CHAPTER XXII--A Blizzard on Flat Top--The Camp is Christened

"Valley Forge"

The next day the mountains were still under. It wasn't raining, but the clouds were a dark, gun metal color, and seemed to rest like heavy smoke on the rocks overhead.

"Nothing doing," said Mills. "They may be over for two days yet, and it will surely rain. We'll keep the trail over Ahern Pass, and make Flat Top to-day. All out!"

And it was a strange day that followed. The trail was none too good, with much fallen timber to drive the packhorses around for the first two or three miles, and it very soon got up into a wild, desolate, narrow canyon under the southern wall of Mount Merritt, with the water of Lake Elizabeth beside the path, looking in this gray light under the lowering clouds a sort of dead, chalky green. Beyond Lake Elizabeth the canyon grew steeper and narrower, the cliffs of Mount Merritt went sheer up into the clouds, and on the other side of the valley rose the equally steep walls that were the reverse side of the Iceberg Lake cliffs Tom had scaled. But the tops both of Merritt and these cliffs were hidden in cloud, that swirled and raised and lowered as the upper wind currents hit it. When they reached Lake Helen, at the head of the canyon, where the trail began to switchback up the wall of the Divide, they could see, just under the clouds, poised, it seemed, almost over their heads, no less than four glaciers, one of them apparently hanging on a shelf and ready to fall off at any moment. In fact, a huge cake as big as a house did fall off, and crashed down with a great roar to the rocks below, even as they watched.

"The mountain gnomes are bombarding us!" Mr. Crimmins laughed.

They went steadily and steeply up, on the switchbacks, and reached the top of the Divide at noon. But half an hour before they got to the Divide they were in the clouds, in a thick, damp, chilling fog, that was not rain and yet covered their clothes with drops of moisture, made their hands wet and cold, and of course obscured every vestige of a view.

"Well," said the Ranger, "here we are on the backbone of the world. Over there is Heaven's Peak. Just to the left, only a mile away, Tom, is the top of the Iceberg Lake head wall. If it was clear, you could take Joe over and show him where you climbed. But I guess as it is we'll get down as fast as we can, and not even wait for lunch."

"Anything to get out of this," the men said, blowing on their wet, numb fingers.

So they dropped down on the west side of the Divide, getting out of the cloud below timber-line, and stopped while Joe made hot coffee. Then they pushed on down still farther, picked up a better trail in the deep woods in a canyon beside a stream--Mineral Creek Canon; and turning sharp north, began slowly and gradually to climb again. It was the kind of a day when nobody does much talking, and even the horses seemed to plug dejectedly along. After two or three miles, however, they began to go up more rapidly, out of deep timber, into a region of meadows and low balsams. Joe was the first to smell the balsams, and sniffed eagerly.

"I'm going to have a real bed to-night," he called to Mills, "if you don't look. I know it's against the rules to cut bough beds in the Park."

"I won't look, if you won't tell," Mills called back. "We have to make that rule to protect the trees, but way up here in the wilds Uncle Sam won't miss a few twigs, I guess."

They were now nearly under the clouds again. To their right a steep debris pile rose, and ended in a jagged cliff wall, which disappeared in the vapor. To the left was a wooded slope, and ahead the trail climbed sharply to a ridge which could barely be seen under the clouds.

"We're almost at the north end of Flat Top Mountain," the Ranger said. "That cliff to the right is the Divide, and dead ahead that ridge you see is the Divide turning sharp left and running across to the western range. From here on into Canada the western range is the watershed. We could climb to the top of that ridge--only half a mile, and camp on the Divide, if you want to."

"And spend the night in the cloud? Excuse me!" Mr. Crimmins said. "This is bad enough."

"All right--all off," the Ranger answered.

He called to Joe and Tom, and the three of them pitched the two tents in a sheltered spot, in the centre of a grove of balsams about twenty feet tall.

"And peg 'em down hard," he said. "Anything may come out of those clouds to-night. Now, Tom, get a good big supply of wood, and stack it up dry, under a pack cover, while I turn out the horses."

While Joe was getting supper, the three tourists gathered balsam boughs for beds, following Mills' orders to take only a few twigs from any one tree.

"It's against the rules," he said, "but we may need to sleep as warm as we can to-night."

"I believe you," Robert Crimmins replied, blowing on his numb fingers.

Tom, meanwhile, combed the region all around for dead wood. The supply was none too large, for they were perilously close to timber-line; and under the cloud darkness was coming on early, to make the job harder. But he finally found a large dead tree, down in a sheltered hollow by the stream, and got four or five good logs out of that, and a lot of smaller stuff. The two tents were pitched facing each other, with a camp-fire and Joe's fire pit between, and with the surrounding evergreens for a windbreak and the tent flaps open to catch the heat, they were pretty comfortable that evening, though every one wore his sweater, and Joe and Tom, who had brought their mackinaws, were glad enough to put them on, too.

Nobody undressed that night at all, except to take off his boots and put on an extra pair of socks instead. The wind was rising steadily, the tents shook, the evergreens over them sighed and whistled, and Joe lay awake for the first time since he had been in the Park, with a curious feeling that something was going to happen.

He got to sleep at last, but he woke up presently--it seemed to him that he woke up immediately--and peering through the tent flap saw no sign of a fire. At least, he thought, the embers ought still to be glowing. He slipped out of his blankets as softly as he could, climbed over Mills, who was sleeping nearest the entrance, and started to unbuckle the flap. As he did so, a gust of wind hit the tent, half lifting it off its pole, and blew the flap wildly in. As it blew in, something soft and cold and stinging hit Joe's face. Snow! He stuck out his head for an instant, and all he could see was a kind of swirling, waving, hissing white darkness. It was bitter cold, too, and the fire was out. Dimly he could see the outline of the other tent, and the roof of it was white with drift. No use trying to build up the fire in that! He fought the wind to close the flap again.

But the swirl of the snow in his face had waked the Ranger.

"What's the matter?" he said.

"A blizzard," Joe replied, as another gust of wind strained the canvas and rattled the guy ropes.

"I thought something would come out of this," said Mills. "Hang it, we ought to have camped lower down. I'd rather be drowned than frozen."

Tom woke up now, and they lighted the camp lantern, to peep out into the night.

A voice, half drowned in the roar of the gale, came across from the other tent.

"Say," it called, "what had we better do?"

"Keep in your blankets and hang onto your tent!" Mills shouted back.

"I wonder if he thinks we can call a taxi and drive to a hotel!" he added in a normal tone, that couldn't have been heard two feet beyond the tent flap.

Nobody slept any more in either tent that night. They were too cold, and too busy bailing out snow that drifted under the tent walls, or trying to peg down the walls or stop up the gaps with the balsam beds. Finally, toward morning, there came a perfect hurricane of wind. The tent the scouts were in swayed, tugged, seemed about to leave its moorings, and in the midst of the gust the occupants heard a snapping sound outside, and a smothered yell.

Mills sprang out into the storm, and a moment later came back with Robert and the two men, all wrapped in their blankets, and powdered white by the brief crossing.

Their tent pole had snapped, and the tent had come down on top of them! There was no chance of getting it up again then, so the six people all huddled in the one tent, and waited for daylight.

"Anyhow, the more we are, the warmer we can keep," said Robert, who was rather enjoying the adventure. "Go on, Joe, keep your knee in my back, I like it! It's as good as a hot water bottle."

The storm began to abate presently, and as the light brightened outside, Mills, peering out, reported that the snow had stopped falling. With the diminution of the wind, too, the cold lessened, and the noise, and nearly everybody, in spite of the cramped quarters, fell into a troubled, rather restless sleep.

What woke Joe up was the bright daylight hitting him in the eye through a crack in the tent flap.

He extricated himself from between Robert and Mr. Taylor, and pushed his way out. It was a transformed, a wonderful, a beautiful world he looked on! Evidently the sun was up over the prairie, for far down Mineral Creek Canon he could see the top of Cannon Mountain, snow covered, pink and rosy with the light, and Heaven's Peak, a little nearer, was like a great pyramid of gleaming rose crystal. On the ground about him, half covering his fire pit, was almost a foot of snow, which hung on the balsams, was drifted over the fallen tent, covered the rocks, and through which, here and there, rose the stems of wild flowers, their blossoms nodding above the white carpet!

He gave a shout.

"Don't miss this!" he cried. "Gee, it's worth a lost night's sleep, and then some!"

Sleepy, stiff forms emerged from the tent behind him, and gazed at the sunrise over a world that was white with winter, and yet was summer. Everybody exclaimed with delight--except the Ranger.

"This will make Cleveland hopeless," was all he said, as he began to pull the fallen tent up out of its drift.

"Well, I'm going to name this old camp Valley Forge," Robert Crimmins laughed, as he stamped his feet and blew on his fingers, before picking a wild flower for his buttonhole!