"You bet I will," Joe replied, turning red over his fire. It certainly was almost like being home to have some one like Lucy Elkins be so interested in him, and kindly and sweet. The fire was very smoky, and got into Joe"s eyes, and he had to wipe them--but Lucy did not see, or, if she did, she pretended not to.
"Well," said Mills, after breakfast, "everybody pack. We"ve got a long day ahead of us, if we stop any time to see the sights."
"And where are we going?" somebody asked.
"Over Gunsight Pa.s.s, and down to Lake McDonald," the Ranger answered, pointing up to the Great Divide at the head of Gunsight Lake.
"Do you mean to tell me we are going over that place?" demanded Mrs.
Jones.
"Why not?" said Mills.
"Why not? Well, I"m not one of these Rocky Mountain goats I hear about."
"Your horse is," the Ranger laughed.
As soon as camp was struck, and the horses brought from the upper meadows, where they had wandered in the night, and packed, the party started up the trail.
"Gunsight Pa.s.s--I like that name," said Bob. "But how did it get the name?"
"You"ll see when we reach it," Mills replied.
The trail over Gunsight is one of the most interesting in the entire Park. The head wall of the horseshoe of rocks which holds the green lake is too steep to climb, so the path gets to the summit by working up the shoulder of Jackson, in a long series of inclines, with sharp, steep switchbacks every little way, to boost it a little higher up the steep slope.
After climbing for, perhaps, two miles, they reached what appeared to be the level of the Divide ahead of them, but they were still around on one side of the horseshoe, and had to make their way along the tremendously steep wall of the mountain till they got to the pa.s.s at the centre.
Between them and this pa.s.s lay a huge snow-field, two hundred yards wide, and extending half a mile up the slope, and as far down, and ending at the bottom right on the top of a precipice, which dropped off into the lake. They could hear the melting water from this snow-field falling down far, far below, over the precipice.
Mills stopped his horse, and studied the ground, while the two women looked at the steep, gleaming, slippery field of snow, steeper than a house roof, at the yawning hole at the bottom, and declared in loud tones that they would _not_ go across.
But other parties had been across, and somebody had shoveled out a path, about three feet wide, to make level footing for the horses. Still, even so, it was a ticklish place, for if a horse once slid off, there would be no stopping him short of the lake two thousand feet below.
"Everybody off!" Mills ordered.
"Joe, d.i.c.k, Val," he commanded, "lead all the horses over, one at a time, and then two of you come back."
After the horses were across--and they did not have the least fear, even when one of their feet would cut through the soft snow, and they appeared to be in danger of slipping--Joe and d.i.c.k returned, and, with Mills, led the two women and the girls over, and helped them back into their saddles. Bob and the two congressmen came alone, and in the centre of the slide, Bob made a big s...o...b..ll, and let it roll down. Inside of a hundred feet it appeared to be traveling a mile a minute, growing bigger all the time, and finally it hit a rock at the bottom with a loud report, and the broken pieces flew out over the hole below.
"Say, Joe," he called, "great place for skis, eh?"
Joe laughed, but not very mirthfully. The thought of going down that slope on skis made you sick in the pit of your stomach.
It was but a few steps now, around a hanging ledge, to the pa.s.s, and as they came out into the small level s.p.a.ce on top of the Divide, they saw in front of them, forming the northern gate-post of the pa.s.s, as it were, a big rock pile shaped exactly like the front sight of a rifle--a sight several hundred feet high.
"Now you see why it"s Gunsight Pa.s.s," said Mills to Bob.
"Some gun!" the boy answered.
Those ahead moved to the western side of the Divide, and suddenly Joe heard the girls screaming with delight. As soon as he got there, he realized why, for never before had he seen anywhere such a wonderful view.
Right below them, eight hundred or a thousand feet, lay the loveliest little lake in all the world, oval in shape, a beautiful green in color, possibly half or three-quarters of a mile long. Out of one side sprang up the red precipices of Mount Jackson, from the upper end rose the wall of the Divide to their feet, on the other side, sweeping around in a circular curve carved by some ancient glacier as smooth as a drill hole, was the precipice of Gunsight Mountain. At the farther end of the lake the land just dropped away out of sight, and far off in the distance they could see range after range of purple mountains. Right at their feet, almost at the top of the Divide, was a pine tree, the only one, the very outmost sentinel of timber-line. It was only eight feet tall, though the trunk was two feet thick, and it was torn and twisted and gnarled by the winds till it looked like a grim old fighter who had left all the rest of his company far below and battled his way on up, almost to the top.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Party Crossing Near Top of Gunsight Pa.s.s]
Even Mrs. Jones stopped her horse and admired this view.
"It"s really worth coming for," she said.
"And how she hates to admit it," Val whispered in Joe"s ear, for the whole party was now gathered together on the edge, looking at the prospect.
"What"s the name of that heavenly little lake?" Lucy asked.
"Lake Ellen Wilson," Mills answered.
"Oh, dear, it shouldn"t be--it ought to have a beautiful Indian name, like Eye-of-the-morning, or something," said she.
"Let"s name it Lake Lucy Elkins," Bob suggested. "Seems to suit you."
Joe thought so, too, but he did not say anything.
Lucy laughed. "If we only _could_ rename it," she answered, "I certainly would find a pretty Indian name. I think it"s terrible, the way we take the land away from the Indians first, and then give everything new names, in the bargain."
The trail now descended in switchbacks to the very sh.o.r.e of the lake, for, although it had to climb up again at the lower, west side, the precipices were so steep in between that the only way to get from one point to the other was to descend to the sh.o.r.e.
"And this water is really going to the Pacific Ocean," said Mr. Jones, as they reached the lake. "We are over the Great Divide, Bob!"
"Yes, I feel a change in the climate," the irrepressible Bob answered.
"That"s not such a joke as you think, at that," Mills said. "The climate is different over here, as you"ll see presently."
They had still another pa.s.s to go over--Lincoln Pa.s.s (not a part of the Divide) before they could begin the final descent to Lake McDonald, and from the lake sh.o.r.e they began to climb again, with the green water between them and the tremendous red walls of Jackson, where long, narrow snow-fields clung in the hollows. At the top of Lincoln Pa.s.s was a meadow, on the edge of a precipice, a meadow full of snow-fields, wild flowers, and a few stunted, twisted pines, for it was on the very edge of timber-line. Here Mills ordered a halt for lunch.
"Charlie Chaplin sandwiches again, Joe," he said. "You can make tea if you want to, and can find any wood."
Joe and Bob and the girls between them managed to sc.r.a.pe together enough dead wood to make a small fire, and the water Joe got from the little brook flowing out from under a snow-field and starting on its long journey to the Pacific Ocean.
After lunch, everybody wanted to sit around for a bit, and enjoy the view of Lake Ellen Wilson and Mount Jackson, and Joe and Lucy got their cameras from their packs, and took pictures of each other on horseback, of the party, of Bob and Alice climbing down over an edge of the cliff beside a waterfall, and finally of a wonderful, twisted pine.
"I love the old trees at timber-line," Joe said. "They look so sort of--of heroic."
"Guess they are, all right," Bob laughed. "I"d feel heroic if I stood up here in winter!"
Almost as soon as they started again, they began to drop down a steep, rocky trail to the Sperry camp, a chalet built up on the slopes to accommodate the people who want to climb over the Divide just behind it to Sperry Glacier; and then to drop, by a wide, good trail, past rushing brooks, into the first real forest Joe had seen. The climate certainly _was_ different over here--he began to feel it. It seemed warmer, and the air wasn"t quite so vividly clear. There was a faint suggestion of haze over the lower blue ranges out to the west. It must be different, he told himself, there must be more rainfall, anyhow, and less severe winter cold, or the trees wouldn"t be so much larger.
Down and down they dropped, through spruces and pines and larches, growing ever taller and larger, till suddenly the trail went into the most wonderful forest Joe had ever seen. It was entirely composed of one kind of tree, tall, straight, ghostly gray trees, with a thin bark that shredded in strips on the smaller trunks; and these trees grew so thickly together that their tops made a solid canopy over the ground below, shutting out all sunlight, so that it was almost twilight deep in the heart of the forest. Not a living thing grew on the forest floor; it was simply a carpet of brownish, tiny needle-like dead leaves, and of dead sticks and fallen tree trunks.
Joe heard Lucy, ahead of him, saying it reminded her of the woods that Hop-o"-my-thumb and his brother got lost in. It reminded him of some great forest he once dreamed about in a nightmare; and yet it was beautiful, because of the ghostly gray of the tall trees, and the utter hush and silence of its dim recesses.
"What kind of trees are these?" he called back to Val. "They look like some sort of cedar."