Boy Scouts in Glacier Park Part 14

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 pa.s.sed the food and Joe poured the coffee.

"Say, what do you take these sardines out with?" demanded Mrs. Jones.

"Fingers were made before forks, mother darling," said Bob. "See--watch your little son."

He picked up a sardine by the tail, and dropped the whole of it into his mouth.

"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 to make 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 dropped it upon a cracker.

Joe cast her a grateful glance, and she smiled at him sweetly. He decided then and there, as he put it to himself, that she was "all to the good."

Meantime Mrs. Elkins, her mother, was watching Val, with fascinated eyes.

"What _are_ you looking at, mother?" her daughter demanded. Bob's eyes followed 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 a fallen log, making himself a sandwich, between two crackers, of the entire bill of fare--sardines, jam, and baked beans. This he consumed in exactly three bites, and proceeded to concoct another one.

"Well," he said, as he made this second, "you mix 'em all inside, don't you? 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. Think I'll try it."

"Me, too," said Bob.

"Me, too."

"Me, too," from each of the girls. They all did try it--once--much to Mrs. 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 girls called him "a darling thing," and the congressmen lit their cigars and lay back on the gra.s.s, while Joe and Val packed up again.

"You go along right away, with the pack-train," said Mills to them, "and when you reach the lake, turn toward Sun Camp, till you come to the point of land. Start making camp by that. We'll come slower."

So Joe had to climb back on Popgun--reluctantly, for he hated to leave this beautiful upland meadow, and led the way down the trail, with the eight packhorses behind him, and Val bringing up the rear. Of course, he and Val were thus so far apart they could not talk, and with nothing in front of him, it seemed almost as if he were alone, plunging into the unknown wilderness.

The trail immediately fell over the edge of the meadow, into timber, and began to descend steeply, the woods growing more dense and the trees much larger as the trail dropped down, till, after a mile or two, they were 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 the great tree trunks, Joe began to see light, and, high up, the red and white and gray tops of mountains, and finally, after they had turned to the left by a rus.h.i.+ng stream, and followed down it a ways, he saw the dancing waters of a green lake. A short distance now, and they were beside this lake. It was, Joe knew, St. Mary Lake, the upper end of the same 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 sh.o.r.e, he could not help pulling 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 could not have told you what he was thinking; maybe he was just feeling. It was all so huge, and awe-inspiring, and yet so beautiful! The lake was two miles wide, he fancied, and went out of sight around a headland to the east. To the west, it seemed to run right up into a big canon that ended bang against Blackfeet Glacier, Mount Jackson, and the sawtooth peaks of the Great Divide. Directly opposite, two huge rock pyramids came sheer down into the water.

"Those are Red Eagle and Little Chief Mountains," said Val. "See that house over on the one little island? That's where the president of the Great Northern Railroad lives in summer. Come on, though, we can't look at the pretty pictures. We've got to get tents up for the others. She doesn't like to rough it, Mrs. Jones don't. Say, I bet she asks you to heat 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 him especially because when it came to doing any job, he went right at it cheerfully and did it.

They now trotted east, along the border of the lake, directly in front of them towering up the huge and beautifully shaped pinkish-gray pyramid of Going-to-the-Sun Mountain. After a mile or so, Val called out for Joe to turn off the trail, and he obeyed, going down through the woods to a long spit of rocks and earth and little trees which had been pushed out into the lake by a roaring brook, which now flowed through the middle of it. Here they dismounted and unloaded the horses, which Val led back to the trail, and then took somewhere up the slopes to their night feeding.

Meanwhile Joe set about making camp. He first picked out a good place for the fire pit, and built that. He got out what he was going to need for supper, and then set about collecting dead wood for his fire. He did not have to go far, either, for the whole rocky beach of the lake was lined with driftwood, and he cut up a good supply, made a fire, and put on two kettles of water to boil, one with some of the beef in it for a stew, one for soup. Then he went at the task of setting up the tent the Ranger had packed, in which he and Mills would sleep, and in which he would keep his provisions.

He had hardly finished, and had the stuff stowed into it, when up the trail he heard voices, and a moment later the party came in sight. They were 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 f.a.gged as the women.

"Can I help?" Joe asked the Ranger, after the party had dismounted, and the older people had flopped on the ground.

"No, get supper as soon as you can, that's all. d.i.c.k and I will pitch the tents. Where's Val?"

"He took the horses somewhere."

"Good. He can take these, too, when he gets back. That'll please him a whole lot! Why didn't he wait till he had the whole bunch?"

Joe looked quickly at Mills' face, for he had never seen the Ranger cross before.

Mills managed a grin, when he saw the look. "Yes, I got a grouch," he said, in a low tone. "It's that Jones woman. You'd think she wanted a twin-six limousine to bring her over Piegan Pa.s.s! What'll you take to throw her in the lake?"

"Wait for Val. He'll do it for nothing," Joe laughed. "She'll feel better soon. I'm goin' to give her two forks."

Joe went back to his preparations for supper, keeping the fire roaring under his stew to hasten the cooking, and mixing up a batter of flour, condensed milk, one of his precious eggs, and some baking powder, for cakes. The Ranger and d.i.c.k, the other guide, were busy with the tents, one for the three men, and two smaller ones for the four women. The women's tents had little folding cot beds, but the men's did not, and Mills, with a wink at Joe, gave Bob and the two congressmen axes, and told them to go cut themselves boughs to sleep on, from a big evergreen which 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?" said Miss Elkins.

Joe looked up and met her twinkling eyes. "Sure," he said. "I'll put a Charlie Chaplin sandwich in it."

"Mercy, Mr. Cook, Sir Cook, My Lord Cook, Reverend Cook!" cried Alice.