"I"ve seen sheep and goats go around a ledge on a sheer precipice that wasn"t over four inches wide, and stop to scratch themselves on the way!"
"I"m going to climb up there and see how steep that place is!" Bob cried.
"Hooray! Us, too," said Alice and Lucy. "Come on, Joe."
Mills was smiling, and Joe thought once more of the story of the Englishman. He told the story now, and Mills smiled again.
"Is it that far, Mr. Mills--now, honestly?" the girls asked.
"Go ahead and try it," the Ranger said, still smiling. "I"ll come along, like Joe"s friend."
The five of them started out, worked around the head of the lake, and began at once to climb the long, steep, rough shale pile at the foot of the first cliff. Above this first cliff was another slope, before the cliff began on which they had seen the goats. It was hard going, with thick patches of timber-line scrub spruces which held you like iron and tore like barbed wire, and sharp, irregular rocks of all sizes, and slopes of loose, small stones that gave way underfoot, and even patches of snow. They toiled on, Mills in the rear this time, still smiling, until at last they reached the foot of the first cliff, and looked far down at the lake and their tents. They could see the people there, the horses, even Joe"s fire pit and a tin kettle.
"Why, I could almost throw a stone down on "em," said Bob, "yet I feel as if we"d come a long way."
He looked at his watch.
"Gee whiz, we"ve been gone "most two hours already!" he cried. Then he looked up at the cliff above, which was almost perpendicular. The girls looked at it, too. Joe looked at it, and longed for Spider and a rope to tackle it. But he did not see how any one could safely climb it without a rope. Mills looked at the four of them--and still smiled.
"Well," he said, finally, "going on?"
"You win," Bob admitted reluctantly. "We"re the goats."
"No, the trouble is, we"re not!" laughed Lucy. "If we were, we could keep on."
So they started back, sliding down a snow-field by sitting down and "letting her go"--which was rapid, but very damp.
"The goats win," said Bob, as they reached camp almost three hours later.
"And yet we could see you all the way," his father said "Now I realize what Rocky Mountain air is."
That night they had a big camp-fire, and a sing--all the songs every one knew, with Val playing on a harmonica he fished sheepishly out of his saddle-bag. Then they all "turned in" early, to be ready for a long trip the next day.
CHAPTER XIV--Up the Divide in a Rain, With a Lost Horse On the Way, and a Howling Snow-Storm At the Top
Joe was still sleepy when the Ranger shook him by the shoulder.
"Get up," said Mills. "We"re in for a rain before night, sure. I want to get as far as we can before it begins. Get breakfast, and put up some stuff handy for lunch, so you can get it without unpacking."
Joe crawled out into a new, strange world. For the first time since he"d been in the Park it was not a clear day. The clouds hung low, way down over the tops and sides of the mountains, gray, dull clouds, with ghostly strings of vapor moving around on the under side. Sperry Glacier was invisible, and the vapors were half-way down the wall where the goats had been. Here, in the deep bowl of Avalanche Basin, with its towering, precipitous sides, the result was that Joe felt exactly as if he were shut in down at the bottom of a huge well, a well with a gray smoke cover over it. Even the bright green water of the little lake, without any sunlight, had turned a dull, chalky green, and looked ominous and unreal, as if you would catch dead fish in it.
"I don"t like this--I feel as if I were in a prison," he said to the Ranger, as he kindled his fire.
"You may like it less before we get to Granite Park," Mills answered.
"Put your poncho over your saddle to-day--you"re going to need it."
Then he woke the camp.
Everybody felt more or less as Joe did, and breakfast was curiously quiet. Even Bob stopped his gay chatter. They got an early start, and were soon down on the main trail beside McDonald Creek, and plugging north through the deep forest of pines, larches and Englemann spruce. It was dull, monotonous work, with no view at all, for when there was an opening in the woods, all they could see was a cliff wall going up into the gray cloud overhead, which shut down over them like a roof. Mile after mile they went, now and then Bob or the girls starting a song, but soon stopping it. The trail was wet and muddy underfoot, and there were some fallen trees to jump. Moreover, the packhorses were, for some reason, particularly badly behaved that day, and Joe and Val nearly lost their tempers a dozen times as they rode into the brush, to head off some packhorse which was trying to get out of line.
When they stopped for lunch, it had already begun to drizzle. Joe made coffee, and pa.s.sed out the usual collection of food for a Charlie Chaplin sandwich. By the time lunch was eaten, the drizzle had settled down into a misty rain, and the trees had begun to drip. Then everybody realized why they had been carrying around slickers on their saddles. On went these slickers--long, yellow rubber coats such as are worn by the Gloucester fishermen. They fitted the men all right, but poor Lucy and Alice were completely enveloped, with the sleeves coming down over their hands. Joe put his head through the hole in his poncho--and that was all right till he came to mount his horse. Then he discovered that a poncho is decidedly not the thing for horseback riding, for his knees and legs kept coming out from under, on either side, and as the trees and bushes were soon dripping wet, and the rain kept falling, he was speedily soaked almost to the waist. It grew colder, too. But there was nothing to do but plod on, through the wet, miry trail.
However, very soon after lunch, the trail suddenly left the canon, and headed east right up the side wall, to Swift Current Pa.s.s.
"Less than three miles to camp," Mills called back; "and three thousand feet to climb," he added.
"Three thousand feet in less than three miles," Joe reflected. "Let"s see, Mount Lafayette in the White Mountains is fifty-two hundred feet high, and the trail starts from the Profile House, which is nineteen hundred feet up. That makes only thirty-three hundred feet, and the trail is five miles long."
Then Joe thought of that trail, which he had climbed only two summers before, and how steep it was, and whistled to himself.
"We"re in for it," he thought.
And he was right. Ordinarily, this trail, while it is steep and not well graded or maintained, is easy enough for a Rocky Mountain horse; but now, with the rain pouring down, it was converted into a regular brook in places, and in other places, where the rocks were bare or mossy, it was slippery as ice.
"Everybody off, and take hold of the tails of your horses," Mills finally ordered, after two horses had almost slipped off.
"I can"t walk up here! What do you think I hired this horse for?" Mrs.
Jones demanded.
"Well, your horse can"t walk up here with you on him," the Ranger replied. "I"m not responsible for the weather. You"ll have to walk, or break your neck."
And Joe could see he wanted to add--"I don"t care which."
Bob and the girls grabbed their horses by the tails, and scrambled up rapidly to the next easy stretch, but their fathers and mothers climbed up more slowly, while Mills drove up the horses. Then d.i.c.k, Val and Joe drove up the packhorses, which, of course, couldn"t be unloaded, and had a hard time. All of them were up but two, and they were breathing easier, when the next to the last horse, on a slippery ledge, b.u.mped his pack against the upper wall, slipped out toward the edge, pawed madly with his hoofs, got no grip on the skin of wet, slimy moss and mud which covered the rock, and went over backward, with a wild whinny, and staring, frightened eyes.
Fortunately, it was not straight down here, only a very steep slope, and twenty feet below was a thick tangle of scrub pine and tall huckleberry bushes. The poor horse tipped over on his back, turned a complete double somersault, and landed crash against the pines, where he lay struggling to get on his feet again. Joe, Val, d.i.c.k and Mills all dashed down to him, and one held his head while the rest got the pack off his back. He got up on his feet, trembling, and the Ranger and d.i.c.k felt him all over.
"I guess the pack saved him, at that," Mills said. "He fell on the blankets. Well, boys, haul the stuff up."
They each took part of the load, and carried it to the level above, while the Ranger led up the poor, frightened horse. At the top the party was waiting, huddled in the rain. They were a sorry and comical looking lot, and though Joe"s own feet were soaked, and he was wet to the skin below the hips, and he was cold, he certainly wanted to laugh. Water was dripping from the women"s hair, Mrs. Jones" face looked blacker than the clouds which hung in the trees just above her, Mrs. Elkins looked as if she was about to cry any minute, Mr. Elkins simply looked wet and cold and mad, and Alice and Lucy, almost buried in their enormous slickers, were trying to sing to keep up their courage. Only Bob was still cheerful. He was eating wet huckleberries--wet and half green.
It was a nasty, wet job getting the pack on again, and Mills sent the party on ahead, with d.i.c.k to guide them. But the Granite Park chalet was not far away. They were over the worst of the trail. In another half hour, after crossing a meadow which was now full of running brooks, and climbing up a last steep pitch, Joe suddenly saw the chalet emerge from the heavy cloud, as if a picture of Switzerland in his old school geography had popped out of a fog right over his head. Built partly of stone and partly of rough timber, exactly in the style of a Swiss chalet, this building was about the size of an ordinary house. Joe knew by the map that it was almost up to the top of Swift Current Pa.s.s, just below the Great Divide, but you could not have told it now. The clouds were swirling all around, and it was already so cold that the rain was beginning to freeze as fast as it hit, making a thin skin of ice on the rocks.
Unpacking the horses, and getting the packs piled under the shelter of the porch, and then taking the horses to a rough stable near by, was done in a hurry. The three men then dove into the kitchen door, into the warmth of the fire which roared in a red hot stove.
In the big front room there was another stove roaring, and around that the party were already huddled, waiting for their dunnage bags, to get out dry clothes. Joe and d.i.c.k brought the bags in, and each one went to a room up-stairs to change. Joe himself had dry underclothes, socks, and a pair of shoes, but he had no extra trousers. He and the cowboys and Mills changed as much as they could in the kitchen, but Joe had to put his wet trousers on again. When Lucy came down, in a skirt and dry shoes, she saw this at once.
"Oh, Joe, you _must_ get some dry trousers," she said. "You mustn"t run such a risk."
Joe laughed. "Oh, I"m all right," he said. "Won"t hurt me--I"ve been exercising."
"But you"re not exercising now. I"m going to fix you."
She went over and spoke to the manager in charge of the chalet; he nodded, and went into the little room where he slept, emerging with a pair of his own trousers. As he was some six inches larger around the middle than Joe, everybody laughed, and they laughed more when Joe reappeared, with the trousers on.