Boy Scouts in Glacier Park Part 8

"Look at yourself," he said.

Tom looked. He was as red as a boiled lobster from head to foot.

"It's a wonder there ain't icicles on my elbows," he laughed. "You heat yourself some water on the fire, Joe, if you want a bath!"

Which was exactly what Joe did.

They were hardly dressed again, and beginning to prepare supper, when they heard a great clatter of hoofs and shouting coming down the trail.

They ran through their fringe of woods, coming out on the trail a little way above the camp, and galloping toward them they saw a procession on horseback, shouting, laughing, screaming. At the head rode a cowboy, well in the lead, and holding his horse back. It was a big, bay horse, with a white star in its forehead, and full of ginger. The cowboy wore white fur chaps on his legs, and spurs, and a broad-brimmed felt hat.

Behind him came another guide, also in cowboy costume, and then almost a dozen men and women, evidently tourists. Some of them knew how to ride, but more of them evidently did not. The women were bouncing around in their saddles and screaming, but n.o.body stopped. The race for home had begun, and the horses intended to finish at a gallop. As the leader thundered past the two boys, they saw with admiration how firmly he sat in his saddle, like a part of the horse, and looked calmly back over his shoulder with a laugh. Then they saw him touch the horse with his spurs, and it sprang forward with a bound, while the rest came tearing on behind. As one woman pa.s.sed the scouts, her last hairpin flew out, and her hair came tumbling down in a braid, which began bobbing up and down on her back.

"Gee, that's the life!" Tom cried. "We simply _got_ to learn to ride horseback, Joe. I bet they've been over a pa.s.s, or something, to-day."

"I bet some of 'em are going to eat off the mantelpiece to-morrow," Joe replied.

They went back by way of the camp, to see if any hikers had arrived, and then got their supper, a rather smoky job, with only soft wood to cook by. But they were too hungry to mind the smoke. After supper they walked around to the great hotel, which was not yet lighted up, for though it was now seven o'clock, it was still broad daylight, and bought souvenir postcards to send home to their parents and the other scouts. As yet the hotel had few guests, for the season had hardly begun, the snow had lain so late on the pa.s.ses that year, but there was music and bustle about the place, just the same, and another party on horseback was just galloping in, so the boys could watch the tired riders dismount, and the cowboy guides drive the horses away, down the road to their night feeding on the lower meadows. Joe longed to ask one of those cowboys to show him what that mysterious thing, a diamond hitch, was, but he did not have the nerve.

It was still quite light enough to read a newspaper when they returned to camp. n.o.body had come, and as it had been a hard day, and Tom saw Joe was tired, he gave orders to turn in, though the lights in the great hotel across the lake, under the vast wall of Allen Mountain, were just twinkling on.

"Seems foolish to go to bed by daylight," he said, "but it's nine o'clock, and you're a sick little wifey."

"You'll be a sick little hubby, in about a minute and a quarter," Joe retorted, swinging at him. "Still, I feel as if I could sleep, daylight or not."

"Come here," Tom went on, "and let's see how your old temperature is. If you've got a fever to-night it means you got to stay still for the next week, and rest up."

He shook down the little clinical thermometer Dr. Meyer had given him, and put it under Joe's tongue. "Smoke that a while," he laughed.

After a couple of minutes he took it out again and inspected it.

"Ninety-eight," said he. "That's normal, ain't it? Hooray, old Joey, no temperature even after this day! I guess you're getting better, all right."

"Sure I am," Joe laughed. "I'm going to climb to the top of the Great Divide to-morrow!"

The night came on as they were getting ready to bunk, and with it came a sudden coolness.

"I guess we're going to be glad of these blankets, after all," Tom said, "and you won't be sorry your mother put in that puff."

"You bet I won't," Joe answered, climbing into his cot, and pulling the puff up about him.

Tom took a last look at the fire, at the still woods, at the lake glimmering down through the trees, picked up his sweater, which he had dropped on the ground, and hung it idly over a log by the fire, pulled the tent flap together, blew out the candle in the camp lantern, and also crawled in.

"Well, Joe," he said, "we've begun our life five thousand feet up, at the feet of the glaciers."

Joe's answer was a snore.

CHAPTER VII--Joe Gets Acquainted with Porcupines, the Diamond Hitch, and Switchback Trails

Some hours later the boys were awakened by a tremendous clatter just outside the tent. They both sprang up and rushed out. It was pitch dark, the last ember of the fire had died, and they could see nothing. But they could hear something scampering away in the underbrush.

"Is it a bear?" Joe whispered. "Gee, I wish they'd let you have a gun in the Park!"

Tom jumped into the tent and lit the lantern. By its dim rays, they saw what had made the clatter. Half their little stock of canned goods and other provisions had been knocked down off the shelf Joe had built.

"I know--porcupines!" Spider cried. "Remember, Big Bertha told us to look out for 'em."

They carried their provisions back into the tent, and went to sleep again.

Tom was the first up. Joe heard him muttering and exclaiming outside the tent, and crawled out to see what was the matter.

"Matter? Matter?" Spider shouted. "Look at this--and this!"

He held up his sweater in one hand, and one of the scout axes in the other. One entire sleeve of the sweater was gone, and the handle of the axe was so chewed up that it was practically useless.

"Holy smoke, what did that?"

Before Tom could answer, there was a movement in the undergrowth, and both boys sprang toward it. There, sure enough, was the culprit--a fat porcupine, surprised by their quick descent, and backing away from them with every quill rigid and ready for business. Tom grabbed a heavy stick, and was about to hit it, when Joe stopped him.

"Wait a minute--I want to see it work," he said. "I want to see if they really throw their quills. You keep him here."

Joe quickly hunted up a rotten stick, and gingerly poked it at the porcupine, which bit at the end viciously, and filled it full of quills, but he certainly didn't "shoot" them. The stick had to touch them first before they came out.

"There, now you see the story's a fake," Tom cried, "so good-night, Pork,--you'll pay for my sweater, you beast, you!"

He brought his club down on the poor animal's head, and laid it out.

"I kind of hate to see him killed," said Joe.

"I hate to kill animals myself, but we got to keep our sweaters and axes," Tom answered. "We'll make an Indian belt, or something, of the quills, and send it home to the kids."

They were still talking about the porcupine as they got breakfast.

"Don't seem as though a woollen sweater sleeve and a wooden axe handle were exactly what you'd call nouris.h.i.+ng," said Joe.

"I'd rather have bacon," Tom laughed. "He looks fat, too."

As they were speaking, they heard steps in the woods, and a second later a tall, thin, tanned man in a khaki-colored uniform, with leather riding gaiters and a wide-brimmed felt hat, appeared in their little clearing.

The two scouts rose quickly, in surprise.

"h.e.l.lo, boys," the man said, as his blue eyes took in them and every detail of the camp at a single piercing glance, "goin' to have porcupine for breakfast?"

"He'll never have my sweater for breakfast again!" Tom replied.

The man laughed--or, rather, he smiled. It was really a kind of inside laugh, noiseless. Even his voice was low, so you had to listen sharply to hear what he was saying.

"They'll eat the clothes off your back if you let 'em," said he.