Boy Scouts in Glacier Park.
by Walter Prichard Eaton.
FOREWORD
Glacier Park is one of the newest, as well as one of the most beautiful, of our National Parks. It is peculiarly fitted to be a summer playground, both for men and women who prefer to travel on horseback and "rough it" by putting up at a hotel at night, and for the true mountain lovers, who delight to use their own legs in climbing, and to sleep under the stars. This book has been written primarily to show Young America just how interesting, exciting, full of outdoor adventure, and full, too, of real education, life in this National park can be. We can promise our boy readers, and their parents, too, that there isn"t any "faking" in this story. The trips we tell about are all real trips, and if you go to Glacier Park you can take them all--all, that is, except, perhaps, the climb up the head wall of Iceberg Lake. You have to have a real mountaineer as a guide, with a real Alpine rope, in order to make that trip. It was fortunate for Tom that one came along. Then, too, unless you stay in the Park over the winter, you haven"t much chance of riding down a mountain on a snowslide. Possibly you wouldn"t want to. I never knew anybody who took that trip intentionally! Tom and Joe and the Ranger were unlucky enough to take it, and lucky enough to live to tell the tale.
This book isn"t written just to use the Rocky Mountains as a background for adventures which never really could happen to ordinary boys. It is written, on the contrary, to show what fine adventures can happen to ordinary boys, in one of the finest and most healthful and beautiful spots in this great country of ours, if only the boys have pluck, and have been good Scouts enough to learn how to take care of themselves in the open.
And it is written, too, in order to tell about Glacier Park, to make you want to go there and see it for yourself, to make you glad and proud that the United States has set aside for the use of all the public such a splendid playground, and to make you, if possible, more determined than ever to protect this, and all our other parks and State and National forests, from the attacks of the men who are always trying to get laws pa.s.sed to let them spoil the meadows and the wildflowers with their sheep, or cut the forests for timber, putting their selfish gain above the welfare of the whole people.
W. P. E.
Twin Fires Sheffield, Ma.s.sachusetts 1918
CHAPTER I--Joe Gets Bad News About His Lungs--His "Pipes," as Spider Called Them
"What"s the matter, Joe, lost all your pep?" asked Tom Seymour, as he slowed his pace down so that his tired companion could keep up with him.
It was a Sat.u.r.day morning in May, and the two boys, in their scout suits, with heavy shoes on, were tramping through the woods, where the spring flowers were beginning to appear and the little leaf buds were bursting out on the trees. Both Tom Seymour and his chum, Joe Clark, loved the woods, and especially in early spring they got into them whenever they could, to see how the birds and animals had come through the winter, and then a little later to watch for the flowers and see the foliage come.
But this day Joe seemed to be getting tired. They were tramping up a hillside, through mould softened by a recent rain, that made the footing difficult, and though Joe was trying to keep up, Tom realized that something was the matter.
"Say, Joe, old scout, what ails you, anyhow?" he asked again.
"Oh, it"s nothing," Joe answered. "I"ve had a cold for a month, you know, and it"s pulled me down, that"s all. Ma"s giving me some tonic.
I"ll be all right. But I do get awful tired lately."
He stopped just then and began to cough.
"I wish you"d shake that old cold," Tom said. "I"m getting sick of hearing you bark in school--you always tune up just as Pap Forbes is calling on me to translate Caesar. And if you don"t shake it, you"ll be no good for the team, and how"s the Southmead High School going to trim Mercerville without you on second bag?"
Joe stopped coughing as soon as he could, and demanded, "Well, you don"t think I keep the old thing around because I like it, do you? I"ll give it to anybody who"ll cart it off. Come on--let"s forget it!"
They started up the hill again, which grew steeper as they advanced, and presently Tom realized once more that Joe couldn"t keep up. As he had to breathe harder with the increased steepness, too, he began to cough again.
"Say, have you been to see a doctor?" Tom demanded.
"Oh, sure," said Joe, sitting down on a rock to rest "Ma had old Doc Jones in first week I was sick, and he gave me some stuff--tasted like a mixture of kerosene and skunk cabbage, too."
"Doc Jones is no good," Tom declared. "My father says he wouldn"t have him for a sick cat. He doesn"t even know there are germs. Mr. Rogers told me the Doc thought it was foolish to make us scouts boil the water from strange brooks before we drank it. Haven"t you been to anybody else since, when you didn"t get better?"
"Say, what do you think I am, a millionaire?" said Joe. "I can"t be spending money on fancy doctors, and get through high school, too. Ma"s got all she can handle now, with food and everything costing so much."
"I know all that, old scout," Tom answered, putting his hand on Joe"s shoulder. "But I guess it would cost your mother more if you were laid up, wouldn"t it? Now, I"ve got a hunch you need some good doc to give you the once over. Are you tired all the time like this?"
"Oh, no," Joe replied. "Or only at night, mostly," he added. "I get kind of hot and tired at night, and I can"t do much work. That"s why I"ve been flunking Caesar. Old Pap thinks I"m lying down on the job, but I really ain"t. I try every evening, but the words get all mixed together on the page."
Tom sprang to his feet with the quick, almost catlike agility which, in combination with his thin, rather tall and very wiry frame, had earned for him the nickname of Spider.
"You come along with me," he said.
"Depends on where you"re going," Joe laughed.
"Say, I"m patrol leader, ain"t I?"
"You are, but this isn"t the patrol. We aren"t under scout discipline to-day."
"_You_ are," laughed Tom. "You"re going to do just what I tell you. Come on, now!"
He grabbed Joe by the wrist and brought him to his feet. Joe didn"t resist, either, though Tom expected a sc.r.a.p. He came along meekly down the hill, through the wet, fragrant woods. Once on the village street, Spider led the way directly to Mr. Rogers" house, and "round the house to the studio, and knocked on the door.
The scout master opened it. He was wearing his long artist"s ap.r.o.n, and had his big palette, covered with all the colors of the rainbow, thrust over the thumb of his left hand.
"h.e.l.lo, Spider; h.e.l.lo, Joe," he said. "What"s the trouble? Has the tenderfoot patrol mutinied?"
The boys came in.
"No, sir, but Joe"s windpipes have," said Tom. He quickly told about his chum"s cold, and how he got tired now all the time.
"Now, cough for the gentleman, Joe," he added with a laugh.
Joe laughed, too, which actually did set him to coughing.
But Mr. Rogers didn"t laugh. He looked very grave, and began to take off his ap.r.o.n. He washed his hands, put on his coat, and with a short, "Come, boys," started down the path.
There was a famous doctor in Southmead who didn"t practice in the town at all. His patients came from various parts of the country, to be treated for special diseases, and they lived while there in a sort of hotel-sanitorium. It was said that this doctor, whose name was Meyer, charged twenty dollars a visit. The boys soon realized that Mr. Rogers was headed for his house.
"Say, who does he think I am, John D. Rockefeller?" Joe whispered to Tom.
"Don"t you worry," Tom whispered back. "He"s a friend of old Doc Meyer"s, all right. He"ll fix it. You trot along."
They had to wait in the doctor"s anteroom some time, as he had a patient in the office. Finally he came out and greeted Mr. Rogers warmly. He was not a native of Southmead, but had come there only two or three years ago from New York, to have his sanitorium in the country, and he had always been so busy that most of the townspeople scarcely knew him. Tom and Joe, while they had seen him, had never spoken with him before. He was a middle-aged Jew, with gold spectacles on his big nose, and large, kindly brown eyes, which grew very keen as he looked at the boys, and seemed to pierce right through them.
The scout master spoke to him a moment, in a low voice, and then he led all three into his office. It wasn"t like any doctor"s office the scouts had ever been in. It looked more like some sort of a mysterious laboratory, except for the flat-top office desk in the middle, and the strange chair, with wheels and joints, which could evidently be tipped at any angle, or made into a flat surface like an elevated sofa. There was a great X-ray machine, and many other strange devices, and rows of test tubes on a white enameled table, and sinks and sterilizers.
The doctor patted Joe on the head as if he"d been a little boy instead of a first cla.s.s scout sixteen years old, going on seventeen, and large for his age. He sat Joe down in a chair and asked him a lot of questions first, making some notes on a card which he took out of a small filing cabinet that was like a library catalogue case. Then he told him to undress.
Joe stripped to the waist, and stood up while the doctor tapped his shoulders, his chest, his back, and then listened with his ear down both on his chest and back, and finally he took a stethoscope and went over every square inch of surface, front and back, covering his lungs, while he made the patient cough, say "Ah," draw in a deep breath, and expel it slowly. Finally he took his temperature, and a sample of sputum.
Meanwhile Tom looked on with a rapidly increasing alarm. He knew a little something about tuberculosis, and realized it was for that he was examining his chum. He knew what a deadly disease it is, too, if it is not caught in time, and he began to feel sick in the pit of his stomach.
He wanted to cry out to the doctor and demand that he tell him at once that old Joe did not have this terrible disease--that he was all right, that it was nothing but a cold. But, of course, he said not a word.