Boy Scouts in Glacier Park Part 11

"I bet you're sore to-night," said Tom.

"I bet I am, too. You try him. Gee, he's a fine old horse. You ought to see him come down a trail--just as careful. Wow! and some trail, too!"

Joe dismounted, stiffly, with an "Ouch!" and Tom climbed into the saddle. Popgun looked mildly around, to see what the change meant, and then trotted obediently off.

Joe watched, laughing. There was no doubt that Tom bounced. He bounced as much as the women. The harder he tried not to, the more he bounced.

"See, you got to do it this way," said Joe, as the other scout came back. He started to mount again, with a leap, but his legs were so stiff they'd hardly work.

"Very graceful, _very_ graceful indeed!" Tom taunted. "Why don't you get a job in the movies, you're so graceful?"

"Maybe I will," Joe answered, finally getting into his saddle. "Now look--here's the way."

He hit Popgun with his heels, and started up the trail, but before he was out of sight a second cavalcade, with a cowboy at the head, came thundering past. Popgun turned, and in spite of Joe's cries and tugs at the rein, insisted on galloping with it. Hanging helpless to his saddle horn, Tom saw Joe tearing past, in the middle of the crowd, and disappearing toward the hotel.

Five minutes later he returned, looking very sheepish.

"I see just how to do it," Tom taunted. "Joe, you've got speed, but no control!"

"You wait! I'll have old Popgun eating out of my hand yet," Joe answered. "Guess I'll put him up now, and feed him."

"Yes, and then you come back and rest. You've been doing too much to-day," said Tom.

When Joe got back, he found Tom busy at the camp. The first party of hikers had arrived--ten of them, men about thirty-five years old from Chicago, who were taking their vacation tramping through the Park. They all wore high, heavy boots with hobnails, flannel s.h.i.+rts, khaki trousers, and carried knapsacks on their backs. Tom was hustling around buying provisions for them at the chalet store, fixing their bunks, getting fresh water, making a fire in the stove, and so on, while two of the men, who acted as cooks, were getting ready to cook the supper.

"Can I help?" Joe asked.

"No, you go back to our tent and rest," said Tom. "You can get our supper, after you've thought a while about how graceful you are."

Joe went limping off, and was only too glad to lie down in the tent. He lay on his side presently. He began to realize acutely, and locally, that he had been riding horseback, fourteen miles, for the first time.

But he had supper ready when Tom came at six-thirty.

"How do you feel?" Tom demanded. "I bet you've been doing too much.

Tired? Got a fever?"

He got out the thermometer.

"I'm sore, all right, but I'm not very tired, not half as tired as I used to get at home, just walking back from school."

Tom answered by putting the thermometer in his mouth.

"No fever at all--and you're all sweaty," he said a minute later. "You really feeling better, old Joey?"

"Sure I am."

But Tom wouldn't let him help after supper in getting more wood for the camp. Tom did it all, while Joe sat at first outside the tepees and tried to hear the talk of the hikers about their trip, and later, when Tom was through, moved closer to the "council fire," built in a ring of stones, at the invitation of the men, and heard them tell of their twenty-two mile hike that day over Piegan Pa.s.s from Upper St. Mary Lake.

It was fine to sit there, by the warm fire, as the darkness gathered over the great, solemn wall of the Divide, as the lights in the hotel across the lake twinkled on, as the night wind whispered in the pines, and hear the talk of glaciers, and snow-fields, and ten-thousand-foot climbs. It made Joe and Tom long for the day when they could get out, with blanket and knapsack, over the high trails. They went back to their tent at last reluctantly, while the hikers bade them a cheerful good-night.

"Seems as if everybody in the Park was good-natured," Joe remarked, as he crawled into bed. "Guess it's the air."

"I like everybody but the porcupines," Tom answered, carefully folding what was left of his sweater under his pillow! "I wrote home for a new one to-day, but I'll hang on to what I've got."

CHAPTER VIII--Joe Gets a Chance at Last to Go Out on a Trip as Camp Cook

The next few days were busy ones for both boys. Tom had hikers to take care of now every day, sometimes only two or three at a time, sometimes much larger parties, so that he had to wheel down more cots from the chalets. There was much to do, cutting wood, hauling water, making beds, raking and burning the litter after each party, for Tom had learned as a scout that one of the worst things a camper can do is to leave any litter behind him, and one of the best ways to collect flies around a camp is to leave sc.r.a.ps and garbage unburned or unburied. He even went over to the hotel and begged a can of stove polish from the kitchen, and each day, after the crowd had gone, polished up the camp stove.

Big Bertha, coming down to look things over, found him busy at this job.

"Well, well," said he, in his funny, high voice, "I'd know you came from New England. Must have a clean kitchen! The camp looks well, Tom, and n.o.body's made a kick yet. I guess we can keep you another week."

Then he laughed in such a way that Tom knew his job was safe.

Meanwhile Joe divided his day between cooking the meals for Tom and himself, building a lean-to kitchen and dining-room for rainy weather, rigging up a porcupine-proof pantry with some old chicken wire he found behind the hotel chicken yards, and feeding and riding the Ranger's horse. Twice a day he took Popgun out for a spin, going down below the hotel to the level meadows where the packhorses and saddle-horses rented to the tourists were pastured at night, and there he galloped, trotted, and jumped logs till he felt sure of himself, and all his saddle soreness wore off. Sometimes, after the guests at the camp were gone, and no new party had yet arrived, Tom took a try in the saddle, too, and both of them, with packs made of their blankets and an old mattress, practiced throwing a diamond hitch, while Popgun, who was being used for the experiment, stood still, but looked around at them with a comical, grieved expression, as much as to say, "What do you think I am, just an old packhorse?"

The Ranger did not return for five days, and Joe was sorely tempted to ride Popgun up one of the trails again, to the high places which lured him--to Iceberg Lake, for instance, only six miles away, which everybody talked about as being so beautiful. But he remembered what the Ranger had said, and he never went more than a mile or two from camp. It was certainly hard, with a good horse under you, and a bright sky overhead, and the great towering red mountains all around, not to ride on and on, higher and higher, into those wonderful upland meadows, and then on some more to the sky-flung bridge of the Great Divide!

On the sixth morning, as Joe drew near the Ranger's cabin to feed and water Popgun, he saw smoke coming out of the chimney. The door was open, and inside he saw Mills just getting breakfast.

"h.e.l.lo," he called.

"Oh, it's you," Mills answered, looking out. "Come make me some coffee, will you?"

Joe entered, and Mills shook hands. "Glad to see you," he said. "I'd be glad to see _anybody_, so don't get flattered. I've been five days alone in the woods, cuttin' out fallen trees from the trail. Last winter was a bad one."

"I s'pose there's a lot of snow here in winter," said Joe, as he set about making the coffee.

"Last winter there was ten feet on the level in the woods, and the drift piled up against Many Glacier Hotel out there till all you could see was the peak of the roof."

"What!" Joe cried. "Why, that's five stories high!"

"So was the drift," said Mills

"What a chance for skiing!" Joe sighed. "Say, I'd like to spend a winter here."

"Don't let's talk about it," Mills suddenly said. "Makes me blue. The winters are too darn lonely. I see Popgun looks fat, and you've been groomin' him, too. Where'd you get the curry comb? _I_ don't own one."

"Made it," Joe answered, "by punching holes with a nail through a tin box cover."

"Can you ride yet?"

"Well, I can get around, without having to eat off the mantelpiece at night."

"Want a job?"