Part 31 (1/2)

”So much perspiring, and such rapid evaporation in the wind up there, certainly does use up the water in your system,” the doctor said, as his face emerged dripping from the brook, and he put on his gla.s.ses again.

”Free ice water, too. Look at the chunks of ice floating around in it--and here it is August, and flowers growing on the bank!”

Mills got the horses, and they mounted. Tom could hardly have truthfully said he ”vaulted into the saddle,” however. He got up with considerable difficulty, for he was stiff and lame, and his arms were trembling from such long, hard strain in going up and then down the rope. But it was certainly good to be in the saddle, once you got there, and find yourself being carried, instead of having to do the work.

The Ranger at once began to trot. The trail to Iceberg Lake is such a good one, and the grade is so easy, that you can trot over a good deal of the distance, and Mills did not let any gra.s.s grow under their feet, especially as the horses were fresh. When they reached the woods near home, and the trail was almost level, he broke into a gallop, and with the doctor (who was not a good rider) wildly hanging to the horn of his saddle, they tore past a party just coming in from Swift Current, and dashed up to the tepee camp, where Joe was waiting for them.

The camp was full of hikers--a whole party of men and women, ten or a dozen. They were busily cooking on the stove, and the doctor looked anything but pleased.

”Where do I come in, Joe?” he asked, as he climbed from his horse.

”I thought maybe you'd rather come down to our little camp for supper,”

said Joe. ”I can't use the stove here till this gang gets through, and Tom and I have a rough sort of table at our camp, and I have supper all ready to cook there, and I planned to have Mr. Mills come, too. Tom and I will sort of give a party.”

”Well, now, that's fine!” said the doctor. ”Mills and I accept. Let me wash up in my tepee first, and I'll be with you.”

He went into his tepee.

”I'll take the horses up to the cabin,” said the Ranger, ”and be with you in a jiffy. Say, Tom,” [he added this in a low tone] ”we had his number wrong. He knows the climbing game from the bottom up--he's careful, he's got nerve, he can pick a hold every time, and he don't gas. He gets my vote.”

”Mine, too!” Tom answered.

”Everything O.K. here?” Tom asked Joe. ”These people got wood, and cots, and everything?”

”Sure--beat it, and wash your mug. Gee, you're dirty!” Joe laughed.

”Well, I guess you'd be if you'd been kissin' an old precipice all day,”

Tom retorted. ”Oh, gee, Joe--this is the life! Some climb! Some old goats and sheep! Some Park!”

”Yes, and go and wash up if you want some supper.”

Joe made sure the hikers had everything they needed or wanted, and hurried down the path to the scout camp, where he began to cook the supper, while Tom was having a wash and getting into dry underclothes and s.h.i.+rt. He had been to the chalet store that afternoon and restocked the larder, and secured a piece of a big, fresh steak which had just come in by motor bus. This he now broiled over as good a bed of coals as he could get from his soft wood fire. He had coffee already boiling, and hot soup, and some nice canned beans, and French fried potatoes, and a surprise for dessert--nothing less than four plates of fresh huckleberries, which he had stumbled upon while taking a walk that noon, and picked into his hat.

When Mills and the doctor arrived, this supper was all ready, and the two men and two boys sat down on the log seats around the rough table of boards, and ate and talked, and talked and ate, while the evening shadows crossed the lake and the lights of the big hotel could be seen twinkling through the trees. It was a jolly meal, and a good one, and Tom had never in his life felt so hungry, and deliciously lame and sore and tired, so that a long draught of hot coffee seemed to go warming and tingling through all his body.

After supper, Joe would not let him go back to the tepee camp, but went himself to see that everything was fixed for the night. Tom just sat by the blazing camp-fire, while Mills and Dr. Kent smoked, and listened to the talk of the two men, who swapped yarns about mountain climbing. The doctor had been up rock crags in the Austrian Tyrol, thrilling precipices steeper than the wall of Iceberg Lake, and he had climbed over ice and snow, also, where you had to cut steps with an ice axe. But Mills, who had never been east of Omaha in his life, had once ridden down a mountain on a snow avalanche, (needless to say, without intending to!) and had seen a mother goat standing over her kid on the ledge of a precipice fighting off a bald eagle. Tom listened with ears wide open, and though he was sleepy and tired, he was sorry when the men rose to depart.

”I'll come here for breakfast, boys, if you don't mind,” the doctor said. ”Those hikers may be an estimable collection of citizens and citizenesses, but I came out here to get away from folks. Good-night, Tom. We'll have to have one more climb before I go--day after to-morrow, I guess. To-morrow I'm going back to Iceberg Lake and look at the flowers more carefully. Good-night, Joe. Good-night, Mills. Thanks for coming to-day. You Rocky Mountain goat hunters don't need any course of training in the Alps.”

”Good-night,” the scouts called, as the two men disappeared in opposite directions.

Tom told Joe all that had happened as they got ready for bed, and ended by declaring he was too excited still to go to sleep.

Joe laughed.

”I thought I was, the first day over Piegan,” said he. ”But the old Rockies fooled me. I slept, all right. So'll you.”

And Tom did. In fact, it is doubtful if he heard the tail end of Joe's sentence.