Tom followed his finger, and, lo! there they were, the Rocky Mountains!
As far to the north, as far to the south, as the eye could see stretched the great, blue procession of towering peaks, dazzling white with great patches of snow on summits and shoulders, and seemingly only a few miles away.
"And we could have seen "em _hours_ ago, if we"d only been looking ahead," Joe complained, as they took their seats on the observation platform. "They can"t be more"n ten miles off now."
A big, heavy man who was sitting there laughed loudly.
"Guess you ain"t never been out here before, have you?" he asked.
"No, we never have."
"Well, this train"s making thirty miles an hour, and we got three hours to go yet before we get to them hills," he went on. "You chaps remind me of a story, about a friend o" mine who was prospectin" up here before the government made a park out o" Glacier. An Englishman came along one day, and he started out to walk to the base o" one o" them mountains before breakfast, so my friend, bein" just naturally curious, allowed he"d go along too. Fust, though, he sneaked out and got a bite o" grub.
Well, they walked and walked till along about ten o"clock, and the mountain not gettin" any nearer. By"mby they come to a brook a baby could have jumped, and the Englishman started to peel off his clothes.
""What in blazes be you goin" to do?" asked my friend.
""Well," said the bally Britisher, "that _looks_ like a brook, but I ain"t taking no chances.""
Tom and Joe laughed.
"I"ve always heard you could see awfully plain out here," said Tom. "It must bother you at first sighting a gun."
"I reckon it does bother a stranger. I seen fellers sight for a goat at four hundred yards, when he was a clean eight hundred, and kick up the dust on the rocks twenty feet below him."
"Have you hunted goats?" the boys demanded.
"What I"ve not hunted, _ain"t_," said the man. "I don"t know what folks want goats for, though. They"re the hardest work to get, and no good when you get "em. A bighorn, now!"
"What"s a bighorn?" asked Joe.
The man looked at him in profound surprise. "By glory, don"t you know what a bighorn is?" he demanded. "Where do you come from, anyhow? A bighorn"s a Rocky Mountain sheep, the old ram of the flock, with horns fifty inches long that curl around in a circle, and he"s the handsomest, finest, proudest lookin" critter G.o.d Almighty ever made. Wait till you see one!"
"Do you think we can see one in the Park this summer?" the boys asked.
"If you climb up a cliff about seven thousand feet and make a noise like a bunch o" gra.s.s, I reckon maybe you can," said the stranger.
The next three hours were about the longest the boys had ever spent.
They went back into the sleeper as soon as the berths were moved out of the way and they could sit at the window, and with their faces glued to the pane strained their eyes ahead to see the mountains. Whenever the road made a curve, they could see them plainly, a vast, sawtooth range of blue peaks, some of them sharp like pyramids, some of them rounded into domes, marching down out of the north and stretching away to the south as far as the eye could see. Not only were they bigger mountains than the scouts had ever seen, even on a trip the year before to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, but all over them, on their summits, in great patches on their sides, sometimes quite covering an entire peak, were great fields of snow. Here it was about the 4th of July, with flowers blooming in the gra.s.s beside the track and a blazing hot sun in the heavens--and the mountains just out there covered with vast fields of snow!
"Gee, I wish the old engineer"d put on some steam!" sighed Joe.
"I wish he would," Tom answered. "But I guess that snow ain"t all going to melt before we get there. Say, Joe, why do you suppose that range goes right up out of the prairie without any foot-hills? Remember, when we went to the White Mountains we got into smaller mountains long before we reached Washington? They went up like steps. But here the Rockies just jump right up out of the plain."
"I don"t know--wish I"d studied geology. Maybe the guy who had the friend who walked with the Englishman can tell us."
Tom shook his head. "I have a hunch he knows more about goats than geology," said he. "Maybe we can get a book at the Park."
The mountains were now getting perceptibly nearer. They were becoming less blue, the snow showed more plainly on their sharp peaks and great shoulders, and the boys began to pack up their handbags and get ready to disembark.
Their rear-platform friend, coming through the car, stopped and laughed.
"Don"t go trying to jump no brooks, now," he said.
"Sure--we"ll throw a stone first," Spider answered. "Can you tell us why the Rocky Mountains haven"t any foot-hills?"
The stranger seemed to take this very seriously. "They did have once,"
said he, "but they was all dug away for the gold and copper."
Then he pa.s.sed on, still laughing.
"He"s a good scout," laughed Joe.
"But I"d hate to have him for a geology teacher," Tom answered.
The mountains didn"t seem much nearer than they had looked for half an hour when the train finally rolled up to the Glacier Park station and stopped. The boys, together with several tourists, got off, and the minute they stepped on the platform they felt how much cooler it was than back in St. Paul, and how much purer the air.
"Take a big lungful, Joey," Tom cried. "This is the real old ozone!"
The station is at the gate of the mountains, where the railroad enters the pa.s.s which takes it through the range. The mountains here do not look very high, for you are so close under that you do not see much of them. The boys looked up at a ragged wall to the north, covered first with fir timber and then with snow patches on the reddish rocks. Behind them to the east, they looked out over the rolling plains. Close by the station was a big hotel, several stories high, but built entirely of huge fir logs. Even the tall columns in front were single logs.
"I suppose I go up there and report," said Tom. "Let"s see if our baggage is all here, first"
They found the baggage on the platform, and set out for the hotel, pa.s.sing on the way an Indian tepee, with pictures painted on the outside, and smoke ascending from the peak. This was the home of old Chief Three Bears, the boys learned, a Blackfeet Indian who lives here by the hotel in summer, and welcomes arriving guests. He was coming down the path, in fact, as the boys walked up, a tall Indian, over six feet, and looking taller still because of his great feathered head-dress. He was very old, but still erect, though his face was covered all over with tiny wrinkles.
The two scouts stopped and saluted him.
Old Three Bears smiled at them, and grunted, "Okeea" (with the accent on the first syllable, and the _ee_ and _a_ sounds slid together). Then he held his blanket around him with his left hand, and putting out his right, solemnly shook both boys by their hands.
"Say, the old Chief"s got a big fist, all right," said Joe, as they went on. "I"ll bet he was strong once."
"He must "a" been good looking, too," said Tom. "I didn"t know Indians were so big and--and sort of n.o.ble looking."
They now entered the great lobby of the hotel, which, like the outside, was all made of fir logs, with tremendous trunks, bark and all, used as the columns clear to the fourth story. Hunting out the manager, they learned that they were to take the motor bus for Many Glacier Hotel in fifteen minutes, and they just had time to go to the news stand and secure a government map of the Park and a government report about its geology, before turning in their baggage checks and climbing aboard the bus, a four-seated motor something like a "Seeing New York" automobile.
This bus was full, three on a seat, and a moment later the driver cranked his engine, gave a toot on his horn, and they were off.
CHAPTER V--The Scouts Learn Why the Rocky Mountains Have No Foot-Hills and Arrive at Many Glacier
They had about fifty miles to go, northward, straight away from the railroad. It was a clear, lovely day, the air so transparent that you could apparently walk to the top of one of those mountains in an hour or two.
"Gee, I know now how that Englishman felt," Joe laughed.
The road was not what would be called a good road, or even a decent road, in the East, as it was only a track in the gra.s.s, full of sand and sharp little stones; it did not lead into the mountains at all; it ran along just to the east of the great range, over the bare, rolling hills of the prairie, so that from the motor bus you could see the entire mountain wall, mile after mile. What a wonderful wall it was, too! It sprang right up out of this rolling green prairie, a great procession of peaks, and now they were so near the boys could see they were not blue at all, but every color of the rainbow, with red predominating. Up their sides for a way stretched timber--all evergreen, and not very big--and then came the rocks--red rocks, yellow rocks, gray rocks, white rocks, in long horizontal strata, and in the ravines and hollows on the slopes great patches of snow stretching down from the snow caps on the summits like vast white fingers.
As they sped along, every eye in the motor fixed on the mountains, a man in the front seat pointed ahead to a huge red mountain which stood out eastward from the range, a n.o.ble mountain shaped like a tremendous dome.
"That"s old Rising Wolf," he said.