
morning! And how fragrantly the hot bacon sizzled and spluttered in the
pan!
They made the second stage of their journey chiefly over the prairie,
more or less following the motor road, but cutting off all the corners
they could to reduce mileage, and getting dozens of wonderful ski runs
over the treeless slopes, while Mills, who by now had become quite an
expert steering the toboggan, came on behind.
"When I get back," he kept saying, "I'm going to learn to use those
blooming things, too--but on a little hill first!"
The early twilight was deepening into night, and the northern lights
were playing when they came over the final slope and saw the railroad
signal lights--the first sign of other human beings than themselves
they'd laid eyes on since October.
Half an hour later they were at the station, Mills was telephoning to
Park headquarters at Lake McDonald, and the boys were getting their
accumulated mail--letters from home, newspapers for two months past, a
big box of cakes and sweet chocolate for Tom from his mother, and, for
Joe, a long letter from Lucy Elkins, enclosing the pictures she had
taken on their trip.
That evening they slept in beds at the house of the station agent, after
they had spent the evening hearing the news from the outside world. The
mass of newspapers they kept to read in the long evenings back in the
cabin. Laying in some additional provisions, and carefully packing their
precious papers, they started back in the morning, over their old
tracks, which, except in windy places where they were drift covered,
afforded now pretty easy sledding for the toboggan. They made camp again
in the same spot, and were up before daylight for the last stage, Mills
looking scowlingly at the sky.
"Don't like it to-day, boys," he said. "We're in for a storm. Let's beat
it home, if we can."
And that day he gave them little rest, driving on at a fast pace, with
the toboggan rope straining over his shoulder. The sun went under before
noon. By mid-afternoon, as they entered the Swift Current valley mouth,
the peaks of the Divide were lost in a cold, gun metal cloud, and the
wind was rising. They faced this wind all up the valley, with no chance
now to coast--only a steady, grinding up-hill pull.
It was dark long before they got to the cabin, and the snow had begun to
fall in fine, stinging flakes. They were a cold, weary lot when finally
they tugged their load up the last grade to the level of the lake,
passed into the trees at the tepee camp, and a few minutes later tumbled
into the cold cabin, and began to pile wood into the stove.
"Well, Joe, get a hunk of that venison out, and let's forget this day!"
Mills cried. "Light up the big lamp, Tom. We've got kerosene enough,
too. Let's be cheerful."
The roar of the logs in the stove, the light of the lamp, and presently
the smell of food and coffee, acted like magic. They were soon laughing
again, while the wind rose outside, and the trees groaned and creaked,
and the snow drove with a kind of hissing patter against the windows and
the roof.
"A hundred miles in four days, over four feet of snow, and pulling a
toboggan--gosh, if anybody'd told me old Joe could do that last May, I'd
have thought he was crazy," said Tom.
"You couldn't have done it yourself last May," Joe replied.
"And," said the Ranger, stretching out his legs and rubbing them, "by
golly, _I_ don't want to do it again!"
"Ho," said Tom, "I feel fine!"
But he was the first to propose bed--although it must be admitted nobody
quarreled with his suggestion.