The forest fire was about done. Just a little smoke drifted up, in the distance behind and below. But from our march we could see where the fire had passed through the timber, yonder across; and that blackened swath was a melancholy sight. We didn't stop for nooning, and when we made an early camp the crack had opened out, and was a pass, sure enough.
Red Fox Scout Van Sant and I were detailed to take the two rifles and hunt for rabbits. We got three—two cottontails and a jack—among the willows where a stream flowed down from the pass. The stream was swarming here with little trout, and Jed Smith and Kit Carson caught twenty-four in an hour. So we lived high again.
Those Red Fox Scouts had a fine outfit. They had a water-proof silk tent, with jointed poles. It folded to pocket size, and didn't weigh anything at all; but when set up it was large enough for them both to sleep in. Then they had a double sleeping bag, and blankets that were light and warm both, and a lot of condensed foods and that little alcohol stove, and a complete kit of aluminum cooking and eating ware that closed together—and everything went into those two packs.
They used the packs instead of burros or pack-horses. I believe that animals are better in the mountains where a fellow climbs at ten and twelve thousand feet, and where the nights are cold so he needs more bedding than lower down. Man-packs are all right in the flat timber and in the hills out East, I suppose. But all styles have their good points, maybe; and a Scout must adapt himself to the country. We all can't be the same.
Because the Red Fox Scouts were Easterners, clear from New Jersey, and we were Westerners, of Colorado, we sort of eyed them sideways, at first. They had such a swell outfit, you know, and their uniform was smack to the minute, while ours was rough and ready. They set up their tent, and we let them—but our way was to sleep out, under tarps (when we had tarps), in the open. We didn't know but what, on the march, they might want to keep their own mess—they had so many things that we didn't. But right away a good thing happened again.
"How did Fitzpatrick lose his arm?" asked Scout Van Sant of me, when we were out hunting and Fitz couldn't hear.
"In the April Day mine," I said.
"Where?"
He studied. "I thought the name of that town sounded awfully familiar to me," he said.