Part 15 (1/2)

”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.”