CHAPTER XX--The Scouts Start on a Trip Together at Last, To ClimbChief Mountain
Joe was gone five days, coming back over Gunsight and Piegan Pass, thereverse of the route he had taken on his first trip. But this time, hewas getting so at home in the saddle that he could manage the packhorseswithout worrying, could throw a diamond hitch as well as the next man,and cook for a crowd without having too much left over, or not enoughprepared--not that there is ever much danger of having anything leftover in the Rocky Mountains! Everybody eats while there's food in sight.But Tom was pretty lonely without him, especially as the Ranger wasaway, too, for the first three days.
But on the fourth day Big Bertha called Tom up to the chalet office, andtold him something that made him very happy, though it didn't seem toplease Big Bertha at all.
"Tom," said he, "I've got to fire you."
(This isn't what made Tom happy. It made his heart drop into his bootsfor a second, before he realized that the man was trying to get a riseout of him.)
"Yes," the manager went on, "there's a party of men from Washington atthe hotel. They came over Piegan, and they've been up to Iceberg Laketo-day, and now they want to climb Chief Mountain. Somebody's told 'emabout it, and nothing for it but they must go up there. There's no cookfor 'em till Joe gets back, and the Saddle Company is short on guidesanyhow, and hasn't anybody who knows Chief Mountain. Mills says he'lllead the party, if he can have you and your rope. He won't go otherwise.Now, that puts me in a hole, because I'll have to go short handed andsend one of my boys down to look after the tepees. But these Washingtonguys are big bugs of some sort, and I suppose we gotter please 'em. Soday after to-morrow you start, if Joe gets back."
"Hooray!" Tom shouted. "Old Joey and I'll be on a trip together!"
"Yes, and what about me? You don't seem sorry for me at all," said BigBertha.
"I'm not," Tom laughed. "I'll cut up enough wood to-morrow for a week,and clean the stove, and fix everything up. Guess you can worry along."
"You are a heartless, ungrateful creature," said Big Bertha, in hisfunny, high voice. But Tom knew that he was really glad to give him thischance to see Chief Mountain.
The next day Mills and Tom got together and made all the arrangementsfor the trip, for they knew Joe would not get in till late, over thetwenty-two mile Piegan trail. It was to be a long expedition--probably aweek--and needed considerable planning, for they were going north, wherethere were no chalets, no stores nor camps, and they had to carryeverything. Fortunately, there were only three men in the party, soMills, Joe and Tom were the only guides necessary. But it meant tents,provisions, blankets, and that meant packhorses--good ones, too, whichwere hard to pick, for the season was late, and the horses were allgetting thin and tired.
Joe came in late, as they expected, and though he, too, was tired afterthe long ride over Piegan, he gave a whoop of joy at Tom's announcement.Tom made him sit down, however, and got the supper himself.
"And you're going to bed early," he added. "This is the real thing aheadof us now--Chief Mountain, maybe the Belly River Canon, and Mills saysmaybe Cleveland, the highest mountain in the Park, if the weather isgood. He says, though, it's getting time for a storm again. Anyhow,we'll see old Cleveland. Gee--it'll be great to be on a rope again!"
"You talk as if you'd climbed the Matterhorn all your life," Joelaughed.
The next morning at six o'clock the Ranger and the two boys were at thehotel, and beginning to pack the horses. For this trip they took but twotents, one for the three men, one for themselves. Enough food was themain requirement. They got everything, including blankets, on fourhorses, saving a fifth horse for the dunnage bags, which the menspeedily brought out.
Of course, Joe and Tom looked at these men carefully. When you are goingto be on the trail and in camp with people for a whole week, you arepretty interested to know what sort of folks they are, and whether youare going to like them. One of these three was young, not overtwenty-two or twenty-three, the son of the oldest man in the party. Thefather, whom Mills addressed as Mr. Crimmins, had gray hair, but helooked hardy and strong, with a quick, sharp way of talking and quickmotions. He and his friend, Mr. Taylor, a man of about forty, were bothconnected with the State Department at Washington, Mills said. The youngman, Robert Crimmins, was just out of college.
"They look good to me," Joe whispered to Tom.
"I ain't saying a word," Tom answered. "Not after Doc Kent. Wait andsee."
The fifth horse was now packed, and the expedition started.
But instead of turning up any of the trails toward the range, Mills ledthe way straight down the automobile road, toward the prairie. It seemedfunny to Joe to be setting off on a trip in this direction, right awayfrom the high places, but the horses liked it. They liked thecomparatively smooth going, gently down-hill, and swung along at an easytrot.
Down the road they went, mile after mile, until they emerged from thelower end of the Swift Current Valley, out into the rolling prairies,with the whole range behind them. Then, as the road swung up over aknoll, Mills paused and pointed north.
"There's old Chief," he said.
Everybody looked. About twelve miles to the northwest, thrust outeastward far from the Divide and with the wall which rose out of theprairie growing steeper and steeper till the last two thousand feet weresheer precipice, stood a magnificent tower of a mountain, shiningwhitish in the sun as if it were composed of limestone. At the back, itseemed connected by a spine with the range behind, but to the prairie itpresented an unbroken front, like some great Gibraltar of a tower, withthe prairie grass and forest beating like surf at its feet. All alone itseemed to stand, like a sentinel of the range behind, a lone outpost.
"Is _that_ what we've got to climb?" the three men exclaimed, in onebreath.
"Well, we won't take you up the east wall," Mills laughed.
"Oh, couldn't we get up it?" Tom cried.
Mills looked at him, and grinned again. "About to-night you won't feellike climbing _anything_," he said. "Remember, you're not saddle-broke,the way Joe is."
They now turned north, away from the motor road, ate some lunch underthe shade of an aspen and willow thicket, amid the Persian carpet ofprairie wild flowers, and then all the afternoon pushed on toward thegreat limestone tower, with the whole pile of the Rocky Mountain chainbeside them for company. Late in the day they reached a rushing stream,which came down from a canyon just south of the big mountain. This wasthe north fork of Kennedy Creek, and they turned up it by a trail, thelowering cliffs of Chief now rearing up almost over their heads, andwent into the mouth of the valley, and up till the main tower of Chiefwas east of them, and they were under the south wall of the spine whichconnected the peak with the main range behind. Here they made camp, in alittle meadow beside the stream, with pine woods all about, and whileTom and the Ranger pitched the tents, with Robert Crimmins givingenthusiastic help, Joe built his fire pit and began to get supper. Thetwo older men, who were pretty sore after the thirty mile ride, hobbledabout snipping some boughs for their beds.
It was a good supper Joe gave them, however, and the camp was in asdelightful a post as a man could ask, and around the big fire, when thefood had all been eaten, the whole party sat or lay on the grass, in thefine democracy of the open trail, the assistant Secretaries of Statebeside the boy scouts from Southmead, and the jokes and stories wentaround.
But Mills "sounded taps," as he called his bedtime order, very early, ashe planned a six o'clock getaway in the morning, and that meant gettingup at half-past four. The next day they were to climb Chief. The Rangerlooked long at the stars before he came into the tent he and the scoutswere using.
"Boys, a good day to-morrow," he said, "but it looks like a storm afterthat."
"Well, let her rip, after to-morrow," Tom answered. "To-morrow, though,I'm goin' up old Chief, even if I have to climb with nothing but myhands, and I feel now's if I _would_ have to!"
"Poor old tenderfoot!" Joe laughed.
"Gee, it isn'
t my foot," said Tom, so comically that Joe and the Rangerroared with mirth, as they rolled up in their blankets.