TENTINGTO-NIGHT

_A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the CascadeMountains by_

MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

[Illustration]

 BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY =The Riverside Press Cambridge= 1918

 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY (COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE)

 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 _Published April 1918_

[Illustration: _Chiwawa Mountain and Lyman Lake_]

CONTENTS

 I. THE TRAIL 1

 II. THE BIG ADVENTURE 10

 III. BRIDGE CREEK TO BOWMAN LAKE 24

 IV. A FISHERMAN'S PARADISE 39

 V. TO KINTLA LAKE 50

 VI. RUNNING THE RAPIDS OF THE FLATHEAD 63

 VII. THE SECOND DAY ON THE FLATHEAD 71

 VIII. THROUGH THE FLATHEAD CAÑON 80

 IX. THE ROUND-UP AT KALISPELL 90

 X. OFF FOR CASCADE PASS 100

 XI. LAKE CHELAN TO LYMAN LAKE 111

 XII. CLOUDY PASS AND THE AGNES CREEK VALLEY 129

 XIII. CAÑON FISHING AND A TELEGRAM 142

 XIV. DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE 150

 XV. DOUBTFUL LAKE 158

 XVI. OVER CASCADE PASS 167

 XVII. OUT TO CIVILIZATION 180

ILLUSTRATIONS

 CHIWAWA MOUNTAIN AND LYMAN LAKE _Frontispiece_

 TRAIL OVER GUNSIGHT PASS, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 2 _Photograph by Fred H. Kiser, Portland, Oregon_

 THE AUTHOR, THE MIDDLE BOY, AND THE LITTLE BOY 6

 LOOKING SOUTH FROM POLLOCK PASS, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 14 _Photograph by Kiser Photo Co. _

 LAKE ELIZABETH FROM PTARMIGAN PASS, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 22 _Photograph by A. J. Baker, Kalispell, Mont. _

 A MOUNTAIN LAKE IN GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 36 _Photograph by Fred H. Kiser_

 GETTING READY FOR THE DAY'S FISHING AT CAMP ON BOWMAN LAKE 40 _Photograph by R. E. Marble, Glacier Park_

 THE HORSES IN THE ROPE CORRAL 44 _Photograph by A. J. Baker_

 BEAR-GRASS 56 _Photograph by Fred H. Kiser_

 A GLACIER PARK LAKE 60 _Photograph by A. J. Baker_

 STILL-WATER FISHING 68 _Photograph by R. E. Marble_

 MOUNTAINS OF GLACIER NATIONAL PARK FROM THE NORTH FORK OF THE FLATHEAD RIVER 74 _Photograph by R. E. Marble_

 THE BEGINNING OF THE CAÑON, MIDDLE FORK OF THE FLATHEAD RIVER 82 _Photograph by R. E. Marble_

 PI-TA-MAK-AN, OR RUNNING EAGLE (MRS. RINEHART), WITH TWO OTHER MEMBERS OF THE BLACKFOOT TRIBE 96 _Photograph by Haynes, St. Paul_

 A HIGH MOUNTAIN MEADOW 100 _Photograph by L. D. Lindsley, Lake Chelan_

 SITTING BULL MOUNTAIN, LAKE CHELAN 112 _Photograph by L. D. Lindsley_

 LOOKING OUT OF ICE-CAVE, LYMAN GLACIER 126 _Photograph by L. D. Lindsley_

 LOOKING SOUTHEAST FROM CLOUDY PASS 132 _Photograph by L. D. Lindsley_

 STREAM FISHING 144 _Photograph by Haynes, St. Paul_

 MOUNTAIN MILES: THE TRAIL UP SWIFTCURRENT PASS, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 152 _Photograph by A. J. Baker_

 WHERE THE ROCK-SLIDES START (GLACIER NATIONAL PARK) 156 _Photograph by A. J. Baker_

 SWITCHBACKS ON THE TRAIL (GLACIER NATIONAL PARK) 160 _Photograph by Fred H. Kiser_

 WATCHING THE PACK-TRAIN COMING DOWN AT CASCADE PASS 174

 A FIELD OF BEAR-GRASS 182 _Photograph by Fred H. Kiser_

TENTING TO-NIGHT

I

THE TRAIL

The trail is narrow--often but the width of the pony's feet, a tiny paththat leads on and on. It is always ahead, sometimes bold and wide, aswhen it leads the way through the forest; often narrow, as when it hugsthe sides of the precipice; sometimes even hiding for a time in riverbottom or swamp, or covered by the débris of last winter's avalanche. Sometimes it picks its precarious way over snow-fields which hang atdizzy heights, and again it flounders through mountain streams, wherethe tired horses must struggle for footing, and do not even dare tostoop and drink. 

It is dusty; it is wet. It climbs; it falls; it is beautiful andterrible. But always it skirts the coast of adventure. Always it goeson, and always it calls to those that follow it. Tiny path that it is, worn by the feet of earth's wanderers, it is the thread which has knittogether the solid places of the earth. The path of feet in thewilderness is the onward march of life itself. 

City-dwellers know nothing of the trail. Poor followers of thepavements, what to them is this six-inch path of glory? Life for many ofthem is but a thing of avenues and streets, fixed and unmysterious, amatter of numbers and lights and post-boxes and people. They knowwhither their streets lead. There is no surprise about them, no suddendiscovery of a river to be forded, no glimpse of deer in full flight orof an eagle poised over a stream. No heights, no depths. To know if itrains at night, they look down at shining pavements; they do not holdtheir faces to the sky. 

[Illustration: _Trail over Gunsight Pass, Glacier National Park_]

Now, I am a near-city-dweller. For ten months in the year, I amparticular about mail-delivery, and eat an evening dinner, andoccasionally agitate the matter of having a telephone in every room inthe house. I run the usual gamut of dinners, dances, and bridge, withthe usual country-club setting as the spring goes on. And each May Iorder a number of flimsy frocks, in the conviction that I have done allthe hard going I need to, and that this summer we shall go to the NewEngland coast. And then--about the first of June there comes a day whenI find myself going over the fishing-tackle unearthed by the springhouse-cleaning and sorting out of inextricable confusion the family'ssupply of sweaters, old riding-breeches, puttees, rough shoes, trout-flies, quirts, ponchos, spurs, reels, and old felt hats. Some ofthe hats still have a few dejected flies fastened to the ribbon, melancholy hackles, sadly ruffled Royal Coachmen, and here and there thedetermined gayety of the Parmachene Belle. 

I look at my worn and rubbed high-laced boots, at my riding-clothes, snagged with many briers and patched from many saddles, at my old brownvelours hat, survival of many storms in many countries. It has beenrained on in Flanders, slept on in France, and has carried many arefreshing draft to my lips in my "ain countree. "

I put my fishing-rod together and give it a tentative flick across thebed, and--I am lost. 

The family professes surprise, but it is acquiescent. And that night, orthe next day, we wire that we will not take the house in Maine, and Idiscover that the family has never expected to go to Maine, but has beenbuying more trout-flies right along. 

As a family, we are always buying trout-flies. We buy a great many. I donot know what becomes of them. To those whose lives are limited to theunexciting sport of buying golf-balls, which have endless names but novariety, I will explain that the trout do not eat the flies, but merelyattempt to. So that one of the eternal mysteries is how our fliesdisappear. I have seen a junior Rinehart start out with a boat, a rod, six large cakes of chocolate, and four dollars' worth of flies, andreturn a few hours later with one fish, one Professor, one Doctor, andone Black Moth minus the hook. And the boat had not upset. 

June, after the decision, becomes a time of subdued excitement. Forfear we shall forget to pack them, things are set out early. Stringershang from chandeliers, quirts from doorknobs. Shoe-polish and disgorgersand adhesive plaster litter the dressing-tables. Rows of boots line thewalls. And, in the evenings, those of us who are at home pore over mapsand lists. 

This last year, our plans were ambitious. They took in two completeexpeditions, each with our own pack-outfit. The first was to takeourselves, some eight packers, guides, and cooks, and enough horses tocarry our outfit--thirty-one in all--through the western and practicallyunknown side of Glacier National Park, in northwestern Montana, to theCanadian border. If we survived that, we intended to go by rail to theChelan country in northern Washington and there, again with apack-train, cross the Cascades over totally unknown country to PugetSound. 

We did both, to the eternal credit of our guides and horses. 

The family, luckily for those of us who have the _Wanderlust_, is fourfifths masculine. I am the odd fifth--unlike the story of King Georgethe Fifth and Queen Mary the other four fifths. It consists of the headof the family, to be known hereafter as the Head, the Big Boy, theMiddle Boy, the Little Boy, and myself. As the Big Boy is very, verybig, and the Little Boy is not really very little, being on the verge oflong trousers, we make a comfortable traveling unit. And, because wewere leaving the beaten path and going a-gypsying, with a new camp eachnight no one knew exactly where, the party gradually augmented. 

First, we added an optimist named Bob. Then we added a "movie"-man, called Joe for short and because it was his name, and a "still"photographer, who was literally still most of the time. Some of thesepictures are his. He did some beautiful work, but he really needed amouth only to eat with. 

(The "movie"-man is unpopular with the junior members of the family justnow, because he hid his camera in the bushes and took the Little Boyin a state of goose flesh on the bank of Bowman Lake. )

[Illustration: _The Author, the Middle Boy, and the Little Boy_]

But, of course, we have not got to Bowman Lake yet. 

During the year before, I had ridden over the better-known trails ofGlacier Park with Howard Eaton's riding party, and when I had crossedthe Gunsight Pass, we had looked north and west to a great country ofmountains capped with snow, with dense forests on the lower slopes andin the valleys. 

"What is it?" I had asked the ranger who had accompanied us across thepass. 

"It is the west side of Glacier Park, " he explained. "It is not yetopened up for tourist travel. Once or twice in a year, a camping partygoes up through this part of the park. That is all. "

"What is it like?" I asked. 

"Wonderful!"

So, sitting there on my horse, I made up my mind that sometime _I_ wouldgo up the west side of Glacier Park to the Canadian border. 

Roughly speaking, there are at least six hundred square miles ofGlacier Park on the west side that are easily accessible, but that arepractically unknown. Probably the area is more nearly a thousand squaremiles. And this does not include the fastnesses of the range itself. Itcomprehends only the slopes on the west side to the border-line of theFlathead River. 

The reason for the isolation of the west side of Glacier Park is easilyunderstood. The park is divided into two halves by the Rocky Mountainrange, which traverses it from northwest to southeast. Over it there isno single wagon-road of any sort between the Canadian border and Helena, perhaps two hundred and fifty miles. A railroad crosses at the MariasPass. But from that to the Canadian line, one hundred miles, travel fromthe east is cut off over the range, except by trail. 

To reach the west side of Glacier Park at the present time, the tourist, having seen the wonders of the east side, must return to Glacier ParkStation, take a train over the Marias Pass, and get out at Belton. Eventhen, he can only go by boat up to Lewis's Hotel on Lake McDonald, atrifling distance. There are no hotels beyond Lewis's, and no roads. 

Naturally, this tremendous area is unknown and unvisited. 

It is being planned, however, by the new Department of National Parks tobuild a road this coming year along Lake McDonald. Eventually, thismuch-needed highway will connect with the Canadian roads, and thusindirectly with Banff and Lake Louise. The opening-up of the west sideof Glacier Park will make it perhaps the most unique of all our parks, as it is undoubtedly the most magnificent. The grandeur of the east sidewill be tempered by the more smiling and equally lovely western slopes. And when, between the east and the west sides, there is constructed thegreat motor-highway which will lead across the range, we shall have, perhaps, the most scenic motor-road in the United States--until, in thefullness of time, we build another road across Cascade Pass inWashington. 

II

THE BIG ADVENTURE

Came at last the day to start west. In spite of warnings, we found thatour irreducible minimum of luggage filled five wardrobe-trunks. In vainwe went over our lists and cast out such bulky things as extrahandkerchiefs and silk socks and fancy neckties and toilet-silver. Westarted with all five. It was boiling hot; the sun beat in at thewindows of the transcontinental train and stifled us. Over the prairies, dust blew in great clouds, covering the window-sills with white. The BigBoy and the Middle Boy and the Little Boy referred scornfully to theflannels and sweaters on which I had been so insistent. The Head sleptacross the continent. The Little Boy counted prairie-dogs. 

Then, almost suddenly, we were in the mountains--for the Rockies seem torise out of a great plain. The air was stimulating. There had been agreat deal of snow last winter, and the wind from the ice-capped peaksoverhead blew down and chilled us. We threw back our heads and breathed. 

Before going to Belton for our trip with the pack-outfit, we rode againfor two weeks with the Howard Eaton party through the east side of thepark, crossing again those great passes, for each one of which, like theIndians, the traveler counts a _coup_--Mount Morgan, a mile high and thewidth of an army-mule on top; old Piegan, under the shadow of the GardenWall; Mount Henry, where the wind blows always a steady gale. We hadscaled Dawson with the aid of ropes, since snowslides covered the trail, and crossed the Cut Bank in a hailstorm. Like the noble Duke of York, Howard Eaton had led us "up a hill one day and led us down again. " Only, he did it every day. 

Once, in my notebook, I wrote on top of a mountain my definition of amountain pass. I have used it before, but because it was written withshaking fingers and was torn from my very soul, I cannot better it. Thisis what I wrote:--

 A pass is a blood-curdling spot up which one's horse climbs like a goat and down the other side of which it slides as you lead it, trampling ever and anon on a tender part of your foot. A pass is the highest place between two peaks. A pass is not an opening, but a barrier which you climb with chills and descend with prayer. A pass is a thing which you try to forget at the time, and which you boast about when you get back home. 

At last came the day when we crossed the Gunsight Pass and, under SperryGlacier, looked down and across to the north and west. It was sunset andcold. The day had been a long and trying one. We had ridden across anice-field which sloped gently off--into China, I dare say. I did notlook over. Our horses were weary, and we were saddle-sore and hungry. 

Pete, our big guide, whose name is really not Pete at all, waved an airyhand toward the massed peaks beyond--the land of our dreams. 

"Well, " he said, "there it is!"

And there it was. 

 * * * * *

Getting a pack-outfit ready for a long trip into the wilderness is aserious matter. We were taking thirty-one horses, guides, packers, anda cook. But we were doing more than that--we were taking two boats! Thiswas Bob's idea. Any highly original idea, such as taking boats where noteven tourists had gone before, or putting eggs on a bucking horse, orcarrying grapefruit for breakfast into the wilderness, was Bob's idea. 

"You see, I figure it out like this, " he said, when, on our arrival atBelton, we found the boats among our equipment: "If we can get thoseboats up to the Canadian line and come down the Flathead rapids all theway, it will only take about four days on the river. It's a stunt that'snever been pulled off. "

"Do you mean, " I said, "that we are going to run four days of rapidsthat have never been run?"

"That's it. "

I looked around. There, in a group, were the Head and the Big Boy andthe Middle Boy and the Little Boy. And a fortune-teller at Atlantic Cityhad told me to beware of water!

"At the worst places, " the Optimist continued, "we can send Joe aheadin one boat with the 'movie' outfit, and get you as you come along. "

"I dare say, " I observed, with some bitterness. "Of course we may upset. But if we do, I'll try to go down for the third time in front of thecamera. "

But even then the boats were being hoisted into a wagon-bed filled withhay. And I knew that I was going to run four days of rapids. It waswritten. 

It was a bright morning. In a corral, the horses were waiting to bepacked. Rolls of blankets, crates of food, and camping-utensils layeverywhere. The Big Boy marshaled the fishing-tackle. Bill, the cook, was searching the town for the top of an old stove to bake on. We hadprovided two reflector ovens, but he regarded them with suspicion. Theywould, he suspected, not do justice to his specialty, the corn-mealsaddle-bag, a sort of sublimated hot cake. 

I strolled to the corral and cast a horsewoman's eye on my mount. 

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY KISER PHOTO CO. _Looking south from Pollock Pass, Glacier National Park_]

"He looks like a very nice horse, " I said. "He's quite handsome. "

Pete tightened up the cinch. 

"Yes, " he observed; "he's all right. He's a pretty good mare. "

The Head was wandering around with lists in his hand. His conversationran something like this:--

"Pocket-flashes, chocolate, jam, medicine-case, reels, landing-nets, cigarettes, tooth-powder, slickers, matches. "

He was always accumulating matches. One moment, a box of matches wouldbe in plain sight and the next it had disappeared. He became a sort ofmatch-magazine, so that if anybody had struck him violently, in almostany spot, he would have exploded. 

Hours went by. The sun was getting high and hot. The crowd which hadbeen watching gradually disappeared about its business. The twoboats--big, sturdy river-boats they were--had rumbled along toward thewilderness, one on top of the other, with George Locke and Mike Shannonas pilots, watching for breakers ahead. In the corral, our supplieswere being packed on the horses, Bill Shea and Pete, Tom Sullivan andTom Farmer and their assistants working against time. In crates were ourcooking-utensils, ham, bacon, canned salmon, jam, flour, corn-meal, eggs, baking-powder, flies, rods, and reels, reflector ovens, sunburnlotion, coffee, cocoa, and so on. Cocoa is the cowboy's friend. Innumerable blankets, "tarp" beds, and war-sacks lay rolled ready forthe pack-saddles. The cook was declaiming loudly that some one hadopened his pack and taken out his cleaver. 

For a pack-outfit, the west side of Glacier Park is ideal. The east sideis much the best so far for those who wish to make short trips along thetrails into the mountains, although as yet only a small part, comparatively, of the eastern wonderland is open. There, one may spend aday, or several days, in the midst of the wildest possible country andyet return at night to excellent hotels. 

On the west side, however, a pack-outfit is necessary. There is but onehotel, Lewis's, on Lake McDonald. To get to the Canadian line, theremust be camping facilities for at least eight days if there are nostop-overs. And not to stop over is to lose the joy of the trip. It isan ideal two to three weeks' jaunt with a pack-train. A woman who cansit a horse--and every one can ride in a Western saddle--a woman canmake the land trip not only with comfort but with joy. That is, a womanwho likes the outdoors. 

What did we wear, that bright morning when, all ready at last, the cookon the chuck-wagon, the boats ambling ahead, with Bill Hossick, theteamster, driving the long line of heavily packed horses and our ownsaddlers lined up for the adventure, we moved out on to the trail?

Well, the men wore khaki riding-trousers and flannel shirts, broad-brimmed felt hats, army socks drawn up over the cuff of thebreeches, and pack-shoes. A pack-shoe is one in which the leather of theupper part makes the sole also, without a seam. On to this soft sole issewed a heavy leather one. The pack-shoe has a fastened tongue and iswaterproof. 

And I? I had not counted on the "movie"-man, and I was dressed forcomfort in the woods. I had buckskin riding-breeches and high boots, andover my thin riding-shirt I wore a cloth coat. I had packed in my warbaga divided skirt also, and a linen suit, for hot days, of breeches andcoat. But of this latter the least said the better. It betrayed me and, in portions, deserted me. 

All of us carried tin drinking-cups, which vied with the bells on thepack-animals for jingle. Most of us had sweaters or leatherwind-jammers. The guides wore "chaps" of many colors, boots with highheels, which put our practical packs in the shade, and gay silkhandkerchiefs. 

Joe was to be a detachable unit. As a matter of fact, he became detachedrather early in the game, having been accidentally given a bucker. Itwas on the second day, I think, that his horse buried his head betweenhis fore legs, and dramatized one of the best bits of the trip when Joewas totally unable to photograph it. 

He had his own guide and extra horse for the camera. It had been ourexpectation that, at the most hazardous parts of the journey, he wouldperch on some crag and show us courageously risking our necks to have agood time. But on the really bad places he had his own life to save, andhe never fully trusted Maud, I think, after the first day. Maud was hishorse. 

Besides, when he did climb to some aerie, and photographed me, forinstance, in a sort of Napoleon-crossing-the-Alps attitude, sitting myhorse on the brink of eternity and being reassured from safety by theOptimist--outside the picture, of course--the developed film flattenedout the landscape. So that, although I was on the edge of a cañon a miledeep, I might as well have been posing on the bank of the Ohio River. 

On the east side of the Park I had ridden Highball. It is notparticularly significant that I started the summer on Highball and endedit on Budweiser. Now I had Angel, a huge white mare with a pink nose, aloving disposition, and a gait that kept me swallowing my tongue forfear I would bite the end off it. The Little Boy had Prince, a smallpony which ran exactly like an Airedale dog, and in every canter beatout the entire string. The Head had H----, and considered him wellindicated. One bronco was called "Bronchitis. " The top horse of thestring was Bill Shea's Dynamite, according to Bill Shea. There wereDusty, Shorty, Sally Goodwin, Buffalo Tom, Chalk-Eye, Comet, andSwapping Tater--Swapping Tater being a pacer who, when he hit theground, swapped feet. Bob had Sister Sarah. 

At last, everything was ready. The pack-train got slowly under way. Weleaped into our saddles--"leaped" being a figurative term which grewmore and more figurative as time went on and we grew saddle-weary andstiff--and, passing the pack-train on a canter, led off for thewilderness. 

All that first day we rode, now in the sun, now in deep forest. Luncheon-time came, but the pack-train was far behind. We waited, butwe could not hear so much as the tinkle of its bells. So we munchedcakes of chocolate from the pockets of our riding-coats and went grimlyon. 

The wagon with the boats had made good time. It was several miles alongthe wagon-trail before we caught up with it. It had found a quiet harborbeside the road, and the boatmen were demanding food. We tossed themwhat was left of the chocolate and went on. 

The presence of a wagon-trail in that empty land, unvisited and unknown, requires explanation. In the first place, it was not really a road. Itwas a trail, and in places barely that. But, sixteen years before, aroad had been cleared through the forest by some people who believedthere was oil near the Canadian line. They cut down trees and builtcorduroy bridges. But in sixteen years it has not been used. No wheelshave worn it smooth. It takes its leisurely way, now through wilderness, now through burnt country where the trees stand stark and dead, nowthrough prairie or creek-bottom, now up, now down, always with therange rising abruptly to the east, and with the Flathead River somewhereto the west. 

It will not take much expenditure to make that old wagon-trail into agood road. It has its faults. It goes down steep slopes--on the secondday out, the chuck-wagon got away, and, fetching up at the bottom, threwout Bill the cook and nearly broke his neck. It climbs like a cat aftera young robin. It is rocky or muddy or both. But it is, potentially, aroad. 

The Rocky Mountains run northwest and southeast, and in numerous basins, fed by melting glaciers and snow-fields, are deep and quiet lakes. Theselakes, on the west side, discharge their overflow through roaring andprecipitous streams to the Flathead, which flows south and east. Whileour general direction was north, it was our intention to turn off eastand camp at the different lakes, coming back again to the wagon-trail toresume our journey. 

[Illustration: _Lake Elizabeth from Ptarmigan Pass, Glacier NationalPark_]

Therefore, it became necessary, day after day, to take our boats off thewagon-road and haul them along foot-trails none too good. The log of thetwo boats is in itself a thrilling story. There were days and dayswhen the wagon was mired, when it stuck in the fords of streams or insoft places on the trail. It was a land flotilla by day, and, with itsstraw, a couch at night. And there came, toward the end of the journey, that one nerve-racking day when, over a sixty-foot cliff down afoot-trail, it was necessary to rope wagon, boats, and all, to get theboats into the Flathead River. 

But all this was before us then. We only knew it was summer, that thedays were warm and the nights cool, that the streams were full of trout, that such things as telegraphs and telephones were falling far in ourrear, and that before us was the Big Adventure. 

III

BRIDGE CREEK TO BOWMAN LAKE

The first night we camped at Bridge Creek on a river-flat. Beside us, the creek rolled and foamed. The horses, in their rope corral, lay downand rolled in sheer ecstasy when their heavy packs were removed. Thecook set up his sheet-iron stove beside the creek, built a wood fire, lifted the stove over it, fried meat, boiled potatoes, heated beans, andmade coffee while the tents were going up. From a thicket near by camethe thud of an axe as branches were cut for bough beds. 

I have slept on all kinds of bough beds. They may be divided into threeclasses. There is the one which is high in the middle and slopes down atthe side--there is nothing so slippery as pine-needles--so that bymorning you are quite likely to be not only off the bed but out of thetent. And there is the bough bed made by the guide when he is in a greathurry, which consists of large branches and not very many needles. Sothat in the morning, on rising, one is as furrowed as a waffle off theiron. And there is the third kind, which is the real bough bed, butwhich cannot be tossed off in a moment, like a poem, but must be theresult of calculation, time, and much labor. It is to this bough bedthat I shall some day indite an ode. 

This is the way you go about it: First, you take a large and healthywoodsman with an axe, who cuts down a tree--a substantial tree. Becausethis is the frame of your bed. But on no account do this yourself. Oneof the joys of a bough bed is seeing somebody else build it. 

The tree is an essential. It is cut into six-foot lengths--unless one ismore than six feet long. If the bed is intended for one, two side pieceswith one at the head and one at the foot are enough, laid flat on alevel place, making a sort of boxed-in rectangle. If the bed is intendedfor two, another log down the center divides it into two bunks andprevents quarreling. 

Now begins the real work of constructing the bough bed. If one is a goodmanager, while the frame is being made, the younger members of thefamily have been performing the loving task of getting the branchestogether. When a sufficient number of small branches has beenaccumulated, this number varying from one ton to three, judging by sizeand labor, the bough bed is built by the simple expedient of stickingthe branches into the enclosed space like flowers into a vase. They mustbe packed very closely, stem down. This is a slow and not particularlyagreeable task for one's loving family and friends, owing to thetendency of pine-and balsam-needles to jag. Indeed, I have known it tohappen that, after a try or two, some one in the outfit is delegated tothe task of official bed-maker, and a slight coldness is noticeable whenone refers to dusk and bedtime. 

Over these soft and feathery plumes of balsam--soft and feathery onlythrough six blankets--is laid the bedding, and on this couch the weariedand saddle-sore tourist may sleep as comfortably as in his grandaunt'sfeather bed. 

But, dear traveler, it is much simpler to take an air-mattress and afoot-pump. True, even this has its disadvantages. It is not safe tostick pins into it while disrobing at night. Occasionally, a faultyvalve lets go, and the sleeper dreams he is falling from the WoolworthTower. But lacking a sturdy woodsman and a loving family to collectbranches, I advise the air-bed. 

Fishing at Bridge Creek, that first evening, was poor. We caught dozensof small trout. But it would have taken hundreds to satisfy us after ourlunchless day, and there were other reasons. 

One casts for trout. There is no sitting on a mossy stone and watching aworm guilefully struggling to attract a fish to the hooks. No; onecasts. 

Now, I have learned to cast fairly well. On the lawn at home, or in themiddle of a ten-acre lot, cleared, or the center of a lake, I can putout quite a lot of line. In one cast out of three, I can drop a fly sothat it appears to be committing suicide--which is the correct way. Butin a thicket I am lost. I hold the woman's record for getting the hookin my hair or the lobe of the Little Boy's ear. I have hung fish high intrees more times than phonographs have hanged Danny Deever. I can, undersuch circumstances (i. E. , the thicket), leave camp with a rod, foursix-foot leaders, an expensive English line, and a smile, and return anhour later with a six-inch trout, a bandaged hand, a hundred and eightymosquito bites, no leaders, and no smile. 

So we fished little that first evening, and, on the discovery thatcandles had been left out of the cook's outfit, we retired early to ourbough beds, which were, as it happened that night, of class A. 

There was a deer-lick on our camp-ground there at Bridge Creek, andduring the night deer came down and strayed through the camp. One of theguides saw a black bear also. We saw nothing. Some day I shall write anarticle called: "Wild Animals I Have Missed. "

We had made fourteen miles the first day, with a late start. It was notbad, but the next day we determined to do better. At five o'clock wewere up, and at five-thirty tents were down and breakfast under way. Wehad had a visitor the night before--that curious anomaly, a younghermit. He had been a very well-known pugilist in the light-weight classand, his health failing, he had sought the wilderness. There he hadlived for seven years alone. 

We asked him if he never cared to see people. But he replied that treeswere all the company he wanted. Deer came and browsed around his tinyshack there in the woods. All the trout he could use played in his frontgarden. He had a dog and a horse, and he wanted nothing else. He came tosee us off the next morning, and I think we amused him. We seemed toneed so much. He stared at our thirty-one horses, sixteen of them packedwith things he had learned to live without. But I think he rather hatedto see us go. We had brought a little excitement into his quiet life. 

The first bough bed had been a failure. For--note you--I had not thenlearned of the bough bed _de luxe_. This information, which I have givenyou so freely, dear reader, what has it not cost me in sleepless nightsand family coldness and aching muscles!

So I find this note in my daily journal, written that day on horseback, and therefore not very legible:--

 Mem: After this, must lie over the camp-ground until I find a place that fits me to sleep on. Then have the tent erected over it. 

There was a little dissension in the party that morning, Joe havingwakened in the night while being violently shoved out under the edge ofhis tent by his companion, who was a restless sleeper. But ill-tempercannot live long in the open. We settled to the swinging walk of thetrail. In the mountain meadows there were carpets of flowers. Theyfurnished highly esthetic if not very substantial food for our horsesduring our brief rests. They were very brief, those rests. All too soon, Pete would bring Angel to me, and I would vault into thesaddle--extremely figurative, this--and we would fall into line, Peteswaying with the cowboy's roll in the saddle, the Optimist bouncingfreely, Joe with an eye on that pack-horse which carried the delicaciesof the trip, the Big Boy with long legs that almost touched the ground, the Middle Boy with eyes roving for adventure, the Little Boy deadlyserious and hoping for a bear. And somewhere in the rear, where he couldwatch all responsibilities and supply the smokers with matches, theHead. 

That second day, we crossed Dutch Ridge and approached the Flathead. What I have called here the Flathead is known locally as the North Fork. The pack-outfit had started first. Long before we caught up with them, we heard the bells on the lead horses ringing faintly. 

Passing a pack-outfit on the trail is a difficult matter. The wiselittle horses, traveling free and looked after only by a wrangler ortwo, do not like to be passed. One of two things happens when thesaddle-outfit tries to pass the pack. Either the pack starts on a smartcanter ahead, or it turns wildly off into the forest to theaccompaniment of much complaint by the drivers. A pack-horse loose on anarrow trail is a dangerous matter. With its bulging pack, it worms itsway past anything on the trail, and bad accidents have followed. Here, however, there was room for us to pass. 

Tiny gophers sat up beside the trail and squeaked at us. A coyoteyelped. Bumping over fallen trees, creaking and groaning and swaying, came the boat-wagon. Mike had found a fishing-line somewhere, andpretended to cast from the bow. 

"Ship ahoy!" he cried, when he saw us, and his instructions to thedriver were purely nautical. "Hard astern!" he yelled, going down ahill, and instead of "Gee" or "Haw" he shouted "Port" or "Starboard. "

An acquaintance of George and Mike has built a boat which is intended togo up-stream by the force of the water rushing against it and turning apropeller. We had a spirited discussion about it. 

"Because, " as one of the men objected, "it's all right until you get tothe head of the stream. Then what are you going to do?" he asked. "She'll only go up--she won't go down. "

Pete, the chief guide, was a German. He was rather uneasy for fear weintended to cross the Canadian line. But we reassured him. A big blondin a wide-flapping Stetson, black Angora chaps, and flannel shirt with abandana, he led our little procession into the wilderness and sang as herode. The Head frequently sang with him. And because the only song theHead knew very well in German was the "Lorelei, " we had it hour afterhour. Being translated to one of the boatmen, he observed: "I have knowngirls like that. I guess I'd leave most any boat for them. But I'd leavethis boat for most any girl. "

We were approaching the mountains, climbing slowly but steadily. Wepassed through Lone Tree Prairie, where one great pine dominated thecountry for miles around, and stopped by a small river for luncheon. 

Of all the meals that we took in the open, perhaps luncheon was the mostdelightful. Condensed milk makes marvelous cocoa. We opened tins ofthings, consulted maps, eased the horses' cinches, rested our own tiredbodies for an hour or so. For the going, while much better than we hadexpected, was still slow. It was rare, indeed, to be able to get thehorses out of a walk. And there is no more muscle-racking occupationthan riding a walking horse hour after hour through a long day. 

By the end of the second day we were well away from even that remotepart of civilization from which we had started, and a terrible fact wasdawning on us. The cook did not like us!

Now, we all have our small vanities, and mine has always been my successwith cooks. I like cooks. As time goes on, I am increasingly dependenton cooks. I never fuss a cook, or ask how many eggs a cake requires, orremark that we must be using the lard on the hardwood floors. I nevermake any of the small jests on that order, with which most housewivestry to reduce the cost of living. 

No; I really go out of my way to ignore the left-overs, and not once onthis trip had I so much as mentioned dish-towels or anything unpleasant. I had seen my digestion slowly going with a course of delicious butindigestible saddle-bags, which were all we had for bread. 

But--I was failing. Bill unpacked and cooked and packed up again androde on the chuck-wagon. But there was something wrong. Perhaps it wasthe fall out of the wagon. Perhaps we were too hungry. We were that, Iknow. Perhaps he looked ahead through the vista of days and saw thatformidable equipment of fishing-tackle, and mentally he was counting thefish to clean and cook and clean and cook and clean and--

The center of a camping-trip is the cook. If, in the spring, men'shearts turn to love, in the woods they turn to food. And cooking is atemperamental art. No unhappy cook can make a soufflé. Not, of course, that we had soufflé. 

A camp cook should be of a calm and placid disposition. He has thehardest job that I know of. He cooks with inadequate equipment on atiny stove in the open, where the air blows smoke into his face andcinders into his food. He must cook either on his knees or bending overto within a foot or so of the ground. And he must cook moving, as itwere. Worse than that, he must cook not only for the party but for ahungry crowd of guides and packers that sits around in a circle andwatches him, and urges him, and gets under his feet, and, if he isunpleasant, takes his food fairly out of the frying-pan under his eyesif he is not on guard. He is the first up in the morning and the last inbed. He has to dry his dishes on anything that comes handy, and thenpack all of his grub on an unreliable horse and start off for the nexteating-ground. 

So, knowing all this, and also that we were about a thousand miles fromthe nearest employment-office and several days' hard riding from asettlement, we went to Bill with tribute. We praised his specialties. Wegave him a college lad, turned guide for the summer, to assist him. Wegathered up our own dishes. We inquired for his bruise. But gloomhung over him like a cloud. 

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT BY FRED H. KISER, PORTLAND, OREGON _A mountain lake in Glacier National Park_]

And he _could_ cook. Well--

We had made a forced trip that day, and the last five miles wereagonizing. In vain we sat sideways on our horses, threw a leg over thepommel, got off, and walked and led them. Bowman Lake, our objectivepoint, seemed to recede. 

Very few people have ever seen Bowman Lake. Yet I believe it is one ofthe most beautiful lakes in this country. It is not large, perhaps onlytwelve miles long and from a mile to two miles in width. Save for thelower end, it lies entirely surrounded by precipitous and inaccessiblepeaks--old Rainbow, on whose mist-cap the setting sun paints a truerainbow day after day, Square Peak, Reuter Peak, and Peabody, named withthe usual poetic instinct of the Geological Survey. They form a naturalwall, round the upper end of the lake, of solid-granite slopes whichrise over a mile in height above it. Perpetual snow covers the tops ofthese mountains, and, melting in innumerable waterfalls, feeds the lakebelow. 

So far as I can discover, we were taking the first boat, with thepossible exception of an Indian canoe long ago, to Bowman Lake. Not thefirst boat, either, for the Geological Survey had nailed a few boardstogether, and the ruin of this venture was still decaying on the shore. 

There was a report that Bowman Lake was full of trout. That was one ofthe things we had come to find out. It was for Bowman Lake primarilythat all the reels and flies and other lure had been arranged. If it wastrue, then twenty-four square miles of virgin lake were ours to fishfrom. 

IV

A FISHERMAN'S PARADISE

After our first view of the lake, the instant decision was to make apermanent camp there for a few days. And this we did. Tents were put upfor the luxurious-minded, three of them. Mine was erected over me, when, as I had pre-determined, I had found a place where I could liecomfortably. The men belonging to the outfit, of course, slept under thestars. A packer, a guide, or the cook with an outfit like ours has, outside of such clothing as he wears or carries rolled in his blankets, but one possession--and that is his tarp bed. With such a bed, a can oftomatoes, and a gun, it is said that a cow-puncher can go anywhere. 

Once or twice I was awake in the morning before the cook's loud call of"Come and get it!" brought us from our tents. I never ceased to viewwith interest this line of tarp beds, each with its sleeping occupant, his hat on the ground beside him, ready, when the call came, to sit upblinking in the sunlight, put on his hat, crawl out, and be ready forthe day. 

The boats had traveled well. The next morning, after a breakfast of hamand eggs, fried potatoes, coffee, and saddle-bags, we were ready to trythem out. 

And here I shall be generous. For this means that next year we shall gothere and find other outfits there before us, and people in the latestthing in riding-clothes, and fancy trout-creels and probablysixty-dollar reels. 

Bowman Lake is a fisherman's paradise. The first day on the lake wecaught sixty-nine cut-throat trout averaging a pound each, and thiswithout knowing where to look. 

[Illustration: _Getting ready for the day's fishing at camp on BowmanLake_]

In the morning, we could see them lying luxuriously on shelving banks inthe sunlight, only three to six feet below the surface. They rose, likea shot, to the flies. For some reason, George Locke, our fisherman, resented their taking the Parmachene Belle. Perhaps because the trout ofhis acquaintance had not cared for this fly. Or maybe he consideredthe Belle not sportsmanly. The Brown Hackle and Royal Coachman didwell, however, and, in later fishing on this lake, we found them morereliable than the gayer flies. In the afternoon, the shallows failed us. But in deep holes where the brilliant walls shelved down to incredibledepths, they rose again in numbers. 

It was perfectly silent. Doubtless, countless curious wild eyes watchedus from the mountain-slopes and the lake-borders. But we heard not eventhe cracking of brushwood under cautious feet. The tracks of deer, wherethey had come down to drink, a dead mountain-lion floating in a pool, the slow flight of an eagle across the face of old Rainbow, and no soundbut the soft hiss of a line as it left the reel--that was Bowman Lake, that day, as it lay among its mountains. So precipitous are the slopes, so rank the vegetation where the forest encroaches, that we were put toit to find a ridge large enough along the shore to serve as a footholdfor luncheon. At last we found a tiny spot, perhaps ten feet long bythree feet wide, and on that we landed. The sun went down; the rainbowclouds gathered about the peaks above, and still the trout were rising. When at last we turned for our ten-mile row back to camp, it was almostdusk. 

Now and then, when I am tired and the things of this world press closeand hard, I think of those long days on that lonely lake, and thehome-coming at nightfall. Toward the pin-point of glow--the distantcamp-fire which was our beacon light--the boat moved to the long, tiredsweep of the oars; around us the black forest, the mountains overheadglowing and pink, as if lighted from within. And then, at last, thegrating of our little boat on the sand--and night. 

During the day, our horses were kept in a rope corral. Sometimes theywere quiet; sometimes a spirit of mutiny seemed to possess the entirethirty-one. There is in such a string always one bad horse that, withears back and teeth showing, keeps the entire bunch milling. When such ahorse begins to stir up trouble, the wrangler tries to rope him and gethim out. Mad excitement follows as the noose whips through the air. Butthey stay in the corral. So curious is the equine mind that it seldomrealizes that it could duck and go under the rope, or chew it through, or, for that matter, strain against it and break it. 

At night, we turned the horses loose. Almost always in the morning, somewere missing, and had to be rounded up. The greater part, however, stayed close to the bell-mare. It was our first night at Bowman Lake, Ithink, that we heard a mountain-lion screaming. The herd immediatelystampeded. It was far away, so that we could not hear the horsesrunning. But we could hear the agitated and rapid ringing of the bell, and, not long after, the great cat went whining by the camp. In themorning, the horses were far up the mountain-side. 

Sometime I shall write that article on "Wild Animals I Have Missed. " Wewere in a great game-country. But we had little chance to creep up onanything but deer. The bells of the pack-outfit, our own jingling spurs, the accouterments, the very tinkle of the tin cups on our saddles musthave made our presence known to all the wilderness-dwellers long beforewe appeared. 

After we had been at Bowman Lake a day or two, while at breakfast onemorning, we saw two of the guides racing their horses in a mad rushtoward the camp. Just outside, one of the ponies struck a log, turned asomersault, and threw his rider, who, nothing daunted, came hurrying upon foot. They had seen a bull moose not far away. Instantly all wasconfusion. The horses were not saddled. One of the guides gave me hisand flung me on it. The Little Boy made his first essay at barebackriding. In a wild scamper we were off, leaping logs and dodging trees. The Little Boy fell off with a terrific thud, and sat up, lookingextremely surprised. And when we had got there, as clandestinely as asteam calliope in a circus procession, the moose was gone. I sometimeswonder, looking back, whether there really was a moose there or not. DidI or did I not see a twinkle in Bill Shea's eye as he described thesweep of the moose's horns? I wonder. 

[Illustration: _The horses in the rope corral_]

Birds there were in plenty; wild ducks that swam across the lake atterrific speed as we approached; plover-snipe, tiny gray birds with longbills and white breasts, feeding along the edge of the lake peacefullyat our very feet; an eagle carrying a trout to her nest. Brown squirrelscame into the tents and ate our chocolate and wandered over usfearlessly at night. Bears left tracks around the camp. But we saw noneafter we left the Lake McDonald country. 

Yet this is a great game-country. The warden reports a herd ofthirty-six moose in the neighborhood of Bowman Lake; mountain-lion, lynx, marten, bear, and deer abound. A trapper built long ago asubstantial log shack on the north shore of the lake, and although it ismany years since it was abandoned, it is still almost weather-proof. Allof us have our dreams. Some day I should like to go back and live for alittle time in that forest cabin. In the long snow-bound days after heset his traps, the trapper had busied himself fitting it up. A tin canmade his candle-bracket on the wall, axe-hewn planks formed a table anda bench, and diagonally across a corner he had built his fireplace ofstones from the lakeside. 

He had a simple method of constructing a chimney; he merely left withouta roof that corner of the cabin and placed slanting boards in it. He hadmade a crane, too, which swung out over the fireplace. All of the RockyMountains were in his back garden, and his front yard was Bowman Lake. 

We had had fair weather so far. But now rain set in. Hail came first;then a steady rain. The tents were cold. We got out our slickers andstood out around the beach fire in the driving storm, and ate ourbreakfast of hot cakes, fried ham, potatoes and onions cooked together, and hot coffee. The cook rigged up a tarpaulin over his little stove andstood there muttering and frying. He had refused to don a slicker, andhis red sweater, soaking up the rain, grew heavy with moisture and beganto stretch. Down it crept, down and down. 

The cook straightened up from his frying-pan and looked at it. Then hesaid:--

 "There, little sweater, don't you cry; You'll be a blanket by and by. "

This little touch of humor on his part cheered us. Perhaps, seeing howsporting we were about the weather, he was going to like us after all. Well--

Our new tents leaked--disheartening little drips that came in andwandered idly over our blankets, to lodge in little pools here andthere. A cold wind blew. I resorted to that camper's delight--a stoneheated in the camp-fire--to warm my chilled body. We found one or twomagazines, torn and dejected, and read them, advertisements and all. Andstill, when it seemed the end of the day, it was not high noon. 

By afternoon, we were saturated; the camp steamed. We ate supper afterdark, standing around the camp-fire, holding our tin plates of food inour hands. The firelight shone on our white faces and dripping slickers. The horses stood with their heads low against the storm. The men of theoutfit went to bed on the sodden ground with the rain beating in theirfaces. 

The next morning was gray, yet with a hint of something better. At eighto'clock, the clouds began to lift. Their solidity broke. The lower edgeof the cloud-bank that had hung in a heavy gray line, straight andominous, grew ragged. Shreds of vapor detached themselves and moved off, grew smaller, disappeared. Overhead, the pall was thinner. Finally itbroke, and a watery ray of sunlight came through. And, at last, oldRainbow, at the upper end of the lake, poked her granite head throughits vapory sheathings. Angel, my white horse, also eyed the sky, andthen, putting her pink nose under the corral-rope, she gently worked herway out. The rain was over. 

The horses provided endless excitement. Whether at night being drivenoff by madly circling riders to the grazing-ground or rounded up intothe corral in the morning, they gave the men all they could do. Gettingthem into the corral was like playing pigs-in-clover. As soon as a fewwere in, and the wrangler started for others, the captives escaped andshot through the camp. There were times when the air seemed full offlying hoofs and twitching ears, of swinging ropes and language. 

On the last day at Bowman Lake, we realized that although the weatherhad lifted, the cook's spirits had not. He was polite enough--he hadalways been polite to the party. But he packed in a dejected manner. There was something ominous in the very way he rolled up the strawberryjam in sacking. 

The breaking-up of a few days' camp is a busy time. The tents are takendown at dawn almost over one's head. Blankets are rolled and strapped;the pack-ponies groan and try to roll their packs off. 

Bill Shea quotes a friend of his as contending that the way to keep apack-pony cinched is to put his pack on him, throw the diamond hitch, cinch him as tight as possible, and then take him to a drinking-placeand fill him up with water. However, we did not resort to this. 

V

TO KINTLA LAKE

We had washed at dawn in the cold lake. The rain had turned to snow inthe night, and the mountains were covered with a fresh white coating. And then, at last, we were off, the wagons first, although we were soonto pass them. We had lifted the boats out of the water and put themlovingly in their straw again. And Mike and George formed the crew. Theguides were ready with facetious comments. 

"Put up a sail!" they called. "Never give up the ship!" was anotherfavorite. The Head, who has a secret conviction that he should have hadhis voice trained, warbled joyously:--

 "I'll stick to the ship, lads; You save your lives. I've no one to love me; You've children and wives. "

And so, still in the cool of the morning, our long procession mountedthe rise which some great glacier deposited ages ago at the foot ofwhat is now Bowman Lake. We turned longing eyes back as we left the laketo its winter ice and quiet. For never again, probably, will it be ours. We have given its secret to the world. 

At two o'clock we found a ranger's cabin and rode into its enclosure forluncheon. Breakfast had been early, and we were very hungry. We had gonelong miles through the thick and silent forest, and now we wanted food. We wanted food more than we wanted anything else in the world. We sat ina circle on the ground and talked about food. 

And, at last, the chuck-wagon drove in. It had had a long, slow trip. Westood up and gave a hungry cheer, and then--_Bill was gone!_ Some milesback he had halted the wagon, got out, taken his bed on his back, andstarted toward civilization afoot. We stared blankly at the teamster. 

"Well, " we said; "what did he say?"

"All he said to me was, 'So long, '" said the teamster. 

And that was all there was to it. So there we were in the wilderness, far, far from a cook. The hub of our universe had departed. Or, to makethe figure modern, we had blown out a tire. And we had no spare one. 

I made my declaration of independence at once. I could cook; but I wouldnot cook for that outfit. There were too many; they were too hungry. Besides, I had come on a pleasure-trip, and the idea of cooking forfifteen men and thirty-one horses was too much for me. I made some cocoaand grumbled while I made it. We lunched out of tins and in savagesilence. When we spoke, it was to impose horrible punishments on thedefaulting cook. We hoped he would enjoy his long walk back tocivilization without food. 

"Food!" answered one of the boys. "He's got plenty cached in that bed ofhis, all right. What you should have done, " he said to the teamster, "was to take his bed from him and let him starve. "

In silence we finished our luncheon; in silence, mounted our horses. Inblack and hopeless silence we rode on north, farther and farther fromcooks and hotels and tables-d'hôte. 

We rode for an hour--two hours. And, at last, sitting in a cleared spot, we saw a man beside the trail. He was the first man we had seen in days. He was sitting there quite idly. Probably that man to-day thinks that hetook himself there on his own feet, of his own volition. We know better. He was directed there for our happiness. It was a direct act ofProvidence. For we rode up to him and said:--

"Do you know of any place where we can find a cook?"

And this man, who had dropped from heaven, replied:

"_I am a cook. _"

So we put him on our extra saddle-horse and took him with us. He cookedfor us with might and main, day and night, until the trip was over. Andif you don't believe this story, write to Norman Lee, Kintla, Montana, and ask him if it is true. What is more, Norman Lee could cook. He couldcook on his knees, bending over, and backward. He had been in Cuba, inthe Philippines, in the Boxer Rebellion in China, and was now a trapper;is now a trapper, for, as I write this, Norman Lee is trapping martenand lynx on the upper left-hand corner of Montana, in one of the emptyspaces of the world. 

We were very happy. We caracoled--whatever that may be. We sang andwhistled, and we rode. How we rode! We rode, and rode, and rode, androde, and rode, and rode, and rode. And, at last, just when the end ofendurance had come, we reached our night camp. 

Here and there upon the west side of Glacier Park are curious, sharplydefined treeless places, surrounded by a border of forest. On RoundPrairie, that night, we pitched our tents and slept the sleep of theweary, our heads pillowed on war-bags in which the heel of a slipper, the edge of a razor-case, a bottle of sunburn lotion, and the tooth-endof a comb made sleeping an adventure. 

It was cold. It was always cold at night. But, in the morning, wewakened to brilliant sunlight, to the new cook's breakfast, and toanother day in the saddle. We were roused at dawn by a shrill yell. 

Startled, every one leaped to the opening of his tent and stared out. Itproved, however, not to be a mountain-lion, and was, indeed, nothingmore than one of the packers struggling to get into a wet pair of socks, and giving vent to his irritation in a wild fury of wrath. 

As Pete and Bill Shea and Tom Farmer threw the diamond hitch over thepacks that morning, they explained to me that all camp cooks are of twokinds--the good cooks, who are evil of disposition, and the tin-cancooks, who only need a can-opener to be happy. But I lived to be able torefute that. Norman Lee was a cook, and he was also amiable. 

But that morning, in spite of the bright sunlight, started ill. Forseven horses were missing, and before they were rounded up, the guideshad ridden a good forty miles of forest and trail. But, at last, thewanderers were brought in and we were ready to pack. 

On a pack-horse there are two sets of rope. There is a sling-rope, twenty or twenty-five feet long, and a lash-rope, which should bethirty-five feet long. The sling-rope holds the side pack; the top packis held by the lash-rope and the diamond hitch. When a cow-puncher on abronco yells for a diamond, he does not refer to a jewel. He means alash-rope. When the diamond is finally thrown, the packer puts his footagainst the horse's face and pulls. The packer pulls, and the horsegrunts. If the packer pulls a shade too much, the horse bucks, and thereis an exciting time in which everybody clears and the horse has thefield--every one, that is, but Joe, whose duty it was to be on the spotin dangerous moments. Generally, however, by the time he got his cameraset up and everything ready, the bucker was feeding placidly and theexcitement was over. 

We rather stole away from Round Prairie that morning. A settler hadtaken advantage of a clearing some miles away to sow a little grain. When our seven truants were found that brilliant morning, they had eatenup practically the grain-field and were lying gorged in the center ofit. 

[Illustration: _Bear-grass_]

So "we folded our tents like the Arabs, and as silently stole away. "(This has to be used in every camping-story, and this seems to be a goodplace for it. )

We had come out on to the foothills again on our way to Kintla Lake. Again we were near the Flathead, and beyond it lay the blue and purpleof the Kootenai Hills. The Kootenais on the left, the Rockies on theright, we were traveling north in a great flat basin. 

The meadow-lands were full of flowers. There was rather less Indianpaint-brush than on the east side of the park. We were too low for muchbear-grass. But there were masses everywhere of June roses, trueforget-me-nots, and larkspur. And everywhere in the burnt areas was thefireweed, that phoenix plant that springs up from the ashes of deadtrees. 

There were, indeed, trees, flowers, birds, fish--everything but freshmeat. We had had no fresh meat since the first day out. And now my soulrevolted at the sight of bacon. I loathed all ham with a deadlyloathing. I had eaten canned salmon until I never wanted to see itagain. And our provisions were getting low. 

Just to the north, where we intended to camp, was Starvation Ridge. Itseemed to be an ominous name. 

Norman Lee knew a man somewhere within a radius of one hundredmiles--they have no idea of distance there--who would kill a forty-poundcalf if we would send him word. But it seemed rather too much veal. Wepassed it up. 

On and on, a hot day, a beautiful trail, but no water. No littlerivulets crossing the path, no icy lakes, no rolling cataracts from themountains. We were tanned a blackish purple. We were saddle-sore. One ofthe guides had a bottle of liniment for saddle-gall and suggestedrubbing it on the saddle. Packs slipped and were tightened. The mountainpanorama unrolled slowly to our right. And all day long the boatmenstruggled with the most serious problem yet, for the wagon-trail was nowhardly good enough for horses. 

Where the trail turned off toward the mountains and Kintla Lake, we meta solitary horseman. He had ridden sixty miles down and sixty miles backto get his mail. There is a sort of R. F. D. In this corner of the world, but it is not what I should call in active operation. It was thenAugust, and there had been just two mails since the previous Christmas!

Aside from the Geological Survey, very few people, except an occasionaltrapper, have ever seen Kintla Lake. It lies, like Bowman Lake, in arecess in the mountains. We took some photographs of Kintla Peak, takingour boats to the upper end of the lake for the work. They are, so far asI can discover, the only photographs ever taken of this great mountainwhich towers, like Rainbow, a mile or so above the lake. 

Across from Kintla, there is a magnificent range of peaks without anyname whatever. The imagination of the Geological Survey seemed to dieafter Starvation Ridge; at least, they stopped there. Kintla is acurious lemon-yellow color, a great, flat wall tapering to a point andfrequently hidden under a cap of clouds. 

But Kintla Lake is a disappointment to the fisherman. With the exceptionof one of the guides, who caught a four-pound bull-trout there, repeatedwhippings of the lake with the united rods and energies of the entireparty failed to bring a single rise. No fish leaped of an evening; nonelay in the shallows along the bank. It appeared to be a dead lake. Ihave a strong suspicion that that guide took away Kintla's only fish, and left it without hope of posterity. 

We rested at Kintla, --for a strenuous time was before us, --rested andfasted. For supplies were now very low. Starvation Ridge loomed over us, and starvation stared us in the face. We had counted on trout, and therewere no trout. That night, we supped off our last potatoes and off cakesmade of canned salmon browned in butter. Breakfast would have to be arepetition minus the potatoes. We were just a little low in our minds. 

[Illustration: _A Glacier Park lake_]

The last thing I saw that night was the cook's shadowy figure as hecrouched working over his camp-fire. 

And we wakened in the morning to catastrophe. In spite of the fact thatwe had starved our horses the day before, in order to keep them grazingnear camp that night, they had wandered. Eleven were missing, and elevenremained missing. Up the mountain-slopes and through the woods thewranglers rode like madmen, only to come in on dejected horses withfailure written large all over them. One half of the saddlers were gone;my Angel had taken wings and flown away. 

We sat dejectedly on the bank and fished those dead waters. We wrangledamong ourselves. Around us was the forest, thick and close save for thetiny clearing, perhaps forty feet by forty feet. There was no openspace, no place to walk, nothing to do but sit and wait. 

At last, some of us in the saddle and some afoot, we started. It lookedas though the walkers might have a long hike. But sometime about middaythere was a sound of wild cheering behind us, and the wranglers rode upwith the truants. They had been far up on the mountain-side. 

It is curious how certain comparatively unimportant things stand outabout such a trip as this. Of Kintla itself, I have no very vividmemories. But standing out very sharply is that figure of the cookcrouched over his dying fire, with the black forest all about him. Thereis a picture, too, of a wild deer that came down to the edge of the laketo drink as we sat in the first boat that had ever been on Kintla Lake, whipping a quiet pool. And there is a clear memory of the assistantcook, the college boy who was taking his vacation in the wilds, whistling the Dvo[vr]ák "Humoresque" as he dried the dishes on a pieceof clean sacking. 

VI

RUNNING THE RAPIDS OF THE FLATHEAD

It was now approaching time for Bob's great idea to materialize. Forthis, and to this end, had he brought the boats on their strangeland-journey--such a journey as, I fancy, very few boats have ever hadbefore. 

The project was, as I have said, to run the unknown reaches of the NorthFork of the Flathead from the Canadian border to the town of ColumbiaFalls. 

"The idea is this, " Bob had said: "It's never been done before, do yousee? It makes the trip unusual and all that. "

"Makes it unusually risky, " I had observed. 

"Well, there's a risk in pretty nearly everything, " he had repliedblithely. "There's a risk in crossing a city street, for that matter. Riding these horses is a risk, if you come to that. Anyhow, it wouldmake a good story. "

So that is why I did it. And this is the story:

We were headed now for the Flathead just south of the Canadian line. Toreach the river, it was necessary to take the boats through a burntforest, without a trail of any sort. They leaped and plunged as thewagon scrambled, jerked, careened, stuck, détoured, and finally gotthrough. There were miles of such going--heart-breaking miles--and atthe end we paused at the top of a sixty-foot bluff and looked down atthe river. 

Now, I like water in a tub or drinking-glass or under a bridge. I amvery keen about it. But I like still water--quiet, well-behaved, stay-at-home water. The North Fork of the Flathead River is a riotous, debauched, and highly erratic stream. It staggers in a series of wildzigzags for a hundred miles of waterway from the Canadian border toColumbia Falls, our destination. And that hundred miles of whirlpools, jagged rocks, and swift and deadly cañons we were to travel. I turnedaround and looked at the Family. It was my ambition that had broughtthem to this. We might never again meet, as a whole. We were sure toget to Columbia Falls, but not at all sure to get there in the boats. Ilooked at the boats; they were, I believe, stout river-boats. But theywere small. Undeniably, they were very small. 

The river appeared to be going about ninety miles an hour. There was onehope, however. Perhaps they could not get the boats down over the bluff. It seemed a foolhardy thing even to try. I suggested this to Bob. But hereplied, rather tartly, that he had not brought those boats at the riskof his life through all those miles of wilderness to have me fail himnow. 

He painted the joys of the trip. He expressed so strong a belief in themthat he said that he himself would ride with the outfit, thus permittingmost of the Family in the boats that first day. He said the river wasfull of trout. I expressed a strong doubt that any trout could live inthat stream and hold their own. I felt that they had all been washeddown years ago. And again I looked at the Family. 

Because I knew what would happen. The Family would insist on goingalong. It was not going to let mother take this risk alone; it wasgoing to drown with her if necessary. 

The Family jaws were set. _They were going. _

The entire outfit lowered the wagon by roping it down. There was onedelicious moment when I thought boats and all were going over the edge. But the ropes held. Nothing happened. 

_They put the boats in the water. _

I had one last rather pitiful thought as I took my seat in the stern ofone of them. 

"This is my birthday, " I said wistfully. "It's rather a queer way tospend a birthday, I think. "

But this was met with stern silence. I was to have my story whether Iwanted it or not. 

Yet once in the river, the excitement got me. I had run brief spells ofrapids before. There had been a gasp or two and it was over. But thiswas to be a prolonged four days' gasp, with intervals only to sleep atnight. 

Fortunately for all of us, it began rather quietly. The current wasswift, so that, once out into the stream, we shot ahead as if we hadbeen fired out of a gun. But, for all that, the upper reaches werecomparatively free of great rocks. Friendly little sandy shoals beckonedto us. The water was shallow. But, even then, I noticed what afterward Ifound was to be a delusion of the entire trip. 

This was the impression of riding downhill. I do not remember now howmuch the Flathead falls per mile. I have an impression that it is ninetyfeet, but as that would mean a drop of nine thousand feet, or almost twomiles, during the trip, I must be wrong somewhere. It was sixteen feet, perhaps. 

But hour after hour, on the straight stretches, there was thatsensation, on looking ahead, of staring down a toboggan-slide. It nevergrew less. And always I had the impression that just beyond that glassyslope the roaring meant uncharted falls--and destruction. It never did. 

The outfit, following along the trail, was to meet us at night and havecamp ready when we appeared--if we appeared. Only a few of us could usethe boats. George Locke in one, Mike Shannon in the other, could carrytwo passengers each. For the sake of my story, I was to take the entiretrip; the others were to alternate. 

I do not know, but I am very confident that no other woman has evertaken this trip. I am fairly confident that no other men have ever takenit. We could find no one who had heard of it being taken. All that weknew was that it was the North Fork of the Flathead River, and that ifwe stayed afloat long enough, we would come out at Columbia Falls. Theboatmen knew the lower part of the river, but not the upper two thirdsof it. 

[Illustration: _Still-water fishing_]

Now that it is over, I would not give up my memory of that long run foranything. It was one of the most unique experiences in a not uneventfulcareer. It was beautiful always, terrible occasionally. There weredozens of places each day where the boatmen stood up, staring ahead forthe channel, while the boats dodged wildly ahead. But always theseskillful pilots of ours found a way through. And so fast did we go thatthe worst places were always behind us before we had time to bereally terrified. 

The Flathead River in these upper reaches is fairly alive with trout. Onthe second day, I think it was, I landed a bull-trout that weighed ninepounds, and got it with a six-ounce rod. I am very proud of that. I haveeleven different pictures of myself holding the fish up. There weretrout everywhere. The difficulty was to stop the boat long enough to getthem. In fact, we did not stop, save in an occasional eddy in the midstof the torrent. We whipped the stream as we flew along. Under greatboulders, where the water seethed and roared, under deep cliffs where itflew like a mill-race, there were always fish. 

It was frightful work for the boatmen. It required skill every moment. There was not a second in the day when they could relax. Only mentrained to river rapids could have done it, and few, even, of these. Tothe eternal credit of George and Mike, we got through. It was nothingelse. 

On the evening of the first day, in the dusk which made the riverdoubly treacherous, we saw our camp-fire far ahead. 

With the going-down of the sun, the river had grown cold. We were wetwith spray, cramped from sitting still and holding on. But friendlyhands drew our boats to shore and helped us out. 

VII

THE SECOND DAY ON THE FLATHEAD

In a way, this is a fairy-story. Because a good fairy had been busyduring our absence. Days before, at the ranger's cabin, unknown to mostof us, an order had gone down to civilization for food. During all thosedays under Starvation Ridge, food had been on the way bypack-horse--food and an extra cook. 

So we went up to camp, expecting more canned salmon and fried trout andlittle else, and beheld--

A festive board set with candles--the board, however, in this case isfigurative; it was the ground covered with a tarpaulin--fried chicken, fresh green beans, real bread, jam, potatoes, cheese, cake, candy, cigars, and cigarettes. And--champagne!

That champagne had traveled a hundred miles on horseback. It had beencooled in the icy water of the river. We drank it out of tin cups. Wetoasted each other. We toasted the Flathead flowing just beside us. Wetoasted the full moon rising over the Kootenais. We toasted the goodfairy. The candles burned low in their sockets--this, also, isfigurative; they were stuck on pieces of wood. With due formality I waspresented with a birthday gift, a fishing-reel purchased by the Big andthe Middle and the Little Boy. 

Of all the birthdays that I can remember--and I remember quite afew--this one was the most wonderful. Over mountain-tops, glowing deeppink as they rose above masses of white clouds, came slowly a greatyellow moon. It turned the Flathead beside us to golden glory, andtransformed the evergreen thickets into fairy glades of light andshadow. Flickering candles inside the tents made them glow in luminoustriangles against their background of forest. 

Behind us, in the valley lands at the foot of the Rockies, the horsesrested and grazed, and eased their tired backs. The men lay out in theopen and looked at the stars. The air was fragrant with pine andbalsam. Night creatures called and answered. 

And, at last, we went to our tents and slept. For the morning was a newday, and I had not got all my story. 

That first day's run of the river we got fifty trout, ranging from onehalf-pound to four pounds. We should have caught more, but they couldnot keep up with the boat. We caught, also, the most terrific sunburnthat I have ever known anything about. We had thought that we werethoroughly leathered, but we had not passed the primary stage, apparently. In vain I dosed my face with cold-cream and talcum powder, and with a liquid warranted to restore the bloom of youth to an agedskin (mine, however, is not aged). 

My journal for the second day starts something like this:--

 Cold and gray. Stood in the water fifteen minutes in hip-boots for a moving picture. River looks savage. 

Of that second day, one beautiful picture stands out with distinctness. 

The river is lovely; it winds and twists through deep forests withalways that marvelous background of purple mountains capped with snow. Here and there, at long intervals, would come a quiet half-mile where, although the current was incredibly swift, there were, at least, norocks. It was on coming round one of these bends that we saw, out fromshore and drinking quietly, a deer. He was incredulous at first, andthen uncertain whether to be frightened or not. He threw his head up andwatched us, and then, turning, leaped up the bank and into the forest. 

Except for fish, there was surprisingly little life to be seen. Baldeagles sat by the river, as intent on their fishing as we were on ours. Wild ducks paddled painfully up against the current. Kingfishers fishedin quiet pools. But the real interest of the river, its real life, layin its fish. What piscine tragedies it conceals, with those murderous, greedy, and powerful assassins, the bull-trout, pursuing fish, as I haveseen them, almost into the landing-net! What joyous interludes where, ina sunny shallow, tiny baby trout played tag while we sat and watchedthem!

[Illustration: _Mountains of Glacier National Park from the North Forkof the Flathead River_]

The danger of the river is not all in the current. There are quicksandsalong the Flathead, sands underlain with water, apparently secure butreaching up clutching hands to the unwary. Our noonday luncheon, takenalong the shore, was always on some safe and gravelly bank or tinyisland. 

Our second camp on the Flathead was less fortunate than the first. Always, in such an outfit as ours, the first responsibility is thehorses. Camp must be made within reach of grazing-grounds for them, andin these mountain and forest regions this is almost always a difficultmatter. Here and there are meadows where horses may eat their fill; but, generally, pasture must be hunted. Often, long after we were settled forthe night, our horses were still ranging far, hunting for grass. 

So, on this second night, we made an uncomfortable camp for the sake ofthe horses, a camp on a steep bluff sloping into the water in a deadforest. It had been the intention, as the river was comparatively quiethere, to swim the animals across and graze them on the other side. But, although generally a horse can swim when put to it, we discovered toolate that several horses in our string could not swim at all. In theattempt to get them across, one horse with a rider was almost drowned. So we gave that up, and they were driven back five miles into thecountry to pasture. 

There is something ominous and most depressing about a burnt forest. There is no life, nothing green. It is a ghost-forest, filled with talltree skeletons and the mouldering bones of those that have fallen, anddraped with dry gray moss that swings in the wind. Moving through such aforest is almost impossible. Fallen and rotten trees, black and charredstumps cover every foot of ground. It required two hours' work with anaxe to clear a path that I might get to the little ridge on which mytent was placed. The day had been gray, and, to add to our discomfort, there was a soft, fine rain. The Middle Boy had developed an inflamedknee and was badly crippled. Sitting in the drizzle beside thecamp-fire, I heated water in a tin pail and applied hot compressesconsisting of woolen socks. 

It was all in the game. Eggs tasted none the worse for being fried in askillet into which the rain was pattering. Skins were weather-proof, ifclothes were not. And heavy tarpaulins on the ground protected ourbedding from dampness. 

The outfit, coming down by trail, had passed a small store in aclearing. They had bought a whole cheese weighing eleven pounds, adifficult thing to transport on horseback, a wooden pail containingnineteen pounds of chocolate chips, and six dozen eggs--our first eggsin many days. 

In the shop, while making the purchase, the Head had pulled out a box ofcigarettes. The woman who kept the little store had never seenmachine-made cigarettes before, and examined them with the greatestinterest. For in that country every man is his own cigarette-maker. TheMiddle Boy later reported with wide eyes that at her elbow she kept aloaded revolver lying, in plain view. She is alone a great deal of thetime there in the wilderness, and probably she has many strangevisitors. 

It was at the shop that a terrible discovery was made. We had been inthe wilderness on the east side and then on the west side of the parkfor four weeks. And days in the woods are much alike. No one had had acalendar. The discovery was that we had celebrated my birthday on thewrong day!

That night, in the dead forest, we gathered round the camp-fire. I madehot compresses. The packers and guides told stories of the West, and wematched them with ones of the East. From across the river, above theroaring, we could hear the sharp stroke of the axe as branches werebeing cut for our beds. There was nothing living, nothing green about uswhere we sat. 

I am aware that the camp-fire is considered one of the things aboutwhich the camper should rave. My own experience of camp-fires is thatthey come too late in the day to be more than a warming-time beforegoing to bed. We were generally too tired to talk. A little desultoryconversation, a cigarette or two, an outline of the next day's work, andall were off to bed. Yet, in that evergreen forest, our fires werealways rarely beautiful. The boughs burned with a crackling white flame, and when we threw on needles, they burst into stars and sailed far upinto the night. As the glare died down, each of us took his hot stonefrom its bed of ashes and, carrying it carefully, retired with it. 

VIII

THROUGH THE FLATHEAD CAÑON

The next morning we wakened to sunshine, and fried trout and bacon andeggs for breakfast. The cook tossed his flapjacks skillfully. As theonly woman in the party, I sometimes found an air of festivity about mybreakfast-table. Whereas the others ate from a tarpaulin laid on theground, I was favored with a small box for a table and a smaller one fora seat. On the table-box was set my graniteware plate, knife, fork, andspoon, a paper napkin, the Prince Albert and the St. Charles. Lest thissound strange to the uninitiated, the St. Charles was the condensed milkand the Prince Albert was an old tin can which had once containedtobacco but which now contained the sugar. Thus, in our camp-etiquette, one never asked for the sugar, but always for the Prince Albert; not forthe milk, but always for the St. Charles, sometimes corrupted to theCharlie. 

I was late that morning. The men had gone about the business ofpreparing the boats for the day. The packers and guides were out afterthe horses. The cook, hot and weary, was packing up for the dailyexodus. He turned and surveyed that ghost-forest with a scowl. 

"Another camping-place like this, and I'll be braying like a bloomingburro. "

On the third day, we went through the Flathead River cañon. We hadlooked forward to this, both because of its beauty and its danger. Bitterly complaining, the junior members of the family were exiled tothe trail with the exception of the Big Boy. 

It had been Joe's plan to photograph the boat with the moving-picturecamera as we came down the cañon. He meant, I am sure, to be on hand ifanything exciting happened. But impenetrable wilderness separated thetrail from the edge of the gorge, and that evening we reached the campunphotographed, unrecorded, to find Joe sulking in a corner and inclinedto blame the forest on us. 

In one of the very greatest stretches of the rapids, a longstraightaway, we saw a pigmy figure, far ahead, hailing us from thebank. "Pigmy" is a word I use generally with much caution, since afriend of mine, in the excitement of a first baby, once published a poementitled "My Pigmy Counterpart, " which a type-setter made, in themagazine version, "My Pig, My Counterpart. "

Nevertheless, we will use it here. Behind this pigmy figure stretched acliff, more than one hundred feet in height, of sheer rock overgrownwith bushes. The figure had apparently but room on which to stand. George stood up and surveyed the prospect. 

"Well, " he said, in his slow drawl, "if that's lunch, I don't think wecan hit it. "

The river was racing at mad speed. Great rocks caught the current, formed whirlpools and eddies, turned us round again and again, and sentus spinning on, drenched with spray. That part of the river the boatmenknew--at least by reputation. It had been the scene, a few years before, of the tragic drowning of a man they knew. For now we were getting downinto the better known portions. 

[Illustration: _The beginning of the cañon, Middle Fork of the FlatheadRiver_]

To check a boat in such a current seemed impossible. But we needed food. We were tired and cold, and we had a long afternoon's work still beforeus. 

At last, by tremendous effort and great skill, the boatmen made thelanding. It was the college boy who had clambered down the cliff andbrought the lunch, and it was he who caught the boats as they werewhirling by. We had to cling like limpets--whatever a limpet is--to theedge, and work our way over to where there was room to sit down. 

It reminded the Head of Roosevelt's expression about peace raging inMexico. He considered that enjoyment was raging here. 

Nevertheless, we ate. We made the inevitable cocoa, warmed beans, ate apart of the great cheese purchased the day before, and, with gingersnapsand canned fruit, managed to eke out a frugal repast. And shrieked ourwords over the roar of the river. 

It was here that the boats were roped down. Critical examination andlong debate with the boatmen showed no way through. On the far side, under the towering cliff, was an opening in the rocks through which theriver boiled in a drop of twenty feet. 

So it was fortunate, after all, that we had been hailed from the shoreand had stopped, dangerous as it had been. For not one of us would havelived had we essayed that passage under the cliff. The Flathead River isnot a deep river; but the force of its flow is so great, its drop sorapid, that the most powerful swimmer is hopeless in such a current. Light as our flies were, again and again they were swept under and heldas though by a powerful hand. 

Another year, the Flathead may be a much simpler proposition tonegotiate. Owing to the unusually heavy snows of last winter, which hadnot commenced to melt on the mountain-tops until July, the river washigh. In a normal summer, I believe that this trip could betaken--although always the boatmen must be expert in river rapids--withcomparative safety and enormous pleasure. 

There is a thrill and exultation about running rapids--not for minutes, not for an hour or two, but for days--that gets into the blood. Andwhen to that exultation is added the most beautiful scenery in America, the trip becomes well worth while. However, I am not at all sure that itis a trip for a woman to take. I can swim, but that would not havehelped at all had the boat, at any time in those four days, struck arock and turned over. Nor would the men of the party, all powerfulswimmers, have had any more chance than I. 

We were a little nervous that afternoon. The cañon grew wilder; thecurrent, if possible, more rapid. But there were fewer rocks; theriver-bed was clearer. 

We were rapidly nearing the Middle Fork. Another day would see us there, and from that point, the river, although swift, would lose much of itsdanger. 

Late the afternoon of the third day we saw our camp well ahead, on aledge above the river. Everything was in order when we arrived. Weunloaded ourselves solemnly out of the boats, took our fish, our poles, our graft-hooks and landing-nets, our fly-books, my sunburn lotion, andour weary selves up the bank. Then we solemnly shook hands all round. Wehad come through; the rest was easy. 

On the last day, the river became almost a smiling stream. Once again, instead of between cliffs, we were traveling between great forests ofspruce, tamarack, white and yellow pine, fir, and cedar. A great goldeneagle flew over the water just ahead of our boat. And in the morning wecame across our first sign of civilization--a wire trolley with a cage, extending across the river in lieu of a bridge. High up in the air ateach end, it sagged in the middle until the little car must almost havetouched the water. We had a fancy to try it, and landed to make theexperiment. But some ungenerous soul had padlocked it and had gone awaywith the key. 

For the first time that day, it was possible to use the trolling-lines. We had tried them before, but the current had carried them out far aheadof the boat. Cut-throat trout now and then take a spoon. But it is thebull-trout which falls victim, as a rule, to the troll. 

I am not gifted with the trolling-line. Sometime I shall write anarticle on the humors of using it--on the soft and sibilant hiss withwhich it goes out over the stern; on the rasping with which it grates onthe edge of the boat as it holds on, stanch and true, to water-weeds andfloating branches; on the low moan with which it buries itself under arock and dies; on the inextricable confusion into which it twists andknots itself when, hand over hand, it is brought in for inspection. 

I have spent hours over a trolling-line, hours which, otherwise, Ishould have wasted in idleness. There are thirty-seven kinds of knotswhich, so far, I have discovered in a trolling-line, and I am but at thebeginning of my fishing career. 

"What are you doing, " the Head said to me that last day, as I sat in thestern busily working at the line. "Knitting?"

We got few fish that day, but nobody cared. The river was wide andsmooth; the mountains had receded somewhat; the forest was there to theright and left of us. But it was an open, smiling forest. Still farenough away, but slipping toward us with the hours, were settlements, towns, the fertile valley of the lower river. 

We lunched that night where, just a year before, I had eaten my firstlunch on the Flathead, on a shelving, sandy beach. But this time themeal was somewhat shadowed by the fact that some one had forgotten toput in butter and coffee and condensed milk. 

However, we were now in that part of the river which our boatmen knewwell. From a secret cache back in the willows, George and Mike producedcoffee and condensed milk and even butter. So we lunched, and far awaywe heard a sound which showed us how completely our wilderness days wereover--the screech of a railway locomotive. 

Late that afternoon, tired, sunburned, and unkempt, we drew in at thelittle wharf near Columbia Falls. It was weeks since we had seen amirror larger than an inch or so across. Our clothes were wrinkled frombeing used to augment our bedding on cold nights. The whites of our eyeswere bloodshot with the sun. My old felt hat was battered and torn withthe fish-hooks that had been hung round the band. Each of us looked atthe other, and prayed to Heaven that he looked a little better himself. 

IX

THE ROUND-UP AT KALISPELL

Columbia Falls had heard of our adventure, and was prepared to do ushonor. Automobiles awaited us on the river-bank. In a moment we weresnatched from the jaws of the river and seated in the lap of luxury. Ifthis is a mixed metaphor, it is due to the excitement of the change. With one of those swift transitions of the Northwest, we were out of thewilderness and surrounded by great yellow fields of wheat. 

Cleared land or natural prairie, these valleys of the Northwest aremarvelously fertile. Wheat grows an incredible number of bushels to theacre. Everything thrives. And on the very borders of the fields standsstill the wilderness to be conquered, the forest to be cleared. Untoldwealth is there for the man who will work and wait, land rich beyond thedreams of fertilizer. But it costs about eighty dollars an acre, I amtold, to clear forest-land after it has been cut over. It is not aproject, this Northwestern farming, to be undertaken on a shoestring. The wilderness must be conquered. It cannot be coaxed. And a good manyhearts have been broken in making that discovery. A little money--nottoo little--infinite patience, cheerfulness, and red-bloodedeffort--these are the factors which are conquering the Northwest. 

I like the Northwest. In spite of its pretensions, its large cities, itswealth, it is still peopled by essential frontiersmen. They are stillpioneers--because the wilderness encroaches still so close to them. Ilike their downrightness, their pride in what they have achieved, theirhatred of sham and affectation. 

And if there is to be real progress among us in this present generation, the growth of a political and national spirit, that sturdy insistence onbetter things on which our pioneer forefathers founded this nation, itis likely to come, as a beginning, from these newer parts of ourcountry. These people have built for themselves. What we in the Easthave inherited, they have made. They know its exact cost in blood andsweat. They value it. And they will do their best by it. 

Perhaps, after all, this is the end of this particular adventure. Andyet, what Western story is complete without a round-up?

There was to be a round-up the next day at Kalispell, farther south inthat wonderful valley. 

But there was a difficulty in the way. Our horses were Glacier Parkhorses. Columbia Falls was outside of Glacier Park. Kalispell was evenfarther outside of Glacier Park, and horses were needed badly in thePark. For last year Glacier Park had the greatest boom in its historyand found the concessionnaires unprepared to take care of all thetourists. What we should do, we knew, was to deadhead our horses backinto the Park as soon as they had had a little rest. 

But, on the other hand, there was Kalispell and the round-up. It wouldmake a difference of just one day. True, we could have gone to theround-up on the train. But, for two reasons, this was out of thequestion. First, it would not make a good story. Second, we had nothingbut riding-clothes, and ours were only good to ride in and not at all towalk about in. 

After a long and serious conclave, it was decided that Glacier Parkwould not suffer by the absence of our string for twenty-four hoursmore. 

On the following morning, then, we set off down the white and dustyroad, a gay procession, albeit somewhat ragged. Sixteen miles in theheat we rode that morning. It was when we were halfway there that one ofthe party--it does not matter which one--revealed that he had received atelegram from the Government demanding the immediate return of ouroutfit. We halted in the road and conferred. 

It is notorious of Governments that they are short-sighted, detached, impersonal, aloof, and haughty. We gathered in the road, a gaylybandanaed, dusty, and highly indignant crowd, and conferred. 

The telegram had been imperative. It did not request. It commanded. Itunhorsed us violently at a time when it did not suit either ourselves orour riding-clothes to be unhorsed. 

We conferred. We were, we said, paying two dollars and a half a day foreach of those horses. Besides, we were out of adhesive tape, which isuseful for holding on patches. Besides, also, we had the horses. If theywanted them, let them come and get them. Besides, this wasdiscrimination. Ever since the Park was opened, horses had been takenout of it, either on to the Reservation or into Canada, to get about toother parts of the Park. Why should the Government pick on us?

We were very bitter and abusive, and the rest of the way I wrotementally a dozen sarcastic telegrams. Yes; the rest of the way. Becausewe went on. With a round-up ahead and the Department of the Interior inthe rear, we rode forward to our stolen holiday, now and then pausing, an eye back to see if we were pursued. But nothing happened; no sheriffin a buckboard drove up with a shotgun across his knees. The Government, or its representative in Glacier Park, was contenting itself withfoaming at the mouth. We rode on through the sunlight, and sang as werode. 

Kalispell is a flourishing and attractive town of northwestern Montana. It is notable for many other things besides its annual round-up. But itremains dear to me for one particular reason. 

My hat was done. It had no longer the spring and elasticity of youth. Itwas scarred with many rains and many fish-hooks. It had ceased to addits necessary jaunty touch to my costume. It detracted. In its age, Iloved it, but the Family insisted cruelly on a change. So, sitting onAngel, a new one was brought me, a chirky young thing, a cowgirl affairof high felt crown and broad rim. 

And, at this moment, a gentleman I had never seen before, but who isgreen in my memory, stepped forward and presented me with his ownhat-band. It was of leather, and it bore this vigorous and inspiritinginscription: "Give 'er pep and let 'er buck. "

To-day, when I am low in my mind, I take that cowgirl hat from itsretreat and read its inscription: "Give 'er pep and let 'er buck. " It isa whole creed. 

Somewhere among my papers I have the programme of that round-up atKalispell. It was a very fine round-up. There was a herd of buffalo;there were wild horses and long-horned Mexican steers. There was acheering crowd. There was roping, and marvelous riding. 

But my eyes were fixed on the grand-stand with a stony stare. 

I am an adopted Blackfoot Indian, known in the tribe as "Pi-ta-mak-an, "and only a few weeks before I had had a long conference with the chiefsof the tribe, Two Guns, White Calf (the son of old White Calf, the greatchief who dropped dead in the White House during President Cleveland'sadministration), Medicine Owl and Curly Bear and Big Spring and BirdPlume and Wolf Plume and Bird Rattler and Bill Shute andStabs-by-Mistake and Eagle Child and Many Tail-Feathers--and many more. 

[Illustration: _Pi-ta-mak-an, or Running Eagle (Mrs. Rinehart), with twoother members of the Blackfoot Tribe_]

And these Indians had all promised me that, as soon as our conferencewas over, they were going back to the Reservation to get in their hayand work hard for the great herd which the Government had promised togive them. They were going to be good Indians. 

So I stared at the grand-stand with a cold and fixed eye. For there, very many miles from where they should have been, off the Reservationwithout permission of the Indian agent, painted and bedecked in all theglory of their forefathers--paint, feathers, beads, strings of thimblesand little mirrors--handsome, bland, and enjoying every instant to thefull in their childish hearts, were my chiefs. 

During the first lull in the proceedings, a delegation came to visit meand to explain. This is what they said: First of all, they desired me tomake peace with the Indian agent. He was, they considered, mostunreasonable. There were many times when one could labor, and there wasbut one round-up. They petitioned, then, that I intercede and see thattheir ration-tickets were not taken away. 

And even as the interpreter told me their plea, one old brave caught myhand and pointed across to the enclosure, where a few captive buffalowere grazing. I knew what it meant. These, my Blackfeet, had been thegreat buffalo-hunters. With bow and arrow they had followed the herdsfrom Canada to the Far South. These chiefs had been mighty hunters. Butfor many years not a single buffalo had their eyes beheld. They who hadlived by the buffalo were now dying with them. A few full-bloods shutaway on a reservation, a few buffalo penned in a corral--children of theopen spaces and of freedom, both of them, and now dying and imprisoned. For the Blackfeet are a dying people. 

They had come to see the buffalo. 

But they did not say so. An Indian is a stoic. He has both imaginationand sentiment, but the latter he conceals. And this was the explanationthey gave me for the Indian agent:--

I knew that, back in my home, when a friend asked me to come to anentertainment, I must go or that friend would be offended with me. Andso it was with the Blackfeet Indians--they had been invited to thisround-up, and they felt that they should come or they would hurt thefeelings of those who had asked them. Therefore, would I, Pi-ta-mak-an, go to the Indian agent and make their peace for them? For, after all, summer was short and winter was coming. The old would need theirration-tickets again. And they, the braves, would promise to go back tothe Reservation and get in the hay, and be all that good Indians shouldbe. 

And I, too, was as good an Indian as I knew how to be, for I scoldedthem all roundly and then sat down at the first possible opportunity andwrote to the agent. 

And the agent? He is a very wise and kindly man, facing one of thebiggest problems in our country. He gave them back their ration-ticketsand wiped the slate clean, to the eternal credit of a Government thathas not often to the Indian tempered justice with mercy. 

X

OFF FOR CASCADE PASS

How many secrets the mountains hold! They have forgotten things we shallnever know. And they are cruel, savagely cruel. What they want, theytake. They reach out a thousand clutching hands. They attack withavalanche, starvation, loneliness, precipice. They lure on with greenvalleys and high flowering meadows where mountain-sheep move sedately, with sunlit peaks and hidden lakes, with silence for tired ears andpeace for weary souls. And then--they kill. 

Because man is a fighting animal, he obeys their call, his wit againsttheir wisdom of the ages, his strength against their solidity, hiscourage against their cunning. And too often he loses. 

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT BY L. D. LINDSLEY _A high mountain meadow_]

I am afraid of the mountains. I have always the feeling that they arelying in wait. At night, their very silence is ominous. The crack of iceas a bit of slow-moving glacier is dislodged, lightning, and the roarof thunder somewhere below where I lie--these are the artillery of therange, and from them I am safe. I am too small for their heavy guns. Buta shelving trail on the verge of a chasm, a slip on an ice-field, arolling stone under a horse's foot--these are the weapons I fear abovethe timber-line. 

Even below there is danger--swamps and rushing rivers, but above all theforest. In mountain valleys it grows thick on the bodies of dead forestsbeneath. It crowds. There is barely room for a tent. And all through thenight the trees protest. They creak and groan and sigh, and sometimesthey burn. In a _cul-de-sac_, with only frowning cliffs about, theforest becomes ominous, a thing of dreadful beauty. On nights when, through the crevices of the green roof, there are stars hung in the sky, the weight lifts. But there are other nights when the trees close inlike ranks of hostile men and take the spirit prisoner. 

The peace of the wilderness is not peace. It is waiting. 

On the Glacier Park trip, there had been one subject which came up fordiscussion night after night round the camp-fire. It resolved itself, briefly, into this: Should we or should we not get out in time to goover to the State of Washington and there perform the thrilling featwhich Bob, the Optimist, had in mind?

This was nothing more nor less than the organization of a secondpack-outfit and the crossing of the Cascade Mountains on horseback by avirgin route. The Head, Bob, and Joe had many discussions about it. I donot recall that my advice was ever asked. It is generally taken forgranted in these wilderness-trips of ours that I will be there, ready toget a story when the opportunity presents itself. 

Owing to the speed with which the North Fork of the Flathead Riverdescends from the Canadian border to civilization, we had made very goodtime. And, at last, the decision was made to try this new adventure. 

"It will be a bully story, " said the Optimist, "and you can be dead sureof this: it's never been done before. "

So, at last, it was determined, and we set out on that wonderfulharebrain excursion of which the very memory gives me a thrill. Yet, nowthat I know it can be done, I may try it again some day. It paid foritself over and over in scenery, in health, and in thrills. But therewere several times when it seemed to me impossible that we could all getover the range alive. 

We took through thirty-one horses and nineteen people. When we got out, our horses had had nothing to eat, not a blade of grass or a handful ofgrain, for thirty-six hours, and they had had very little for five days. 

On the last morning, the Head gave his horse for breakfast onerain-soaked biscuit, an apple, two lumps of sugar, and a raw egg. Theother horses had nothing. 

We dropped three pack-horses over cliffs in two days, but got themagain, cut and bruised, and we took out our outfit complete, after twoweeks of the most arduous going I have ever known anything about. Whenthe news that we had got over the pass penetrated to the settlements, apack-outfit started over Cascade Pass in our footsteps to take suppliesto a miner. They killed three horses on that same trail, and I believegave it up in the end. 

Doubtless, by next year, a passable trail will have been built up toDoubtful Lake and another one up that eight-hundred-foot mountain-wallabove the lake, where, when one reaches the top, there is but room tolook down again on the other side. Perhaps, too, there will be a traildown the Agnes Creek Valley, so that parties can get through easily. When that is done, --and it is promised by the Forest Supervisor, --one ofthe most magnificent horseback trips in the country will be opened forthe first time to the traveler. 

Most emphatically, the trip across the Cascades at Doubtful Lake andCascade Pass is not a trip for a woman in the present condition ofthings, although any woman who can ride can cross Cloudy Pass and getdown Agnes Creek way. But perhaps before this is published, the ChelanNational Forest will have been made a National Park. It ought to be. Itis superb. There is no other word for it. And it ought not to be calleda forest, because it seems to have everything but trees. Rocks andrivers and glaciers--more in one county than in all Switzerland, theyclaim--and granite peaks and hair-raising precipices and lakes filledwith ice in midsummer. But not many trees, until, at Cascade Pass, onereaches the boundaries of the Washington National Forest and begins todescend the Pacific slope. 

The personnel of our party was slightly changed. Of the original one, there remained the Head, the Big, the Middle, and the Little Boy, Joe, Bob, and myself. To these we added at the beginning six persons besidesour guides and packers. Two of them did not cross the pass, however--theForest Pathologist from Washington, who travels all over the countrywatching for tree-diseases and tree-epidemics and who left us after afew days, and the Supervisor of Chelan Forest, who had but just comefrom Oregon and was making his first trip over his new territory. 

We were fortunate, indeed, in having four forest-men with us, men whoselives are spent in the big timber, who know the every mood and tense ofthe wilderness. For besides these two, the Pathologist and the ForestSupervisor, there was "Silent Lawrie" Lindsley, naturalist, photographer, and lover of all that is wild, a young man who has spentyears wandering through the mountains around Chelan, camera and gun athand, the gun never raised against the wild creatures, but used to shootaway tree-branches that interfere with pictures, or, more frequently, totrim a tree into such outlines as fit it into the photograph. 

And then there was the Man Who Went Ahead. For forty years this man, Mr. Hilligoss, has lived in the forest. Hardly a big timber-deal in theNorthwest but was passed by him. Hardly a tree in that vast wildernessbut he knew it. He knew everything about the forest but fear--fear andfatigue. And, with an axe and a gun, he went ahead, clearing trail, blazing trees, and marking the détours to camp-sites by an arrow made ofbark and thrust through a slash in a tree. 

Hour after hour we would struggle on, seeing everywhere evidences of hisskill on the trail, to find, just as endurance had reached its limit, the arrow that meant camp and rest. 

And--there was Dan Devore and his dog, Whiskers. Dan Devore was ourchief guide and outfitter, a soft voiced, bearded, big souled man, neither very large nor very young. All soul and courage was Dan Devore, and one of the proud moments of my life was when it was all over and hetold me I had done well. I wanted most awfully to have Dan Devore thinkI had done well. 

He was sitting on a stone at the time, I remember, and Whiskers, his oldAiredale, had his head on Dan's knee. All of his thirteen years, Whiskers had wandered through the mountains with Dan Devore, alwayswithin call. To see Dan was to see Whiskers; to see Whiskers was to seeDan. 

He slept on Dan's tarp bed at night, and in the daytime led our long andwinding procession. Indomitable spirit that he was, he traveled threemiles to our one, saved us from the furious onslaughts of many a marmotand mountain-squirrel, and, in the absence of fresh meat, ate his saltpork and scraps with the zest of a hungry traveler. 

Then there were Mr. And Mrs. Fred. I call them Mr. And Mrs. Fred, because, like Joe, that was a part of their name. I will be frank aboutMrs. Fred. I was worried about her before I knew her. I was accustomedto roughing it; but how about another woman? Would she be putting up herhair in curlers every night, and whimpering when, as sometimes happens, the slow gait of her horse became intolerable? Little did I know Mrs. Fred. She was a natural wanderer, a follower of the trail, a fine andsound and sporting traveling companion. And I like to think that she istypical of the women of that Western country which bred her, feminine tothe core, but strong and sweet still. 

Both the Freds were great additions. Was it not after Mr. Fred that wetrailed on that famous game-hunt of ours, of which a spirited account iscoming later? Was it not Mr. Fred who, night after night, took thejunior Rineharts away from an anxious mother into the depths of theforest or the bleakness of mountain-slopes, there to lie, armed to theteeth, and wait for the first bears to start out for breakfast?

Now you have us, I think, except the men of the outfit, and they deservespace I cannot give them. They were a splendid lot, and it was by theirincessant labor that we got over. 

Try to see us, then, filing along through deep valleys, climbing cliffs, stumbling, struggling, not talking much, a long line of horses andriders. First, far ahead, Mr. Hilligoss. Then the riders, led by "SilentLawrie, " with me just behind him, because of photographs. Then, at thehead of the pack-horses, Dan Devore. Then the long line of pack-ponies, sturdy and willing, and piled high with our food, our bedding, and ourtents. And here, there, and everywhere, Joe, with the moving-picturecamera. 

We were determined, this time, to have no repetition of the Glacier Parkfiasco, where Bill, our cook, had deserted us at a bad time--although itis always a bad time when the cook leaves. So now we had two cooks. Much as I love the mountains and the woods, the purple of eveningvalleys, the faint pink of sunrise on snow-covered peaks, the mostreally thrilling sight of a camping-trip is two cooks bending over aniron grating above a fire, one frying trout and the other turningflapjacks. 

Our trail led us through one of the few remaining unknown portions ofthe United States. It cannot long remain unknown. It is too superb, toowonderful. And it has mineral in it, silver and copper and probablycoal. The Middle Boy, who is by way of being a chemist and hassystematically blown himself up with home-made explosives for years--theMiddle Boy found at least a dozen silver mines of fabulous value, although the men in the party insisted that his specimens were ironpyrites and other unromantic minerals. 

XI

LAKE CHELAN TO LYMAN LAKE

Now, as to where we were--those long days of fording rivers and beatingour way through jungle or of dizzy climbs up to the snow, those shortnights, so cold that six blankets hardly kept us warm, while our tiredhorses wandered far, searching for such bits of grass as grew among theshale. 

In the north-central part of the State of Washington, Nature has done acurious thing. She has built a great lake in the eastern shoulders ofthe Cascade Mountains. Lake Chelan, more than fifty miles long andaveraging a mile and a half in width, is ten hundred and seventy-fivefeet above sea-level, while its bottom is four hundred feet below thelevel of the ocean. It is almost completely surrounded by granite wallsand peaks which reach more than a mile and a half into the air. 

The region back from the lake is practically unknown. A small part of ithas never been touched by the Geological Survey, and, in one or twoinstances, we were able to check up errors on our maps. Thus, a lakeshown on our map as belonging at the head of McAllister Creek reallybelongs at the head of Rainbow Creek, while McAllister Lake is not shownat all. Mr. Coulter, a forester who was with us for a time, last yeardiscovered three lakes at the head of Rainbow Creek which have neverbeen mapped, and, so far as could be learned, had never been seen by awhite man before. Yet Lake Chelan itself is well known in the Northwest. It is easily reached, its gateway being the famous Wenatchee Valley, celebrated for its apples. 

It was from Chelan that we were to make our start. Long before wearrived, Dan Devore and the packers were getting the outfit ready. 

[Illustration: _Sitting Bull Mountain, Lake Chelan_]

Yet the first glimpse of Chelan was not attractive. We had motored halfa day through that curious, semi-arid country, which, when irrigated, proves the greatest of all soils in the world for fruit-raising. TheAugust sun had baked the soil into yellow dust which coveredeverything. Arid hillsides without a leaf of green but dotted thicklywith gray sagebrush, eroded valleys, rocks and gullies--all shone adusty yellow in the heat. The dust penetrated everything. Wherever watercould be utilized were orchards, little trees planted in geometricalrows and only waiting the touch of irrigation to make their ownerswealthy beyond dreams. 

The lower end of Lake Chelan was surrounded by these bleak hillsides, desert without the great spaces of the desert. Yet unquestionably, in afew years from now, these bleak hillsides will be orchard land. Only thelower part, however, is bleak--only an end, indeed. There is nothingmore beautiful and impressive than the upper part of that strangely deepand quiet lake lying at the foot of its enormous cliffs. 

By devious stages we reached the head of Lake Chelan, and there for fourdays the outfitting went on. Horses were being brought in, saddlesfitted; provisions in great cases were arriving. To outfit a party ofour size for two weeks means labor and generous outlay. And we weregoing to be comfortable. We were willing to travel hard and sleep hard. But we meant to have plenty of food. I think we may claim the uniquedistinction of being the only people who ever had grapefruit regularlyfor breakfast on the top of that portion of the Cascade Range. 

While we waited, we learned something about the country. It is volcanicash, disintegrated basalt, this great fruit-country to the right of therange. And three things, apparently, are responsible for its marvelousfruit-growing properties. First, the soil itself, which needs only waterto prove marvelously fertile; second, the length of the growing-season, which around Lake Chelan is one hundred and ninety-two days in the year. And this just south of the Canadian border! There is a third reason, too: the valleys are sheltered from frost. Even if a frost comes, --and Ibelieve it is almost unknown, --the high mountains surrounding thesevalleys protect the blossoms so that the frost has evaporated before thesun strikes the trees. There is no such thing known as a killing frost. 

But it is irrigation on a virgin and fertile soil that is primarilyresponsible. They run the water to the orchards in conduits, and thendig little trenches, running parallel among the trees. Then they turn iton, and the tree-roots are bathed, soaked. And out of the desert springsuch trees of laden fruit that each branch must be supported by wires!

So we ate such apples as I had never dreamed of, and waited. Joe got hisfilms together. The boys practiced shooting. I rested and sharpenedlead-pencils. Bob had found a way to fold his soft hat into what hefondly called the "Jennings do, " which means a plait in the crown toshed the rain, and which turned an amiable _ensemble_ into somethingsavage and extremely flat on top. The Head played croquet. 

And then into our complacency came, one night, a bit of tragedy. 

A man staggered into the little hotel at the head of the lake, carryinganother man on his back. He had carried him for forty hours, loweringhim down, bit by bit, from that mountain highland where he had beenhurt--forty hours of superhuman effort and heart-breaking going, overcliffs and through wilderness. 

The injured man was a sheep-herder. He had cut his leg with hiswood-axe, and blood-poisoning had set in. I do not know the rest of thatstory. The sheep-herder was taken to a hospital the next day, travelinga very long way. But whether he traveled still farther, to the land ofthe Great Shepherd, I do not know. Only this I do know: that thisWestern country I love is full of such stories, and of such men as thehero of this one. 

At last we were ready. Some of the horses were sent by boat the daybefore, for this strange lake has little or no shore-line. Granitemountains slope stark and sheer to the water's edge, and drop from thereto frightful depths below. There are, at the upper end, no roads, notrails or paths that border it. So the horses and all of us went by boatto the mouth of Railroad Creek, --so called, I suppose, because thenearest railroad is more than forty miles away, --up which led the trailto the great unknown. All around and above us were the cliffs, toweringseven thousand feet over the lake. And beyond those cliffs layadventure. 

For it _was_ adventure. Even Dan Devore, experienced mountaineer andguide that he was, had only been to Cascade Pass once, and that wassixteen years before. He had never been across the divide. "SilentLawrie" Lindsley, the naturalist, had been only part-way down the AgnesCreek Valley, which we intended to follow. Only in a general way had weany itinerary at all. 

Now a National Forest is a happy hunting-ground. Whereas in the NationalParks game is faithfully preserved, hunting is permitted in the forests. To this end, we took with us a complete arsenal. The naturalist carrieda Colt's revolver; the Big Boy had a twelve-gauge hammerless, called a"howitzer. " We had two twenty-four-gauge shotguns in case we met anelephant or anything similarly large and heavy, and the Little Boyproudly carried, strapped to his saddle, a twenty-two high-power rifle, shooting a steel-jacketed, soft-nose bullet, an express-rifle of highvelocity and great alarm to mothers. In addition to this, we had aSavage repeater and two Winchester thirties, and the Forest Supervisorcarried his own Winchester thirty-eight. We were entirely prepared tomeet the whole German army. 

It is rather sad to relate that, with all this preparation, we killednothing whatever. Although it is not true that, on the day weencountered a large bear, and the three junior members of the familywere allowed to turn the artillery loose on him, at the end of thefiring the bear pulled out a flag and waved it, thinking it was theFourth of July. 

As we started, that August midday, for the long, dusty ride up theRailroad Creek Trail, I am sure that the three junior Rineharts hadnothing less in mind than two or three bearskins apiece for schoolbedrooms. They deserved better luck than they had. Night after night, sitting in the comparative safety of the camp-fire, I have seen my threesons, the Big, the Middle, and the Little Boy, starting off, armed tothe teeth with deadly weapons, to sleep out under the stars and catchthe first unwary bear on his way to breakfast in the morning. 

Morning after morning, I have sat breakfastless and shaken until theweary procession of young America toiled into camp, hungry and bearless, but, thank Heaven, whole of skin save where mosquitoes and black flieshad taken their toll of them. They would trudge five miles, sleep threehours, hunt, walk five miles back, and then ride all day. 

 * * * * *

The first day was the least pleasant. We were still in the RailroadCreek Valley; the trail was dusty; packs slipped on the sweating horsesand had to be replaced. The bucking horse of the outfit had, as usual, been given the eggs, and, burying his head between his fore legs, threwoff about a million dollars' worth before he had been on the trail anhour. 

On that first part of the trip, we had three dogs with us--Chubb andDoc, as well as Whiskers. They ran in the dust with their tongues out, and lay panting under bushes at each stop. Here and there we found thetrack of sheep driven into the mountain to graze. For a hundred or twohundred feet in width, it was eaten completely clean, for sheep have away of tearing up even the roots of the grass so that nothing greenlives behind them. They carry blight into a country like this. 

Then, at last, we found the first arrow of the journey, and turned offthe trail to camp. 

On that first evening, the arrow landed us in a great spruce grove wherethe trees averaged a hundred and twenty-five feet in height. Below, theground was cleared and level and covered with fine moss. The great graytrunks rose to Gothic arches of green. It was a churchly place. Andrunning through it were little streams living with trout. 

And in this saintly spot, quiet and peaceful, its only noise thebabbling of little rivers, dwelt billions on billions of mosquitoes thatwere for the first time learning the delights of the human frame asfood. 

There was no getting away from them. Open our mouths and we inhaledthem. They hung in dense clouds about us and fought over the bestlocations. They held loud and noisy conversations about us, and got inour ears and up our nostrils and into our coffee. They wenttrout-fishing with us and put up the tents with us; dined with us and onus. But they let us alone at night. 

It is a curious thing about the mountain mosquito as I know him. He is alazy insect. He retires at sundown and does not begin to get in anyactive work until eight o'clock the following morning. He keeps unionhours. 

Something of this we had anticipated, and I had orderedmosquito-netting, to be worn as veils. When it was unrolled, it provedto be a brilliant scarlet, a scarlet which faded in hot weather on tonecks and faces and turned us suddenly red and hideous. 

Although it was late in the afternoon when we reached that first camp, Camp Romany, two or three of us caught more than a hundred trout beforesundown. We should have done better had it not been necessary to stopand scratch every thirty seconds. 

That night, the Woodsman built a great bonfire. We huddled about it, glad of its warmth, for although the days were hot, the nights, with thewind from the snow-covered peaks overhead, were very cold. The tall, unbranching gray spruce-trunks rose round it like the pillars of acolonnade. The forester blew up his air bed. In front of thesupper-fire, the shadowy figures of the cooks moved back and forward. From a near-by glacier came an occasional crack, followed by a roarwhich told of ice dropping into cavernous depths below. The Little Boycleaned his gun and dreamed of mighty exploits. 

We rested all the next day at Camp Romany--rested and fished, whilethree of the more adventurous spirits climbed a near-by mountain. Latein the afternoon they rode in, bringing in their midst Joe, who had, atthe risk of his life, slid a distance which varied in the reports fromone hundred yards to a mile and a half down a snow-field, and had hungfastened on the brink of eternity until he was rescued. 

Very white was Joe that evening, white and bruised. It was twenty-fourhours before he began to regret that the camera had not been turned onhim at the time. 

Not until we left Camp Romany did we feel that we were really off forthe trip. And yet that first day out from Romany was not agreeablegoing. The trail was poor, although there came a time when we lookedback on it as superlative. The sun was hot, and there was no shade. Years ago, prospectors hunting for minerals had started forest-fires tolevel the ridges. The result was the burning-over of perhaps a hundredsquare miles of magnificent forest. The second growth which has come upis scrubby, a wilderness of young trees and chaparral, through whichprogress was difficult and uninteresting. 

Up the bottom of the great glacier-basin toward the mountain at itshead, we made our slow and painful way. More dust, more mosquitoes. Eventhe beauty of the snow-capped peaks overhead could not atone for theugliness of that destroyed region. Yet, although it was not lovely, itwas vastly impressive. Literally, hundreds of waterfalls cascaded downthe mountain wall from hidden lakes and glaciers above, and toweringbefore us was the mountain wall which we were to climb later that day. 

We had seen no human creature since leaving the lake, but as we haltedfor luncheon by a steep little river, we suddenly found that we were notalone. Standing beside the trail was an Italian bandit with a knife twofeet long in his hands. 

Ha! Come adventure! Come romance! Come rifles and pistols and all thearsenal, including the Little Boy, with pure joy writ large over him! Abandit, armed to the teeth!

But this is a disappointing world. He was the cook from a mine--strange, the way we met cooks, floating around loose in a world that seems to begrowing gradually cookless. And he carried with him his knife and hisbread-pan, which was, even then, hanging to a branch of a tree. 

We fed him, and he offered to sing. The Optimist nudged me. 

"Now, listen, " he said; "these fellows can _sing_. Be quiet, everybody!"

The bandit twisted up his mustachios, smiled beatifically, and took up aposition in the trail, feet apart, eyes upturned. 

And then--he stopped. 

"I start a leetle high, " he said; "I start again. "

So he started again, and the woods receded from around us, and therushing of the river died away, and nothing was heard in that lonelyvalley but the most hideous sounds that ever broke a primeval silenceinto rags and tatters. 

When, at last, he stopped, we got on our horses and rode on, a bitterand disillusioned party of adventurers whose first bubble of enthusiasmhad been pricked. 

It was four o'clock when we began the ascent of the switchback at thetop of the valley. Up and up we went, dismounting here and there, goingslowly but eagerly. For, once over the wall, we were beyond the reachof civilization. So strange a thing is the human mind! We who were formost of the year most civilized, most dependent on our kind and thecomforts it has wrought out of a primitive world, now we were savagelyresentful of it. We wanted neither men nor houses. Stirring in us hadcommenced that primeval call that comes to all now and then, the longingto be alone with Mother Earth, savage, tender, calm old Mother Earth. 

And yet we were still in touch with the world. For even here man hadintruded. Hanging to the cliff were the few buildings of a small minewhich sends out its ore by pack-pony. I had already begun to feel thealoofness of the quiet places, so it was rather disconcerting to have aminer with a patch over one eye come to the doorway of one of thebuildings and remark that he had read some of my political articles andagreed with them most thoroughly. 

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY L. D. LINDSLEY _Looking out of ice-cave, Lyman Glacier_]

That was a long day. We traveled from early morning until long afterlate sundown. Up the switchback to a green plateau we went, meetingour first ice there, and here again that miracle of the mountains, meadow flowers and snow side by side. 

Far behind us strung the pack-outfit, plodding doggedly along. From therim we could look back down that fire-swept valley toward Heart Lake andthe camp we had left. But there was little time for looking back. Somewhere ahead was a brawling river descending in great leaps fromLyman Lake, which lay in a basin above and beyond. Our camp, that night, was to be on the shore of Lyman Lake, at the foot of Lyman Glacier. Andwe had still far to go. 

Mr. Hilligoss met us on the trail. He had found a camp-site by the lakeand had seen a bear and a deer. There were wild ducks also. 

Now and then there are scenes in the mountains that defy the writtenword. The view from Cloudy Pass is one; the outlook from Cascade Pass isanother. But for sheer loveliness there are few things that surpassLyman Lake at sunset, its great glacier turned to pink, the toweringgranite cliffs which surround it dark purple below, bright rose at thesummits. And lying there, still with the stillness of the ages, thequiet lake. 

There was, as a matter of fact, nothing to disturb its quiet. Not afish, so far as we could discover, lived in its opalescent water, cloudyas is all glacial water. It is only good to look at, is Lyman Lake, andthere are no people to look at it. 

Set in its encircling, snow-covered mountains, it lies fifty-fivehundred feet above sea-level. We had come up in two days from elevenhundred feet, a considerable climb. That night, for the first time, wesaw the northern lights--at first, one band like a cold finger setacross the sky, then others, shooting ribbons of cold fire, now bright, now dim, covering the northern horizon and throwing into silhouette thepeaks over our heads. 

XII

CLOUDY PASS AND THE AGNES CREEK VALLEY

I think I have said that one of the purposes of our expedition was tohunt. We were to spend a day or two at Lyman Lake, and the sportsmenwere busy by the camp-fire that evening, getting rifles and shotguns inorder and preparing fishing-tackle. 

At dawn the next morning, which was at four o'clock, one of the packersroused the Big Boy with the information that there were wild ducks onthe lake. He was wakened with extreme difficulty, put on his bedroomslippers, picked up his shotgun, and, still in his sleeping-garments, walked some ten feet from the mouth of his tent. There he yawned, discharged both barrels of his gun in the general direction of theducks, yawned again, and went back to bed. 

I myself went on a hunting-excursion on the second day at Lyman Lake. Now, theoretically, I am a mighty hunter. I have always expected toshoot something worth while and be photographed with my foot on it, anda "bearer"--whatever that may be--holding my gun in the background. Sowhen Mr. Fred proposed an early start and a search along the side ofChiwawa Mountain for anything from sheep to goats, including a grizzlyif possible, my imagination was roused. So jealous were we that thefirst game should be ours that the party was kept a profound secret. Mr. Fred and Mrs. Fred, the Head, and I planned it ourselves. 

We would rise early, and, armed to the teeth, would stalk the skulkingbear to his den. 

Rising early is also a theory of mine. I approve of it. But I do notconsider it rising early to get up at three o'clock in the morning. Three o'clock in the morning is late at night. The moon was still up. Itwas frightfully cold. My shoes were damp and refused to go on. I couldnot find any hairpins. And I recalled a number of stories of the extremedisagreeableness of bears when not shot in a vital spot. 

With all our hurry, it was four o'clock when we were ready to start. Nosun was in sight, but already a faint rose-colored tint was on the topsof the mountains. Whiskers raised a sleepy head and looked at us fromDan's bed. We tiptoed through the camp and started. 

We climbed. Then we climbed some more. Then we kept on climbing. Mr. Fred led the way. He had the energy of a high-powered car and thehopefulness of a pacifist. From ledge to ledge he scrambled, turning nowand then to wave an encouraging hand. It was not long before I ceased tohave strength to wave back. Hours went on. Five hundred feet, onethousand feet, fifteen hundred feet above the lake. I confided to theHead, between gasps, that I was dying. We had seen no living thing; wecontinued to see no living thing. Two thousand feet, twenty-five hundredfeet. There was not enough air in the world to fill my collapsed lungs. 

Once Mr. Fred found a track, and scurried off in a new direction. Stillno result. The sun was up by that time, and I judged that it was aboutnoon. It was only six-thirty. 

A sort of desperation took possession of us all. We would keep up withMr. Fred or die trying. And then, suddenly, we were on the very roof ofthe world, on the top of Cloudy Pass. All the kingdoms of the earth laystretched out around us, and all the kingdoms of the earth were empty. 

Now, the usual way to climb Cloudy Pass is to take a good businesslikehorse and sit on his back. Then, by devious and circuitous routes, withfrequent rests, the horse takes you up. When there is a place the horsecannot manage, you get off and hold his tail, and he pulls you. Even atthat, it is a long business and a painful one. But it is better--oh, far, far better!--than the way we had taken. 

Have you ever reached a point where you fix your starting eyes on ashrub or a rock ten feet ahead and struggle for it? And, having achievedit, fix on another five feet farther on, and almost fail to get it?Because, if you have not, you know nothing of this agony of tearinglungs and hammering heart and throbbing muscles that is themountain-climber's price for achievement. 

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT BY L. D. LINDSLEY _Looking southeast from Cloudy Pass_]

And then, after all, while resting on the top of the world with our feethanging over, discussing dilated hearts, because I knew mine would nevergo back to normal, to see a ptarmigan, and have Mr. Fred miss it becausehe wanted to shoot its head neatly off!

Strange birds, those ptarmigan. Quite fearless of man, because they knowhim not or his evil works, on alarm they have the faculty of almostinstantly obliterating themselves. I have seen a mother bird and herbabies, on an alarm, so hide themselves on a bare mountain-side that notso much as a bit of feather could be seen. But unless frightened, theywill wander almost under the hunter's feet. 

I dare say they do not know how very delicious they are, especiallyafter a diet of salt meat. 

As we sat panting on Cloudy Pass, the sun rose over the cliff of thegreat granite bowl. The peaks turned from red to yellow. It wasabsolutely silent. No trees rustled in the morning air. There were notrees. Only, here and there, a few stunted evergreens, two or three feethigh, had rooted on the rock and clung there, gnarled and twisted fromtheir winter struggles. 

Ears that had grown tired of the noises of cities grew rested. But ourears were more rested than our bodies. 

I have always believed that it is easier to go downhill than to go up. This is not true. I say it with the deepest earnestness. After the firstfive hundred feet of descent, progress down became agonizing. Thesomething that had gone wrong with my knees became terribly wrong; theyshowed a tendency to bend backward; they shook and quivered. 

The last mile of that four-mile descent was one of the most dreadfulexperiences of my life. A broken thing, I crept into camp and tenderedmute apologies to Budweiser, my horse, called familiarly "Buddy. "(Although he was not the sort of horse one really became familiar with. )

The remainder of that day, Mrs. Fred and I lay under a mosquito-canopy, played solitaire, and rested our aching bodies. The Forest Supervisorclimbed Lyman Glacier. The Head and the Little Boy made the circuit ofthe lake, and had to be roped across the rushing river which is itsoutlet. And the horses rested for the real hardship of the trip, whichwas about to commence. 

One thing should be a part of the equipment of every one who intends tocamp in the mountains near the snow-fields. This is a mosquito-tent. Ours was brought by that experienced woodsman and mountaineer, Mr. Hilligoss, and was made with a light-muslin top three feet long by thewidth of double-width muslin. To this was sewed sides of cheese-cloth, with double seams and reinforced corners. At the bottom it had an extrapiece of netting two feet wide, to prevent the insects from crawlingunder. 

Erecting such a shelter is very simple. Four stakes, five feet high, were driven into the ground and the mosquito-canopy simply hung overthem. 

We had no face-masks, except the red netting, but, for such a trip, amask is simple to make and occasionally most acceptable. The best one Iknow--and it, too, is the Woodsman's invention--consists of a four-inchband of wire netting; above it, whipped on, a foot of light muslin to betied round the hat, and, below, a border of cheese-cloth two feet deep, with a rubber band. Such a mask does not stick to the face. Through thewire netting, it is possible to shoot with accuracy. The rubber bandround the neck allows it to be lifted with ease. 

I do not wish to give the impression that there were mosquitoeseverywhere. But when there were mosquitoes, there was nothingclandestine about it. 

The next day we crossed Cloudy Pass and started down the Agnes CreekValley. It was to be a forced march of twenty-five miles over a trailwhich no one was sure existed. There had, at one time, been a trail, butavalanches have a way, in these mountain valleys, of destroying alllandmarks, and rock-slides come down from the great cliffs, fillcreek-beds, and form swamps. Whether we could get down at all or not wasa question. To the eternal credit of our guides, we made it. For theupper five miles below Cloudy Pass it was touch and go. Even with thesharp hatchet of the Woodsman ahead, with his blazes on the trees wherethe trail had been obliterated, it was the hardest kind of going. 

Here were ditches that the horses leaped; here were rushing streamswhere they could hardly keep their footing. Again, a long mile or two ofswamp and almost impenetrable jungle, where only the Woodsman'saxe-marks gave us courage to go on. We were mired at times, and againthere were long stretches over rock-slides, where the horses scrambledlike cats. 

But with every mile there came a sense of exhilaration. We were makingprogress. 

There was little or no life to be seen. The Woodsman, going ahead of us, encountered a brown bear reaching up for a cluster of salmon-berries. Heambled away, quite unconcerned, and happily ignorant of that desperatetrio of junior Rineharts, bearing down on him with almost the entirecontents of the best gun shop in Spokane. 

It should have been a great place for bears, that Agnes Creek Valley. There were ripe huckleberries, service-berries, salmon-andmanzanita-berries. There were plenty of places where, if I had been abear, I should have been entirely happy--caves and great rocks, andgood, cold water. And I believe they were there. But thirty-one horsesand a sort of family tendency to see if there is an echo anywhere about, and such loud inquiries as, "Are you all right, mother?" and "Who thedickens has any matches?"--these things are fatal to seeing wild life. 

Indeed, the next time I am overcome by one of my mad desires to see abear, I shall go to the zoo. 

It was fifteen years, I believe, since Dan Devore had seen the AgnesCreek Valley. From the condition of the trail, I am inclined to thinkthat Dan was the last man who had ever used it. And such a wonderlandas it is! Such marvels of flowers as we descended, such wildtiger-lilies and columbines and Mariposa lilies! What berries andqueen's-cup and chalice-cup and bird's-bill! There was trillium, too, although it was not in bloom, and devil's-club, a plant which stings andsets up a painful swelling. There were yew trees, those trees which theIndians use for making their bows, wild white rhododendron and spirea, cottonwood, white pine, hemlock, Douglas spruce, and white fir. Everywhere there was mountain-ash, the berries beloved of bears. Andhigh up on the mountain there was always heather, beautiful to look atbut slippery, uncertain footing for horse and man. 

Twenty-five miles, broken with canter and trot, is not more than I havefrequently taken on a brisk sunny morning at home. But twenty-five milesat a slow walk, now in a creek-bed, now on the edge of a cliff, is adifferent matter. The last five miles of the Agnes Creek trip were along despair. We found and located new muscles that the anatomists haveoverlooked. --A really first-class anatomist ought never to make a chartwithout first climbing a high mountain and riding all day on thecreature alluded to in this song of Bob's, which gained a certainpopularity among the male members of the party. 

 "A sailor's life is bold and free. He lives upon the bright blue sea. He has to work like h----, of course, But he doesn't have to ride on a darned old horse. "

It was dark when we reached our camp-ground at the foot of the valley. Ahundred feet below, in a gorge, ran the Stehekin River, a noisy andturbulent stream full of trout. We groped through the darkness for ourtents that night and fell into bed more dead than alive. But at threeo'clock the next morning, the junior Rineharts, following Mr. Fred, wereoff for bear, reappearing at ten, after breakfast was over, with anexcited story of having seen one very close but having unaccountablymissed it. 

There was no water for the horses at camp that night, and none for themin the morning. There was no way to get them down to the river, and thepoor animals were almost desperate with thirst. They were having littleenough to eat even then, at the beginning of the trip, and it was hardto see them without water, too. 

XIII

CAÑON FISHING AND A TELEGRAM

It was eleven o'clock the next morning before I led Buddy--I hadabandoned "Budweiser" in view of the drought--into a mountain stream andlet him drink. He would have rolled in it, too, but I was on his backand I fiercely restrained him. 

The next day was a comparatively short trip. There was a trapper's cabinat the fork of Bridge Creek in the Stehekin River. There we were tospend the night before starting on our way to Cascade Pass. As it turnedout, we spent two days there. There was a little grass for the horses, and we learned of a cañon, some five or six miles off our trail, whichwas reported as full of fish. 

The most ardent of us went there the next day--Mr. Hilligoss, Weaver, and "Silent Lawrie" and the Freds and Bob and the Big Boy and the LittleBoy and Joe. And, without expecting it, we happened on adventure. 

Have you ever climbed down a cañon with rocky sides, a straight andprecipitous five hundred feet, clinging with your finger nails to anybit of green that grows from the cliff, and to footholds made by an axe, and carrying a fly-book and a trout-rod which is an infinitely precioustrout-rod? Also, a share of the midday lunch and twenty pounds moreweight than you ought to have by the beauty-scale? Because, unless youhave, you will never understand that trip. 

It was a series of wild drops, of blood-curdling escapes, of slips andrecoveries, of bruises and abrasions. But at last we made it, and therewas the river!

I have still in mind a deep pool where the water, rushing at tremendousspeed over a rocky ledge, fell perhaps fifteen feet. I had fixed my eyeson that pool early in the day, but it seemed impossible of access. Toreach it it was necessary again to scale a part of the cliff, and, clinging to its face, to work one's way round along a ledge perhapsthree inches wide. When I had once made it, with the aid of friendlyhands and a leather belt, by which I was lowered, I knew one thing--knewit inevitably. I was there for life. Nothing would ever take me backover that ledge. 

However, I was there, and there was no use wasting time. For there werefish there. Now and then they jumped. But they did not take the fly. Thewater seethed and boiled, and I stood still and fished, because a slipon that spray-covered ledge and I was gone, to be washed down to LakeChelan, and lie below sea-level in the Cascade Mountains. Which might bea glorious sort of tomb, but it did not appeal to me. 

I tried different flies with no result. At last, with a weighted lineand a fish's eye, I got my first fish--the best of the day, and fromthat time on I forgot the danger. 

Some day, armed with every enticement known to the fisherman, I am goingback to that river. For there, under a log, lurks the wiliest trout Ihave ever encountered. In full view he stayed during the entire time ofmy sojourn. He came up to the fly, leaped over it, made faces at it. Then he would look up at me scornfully. 

[Illustration: _Stream fishing_]

"Old tricks, " he seemed to say. "Old stuff--not good enough. " I dare sayhe is still there. 

Late in the day, we got out of that cañon. Got out at infinite peril andfatigue, climbed, struggled, stumbled, held on, pulled. I slipped onceand had a bad knee for six weeks. Never once did I dare to look back anddown. It was always up, and the top was always receding. And when wereached camp, the Head, who had been on an excursion of his own, refusedto be thrilled, and spent the evening telling how he had been climbingover the top of the world on his hands and knees. In sheer scorn, we lethim babble. 

But my hat is off to him, after all, for he had ready for us, and swearsto this day to its truth, the best fish-story of the trip. 

Lying on the top of one of our packing-cases was a great bull-trout. Nowa bull-trout has teeth, and held in a vise-like grip in the teeth ofthis one was a smaller trout. In the mouth of the small trout was agray-and-black fly. The Head maintained that he had hooked the smallfish and was about to draw it to shore when the bull-trout leaped out ofthe water, caught the small fish, and held on grimly. The Head thereuponhad landed them both. 

In proof of this, as I have said, he had the two fish on top of apacking-case. But it is not a difficult matter to place a small troutcross-wise in the jaws of a bull-trout, and to this day we are not quitecertain. 

There _were_ tooth-marks on the little fish, but, as one of the guidessaid, he wouldn't put it past the Head to have made them himself. 

That night we received a telegram. I remember it with greatdistinctness, because the man who brought it in charged fifteen dollarsfor delivering it. He came at midnight, and how he had reached us no onewill ever know. The telegram notified us that a railroad strike wasabout to take place and that we should get out as soon as possible. 

Early the next morning we held a conference. It was about as far back asit was to go ahead over the range. And before us still lay the GreatAdventure of the pass. 

We took a vote on it at last and the "ayes" carried. We would go ahead, making the best time we could. If the railroads had stopped when we gotout, we would merely turn our pack-outfit toward the east and keep onmoving. We had been all summer in the saddle by that time, and a matterof thirty-five hundred miles across the continent seemed a trifle. 

Dan Devore brought us other news that morning, however. Cascade Pass wasclosed with snow. A miner who lived alone somewhere up the gorge hadbrought in the information. It was a serious moment. We could get toDoubtful Lake, but it was unlikely we could get any farther. Thecomparatively simple matter thus became a complicated one, for DoubtfulLake was not only a détour; it was almost inaccessible, especially forhorses. But we hated to acknowledge defeat. So again we voted to goahead. 

That day, while the pack-outfit was being got ready, I had a long talkwith the Forest Supervisor. He told me many things about our NationalForests, things which are worth knowing and which every American, whoseplaygrounds the forests are, should know. 

In the first place, the Forestry Department welcomes the camper. He isgiven his liberty, absolutely. He is allowed to hunt such game as is inseason, and but two restrictions are placed on him. He shall leave hiscamp-ground clean, and he shall extinguish every spark of fire before heleaves. Beyond that, it is the policy of the Government to let campersalone. It is possible in a National Forest to secure a special permit toput up buildings for permanent camps. An act passed on the 4th of March, 1915, gives the camper a permit for a definite period, although untilthat time the Government could revoke the permit at will. 

The rental is so small that it is practically negligible. All roads andtrails are open to the public; no admission can be charged to a NationalForest, and no concession will be sold. The whole idea of the NationalForest as a playground is to administer it in the public interest. Goodlots on Lake Chelan can be obtained for from five to twenty-five dollarsa year, depending on their locality. It is the intention of theGovernment to pipe water to these allotments. 

For the hunters, there is no protection for bear, cougar, coyotes, bobcats, and lynx. No license is required to hunt them. And to thepersistent hunter who goes into the woods, not as we did, with an outfitthe size of a cavalry regiment, there is game to be had in abundance. Wesaw goat-tracks in numbers at Cloudy Pass and the marks of Bruineverywhere. 

The Chelan National Forest is well protected against fires. Afire-launch patrols the lake and lookouts are stationed all the time onStrong Mountain and Crow's Hill. They live there on the summits, whereprovisions and water must be carried up to them. These lookouts now havetelephones, but until last summer they used the heliograph instead. 

So now we prepared, having made our decision to go on. That night, ifthe trail was possible, we would camp at Doubtful Lake. 

XIV

DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE

The first part of that adventurous day was quiet. We moved sedatelyalong on an overgrown trail, mountain walls so close on each side thatthe valley lay in shadow. I rode next to Dan Devore that day, and on thetrail he stopped his horse and showed me the place where Hughie McKeeverwas found. 

Dan Devore and Hughie McKeever went out one November to go up toHorseshoe Basin. Dan left before the heaviest snows came, leavingMcKeever alone. When McKeever had not appeared by February, Dan went infor him. His cabin was empty. 

He had kept a diary up to the 24th of December, when it stoppedabruptly. There were a few marten skins in the cabin, and his outfit. That was all. In some cottonwoods, not far from the camp, they found hishatchet and his bag hanging to a tree. 

It looked for a time, as though the mystery of Hughie McKeever'sdisappearance would be one of the unsolved tragedies of the mountains. But a trapper, whose route took him along Thunder Creek that spring, noticed that his dog made a side trip each time, away from the trail. Atlast he investigated, and found the body of Hughie McKeever. He hadprobably been caught in a snow-slide, for his leg was broken below theknee. Unable to walk, he had put his snowshoes on his hands and, dragging the broken leg, had crawled six miles through the snow and iceof the mountain winter. When he was found, he was only a mile and a halffrom his cabin and safety. 

There are many other tragedies of that valley. There was a man who wentup Bridge Creek to see a claim he had located there. He was to be outfour days. But in ten days he had not appeared, which was notsurprising, for there was twenty-five feet of snow, and when the snowhad frozen so that rescuers could travel over the crust, they went upafter him. He was lying in one of the bunks of his cabin with amattress over him, frozen to death. 

So, Dan said, they covered him in the snow with a mattress, and wentback in the spring to bury him. 

Every winter, in those mountain valleys, men who cannot get theiroutfits out before the snow shoot their horses or cut their throatsrather than let them freeze or starve to death. It is a grim country, the Cascade country. One man shot nine in this very valley last winter. 

Our naturalist had been caught the winter before in the first snowstormof the season. He was from daylight until eight o'clock at night makingtwo miles of trail. He had to break it, foot by foot, for the horses. 

As we rode up the gorge toward the pass, it was evident, from the amountof snow in the mountains, that stories had not been exaggerated. Thepackers looked dubious. Even if we could make the climb to DoubtfulLake, it seemed impossible that we could get farther. But the monotonyof the long ride was broken that afternoon by our first sight, as aparty, of a bear. 

[Illustration: _Mountain miles: The trail up Swiftcurrent Pass, GlacierNational Park_]

It came out on a ledge of the mountain, perhaps three hundred yardsaway, and proceeded, with great deliberation, to walk across arock-slide. It paid no attention whatever to us and to the wildexcitement which followed its discovery. Instantly, the three juniorRineharts were off their horses, and our artillery attack was beingprepared. At the first shot, the pack-ponies went crazy. They lunged andjumped, and even Buddy showed signs of strain, leaping what I imagine tobe some eleven feet in the air and coming back on four rigid knees. Followed such a peppering of that cliff as it had never had before. Little clouds of rock-dust rose above the bear, in front of him, behindhim, and below him. He stopped, mildly astonished, and looked around. More noise, more bucking on the trail, more dust. The bear walked on atrifle faster. 

It had been arranged that the first bear was to be left for the juniors. So the packers and the rest of the party watched and advised. 

But, as I have related elsewhere in this narrative, there were nocasualties. The bear, as far as I know, is living to-day, an honoredmember of his community, and still telling how he survived the greatwar. At last he disappeared into a cave, and we went on without so muchas a single skin to decorate a college room. 

We went on. 

What odds and ends of knowledge we picked up on those long days in thesaddle! That if lightning strikes a pine even lightly, it kills, butthat a fir will ordinarily survive; that mountain miles are measuredair-line, so that twenty-five miles may really be forty, and that, eventhen, they are calculated on the level, so that one is credited withonly the base of the triangle while he is laboriously climbing up itshypotenuse. I am personally acquainted with the hypotenuses of a goodmany mountains, and there is no use trying to pretend that they arebases. They are not. 

Then we learned that the purpose of the National Forests is not topreserve timber but to conserve it. The idea is to sell and reseed. About twenty-five per cent of the timber we saw was yellow pine. Butmost of the timber we saw on the east side of the Cascades will be safefor some time. I wouldn't undertake to carry out, from most of thatregion, enough pine-needles to make a sofa-cushion. It is quite enoughto get oneself out. 

Up to now it had been hard going, but not impossible. Now we were to dothe impossible. 

It is a curious thing about mountains, but they have a hideous tendencyto fall down. Whole cliff-faces, a mile or so high, are suddenly seizedwith a wandering disposition. Leaving the old folks at home and slidingdown into the valleys, they come awful croppers and sustain about elevenmillion compound comminuted fractures. 

These family breaks are known as rock-slides. 

Now to travel twenty feet over a rock-slide is to twist an ankle, bruisea shin-bone, utterly discourage a horse, and sour the most amiabledisposition. 

There is no flat side to these wandering rocks. With the diabolicalingenuity that nature can show when she goes wrong, they lie edge up. Doyou remember the little mermaid who wished to lose her tail and gainlegs so she could follow the prince? And how her penalty was that everystep was like walking on the edges of swords? That is a mountainrock-slide, but I do not recall that the little mermaid had to drag afrightened and slipping horse, which stepped on her now and then. Orwear riding-boots. Or stop every now and then to be photographed, andtry to persuade her horse to stop also. Or keep looking up to see ifanother family jar threatened. Or look around to see if any of the partyor the pack was rolling down over the spareribs of that ghastlyskeleton. No; the little mermaid's problem was a simple anduncomplicated one. 

We were climbing, too. Only one thing kept us going. The narrow valleytwisted, and around each cliff-face we expected the end--either death orsolid ground. But not so, or, at least, not for some hours. Riding-boots peeled like a sunburnt face; stones dislodged and rolleddown; the sun beat down in early September fury, and still we went on. 

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY A. J. BAKER, KALISPELL, MONT. _Where the rock-slides start_ (_Glacier National Park_)]

Only three miles it was, but it was as bad a three miles as I have evercovered. Then--the naturalist turned and smiled. 

"Now we are all right, " he said. "_We start to climb soon!_"

XV

DOUBTFUL LAKE

Of all the mountain-climbing I have ever done the switchback up toDoubtful Lake is the worst. We were hours doing it. There were placeswhen it seemed no horse could possibly make the climb. Back and forth, up and up, along that narrow rock-filled trail, which was lost here in asnow-bank, there in a jungle of evergreen that hung out from themountain-side, we were obliged to go. There was no going back. We couldnot have turned a horse around, nor could we have reversed thepack-outfit without losing some of the horses. 

As a matter of fact, we dropped two horses on that switchback. Withinfinite labor the packers got them back to the trail, rolling, tumbling, and roping them down to the ledge below, and there salvagingthem. It was heart-breaking, nerve-racking work. Near the top was anice-patch across a brawling waterfall. To slip on that ice-patch meant adrop of incredible distance. From broken places in the crust it waspossible to see the stream below. Yet over the ice it was necessary totake ourselves and the pack. 

"Absolutely no riding here, " was the order, given in strained tones. Foreverybody's nerves were on edge. 

Somehow or other, we got over. I can still see one little pack-ponywandering away from the others and traveling across that tiny ice-fieldon the very brink of death at the top of the precipice. The sun hadsoftened the snow so that I fell flat into it. And there was a dreadfulmoment when I thought I was going to slide. 

Even when I was safely over, my anxieties were just beginning. For theHead and the Juniors were not yet over. And there was no space to stopand see them come. It was necessary to move on up the switchback, thatthe next horse behind might scramble up. Buddy went gallantly on, leaping, slipping, his flanks heaving, his nostrils dilated. Then, atlast, the familiar call, --

"Are you all right, mother?"

And I knew it was all right with them--so far. 

Three thousand feet that switchback went straight up in the air. Howmany thousand feet we traveled back and forward, I do not know. 

But these things have a way of getting over somehow. The last of thepack-horses was three hours behind us in reaching Doubtful Lake. Theweary little beasts, cut, bruised, and by this time very hungry, lookeddejected and forlorn. It was bitterly cold. Doubtful Lake was full offloating ice, and a chilling wind blew on us from the snow all about. Abear came out on the cliff-face across the valley. But no one attemptedto shoot at him. We were too tired, too bruised and sore. We gave him nomore than a passing glance. 

It had been a tremendous experience, but a most alarming one. From thebrink of that pocket on the mountain-top where we stood the earth fellaway to vast distances beneath. The little river which empties DoubtfulLake slid greasily over a rock and disappeared without a sound intothe void. 

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT BY FRED H. KISER, PORTLAND, OREGON _Switchbacks on the trail_ (_Glacier National Park_)]

Until the pack-outfit arrived, we could have no food. We built a fireand huddled round it, and now and then one of us would go to the edge ofthe pit which lay below to listen. The summer evening was over and nighthad fallen before we heard the horses coming near the top of the cliff. We cheered them, as, one by one, they stumbled over the edge, darkfigures of horses and men, the animals with their bulging packs. Theyhad put up a gallant fight. 

And we had no food for the horses. The few oats we had been able tocarry were gone, and there was no grass on the little plateau. There washeather, deceptively green, but nothing else. And here, for the benefitof those who may follow us along the trail, let me say that oats shouldbe carried, if two additional horses are required for thepurpose--carried, and kept in reserve for the last hard days of thetrip. 

The two horses that had fallen were unpacked first. They were cut, andon their cuts the Head poured iodine. But that was all we could do forthem. One little gray mare was trembling violently. She went over acliff again the next day, but I am glad to say that we took her outfinally, not much the worse except for a badly cut shoulder. The otherhorse, a sorrel, had only a day or two before slid five hundred feetdown a snow-bank. He was still stiff from his previous accident, and ifever I saw a horse whose nerve was gone, I saw one there--a poor, tragic, shaken creature, trembling at a word. 

That night, while we lay wrapped in blankets round the fire while thecooks prepared supper at another fire near by, the Optimist produced abottle of claret. We drank it out of tin cups, the only wine of thejourney, and not until long afterward did we know its history--that avery great man to whose faith the Northwest owes so much of itsdevelopment had purchased it, twenty-five years before, for the visit tothis country of Albert, King of the Belgians. 

That claret, taken so casually from tin cups near the summit of theCascades, had been a part of the store of that great dreamer and mostabstemious of men, James J. Hill, laid in for the use of that othergreat dreamer and idealist, Albert, when he was his guest. While we ate, Weaver said suddenly, --

"Listen!"

His keen ears had caught the sound of a bell. He got up. 

"Either Johnny or Buck, " he said, "starting back home!"

Then commenced again that heart-breaking task of rounding up the horses. That is a part of such an expedition. And, even at that, one escaped andwas found the next morning high up the cliffside, in a basin. 

It was too late to put up all the tents that night. Mrs. Fred and Islept in our clothes but under canvas, and the men lay out with theirfaces to the sky. 

Toward dawn a thunder-storm came up. For we were on the crest of theCascades now, where the rain-clouds empty themselves before travelingto the arid country to the east. Just over the mountain-wall above uslay the Pacific Slope. 

The rain came down, and around the peaks overhead lightning flashed andflamed. No one moved except Joe, who sat up in his blankets, put his haton, said, "Let 'er rain, " and lay down to sleep again. Peanuts, thenaturalist's horse, sought human companionship in the storm, andwandered into camp, where one of the young bear-hunters wakened to findhim stepping across his prostrate and blanketed form. 

Then all was still again, except for the solid beat of the rain oncanvas and blanket, horse and man. 

It cleared toward morning, and at dawn Dan was up and climbed the wallon foot. At breakfast, on his return, we held a conference. He reportedthat it was possible to reach the top--possible but difficult, and thatwhat lay on the other side we should have to discover later on. 

A night's sleep had made Joe all business again. On the previous day hehad been too busy saving his camera and his life--camera first, ofcourse--to try for pictures. But now he had a brilliant idea. 

"Now see here, " he said to me; "I've got a great idea. How's Buddy aboutwater?"

"He's partial to it, " I admitted, "for drinking, or for lying down androlling in it, especially when I am on him. Why?"

"Well, it's like this, " he observed: "I'm set up on the bank of thelake. See? And you ride him into the water and get him to scramble up onone of those ice-cakes. Do you get it? It'll be a whale of a picture. "

"Joe, " I said, in a stern voice, "did you ever try to make a horse gointo an icy lake and climb on to an ice-cake? Because if you have, youcan do it now. I can turn the camera all right. Anyhow, " I added firmly, "I've been photographed enough. This film is going to look as if I'dcrossed the Cascades alone. Some of you other people ought to have achance. "

But a moving-picture man after a picture is as determined as a cook whodoes not like the suburbs. 

I rode Buddy to the brink of the lake, and there spoke to him infriendly tones. I observed that this lake was like other lakes, onlycolder, and that it ought to be mere play after the day before. I alsoselected a large ice-cake, which looked fairly solid, and pointed Buddyat it. 

Then I kicked him. He took a step and began to shake. Then he leaped sixfeet to one side and reared, still shaking. Then he turned round andheaded for the camp. 

By that I was determined on the picture. There is nothing like two willsset in opposite directions to determine a woman. Buddy and I again andagain approached the lake, mostly sideways. But at last he went in, tooktwenty steps out, felt the cold on his poor empty belly, and--refusedthe ice-cake. We went out much faster than we went in, making the bankin a great bound and a very bad humor--two very bad humors. 

XVI

OVER CASCADE PASS

To get out of the Doubtful Lake plateau to Cascade Pass it was necessaryto climb eight hundred feet up a steep and very slippery cliffside. Onthe other side lay the pass, but on the level of the lake. It was herethat we "went up a hill one day and then went down again" with avengeance. And on this cliffside it was that the little gray mare wentover again, falling straight on to a snow-bank, which saved her, andthen rolling over and over shedding parts of our equipment, and landingfar below dazed and almost senseless. 

It was on the top of that wall above Doubtful Lake that I had thegreatest fright of the trip. 

That morning, as a special favor, the Little Boy had been allowed to goahead with Mr. Hilligoss, who was to clear trail and cut footholds wherethey were necessary. When we were more than halfway to the top of thewall above the lake, two alternative routes to the top offeredthemselves, one to the right across a snow-field that hugged the edge ofa cliff which dropped sheer five hundred feet to the water, another tothe left over slippery heather which threatened a slide and a casualtyat every step. The Woodsman had left no blazes, there being no tree tomark. Holding on by clutching to the heather with our hands, we debated. Finally, we chose the left-hand route as the one they had probablytaken. But when we reached the top, the Woodsman and the Little Boy werenot there. We hallooed, but there was no reply. And, suddenly, theterrible silence of the mountains seemed ominous. Had they venturedacross the snow-bank and slipped?

I am not ashamed to say that, sitting on my horse on the top of thatmountain-wall, I proceeded to have a noiseless attack of hysterics. There were too many chances of accident for any of the party to take thematter lightly. There we gathered on that little mountain meadow, notmuch bigger than a good-sized room, and waited. There was snow and iceand silence everywhere. Below, Doubtful Lake lay like a sapphire set ingranite, and far beneath it lay the valley from which we had climbed theday before. But no one cared for scenery. 

Then it was that "Silent Lawrie" turned his horse around and went back. Soon he hallooed, and, climbing back to us, reported that they hadcrossed the ice-bank. He had found the marks of the axe makingfootholds. And soon afterward there was another halloo from below, andthe missing ones rode into sight. They were blithe and gay. They hadcrossed the ice-field and had seen a view which they urged we should notmiss. But I had had enough view. All I wanted was the level earth. Therecould be nothing after that flat enough to suit me. 

Sliding, stumbling, falling, leading our scrambling horses, we got downthe wall on the other side. It was easier going, but slippery withheather and that green moss of the mountains, which looks so temptingbut which gives neither foothold nor nourishment. Then, at last, thepass. 

It was thirty-six hours since our horses had had anything to eat. We hadhad food and sleep, but during the entire night the poor animals hadbeen searching those rocky mountain-sides for food and failing to findit. They stood in a dejected group, heads down, feet well braced tosupport their weary bodies. 

But last summer was not a normal one. Unusually heavy snowfalls thewinter before had been followed by a late, cold spring. The snow wasonly beginning to melt late in July, and by September, although almostgone from the pass itself, it still covered deep the trail on the eastside. 

So, some of those who read this may try the same great adventurehereafter and find it unnecessary to make the Doubtful Lake détour. Ihope so. Because the pass is too wonderful not to be visited. Some day, when this magnificent region becomes a National Park, and there issomething more than a dollar a mile to be spent on trails, a thousanddollars or so invested in trail-work will put this roof of the worldwithin reach of any one who can sit a horse. And those who go there willbe the better for the going. Petty things slip away in the silent highplaces. It is easy to believe in God there. And the stars and heavenseem very close. 

One thing died there forever for me--my confidence in the man who writesthe geography and who says that, representing the earth by an orange, the highest mountains are merely as the corrugations on its skin. 

On Cascade Pass is the dividing-line between the Chelan and theWashington National Forests. For some reason we had confidently believedthat reaching the pass would see the end of our difficulties. The onlyquestion that had ever arisen was whether we could get to the pass ornot. And now we were there. 

We were all perceptibly cheered; even the horses seemed to feel that theworst was over. Tame grouse scudded almost under our feet. They hadnever seen human beings, and therefore had no terror of them. 

And here occurred one of the small disappointments that the Middle Boywill probably remember long after he has forgotten the altitude in feetof that pass and other unimportant matters. For he scared up somegrouse, and this is the tragedy. The open season for grouse is September1st in Chelan and September 15th across the line. And the birds wouldnot cross the line. They were wise birds, and must have had a calendarabout them, for, although we were vague as to the date, we knew it wasnot yet the 15th. So they sat or fluttered about, and looked mostawfully good to eat. But they never went near the danger-zone or theenemy's trenches. 

We lay about and rested, and the grouse laughed at us, and a greatmarmot, sentinel of his colony, sat on a near-by rock and whistledreports of what we were doing. Joe unlimbered the moving-picture camera, and the Head used the remainder of his small stock of iodine on theinjured horses. The sun shone on the flowers and the snow, on the pailin which our cocoa was cooking, on the barrels of our unused guns andthe buckles of the saddles. We watched the pack-horses coming down, tinypin-point figures, oddly distorted by the great packs. And we rested forthe descent. 

I do not know why we thought that descent from Cascade Pass on thePacific side was going to be easy. It was by far the most nerve-rackingpart of the trip. Yet we started off blithely enough. Perhaps Buddy knewthat he was the first horse to make that desperate excursion. Hedeveloped a strange nervousness, and took to leaping off the trail inbad places, so that one moment I was a part of the procession and thenext was likely to be six feet above the trail on a rocky ledge, with noapparent way to get down. 

We had expected that there would be less snow on the western slope, butat the beginning of the trip we found snow everywhere. And whereasbefore the rock-slides had been wretchedly uncomfortable but atcomparatively low altitudes, now we found ourselves climbing acrossslides which hugged the mountain thousands of feet above the valley. 

Our nerves began to go, too, I think, on that last day. We were plainlyfrightened, not for ourselves but each for the other. There were manyplaces where to dislodge a stone was to lose it as down a bottomlesswell. There was one frightful spot where it was necessary to go througha waterfall on a narrow ledge slippery with moss, where the waterdropped straight, uncounted feet to the valley below. 

The Little Boy paused blithely, his reins over his arm, and surveyed thescenery from the center of this death-trap. 

"If anybody slipped here, " he said, "he'd fall quite a distance. " Thenhe kicked a stone to see it go. 

"_Quit that!_" said the Head, in awful tones. 

Midway of the descent, we estimated that we should lose at least tenhorses. The pack was behind us, and there was no way to discover howthey were faring. But as the ledges were never wide enough for a horseand the one leading him to move side by side, it seemed impossible thatthe pack-ponies with their wide burdens could edge their way along. 

[Illustration: _Watching the pack-train coming down at Cascade Pass_]

I had mounted Buddy again. I was too fatigued to walk farther, and, besides, I had fallen so often that I felt he was more sure-footed thanI. Perhaps my narrowest escape on that trip was where a huge stone hadslipped across the ledge we were following. Buddy, afraid to climb itsslippery sides, undertook to leap it. There was one terrible moment whenhe failed to make a footing with his hind feet and we hung there overthe gorge. After that, Dan Devore led him. 

In spite of our difficulties, we got down to the timber-line ratherquickly. But there trouble seemed to increase rather than diminish. Trees had fallen across the way, and dangerous détours on uncertainfooting were necessary to get round them. The warm rains of the PacificSlope had covered the mountain-sides with thick vegetation also. Ourway, hardly less steep than on the day before, was overgrown withgreenery that was often a trap for the unwary. And even when, at last, we were down beyond the imminent danger of breaking our necks at everystep, there were more difficulties. The vegetation was rank, tremendously high. We worked our way through it, lost to each other andto the world. Wilderness snows had turned the small streams to roaringrivers and spread them over flats through which we floundered. So longwas it since the trail had been used that it was often difficult to tellwhere it took off from the other side of the stream. And our horses weregrowing very weary. They had made the entire trip without grain and withsuch bits of pasture as they could pick up in the mountains. Now it wasa long time since they had had even grass. 

It will never be possible to know how many miles we covered in thatCascade Pass trip. As Mr. Hilligoss said, mountain miles were measuredwith a coonskin, and they threw in the tail. Often to make a mile'sadvance we traveled four on the mountain-side. 

So when they tell me that it was a trifle of sixteen miles from the topof Cascade Pass to the camp-site we made that night, I know that it wasnearer thirty. In point of difficulties, it was a thousand. 

Yet the last part of the trip, had we not been too weary to enjoy it, was superbly beautiful. There was a fine rain falling. The undergrowthwas less riotous and had taken on the form of giant ferns, ten feethigh, which overhung the trail. Here were great cypress trees thirty-sixfeet in circumference--a forest of them. We rode through green aisleswhere even the death of the forest was covered by soft moss. Out of thegreen and moss-covered trunks of dead giants, new growth had sprung, newtrees, hanging gardens of ferns. 

There had been much talk of Mineral Park. It was our objective point forcamp that night, and I think I had gathered that it was to be asettlement. I expected nothing less than a post-office and perhaps someminers' cabins. When, at the end of that long, hard day, we reachedMineral Park at twilight and in a heavy rain, I was doomed todisappointment. 

Mineral Park consists of a deserted shack in a clearing perhaps fortyfeet square, on the bank of a mountain stream. All around it isimpenetrable forest. The mountains converge here so that the valleybecomes a cañon. So dense was the growth that we put up our tents on thetrail itself. 

In the little clearing round the empty shack, the horses were tied inthe cold rain. It was impossible to let them loose, for we could neverhave found them again. Our hearts ached that night for the hungrycreatures; the rain had brought a cold wind and they could not even moveabout to keep warm. 

I was too tired to eat that night. I went to bed and lay in my tent, listening to the sound of the rain on the canvas. The camp-stove was setup in the trail, and the others gathered round it, eating in the rain. But, weary as I was, I did not sleep. For the first time, terror of theforest gripped me. It menaced; it threatened. 

The roar of the river sounded like the rush of flame. I lay there andwondered what would happen if the forest took fire. For the gentlesummer rain would do little good once a fire started. There would be noway out. The giant cliffs would offer no refuge. We could not even havereached them through the jungle had we tried. And forest-fires werecommon enough. We had ridden over too many burned areas not to realizethat. 

XVII

OUT TO CIVILIZATION

It was still raining in the morning. The skies were gray and sodden andthe air was moist. We stood round the camp-fire and ate our fried ham, hot coffee, and biscuits. It was then that the Head, prompted bysympathy, fed his horse the rain-soaked biscuit, the apple, the twolumps of sugar, and the raw egg. 

Yet, in spite of the weather, we were jubilant. The pack-train had comethrough without the loss of a single horse. Again the impossible hadbecome possible. And that day was to see us out of the mountains and inpeaceful green valleys, where the horses could eat their fill. 

The sun came out as we started. Had it not been for the horses, weshould have been entirely happy. But sympathy for them had become anobsession. We rode slowly to save them; we walked when we could. It wasstrange to go through that green wonderland and find not a leaf thehorses could eat. It was all moss, ferns, and evergreens. 

From the semi-arid lands east of the Cascades to the rank vegetation ofthe Pacific side was an extraordinary change. Trees grew to enormoussizes. In addition to the great cedars, there were hemlocks fifteen andeighteen feet in circumference. Only the strong trees survive in thesevalleys, and by that ruthless selection of nature weak young saplingsdie early. So we found cedar, hemlock, lodge-pole pine, white andDouglas fir, cottonwood, white pine, spruce, and alder of enormous size. 

The brake ferns were the most common, often growing ten feet tall. Wecounted five varieties of ferns growing in profusion, among them brakeferns, sword-ferns, and maidenhair, most beautiful and luxuriant. Themaidenhair fern grew in masses, covering dead trunks of trees and makingsolid walls of delicate green beside the trail. 

"Silent Lawrie" knew them all. He knew every tiniest flower and plantthat thrust its head above the leaf-mould. He saw them all, too. Peanuts, his horse, made his own way now, and the naturalist sat atrifle sideways in his saddle and showed me his discoveries. 

I am no naturalist, so I rode behind him, notebook in hand, and I made alist something like this. If there are any errors they are not thenaturalist's, but mine, because, although I have written a great deal ona horse's back, I am not proof against the accident of Whiskers stirringa yellow-jackets' nest on the trail, or of Buddy stumbling, weary beastthat he was, over a root on the path. 

This is my list: red-stemmed dogwood; bunchberries, in blossom on thehigher reaches, in bloom below; service-berries, salmon-berries;skunk-cabbage, beloved by bears, and the roots of which the Indiansroast and eat; above four thousand feet, white rhododendrons, and, abovefour thousand five hundred feet, heather; hellebore also in the highplaces; thimble-berries and red elderberries, tag-alder, redhoneysuckle, long stretches of willows in the creek-bottoms; viningmaples, too, and yew trees, the wood of which the Indians use formaking bows. 

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT BY FRED H. KISER, PORTLAND, OREGON _A field of bear-grass_]

Around Cloudy Pass we found the red monkey-flower. In different placesthere was the wild parsnip; the ginger-plant, with its heart-shaped leafand blossom, buried in the leaf-mould, its crushed leaves redolent ofginger; masses of yellow violets, twinflowers, ox-eye daisies, andsweet-in-death, which is sold on the streets in the West as we sellsweet lavender. There were buttercups, purple asters, bluebells, goat's-beard, columbines, Mariposa lilies, bird's-bill, trillium, devil's-club, wild white heliotrope, brick-leaved spirea, wintergreen, everlasting. 

And there are still others, where Buddy collided with the yellow-jacket, that I find I cannot read at all. 

Something lifted for me that day as Buddy and I led off down that fat, green valley, with the pass farther and farther behind--a weight off myspirit, a deadly fear of accident, not to myself but to the Family, which had obsessed me for the last few days. But now I could twist inmy saddle and see them all, ruddy and sound and happy, whistling as theyrode. And I knew that it was all right. It had been good for them andgood for me. It is always good to do a difficult thing. And no one hasever fought a mountain and won who is not the better for it. Themountains are not for the weak or the craven, or the feeble of mind orbody. 

We went on, to the distant tinkle of the bell on the lead-horse of thepack-train. 

It was that day that "Silent Lawrie" spoke I remember, because he hadsaid so little before, and because what he said was so well worthremembering. 

"Why can't all this sort of thing be put into music?" he asked. "It _is_music. Think of it, the drama of it all!"

Then he went on, and this is what "Silent Lawrie" wants to have written. I pass it on to the world, and surely it can be done. It starts at dawn, with the dew, and the whistling of the packers as they go after thehorses. Then come the bells of the horses as they come in, the smoke ofthe camp-fire, the first sunlight on the mountains, the saddling andpacking. And all the time the packers are whistling. 

Then the pack starts out on the trail, the bells of the leadersjingling, the rattle and crunch of buckles and saddle-leather, the clickof the horses' feet against the rocks, the swish as they ford a singingstream. The wind is in the trees and birds are chirping. Then comes thelong, hard day, the forest, the first sight of snow-covered peaks, thefinal effort, and camp. 

After that, there is the thrush's evening song, the afterglow, thecamp-fire, and the stars. And over all is the quiet of the night, andthe faint bells of grazing horses, like the silver ringing of the bellat a mass. 

I wish I could do it. 

At noon that day in the Skagit Valley, we found our first civilization, a camp where a man was cutting cedar blocks for shingles. He lookedabsolutely astounded when our long procession drew in around his shanty. He meant only one thing to us; he meant oats. If he had oats, we weresaved. If he had no oats, it meant again long hours of traveling withour hungry horses. 

He had a bag of oats. But he was not inclined, at first, to dispose ofthem, and, as a matter of fact, he did not sell them to us at all. Whenwe finally got them from him, it was only on our promise to send backmore oats. Money was of no use to him there in the wilderness; but oatsmeant everything. 

Thirty-one horses we drove into that little bit of a clearing under thecedar trees, perhaps a hundred feet by thirty. Such wild excitement asprevailed among the horses when the distribution of oats began, suchplaintive whinnying and restless stirring! But I think they behaved muchbetter than human beings would have under the same circumstances. And atlast each was being fed--such a pathetically small amount, too, hardlymore than a handful apiece, it seemed. In his eagerness, the LittleBoy's horse breathed in some oats, and for a time it looked as though hewould cough himself to death. 

The wood-cutter's wife was there. We were the one excitement in herlong months of isolation. I can still see her rather pathetic face asshe showed me the lace she was making, the one hundred and one ways inwhich she tried to fill her lonely hours. 

All through the world there are such women, shut away from their kind, staying loyally with the man they have chosen through days of achingisolation. That woman had children. She could not take them into thewilderness with her, so they were in a town, and she was here in theforest, making things for them and fretting about them and longing forthem. There was something tragic in her face as she watched us mount togo on. 

We were to reach Marblemont that day and there to leave our horses. After they had rested and recovered, Dan Devore was to take them backover the range again, while we went on to civilization and a railroad. 

We promised the wood-cutter to send the oats back with the outfit; andwhen we sent them, we sent at the same time some magazines to thatlonely wife and mother on the Skagit. 

Late in the afternoon, we emerged from the forest. It was like comingfrom a darkened room into the light. One moment we were in the aisles ofthat great green cathedral, the next there was an open road and thesunlight and houses. We prodded the horses with our heels and raced downthe road. Surprised inhabitants came out and stared. We waved to them;we loved them; we loved houses and dogs and cows and apple trees. Butmost of all we loved level places. 

We were in time, too, for the railroad strike had not yet taken place. 

As Bob got off his horse, he sang again that little ditty with which, during the most strenuous hours of the trip, we had become familiar:--

 "Oh, a sailor's life is bold and free, He lives upon the bright blue sea: He has to work like h--, of course, But he doesn't have to ride on a darned old horse. "

THE END

 * * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

The poems on pages 140 and 188, were punctuated differently. This wasretained. 

On page 90, Dvorak is printed with a hacek over the r. The contraints oftext preclude this from being used in this one instance.