We passed up a cleft in the hills, and were swallowed up in the pine and cedar forest. Presently the cleft ended, and nothing but good honest climbing was in front. There began my first experience in riding over the fallen timber, which obstructs all the northwestern Rocky Mountains. Once up in British Columbia I did it, but had trails, and I childishly imagined that there must also be trails wherever men wanted to go. Crisscross and all about lay the great peeled logs, and travel was slow, toilsome, and with anything but horses trained to it would have been impossible.
A good horse or mule, once accustomed, makes little of it, but on the steep down grades the situation is complicated by fallen logs, which it is necessary to “bucket” over, and then stop dead on an incline of 50°, with a couple of miles of tumble if he fails. The timber grew thicker, and when Burgess would get us in a hopeless sort of place, Captain A. would sing out to Captain S., “Burgess is on the trail now”; and when it was fairly good going, “Now he is off.” But nothing could rattle Mr. Burgess, and he continued calmly on his journey, the destination of which, it seemed, could be nothing short of the moon. Finally we found ourselves seemingly so inextricably tangled up that even Burgess had to scratch his head. One mule was hung up hopelessly, while the rest crowded around us into the chevaux-de-frise of logs, and merrily wound through the labyrinth the old Sixth Cavalry “gag,” “Here’s where we trot.”
To complete the effect of this passage it began to rain, and shortly to pelt us with hailstones, so we stopped under some trees to let it pass, and two people who should know better dismounted and got their saddles wet, while another, more wise in his generation, sat tight, and was rewarded later for his display of intelligence. By-and-by, wet and tired of fallen timber, we came into the Little Fire-hole Basin, and found buffalo signs in abundance. We were in great hopes of seeing some of these animals, but I may as well add that only one was seen on the trip, though there was fresh spoor, and they were undoubtedly about. We found no pony tracks either, which was more to the soldiers’ liking, since they are intrusted with the protection of the Park against poachers.
In this way squads are sent over the Park, and instructed not to follow the regular trails, but to go to the most unfrequented places, so that they may at any time happen on a malicious person, and perhaps be able to do as one scout did—photograph the miscreant with his own camera.
After a good day’s march we made camp by a little lake, and picketed our horses, while the mules ran loose around the bell-mare. Our appetites had been sharpened by a nine hours’ fast, when a soldier called us to the “commissaries” which were spread out on a pack canvas. It was the usual military “grub,” and no hungry man can find fault with that.
“Any man who can’t eat bacon can’t fight,” as Captain Scott said; so if any reader wants to be a soldier he must have a mania for bacon, it seems. “This is the stuff that makes soldiers brave,” he added, as the coffee-pot came around, and we fell to, and left a dreary waste of empty tins for the cook to pick up. We lighted our pipes after the banquet on the grass, and walked down to the shore of the beautiful pond, which seemed so strangely situated up there on the very crest of the continental divide. There are only three seasons in these altitudes, which the boys divide into July, August, and Winter, and the nights are always chilly. An inch or two of snow may fall even in mid-summer. In winter the snow covers the ground to a great depth, as we can tell by the trees. Nothing grows but rather stunted fir and pine and a little grass of the most hardy variety. The rounds of the Park are then made by mounting the cavalry on the ski, or Norwegian snow-shoe, and with its aid men travel the desolate snow-clad wilderness from one “shack” to another. Small squads of three or four men are quartered in these remote recesses of the savage mountains, and remain for eight months on a stretch. The camps are provisioned for the arctic siege, and what is stranger yet is that soldiers rather like it, and freely apply for this detached service. There is little of the “pomp and vanity” in this soldiering, and it shows good spirit on the part of the enlisted men. They are dressed in fur caps, California blanket coats, leggings, and moccasins—a strange uniform for a cavalryman, and also quite a commentary on what are commonly called the vicissitudes of the service.
DOWN THE MOUNTAIN
