Pluck on the Long Trail; Or, Boy Scouts in the Rockies

by Edwin L. Sabin

You may believe that now I was mighty hungry and thirsty, and I was tired, too. This was a fine place to see from, and I sat on a ledge and looked about, mapping the country. That was Pilot Peak, away off on the left; and that was the Medicine Range, on either side of it. It was the range that we Scouts must cross, if ever we got to it. But between me and the range lay miles of rolling timber, and all about below me lay the timber, with here and there bare rocky points sticking up like the tips of breakers in an ocean and here and there little winding valleys, like the oily streaks in the ocean. Away off in one valley seemed to be a cleared field where grain had been cut; but no ranch house was there. It was just a patch. In all this big country I was the only inhabitant—I and the wild things.

Well, I must camp for the night. The sun was setting behind the mountains. If I tried traveling blind by night I might get all tangled up in the timber and brush and be in a bad fix. Up here it was dry and open and the rocks would shelter me from the wind. I tried to be calm and reasonable and use Scout sense; and I decided to stay right where I was, till morning.

But jiminy, I was hungry and thirsty, and I wanted a fire, too. This was pretty good experience, to be lost without food or drink or matches, or even a knife—it was pretty good experience if I managed right.

There were plenty of dead dried branches scattered here among the rocks, and pack-rats had made a nest of firewood. But first, as seemed to me, I must get a drink and something for supper. I had only that one arrow to depend on, for game, and if I waited much longer then I might lose it in the dusk. Not an easy shot had shown itself, either, during all the time I had been traveling.

Water was liable to be down there somewhere, in those valleys, and I looked to see which was the greenest or which had any willows. To the greenest it seemed a long way. Then I had a clue. I saw a flock of grouse. They sailed out from the timber and across and slanted down into a gulch. More followed. They acted as if they were bound somewhere on purpose, and I remembered that grouse usually drink before they go to bed.

These were so far away, below me, that I couldn't make out whether they were sage grouse, or the blue grouse, or the fool grouse. If they were sage grouse, I might not get near enough to them to shoot sure with my one arrow. If they were blue grouse, that would be bad, too, for blue grouse are sharp. If they were fool grouse, I ought to get one. I marked exactly where they sailed for, and down I went, keeping my eye on the spot. Now I must use Scoutcraft for water and food. If I couldn't manage a fire, I could chew meat raw.

Yes, I remembered that it was against the law to kill grouse, yet. I thought about it a minute; and decided that the law did not intend that a starving person should not kill just enough for meat when he had nothing else. I was willing to tell the first ranger or game warden, and pay a fine—but I must eat. And I hoped that what I was trying to do was all right. Motives count, in law, don't they?

Down I went, as fast as I could go. The sun was just sinking out of sight. It was the lonesome time of day for a fellow without fire or food or shelter, in the places where nobody lived, and I wouldn't have objected much if I'd been home at the supper table.

I reached the bottom of the hill. It ended at the edge of some aspens. Their white trunks were ghostly in the twilight. Across through the aspens I hurried, straight as I could go; and I came out into a grassy, boggy place—a basin where water from the hills around was seeping! Hurrah! It was a regular spring, and the water ran trickling away, down through a gulch.

Grasses grew high: wild timothy and wild oats and gama grass, mingled with flowers. Along the trickle were willows, too. With the aspens and the willows and the seed grasses and the water this was a fine place for grouse. I looked for sign, on the edge of the wetness, and I saw where birds had been scratching and taking dust baths, in a patch of sage.