We crossed the creek, above the beaver pond, and struck off into the old survey trail that cut over the ridge. The brush was thick, and the trees had sprung up again, so that really it wasn't a regular trail unless you had known about it. The blazes on the side trees had closed over. But all the same, by watching the scars, and by keeping in the line where the trees always opened out, and by watching the sky as it showed before, we followed right along.
After we had been traveling about two hours, we heard thunder and that made us hustle the more, to get out of the thin timber, so that we would not be struck by lightning. (Note 24.) The wind moaned through the trees. The rain was coming, sure.
The trail was diagonally up-hill, all the way, and if we had been cigarette smokers we wouldn't have had breath enough to hit the fast pace that General Ashley set. The burros had to trot, and it made little Jed Smith, who is kind of fat, wheeze; but we stuck it out and came to a flat place of short dried grass and bushes, with no trees. Here we stopped. We were about nine thousand feet up.
From where we were we could see the storm. It was flowing down along a bald-top mountain back from our camp at the beaver pond, and looked like gray smoke. The sun was just being swallowed. Well, all we could do was to wait and take it, and see how bad it was. We tied Sally and Apache to some bushes, but we didn't unpack them, of course. The tarps on top would keep the grub from getting wet.
The storm made a grand sight, as it rolled toward us, over the timber. And soon it was raining below us, down at the beaver pond—and then, with a drizzle and a spatter, the rain reached us, too.
We sat hunched, under our hats, and took it. We might have got under blankets—but that would have given us soaked blankets for night, unless we had stretched the tarps, too; and if we had stretched the tarps then the rest of our packs would have suffered. The best way is to crawl under a spruce, where the limbs have grown close to the ground. But not in a thunder storm. And it is better to be wet yourself and have a dry camp for night, than to be dry yourself and have a wet camp for night.
Anyway, the rain didn't hurt us. While it thundered and lightened and the drops pelted us well, we sang our Patrol song—which is a song like one used by the Black feet Indians:
"The Elk is our Medicine,
He makes us very strong.
The Elk is our Medicine,
The Elk is our Medicine,
The Elk is our Medicine,
He makes us very strong.
Ooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
And when the thunder boomed we sang at it:
"The Thunder is our Medicine—"