Part 5 (1/2)
Tom followed his finger, and, lo! there they were, the Rocky Mountains!
As far to the north, as far to the south, as the eye could see stretched the great, blue procession of towering peaks, dazzling white with great patches of snow on summits and shoulders, and seemingly only a few miles away.
”And we could have seen 'em _hours_ ago, if we'd only been looking ahead,” Joe complained, as they took their seats on the observation platform. ”They can't be more'n ten miles off now.”
A big, heavy man who was sitting there laughed loudly.
”Guess you ain't never been out here before, have you?” he asked.
”No, we never have.”
”Well, this train's making thirty miles an hour, and we got three hours to go yet before we get to them hills,” he went on. ”You chaps remind me of a story, about a friend o' mine who was prospectin' up here before the government made a park out o' Glacier. An Englishman came along one day, and he started out to walk to the base o' one o' them mountains before breakfast, so my friend, bein' just naturally curious, allowed he'd go along too. Fust, though, he sneaked out and got a bite o' grub.
Well, they walked and walked till along about ten o'clock, and the mountain not gettin' any nearer. By'mby they come to a brook a baby could have jumped, and the Englishman started to peel off his clothes.
”'What in blazes be you goin' to do?' asked my friend.
”'Well,' said the bally Britisher, 'that _looks_ like a brook, but I ain't taking no chances.'”
Tom and Joe laughed.
”I've always heard you could see awfully plain out here,” said Tom. ”It must bother you at first sighting a gun.”
”I reckon it does bother a stranger. I seen fellers sight for a goat at four hundred yards, when he was a clean eight hundred, and kick up the dust on the rocks twenty feet below him.”
”Have you hunted goats?” the boys demanded.
”What I've not hunted, _ain't_,” said the man. ”I don't know what folks want goats for, though. They're the hardest work to get, and no good when you get 'em. A bighorn, now!”
”What's a bighorn?” asked Joe.
The man looked at him in profound surprise. ”By glory, don't you know what a bighorn is?” he demanded. ”Where do you come from, anyhow? A bighorn's a Rocky Mountain sheep, the old ram of the flock, with horns fifty inches long that curl around in a circle, and he's the handsomest, finest, proudest lookin' critter G.o.d Almighty ever made. Wait till you see one!”
”Do you think we can see one in the Park this summer?” the boys asked.
”If you climb up a cliff about seven thousand feet and make a noise like a bunch o' gra.s.s, I reckon maybe you can,” said the stranger.
The next three hours were about the longest the boys had ever spent.
They went back into the sleeper as soon as the berths were moved out of the way and they could sit at the window, and with their faces glued to the pane strained their eyes ahead to see the mountains. Whenever the road made a curve, they could see them plainly, a vast, sawtooth range of blue peaks, some of them sharp like pyramids, some of them rounded into domes, marching down out of the north and stretching away to the south as far as the eye could see. Not only were they bigger mountains than the scouts had ever seen, even on a trip the year before to the White Mountains in New Hamps.h.i.+re, but all over them, on their summits, in great patches on their sides, sometimes quite covering an entire peak, were great fields of snow. Here it was about the 4th of July, with flowers blooming in the gra.s.s beside the track and a blazing hot sun in the heavens--and the mountains just out there covered with vast fields of snow!
”Gee, I wish the old engineer'd put on some steam!” sighed Joe.
”I wish he would,” Tom answered. ”But I guess that snow ain't all going to melt before we get there. Say, Joe, why do you suppose that range goes right up out of the prairie without any foot-hills? Remember, when we went to the White Mountains we got into smaller mountains long before we reached Was.h.i.+ngton? They went up like steps. But here the Rockies just jump right up out of the plain.”
”I don't know--wish I'd studied geology. Maybe the guy who had the friend who walked with the Englishman can tell us.”
Tom shook his head. ”I have a hunch he knows more about goats than geology,” said he. ”Maybe we can get a book at the Park.”
The mountains were now getting perceptibly nearer. They were becoming less blue, the snow showed more plainly on their sharp peaks and great shoulders, and the boys began to pack up their handbags and get ready to disembark.