CHAPTER XXVI--A Hundred Miles in Four Days, Over the Snow, Which is a

Long Trip To Get Your Mail

The next morning Mills was up at the usual time, but he let the boys sleep, and it was the sound of the breakfast dishes that woke Joe, who was usually first up to do the cooking and get the stove red hot. Joe himself slept in a separate little room partitioned off at the back, so he could have his window wide open without freezing out the whole cabin. He got up now and hurried out, still sleepy.

"I had a funny dream last night," he said. "I dreamed we were bringing the lion home on the sledge Peary took to the North Pole."

"Not a bad idea!" the Ranger exclaimed. "We might make a sledge to get the deer meat home on. Suppose we do that to-day, and to-night we'll take turns guarding the yard from possible wolves."

In the Ranger's cabin was a kit of tools, and outside was plenty of wood. A sled like Peary's, however, was impractical in the soft snow, and, moreover, they soon found that without small hard woods to work with it would be impossible to build any kind of an enduring sledge.

"Why don't we make a toboggan?" said Tom.

"You need hard wood for that, too, to curl the end--and it takes time to steam the wood and get it bent, anyhow," Mills replied.

"Wait--I have it!" Joe cried. "You folks be getting three or four strips of board ten feet long planed down thin, with the under side smooth. I'll come back presently."

He put on his skis and vanished down the trail, with a shovel over his shoulder.

While he was gone Tom and the Ranger took two boards left over from the stable, each about six inches wide, and made another by hand-hewing it from a fallen log close to the cabin. Before this was done, Joe had returned, bearing triumphantly a twenty-five pound butter box.

"I saw it behind the hotel, on the trash pile, when I got the hens," he said. "I went down there and dug where I thought it was. Had to make three holes and a tunnel before I got it--but it's hard wood, and all curled."

When the third board was hewn out, and all three planed smooth and thin, they were laid side by side and connected with light crosspieces. Then the bottom was removed from the big butter box, the side drum severed, and one end securely fastened under the front end of the toboggan bottom. Thus the butter box curled up and around like the front of a real toboggan. The loose end was secured with thongs, and rings were put on either side of the boards, to run ropes through to hold on a load. Finally, a rope to pull it by was made fast.

"There!" Tom said. "That's a regular toboggan, and she'll ride on top of the softest snow."

"I wonder if she'll buck when we throw a diamond hitch?" Joe laughed.

As soon as supper was over, Joe went alone, with his rifle, up to the yard, and watched over the dead deer till eleven o'clock, when Tom relieved him. Tom watched till three, and then the Ranger guarded till daylight.

But before daylight Joe was up, cooked some breakfast, roused Tom, and taking food for Mills and pulling the toboggan, they hurried over the snow, now well packed into a trail by their frequent trips to the yard. All that morning they worked skinning the deer, to save the valuable hides for moccasins, thongs, and similar uses, and quartering the carcases which the lion had not molested after killing them. The meat, of course, was frozen now, and would keep indefinitely. It was a great load of skins and meat they finally packed upon the toboggan, piled high and fastened securely on, but a very dirty, bloody, tired lot of people to drag it home, and they were glad enough that the yard was above the cabin, not below it.

But that night, after they were washed, they sat down to a fresh venison steak, and forgot their weariness, as only men can who have lived largely on canned goods for many weeks.

"M-m, m-m!" said Tom. "This is good! Somehow I ain't so mad at that old lion as I was!"

"What did you kill him for, then?" Mills laughed. "You might have had eleven other deer to eat if you'd let him go."

"Kind o' mixed, isn't it?" Tom confessed. "I sure would kill him every time--but I'd rather eat the deer than leave 'em for the wolves, just the same."

"If you want something good to eat, get one of your lion friends to kill a sheep for you, and bring us some mutton," said the Ranger. "I haven't had a piece of mutton for ten years, I guess. Before this was a Park, and we used to hunt here, my! the feasts I've had!"

"Well, I could stand tinned beef all my life, to see the sheep alive," Joe declared. "I'm glad it's a Park now."

The next day the hides were spread to cure, and the meat was all cleaned and hung, and the three then overhauled their equipment and packed up to make a start the next day for Glacier Park station. No mail had come to anybody since October, they had been able to send no letters to their parents, and the Ranger had not even been able to report to the Park superintendent, or the boys to send telegrams since the storm before Thanksgiving, because the telephone wire between Many Glacier Hotel and the railroad had been broken. As a rule, Mills used this wire in winter. One of the objects of their trip was to see about this break.

The trip out to the railroad, which was about fifty-five miles by automobile road, could now be reduced to about forty-five, because they could cut cross lots, over the deep snow, shaving the end of Flat Top Mountain (not the Flat Top of the Valley Forge camp, but another on the eastern edge of the overthrust), and by good hiking reach Glacier Park station in two days. They planned to take the toboggan, loading on it their provisions, sleeping-bags, a small tent, axes, and the scouts' snow-shoes. The boys planned to wear skis for a good part of the trip, and to put Mills on the toboggan on the down grades, thus saving time. He laughed at the idea, but as the shoes were light made no objection.

That night was clear and cold, and the next day promised to be fair. Joe and Tom sat up late, getting letters ready to send home, and Joe spent an hour on a letter to Lucy Elkins, telling her about his life in the Park, and promising to send snow pictures as soon as he could get them developed. But they were up long before the sun in the morning, and set off by starlight, all three on the ropes of the toboggan, down the trail.

When they came to the first long, snowy slope, Mills said, "Let me see one of you go down it on your skis."

Tom dropped the rope, and ran, gaining speed as he went, the snow flying out from under the prow of his skis, and a moment later was waving his hand from the bottom.

"Saves time, all right," the Ranger agreed, "but what's to become of me?"

"Get on the back of the toboggan, let one foot hang out and steer with it, and come along," Joe laughed. "It's easy."

"I never steered one of the blamed things," said Mills.

"Here, you sit on top of the bags, and hold my skis. I'll show you."

Joe took his skis off, put Mills on the front, and pushed the toboggan over. A cloud of snow rose over the curl of the butter box prow, powdering the Ranger in the face, and they flew down the hill in Tom's tracks, and stopped at his side.

"Well, I'll be darned--here we be!" was all Mills said, as he brushed off the snow.

"Tom, I believe there's something we can teach Mr. Mills!" Joe laughed. "I believe he was afraid of a toboggan!"

Mills' blue eyes twinkled a little.

"By gosh, I'll go down the next one on your skis, just for that!"

They pushed on steadily down the Swift Current Valley, taking the easiest way over the frozen lake, into the sunrise, and then, at the valley's mouth, swinging south and cutting across toward the end of Flat Top. Mills did put on Joe's skis at the next favorable slope--and the scouts had to dig him out of the snow half-way down!

"Take your old skis," he spluttered, grabbing for his snow-shoes again. "I'll stick to what I'm used to--and the toboggan. I don't have to balance the toboggan."

After that, he steered the toboggan down the hills, while the scouts ran on skis.

For the up grades, the boys put on their snow-shoes, also, because even on a gentle slope you back-slide with skis if you are pulling a load. They reached the ridge over Lower St. Mary Lake at noon, ate lunch, lowered the toboggan down the slope to the lake, and then ran on the white, level snow surface above the ice inshore, due south, till at evening they had passed St. Mary Chalets at the foot of Upper St. Mary Lake, and went on into a stand of thick woods, where they decided to camp.

The tent was pitched in the most sheltered spot, on packed snow, facing a rock, and on logs laid across the snow packed in front of the rock they built a roaring fire. With the heat of this fire, Joe was able to cook supper without his mittens on, though he could not go far away from it without them. When supper was over, they built the fire up afresh, laid in a big supply of wood, and crawling into their sleeping-bags, under the shelter of the tent, itself sheltered by the evergreens, with the flap facing the fire left wide open and the rock reflecting the heat in to them, they were surprisingly warm, when you consider that they were sleeping on snow, with the mercury in the thermometer outside playing tag somewhere below the zero mark--or it would have been, if there had been a thermometer outside.

It was "anybody's job," if he woke up, to crawl out and throw more wood on the fire, and Joe twice did this. Both times, however, must have been long before morning, because when he finally woke up there was a faint hint of dawn in the sky, and the fire was practically out--only the logs they had placed on the snow for a fire base were smouldering.

He crawled out again, and built a new fire. Then he took a kettle and went to see if he could find any brook open, it was such a slow job melting snow. When he got back, the others were up, stretching and warming themselves by the blaze. The coffee certainly tasted good that morning! And how fragrantly the hot bacon sizzled and spluttered in the pan!

They made the second stage of their journey chiefly over the prairie, more or less following the motor road, but cutting off all the corners they could to reduce mileage, and getting dozens of wonderful ski runs over the treeless slopes, while Mills, who by now had become quite an expert steering the toboggan, came on behind.

"When I get back," he kept saying, "I'm going to learn to use those blooming things, too--but on a little hill first!"

The early twilight was deepening into night, and the northern lights were playing when they came over the final slope and saw the railroad signal lights--the first sign of other human beings than themselves they'd laid eyes on since October.

Half an hour later they were at the station, Mills was telephoning to Park headquarters at Lake McDonald, and the boys were getting their accumulated mail--letters from home, newspapers for two months past, a big box of cakes and sweet chocolate for Tom from his mother, and, for Joe, a long letter from Lucy Elkins, enclosing the pictures she had taken on their trip.

That evening they slept in beds at the house of the station agent, after they had spent the evening hearing the news from the outside world. The mass of newspapers they kept to read in the long evenings back in the cabin. Laying in some additional provisions, and carefully packing their precious papers, they started back in the morning, over their old tracks, which, except in windy places where they were drift covered, afforded now pretty easy sledding for the toboggan. They made camp again in the same spot, and were up before daylight for the last stage, Mills looking scowlingly at the sky.

"Don't like it to-day, boys," he said. "We're in for a storm. Let's beat it home, if we can."

And that day he gave them little rest, driving on at a fast pace, with the toboggan rope straining over his shoulder. The sun went under before noon. By mid-afternoon, as they entered the Swift Current valley mouth, the peaks of the Divide were lost in a cold, gun metal cloud, and the wind was rising. They faced this wind all up the valley, with no chance now to coast--only a steady, grinding up-hill pull.

It was dark long before they got to the cabin, and the snow had begun to fall in fine, stinging flakes. They were a cold, weary lot when finally they tugged their load up the last grade to the level of the lake, passed into the trees at the tepee camp, and a few minutes later tumbled into the cold cabin, and began to pile wood into the stove.

"Well, Joe, get a hunk of that venison out, and let's forget this day!" Mills cried. "Light up the big lamp, Tom. We've got kerosene enough, too. Let's be cheerful."

The roar of the logs in the stove, the light of the lamp, and presently the smell of food and coffee, acted like magic. They were soon laughing again, while the wind rose outside, and the trees groaned and creaked, and the snow drove with a kind of hissing patter against the windows and the roof.

"A hundred miles in four days, over four feet of snow, and pulling a toboggan--gosh, if anybody'd told me old Joe could do that last May, I'd have thought he was crazy," said Tom.

"You couldn't have done it yourself last May," Joe replied.

"And," said the Ranger, stretching out his legs and rubbing them, "by golly, _I_ don't want to do it again!"

"Ho," said Tom, "I feel fine!"

But he was the first to propose bed--although it must be admitted nobody quarreled with his suggestion.