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TENTING
TO-NIGHT
_A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the Cascade
Mountains by_
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
=The Riverside Press Cambridge=
1918
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE
COMPANY (COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE)
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published April 1918_
[Illustration: _Chiwawa Mountain and Lyman Lake_]
CONTENTS
I. THE TRAIL 1
II. THE BIG ADVENTURE 10
III. BRIDGE CREEK TO BOWMAN LAKE 24
IV. A FISHERMAN'S PARADISE 39
V. TO KINTLA LAKE 50
VI. RUNNING THE RAPIDS OF THE FLATHEAD 63
VII. THE SECOND DAY ON THE FLATHEAD 71
VIII. THROUGH THE FLATHEAD CANON 80
IX. THE ROUND-UP AT KALISPELL 90
X. OFF FOR CASCADE PASS 100
XI. LAKE CHELAN TO LYMAN LAKE 111
XII. CLOUDY PASS AND THE AGNES CREEK VALLEY 129
XIII. CANON FISHING AND A TELEGRAM 142
XIV. DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE 150
XV. DOUBTFUL LAKE 158
XVI. OVER CASCADE PASS 167
XVII. OUT TO CIVILIZATION 180
ILLUSTRATIONS
CHIWAWA MOUNTAIN AND LYMAN LAKE _Frontispiece_
TRAIL OVER GUNSIGHT PASS, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 2
_Photograph by Fred H. Kiser, Portland, Oregon_
THE AUTHOR, THE MIDDLE BOY, AND THE LITTLE BOY 6
LOOKING SOUTH FROM POLLOCK PASS, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 14
_Photograph by Kiser Photo Co._
LAKE ELIZABETH FROM PTARMIGAN PASS, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 22
_Photograph by A. J. Baker, Kalispell, Mont._
A MOUNTAIN LAKE IN GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 36
_Photograph by Fred H. Kiser_
GETTING READY FOR THE DAY'S FISHING AT CAMP ON BOWMAN LAKE 40
_Photograph by R. E. Marble, Glacier Park_
THE HORSES IN THE ROPE CORRAL 44
_Photograph by A. J. Baker_
BEAR-GRASS 56
_Photograph by Fred H. Kiser_
A GLACIER PARK LAKE 60
_Photograph by A. J. Baker_
STILL-WATER FISHING 68
_Photograph by R. E. Marble_
MOUNTAINS OF GLACIER NATIONAL PARK FROM THE NORTH FORK OF THE
FLATHEAD RIVER 74
_Photograph by R. E. Marble_
THE BEGINNING OF THE CANON, MIDDLE FORK OF THE FLATHEAD RIVER 82
_Photograph by R. E. Marble_
PI-TA-MAK-AN, OR RUNNING EAGLE (MRS. RINEHART), WITH TWO OTHER
MEMBERS OF THE BLACKFOOT TRIBE 96
_Photograph by Haynes, St. Paul_
A HIGH MOUNTAIN MEADOW 100
_Photograph by L. D. Lindsley, Lake Chelan_
SITTING BULL MOUNTAIN, LAKE CHELAN 112
_Photograph by L. D. Lindsley_
LOOKING OUT OF ICE-CAVE, LYMAN GLACIER 126
_Photograph by L. D. Lindsley_
LOOKING SOUTHEAST FROM CLOUDY PASS 132
_Photograph by L. D. Lindsley_
STREAM FISHING 144
_Photograph by Haynes, St. Paul_
MOUNTAIN MILES: THE TRAIL UP SWIFTCURRENT PASS, GLACIER NATIONAL
PARK 152
_Photograph by A. J. Baker_
WHERE THE ROCK-SLIDES START (GLACIER NATIONAL PARK) 156
_Photograph by A. J. Baker_
SWITCHBACKS ON THE TRAIL (GLACIER NATIONAL PARK) 160
_Photograph by Fred H. Kiser_
WATCHING THE PACK-TRAIN COMING DOWN AT CASCADE PASS 174
A FIELD OF BEAR-GRASS 182
_Photograph by Fred H. Kiser_
TENTING TO-NIGHT
I
THE TRAIL
The trail is narrow--often but the width of the pony's feet, a tiny path
that leads on and on. It is always ahead, sometimes bold and wide, as
when it leads the way through the forest; often narrow, as when it hugs
the sides of the precipice; sometimes even hiding for a time in river
bottom or swamp, or covered by the debris of last winter's avalanche.
Sometimes it picks its precarious way over snow-fields which hang at
dizzy heights, and again it flounders through mountain streams, where
the tired horses must struggle for footing, and do not even dare to
stoop and drink.
It is dusty; it is wet. It climbs; it falls; it is beautiful and
terrible. But always it skirts the coast of adventure. Always it goes
on, and always it calls to those that follow it. Tiny path that it is,
worn by the feet of earth's wanderers, it is the thread which has knit
together the solid places of the earth. The path of feet in the
wilderness is the onward march of life itself.
City-dwellers know nothing of the trail. Poor followers of the
pavements, what to them is this six-inch path of glory? Life for many of
them is but a thing of avenues and streets, fixed and unmysterious, a
matter of numbers and lights and post-boxes and people. They know
whither their streets lead. There is no surprise about them, no sudden
discovery of a river to be forded, no glimpse of deer in full flight or
of an eagle poised over a stream. No heights, no depths. To know if it
rains at night, they look down at shining pavements; they do not hold
their faces to the sky.
[Illustration: _Trail over Gunsight Pass, Glacier National Park_]
Now, I am a near-city-dweller. For ten months in the year, I am
particular about mail-delivery, and eat an evening dinner, and
occasionally agitate the matter of having a telephone in every room in
the house. I run the usual gamut of dinners, dances, and bridge, with
the usual country-club setting as the spring goes on. And each May I
order a number of flimsy frocks, in the conviction that I have done all
the hard going I need to, and that this summer we shall go to the New
England coast. And then--about the first of June there comes a day when
I find myself going over the fishing-tackle unearthed by the spring
house-cleaning and sorting out of inextricable confusion the family's
supply of sweaters, old riding-breeches, puttees, rough shoes,
trout-flies, quirts, ponchos, spurs, reels, and old felt hats. Some of
the hats still have a few dejected flies fastened to the ribbon,
melancholy hackles, sadly ruffled Royal Coachmen, and here and there the
determined gayety of the Parmachene Belle.
I look at my worn and rubbed high-laced boots, at my riding-clothes,
snagged with many briers and patched from many saddles, at my old brown
velours hat, survival of many storms in many countries. It has been
rained on in Flanders, slept on in France, and has carried many a
refreshing draft to my lips in my "ain countree."
I put my fishing-rod together and give it a tentative flick across the
bed, and--I am lost.
The family professes surprise, but it is acquiescent. And that night, or
the next day, we wire that we will not take the house in Maine, and I
discover that the family has never expected to go to Maine, but has been
buying more trout-flies right along.
As a family, we are always buying trout-flies. We buy a great many. I do
not know what becomes of them. To those whose lives are limited to the
unexciting sport of buying golf-balls, which have endless names but no
variety, I will explain that the trout do not eat the flies, but merely
attempt to. So that one of the eternal mysteries is how our flies
disappear. I have seen a junior Rinehart start out with a boat, a rod,
six large cakes of chocolate, and four dollars' worth of flies, and
return a few hours later with one fish, one Professor, one Doctor, and
one Black Moth minus the hook. And the boat had not upset.
June, after the decision, becomes a time of subdued excitement. For
fear we shall forget to pack them, things are set out early. Stringers
hang from chandeliers, quirts from doorknobs. Shoe-polish and disgorgers
and adhesive plaster litter the dressing-tables. Rows of boots line the
walls. And, in the evenings, those of us who are at home pore over maps
and lists.
This last year, our plans were ambitious. They took in two complete
expeditions, each with our own pack-outfit. The first was to take
ourselves, some eight packers, guides, and cooks, and enough horses to
carry our outfit--thirty-one in all--through the western and practically
unknown side of Glacier National Park, in northwestern Montana, to the
Canadian border. If we survived that, we intended to go by rail to the
Chelan country in northern Washington and there, again with a
pack-train, cross the Cascades over totally unknown country to Puget
Sound.
We did both, to the eternal credit of our guides and horses.
The family, luckily for those of us who have the _Wanderlust_, is four
fifths masculine. I am the odd fifth--unlike the story of King George
the Fifth and Queen Mary the other four fifths. It consists of the head
of the family, to be known hereafter as the Head, the Big Boy, the
Middle Boy, the Little Boy, and myself. As the Big Boy is very, very
big, and the Little Boy is not really very little, being on the verge of
long trousers, we make a comfortable traveling unit. And, because we
were leaving the beaten path and going a-gypsying, with a new camp each
night no one knew exactly where, the party gradually augmented.
First, we added an optimist named Bob. Then we added a "movie"-man,
called Joe for short and because it was his name, and a "still"
photographer, who was literally still most of the time. Some of these
pictures are his. He did some beautiful work, but he really needed a
mouth only to eat with.
(The "movie"-man is unpopular with the junior members of the family just
now, because he hid his camera in the bushes and took the Little Boy
in a state of goose flesh on the bank of Bowman Lake.)
[Illustration: _The Author, the Middle Boy, and the Little Boy_]
But, of course, we have not got to Bowman Lake yet.
During the year before, I had ridden over the better-known trails of
Glacier Park with Howard Eaton's riding party, and when I had crossed
the Gunsight Pass, we had looked north and west to a great country of
mountains capped with snow, with dense forests on the lower slopes and
in the valleys.
"What is it?" I had asked the ranger who had accompanied us across the
pass.
"It is the west side of Glacier Park," he explained. "It is not yet
opened up for tourist travel. Once or twice in a year, a camping party
goes up through this part of the park. That is all."
"What is it like?" I asked.
"Wonderful!"
So, sitting there on my horse, I made up my mind that sometime _I_ would
go up the west side of Glacier Park to the Canadian border.
Roughly speaking, there are at least six hundred square miles of
Glacier Park on the west side that are easily accessible, but that are
practically unknown. Probably the area is more nearly a thousand square
miles. And this does not include the fastnesses of the range itself. It
comprehends only the slopes on the west side to the border-line of the
Flathead River.
The reason for the isolation of the west side of Glacier Park is easily
understood. The park is divided into two halves by the Rocky Mountain
range, which traverses it from northwest to southeast. Over it there is
no single wagon-road of any sort between the Canadian border and Helena,
perhaps two hundred and fifty miles. A railroad crosses at the Marias
Pass. But from that to the Canadian line, one hundred miles, travel from
the east is cut off over the range, except by trail.
To reach the west side of Glacier Park at the present time, the tourist,
having seen the wonders of the east side, must return to Glacier Park
Station, take a train over the Marias Pass, and get out at Belton. Even
then, he can only go by boat up to Lewis's Hotel on Lake McDonald, a
trifling distance. There are no hotels beyond Lewis's, and no roads.
Naturally, this tremendous area is unknown and unvisited.
It is being planned, however, by the new Department of National Parks to
build a road this coming year along Lake McDonald. Eventually, this
much-needed highway will connect with the Canadian roads, and thus
indirectly with Banff and Lake Louise. The opening-up of the west side
of Glacier Park will make it perhaps the most unique of all our parks,
as it is undoubtedly the most magnificent. The grandeur of the east side
will be tempered by the more smiling and equally lovely western slopes.
And when, between the east and the west sides, there is constructed the
great motor-highway which will lead across the range, we shall have,
perhaps, the most scenic motor-road in the United States--until, in the
fullness of time, we build another road across Cascade Pass in
Washington.
II
THE BIG ADVENTURE
Came at last the day to start west. In spite of warnings, we found that
our irreducible minimum of luggage filled five wardrobe-trunks. In vain
we went over our lists and cast out such bulky things as extra
handkerchiefs and silk socks and fancy neckties and toilet-silver. We
started with all five. It was boiling hot; the sun beat in at the
windows of the transcontinental train and stifled us. Over the prairies,
dust blew in great clouds, covering the window-sills with white. The Big
Boy and the Middle Boy and the Little Boy referred scornfully to the
flannels and sweaters on which I had been so insistent. The Head slept
across the continent. The Little Boy counted prairie-dogs.
Then, almost suddenly, we were in the mountains--for the Rockies seem to
rise out of a great plain. The air was stimulating. There had been a
great deal of snow last winter, and the wind from the ice-capped peaks
overhead blew down and chilled us. We threw back our heads and breathed.
Before going to Belton for our trip with the pack-outfit, we rode again
for two weeks with the Howard Eaton party through the east side of the
park, crossing again those great passes, for each one of which, like the
Indians, the traveler counts a _coup_--Mount Morgan, a mile high and the
width of an army-mule on top; old Piegan, under the shadow of the Garden
Wall; Mount Henry, where the wind blows always a steady gale. We had
scaled Dawson with the aid of ropes, since snowslides covered the trail,
and crossed the Cut Bank in a hailstorm. Like the noble Duke of York,
Howard Eaton had led us "up a hill one day and led us down again." Only,
he did it every day.
Once, in my notebook, I wrote on top of a mountain my definition of a
mountain pass. I have used it before, but because it was written with
shaking fingers and was torn from my very soul, I cannot better it. This
is what I wrote:--
A pass is a blood-curdling spot up which one's
horse climbs like a goat and down the other side
of which it slides as you lead it, trampling ever
and anon on a tender part of your foot. A pass is
the highest place between two peaks. A pass is not
an opening, but a barrier which you climb with
chills and descend with prayer. A pass is a thing
which you try to forget at the time, and which you
boast about when you get back home.
At last came the day when we crossed the Gunsight Pass and, under Sperry
Glacier, looked down and across to the north and west. It was sunset and
cold. The day had been a long and trying one. We had ridden across an
ice-field which sloped gently off--into China, I dare say. I did not
look over. Our horses were weary, and we were saddle-sore and hungry.
Pete, our big guide, whose name is really not Pete at all, waved an airy
hand toward the massed peaks beyond--the land of our dreams.
"Well," he said, "there it is!"
And there it was.
* * * * *
Getting a pack-outfit ready for a long trip into the wilderness is a
serious matter. We were taking thirty-one horses, guides, packers, and
a cook. But we were doing more than that--we were taking two boats! This
was Bob's idea. Any highly original idea, such as taking boats where not
even tourists had gone before, or putting eggs on a bucking horse, or
carrying grapefruit for breakfast into the wilderness, was Bob's idea.
"You see, I figure it out like this," he said, when, on our arrival at
Belton, we found the boats among our equipment: "If we can get those
boats up to the Canadian line and come down the Flathead rapids all the
way, it will only take about four days on the river. It's a stunt that's
never been pulled off."
"Do you mean," I said, "that we are going to run four days of rapids
that have never been run?"
"That's it."
I looked around. There, in a group, were the Head and the Big Boy and
the Middle Boy and the Little Boy. And a fortune-teller at Atlantic City
had told me to beware of water!
"At the worst places," the Optimist continued, "we can send Joe ahead
in one boat with the 'movie' outfit, and get you as you come along."
"I dare say," I observed, with some bitterness. "Of course we may upset.
But if we do, I'll try to go down for the third time in front of the
camera."
But even then the boats were being hoisted into a wagon-bed filled with
hay. And I knew that I was going to run four days of rapids. It was
written.
It was a bright morning. In a corral, the horses were waiting to be
packed. Rolls of blankets, crates of food, and camping-utensils lay
everywhere. The Big Boy marshaled the fishing-tackle. Bill, the cook,
was searching the town for the top of an old stove to bake on. We had
provided two reflector ovens, but he regarded them with suspicion. They
would, he suspected, not do justice to his specialty, the corn-meal
saddle-bag, a sort of sublimated hot cake.
I strolled to the corral and cast a horsewoman's eye on my mount.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY KISER PHOTO CO.
_Looking south from Pollock Pass, Glacier National Park_]
"He looks like a very nice horse," I said. "He's quite handsome."
Pete tightened up the cinch.
"Yes," he observed; "he's all right. He's a pretty good mare."
The Head was wandering around with lists in his hand. His conversation
ran something like this:--
"Pocket-flashes, chocolate, jam, medicine-case, reels, landing-nets,
cigarettes, tooth-powder, slickers, matches."
He was always accumulating matches. One moment, a box of matches would
be in plain sight and the next it had disappeared. He became a sort of
match-magazine, so that if anybody had struck him violently, in almost
any spot, he would have exploded.
Hours went by. The sun was getting high and hot. The crowd which had
been watching gradually disappeared about its business. The two
boats--big, sturdy river-boats they were--had rumbled along toward the
wilderness, one on top of the other, with George Locke and Mike Shannon
as pilots, watching for breakers ahead. In the corral, our supplies
were being packed on the horses, Bill Shea and Pete, Tom Sullivan and
Tom Farmer and their assistants working against time. In crates were our
cooking-utensils, ham, bacon, canned salmon, jam, flour, corn-meal,
eggs, baking-powder, flies, rods, and reels, reflector ovens, sunburn
lotion, coffee, cocoa, and so on. Cocoa is the cowboy's friend.
Innumerable blankets, "tarp" beds, and war-sacks lay rolled ready for
the pack-saddles. The cook was declaiming loudly that some one had
opened his pack and taken out his cleaver.
For a pack-outfit, the west side of Glacier Park is ideal. The east side
is much the best so far for those who wish to make short trips along the
trails into the mountains, although as yet only a small part,
comparatively, of the eastern wonderland is open. There, one may spend a
day, or several days, in the midst of the wildest possible country and
yet return at night to excellent hotels.
On the west side, however, a pack-outfit is necessary. There is but one
hotel, Lewis's, on Lake McDonald. To get to the Canadian line, there
must be camping facilities for at least eight days if there are no
stop-overs. And not to stop over is to lose the joy of the trip. It is
an ideal two to three weeks' jaunt with a pack-train. A woman who can
sit a horse--and every one can ride in a Western saddle--a woman can
make the land trip not only with comfort but with joy. That is, a woman
who likes the outdoors.
What did we wear, that bright morning when, all ready at last, the cook
on the chuck-wagon, the boats ambling ahead, with Bill Hossick, the
teamster, driving the long line of heavily packed horses and our own
saddlers lined up for the adventure, we moved out on to the trail?
Well, the men wore khaki riding-trousers and flannel shirts,
broad-brimmed felt hats, army socks drawn up over the cuff of the
breeches, and pack-shoes. A pack-shoe is one in which the leather of the
upper part makes the sole also, without a seam. On to this soft sole is
sewed a heavy leather one. The pack-shoe has a fastened tongue and is
waterproof.
And I? I had not counted on the "movie"-man, and I was dressed for
comfort in the woods. I had buckskin riding-breeches and high boots, and
over my thin riding-shirt I wore a cloth coat. I had packed in my warbag
a divided skirt also, and a linen suit, for hot days, of breeches and
coat. But of this latter the least said the better. It betrayed me and,
in portions, deserted me.
All of us carried tin drinking-cups, which vied with the bells on the
pack-animals for jingle. Most of us had sweaters or leather
wind-jammers. The guides wore "chaps" of many colors, boots with high
heels, which put our practical packs in the shade, and gay silk
handkerchiefs.
Joe was to be a detachable unit. As a matter of fact, he became detached
rather early in the game, having been accidentally given a bucker. It
was on the second day, I think, that his horse buried his head between
his fore legs, and dramatized one of the best bits of the trip when Joe
was totally unable to photograph it.
He had his own guide and extra horse for the camera. It had been our
expectation that, at the most hazardous parts of the journey, he would
perch on some crag and show us courageously risking our necks to have a
good time. But on the really bad places he had his own life to save, and
he never fully trusted Maud, I think, after the first day. Maud was his
horse.
Besides, when he did climb to some aerie, and photographed me, for
instance, in a sort of Napoleon-crossing-the-Alps attitude, sitting my
horse on the brink of eternity and being reassured from safety by the
Optimist--outside the picture, of course--the developed film flattened
out the landscape. So that, although I was on the edge of a canon a mile
deep, I might as well have been posing on the bank of the Ohio River.
On the east side of the Park I had ridden Highball. It is not
particularly significant that I started the summer on Highball and ended
it on Budweiser. Now I had Angel, a huge white mare with a pink nose, a
loving disposition, and a gait that kept me swallowing my tongue for
fear I would bite the end off it. The Little Boy had Prince, a small
pony which ran exactly like an Airedale dog, and in every canter beat
out the entire string. The Head had H----, and considered him well
indicated. One bronco was called "Bronchitis." The top horse of the
string was Bill Shea's Dynamite, according to Bill Shea. There were
Dusty, Shorty, Sally Goodwin, Buffalo Tom, Chalk-Eye, Comet, and
Swapping Tater--Swapping Tater being a pacer who, when he hit the
ground, swapped feet. Bob had Sister Sarah.
At last, everything was ready. The pack-train got slowly under way. We
leaped into our saddles--"leaped" being a figurative term which grew
more and more figurative as time went on and we grew saddle-weary and
stiff--and, passing the pack-train on a canter, led off for the
wilderness.
All that first day we rode, now in the sun, now in deep forest.
Luncheon-time came, but the pack-train was far behind. We waited, but
we could not hear so much as the tinkle of its bells. So we munched
cakes of chocolate from the pockets of our riding-coats and went grimly
on.
The wagon with the boats had made good time. It was several miles along
the wagon-trail before we caught up with it. It had found a quiet harbor
beside the road, and the boatmen were demanding food. We tossed them
what was left of the chocolate and went on.
The presence of a wagon-trail in that empty land, unvisited and unknown,
requires explanation. In the first place, it was not really a road. It
was a trail, and in places barely that. But, sixteen years before, a
road had been cleared through the forest by some people who believed
there was oil near the Canadian line. They cut down trees and built
corduroy bridges. But in sixteen years it has not been used. No wheels
have worn it smooth. It takes its leisurely way, now through wilderness,
now through burnt country where the trees stand stark and dead, now
through prairie or creek-bottom, now up, now down, always with the
range rising abruptly to the east, and with the Flathead River somewhere
to the west.
It will not take much expenditure to make that old wagon-trail into a
good road. It has its faults. It goes down steep slopes--on the second
day out, the chuck-wagon got away, and, fetching up at the bottom, threw
out Bill the cook and nearly broke his neck. It climbs like a cat after
a young robin. It is rocky or muddy or both. But it is, potentially, a
road.
The Rocky Mountains run northwest and southeast, and in numerous basins,
fed by melting glaciers and snow-fields, are deep and quiet lakes. These
lakes, on the west side, discharge their overflow through roaring and
precipitous streams to the Flathead, which flows south and east. While
our general direction was north, it was our intention to turn off east
and camp at the different lakes, coming back again to the wagon-trail to
resume our journey.
[Illustration: _Lake Elizabeth from Ptarmigan Pass, Glacier National
Park_]
Therefore, it became necessary, day after day, to take our boats off the
wagon-road and haul them along foot-trails none too good. The log of the
two boats is in itself a thrilling story. There were days and days
when the wagon was mired, when it stuck in the fords of streams or in
soft places on the trail. It was a land flotilla by day, and, with its
straw, a couch at night. And there came, toward the end of the journey,
that one nerve-racking day when, over a sixty-foot cliff down a
foot-trail, it was necessary to rope wagon, boats, and all, to get the
boats into the Flathead River.
But all this was before us then. We only knew it was summer, that the
days were warm and the nights cool, that the streams were full of trout,
that such things as telegraphs and telephones were falling far in our
rear, and that before us was the Big Adventure.
III
BRIDGE CREEK TO BOWMAN LAKE
The first night we camped at Bridge Creek on a river-flat. Beside us,
the creek rolled and foamed. The horses, in their rope corral, lay down
and rolled in sheer ecstasy when their heavy packs were removed. The
cook set up his sheet-iron stove beside the creek, built a wood fire,
lifted the stove over it, fried meat, boiled potatoes, heated beans, and
made coffee while the tents were going up. From a thicket near by came
the thud of an axe as branches were cut for bough beds.
I have slept on all kinds of bough beds. They may be divided into three
classes. There is the one which is high in the middle and slopes down at
the side--there is nothing so slippery as pine-needles--so that by
morning you are quite likely to be not only off the bed but out of the
tent. And there is the bough bed made by the guide when he is in a great
hurry, which consists of large branches and not very many needles. So
that in the morning, on rising, one is as furrowed as a waffle off the
iron. And there is the third kind, which is the real bough bed, but
which cannot be tossed off in a moment, like a poem, but must be the
result of calculation, time, and much labor. It is to this bough bed
that I shall some day indite an ode.
This is the way you go about it: First, you take a large and healthy
woodsman with an axe, who cuts down a tree--a substantial tree. Because
this is the frame of your bed. But on no account do this yourself. One
of the joys of a bough bed is seeing somebody else build it.
The tree is an essential. It is cut into six-foot lengths--unless one is
more than six feet long. If the bed is intended for one, two side pieces
with one at the head and one at the foot are enough, laid flat on a
level place, making a sort of boxed-in rectangle. If the bed is intended
for two, another log down the center divides it into two bunks and
prevents quarreling.
Now begins the real work of constructing the bough bed. If one is a good
manager, while the frame is being made, the younger members of the
family have been performing the loving task of getting the branches
together. When a sufficient number of small branches has been
accumulated, this number varying from one ton to three, judging by size
and labor, the bough bed is built by the simple expedient of sticking
the branches into the enclosed space like flowers into a vase. They must
be packed very closely, stem down. This is a slow and not particularly
agreeable task for one's loving family and friends, owing to the
tendency of pine-and balsam-needles to jag. Indeed, I have known it to
happen that, after a try or two, some one in the outfit is delegated to
the task of official bed-maker, and a slight coldness is noticeable when
one refers to dusk and bedtime.
Over these soft and feathery plumes of balsam--soft and feathery only
through six blankets--is laid the bedding, and on this couch the wearied
and saddle-sore tourist may sleep as comfortably as in his grandaunt's
feather bed.
But, dear traveler, it is much simpler to take an air-mattress and a
foot-pump. True, even this has its disadvantages. It is not safe to
stick pins into it while disrobing at night. Occasionally, a faulty
valve lets go, and the sleeper dreams he is falling from the Woolworth
Tower. But lacking a sturdy woodsman and a loving family to collect
branches, I advise the air-bed.
Fishing at Bridge Creek, that first evening, was poor. We caught dozens
of small trout. But it would have taken hundreds to satisfy us after our
lunchless day, and there were other reasons.
One casts for trout. There is no sitting on a mossy stone and watching a
worm guilefully struggling to attract a fish to the hooks. No; one
casts.
Now, I have learned to cast fairly well. On the lawn at home, or in the
middle of a ten-acre lot, cleared, or the center of a lake, I can put
out quite a lot of line. In one cast out of three, I can drop a fly so
that it appears to be committing suicide--which is the correct way. But
in a thicket I am lost. I hold the woman's record for getting the hook
in my hair or the lobe of the Little Boy's ear. I have hung fish high in
trees more times than phonographs have hanged Danny Deever. I can, under
such circumstances (i.e., the thicket), leave camp with a rod, four
six-foot leaders, an expensive English line, and a smile, and return an
hour later with a six-inch trout, a bandaged hand, a hundred and eighty
mosquito bites, no leaders, and no smile.
So we fished little that first evening, and, on the discovery that
candles had been left out of the cook's outfit, we retired early to our
bough beds, which were, as it happened that night, of class A.
There was a deer-lick on our camp-ground there at Bridge Creek, and
during the night deer came down and strayed through the camp. One of the
guides saw a black bear also. We saw nothing. Some day I shall write an
article called: "Wild Animals I Have Missed."
We had made fourteen miles the first day, with a late start. It was not
bad, but the next day we determined to do better. At five o'clock we
were up, and at five-thirty tents were down and breakfast under way. We
had had a visitor the night before--that curious anomaly, a young
hermit. He had been a very well-known pugilist in the light-weight class
and, his health failing, he had sought the wilderness. There he had
lived for seven years alone.
We asked him if he never cared to see people. But he replied that trees
were all the company he wanted. Deer came and browsed around his tiny
shack there in the woods. All the trout he could use played in his front
garden. He had a dog and a horse, and he wanted nothing else. He came to
see us off the next morning, and I think we amused him. We seemed to
need so much. He stared at our thirty-one horses, sixteen of them packed
with things he had learned to live without. But I think he rather hated
to see us go. We had brought a little excitement into his quiet life.
The first bough bed had been a failure. For--note you--I had not then
learned of the bough bed _de luxe_. This information, which I have given
you so freely, dear reader, what has it not cost me in sleepless nights
and family coldness and aching muscles!
So I find this note in my daily journal, written that day on horseback,
and therefore not very legible:--
Mem: After this, must lie over the camp-ground
until I find a place that fits me to sleep on.
Then have the tent erected over it.
There was a little dissension in the party that morning, Joe having
wakened in the night while being violently shoved out under the edge of
his tent by his companion, who was a restless sleeper. But ill-temper
cannot live long in the open. We settled to the swinging walk of the
trail. In the mountain meadows there were carpets of flowers. They
furnished highly esthetic if not very substantial food for our horses
during our brief rests. They were very brief, those rests. All too soon,
Pete would bring Angel to me, and I would vault into the
saddle--extremely figurative, this--and we would fall into line, Pete
swaying with the cowboy's roll in the saddle, the Optimist bouncing
freely, Joe with an eye on that pack-horse which carried the delicacies
of the trip, the Big Boy with long legs that almost touched the ground,
the Middle Boy with eyes roving for adventure, the Little Boy deadly
serious and hoping for a bear. And somewhere in the rear, where he could
watch all responsibilities and supply the smokers with matches, the
Head.
That second day, we crossed Dutch Ridge and approached the Flathead.
What I have called here the Flathead is known locally as the North Fork.
The pack-outfit had started first. Long before we caught up with them,
we heard the bells on the lead horses ringing faintly.
Passing a pack-outfit on the trail is a difficult matter. The wise
little horses, traveling free and looked after only by a wrangler or
two, do not like to be passed. One of two things happens when the
saddle-outfit tries to pass the pack. Either the pack starts on a smart
canter ahead, or it turns wildly off into the forest to the
accompaniment of much complaint by the drivers. A pack-horse loose on a
narrow trail is a dangerous matter. With its bulging pack, it worms its
way past anything on the trail, and bad accidents have followed. Here,
however, there was room for us to pass.
Tiny gophers sat up beside the trail and squeaked at us. A coyote
yelped. Bumping over fallen trees, creaking and groaning and swaying,
came the boat-wagon. Mike had found a fishing-line somewhere, and
pretended to cast from the bow.
"Ship ahoy!" he cried, when he saw us, and his instructions to the
driver were purely nautical. "Hard astern!" he yelled, going down a
hill, and instead of "Gee" or "Haw" he shouted "Port" or "Starboard."
An acquaintance of George and Mike has built a boat which is intended to
go up-stream by the force of the water rushing against it and turning a
propeller. We had a spirited discussion about it.
"Because," as one of the men objected, "it's all right until you get to
the head of the stream. Then what are you going to do?" he asked.
"She'll only go up--she won't go down."
Pete, the chief guide, was a German. He was rather uneasy for fear we
intended to cross the Canadian line. But we reassured him. A big blond
in a wide-flapping Stetson, black Angora chaps, and flannel shirt with a
bandana, he led our little procession into the wilderness and sang as he
rode. The Head frequently sang with him. And because the only song the
Head knew very well in German was the "Lorelei," we had it hour after
hour. Being translated to one of the boatmen, he observed: "I have known
girls like that. I guess I'd leave most any boat for them. But I'd leave
this boat for most any girl."
We were approaching the mountains, climbing slowly but steadily. We
passed through Lone Tree Prairie, where one great pine dominated the
country for miles around, and stopped by a small river for luncheon.
Of all the meals that we took in the open, perhaps luncheon was the most
delightful. Condensed milk makes marvelous cocoa. We opened tins of
things, consulted maps, eased the horses' cinches, rested our own tired
bodies for an hour or so. For the going, while much better than we had
expected, was still slow. It was rare, indeed, to be able to get the
horses out of a walk. And there is no more muscle-racking occupation
than riding a walking horse hour after hour through a long day.
By the end of the second day we were well away from even that remote
part of civilization from which we had started, and a terrible fact was
dawning on us. The cook did not like us!
Now, we all have our small vanities, and mine has always been my success
with cooks. I like cooks. As time goes on, I am increasingly dependent
on cooks. I never fuss a cook, or ask how many eggs a cake requires, or
remark that we must be using the lard on the hardwood floors. I never
make any of the small jests on that order, with which most housewives
try to reduce the cost of living.
No; I really go out of my way to ignore the left-overs, and not once on
this trip had I so much as mentioned dish-towels or anything unpleasant.
I had seen my digestion slowly going with a course of delicious but
indigestible saddle-bags, which were all we had for bread.
But--I was failing. Bill unpacked and cooked and packed up again and
rode on the chuck-wagon. But there was something wrong. Perhaps it was
the fall out of the wagon. Perhaps we were too hungry. We were that, I
know. Perhaps he looked ahead through the vista of days and saw that
formidable equipment of fishing-tackle, and mentally he was counting the
fish to clean and cook and clean and cook and clean and--
The center of a camping-trip is the cook. If, in the spring, men's
hearts turn to love, in the woods they turn to food. And cooking is a
temperamental art. No unhappy cook can make a souffle. Not, of course,
that we had souffle.
A camp cook should be of a calm and placid disposition. He has the
hardest job that I know of. He cooks with inadequate equipment on a
tiny stove in the open, where the air blows smoke into his face and
cinders into his food. He must cook either on his knees or bending over
to within a foot or so of the ground. And he must cook moving, as it
were. Worse than that, he must cook not only for the party but for a
hungry crowd of guides and packers that sits around in a circle and
watches him, and urges him, and gets under his feet, and, if he is
unpleasant, takes his food fairly out of the frying-pan under his eyes
if he is not on guard. He is the first up in the morning and the last in
bed. He has to dry his dishes on anything that comes handy, and then
pack all of his grub on an unreliable horse and start off for the next
eating-ground.
So, knowing all this, and also that we were about a thousand miles from
the nearest employment-office and several days' hard riding from a
settlement, we went to Bill with tribute. We praised his specialties. We
gave him a college lad, turned guide for the summer, to assist him. We
gathered up our own dishes. We inquired for his bruise. But gloom
hung over him like a cloud.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT BY FRED H. KISER, PORTLAND, OREGON
_A mountain lake in Glacier National Park_]
And he _could_ cook. Well--
We had made a forced trip that day, and the last five miles were
agonizing. In vain we sat sideways on our horses, threw a leg over the
pommel, got off, and walked and led them. Bowman Lake, our objective
point, seemed to recede.
Very few people have ever seen Bowman Lake. Yet I believe it is one of
the most beautiful lakes in this country. It is not large, perhaps only
twelve miles long and from a mile to two miles in width. Save for the
lower end, it lies entirely surrounded by precipitous and inaccessible
peaks--old Rainbow, on whose mist-cap the setting sun paints a true
rainbow day after day, Square Peak, Reuter Peak, and Peabody, named with
the usual poetic instinct of the Geological Survey. They form a natural
wall, round the upper end of the lake, of solid-granite slopes which
rise over a mile in height above it. Perpetual snow covers the tops of
these mountains, and, melting in innumerable waterfalls, feeds the lake
below.
So far as I can discover, we were taking the first boat, with the
possible exception of an Indian canoe long ago, to Bowman Lake. Not the
first boat, either, for the Geological Survey had nailed a few boards
together, and the ruin of this venture was still decaying on the shore.
There was a report that Bowman Lake was full of trout. That was one of
the things we had come to find out. It was for Bowman Lake primarily
that all the reels and flies and other lure had been arranged. If it was
true, then twenty-four square miles of virgin lake were ours to fish
from.
IV
A FISHERMAN'S PARADISE
After our first view of the lake, the instant decision was to make a
permanent camp there for a few days. And this we did. Tents were put up
for the luxurious-minded, three of them. Mine was erected over me, when,
as I had pre-determined, I had found a place where I could lie
comfortably. The men belonging to the outfit, of course, slept under the
stars. A packer, a guide, or the cook with an outfit like ours has,
outside of such clothing as he wears or carries rolled in his blankets,
but one possession--and that is his tarp bed. With such a bed, a can of
tomatoes, and a gun, it is said that a cow-puncher can go anywhere.
Once or twice I was awake in the morning before the cook's loud call of
"Come and get it!" brought us from our tents. I never ceased to view
with interest this line of tarp beds, each with its sleeping occupant,
his hat on the ground beside him, ready, when the call came, to sit up
blinking in the sunlight, put on his hat, crawl out, and be ready for
the day.
The boats had traveled well. The next morning, after a breakfast of ham
and eggs, fried potatoes, coffee, and saddle-bags, we were ready to try
them out.
And here I shall be generous. For this means that next year we shall go
there and find other outfits there before us, and people in the latest
thing in riding-clothes, and fancy trout-creels and probably
sixty-dollar reels.
Bowman Lake is a fisherman's paradise. The first day on the lake we
caught sixty-nine cut-throat trout averaging a pound each, and this
without knowing where to look.
[Illustration: _Getting ready for the day's fishing at camp on Bowman
Lake_]
In the morning, we could see them lying luxuriously on shelving banks in
the sunlight, only three to six feet below the surface. They rose, like
a shot, to the flies. For some reason, George Locke, our fisherman,
resented their taking the Parmachene Belle. Perhaps because the trout of
his acquaintance had not cared for this fly. Or maybe he considered
the Belle not sportsmanly. The Brown Hackle and Royal Coachman did
well, however, and, in later fishing on this lake, we found them more
reliable than the gayer flies. In the afternoon, the shallows failed us.
But in deep holes where the brilliant walls shelved down to incredible
depths, they rose again in numbers.
It was perfectly silent. Doubtless, countless curious wild eyes watched
us from the mountain-slopes and the lake-borders. But we heard not even
the cracking of brushwood under cautious feet. The tracks of deer, where
they had come down to drink, a dead mountain-lion floating in a pool,
the slow flight of an eagle across the face of old Rainbow, and no sound
but the soft hiss of a line as it left the reel--that was Bowman Lake,
that day, as it lay among its mountains. So precipitous are the slopes,
so rank the vegetation where the forest encroaches, that we were put to
it to find a ridge large enough along the shore to serve as a foothold
for luncheon. At last we found a tiny spot, perhaps ten feet long by
three feet wide, and on that we landed. The sun went down; the rainbow
clouds gathered about the peaks above, and still the trout were rising.
When at last we turned for our ten-mile row back to camp, it was almost
dusk.
Now and then, when I am tired and the things of this world press close
and hard, I think of those long days on that lonely lake, and the
home-coming at nightfall. Toward the pin-point of glow--the distant
camp-fire which was our beacon light--the boat moved to the long, tired
sweep of the oars; around us the black forest, the mountains overhead
glowing and pink, as if lighted from within. And then, at last, the
grating of our little boat on the sand--and night.
During the day, our horses were kept in a rope corral. Sometimes they
were quiet; sometimes a spirit of mutiny seemed to possess the entire
thirty-one. There is in such a string always one bad horse that, with
ears back and teeth showing, keeps the entire bunch milling. When such a
horse begins to stir up trouble, the wrangler tries to rope him and get
him out. Mad excitement follows as the noose whips through the air. But
they stay in the corral. So curious is the equine mind that it seldom
realizes that it could duck and go under the rope, or chew it through,
or, for that matter, strain against it and break it.
At night, we turned the horses loose. Almost always in the morning, some
were missing, and had to be rounded up. The greater part, however,
stayed close to the bell-mare. It was our first night at Bowman Lake, I
think, that we heard a mountain-lion screaming. The herd immediately
stampeded. It was far away, so that we could not hear the horses
running. But we could hear the agitated and rapid ringing of the bell,
and, not long after, the great cat went whining by the camp. In the
morning, the horses were far up the mountain-side.
Sometime I shall write that article on "Wild Animals I Have Missed." We
were in a great game-country. But we had little chance to creep up on
anything but deer. The bells of the pack-outfit, our own jingling spurs,
the accouterments, the very tinkle of the tin cups on our saddles must
have made our presence known to all the wilderness-dwellers long before
we appeared.
After we had been at Bowman Lake a day or two, while at breakfast one
morning, we saw two of the guides racing their horses in a mad rush
toward the camp. Just outside, one of the ponies struck a log, turned a
somersault, and threw his rider, who, nothing daunted, came hurrying up
on foot. They had seen a bull moose not far away. Instantly all was
confusion. The horses were not saddled. One of the guides gave me his
and flung me on it. The Little Boy made his first essay at bareback
riding. In a wild scamper we were off, leaping logs and dodging trees.
The Little Boy fell off with a terrific thud, and sat up, looking
extremely surprised. And when we had got there, as clandestinely as a
steam calliope in a circus procession, the moose was gone. I sometimes
wonder, looking back, whether there really was a moose there or not. Did
I or did I not see a twinkle in Bill Shea's eye as he described the
sweep of the moose's horns? I wonder.
[Illustration: _The horses in the rope corral_]
Birds there were in plenty; wild ducks that swam across the lake at
terrific speed as we approached; plover-snipe, tiny gray birds with long
bills and white breasts, feeding along the edge of the lake peacefully
at our very feet; an eagle carrying a trout to her nest. Brown squirrels
came into the tents and ate our chocolate and wandered over us
fearlessly at night. Bears left tracks around the camp. But we saw none
after we left the Lake McDonald country.
Yet this is a great game-country. The warden reports a herd of
thirty-six moose in the neighborhood of Bowman Lake; mountain-lion,
lynx, marten, bear, and deer abound. A trapper built long ago a
substantial log shack on the north shore of the lake, and although it is
many years since it was abandoned, it is still almost weather-proof. All
of us have our dreams. Some day I should like to go back and live for a
little time in that forest cabin. In the long snow-bound days after he
set his traps, the trapper had busied himself fitting it up. A tin can
made his candle-bracket on the wall, axe-hewn planks formed a table and
a bench, and diagonally across a corner he had built his fireplace of
stones from the lakeside.
He had a simple method of constructing a chimney; he merely left without
a roof that corner of the cabin and placed slanting boards in it. He had
made a crane, too, which swung out over the fireplace. All of the Rocky
Mountains were in his back garden, and his front yard was Bowman Lake.
We had had fair weather so far. But now rain set in. Hail came first;
then a steady rain. The tents were cold. We got out our slickers and
stood out around the beach fire in the driving storm, and ate our
breakfast of hot cakes, fried ham, potatoes and onions cooked together,
and hot coffee. The cook rigged up a tarpaulin over his little stove and
stood there muttering and frying. He had refused to don a slicker, and
his red sweater, soaking up the rain, grew heavy with moisture and began
to stretch. Down it crept, down and down.
The cook straightened up from his frying-pan and looked at it. Then he
said:--
"There, little sweater, don't you cry;
You'll be a blanket by and by."