"So much perspiring, and such rapid evaporation in the wind up there, certainly does use up the water in your system," the doctor said, as his face emerged dripping from the brook, and he put on his gla.s.ses again.
"Free ice water, too. Look at the chunks of ice floating around in it--and here it is August, and flowers growing on the bank!"
Mills got the horses, and they mounted. Tom could hardly have truthfully said he "vaulted into the saddle," however. He got up with considerable difficulty, for he was stiff and lame, and his arms were trembling from such long, hard strain in going up and then down the rope. But it was certainly good to be in the saddle, once you got there, and find yourself being carried, instead of having to do the work.
The Ranger at once began to trot. The trail to Iceberg Lake is such a good one, and the grade is so easy, that you can trot over a good deal of the distance, and Mills did not let any gra.s.s grow under their feet, especially as the horses were fresh. When they reached the woods near home, and the trail was almost level, he broke into a gallop, and with the doctor (who was not a good rider) wildly hanging to the horn of his saddle, they tore past a party just coming in from Swift Current, and dashed up to the tepee camp, where Joe was waiting for them.
The camp was full of hikers--a whole party of men and women, ten or a dozen. They were busily cooking on the stove, and the doctor looked anything but pleased.
"Where do I come in, Joe?" he asked, as he climbed from his horse.
"I thought maybe you"d rather come down to our little camp for supper,"
said Joe. "I can"t use the stove here till this gang gets through, and Tom and I have a rough sort of table at our camp, and I have supper all ready to cook there, and I planned to have Mr. Mills come, too. Tom and I will sort of give a party."
"Well, now, that"s fine!" said the doctor. "Mills and I accept. Let me wash up in my tepee first, and I"ll be with you."
He went into his tepee.
"I"ll take the horses up to the cabin," said the Ranger, "and be with you in a jiffy. Say, Tom," [he added this in a low tone] "we had his number wrong. He knows the climbing game from the bottom up--he"s careful, he"s got nerve, he can pick a hold every time, and he don"t gas. He gets my vote."
"Mine, too!" Tom answered.
"Everything O.K. here?" Tom asked Joe. "These people got wood, and cots, and everything?"
"Sure--beat it, and wash your mug. Gee, you"re dirty!" Joe laughed.
"Well, I guess you"d be if you"d been kissin" an old precipice all day,"
Tom retorted. "Oh, gee, Joe--this is the life! Some climb! Some old goats and sheep! Some Park!"
"Yes, and go and wash up if you want some supper."
Joe made sure the hikers had everything they needed or wanted, and hurried down the path to the scout camp, where he began to cook the supper, while Tom was having a wash and getting into dry underclothes and shirt. He had been to the chalet store that afternoon and restocked the larder, and secured a piece of a big, fresh steak which had just come in by motor bus. This he now broiled over as good a bed of coals as he could get from his soft wood fire. He had coffee already boiling, and hot soup, and some nice canned beans, and French fried potatoes, and a surprise for dessert--nothing less than four plates of fresh huckleberries, which he had stumbled upon while taking a walk that noon, and picked into his hat.
When Mills and the doctor arrived, this supper was all ready, and the two men and two boys sat down on the log seats around the rough table of boards, and ate and talked, and talked and ate, while the evening shadows crossed the lake and the lights of the big hotel could be seen twinkling through the trees. It was a jolly meal, and a good one, and Tom had never in his life felt so hungry, and deliciously lame and sore and tired, so that a long draught of hot coffee seemed to go warming and tingling through all his body.
After supper, Joe would not let him go back to the tepee camp, but went himself to see that everything was fixed for the night. Tom just sat by the blazing camp-fire, while Mills and Dr. Kent smoked, and listened to the talk of the two men, who swapped yarns about mountain climbing. The doctor had been up rock crags in the Austrian Tyrol, thrilling precipices steeper than the wall of Iceberg Lake, and he had climbed over ice and snow, also, where you had to cut steps with an ice axe. But Mills, who had never been east of Omaha in his life, had once ridden down a mountain on a snow avalanche, (needless to say, without intending to!) and had seen a mother goat standing over her kid on the ledge of a precipice fighting off a bald eagle. Tom listened with ears wide open, and though he was sleepy and tired, he was sorry when the men rose to depart.
"I"ll come here for breakfast, boys, if you don"t mind," the doctor said. "Those hikers may be an estimable collection of citizens and citizenesses, but I came out here to get away from folks. Good-night, Tom. We"ll have to have one more climb before I go--day after to-morrow, I guess. To-morrow I"m going back to Iceberg Lake and look at the flowers more carefully. Good-night, Joe. Good-night, Mills. Thanks for coming to-day. You Rocky Mountain goat hunters don"t need any course of training in the Alps."
"Good-night," the scouts called, as the two men disappeared in opposite directions.
Tom told Joe all that had happened as they got ready for bed, and ended by declaring he was too excited still to go to sleep.
Joe laughed.
"I thought I was, the first day over Piegan," said he. "But the old Rockies fooled me. I slept, all right. So"ll you."
And Tom did. In fact, it is doubtful if he heard the tail end of Joe"s sentence.
CHAPTER XVIII--Joe Gets Good News From the Doctor, And The Scouts Name Their Camp, "Camp Kent"
The next morning Dr. Kent arrived, rather cross, at the boys" camp, for the hikers had waked him up early, and he told Joe nothing but a good breakfast would set the world right. Joe did his best, and then put up some lunch for him, and he went off presently in better spirits, to spend the day, as he put it, "loafing with the wild flowers and inviting my soul." Joe also cooked his dinner when he returned at night. The next day, he said, would be his last, and he insisted that Tom go with him up on Grinnell Glacier.
"We"ll have a little more practice with the rope," he said, "and you can see if you can tumble into a creva.s.se the way your friend Joe did."
So Joe, for a second time, took charge of the camp, and Tom left with the doctor, bright and early. It wasn"t a hard climb up to the glacier, and they crossed it, using Tom"s scout axe for cutting steps when necessary, and the doctor sent Tom ahead a little way up a cliff, and then reversed positions on the rope, and let Tom take number two position. They climbed far enough up on the great gray shoulder of Gould Mountain to look down on the glacier, on the lake far below that, on the green meadow, and then returned leisurely to camp.
On the way back Tom got up courage to ask Dr. Kent what he had been longing to ask him ever since he learned of his profession. That was, to examine Joe. He told his new friend of Joe"s condition, and why they were in the Park, and how he was responsible for him, and did not want him to go on trips and do hard work if it wasn"t safe.
"I"ll see if I can borrow a stethoscope from the hotel," Dr. Kent said.
"There must be a house physician there. Then I"ll give him the once over, gladly. Anybody who can make coffee like his mustn"t be allowed to die! But he doesn"t look like a sick boy to me."
True to his word, he got the instrument, and before dinner took Joe into the scouts" tent, stripped him, and examined him very carefully.
"Who told you you had tuberculosis?" he finally said.
"Dr. Meyer," Joe replied.
"What Dr. Meyer--not Julius Meyer?"
"Yes, sir, in Southmead."
"Well, if _he_ said you had, then I suppose you did have," Dr. Kent replied. "But, frankly, I can"t find any trace of it in your lungs now."
"But ought he to do hard work?" Tom asked.
"I wouldn"t let him over-strain," the doctor said, "and if he climbs, make him climb rather slowly. But out here in this wonderful land I don"t believe he need worry much any more. If you can keep him here for a few months more, living this outdoor life, and then if he is careful when he gets back, I think he"ll be a well man by the time he gets his full growth."
"But we have to get back to go to school," Joe said. "I couldn"t let old Spider lose out on school, even if I did."
"What are you planning to become? What are you studying to be?" the man asked.
"We want to go into the forest service," both scouts answered.
"Oh, fine! That"s a coming job, boys, but one that Joe can"t take, if he isn"t cured thoroughly. Think of this--your life out here is the best training you could have for the forest service. You can afford to miss six months of school to learn how to live in the big woods and the wild places. If you should camp with Mills till Christmas, say, you"d really be going to school, and Joe would be taking tonic twenty-four hours a day. Think it over, boys."
That night, after dinner, which he again ate at the scouts" camp, the tepee camp being again filled up with hikers, he paid Joe at the regular rate of three dollars a day for cooking his meals, and paid for the food, all except the dinner Joe had got ready the night of the first climb, which the scouts declared was their treat. Then he picked up his Alpine rope and handed it to Tom.
"How"d you like this for a souvenir?" he asked.
Tom gasped. "For _me_!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Dr. Kent, I--I--why, what"ll you do?"
"I"m taking the bus out in the morning," the doctor said. "I"ve other ropes at home. You boys might like to do a little climbing. But promise me you"ll pick easy grades to learn on, unless Mills is with you."
"Thank you!" Tom cried. "I--I never guessed I"d own a real Alpine rope.