"Sure, if it"s something I can do. You know, I"m a regular grafter now, just living off Spider. What is it?"
"Cooking mostly. Tastes to me as if you could do that," the Ranger said, as he took a sip of Joe"s coffee, and a bite of the fried eggs and bacon Joe had also cooked for him, as they talked.
"I can cook all right--I learned that in the Boy Scouts," Joe answered, eagerly. "Is it for a party?"
"Yes, it"s a special party--a couple o" congressmen and their wives and families. The Park superintendent wants me to show "em around the circuit a bit--have to be nice to congressmen, because Congress appropriates what little money we get to build trails with. All the camp cooks are out on trips now, and I"m up against it unless you"ll go along."
"I"m your man!" Joe cried, eagerly.
"Well, you"re as good as a man when it comes to coffee," Mills grinned.
"I"ll get a guide to help out with the packing and the heavy work. We start to-morrow morning, early. Be up here at seven."
"O.K.," cried Joe, with a salute, and hurried back to tell Tom the news.
Spider looked grave. "I dunno about it," said he. "You know what the doc said about overworking. I dunno whether I"ll let you go."
"But it won"t be overworking," Joe cried. "Gee, I feel great now, anyhow, and it"s just cooking, and the Ranger"s going to get a guide to do the heavy packing, and I"ll be on horseback all the time, and out in the air, and, gosh, but it"s a great chance to see the Park, and earn some money to pay you back----"
"Oh, forget that!" said Tom. "What"s your pay going to be?"
"Don"t know--didn"t stop to ask," Joe laughed.
"You"re a great little business man, you are," Tom said. "Well, you can try it this trip, if you"ll come over now to the hotel and get weighed, and have your temperature taken."
The hikers had gone for the day, and the camp was vacant, so the two scouts went around to the hotel at once, and Joe climbed on the scales.
Tom set them at a hundred and thirty, but the weight did not drop. He moved the indicator weight pound by pound till he reached a hundred and thirty-nine, before he reached a balance.
"Gosh," cried Joe, "that"s almost ten pounds I"ve put on since I left little old Southmead!"
"Yes, and you haven"t coughed for a week," Tom added. "You"re on the mend, all right, all right. But you got to stay so, and I dunno about letting you go on this trip--it"ll be hard work cooking for a whole lot o" people."
"Aw, please!" Joe pleaded. "I feel great now, honest I do. Besides, it"s all out in the open air."
"Well, you can try it this once," Tom finally said. "But if you have any fever, or have lost any weight, or are f.a.gged, when you get back, or have any signs of a cold, or cough, no more trips for you!"
"Yes, doctor," Joe answered, meekly.
They went back to the camp, and Joe spent the afternoon studying the government topographical survey map of the Park he had bought at the hotel, overhauling his personal equipment, and then, at the supply depot of the Glacier Park Saddle Company, which furnishes the horses, tents, guides, blankets, etc., for camping and horseback parties in the Park, selecting what he wanted in the way of cooking utensils and provisions for his party.
Mills said they would be out five days, and there were to be two men, two women, two girls and a boy in the party, besides Mills, Joe and two guides, for Mills had decided they"d need two. That made eleven people in all, or a hundred and sixty-five individual meals. Joe began to think, when he came to figure it out, that it was more of a job than it looked at first, especially when all the stuff had to be packed on horseback. He planned for canned soups, for coffee, tea and cocoa, served with condensed milk, of course; for plenty of bacon; for two or three meals of eggs, packed in a small crate; for two meals of beef (which, of course, would not keep, and would have to be served the first two days out); for pancakes and "saddle blankets" (a kind of pan-fried cake served with syrup, the syrup coming in cans); for bread, of course, if he had time to make any; and, finally, beans, sardines, crackers, some canned vegetables, and jam, marmalade and canned peaches. All these things could be carried easily, as they came in tins or jars. All that was needed were the horses. He got everything ready to be packed in the morning, and hurried back to camp to get Tom"s supper. Tom was busy with a big crowd of hikers, who had just arrived over Piegan Pa.s.s, and it was late before the two boys sat down to their meal.
"I sort of hate to go now," Joe said. "I"ll be seeing all the Park, and you having to stick around here and make beds for the hikers. When I get back, I"m going to ask Big Bertha to let me run the camp, while you have a trip."
"_Yes_ you are!" Spider laughed. "You"re going to rest a whole week after you get back. You look tired already. Guess I won"t let you go, after all."
"I"d like to see you stop me!" Joe answered, as he took a third helping of pancakes.
"Well, you eat like a well man, I must admit," said Spider, reaching for what was left.
CHAPTER IX--Over Piegan Pa.s.s to St. Mary Lake, Underneath the Precipices
Promptly at seven, Joe was at the Ranger"s cabin. He had already cooked Tom"s breakfast, and Tom was over at the camp, helping the hikers to get theirs. The sun had long been up, and the day was clear and perfect. In fact, there hadn"t yet been a rainy day since the scouts reached the Park. But Mills had told Joe to bring his rubber poncho, so he had it with him. He was to ride Popgun, of course, and the Ranger and he put their personal equipment of blankets, tent, extra clothing, ponchos, axes, and the like, on the Ranger"s packhorse, and started for the big hotel.
"I"ve got hold of a good extra man," Mills said. "With so many skirts in the party, we"ll have a big pack-train, for they insist on sleeping out instead of going to the chalets. I was over last night to see "em."
"Where are we going to-day?" Joe asked.
"Piegan Pa.s.s," Mills answered, "and make camp to-night by the lake.
That"s twenty-two miles. To-morrow we"ll go to Gunsight Lake--that"s only seven, and it"ll be all they"ll want after to-day--and rest up, and let "em climb Blackfeet Glacier if they want to."
At the hotel the two cowboy guides, one of them not very much older than Joe, were already on hand with the horses and Joe"s equipment of stores, and the cooking kit, and three tents, and innumerable blankets. It made such a pile of stuff that you"d have thought it would need a regiment of horses to carry it, but Mills and the two guides went about the task of packing it on to the backs of five horses, and so well did they stow it away, properly balanced on either side and made fast with ropes in diamond hitches, that the horses didn"t seem to mind it in the least, though they looked more like camels than horses. It was eight o"clock before this work was done, and by that time the tourists appeared, with their dunnage bags, which had to be packed on two more horses.
Joe had never seen a congressman before, except once when he went to a political rally and he could not help staring at the two men as they approached, and wanting to laugh. Beside Mills and the two cowboys, they looked so unfitted for this job of riding a horse over the high trails!
They looked about as unfit as the cowboys would have looked in Congress.
Both of them still wore long trousers and ordinary boots, though they had bought themselves flannel shirts and soft hats at the hotel store, and sweaters. Their wives were not very much better equipped, though both of them had bought khaki divided riding skirts (for n.o.body is allowed to ride a side saddle in the Park). Beside the two congressmen and their wives, there were two girls about twenty, and a boy about Joe"s age. One of the girls was the daughter of Congressman Elkins of New Jersey, the other two of Congressman Jones of Pennsylvania. All three of the young people, Joe noted, were better equipped. The girls had regular riding breeches and leather leggins, like a man"s, and the boy had khaki riding breeches and high boots.
As soon as their dunnage bags had been packed on two more horses, the job of getting the women into their saddles began, and then getting the stirrups adjusted right. The girls and young Jones were up and ready long before their mothers were, and making uncomplimentary remarks.
"Say, ma," called young Jones, "if your horse bucks, grab his tail. That always stops "em."
"Father looks as scared as when he made his first speech in the House,"
laughed Miss Elkins.
"Nonsense!" said that statesman. "I rode a horse many a time when I was a boy."
"That was a long time ago, papa dear," his daughter said.
"And pray when did you learn to ride?" her father asked, trying to get comfortable in his saddle.
"Oh, it"s just going to come natural to me," she answered, with one of her rippling laughs that Joe liked to hear.
Mills walked through the little group of mounted riders, gave a testing pull to all the saddle girths, looked at the stirrups, and vaulted into his own saddle.
"You keep the two horses with the dunnage bags, and our own packhorse, in front of you, just behind the last rider," he said to Joe. Then he touched his horse with his heel, and the animal jumped up the trail. The rest followed--first the party of tourists, behind Mills, then one of the guides to keep an eye on them, then three packhorses, then Joe to keep an eye on these three, then the five other packhorses, and finally the second guide to watch them. In all, then, there were nineteen horses strung out along the trail in single file, which made a considerable procession, as Joe looked forward and then back upon it.
The trail they were on did not go past the tepee camp, so Joe had no chance to call good-bye to Tom. It went along the other sh.o.r.e of Lake McDermott, sometimes on the little rocky beach, sometimes almost in the water, heading directly up the valley toward the great gray fortress of Gould Mountain and Grinnell Glacier, which Joe could see glistening like a huge white and green silk mantle flung along a high ledge just under the spine of the Continental Divide. Mills broke into a trot as soon as the party was well started, and ahead Joe could see the two congressmen and their wives bounding up and down, and noticed that Congressman Elkins, who said he rode when he was a boy, bounded quite as much as any one. Of course, the packhorses wanted to trot, too, and Joe saw the guide in front turning back and gesticulating to him. He gave Popgun a jab in the ribs, and rode past his three charges, getting in front of them, and then pulled Popgun down to a walk. If he had not, of course, the packs might soon have been shaken off. The tourists were soon out of sight up the trail, in the woods, and Joe and Val, the young cowboy, were left alone, with the eight pack animals.
It looked like an easy job they had, too, but Joe soon found it was not so easy as it looked. Some one of the eight was always wanting to fall out of line and eat a particularly tempting bunch of gra.s.s, or else took it into his silly head to make a detour into the woods, and then he had to be yelled at, or chased and driven into line again. Joe found himself fairly busy most of the first four miles of the trail, till they reached Grinnell Meadow, where the rest of the party had halted and were waiting for them.
Grinnell Meadow, Joe thought, was the most beautiful place he had ever been in. It was a gra.s.sy glade of twenty acres, at the foot of Grinnell Lake, and was studded with little fir trees and carpeted with great white chalice cups, which are a kind of big anemone. The lake itself was green in color, and maybe half a mile across. The far side lay right under a two thousand foot precipice which sprang up to the glacier, and down this precipice, from under the lip of the glacier, were pouring half a dozen very slender waterfalls, like long white ribbons let down the rocks. Just to the left the vast cliff wall of Mount Gould shot straight up to the almost ten thousand foot summit. (Of course, the meadow being five or six thousand feet above sea level, this wall of Gould wasn"t ten thousand feet high, but only about four thousand.)
As soon as Mills saw the packhorses appear, however, he gave the signal to proceed, so Joe did not have time to look about much. The trail crossed the meadow, the ground squirrels peeking out of their holes and chattering angrily at the disturbance, and then turned left, and began at once to climb, alongside of the great cliff of Gould Mountain. They climbed beside a roaring brook, and Joe soon realized that they weren"t going up Gould at all, but up the side canon to the east. They hadn"t gone a mile before this brook was far below them, and they looked across the deep hole it had made to the towering cliffs of Gould. Gould is a part of the Great Divide, and Joe could now see more plainly than ever before the strata of the earth crust--layer on layer of different colored stone, like the layers in a gigantic cake. All down the precipices were coming waterfalls, from the snow-fields above, and Joe and Val reckoned that one fall took a clean jump of twenty-five hundred feet. They could hear the thunder of it, across the canon, though it was not nearly so loud as you might think, because most of the water turned to mist before it reached the bottom.
Now the trail began to get into the region of switchbacks, and Joe could see the horses of all the party strung out far ahead, and then suddenly doubling on their tracks so Mills would pa.s.s almost over his head, and speak to him as he went by. Before long, he saw Mills halt, where the trail went close to a beautiful waterfall, and as he came up, he heard the Ranger telling the party that it was Morning Eagle Falls.