He trotted ahead, and Joe saw with admiration that his shoulders hardly bobbed up and down at all. He did his best to imitate him, and after a while felt as if he were getting on to the hang of it. But they couldn"t trot far, because the packhorse was following them, all by himself, and if he trotted it shook up his pack too much. So they pulled down to a walk, and climbed the trail, first the Ranger, then Joe, then the patient packhorse, through woods at first, and across a roaring, racing little green river, which foamed up against the horses" legs and made Joe hold up his feet under him to keep them dry.
"I"m going over Swift Current Pa.s.s," the Ranger said, "and on up the Mineral Creek Canon on the other side, and then down into the Little Kootenai River country, to open the trail a bit. You can come with me to the top of the pa.s.s, and pick up some party to bring you back."
"I wish I could come all the way!" Joe exclaimed.
Mills laughed another of his silent laughs. "You"re ambitious for a sick boy and a tenderfoot," he said. "You"ll be sore enough, with fourteen miles, to-night."
They were getting out of high timber now, into stunted limber pines, which were covered all over with bright reddish-pink cone buds, like flowers, and everywhere in the gra.s.s and trees around them Joe saw more beautiful wild flowers, and more kinds of wild flowers, than he had ever seen in his life before. It was like riding through a garden, with tremendous red mountain precipices for walls. Beside the trail was the Swift Current River, every now and then widening out into a lovely little green lake, and directly ahead of them, at the head of the canon, rose an almost perpendicular wall of rock for two thousand feet, to a lofty shelf, on which Swift Current Glacier, snow-covered now, hung like a gigantic white napkin. To the right was the Egyptian pyramid of Mount Wilbur. From the glacier, down over the precipice, were falling half a dozen white streams of waterfalls, like great silver ribbons. As they got nearer and nearer to this head wall, and it seemed to rise higher and higher over them, while the walls on each side of them, the one across the canon bright red, also grew higher and higher, Joe began to get nervous.
"Say," he finally asked, "are we going to _climb_ that?"
Mills looked back at him with a grin.
"Sure," he said.
"Well, I don"t see how," Joe answered. "I"m no goat."
[Ill.u.s.tration: Switchback Trail up Swift Current Pa.s.s]
Mills laughed again, but said no more. Instead, he plodded steadily on, till the great cliff wall seemed about to hit them in the face, and Joe could hear the thunder of the white waterfalls as they leaped and plunged down from the melting glacier two thousand feet over his head.
Just as he had decided the Ranger was playing a joke on him, for surely n.o.body could get up those walls, the trail turned sharp to the right, and began to go up.
Then Joe learned what a Rocky Mountain switchback is.
A switchback trail can be put up almost any slope that is not actually perpendicular, and the slope they were climbing now was not quite that, though to Joe it seemed pretty near it. The trail was about four or five feet wide, and was dug right out of the side of the hill. It went up at an angle of about twenty degrees, for perhaps two hundred feet to the right, then it swung sharp left on a steep hairpin turn and ran another two hundred or three hundred feet, took another sharp hairpin turn, and so on up, and up. When Joe had made one of these turns, he could look right down on the top of the blankets on the packhorse below him.
"Say," he called up to the Ranger, "what happens to you if your horse falls off here?"
"Your horse never falls off," Mills answered. "If he did, you"d probably take to harp playing. But he won"t."
They climbed up these switchbacks for two thousand feet or so, and then worked around a shoulder of the mountain so that they couldn"t see the glacier any more, but looking back down the canon Joe could see a great, narrow hole, with the green lakes like a string of jewels at the bottom, and at the far end, as blue and level as the ocean, the vast prairie.
"The prairie looks just like the ocean," he said.
"Does it?" said the Ranger. "I never saw the ocean. Must be fine."
In a minute or two they reached the first snow-field. Joe did not want to appear too green and excited, but he was almost trembling with excitement, just the same. He had reached the level of summer snow! He was above timber-line, or almost above, and here in a great northern hollow was a vast drift, four hundred feet wide and thirty feet deep in the middle, which Mills said would not melt all summer! Little streams of water were gushing out from the lower side, and the snow was very soft and coa.r.s.e, like rock salt. The trail went right across it, the horses picking their way carefully over the treacherous footing. They climbed but a little way more, and they were on the top of the pa.s.s.
When you think of a mountain pa.s.s, probably, you think of a deep valley or canon between the hills, but a pa.s.s is not like that at all in the high Rockies. In order to get over the Continental Divide (which the Indians called "the backbone of the world"), you have to climb, and the pa.s.s is simply a point on this spine which is not quite so high as other points, and can be reached, moreover, from the base. Joe found himself in a little meadow which was full of stunted pine trees, the last of the timber, with snowdrifts, and with bright gold dog-tooth violets, some of them coming right up and blossoming through two inches of snow. On either side of him, the Divide rose up perhaps another five hundred or a thousand feet, in pyramids of naked rock. Ahead, to the west, he could see a great hole, where the Divide dropped down on the other side, and ten miles away across this hole a wonderful sharp-peaked mountain all covered with snow, and looking like the pictures of the Alps in his old geography.
"What"s that mountain?" he asked.
"Heaven"s Peak," said the Ranger. "Good name for it, eh?"
"It sure is!" said Joe.
Mills stopped the horses in a little gra.s.sy glade, sheltered from the wind by a group of stunted pines, and unslung the packs.
"You"re going to make me some more of that coffee," he laughed, opening one of his dunnage bags.
While Joe was building the fire, Mills pointed up the great slope of naked, tumbled rocks to the south. "Climb up there some day," said he, "and down the other side, and you"ll get on top of the Divide above Swift Current Glacier. It"s narrow--just a knife blade, and all along the centre of it you"ll see a game trail."
While they were eating lunch, Joe was amused to see the ground squirrels--hundreds of them, it seemed--come up out of their holes in the gra.s.s and look at the intruders. They sat up on their hind legs, pressed their front paws against their stomachs, and made a _cheeping_ noise, almost like birds.
"Looks as if they were mechanical toys," Joe laughed, "and had to squeeze their middles to get a sound."
He put a piece of bread down side of him, to fill his cup again, and when he went to pick it up, it wasn"t there--it was vanishing into a hole!
"Mechanical toy, eh?" the Ranger grinned. "Pretty smart mechanism!"
Before they were through lunch, another party appeared from the west, coming up into the pa.s.s, and dismounting. This was a regular tourist party of men and women, with two cowboy guides.
"I thought they"d be along," said Mills. "I"m going to send you back with them. And now here"s what I really brought you for--I"ll be gone three or four days, and somebody"s got to look after Popgun (that"s the horse you"re riding). How"d you like to feed him every day, and give him some water, and a bit o" exercise, just around the lake, mind you. I don"t want you riding off alone on the trails."
Joe gasped with surprise and delight. "You--you mean it?" he asked.
"Sure I mean it. Don"t take me long to size folks up. I like you boys, and maybe we can help each other. Pretty lonely in my cabin, you know."
Mills gave him directions about the feed, and then went over and spoke to one of the guides. When he came back, he said to Joe, "Now, let"s see you throw a diamond hitch."
Joe did his best, but he had to have help.
"I could get it with two or three more tries, I bet!" he cried. "Then I could get a job as cook with a party, maybe."
"There"s a rope in the barn. You can be practicing," the Ranger laughed.
"So long."
"Good-bye, sir," Joe answered, as the lean Ranger swung into his saddle, called to his packhorse as if it were a dog, and disappeared down the trail to the west, the faithful packhorse plodding on behind.
The other party were a long time about their meal, and Joe climbed part way up the peak to the south, getting above the last timber, which consisted of tiny, twisted trees not over two feet high, and some of them growing along the very ground. Up here he found beautiful, tiny Alpine flowers in the rock crannies, he started up what looked like a big black and gray woodchuck, and which he later learned was a whistling marmot, and he came upon a bird, something like a partridge, but the same gray color as the rocks. This bird was followed by six little fluffy chicks, which went scuttering away with shrill little peeps into the maze of stones, and ten feet away couldn"t be seen, so like the stones were they.
"That"s protective coloring," Joe thought. "Wonder why they are colored that way?"
He was later to learn that this was a ptarmigan hen and her chicks, the largest bird which lives above timber in these mountains. No doubt it is colored like the rocks to protect it from the eye of foxes, eagles, and other foes.
Joe didn"t dare climb any higher, though he longed to get to the top, which now rose steep above him. He felt perfectly well, too, and the climbing didn"t make him cough. But he saw the party was packing up again, so he hurried down and cinched up another notch in his saddle to make sure it did not slip on the descent. He mounted and fell in behind the procession, which immediately began winding its way down the steep switchbacks. Joe, from the rear, could look almost directly down on the head of the leader, a hundred feet below him. One or two of the women were screaming, and now and then a stone, loosened by a house"s hoof, would go bounding down the slope with a terrifying rattle. But the horses, carefully putting one foot ahead of the other, were as calm and sure as if they were on level going, and nothing at all happened, of course.
Once on the comparatively level trail below, the leading guide broke into a trot, and the whole cavalcade came bouncing on behind. Joe bounced at first as much as anybody, but by dint of much trial, he got into the swing a little, and began to ride more comfortably. When they were on the level trail in the woods at last, a mile from the lake, the leader gave a yell, touched his spurs, and leaped out at a gallop. All the other horses, without waiting for any command, started in to gallop also, including Popgun. Joe yelled with the rest, jammed his cap on hard, hung to the horn of his saddle to keep aboard, and felt the wind rush against his face. Still galloping and shouting, the cavalcade dashed past the Ranger"s cabin, and on toward the tepee camp.
Joe hoped Spider would be around to see. He wanted to stop his horse at the tepees, but whether he could or not was another question. Popgun didn"t appear to have any intention of stopping till the rest did.
As they dashed in sight of the camp, he saw Spider standing by the trail. Joe yelled, "Hi--Tom!" and began to tug at the reins. Popgun came down to a trot obediently--and also suddenly, very nearly sending Joe out over his head. Another tug, and a "Whoa!" brought him up short, though his ears were p.r.i.c.ked up, and his eyes were following the galloping cavalcade now disappearing toward the hotel.
"Well--_what_ are you doing?" exclaimed the astonished Tom.
"I"m a regular cowboy now, eh, what? Allow me to introduce Popgun, my gallant broncho. We"ve been on top of the Great Divide, we have, and seen the water going toward the Pacific, and, gee I know where there"s a game trail we can climb to, and I"m goin" to have this horse to ride for three or four days, and feed him, and--and all."