CHAPTER XX--The Scouts Start on a Trip Together at Last, To Climb

Chief Mountain

Joe was gone five days, coming back over Gunsight and Piegan Pass, the reverse of the route he had taken on his first trip. But this time, he was getting so at home in the saddle that he could manage the packhorses without worrying, could throw a diamond hitch as well as the next man, and cook for a crowd without having too much left over, or not enough prepared--not that there is ever much danger of having anything left over in the Rocky Mountains! Everybody eats while there's food in sight. But Tom was pretty lonely without him, especially as the Ranger was away, too, for the first three days.

But on the fourth day Big Bertha called Tom up to the chalet office, and told him something that made him very happy, though it didn't seem to please Big Bertha at all.

"Tom," said he, "I've got to fire you."

(This isn't what made Tom happy. It made his heart drop into his boots for a second, before he realized that the man was trying to get a rise out of him.)

"Yes," the manager went on, "there's a party of men from Washington at the hotel. They came over Piegan, and they've been up to Iceberg Lake to-day, and now they want to climb Chief Mountain. Somebody's told 'em about it, and nothing for it but they must go up there. There's no cook for 'em till Joe gets back, and the Saddle Company is short on guides anyhow, and hasn't anybody who knows Chief Mountain. Mills says he'll lead the party, if he can have you and your rope. He won't go otherwise. Now, that puts me in a hole, because I'll have to go short handed and send one of my boys down to look after the tepees. But these Washington guys are big bugs of some sort, and I suppose we gotter please 'em. So day after to-morrow you start, if Joe gets back."

"Hooray!" Tom shouted. "Old Joey and I'll be on a trip together!"

"Yes, and what about me? You don't seem sorry for me at all," said Big Bertha.

"I'm not," Tom laughed. "I'll cut up enough wood to-morrow for a week, and clean the stove, and fix everything up. Guess you can worry along."

"You are a heartless, ungrateful creature," said Big Bertha, in his funny, high voice. But Tom knew that he was really glad to give him this chance to see Chief Mountain.

The next day Mills and Tom got together and made all the arrangements for the trip, for they knew Joe would not get in till late, over the twenty-two mile Piegan trail. It was to be a long expedition--probably a week--and needed considerable planning, for they were going north, where there were no chalets, no stores nor camps, and they had to carry everything. Fortunately, there were only three men in the party, so Mills, Joe and Tom were the only guides necessary. But it meant tents, provisions, blankets, and that meant packhorses--good ones, too, which were hard to pick, for the season was late, and the horses were all getting thin and tired.

Joe came in late, as they expected, and though he, too, was tired after the long ride over Piegan, he gave a whoop of joy at Tom's announcement. Tom made him sit down, however, and got the supper himself.

"And you're going to bed early," he added. "This is the real thing ahead of us now--Chief Mountain, maybe the Belly River Canon, and Mills says maybe Cleveland, the highest mountain in the Park, if the weather is good. He says, though, it's getting time for a storm again. Anyhow, we'll see old Cleveland. Gee--it'll be great to be on a rope again!"

"You talk as if you'd climbed the Matterhorn all your life," Joe laughed.

The next morning at six o'clock the Ranger and the two boys were at the hotel, and beginning to pack the horses. For this trip they took but two tents, one for the three men, one for themselves. Enough food was the main requirement. They got everything, including blankets, on four horses, saving a fifth horse for the dunnage bags, which the men speedily brought out.

Of course, Joe and Tom looked at these men carefully. When you are going to be on the trail and in camp with people for a whole week, you are pretty interested to know what sort of folks they are, and whether you are going to like them. One of these three was young, not over twenty-two or twenty-three, the son of the oldest man in the party. The father, whom Mills addressed as Mr. Crimmins, had gray hair, but he looked hardy and strong, with a quick, sharp way of talking and quick motions. He and his friend, Mr. Taylor, a man of about forty, were both connected with the State Department at Washington, Mills said. The young man, Robert Crimmins, was just out of college.

"They look good to me," Joe whispered to Tom.

"I ain't saying a word," Tom answered. "Not after Doc Kent. Wait and see."

The fifth horse was now packed, and the expedition started.

But instead of turning up any of the trails toward the range, Mills led the way straight down the automobile road, toward the prairie. It seemed funny to Joe to be setting off on a trip in this direction, right away from the high places, but the horses liked it. They liked the comparatively smooth going, gently down-hill, and swung along at an easy trot.

Down the road they went, mile after mile, until they emerged from the lower end of the Swift Current Valley, out into the rolling prairies, with the whole range behind them. Then, as the road swung up over a knoll, Mills paused and pointed north.

"There's old Chief," he said.

Everybody looked. About twelve miles to the northwest, thrust out eastward far from the Divide and with the wall which rose out of the prairie growing steeper and steeper till the last two thousand feet were sheer precipice, stood a magnificent tower of a mountain, shining whitish in the sun as if it were composed of limestone. At the back, it seemed connected by a spine with the range behind, but to the prairie it presented an unbroken front, like some great Gibraltar of a tower, with the prairie grass and forest beating like surf at its feet. All alone it seemed to stand, like a sentinel of the range behind, a lone outpost.

"Is _that_ what we've got to climb?" the three men exclaimed, in one breath.

"Well, we won't take you up the east wall," Mills laughed.

"Oh, couldn't we get up it?" Tom cried.

Mills looked at him, and grinned again. "About to-night you won't feel like climbing _anything_," he said. "Remember, you're not saddle-broke, the way Joe is."

They now turned north, away from the motor road, ate some lunch under the shade of an aspen and willow thicket, amid the Persian carpet of prairie wild flowers, and then all the afternoon pushed on toward the great limestone tower, with the whole pile of the Rocky Mountain chain beside them for company. Late in the day they reached a rushing stream, which came down from a canyon just south of the big mountain. This was the north fork of Kennedy Creek, and they turned up it by a trail, the lowering cliffs of Chief now rearing up almost over their heads, and went into the mouth of the valley, and up till the main tower of Chief was east of them, and they were under the south wall of the spine which connected the peak with the main range behind. Here they made camp, in a little meadow beside the stream, with pine woods all about, and while Tom and the Ranger pitched the tents, with Robert Crimmins giving enthusiastic help, Joe built his fire pit and began to get supper. The two older men, who were pretty sore after the thirty mile ride, hobbled about snipping some boughs for their beds.

It was a good supper Joe gave them, however, and the camp was in as delightful a post as a man could ask, and around the big fire, when the food had all been eaten, the whole party sat or lay on the grass, in the fine democracy of the open trail, the assistant Secretaries of State beside the boy scouts from Southmead, and the jokes and stories went around.

But Mills "sounded taps," as he called his bedtime order, very early, as he planned a six o'clock getaway in the morning, and that meant getting up at half-past four. The next day they were to climb Chief. The Ranger looked long at the stars before he came into the tent he and the scouts were using.

"Boys, a good day to-morrow," he said, "but it looks like a storm after that."

"Well, let her rip, after to-morrow," Tom answered. "To-morrow, though, I'm goin' up old Chief, even if I have to climb with nothing but my hands, and I feel now's if I _would_ have to!"

"Poor old tenderfoot!" Joe laughed.

"Gee, it isn't my foot," said Tom, so comically that Joe and the Ranger roared with mirth, as they rolled up in their blankets.