Boy Scouts in Glacier Park Part 41

After about one minute that seemed like an hour, the slide had descended to less steep ground. Here it hit a little pine wood, and Joe just could see, through the flying snow, the trees go cras.h.i.+ng down in front, and those on either side (their tops level with his feet!) bow and bend in the wind made by the rus.h.i.+ng slide. A second later a tree came boiling up out of the snow right under his feet--or a log, rather, for all its branches were stripped off. He jumped madly to avoid it, and it missed him only by a hair's breadth.

Beyond the wood, the slide ran out into an open park, went up the incline on the further side by its own momentum, and there spread itself out and came to rest.

Joe wiped the snow-dust from his eyes and looked to see what had become of Tom and the Ranger. He was still on his feet, but they were not. The final slump of the slide, with the tail end on which they rode telescoping over the centre, had flung them down and half buried them.

For some reason Joe had been able to keep his feet. He sprang to help them up, crying, "Are you hurt?"

They both rose, dazed, and wiped their faces.

"I--I dunno!" Tom said. "I haven't had time to find out!"

The Ranger was red with rage.

"It had no business to start there!" he exclaimed. "We ought to have been in a safe place. Teaches me a lesson--you can't bank on slides any time o' year. That drift above where we stood is always anch.o.r.ed till spring."

"Well, I guess it's lucky we're alive!" Joe exclaimed. "Wow! that was some ride! I never was kept so busy in my life!"

"And I never want to be again," Mills said. "Boys, had enough slides for to-day? Seen how they work?"

"I sure have!" both exclaimed, in one breath.

"Let's go home. What I'd like to see now is a Chinook wind, to take some of this snow away. There's too much of it."

"Do Chinook winds come before spring?" Joe asked. He had heard of the dry, warm wind which comes over the ranges, from the warm Pacific current, raising the temperature sometimes sixty degrees in as many minutes, and evaporating the snow like magic.

"Sometimes," Mills said. "And we need it now, or all the animals will starve."

They were all too weary and even a bit shaky after that terrific ride, to do much more that day. Mills did go over to try his telephone, which he found the storm had put out of commission again, and then they sat around the cabin and talked over the two minute excitement, which had seemed, while it lasted, nearer two hours.

For supper that night Joe got out a can of lobster he found in the storeroom. He thought it would be a special treat, and it was to Mills, but Tom didn't like lobster, and Joe himself didn't care much for it, either, when he came to taste it. So Mills ate it all.

"Came near death this morning--might as well risk my life again to-night," he laughed.

CHAPTER XXVIII--Tom Starts on a Long Hike in the Deep Snow, Over the Divide, Risking Snow-Slides, to Save the Ranger's Life

The Ranger spoke in jest, but in the night the boys were awakened by his groans, and they found his words were anything but a joke. He was suffering terrible pain, in his stomach evidently, and they had never seen anybody look so sick. They scrambled into clothes; Joe made up the fire and put on water to heat, while Tom got out their first aid kit, and made an emetic, which they got down the poor Ranger's throat. The results eased his pain a little, but the boys were certainly scared.

"We _got_ to get a doctor," Tom cried. "We _got_ to--a doctor or somebody who knows what to do. I got to get over Swift Current, and down to Lake McDonald, to the Park superintendent's office. That's all there is to it."

"You can't--you can't!" Joe exclaimed. "Think of that head wall if a slide hit you! Besides, it's thirty miles to the hotel at the head of the lake, and you don't know the way. I do. I'll have to go."

"A lot I'll let _you_ go! No such over-exertion for you, and you just well. Besides, I know the way over the pa.s.s and down to Mineral Creek.

Then I turn south, through the woods, and just follow the one trail. I couldn't miss it, and if I did, all I'd have to do would be to take the creek bed. I can start before daylight, get to the head wall at sunrise, be over the pa.s.s and down the other side before noon, and have five hours of light to make twenty miles."

"What if there shouldn't be any caretaker at the hotel at the head of the lake?" said Joe.

"I'll break in and use the 'phone, and make a fire. Anyhow, I'll pack my sleeping-bag on my back, and get to the superintendent's camp the next morning."

He flew to make his preparations, putting on all his warmest clothes, with extra socks and mitts stowed in his sleeping-bag, while Joe put him up tea, bacon, matches, raisins and sweet chocolate, in the smallest possible s.p.a.ce, got his axe and compa.s.s, and extra snow-shoe thongs in case of accident, and finally cooked him some bacon and made tea.

"I'm coming with you to the foot of the Swift Current switchbacks," said Joe. "I _got_ to know whether you get up to the top safe!"

"But the Ranger?"

"I can't help him much if I stay--and I guess he's in no more danger than you'll be. Oh, Spider, I _got_ to know if you get up there safe!"

Poor Joe was close to anxious tears as he spoke, and Tom grasped his hand.

"I'll get there!" he cried.

Mills was now only half conscious, moaning on his bed, and the two boys slipped out into the starlight and pushed up the Swift Current trail. It was bitterly cold. Joe carried the pack all the way to the foot of the switchbacks, so that Tom could be as fresh as possible. Then, at the foot, as day was beginning to redden in the east and give light enough to follow the windings of the trail by, for, on this steep slope, even such a deep snow could not quite hide the cuts the trail made in the bank, the two scouts shook hands silently, and Tom started up.

"It's Mills' life, or mine," he said, grimly.

Joe watched him go up, slowly, carefully, following the trail wherever he could detect it by the contour of the snow. Two or three times his snow-shoes started a small slide of loose snow, but as he was above the starting point, it left him secure, rus.h.i.+ng down past Joe with a whirl and shower of snow powder. But on this slope, steep as it was, the tiny trees and shrubs seemed to anchor the snow, and there were no large slides at all. After an hour, from far above him, Joe heard a faint, thin, "Hoo-oo!" and knew that Tom was beyond danger.

His heart seemed to come back into his breast again, and with a great sigh of relief he hurried back in the level sunrise light, to the cabin, to do what he could for the sufferer.

There followed for Joe a long vigil, almost helpless, with a very sick man. He gave him hot water to drink, and improvised a hot water bag with a hot stone wrapped in flannel, but he had no medicines, and could do little but watch the poor Ranger suffer, and wonder, and wonder, how Tom was getting on, until a great, dark, ugly cloud suddenly began to come over the top of the Divide, from the west, and his wonder changed to fear and then almost to terror. It looked as if the worst blizzard of all was raging already on the west side of the range, where Tom was tracking, all alone, miles from any human being, in the deep forests of the canon!

CHAPTER XXIX--Tom Tramps Down McDonald Creek in a Chinook Wind, and Reaches Shelter Almost Exhausted

Meanwhile, Tom had been losing no time. An hour after he had yelled to Joe from the top of the danger zone on the wall, he had gone over the pa.s.s and reached the Granite Park chalet. Here he paused a few moments for breath, and looked across the shadow-filled canon to the great white pinnacle of Heaven's Peak, rosy-white with the sunrise. Then he plunged down the trail, with little fear of snowslides on this side because of the trees to anchor the drifts, and in another hour reached the Lake McDonald trail at the bottom. Without any pause, he plugged steadily along through the tall, silent, lonely forest, over such deep snow that he was elevated far above the underbrush and had difficulty sometimes in spotting the trail, and kept at it till noon. Then he paused to build a fire of dead pine limbs on trodden snow and cook himself some bacon, roasting it on a stick.

It was not till this lunch was eaten that he noticed the dusking of the sun, and looking up saw a great, ugly, dark cloud coming over the range to the west.

His heart, like Joe's back in the cabin a little later, went down somewhere into his moccasins. But, he kept telling himself, he had only a dozen or fifteen more miles to go, he was in the protection of woods, and he couldn't get lost because the canon walls would always show him the way. Besides, he had his sleeping-bag. He could crawl into some hollow tree with it, if the blizzard got too bad. But he must not stop if he could help it.

"Mills' life or mine!" he kept saying. "It's up to me to save the Ranger!"

And he shouldered his pack once more, and pressed on, with one anxious eye on the trail, one on the cloud above, which was rapidly spreading across to the eastern range and enveloping the Divide. Every second he expected to see the first white, driving sheets of the blizzard, for the cloud was racing now, the wind up there was blowing hard. Yet no snow came. In fact, Tom began to get hot. He thought it was the exertion of trying to increase his pace. But when he stopped to rest his weary shoulders a moment, he was still hot. The wind was certainly beginning to come roaring down into the trees above him now. At last it hit his face. It was a hot wind!

Then, suddenly, he realized what was coming. "The Chinook!" he cried aloud.

It was the Chinook! In half an hour, Tom was in a wringing perspiration, and his fur coat had taken its place on his pack. Under his feet a miracle was being performed. The level of the snow was steadily sinking--slowly, to be sure, here in the woods, but steadily. It was sticky on his snow-shoes, but not half so sticky as he thought it would be. The wind seemed so dry that it just soaked the snow up, instead of melting it.

On and on Tom plodded, wearily, almost exhausted now, going on sheer nerve, till close to five o'clock he got a hint of the lake. Then he picked up other snow-shoe tracks, and Robinson Crusoe could not have been more delighted at the sight of a human footprint.

"There's somebody at the hotel!" Tom cried, again aloud.

This sight gave him a second wind, and he plugged on, with clear hints of the lake through the trees now, and what seemed like open water. But the trail kept off to the east of it, and it was getting rapidly dark when he finally came into a clearing and saw the hotel.