"What a place to ski!" said Joe.
"Wow!" yelled Bob, "you bet! You"d get some jump at the bottom, too."
Mills grinned. "About as far as whichever place you"re going to when you die," he said, as he began to uncoil his three ropes, fastening them together.
"What"s the big idea?" asked Bob. "That snow"s soft; you wouldn"t slip in that."
And, to prove it, he started down the rocks, and out on to the snow-covered glacier.
Mills suddenly spoke with a sharp note Joe had never heard him use.
"Come back here!" he said.
Bob came.
"Now, Joe," he said, "you go first on the rope, because you"ve got spikes in your shoes. We"ve got to look out for creva.s.ses. Sound your footing when it looks suspicious. We"d need Alpine stocks to go far."
He fastened one end under Joe"s arms.
"You next, d.i.c.k, to brace if Joe goes under. Then the rest of you, and I"ll be the rear anchor."
He made the rope fast around d.i.c.k, twenty feet behind Joe, then told Bob and the girls to hold it fast at equal intervals, and fastened the rear end around his own waist
"Now, Joe, let her go," he said.
Joe went down the rocks, and out on the great snow-field, tilted like the roof of a house. It was soft, as Bob had said, but not like ordinary soft snow. It was more like walking in cold, wet, rock salt, and the footing was anything but sure. Joe went cautiously, slowly climbing upward and outward at the same time, and as he looked below him, down that smooth, glistening, white slope, and realized that if he once got started sliding he would probably go half a mile and shoot off the lower edge into s.p.a.ce, he felt his heart, for a minute, go down somewhere into his boots. So he looked up, instead of downward, and felt better.
Everything went well for some hundreds of yards, and the whole party, on their rope, were well out on the great snow-field, when Joe saw just ahead of him a very slight depression in the snow. Bracing with his right foot, he put his left forward, and hit this depression smartly. It caved in! He tried to spring back, yelling to d.i.c.k to brace, but his right foot, with nothing but snow for the spikes to hold in, slipped, and he felt himself going down. He had no time to think, only just a terrible flash in his brain of accidents he had read about to Alpine climbers, before the rope caught him under the armpits with a cruel yank; he hung for a minute surrounded by the wet, cold snow which was falling down his neck, and then he felt himself being tugged up again by d.i.c.k.
Mills had come up, bringing the rope around Bob and the girls in a loop, by the time d.i.c.k had him out.
"Hurt?" he asked.
Joe was poking snow out of his neck, and loosening the grip of the rope under his arms.
"I--I guess not!" he panted. "Gee, that gave me some surprise, though. I thought something was coming, and tested it with one foot, but the other slipped."
"We ought to have ice axes," Mills said. "The snow"s getting too thin.
Back"s the word."
Joe looked around at the rest of the party, and saw that Lucy and Alice had turned deadly pale, and even Bob was looking sober.
"Are you sure you aren"t hurt, Joe?" Lucy asked.
"I"ll get dinner, O.K.," Joe answered.
Meanwhile Mills had approached the hole where Joe went under, and called the rest to come and look, one by one, while he and d.i.c.k braced the rope.
Joe looked, too. His fall had collapsed a snow bridge over a creva.s.se, and through the hole, which was six feet wide or more, they could see down through a layer of snow into what looked like a bottomless slit between walls of dirty green ice. A cold, damp, chilling breath came up from the hole, and far below they could hear water running.
"Now you get the big idea, Bob, eh?" said Mills. "See why we had the rope?"
"Yes, and I bet old cookie"s glad it was a strong one," Bob replied.
"Say, I wish it had been me"d been ahead!"
"Oh, do you?" the Ranger laughed. "Want to be lowered down?"
"Oh, no--Mr. Mills!" Alice cried.
"Cheer up, he wouldn"t let me," Mills grinned. "Besides, he"s too fat and heavy to pull up again."
"If a feller fell down there, and they didn"t get him up, and he froze into the ice, would he come out some time at the bottom of the glacier?"
Bob asked.
"I guess he would," said Mills, "but his widow might get tired waiting and marry again."
"Mr. Mills, you"re perfectly awful" said Lucy, with a shudder. "Take us back from this horrid place."
[Ill.u.s.tration: Creva.s.se in Blackfeet Glacier]
They went back carefully in their own tracks, and rejoined the congressmen, who, it seemed, had climbed where they could watch, and had seen the whole thing from a distance. There was much excited talk about Joe"s experience all the way down (on the down trip they led their horses over the steep part, needing no help on the descent), and Joe, sore as he was under the arms and rather shaky from the shock, began to feel like quite a hero. In fact, by the time they reached the level meadows at camp, it did not seem terrible at all, and every one had begun to enjoy it.
"Except me," said Lucy. "I shall dream all night of the way poor Joe"s head went suddenly out of sight, and I saw d.i.c.k bracing on that rope and wondered if it would hold!"
"The moral is," said her father, "have a good rope."
"I should say the moral was, don"t climb in foolish places," Mrs. Jones declared, for the two women had of course been told the story at once.
"Gee, ma," Bob declared, "if everybody was like you, we wouldn"t know there were any Rocky Mountains. Somebody"s got to take a chance!"
Mills had said nothing. Now he spoke, in his brief, quiet way.
"It was a sound rope. n.o.body took a chance," he said. "We don"t let "em in the Park."
There did not seem to be any reply to this. The girls went into their tent to rest, Joe changed his wet boots--which were soaked with the snow--and his wet shirt, and set busily about getting dinner. After all, he was the cook, and there was no further time for being a hero.
CHAPTER XII--Over Gunsight to Lake McDonald, and Joe and Bob See a Grizzly at Close Range
There was no story telling that night. Dinner was late, and afterwards the dusk came earlier up here under the shadows of the great cliffs, and every one except the two women was glad enough to crawl in early. Joe was gladdest of all. He had to confess that he was tired, as well as sore--and now he realized that he had disobeyed all orders not to climb and take strenuous exercise. But he felt of his head, as his mother used to do, and could detect no fever, and he had not coughed once, so he did not worry enough to keep himself awake more than one minute and a quarter. In the morning, he was awake almost as soon as the Ranger, and sat up feeling fine. Lucy was the next up, as usual, and once more her cheerful self. She gathered fresh wild flowers--a great bunch of yellow columbine and blue false forget-me-nots, for the "table," while Joe was cooking, and asked him how he felt, and sang softly to herself, and then asked him again if the fresh, clear, morning air way up here in these high mountains was not the most wonderful thing in the world.
"It"s medicine to me, all right," Joe answered, looking up and watching the sun come over the rock bastions of Citadel and turn to pink and gold the snow-fields on Fusillade. "Gee, I think mountains--big mountains--are just the best ever!"
"The best ever, that"s what they are, Joe, and you"re going back East so big and strong that your own mother won"t know you. You must write to me and tell me about it, won"t you?"