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

by Edwin L. Sabin

But we sailed into it, stamping and kicking and driving it back from the brush.

"Wet your blanket, Jed," I ordered, "while we fight."

A creek was near, luckily; Jed wet his blanket, and we each in turn wet our blankets; and swiping with the rolls we smashed the line of fire right and left, and had it out in just a few minutes.

Now a big blackened space was left, like a blot; and the burning and our trampling about had destroyed most of the sign. But we must learn what had happened. We got busy again.

We picked up the cow-path, back in the gulch, and found that the burros had followed it this far. We found where the burros had been grazing and standing, in the brush, near the burned area, and we found where horses had been standing, too! We found fish-bones, and coffee-grounds dumped from the little bag they had been boiled in, and a path had been worn to the creek. We found in the timber and brush near by other sign, but we missed the second warning sign. However, where the fire had not reached, on the edge of the park, we found several pieces of rope, cut, lying together, and in a soft spot of the turf here we found the hob-nail prints of the Elk Patrol! By ashes we found where the main camp-fire had been, and we found where a second smaller camp-fire had been, at the edge of the park, and prints of shoes worn through in the left sole—the shoes of the beaver man! We found a tin plate and fork, by the big camp-fire, and wrapped in a piece of canvas in a spruce was a hunk of bacon. By circling we found an out-going trail of horses and burros. We found the out-going trail of the beaver man—or of a single horse, anyway, but no shoe prints with it. But looking hard we found Scout sole prints in the horse and burro trail.

By this time it was growing dusk, and Jed Smith was sick because he had drunk too much water out of the creek, when he was tired and hot and hungry. So we decided to stay here for the night. From the signs we figured out what might have happened:

According to the tracks, the burro thieves had joined with this camp. Our fellows had sighted the burro thieves, back where the "Look out" sign had been made, and had circuited the draw so as to keep out of sight themselves, and had taken the trail again on the ridge. They had followed along that cow-path, and had been ambushed. The cut ropes showed that they had been tied. This camp had been here for two or three days, because of the path worn to the creek and because of the coffee grounds and the fish bones and the other sign. It was a dirty camp, too, and with its unsanitary arrangements and cigarette butts and tobacco juice was such a camp as would be made by that town gang. The sign of the cut ropes looked like the town gang, too. The camp must have broken up in a hurry, and moved out quick, by the things that were forgotten. Campers don't forget bacon, very often. The cut ropes would show haste, and we might have thought that the Scout prisoners had escaped, if we hadn't found their sole prints with the out-going trail. These prints had been stepped on by burros, showing that the burros followed behind. What the beaver man was doing here we could not tell.

So we guessed pretty near, I think.

Little Jed Smith had a splitting headache, from heat and work and water-drinking. His tongue looked all right, so I decided it was just tiredness and stomach. One of the blankets was dry; we wrapped him up and let him lie quiet, with a wet handkerchief on his eyes, and I gave him a dose of aconite, for fever. (Note 51.)

At this time, we know now, General Ashley and Thomas Fitzpatrick were being hustled along one trail, captives to the gang; the beaver man was on a second trail, with our message; and Jim Bridger was on his lone scout in another direction, and just about to make a camp-fire with his hob-nails and a flint.