CHAPTER XVI

AN ICE RIVER

Early the next morning, while they were eating breakfast, Hugh said, “Now, boys, let’s saddle and ride up this middle fork. I don’t think it goes far, and I reckon we’ll not see much up there. We can come back and maybe pack up and get to the head of the other fork to-night. You boys go out right after breakfast and picket the pack horses and bring in the saddle animals, while I’m washing up the dishes and rigging up a scare over this meat, to keep off the birds.”

When the boys got in with the saddle horses, after tying the pack horses so that they could not follow, they found that Hugh had put up a pole which slanted over the meat on the scaffold, and to that pole he had tied a cross-stick from which a long strip of cloth was waving merrily in the breeze.

“There,” said Hugh, “as long as this wind blows, no bird or animal will bother that meat. Now let’s start along.”

They rode fast up the valley of the middle fork, for in most places it was fairly open; sometimes in pretty park-like meadows, where the tall white-crowned flower stems of the soap grass waved in the wind, sometimes in broad flat meadows of wet ground, which looked suspiciously like beaver meadows, and sometimes in scattering pine timber growing from low mounds. As they advanced, the valley grew narrower, and on both sides the mountains rose high and steep, but here and there on the heights above they could see the edges of snow fields, and when they reached the head of the valley they found themselves under a tall precipice, over which flowed two great water-falls, which had their sources in the snow banks far above. It was a cold, gray place, grim and grand, but not picturesque nor beautiful, and soon all three were glad to turn about and gallop down the valley toward the sunlight, which was flooding the lower country.

It was not yet noon when they reached the camp, and Hugh said they would just stop for dinner and then move on.

The boys loosened the cinches of the saddle horses, tied them up, brought in the pack horses and saddled them, and took down the tent and packed up the meat, which by this time was quite dry. An hour later, Hugh mounted his horse and they again set out up the trail.

Jack did not clearly see how they were going to get into the valley of the other fork, as the way appeared blocked by the lake on their left, which seemed to run to the very bases of the mountains which lay on three sides of it. However, he followed Hugh and asked no questions.

Joe, however, said, “How do you suppose we’re going to get into that valley, Jack? Are we going to swim this lake?”

“You can’t prove it by me,” said Jack. “But I reckon Hugh will find a way.”

“That’s so,” said Joe, “White Bull knows how to travel in the mountains. I guess we’ll get there.”

Hugh followed the trail that they had now passed over several times, until he had reached the head of the lake, and then turning off into the forest to the left, began to pick his way toward the mountains that lay west of the lake. Before long they came to the stream along which they had traveled in the morning. It was wide, but not deep, and the bottom was hard. There was much pine timber and a good deal of marshy land through which they passed slowly and with some difficulty, but at length they came to higher ground where progress was better.

As they went on they could see sometimes through the trees the water of the lake on the left; while to the right the mountainside rose above them.

After a mile or two of this travel they came to more marshy meadow ground and then entered a belt of forest, and passing through this, found themselves in a wide willow-grown park, which evidently had once been the bed of a shallow lake.

Mountains rose on either side, and to the left they could hear the murmur of the stream. This stream they crossed and following it up, before long found themselves on the border of another long, narrow lake, hemmed in on both sides by mountains. The timber on this side grew thickly, and Hugh, instead of trying to go through it, kept out a little way in the lake, riding just beyond the overhanging branches of the trees and in water which was from six inches to a foot deep. The bottom was hard gravel--good going.

The country was absolutely wild and undisturbed, and Jack expected every moment to see or hear game in the timber. He kept looking and listening for this so intently that he neglected the bare sides of the mountains across the lake, until Joe, who was just before him, driving the pack horses that followed Hugh, turned and making a sign to attract his attention, pointed to the mountainside. Then Jack saw, lying down on the face of the cliff, far above the water and really at a great distance from him, a monstrous white goat. He was greatly impressed by the beast, which, as it lay there with its head lowered, its long beard nearly reaching to the ground, the hump on its back and its low hind quarters, reminded him very much of a buffalo.

By the time the travelers had reached the head of the lake the sun had disappeared and long shadows were creeping up the sides of the mountain to the east of them.

Hugh stopped his horse, looked about a little, and said, “Now, boys, I don’t know what there is beyond here, and it’s getting late in the day. I reckon we may as well stop and camp here and then to-morrow morning look out a trail up above. We’re not greatly rushed for time, and if we travel in the dark we’re liable to run into some mud hole, or find a lot of fallen timber, and perhaps get in trouble that will take us some little time to get out of. Let’s camp here and do our exploring to-morrow. We’ll have to pitch the tent in the timber and I reckon the horses can get along in this little park at the head of the lake. There isn’t very much for them to eat, and so we’ll have to tie them up. Suppose we unload here, and I’ll begin to get supper while you boys make some pins and picket the horses, and put up the tent.”

They did as he said, and when darkness fell the white tent gleamed among the green timber, and a fire--perhaps the first ever kindled on the borders of this lake--cast its cheerful gleam over the water.

Camp was astir very early the next morning, for this was to be a day of real exploration; a trip up to the head of the narrow valley and then perhaps a climb up the mountains beyond, for Hugh had said that the main Divide was probably near at hand.

During the talk of the evening before, he had expressed the belief that they could go only a little farther with horses, and that when they reached the head of the valley the animals must be left behind, and the mountains, stern and forbidding, the snow-covered peaks which had been in sight ever since they had entered the valley, must be climbed afoot.

While breakfast was being cooked, Joe and Jack changed the pack horses to fresh grass, and brought in and saddled the three riding animals. A little later all three mounted, and Hugh taking the lead, they plunged into the forest to try to find a trail to the foot of the mountains.

It was not easy riding. The timber was thick and stood close together. Hugh made his way down to the stream in the hope that it would be possible to ride up its bed and so avoid the obstacles in the forest, but though they entered the creek, they were soon obliged to leave it, for it was blocked by masses of drift timber, over which the horses could not pass. They had traveled a little more than half a mile up the valley, when they came to the edge of a snowslide, the path of an enormous avalanche, which many years before had rushed down the mountainside, making a path through the forest several hundred yards in width.

From this open space a fine view was had of the mountains, and of a great glacier that lay at the head of the valley--an enormous mass of ice a mile or two wide and a half mile deep, lying in a great cup in the mountainside. The glacier was covered for the most part with new fallen snow, but here and there broken surfaces showed blue or green in the light of the morning sun.

While the others looked at the ice, Joe borrowed the field glasses and began to sweep the mountains for goats, and presently found one, and then another, until at last he had made out no less than eleven of the animals. Then after a time they went on and entered the forest on the upper side of the snowslide, where the going was open and dry, and a little farther on crossed a large stream coming out of a side canyon. Not far beyond that the timber grew thinner, and presently they rode out into a little grassy park.

Just as they passed out of the timber they heard a noise of stones rattling in front of them, and a moment later the plunge of a heavy body into water, and then the cracking of branches, growing fainter and fainter.

“Ho,” said Hugh to Jack, “I reckon we started a moose or an elk here, and he’s going up the mountain.”

They rode forward and in a very few moments reached the gravelly borders of a lake which was hemmed in on three sides by mountains. Just opposite them and seen against the great dark precipice, which partly hid the glacier from their view, fell a white line of foam, the melting water of the great ice mass which supplied the lake. At the head of the lake was a narrow fringe of willows and then an open meadow of small extent, broken on one side by a low, rocky, pine-grown knoll. Behind the little meadow rose a thousand feet of black precipice, and above this was the glacier. Behind the glacier stood a jagged wall of rock, but on either side to the right and the left rose abruptly high mountains, which seemed to terminate in knife edges of naked rock. The scene was perhaps the grandest and most beautiful that Jack had ever beheld near at hand. It made him feel solemn, while Hugh’s look at these tremendous heights was full of respect and admiration.

“Son,” said Hugh, “those mountains there seem to threaten one, rather than to ask him to come on. It’s a job to get up there, and I don’t feel sure that we can do it in one day. If we go, we’ve got to start right away, and we’d better leave our animals here and take it afoot from this on.”

“Yes,” said Jack, “we can’t get the horses any further; and we may as well picket them here.”

Joe asked, “You are going to try to climb up there?”

“Why, yes, Joe,” replied Jack. “I want to get on to that ice up there if I can, and maybe look over on to the other side of the mountains.”

“Well,” said Joe, “I don’t like those mountains much; they scare me. I’d like to get back on the prairie where the sun shines warm and you can ride wherever you want to.”

“Oh, come on,” said Jack; “if you get up there, you’ll be where no Piegan has been before. Come along.”

“Come on, Joe,” said Hugh. “You may as well get used to the mountains now as any other time.”

The three tied their horses to pine trees, and took off the bridles so that they could feed. Then Hugh said, “Now, I reckon the best thing for us to do is to try to work our way around this lake and climb up that place where the water is tumbling down. It looks like a bad place, but it’s liable to be a good deal easier than it looks. We don’t know anything about these mountainsides, and if we try to go up them we’re liable to take a whole lot of time, and not get anywhere to-night. Let’s go right around this lake, crawl through the alder brush that grows at its edge, and then try to get up that flume where the water comes down. I think we can do it.”

They started off without delay, and as they reached the rough shingle at the edge of the lake, Hugh pointed to some tracks where the stones and sand were thrown up and said, “That’s what we heard a little while ago.” On the large stones it was impossible to tell just what animal had made the tracks, but before they had gone far they saw where it had come down to the lake to drink, and in the grass and in the bare soil above they found the tracks of a good-sized moose.

The work of making their way over the talus at the lake border and through the willows and alders which grew among the fallen rocks was slow and difficult. The stones were more or less covered with moss and care was needed in stepping, lest a slip should send one of the men sliding down the slope and into the cold waters below.

At last, however, they had passed through the alders and reached the rocky promontory where the going was open, and passing over this, were soon in the open meadow below the precipice, where they took a moment’s breathing spell, then started on, breasting a steep shoulder which gave an easy ascent for a couple of hundred feet to the lowest step of the cliff they wished to climb. Soon they reached the ledge and walked along it until they came to the very bed of the falls, and here began the serious work of the day.

The icy torrent which for ages had been flowing over this precipice had cut for itself a deep channel. On one side or the other of this channel the rock had fallen away so as to furnish here a crevice, there a projecting knob, which gave hand or foothold to the climber. At times, to be sure, they found before them a smooth, naked cliff which could not be climbed, and then search must be made along its face for a place up which they could pass.

They climbed slowly and carefully, often crossing the stream from one side to the other, clinging to little spruce trees that grew in the crevices of the rock, thrusting their fingers into cracks and fitting their feet on some knob or projecting splinter that would give them support. Slowly they worked their way upward, inch by inch, foot by foot.

Often the crossing of the stream was nervous work, for the boulders which lay in it were worn smooth as glass, and the fine mist which rose from the falling waters froze to the rocks, making them very slippery. Sometimes long jumps had to be made from one to another of these rocks, often in places where a slip might cause a bad fall on rough rocks below.

About two-thirds of the way to the top of the precipice they came out on a shelf perhaps a hundred feet wide, which was almost covered by high heaped rocks and gravel--morainal drift brought down by the glacier from above. This was composed of boulders and stones of all sizes, from masses as large as a small house to grains no bigger than a pin’s head.

Here they stopped to rest, and Hugh, with his back against a great rock, smoked a comforting pipe.

Close at hand they could see the beauty of the white, quivering falls rushing down the cliff, often by vertical plunges of a hundred feet or more, or down steep inclines, and in one place they had worn a deep fissure in the slate and shot down with a hissing sound thirty or forty feet back from one who looked in on them from the narrow opening of the crevice. Everywhere there was spray and dampness, and Jack was reminded in some respects of the high mountain torrents which he had seen during his famous canoe trip in British Columbia.

From here the going was much easier. The precipice was no longer vertical, but ascended in a series of huge steps to the level of the glacier.

There they began to see, at the lower border of the ice, vast quantities of drift spread far and wide, and to the right high naked ridges lying parallel to the course of the ice river. The crests of these ridges were sometimes fifty or sixty feet above the surface of the ice which lay against them and from a quarter to a half mile in length. At its lower border, the glacier had melted and had been covered with stones, so that it was hard to say just where the ice ended and the drift which it had carried before it began.

The main body of the glacier lay in the cup-shaped depression already spoken of, but high up on the rock wall behind it and to the left, was another enormous mass of ice looking like a huge snowball thrown against the wall. Its size was very great, but there was no means of estimating it. Hugh thought that the lower ice was two miles across, and nearly a mile deep.

At first the climbers had eyes only for the ice and the mountains which lay in front of them, but presently Joe happened to look behind him down the valley, and there, far, far away, was the yellow prairie shining in the warm sunshine. Joe called the attention of the others to this, saying, “Don’t it look nice down there?”

The climb had taken much less time than had been anticipated, not that the height to which they had ascended had been less than they had thought, but because the way had been very direct and they had wasted little time in resting or loitering.

After their first view, Hugh led the way to a little grassy spot just outside of one of the moraines and, sitting down in a sheltered spot, said, “Let’s sit here and smoke a pipe, and then get up as high as we can and see the whole show; and then we can turn around and go back.” As they sat there they had a fine view of the valley below them.

“Isn’t it a fine thing, Hugh,” said Jack, “to get up here and see just how this glacier is acting? Don’t you remember how Mr. Fannin explained glaciers to us; how simple and easy he made it to understand how they acted? I don’t think I shall ever forget the way he talked about them, and I don’t think I shall ever see one without looking for the things that he explained to us.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “that’s so, he sure did make things plain, and I don’t wonder that you remember what he said. I was thinking of him when we got up here, but one of the things that seems queerest to me about this ice is that it’s all made of snow. He said it was, and now we can see for ourselves that it is. I was looking as we came along, and you can see places just at the edges of the snow where it seems to be changing to ice. I guess the snow just gets solider and solider, and then gets water soaked and makes real ice.”

“Of course,” said Jack, “that must be it. When I was a small boy I used to make snow forts and defend them with snowballs, and sometimes the fellows would make the snowballs when the weather was warm and the snow was melting, and if it froze that night, they would be just solid ice. To get hit with one of those ice balls was a good deal like getting hit with a stone.”

“Well,” said Hugh, “I expect if no more snow fell up here this piece of ice would just melt away and leave nothing but the hole that it’s laying in--just a sort of a basin in the side of the mountain.”

“Yes,” said Jack, “I guess that’s so. I think that’s what Mr. Fannin told us; that a glacier was a glacier, because it was constantly being added to at its upper end, and the weight of the snow and ice was pushing it along over the mountainside. I take it that a snowbank might be ice at the bottom, perhaps, but that if it doesn’t move it isn’t a glacier.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “I reckon that’s so. I took notice of another thing,” he went on, “as we were coming along. Did you see how this ice seems to be in layers? Some of ’em are half an inch thick and some of ’em an inch, and there seems to be a thin crust of dirt that separates one layer from another.”

“Yes,” said Jack, “I noticed that, and I was wondering how it could happen, or what it meant.”

“Well, I was figuring on that very thing,” said Hugh, “and it seemed to me that these little layers of dirt must be the dust and dirt blown off the mountainside by the wind after each fall of snow.”

“Well, Hugh,” said Jack, “that seems a natural explanation. We all know how the wind is always blowing up here, and we all know that old snow is always dusty. I guess you’re right.”

By this time Hugh’s pipe was smoked out, and he rose to his feet and said, “Come on, we’ve got to stretch our legs some more and see if we can go up to the ridge. There looks to be a low place up ahead of us, and maybe if we can get up there we can see over the range. Look out for yourselves when you are walking over this smooth ice. If a man slips on one of these steep places, he’s liable to go a long way before stopping.”

The caution was a wise one, and for some distance they walked along carefully, keeping either on the moraine or on the very edge of the ice, or choosing a path where the snow was old and hard and gave a firm footing.

At one point, however, Joe tried to make a short cut by climbing over some old snow which was quite steep. Before he had gone very far the others saw him begin to dig his feet into the hard snow as if uncertain of his footing, then he slipped, recovered himself, stood for an instant as if doubtful whether to go backward or forward, took another step and then his feet flew out from under him and he began to slide down the slope. It looked very funny to see him flying over the snow, but Hugh did not laugh, for he feared that possibly the boy might go on until he brought up against rough rocks below. Luckily nothing of this kind happened, and after going about a hundred yards at a high rate of speed, Joe ran into some soft snow and his momentum was checked. He stopped, rose to his feet, and making his way cautiously back to the edge of the rocks, took the safe but longer road that his companions had followed.

Hugh and Jack waited until he had come up, and then Hugh, shaking his head, said to him, “That wasn’t very smart, Joe. You’d better not try any more experiments of that kind; it’s dangerous. A man may slip any time on one of these smooth icy slopes, and if he does he never can tell where he’ll stop. You might have slid down there and brought up against the rocks, and broken some bones or killed yourself, and then we’d have had a hard time packing you down this hill and taking you into the agency. Then, besides that, sometimes these big pieces of ice are all cracked and full of holes, and if anyone should slip into one of those he might go down to the bottom and get killed by the fall on the rocks below, or if he stuck somewhere half way down he’d freeze to death before he could be hauled out. One thing we’ll have to do after this when we’re climbing in bad places; that is, to bring along a couple of sling ropes and tie ourselves together. It isn’t likely that all three of us will slip and fall at the same time, and if only one slips, the other two can haul him out.”

“That’s a mighty good idea,” said Jack; “I was scared when I saw Joe sliding down that ice. I remember reading about people climbing the mountains in Switzerland where they carry ice axes. They’re sort of like adzes, with long straight handles and a spike in the end of the handle, and are used for cutting steps in the ice or hard snow. The people who are climbing tie themselves together with ropes and go mighty slowly and carefully, so that there is no danger of more than one man slipping at the same time. They go along one by one, and when one man is moving--I mean, of course, in bad places--the others all stand still and fasten their axes in the ice or hang on to the rope, so that if he does slip, there’s no trouble about catching him. I remember reading that most of the accidents happen where people have so much confidence in themselves that they are not willing to be roped together, and some man makes a blunder and falls and the others just have to stand and look at him.”

“Well,” said Hugh, “if we’re going to do much climbing around here, we ought to fix ourselves out in some such way as that. I tell you I’m too old myself to try any of these experiments.

“Come on, now,” he continued, as he turned and started up the ridge, “let’s get up here to a sheltered place and then we can sit down and eat a bite. I put some bread and bacon in my pocket this morning when we started, and we may as well eat and smoke a pipe before we go on.”