CHAPTER VII

Held Up by the Snow, With the Thermometer at 86°

The next day, sure enough Uncle Billy routed everybody out at five o’clock. They had pancakes and syrup, and bacon and coffee and toast for breakfast, and then camp had to be struck and the cars packed again. The sleeping bags had to be deflated and rolled up by the three boys, and put in their canvas cases. The tents had to be rolled up and also put in cases. The dunnage bags had to be repacked, the dishes washed and put into the boxes on Uncle Billy’s car. It was long after seven before they got away.

On this day, at last, they began to get a taste of wild Oregon—but just a taste, the doctor told them. They finally came to the head of the Willamette valley, and climbed up a long grade, beside a wild, tumbling stream, amid huge old fir trees, and then down a long, wooded cañon on the farther side. They rolled through more valleys full of fruit orchards, and they passed through several towns. In one of them, where they stopped to get an ice cream soda—or rather ice cream sodas, for both the scouts had two apiece and Dumplin’ had three—a big banner was stretched across the street, with the words on it in letters two feet high:

IT’S THE CLIMATE.

“Golly, you wouldn’t think they had any climate anywhere else,” said Bennie. “Out here, you’ve only got one kind. In little old Massachusetts we have every kind.”

“Sure, and on the same day, too,” Uncle Billy laughed.

All that afternoon they climbed up endless grades, where the highway was cut out of the sides of the cañons, and the great trees shadowed the road, and down again, and up again.

“Are we in the Cascade Mountains now?” the boys asked.

“No, these are just hills,” said the doctor. “You won’t see any mountains till we get almost into Medford. Cheer up, they’ll be there tomorrow.”

The grades were so numerous, and so long and hard, that it was impossible to make as many miles in a day here as it is in the East. As the sun began to sink, the doctor began watching for camp sites, and presently he pulled into a field beside the road where a brook came down from a hill, and they camped for a second night on the road.

An early start again was ordered, and now the grades grew less severe again, and after a few hours the cars ran out into a wide plain, and suddenly the boys gave a yell.

“The mountains!” they cried.

Sure enough, there they were. To the east lay the blue rampart of the Cascade range, and right in the centre, covered white with snow, shot up the peaked pyramid of Mount McLaughlin. To the south and west, shutting the valley in, rose more mountains, some of them still showing snow on their summits. Across the head of the valley ran a tumbling green stream, the Rogue River.

“That river comes down from close to Crater Lake,” said Uncle Billy.

“Gee, I’d like to get into it right now,” Bennie remarked.

A dozen miles more, and they were in Medford, a neat, clean little city (it would be called a town in the East), surrounded by flourishing fruit orchards and grain fields. The boys scouted around for some crackers and fireworks, while the men restocked the cars with provisions, got gas and oil, and inquired about the road to the lake.

“Well,” said the doctor, as they met at the cars again, “we don’t get to Crater Lake tomorrow.”

“Aw, gee, why not?” Bennie demanded.

“Road’s not open yet to the rim. Can’t get much beyond Government Camp.”

“What’s the trouble—snow?” asked Mr. Stone.

The doctor nodded.

“Snow!” said Spider, wiping his hot forehead. “Don’t sound possible.”

“It’s the climate,” said Bennie.

Everybody laughed, and Dumplin’ announced he was going to get another ice cream soda while the leaders decided what to do.

When he came back, the doctor and Mr. Stone had decided to go back up the road and then up the Rogue River for a few miles, on the way to Crater Lake, and camp there over the Fourth and the day following. By the third day it was probable, the doctor said, that the government rangers would have the snow blasted out of the road.

“_Blasted_ out?” said Spider.

“Sure; they use TNT. It would take forever to shovel those drifts.”

“Oh, let’s go up and watch ’em!” Bennie pleaded.

“And get the cars mired? No, thank you! We’ll camp by the Rogue River and wait. You can swim and Spider can study birds, and Dumplin’ can wish he was nearer a soda fountain. Come on.”

They turned off the highway at the Rogue River bridge, and the minute they were off the macadam the dust began to fly. Spider looked back into the cloud.

“Glad I’m not in the Stones’ car,” he said. “What makes it so dusty?”

“This soil is all volcanic ash or pumice,” said the doctor, “and it hasn’t rained here, probably, for a month, and won’t for five or six more.”

“It’s the climate,” chuckled Bennie.

Two or three miles up this dusty road, and close to a small, dilapidated looking house, made of boards and huge, hand-hewn shingles or “shakes,” the doctor put the car off the road and into a field which was baked as hard as a brick, with the grass dried up and brown. At the edge of this field was a grove of trees with shiny copper-colored bark and glossy green leaves, called laurel trees, and beyond them the bank plunged sharp down for fifty feet to the rushing green river.

“Camp,” said Uncle Billy, stopping the car. “Here’s where we live for two days at least.”

As soon as camp was made, and wood cut, the entire party ran down the bank to a gravelly beach by the river’s edge, stripped, and plunged into the water. Five yells immediately rose in the stillness, and five bodies came splashing back to shore.

“That water comes down from the snow-fields, all right,” said Mr. Stone.

“That’s why it’s so green,” said the doctor.

“And why Dumplin’s so pink,” laughed Bennie, pointing at Lester, who certainly looked like a very plump boiled lobster.

That night they sang and joked around the camp fire till nine o’clock, because there was no early start in the morning. When Bennie woke up, however, he saw that Spider’s bed was empty. Going down to the river in his pyjamas, for a plunge, he found Spider, all dressed, with a note-book in his hand, watching birds.

“Gee, this is a great place to see birds,” Spider called. “I’ve got nine kinds already, most of ’em that I never saw before. And you want to watch for the funny little lizards on the ground.”

Bennie almost immediately heard a rustle in the dead leaves beside him, and looking down saw a small lizard-like creature scurry up on to a flat stone. He reached down to pick it up—and the lizard wasn’t there! He was on a stone two feet away.

“Say!” he called, “this is the quickest thing I ever saw. Beats a weasel.”

“Mr. Stone says they call ’em swifts,” Spider answered.

Among the new birds that Spider saw, and added to his bird list, he later learned from Mr. Stone and the doctor, were ravens, western tanagers (a beautiful, bright yellow bird), valley quail, camp robbers, water ousels, which live always by the water and build their nests behind the waterfalls, the western catbird, which is much like the eastern, only brownish, and blue jays of a much darker color than in the East. These jays fought and squawked around the camp all day long. Then there were crows and other birds he already knew.

“Well, never mind your old birds now,” Bennie said after breakfast. “This is the Glorious Fourth. Let’s fire off some crackers and do something to celebrate.”

“We might run down to Medford and see the parade,” the doctor suggested.

This was hailed with delight, so they unpacked the cars, and started off for the day. Medford was full of people. There was a parade and a ball game and a lively time generally.

“Well, this is what I call wild life in Oregon,” Bennie laughed. “We came 4,000 miles to get into the wilderness, and here we are with about ten thousand other people watching a parade in a city. Some wilderness!”

“You wait,” his uncle cautioned. “In about a week, you’ll have so much wilderness you’ll be crying for home and mother.”

That night, back in camp, they set off their own fireworks, shooting the rockets from an improvised chute out over the water, and the next day they spent in exploring two or three old gold diggings they found by the bank—shafts which some prospector had laboriously dug far into the earth, but without getting much gold, apparently, for the diggings had all been abandoned. Bennie and Spider spent two or three hours searching everywhere for nuggets, but they found nothing. It was hot and sultry, too, and everybody was getting impatient.

“I’m going to start tomorrow for the lake,” the doctor said that night. “We’ll camp below the rim if we can’t get up. It’s too hot here.”

“It’s the climate,” said Bennie—and the doctor and Dumplin’ fell upon him and rolled him on the hard ground till he howled for mercy.