Boy Scouts in Glacier Park Part 15

"All right, s'long as you don't call me Dr. Cook," said Joe, peeping in the stew kettle to see how it was coming along.

"Here, no flirting with the cook," Mills called out. "You girls have got to make the beds."

"All right," laughed Lucy Elkins. (Joe thought to himself that Lucy was a 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, and disappeared into the tents.

Meantime Val arrived, and the Ranger asked him why he didn't wait and drive 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 than pitch tents," he muttered. "All cowboys are lazy."

The two weary congressmen and Bob now reappeared, with armfuls of evergreen boughs, and the Ranger went to show them how to lay their beds. The sun was getting well down toward the tops of the peaks on the Great Divide to the west. Already it was getting colder, and the women had put on their sweaters. The green waters of the lake were lap-lapping against the sh.o.r.e, and the smell of Joe's stew was rising with the smoke of 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 of boiling water, and mixed it to the right consistency. As soon as this was ready, and Val appeared down from the woods above, he pounded a frying-pan and yelled,

"Come and get it!"

In a second he was surrounded. Sitting on large stones, or logs washed down by the spring floods in the brook, with their laps or other stones as tables, every one except Joe ate the piping hot soup. Then they had stew, on tin plates, with bread and coffee and jam, and while the stew was 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, as he flapped a cake up with the pan, and caught it neatly, other side down.

These they ate with b.u.t.ter from a jar and syrup from a tin can, which Joe had stocked at the Many Glacier store. Finally, he gave them preserved peaches for dessert.

"Poor Joe," said Lucy, as he pa.s.sed her dessert to her. "I don't believe we've left a thing for you."

"Don't you worry about me," Joe answered. "I have the supplies in my tent!"

She laughed, but he saw that she was watching to see if there really was any supper left for him, and it seemed very good to have some one thinking that way about you.

As a matter of fact, there was a little soup left, and a good big plate of stew, and all the jam he wanted, so Joe had no complaint. He sat behind his fire and devoured his supper hungrily, before he tackled the final job of cleaning up all the dishes.

It would have been quite dark at home by this time, for it was eight o'clock, or more, but up here it was still light enough to read, and as Joe took the dishes down to the brook to scour them with clean sand before he poured boiling water over them, he looked up into the west, and saw the great, towering pyramids of the mountains, blue against the sunset sky, with their snow patches and glaciers all rosy pink. The two girls 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 like mountains, 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 have to 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, he found 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 the ground. Everybody was sitting in a ring, glad of the warmth now that the cold 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," said Mills, 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 and sore, for they had ridden twenty-two miles that day, and he had cooked for 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 be telling one of those he gets off in after dinner speeches, and we'll all be 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, I can 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 for punishment," chortled the irrepressible Bob. "Please, Mr. Mills, a bear story."

"Yes, a bear story!"--from the men.

"A _grizzly_ bear story!"--from Alice. "A _great_, BIG grizzly bear story!"--from Lucy. "And put in the middle-sized bear, and the little weeny bear, too, if you want to."

The Ranger laughed. "Well," he said, "I can tell you a bear and a lion story, if that'll do."

He threw another driftwood log on the fire, and began.

CHAPTER X--The Ranger Tells a Grizzly Bear Story Before the Camp-Fire

"The first thing you want to remember about old Mr. Silver Tip," said the Ranger, "is that he's a good deal like a lot o' big, strong men, he's too powerful to be sc.r.a.ppy. You hear a lot o' stories about grizzlies bein' terrible fighters, and they sure can fight when they're cornered, or when old mother bear thinks her cubs are in danger. But if a silver tip can possibly get away, he gets. That's not because he's afraid, either, of anything on earth except a high power rifle. It's because he ain't lookin' for trouble. Mr. Silver Tip is afraid of a rifle, all right, and he's about the smartest of all animals in keeping away from it, too. But there's nothing else he's afraid of, and before man came into these mountains to shoot him, he just wandered around here, the king pin, and n.o.body bothered him a bit, no sir."

"But don't grizzlies have to fight to kill anything as big as a moose?"

asked Bob.

"They don't kill anything as big as a moose," the Ranger said. "Oh, once in a blue moon an old bear will go wrong, and take to killing cattle.

Down in Wyoming there was a silver tip used to kill cattle, and two hundred men and dogs hunted him a month, and never did get him. But mostly they live on roots and berries and mice and ground squirrels and dead birds and animal carcases something else has killed. Why, I've seen a grizzly digging out a ground squirrel in the early spring, just after he'd come out of his winter nest, not far from my cabin, and a lot of sheep, down there to get the early gra.s.s, walking right up close to him to see what he was up to. When they got too close--sheep are kind o'

curious, like kids and women--he just _woufed_ at 'em, to drive 'em off.

They weren't afraid of him eatin' 'em, though, at all, and he could have cleaned out the flock with about two bites.

"Well, this is just to show you how little fear Mr. Silver Tip has that anything but a man can do him any harm, or will dare try it. I was hunting once over west of the Flathead River, in bear country, and I had a dead horse out in a clearing for bait. Up in a tree on the edge of the clearing I'd built myself a kind of blind, where I could watch. You see, most bears can climb trees, but the grizzly can't, so when one comes after you, Bob, you just beat it up the nearest trunk."

"Thanks for the tip--the silver tip, as you might say," the boy laughed.