Ch. 3: The Sporting Chance

The trail began to rise to the tree-covered "bench." It twisted as it rose. Those above called cheerfully to those below. We had settled to the sedate walk of our horses, the pace which was to take us over our long itinerary. Hardly ever was it possible, during the days that followed, to go faster than a walk. The narrow, twisting trails forbade it. Now and then a few adventurous spirits, sighting a meadow, would hold back until the others had got well ahead, and then push their horses to the easy Western lope. But such joyous occasions were rare.

Up and up. The trail was safe, the grade easy. At the edge of the bench we turned and looked back. The great hotel lay below in the sunlight. Leading to it were the gleaming rails of the Great Northern Railway. We turned our horses and went on toward the snow-covered peaks ahead.

The horses moved quietly, one behind the other. As the trail rose there were occasional stops to rest them. Women who had hardly dared to look out of a third-story window found themselves on a bit of rocky shelf, with the tops of the tallest trees far below. The earth, as we had known it, was falling back. And, high overhead, Howard Eaton, at the head of the procession, was sitting on his big horse silhouetted against the sky.

The first day was to be an easy one—twelve miles and camp. "Twelve miles!" said the experienced riders. "Hardly a Sunday morning canter!" But a mountain mile is a real mile. Possibly they measure from peak to peak. I do not know. I do know that we were almost six hours making that twelve miles and that for four of it we led our horses down a mountain-side over a vacillating path of shale. Knees, that up to that point had been fairly serviceable, took to chattering. Riding-boots ceased to be a matter of pride and emerged skinned and broken. The horses slid and stumbled. And luncheon receded.

Down and down! Great granite cliffs of red and blue and yellow across the valley—and no luncheon! Striped squirrels hiding in the shale—and no luncheon! A great glow of moving blood through long-stagnant vessels, deep breaths of clear mountain air, a camera dropped on the trail, a stone in a horse's foot—and no luncheon!

Two o'clock, and we were down. The nervous woman who had never been on a horse before was cinching her own saddle and looking back and up. The saddle tightened, she sat down and emptied her riding-boots of a few pieces of rock. Her silk stockings were in tatters.

"I feel as though my knees will never meet again," she said reflectively. "But I'm so swollen with pride and joy that I could shriek."

That's what it is, partly. A sense of achievement; of conquering the unconquerable; of pitting human wits against giants and winning—a sporting chance. You may climb peaks in a railroad coach and see things as wonderful. But you are doing this thing yourself. Every mile is an achievement. And, after all, it is miraculously easy. The trails are good. The horses are steady and sure-footed. It is a triumph of endurance rather than of courage.

If you have got this far, you are one of us, and you will go on. For the lure of the high places is in your blood. The call of the mountains is a real call. The veneer, after all, is so thin. Throw off the impedimenta of civilization, the telephones, the silly conventions, the lies that pass for truth. Go out to the West. Ride slowly, not to startle the wild things. Throw out your chest and breathe; look across green valleys to wild peaks where mountain sheep stand impassive on the edge of space. Let the summer rains fall on your upturned face and wash away the memory of all that is false and petty and cruel. Then the mountains will get you. You will go back. The call is a real call.

Above the timber-line we rode along bare granite slopes. Erosion had been busy here. The mighty winds that sweep the crests of the Rockies had bared the mountains' breasts. Beside the trails high cairns of stones were piled, so that during the winter snow the rangers might find their way about. Remember, this is northwestern Montana; the Canadian border is only a few miles away, and over these peaks sweeps the full force of the great blizzards of the Northwest.

The rangers keep going all winter. There is much to be done. In the summer it is forest fires and outlaws. In the winter there are no forest fires, but there are poachers after mountain sheep and goats, opium smugglers, bad men from over the Canadian border. Now and then a ranger freezes to death. All summer these intrepid men on their sturdy horses go about armed with revolvers. But in the fall—snow begins early in September, sometimes even in August—they take to snowshoes. With a carbine strung to his shoulders, matches in a waterproof case, snowshoes and a package of food in his pocket, the Glacier Park ranger covers unnumbered miles, patrolling the wildest and most storm-ridden country in America. He travels alone. The imprint of a strange snowshoe on the trail rouses his suspicion. Single-handed he follows the marks in the snow. A blizzard comes. He makes a wikiup of branches, lights a small fire, and plays solitaire until the weather clears. The prey he is stalking cannot advance either. Then one day the snow ceases; the sun comes out. Over the frozen crust his snowshoes slide down great slopes with express speed. Generally he takes his man in. Sometimes the outlaw gets the drop on the ranger first and gets away.

During the winter of 1913 one of these rangers was frozen to death. He was caught in a blizzard, and he knew what was coming. When at last he sat down beside the trail to wait for death he placed his snowshoes points upward in the snow beside him. He sat there, and the snow came down and covered him. They found him the next day by the points of his snowshoes.

The snow melts in the summer on the meadows and in the groves. But the peaks are still covered, and here and there the trail leads through a snow-field. The horses venture out on it gingerly. The hot sun that blisters the face seems to make no impression on these glacier-like patches, snow on top and ice beneath. Flowers grow at their very borders. Striped squirrels and whistling marmots, much like Eastern woodchucks, run about, quite fearless, or sit up and watch the passing of the line of horses and riders, so close that they can almost be touched.

Great spaces; cool, shadowy depths in which lie blue lakes; mountain-sides threaded with white, where, from some hidden lake or glacier far above, the overflow falls a thousand feet or more, and over all the great silence of the Rockies! Nerves that have been tightened for years slowly relax. There is not much talking. The horses move along slowly. The sun beats down. Some one, shading his eyes with his hand, proclaims a mountain sheep or goat on a crag overhead. The word passes back along the line. Also a thrill. Then some wretched electrical engineer or college youth or skeptical lawyer produces a pair of field-glasses and announces it to be a patch of snow.

Here and there we saw "tourist goats," rocks so shaped and situated as to defy the strongest glass. The guides pointed them out and listened with silent enjoyment to the resulting acclamation. After that discovery, we adopted a safe rule: nothing was a goat that did not move. Long hours we spent while our horses wandered on with loose reins, our heads lifted to that line, just above the timber, which is Goatland. And the cry "A goat!" and the glasses, and skepticism—often undeserved.

The first night out of doors I did not sleep. I had not counted on the frosty nights, and I was cold. The next day I secured from a more provident member of the party woolen pajamas. Clad in those, and covered with all the extra portions of my wardrobe, I was more comfortable. But it takes woolen clothing and bed socks to keep out the chill of those mountain nights.

One rises early with Howard Eaton's party. No matter how late the story-tellers have held the crowd the night before around the camp-fire, somewhere about five o'clock, Howard—he is either Howard or Uncle Howard to everybody—comes calling among the silent tepees.

"Time to get up!" he calls. "Five o'clock and a fine morning. Up with you!"

And everybody gets up. There are basins about. Each one clutches his cake of soap and his towel, and fills his basin from whatever lake or stream is at hand. There is plenty of water in Glacier Park, and the camps are generally beside a lake. The water is cold. It ought to be, being glacier water, cold and blue. The air is none too warm. A few brave spirits seek isolation and a plunge bath. The majority are cowards.

Now and then a luxurious soul worried the cook for hot water. They tell of a fastidious lady who carried a small tin pail of water to the cook tent and addressed the cook nervously as he beat the morning flapjacks with a savage hand.

"Do you think," she inquired nervously, "if—if I put this water on your stove, it will heat?"

He turned and eyed her.

"You see it's like this, lady," he said. "My father was a poor man and couldn't give me no education. Damned if I know. What do you think?"

Before one is fairly dressed, with extra garments thrust into the canvas war-sack or duffle-bag which is each person's allowance for luggage, the tents are being taken down and folded. The cook comes to the end of the big tent.

"Come and get it!" he yells through hollowed hands.

"Come and get it!" is repeated down the line of tepees. That is the food call of an Eaton camp. Believe me, it has the butler's "Dinner is served, madame," beaten forty ways for Sunday. There is no second call. You go or you don't go. The long tables under the open end of the cook tent are laden with bacon, ham, fried eggs, flapjacks, round tins of butter, enameled cups of hot coffee, condensed milk, sometimes fried fish. For the cook can catch trout where the most elaborately outfitted Eastern angler fails.

The horses come in with a thudding of hoofs and are rounded up by the men into the rope corral. Watched by night herders, they have been grazing quietly all night in mountain valleys. There is not much grass for them. By the end of the three hundred-mile trip they are a little thin, although in good condition. It is the hope of the Superintendent of the Park and of others interested that the Government will soon realize the necessity for planting some of the fertile valleys and meadows with grass. There are certain grasses that will naturalize themselves there—for instance, clover, blue-joint, and timothy. Beyond the first planting they would need nothing further. And, since much of the beauty of this park will always be inaccessible by motor, it can never be properly opened up until horses can get sufficient grazing.

Sometimes, at night, our horses ranged far for food,—eight miles,—even more. Again and again I have watched my own horse nosing carefully along a green bank and finding nothing at all, not a blade of grass it could eat.

With the second day came a new sense of physical well-being, and this in spite of a sunburn that had swollen my face like a toothache. Already telephones and invitations to dinner and tailor's fittings and face powder belonged to the forgotten past. I carried over my saddle and placed it beside my horse, and a kindly and patronizing member of Howard Eaton's staff put it on and cinched it for me. I never learned how to put the thing on, but I did learn, after a day or two, to take it off, as well as the bridle and the red hackamore, and then to stand clear while my buckskin pony lay down and rolled in the grass to ease his weary back. All the horses rolled, stiff-legged. If the saddle did not come off in time, they rolled anyhow, much to the detriment of cameras, field-glasses, and various impedimenta strapped thereon.