Girl Scouts in the Rockies Part 3

"Can't Featherweight sit still?" laughed Joan.

Mrs. Vernon placed an arm about Ruth's shoulder to hold her steadier, just as an unusually deep hole shook up everybody and all the baggage in the wagon.

"There now! That's the last bite left in my tongue! Three times I thought it was bitten through, but this last jolt twisted the roots so that I will have to have an artificial one hinged on at the first hospital we find," wailed Ruth, showing the damaged organ that all might pity her.

Instead of giving sympathy, every one laughed, and Julie added, "At least your tongue is still in use, but my spine caved in at that last ravine we pa.s.sed through, and now I have no backbone."

Just as the scouts began laughing merrily at the two girls the front wagon wheel on the right side dropped into a hole, while the horses strained at the traces. The awful shock and jar given the pa.s.sengers threw them against the canvas sides, and then together again in a heap.

The babel of shouting, screaming, laughing voices that instantly sounded from the helpless pile of humanity frightened the nervous horses. The leaders plunged madly, but the wheel stuck fast in the hole. Tally held a stiff rein, but the leaders contaminated the two rear horses, and all four plunged, reared, snorted, and pulled different ways at once. The inevitable was sure to happen!

"Jump, Tally, and grab the leaders! I'll hold them in!" cried Mr.

Gilroy, catching hold of the reins.

"Here, Gill, let me hold the reins while you help Tally!" shouted Mr.

Vernon, instantly crawling over the front seat and taking the reins in hand.

So Mr. Gilroy sprang out after Tally, and made for one of the leaders while the guide caught hold of the other. But just as the Indian reached up to take the leather, the horse managed to work the bit between his teeth. At the same time, the lunging beasts yanked the wagon wheel up out of the hole, and feeling the release of what had balked their load, the horses began tearing along the road.

Tally dangled from the head of the first horse whose bit he had tried to work back into place. Mr. Vernon held firmly to the reins as he sat on the driver's seat of the wagon. But Mr. Gilroy was left clear out of sight, standing in the middle of the muddy road, staring speechlessly after the disappearing vehicle. The scouts were tossed back and forth like tennis b.a.l.l.s, but the tossing was not done as gracefully as in a game of tennis.

Fortunately for all concerned, the road soon ascended a steep grade, and a long one. The c.u.mbersome wagon was too heavy to be flipped up that hill without the four horses becoming breathless. The leaders were the first to heave and slow down in their pace; then the two rear beasts panted and slowed, and finally all came to a dead stop. This gave Tally his opportunity to drop from his perilous clutch and glare at the horses.

"_Outlaws!_" hissed he at the animals, as if this ignominious western term was sufficient punishment to shame the horses.

"Poor Gilly! Have we lost him?" cried Betty, who had been shaken into speechlessness during the wild ride.

Mr. Vernon took the field gla.s.ses from his pocket and focussed them along the road he had so recently flown over in the bouncing wagon.

Suddenly a wild laugh shook him, and he pa.s.sed the gla.s.ses to his wife.

The Captain leveled them and took a good look, then laughing as heartily as her husband, she gave them to Julie and hurriedly adjusted the camera.

The Scout Leader took them and looked. "Oh, girls! You ought to see Gilly. He is trying to hurry up the long road, but he is constantly jumping the water holes and slipping in the mud. Here--every one take a squint at him."

By the time Mr. Gilroy came up the long steep hill, every scout had had a good laugh at the appearance he made while climbing, and the Captain had taken several funny snapshots of him.

Upon reaching the wagon, Mr. Gilroy sighed, "Well, I am not sure which was worse--Tally's ride or that walk!"

"Um--him walk, badder of all!" grinned the Indian.

The scouts rolled up the side curtains of the wagon that they could admire the view as they pa.s.sed. And with every one feeling resigned to a mild shaking as compared to the last capers of the four horses, the journey was resumed.

Great overhanging boulders looked ready to roll down upon and crush such pigmies as these that crawled along the road under them. Then, here and there, swift, laughing streams leaped over the rocks to fall down many, many hundreds of feet into the gorges riven between the cliffs. The falling waters sprayed everything and made of the mist a veritable bridal-veil of s.h.i.+mmering, s.h.i.+ning white.

"Tally, shall we reach Boulder to-night?" asked Mr. Gilroy, gazing at the fast-falling twilight.

"Late bimeby," Tally said, shrugging his shoulders to express his uncertainty.

"Well, then, if we are going to be late, and as the way is not too smooth, I propose we pitch camp for the night. What say you?"

suggested Mr. Gilroy, turning to hear the verdict of the scouts.

"Oh, that will be more fun than stopping at a hotel in Boulder!"

exclaimed the Leader, the other girls agreeing with her.

"Very well, Gilly; let us find a suitable place for camp," added the Captain.

"We need not pitch the tents, as you scouts can sleep in the wagon, and we three men will stretch out beside the campfire. Tally can pull in at the first good clearing we find along the way," explained Mr.

Gilroy.

"If we bunk in the wagon, we'll have to stretch out in a row,"

remarked Joan.

"We'll look like a lot of dolls on the shelf of a toy-shop," giggled Julie.

"I don't want to sleep next to you, Julie--you're such a kicker in your sleep," complained Betty. Everybody laughed at the sisters, and Anne said:

"I don't mind kicks, as I never feel them when I'm asleep."

Tally had brought canned and prepared food for just such an emergency as an unexpected camp; so now the supper was quickly cooked and the travelers called to enjoy it.

Night falls swiftly in the mountains, and even though the day may have been warm, the nights in the Rockies are cold. A fire is always a comfort, so when supper was over the scouts sat around the fire, thoroughly enjoying its blaze.

The late afterglow in the sky seemed to hover over the camp as if reluctant to fade away and leave the scouts in the dark. The atmosphere seemed tinged with orchid tints, and a faint, almost imperceptible white chill pervaded the woods.

"Girls," said Mr. Gilroy, "we have shelter, food and clothing enough, in this wonderful isolation of Nature--is there anything more that humans can really secure with all their struggling for supremacy? Is not this life in grand communion with Mother Nature better than the cliff-dwellers in great cities ever have?"

Mrs. Vernon agreed thoroughly with him and added, "Yes, and man can have, if he desires it, this sublime and satisfying life in the mountains, where every individual is supreme over all he surveys--as the Creator willed it to be."

Tally finished clearing away the supper, and sat down to have a smoke.

But Mr. Gilroy turned to him, and said, "Tally, we would like to hear one of your tribe's legends, like those you used to tell me."

"Oh, yes, Tally! please, please!" immediately came from the group of girls.

Tally offered no protest, but removed the pipe from his lips and asked, "You like Blackfeet tale?"

"Yes, indeed!" chorused those about the fire.

"My people, Blackfeet Tribe. Him hunt buffalo, elk, and moose. Him travel far, and fight big. Tally know tribe history, an' Tally tell him."

Then he began to relate, in his fascinating English, a tale that belonged to his people. The Dandelion Scouts would have liked to write the story down in their records as Tally gave it, but they had to be satisfied with such English as they knew.

"Long ago, when the First People lived on earth, there were no horses.

The Blackfeet bred great dogs for hauling and packing. Some Indians used elk for that purpose, but the wild animals were not reliable, and generally broke away when they reached maturity.

"In one of the camps of a Blackfeet Tribe lived two children, orphaned in youth. The brother was stone deaf, but the sister was very beautiful, so the girl was made much of, but the boy was ignored by every one.

"Finally the girl was adopted by a Chief who had no children, but the squaw would not have the deaf boy about her lodge. The sister begged that her brother be allowed to live with her, but the squaw was obdurate and prevailed. So the poor lad was kicked about and thrust away from every tent where he stopped to ask for bread.