CHAPTER IX--Over Piegan Pass to St. Mary Lake, Underneath the Precipices
Promptly at seven, Joe was at the Ranger's cabin. He had already cookedTom's breakfast, and Tom was over at the camp, helping the hikers to gettheirs. The sun had long been up, and the day was clear and perfect. Infact, there hadn't yet been a rainy day since the scouts reached thePark. But Mills had told Joe to bring his rubber poncho, so he had itwith him. He was to ride Popgun, of course, and the Ranger and he puttheir personal equipment of blankets, tent, extra clothing, ponchos,axes, and the like, on the Ranger's packhorse, and started for the bighotel.
"I've got hold of a good extra man," Mills said. "With so many skirts inthe party, we'll have a big pack-train, for they insist on sleeping outinstead of going to the chalets. I was over last night to see 'em."
"Where are we going to-day?" Joe asked.
"Piegan Pass," Mills answered, "and make camp to-night by the lake.That's twenty-two miles. To-morrow we'll go to Gunsight Lake--that'sonly seven, and it'll be all they'll want after to-day--and rest up, andlet 'em climb Blackfeet Glacier if they want to."
At the hotel the two cowboy guides, one of them not very much older thanJoe, were already on hand with the horses and Joe's equipment of stores,and the cooking kit, and three tents, and innumerable blankets. It madesuch a pile of stuff that you'd have thought it would need a regiment ofhorses to carry it, but Mills and the two guides went about the task ofpacking it on to the backs of five horses, and so well did they stow itaway, properly balanced on either side and made fast with ropes indiamond hitches, that the horses didn't seem to mind it in the least,though they looked more like camels than horses. It was eight o'clockbefore this work was done, and by that time the tourists appeared, withtheir dunnage bags, which had to be packed on two more horses.
Joe had never seen a congressman before, except once when he went to apolitical rally and he could not help staring at the two men as theyapproached, and wanting to laugh. Beside Mills and the two cowboys, theylooked so unfitted for this job of riding a horse over the high trails!They looked about as unfit as the cowboys would have looked in Congress.Both of them still wore long trousers and ordinary boots, though theyhad bought themselves flannel shirts and soft hats at the hotel store,and sweaters. Their wives were not very much better equipped, thoughboth of them had bought khaki divided riding skirts (for nobody isallowed to ride a side saddle in the Park). Beside the two congressmenand their wives, there were two girls about twenty, and a boy aboutJoe's age. One of the girls was the daughter of Congressman Elkins ofNew Jersey, the other two of Congressman Jones of Pennsylvania. Allthree of the young people, Joe noted, were better equipped. The girlshad regular riding breeches and leather leggins, like a man's, and theboy had khaki riding breeches and high boots.
As soon as their dunnage bags had been packed on two more horses, thejob of getting the women into their saddles began, and then getting thestirrups adjusted right. The girls and young Jones were up and readylong before their mothers were, and making uncomplimentary remarks.
"Say, ma," called young Jones, "if your horse bucks, grab his tail. Thatalways stops 'em."
"Father looks as scared as when he made his first speech in the House,"laughed Miss Elkins.
"Nonsense!" said that statesman. "I rode a horse many a time when I wasa boy."
"That was a long time ago, papa dear," his daughter said.
"And pray when did you learn to ride?" her father asked, trying to getcomfortable in his saddle.
"Oh, it's just going to come natural to me," she answered, with one ofher rippling laughs that Joe liked to hear.
Mills walked through the little group of mounted riders, gave a testingpull to all the saddle girths, looked at the stirrups, and vaulted intohis own saddle.
"You keep the two horses with the dunnage bags, and our own packhorse,in front of you, just behind the last rider," he said to Joe. Then hetouched his horse with his heel, and the animal jumped up the trail. Therest followed--first the party of tourists, behind Mills, then one ofthe guides to keep an eye on them, then three packhorses, then Joe tokeep an eye on these three, then the five other packhorses, and finallythe second guide to watch them. In all, then, there were nineteen horsesstrung out along the trail in single file, which made a considerableprocession, as Joe looked forward and then back upon it.
The trail they were on did not go past the tepee camp, so Joe had nochance to call good-bye to Tom. It went along the other shore of LakeMcDermott, sometimes on the little rocky beach, sometimes almost in thewater, heading directly up the valley toward the great gray fortress ofGould Mountain and Grinnell Glacier, which Joe could see glistening likea huge white and green silk mantle flung along a high ledge just underthe spine of the Continental Divide. Mills broke into a trot as soon asthe party was well started, and ahead Joe could see the two congressmenand their wives bounding up and down, and noticed that CongressmanElkins, who said he rode when he was a boy, bounded quite as much as anyone. Of course, the packhorses wanted to trot, too, and Joe saw theguide in front turning back and gesticulating to him. He gave Popgun ajab in the ribs, and rode past his three charges, getting in front ofthem, and then pulled Popgun down to a walk. If he had not, of course,the packs might soon have been shaken off. The tourists were soon out ofsight up the trail, in the woods, and Joe and Val, the young cowboy,were left alone, with the eight pack animals.
It looked like an easy job they had, too, but Joe soon found it was notso easy as it looked. Some one of the eight was always wanting to fallout of line and eat a particularly tempting bunch of grass, or else tookit into his silly head to make a detour into the woods, and then he hadto be yelled at, or chased and driven into line again. Joe found himselffairly busy most of the first four miles of the trail, till they reachedGrinnell Meadow, where the rest of the party had halted and were waitingfor them.
Grinnell Meadow, Joe thought, was the most beautiful place he had everbeen in. It was a grassy glade of twenty acres, at the foot of GrinnellLake, and was studded with little fir trees and carpeted with greatwhite chalice cups, which are a kind of big anemone. The lake itself wasgreen in color, and maybe half a mile across. The far side lay rightunder a two thousand foot precipice which sprang up to the glacier, anddown this precipice, from under the lip of the glacier, were pouringhalf a dozen very slender waterfalls, like long white ribbons let downthe rocks. Just to the left the vast cliff wall of Mount Gould shotstraight up to the almost ten thousand foot summit. (Of course, themeadow being five or six thousand feet above sea level, this wall ofGould wasn't ten thousand feet high, but only about four thousand.)
As soon as Mills saw the packhorses appear, however, he gave the signalto proceed, so Joe did not have time to look about much. The trailcrossed the meadow, the ground squirrels peeking out of their holes andchattering angrily at the disturbance, and then turned left, and beganat once to climb, alongside of the great cliff of Gould Mountain. Theyclimbed beside a roaring brook, and Joe soon realized that they weren'tgoing up Gould at all, but up the side canyon to the east. They hadn'tgone a mile before this brook was far below them, and they looked acrossthe deep hole it had made to the towering cliffs of Gould. Gould is apart of the Great Divide, and Joe could now see more plainly than everbefore the strata of the earth crust--layer on layer of differentcolored stone, like the layers in a gigantic cake. All down theprecipices were coming waterfalls, from the snow-fields above, and Joeand Val reckoned that one fall took a clean jump of twenty-five hundredfeet. They could hear the thunder of it, across the canyon, though it wasnot nearly so loud as you might think, because most of the water turnedto mist before it reached the bottom.
Now the trail began to get into the region of switchbacks, and Joe couldsee the horses of all the party strung out far ahead, and then suddenlydoubling on their tracks so Mills would pass almost over his head, andspeak to him as he went by. Before long, he saw Mills halt, where thetrail went close to a beautiful waterfall, and as he came up, he heardthe Ranger telling
the party that it was Morning Eagle Falls.
"What a pretty name--it must be Indian, of course?" Miss Elkins said.
"Named for some Blackfeet chief, I suppose," Mills answered.
"Say, dad, what's the matter with you?" laughed the Jones boy. "Whydon't you christen it Congressman Peter W. Jones Falls? What's the useof being in the House of Representatives if you can't name a dinkylittle waterfall after yourself?"
"My boy, he's waiting till he reaches the biggest mountain in the Park,to name that after himself," the other congressman said, while every onelaughed, and the procession started up again.
They were climbing an ever steeper trail, now, and the trees began togrow smaller and smaller, while, looking back, Joe could see GrinnellMeadow far below him and the great cliff of Gould shooting up out of it.Ahead, they began to get into snow-fields, and then they crossedtimber-line, where the trees were twisted and bent and even laid overflat by the wind, and sometimes an evergreen a foot thick would be onlyeighteen inches tall, and then, for twenty feet, bend over and lie alongthe ground like a vine, sheared by the wind. Beyond timber-line theycame into a wild, naked, desolate region of broken shale stone, withtiny Alpine flowers growing in the crannies, snow-fields lying allabout, and to their right, quite near, the southern end of GouldMountain where it dropped down a little to the Continental Divide level,to their left the bare stone pile summit of Mount Siyeh, which is overten thousand feet high. A few more steps, and they stood on top of thepass, and looked over the rim, on the tumbled mountains to the south,with the great blue and white pyramid of Jackson (ten thousand feet)rising a dozen miles away or more, over what looked like a vast hole inthe earth.
"This is Piegan Pass," said Mills.
"Why Piegan--and why a pass?" one of the congressmen asked. "I thought apass was a place where you went between things, not up over theirbacks."
The Ranger laughed. "You're only seven thousand feet up here," he said."That mountain to the east, Siyeh, is ten thousand."
"Why, it looks as if I could just walk across these stones and get tothe top of it in twenty minutes!" cried Bob Jones.
"Try it," said Mills, laconically. "We'll be having lunch down in thepines below."
Joe thought of the story of the Englishman, and hoped Bob would try it.
"You haven't explained the Piegan," Miss Elkins said.
"Why, the Indians that owned this reservation were the Piegan tribe ofthe Blackfeet," said Mills.
"Dear, dear, another lost opportunity for dad!" sighed the irrepressibleBob.
The cavalcade now began the descent on the south side of the pass, withthe Divide on their right, across a canyon, and the trail itself dug outof the vast shale slide which was the south wall of Siyeh. It was asteep, narrow trail, nothing but loose shale, and the horses had to picktheir way slowly and carefully, while the riders had to lean well backand brace in their stirrups to keep from sliding forward on the horse.
"Say, Mr. Mills," Joe heard Bob call, "has this horse of mine got strongears?"
"Why?" asked Mills.
"Nothing, only if he hasn't, I'm going to take a toboggan slide down hisnose."
"Try walking," Mills called back.
Joe saw Bob dismount, and as he was feeling saddle stiff, he got off hishorse, too, and led him down by the bridle. The poor packhorses had totread on the very outside edge of the trail, because if they didn't,their packs would knock the wall on the inner side, and what kept themfrom slipping off was hard to see.
The trail down seemed endless. Far below, Joe saw a party coming up,looking about a quarter of a mile away.
"I suppose we'll meet 'em day after to-morrow," Bob said.
Trail up Piegan Pass Showing Continental Divide and Mt.Gould]
As a matter of fact, it was half an hour before the two parties met.They had to pass on this narrow path, and Mills, the two guides, and Joeheld the horses of their party while the ascending riders squeezed past,and then led the packhorses, one by one, to a spot where they could makeroom for another horse to get by. It seemed ticklish work to Joe, butthe horses were as calm about it as if they had been on level ground.
It was long after one o'clock when the nineteen horses of the processionfinally stepped off the last of the shale upon the green grass of alittle meadow, and then into a level strip of woods. With a yell, Millshit his horse, and went forward at a smart trot, everybody following,even the weary packhorses. Out of the woods on the other side theytrotted into the most beautiful spot Joe had ever seen in all his life,and when Miss Elkins cried, "Oh, is this Heaven?" he felt like saying,"Me too!"--but remembered that, after all, he was only the cook, andkept silent.
"This is Piegan Pines," said the Ranger. "All off for lunch."
He sprang from his saddle, and he and the forward guide helped the twoolder women to dismount--and they certainly needed help.
"I can _never_ get back there again," wailed poor Mrs. Jones, as sheflopped down on the grass.
While the party were dismounting, Joe had just time for a quick lookabout him. They were in a little meadow, maybe half a mile wide, withtowering rock walls on both sides, hung with snow-fields and a glacieror two, and, behind, the great shale slide down which they had justcome. Only one side, to the south, was open--and there the meadow justdropped off into space. Across the hole, far off and blue, was the greatblue mass of Mount Jackson, covered with snow, and the great white andgreen slopes of Blackfeet Glacier, the largest in the Park. The meadowwas full of little limber pines, golden with millions of dog-toothviolet bells, and criss-crossed with tiny ice-water brooks, running inchannels over the grass--made, of course, by melting snow on the cliffsabove.
"Golly," thought Joe, "if old Spider and I could only come and camphere!"
But now Mills was telling him to get a quick, cold lunch, and he and theother guide sprang for the packhorses, and got out what was needed,while Mills made a camp-fire beside one of the brooks.
As Joe was making his preparations, he felt Miss Elkins standing besidehim, and looked up.
"Are you the cook?" she asked.
"I--I believe so," Joe stammered, getting red.
"You don't look very old to be a cook," said she. "Have you got lots andlots to eat? I could devour a whole butcher shop, I think."
"Cold lunch," said Joe, grinning. "Ranger's orders."
"Oh, not a cold lunch! Mr. Mills--Mr. Mills--cook says you say a coldlunch. You didn't say that, did you?"
"Sure, ice water and a cracker," the Ranger grinned. "Can't stop tocook."
"Oh, please, just coffee--mother will _never_ get back on her horsewithout a cup of coffee."
"I'll never get back without _two_ cups," groaned Mrs. Jones.
"Well, Joe, make 'em coffee," said Mills, with a wink at Joe, who hadbeen intending to make coffee all the time.
He filled his kettle at the little brook, and while the coffee wasboiling, opened a small can of sardines apiece, some boxes of crackers,a can of beans, and two or three jars of jam. For the jam, he carefullywhittled some dead pine limbs into rough spoons, to save dish washing,and sweetened the coffee, when ready, in the pot, for the same purpose.
By the time he had this very simple lunch spread out on a bit of levelground, with no plates or spoons except for the beans, which he hadheated while the coffee was boiling, the party had scattered, all butVal, the young cowboy.
"Ready?" Val asked.
"All ready."
Val picked up a piece of wood and a frying-pan, which lay on the openedpack. Pounding the pan with the stick like a drum, he yelled,
"Come and get it!"
"That's the word that brings 'em in these parts," he added to Joe.
It did.
"That's the most eloquent speech I ever heard!" exclaimed Mr. Jones.
In about one minute, they were all gathered around the fire. Val passedthe food and Joe poured the coffee.
"Say, what do you take these sardines out with?" demanded Mrs. Jones.
"Fingers were made bef
ore forks, mother darling," said Bob. "See--watchyour little son."
He picked up a sardine by the tail, and dropped the whole of it into hismouth.
"Well, I must say, I'd like a fork----" she began, and Joe turned red,for he had forgotten the forks for the sardines.
But Miss Elkins spoke up before Mrs. Jones could finish.
"Cook hasn't time to wash dishes this noon," she said. "We've got tomake camp before dark. Besides, we're roughing it. I think it's great!"and she, too, picked a sardine out of her tin by the tail, and droppedit upon a cracker.
Joe cast her a grateful glance, and she smiled at him sweetly. Hedecided then and there, as he put it to himself, that she was "all tothe good."
Meantime Mrs. Elkins, her mother, was watching Val, with fascinatedeyes.
"What _are_ you looking at, mother?" her daughter demanded. Bob's eyesfollowed hers, and he gave a hoot of glee.
"A Charlie Chaplin sandwich!" he cried.
Then everybody looked at Val, who was grinning amiably, as he sat on afallen log, making himself a sandwich, between two crackers, of theentire bill of fare--sardines, jam, and baked beans. This he consumed inexactly three bites, and proceeded to concoct another one.
"Well," he said, as he made this second, "you mix 'em all inside, don'tyou? Why not first? Saves time."
"Ugh!" said Mrs. Jones. "I'm afraid I wasn't born to rough it."
"Efficiency, I call it," said her husband. "Why not, as he says. ThinkI'll try it."
"Me, too," said Bob.
"Me, too."
"Me, too," from each of the girls. They all did try it--once--much toMrs. Jones' disgust.
It did not take long to clean out the sardine tins and the jam jars.Then Joe produced a piece of sweet chocolate apiece, while the girlscalled him "a darling thing," and the congressmen lit their cigars andlay back on the grass, while Joe and Val packed up again.
"You go along right away, with the pack-train," said Mills to them, "andwhen you reach the lake, turn toward Sun Camp, till you come to thepoint of land. Start making camp by that. We'll come slower."
So Joe had to climb back on Popgun--reluctantly, for he hated to leavethis beautiful upland meadow, and led the way down the trail, with theeight packhorses behind him, and Val bringing up the rear. Of course, heand Val were thus so far apart they could not talk, and with nothing infront of him, it seemed almost as if he were alone, plunging into theunknown wilderness.
The trail immediately fell over the edge of the meadow, into timber, andbegan to descend steeply, the woods growing more dense and the treesmuch larger as the trail dropped down, till, after a mile or two, theywere in a heavy forest of big fir trees. As they neared the bottom land,the footing got heavy, too, and finally the trail was mostly black mud.They plodded through this for a mile or more, and then, through thegreat tree trunks, Joe began to see light, and, high up, the red andwhite and gray tops of mountains, and finally, after they had turned tothe left by a rushing stream, and followed down it a ways, he saw thedancing waters of a green lake. A short distance now, and they werebeside this lake. It was, Joe knew, St. Mary Lake, the upper end of thesame lake he had seen on the trip in from the railroad on the motor bus.
As he came out on an open headland on the shore, he could not helppulling up his horse, and looking at it. Val trotted up beside him.
"Some pond, eh?" said the cowboy. "I like this puddle. Good fish in it,too."
But Joe was not thinking of fish then. He was thinking--well, he couldnot have told you what he was thinking; maybe he was just feeling. Itwas all so huge, and awe-inspiring, and yet so beautiful! The lake wastwo miles wide, he fancied, and went out of sight around a headland tothe east. To the west, it seemed to run right up into a big canyon thatended bang against Blackfeet Glacier, Mount Jackson, and the sawtoothpeaks of the Great Divide. Directly opposite, two huge rock pyramidscame sheer down into the water.
"Those are Red Eagle and Little Chief Mountains," said Val. "See thathouse over on the one little island? That's where the president of theGreat Northern Railroad lives in summer. Come on, though, we can't lookat the pretty pictures. We've got to get tents up for the others. Shedoesn't like to rough it, Mrs. Jones don't. Say, I bet she asks you toheat her curling irons to-night."
Joe laughed.
"Why didn't you remind me of the forks?" said he. "I'm green, you know,and get rattled."
"Forks, what for? Let her use her pickers. It'll do her good," said Val.
Joe laughed again. Val was just what he wanted a cowboy to be--jolly,reckless, without any reverence for any one or anything. He liked himespecially because when it came to doing any job, he went right at itcheerfully and did it.
They now trotted east, along the border of the lake, directly in frontof them towering up the huge and beautifully shaped pinkish-gray pyramidof Going-to-the-Sun Mountain. After a mile or so, Val called out for Joeto turn off the trail, and he obeyed, going down through the woods to along spit of rocks and earth and little trees which had been pushed outinto the lake by a roaring brook, which now flowed through the middle ofit. Here they dismounted and unloaded the horses, which Val led back tothe trail, and then took somewhere up the slopes to their night feeding.
Meanwhile Joe set about making camp. He first picked out a good placefor the fire pit, and built that. He got out what he was going to needfor supper, and then set about collecting dead wood for his fire. He didnot have to go far, either, for the whole rocky beach of the lake waslined with driftwood, and he cut up a good supply, made a fire, and puton two kettles of water to boil, one with some of the beef in it for astew, one for soup. Then he went at the task of setting up the tent theRanger had packed, in which he and Mills would sleep, and in which hewould keep his provisions.
He had hardly finished, and had the stuff stowed into it, when up thetrail he heard voices, and a moment later the party came in sight. Theywere mostly silent now--only Bob and the girls were doing any talking.Their mothers were hanging forward over the horns of their saddles,thoroughly tired out, and the two congressmen looked nearly as fagged asthe women.
"Can I help?" Joe asked the Ranger, after the party had dismounted, andthe older people had flopped on the ground.
"No, get supper as soon as you can, that's all. Dick and I will pitchthe tents. Where's Val?"
"He took the horses somewhere."
"Good. He can take these, too, when he gets back. That'll please him awhole lot! Why didn't he wait till he had the whole bunch?"
Joe looked quickly at Mills' face, for he had never seen the Rangercross before.
Mills managed a grin, when he saw the look. "Yes, I got a grouch," hesaid, in a low tone. "It's that Jones woman. You'd think she wanted atwin-six limousine to bring her over Piegan Pass! What'll you take tothrow her in the lake?"
"Wait for Val. He'll do it for nothing," Joe laughed. "She'll feelbetter soon. I'm goin' to give her two forks."
Joe went back to his preparations for supper, keeping the fire roaringunder his stew to hasten the cooking, and mixing up a batter of flour,condensed milk, one of his precious eggs, and some baking powder, forcakes. The Ranger and Dick, the other guide, were busy with the tents,one for the three men, and two smaller ones for the four women. Thewomen's tents had little folding cot beds, but the men's did not, andMills, with a wink at Joe, gave Bob and the two congressmen axes, andtold them to go cut themselves boughs to sleep on, from a big evergreenwhich had blown over. Meanwhile, the two girls came over to Joe's fire,and watched him work.
They sniffed at the kettle of stew.
"Are we going to have _meat_, really, truly meat, for dinner, Cookie?"asked Miss Jones.
"Alice, if you call him Cookie, he'll poison you, won't you--Joe?" saidMiss Elkins.
Joe looked up and met her twinkling eyes. "Sure," he said. "I'll put aCharlie Chaplin sandwich in it."
"Mercy, Mr. Cook, Sir Cook, My Lord Cook, Reverend Cook!" cried Alice.
"All right, s'long as you don't call me Dr. Cook," said Joe,
peeping inthe stew kettle to see how it was coming along.
"Here, no flirting with the cook," Mills called out. "You girls have gotto make the beds."
"All right," laughed Lucy Elkins. (Joe thought to himself that Lucy wasa nice name.) "Where are the sheets and pillow-cases?"
"You'll find 'em in the linen closet, next door beyond the bathroom,"Mills grinned.
Then she and Alice grabbed armfuls of blankets from the packs, anddisappeared into the tents.
Meantime Val arrived, and the Ranger asked him why he didn't wait anddrive all the horses up together.
"'Cause I'm a natural born mut, and didn't think of it," said Val.
The Ranger growled, and turned away. "Because he'd rather do that thanpitch tents," he muttered. "All cowboys are lazy."
The two weary congressmen and Bob now reappeared, with armfuls ofevergreen boughs, and the Ranger went to show them how to lay theirbeds. The sun was getting well down toward the tops of the peaks on theGreat Divide to the west. Already it was getting colder, and the womenhad put on their sweaters. The green waters of the lake were lap-lappingagainst the shore, and the smell of Joe's stew was rising with the smokeof the fire. When he saw it was about done, he made a big pot of coffee,then opened his cans of soup, and poured them into the other kettle ofboiling water, and mixed it to the right consistency. As soon as thiswas ready, and Val appeared down from the woods above, he pounded afrying-pan and yelled,
"Come and get it!"
In a second he was surrounded. Sitting on large stones, or logs washeddown by the spring floods in the brook, with their laps or other stonesas tables, every one except Joe ate the piping hot soup. Then they hadstew, on tin plates, with bread and coffee and jam, and while the stewwas being eaten Joe tossed over the "saddle blankets" in his frying-pan.
"Why don't you go into vaudeville with that act?" Bob called to him, ashe flapped a cake up with the pan, and caught it neatly, other sidedown.
These they ate with butter from a jar and syrup from a tin can, whichJoe had stocked at the Many Glacier store. Finally, he gave thempreserved peaches for dessert.
"Poor Joe," said Lucy, as he passed her dessert to her. "I don't believewe've left a thing for you."
"Don't you worry about me," Joe answered. "I have the supplies in mytent!"
She laughed, but he saw that she was watching to see if there really wasany supper left for him, and it seemed very good to have some onethinking that way about you.
As a matter of fact, there was a little soup left, and a good big plateof stew, and all the jam he wanted, so Joe had no complaint. He satbehind his fire and devoured his supper hungrily, before he tackled thefinal job of cleaning up all the dishes.
It would have been quite dark at home by this time, for it was eighto'clock, or more, but up here it was still light enough to read, and asJoe took the dishes down to the brook to scour them with clean sandbefore he poured boiling water over them, he looked up into the west,and saw the great, towering pyramids of the mountains, blue against thesunset sky, with their snow patches and glaciers all rosy pink. The twogirls were standing near him, and when they saw him looking, they said,"Isn't it lovely?"
"I never saw anything so beautiful," Joe answered, simply. "I likemountains, but these are such big ones, and there are so many colors in'em!"
"Joe, I believe you're a poet," Lucy said.
"Well, if your poetry is as good as your coffee, Shakespeare will haveto watch out," Alice laughed.
Joe turned red again, and nearly dropped his stack of plates.
When he had the dishes washed and the fire-wood ready for morning, hefound that the Ranger had built a big camp-fire in front of the tents,and placed some logs about it, to lean against, while sitting on theground. Everybody was sitting in a ring, glad of the warmth now that thecold night chill was falling from the peaks--all but the two cowboys,who had disappeared.
"They've gone to the Sun Camp chalets, half a mile down the trail," saidMills, when somebody asked where they were.
"And where's Joe?" said Lucy. "Oh, there he is. Come on in the house,Joe, where it's warm. Mr. Mills is going to tell us a bedtime story."
She made room for Joe to sit beside her, and he sank down, weary andsore, for they had ridden twenty-two miles that day, and he had cookedfor eleven hungry people.
"Now Mr. Mills--begin!" she commanded.
The poor Ranger turned red in his turn.
"Gosh," he said, "I couldn't tell a story. I don't know any stories."
"Oh, yes you do--you must."
"Tell us a bear story." cried Bob. "And tell it quick, or dad'll betelling one of those he gets off in after dinner speeches, and we'll allbe asleep."
"Bob, I'm too sore and tired to thrash you," laughed the congressman.
"But you're never too tired to tell a story, dad. Hurry, Mr. Mills, Ican see one coming now!"
"If I had a child like that, I'd--I'd----" Mr. Elkins began.
"You'd send him to Congress to listen to all the speeches there forpunishment," chortled the irrepressible Bob. "Please, Mr. Mills, a bearstory."
"Yes, a bear story!"--from the men.
"A _grizzly_ bear story!"--from Alice. "A _great_, BIG grizzly bearstory!"--from Lucy. "And put in the middle-sized bear, and the littleweeny bear, too, if you want to."
The Ranger laughed. "Well," he said, "I can tell you a bear and a lionstory, if that'll do."
He threw another driftwood log on the fire, and began.