CHAPTER XVIII

AMONG THE ICEFIELDS

The next morning they rose late, for the previous day had been long and hard. At breakfast Hugh said, “Now, to-day, let’s picket the pack horses and ride up on the mountains prospecting, and see whether we can camp over there where that big snow bank lay when we were here last. I have an idea that we’ll find most of the snow gone and that we’ll have dry ground to camp on and some little feed near by for the horses.”

Soon after breakfast they made ready to start.

“They say lightning don’t strike twice in the same place,” remarked Hugh, “but then it might, so I’m going to hang up all our stuff in one of these trees, where it will be out of the reach of the bears. If they get to mixing up our things once or twice more, we won’t have anything to eat, and we’ll have to go back to the Agency for grub. They’d like mighty well, I reckon, to get at this sheep meat, and if they could ever get hold of that sheep head of yours, son, they’d carry it off in the brush, and you never would find it.”

Some little time was spent in making up the bundles and in putting them in places of safety in the trees. Then they saddled the horses, and climbing the steep game trail that led to the valley above, found themselves once more on the high bench on the mountainside. Here on the flat rocks there were still great expanses of snow, but it was melting fast, and clear torrents of water ran toward the river in the valley below.

Among the rocks was the same wealth of wild flowers that they had seen when they were here before, but the flowers were much more advanced and many of the blossoms had withered and seemed now to be forming seed-pods.

They had not gone far when an old mother ptarmigan hopped up in front of them and performed the familiar ruse of fluttering along the ground with hanging wings, as if wounded. They looked carefully for the chicks, which they knew must be near at hand, but could not see them. No doubt they were lying immediately under their eyes hidden in crevices of the rock, looking just like the little stones that were scattered everywhere.

Across the valley the green timber was now showing black above the paler grass which carpeted the soil, and Joe said, “I reckon we can camp over there all right, White Bull.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “it looks so, doesn’t it? Anyhow, we’ll go over and see. You can’t always tell so far off as this.”

They crossed the stream at its head among the great rounded boulders that had been carried down by the ice, and the roar of the fall coming over the precipice almost deafened them. When they had left it a little behind, Jack asked Hugh, “Where do you suppose all that water comes from?”

“Why,” said Hugh, “I reckon it comes from an awful lot of snow and ice that lies on the mountainside up above there. I wouldn’t be a mite surprised if up there we were to find a glacier two or three times as big as the one where you killed the sheep. There’s an awful lot of room back between this place where the water falls over and the tops of the mountains. We’ll get there in the course of a day or two, if we find a good camping place, as I think we will.”

Hugh’s prediction as to the possibility of camping here was right. The snow was gone, the ground had dried off, and the grass had started thick and green.

Hugh seemed well pleased and selected a place for the camp, declaring that the best thing they could do would be to go right back, pack up and move here.

“It’s true,” he said, “there isn’t feed enough just now to keep the horses, but we can turn them loose over across the creek, where there is good feed, and can bring them in here and tie them up nights, if we want to. I don’t believe that they’ll go off, even if we leave them over there, though it’s rather far from camp, and of course something might scare them and give us some trouble to hunt them up.”

When they reached camp they put the packs on their animals and returning, pitched their tent in a pretty little grove of stunted spruces, close to the edge of a tiny rivulet, where wood was plentiful and there was some grass.

From here they could look out on a dozen splendid mountain peaks, some of them covered with perpetual snow, and with great fields of white snow on the sides of others that seemed to indicate glaciers flowing down their slopes.

Early next morning the three set out to explore this alpine valley, or rather, the mountains which surround it. Opposite them, to the west, rose the huge mountain along whose sides they had now passed several times. To the south of it was a saddle, beyond which again rose a rocky ridge, rising toward a point that was hidden from view by the high cliff to the south, over which came the great water fall that fed the large stream which was the main river. Opposite this saddle, and so to the east of the camp, was a valley in which grew some pine timber, and which seemed to rise by a gentle ascent to very high rocky peaks that were bare of snow.

“Which way shall we go, Hugh?” said Jack. “We have a lot of country to travel over, though of course we don’t know how far we can go in any direction.”

“No,” said Hugh, “we’ve got to learn that for ourselves. Now the horses are a little tired; they’ve been traveling pretty steadily for two or three days now, what do you say to leaving them to feed here and crossing over the creek and walking up that snow slope to yon saddle, and seeing what there is on the other side of it? I reckon that here we’re about as close to the Divide as we can get, and I guess likely that if we can reach that crest of rock that lies above the snow and look over it, we’ll be seeing waters that flow into the Flat Head Lake, and so into the Pacific Ocean. If we can get up on to that ridge, we may be able to see what it is that lies off to the south of us here, which is toward the Cut Bank Pass.”

“I’d like to do that,” said Jack. “How do you feel about it, Joe?”

“Well,” answered Joe, “I’d like to see it, only I don’t want to go sliding round, the way I did the other day. I tell you I was scared that time. I couldn’t hold myself back, and I didn’t know what was going to happen to me.”

“Yes,” said Jack, “I was scared, too. It would be pretty bad luck if one of us got hurt and had to be nursed up here in the mountains, or packed in to the Agency to find a doctor.”

“Well,” said Hugh, “you boys have got to be careful wherever you go, and you must think about what your carelessness might cost other people.

“Now, if we go up over that snow, we’ve got to try to fix ourselves out for it. We’d better each one of us take a kind of walking stick to hold on with, and a rope, so that if we get in any place where the going is right bad we can tie ourselves together, and go mighty careful, one at a time, the way Jack was telling us the other day that those mountain-climbing fellows do in Europe. I’ll take the ax and go over into this small timber across the creek, and cut some sticks for us to use.”

The boys went with Hugh, and in a few minutes returned with three long slender poles, from which, with ax and knife, all the branches and roughness were soon trimmed. Hugh pointed the larger ends of the poles and then told the boys to thrust them into the fire so that they might become charred and hardened. In that way they would last and be effective much longer. Then Hugh took a couple of sling-ropes off the pack saddles, and coiling them up, put one over his right shoulder and under his left arm, and gave the other to Joe, who carried it the same way.

It was but a few minutes’ walk over meadows, green with new springing grass and bright with wild flowers, to the ledges down which they passed to get to the stream. This was easily crossed by springing from rock to rock, and a little later they were slowly trudging over the old snow upon an icefield.

Just before reaching the snow, Hugh pointed out little brooklets running through the drift and gravel, whose milk-white waters showed that they came from under a glacier.

“You remember, I reckon, son,” he said to Jack, “what Fannin told us about the way the masses of ice and the loose rocks under it ground up the soil and rock over which the ice passed, and made the water milky with this powdered rock. This must be what we see here, and we can be sure, I reckon, that this is a glacier.”

“Yes,” said Jack, “I guess there’s no doubt about that, especially when we see that big moraine off there to the right. That must have been made by the glacier, though it looks as if that had been done a long time ago.”

“That’s what,” said Hugh, “a long time ago. But seeing that moraine there makes me think that maybe it would be a good plan to get on that and walk along as far as it goes. I’ve seen these glaciers sometimes that were all cracked and full of holes, and sometimes the holes were bridged with snow, so that a man might break through the snow and fall into one of them. Let’s get on the moraine and walk along that, and then when we have to walk over the snow, rope ourselves together.”

Edging to the right, they soon came to the steep-sided moraine, and after a little search found a place where they could ascend it and walk along its very sharp crest. It was a place for careful walking, since the crest was a sharp knife-edge and they had to walk with one foot on either side of the ridge, with a drop of fifty or sixty feet below if a misstep were made. Before they had gone very far, Joe, who was bringing up the rear, called, “I don’t like this very much. I am afraid I am going to fall.”

“Nonsense,” said Hugh, “you won’t fall, but if you feel as if you were going to, you better sit down astride of the ridge, take your rope and tie one end of it about your waist and throw the other end to Jack. Then he can tie that about his waist, and I’ll throw my rope back and he can tie himself to that, too.”

Joe stopped and stood there for a moment and then called out, “No, I’m all right now. Go ahead and I’ll follow, but don’t go too fast.”

They went on very deliberately, and presently Hugh reached the end of the moraine and stepped off on to the snow, where a moment later he was joined by Jack and Joe.

“Now,” said Hugh, “let’s put these ropes on, leaving a little slack in our hands. Then if any one of the three sees that one of the others is going to slip or fall, he must stand still and do the best he can to support his partner. Look out, too,” he went on, “about where you’re stepping. Try to follow as nearly as you can just where I go, and I’ll try the snow with my stick, and if I find a soft place we’ll go around it.”

They started up the snow slope, directing their course toward the side of the great mountain, until they had come pretty close to it. Then Hugh turned off to the left, and plodded steadily along, vigorously punching the snow with his pole. Occasionally he stopped to rest and to draw a few deep breaths, and on one of these occasions Hugh said to Jack, “You can see, son, why I don’t want to get close to the mountains here,” and he waved his hand toward the rocks, at the foot of which Jack saw many places where recent snowslides from high up on the mountain had rushed down and thrown great masses of snow and even great pieces of rock far out on the slope which they were ascending.

“As the sun gets higher,” Hugh went on, “and the rocks get warm, this snow loosens its hold on the mountain, and sometimes a very little thing will break the last hold it has, and the whole mass will come rushing down. We don’t want to get close enough under the rocks to have any of that stuff hit us.”

“Well, White Bull,” asked Joe, “why don’t you keep far out from the mountain?”

“It’s like this,” replied Hugh; “you see out there in the middle of the ice the slope is steepest, and there in the middle is where the ice moves fastest. For that reason it’s more likely to be cracked and broken there, and it’s into those crevices that a man might slip and get hurt. We want to dodge those cracks in the ice on the one hand, and the falling snow and rocks on the other, and that is just what I’m trying to do.”

“I tell you, Hugh,” said Jack, admiringly, “you seem to see everything and to think of everything.”

“Oh, no,” replied Hugh, “there’s lots of things that I don’t see and lots of things that I don’t think of, but, of course, a man that’s been a long time in the mountains gets to know some things, and if he’s got any sense he tries to keep himself out of danger.”

For an hour or two more they climbed steadily, always keeping near the rim of the great basin, yet well away from the rocks, and at last they were on snow that was almost level, and well up toward a wall of rock, which sometimes stood up high, or again was broken down and so low that it was but six or eight feet above the level of the snow. Gradually they drew near to this wall, which was bare of snow and from which, therefore, Hugh anticipated no danger, until at last they had come so close to it that it seemed that they might reach it at almost any point.

Hugh kept on to a place where the wall was quite broken down, and then, turning, reached the edge of the snow and stepped across to the rocks, where the others joined him.

Through the opening where they were standing they could see mountains, and, taking two or three steps forward, looked into a black gorge full of snow and ice, from which a narrow valley led away to the southwest. It was the coldest, most desolate place that any of them had ever looked into. Below, a precipice fell away a sheer thousand feet, and then, piled up in the valley, one could not tell how thickly, was the snow, sometimes broken and showing green ice beneath it, and sometimes with an immense peak of rock sticking out through it. There was no life to be seen, and no green thing; only black rocks, white snow and dark ice.

“My,” said Jack, “that’s a terrible place.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “it would be mighty lonesome for a man who was put down anywhere in there.”

“I don’t like to look at it,” said Joe, “it scares me. I don’t like these mountains. I like the prairie, where it’s warm and where you can see a long way.”

“Do you suppose that anything lives down there, Hugh?” said Jack.

“Well, I don’t know,” was the answer. “I reckon likely the goats go down there in summer to get cool, but how they get up here again if they go down there, I don’t know. Maybe there are some places where a goat or a man could get down, but I can’t see them from here.”

“Well,” said Jack, “I’d hate to go hunting down there, and I don’t believe I’d go if I saw a dozen goats.”

“No,” said Hugh, “I don’t reckon you would. I think it would be better to try to find some easier place to do your hunting. It’s scary looking.”

They spent a long time looking down into this gulf, and the longer they looked the more dark and forbidding it seemed. Hugh said that the waters from the melting snow and ice must run down into some river that entered Flat Head Lake, but what river it was he did not know, for he had never been in the mountains on the other side of the range.

At length, retreating from the edge of the precipice, they went out to the other side of the rocks, and, sitting down, ate the little lunch of fried sheep meat and bread that they had brought in their pockets. Then Hugh smoked his pipe, and presently they started to return to camp.

“How are you going back, Hugh?” asked Jack. “The way we came or some other way?”

“No,” said Hugh, “the way we came is good enough for me. I know I can get back that way, and, if we try some other road, I don’t feel sure that we won’t meet some steep slope or some big crack that will stop us. I took notice as we came up this morning that the snow on the other side of the basin looks mighty steep, and I don’t want to imitate Joe and go sliding around the way he did. Let’s go back the way we came, and then if we want to try some other way, if we ever come here again, we can try it from the bottom, and if we get stopped we can go back to camp.”

Adjusting their ropes, they started on the return journey. The heat of the sun had decidedly affected the snow, and it was much softer than when they had come up a few hours before. This made the walking easier, and their progress down the slope was much more rapid, so that the afternoon was only half spent when they found themselves once more in camp.

None of the horses were in sight, and they at once set out to look for them, and after considerable search found them all together not very far from camp, but a little way down the hill, where the grass grew thicker and greener than close to the camp.

“Now, boys,” said Hugh, “I’ll tell you what we’ve got to do. We can’t afford to lose our horses and we can’t expect them to stay close to camp where there’s no grass, so let’s take them over across the creek, and turn them loose on the other side, where the feed is better and they can’t very well get away. If they come back and cross the creek to go down hill, we will hear them, and in the morning if any of them are gone from the place where we turned them loose, we can go down the hill on this side of the creek and catch them before they have gone far.”

Hugh’s advice was acted on, and then returning to the tent they found that it was time for supper.

After supper the question came up as to what they should do to-morrow. After talking for a little while, Hugh said, “Now, son, of course, we want to keep busy and see and do all that we can up here in the mountains, but then we must remember that we’ve got pretty nearly all the time there is. We don’t need to make a labor of our fun and climb these hills every day. If you boys want to do so, you can just as well stay in camp for a day now and then, and kind of rest up. These rocks here are not going to get away, and you don’t have to climb them all to-morrow. If you feel like doing it, we can all stay in camp to-morrow and take things easy, and then start out on our travels the next day.”

“I think maybe that’s a good idea, Hugh,” said Jack. “We’ve been on the go pretty steadily ever since we came out, and maybe it would be a good idea to loaf for a day.”

“I think so, too,” agreed Joe, “and then something else, my eyes hurt me to-night. I think maybe the shine of the sun on the snow is what makes them pain.”

“Yes,” said Hugh; “we did a fool trick this morning. I didn’t think of it until we got well up on the ice, and the sun commenced to get strong. We ought to have blackened our noses before we started out. We’re all of us likely to have sore eyes to-morrow. I don’t think it will last long nor hurt much, but the sun is strong now. You see it’s mid-summer and, of course, the glare from the ice is pretty bad. After this, we must not start out over the snow without fixing up our faces.”

So after a little more talk it was determined that the next day should be spent in and about camp.

The boys were lazy about rising the next morning, and when they got up they saw Hugh sitting by the fire smoking, and noticed that the brilliant sunlight which was cut off from the camp by the great mountain that rose to the east of them, was slowly creeping down the ice field across the valley. It was late.

“Why, Hugh,” said Jack, “I guess I was more tired than I thought. I slept right through, and I had no idea it was as late as this.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “it’s pretty late. I’ve had breakfast cooked for two or three hours, and I reckon you’ll find everything pretty well dried up when you get to eating; but no matter about that, the grub is ready for you; are you ready for it?”

“I’ll be ready in about five minutes,” said Jack, as he hurried down to the little stream where they had scraped out a pool where the water had collected and which made a very good place for washing their hands and faces. Presently they were all at breakfast and enjoying their food, even if it was dried up.

After Hugh had washed the dishes, he said, “Now, boys, I’m going over to the other side of the creek there to look at the horses and see how they’re getting along, and I’ll be back in two or three hours. Anybody that wants to go with me can, and anybody that wants to stay here can stay.”

“I’ll go,” said Joe, “if you won’t make me climb over that ice.”

“No,” laughed Hugh, “I promise not to take you on to the ice, but I want to see how those horses are making out over there, and if there’s plenty of feed for them. They seemed to be well satisfied this morning.”

“I don’t believe I’ll go,” Jack said. “My eyes hurt me a little, and I think I’ll just sit here in camp, and then if I get tired of doing that I’ll take a little walk up the valley.”