Boy Scouts in Glacier Park Part 40

"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 b.u.t.ter 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 insh.o.r.e, due south, till at evening they had pa.s.sed 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 acc.u.mulated 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 ma.s.s 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, pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body quarreled with his suggestion.

CHAPTER XXVII--The Ranger and the Boys Get a Ride Down the Mountain on a Snow Avalanche, and Don't Look for Another

The following day the storm was still raging, and it kept it up till night, too. The drifts were piled half-way up the windows, shutting out their light, the rear door, leading to the stable, was completely barricaded by a drift, and they had to make periodic sallies with a shovel out of the front door, which opened on a veranda four feet above ground level, to keep that clear. It was too bitter cold, the wind too penetrating, to invite further expeditions. Even clearing the veranda in front of the door was a job they quarreled over, and finally had to a.s.sign at intervals of one hour, each person taking his turn while the other two peered out of the window to see if he did a thorough job.

But they had plenty of dry wood inside, and the acc.u.mulated newspapers of two months to read, so the day didn't drag, after all.

"And," said the Ranger, "about to-morrow, or next day, the slides will start, the real slides, this time. That'll be something worth coming out here for. There is so much of this snow that the steep places can't hold it all, and the first sun will send it down."

That night, toward morning, Joe was awakened by a sound like thunder, and sat up in his sleeping-bag, astonished.

"What's a thunder-storm doing in December?" he thought.

There was no lightning, however, and he could see outside the brilliant starlight.

"Slides!" he suddenly remembered. And as soon as it was light, he was up, getting breakfast. Breakfast over, he and Tom lost no time in getting on their snow-shoes and hurrying out, free of the woods, on the white surface of the frozen lake, with no less than eight feet of snow under them. The sun was now up over the prairie, and sending its rays up the Swift Current Valley and hitting the snow-covered peaks till they glistened rosy. And all around, from the steep walls of Gould, six miles away, to the upper precipices of the two mountains hemming in the lake over their heads, the snowslides were leaping and booming with a noise like soft thunder. It was a wonderful sight. You had no idea where or when one was going to start. A steep precipice, covered with snow, would suddenly show signs of life, the snow high up would start slipping, and as the ma.s.s descended it would grow in volume, sweeping the slope beneath it and sending up a comet's tail of snow-dust, till it ran out with a boom and a roar upon the less steep slopes below. All around the slides were running, and the steep places seemed fairly to smoke with the comet tails of snow-dust.

"Of course," said Mills, when he was ready to set out, "these slides now are just top snow, the latest fall sliding off the very steep places, and doing little or no harm. In spring the bad ones come, when the whole winter ma.s.s, and all the ice and rocks it has gathered up, come down.

Then, once in a great while, a third kind will descend--the acc.u.mulated snow and ice and rock dust of maybe half a century or more. That kind always chooses a place where there hasn't been a slide before, wipes out forests as it comes, and sometimes houses and people in the valleys. The slides to-day all follow regular channels. I know where there'll probably be a good one."

He led the way up toward the Divide, by a side tributary of the Swift Current. They climbed steadily a long way up toward the steep head wall, leaving the deep brook bed at the danger point, and working on the side slope above it. Finally they reached a point where they were almost under the steep wall, and separated from the brook channel by a ma.s.s of rock. Here they waited. They had not long to wait. Suddenly, without any warning, the snow almost above them started slipping, and in a few seconds was coming down the brook bed at a tremendous rate, pushing all the last snowfall and some of the old ahead of it as it came. By the time it reached the point just below Mills and the two scouts, it was apparently going thirty miles an hour, with a head about forty feet high, the whole ma.s.s maybe fifty or a hundred feet wide and two hundred feet long, and churning, foaming, falling over and over itself with a great, booming roar and sending out a perfect gale of snow-dust.

As it rushed past, the noise was so great that no one heard a lesser roar behind him. Without any warning, a smaller slide had started just above the three observers, no doubt caused by the jar and shock of the first, and suddenly the snow boiled up under their feet, they were launched downward on this second slide, and found themselves on the tail end of the big one.

Then followed the wildest ride any of them had ever had, or ever wanted to have.

Of course, it was only their wide western snow-shoes that saved their lives. In a second, they were on the tail of the big slide, riding on top of fifty feet of boiling, churning, racing snow, that was by this time going down-hill at close to a mile a minute. If you have ever run logs on a river, you know what a slippery job that is. But imagine the logs leaping up and down as well as rolling around, and traveling a mile a minute down-hill into the bargain, and finally casting up a deluge of powdered snow-dust into your face, and you will have some idea of the job that confronted Mills and Tom and Joe.

No one dared look at the others. No one could speak, or make himself heard six inches from his mouth if he did open it. Each of them looked at his own feet, or tried to through the blinding snow powder, and just trod snow desperately, to keep upright. To fall down meant to be churned in under the boiling ma.s.s, and probably suffocated, or crushed to death.