Jack the Young Explorer: A Boy's Experiances in the Unknown Northwest

by George Bird Grinnell

The boys loosened the cinches of the saddle horses, tied them up, brought in the pack horses and saddled them, and took down the tent and packed up the meat, which by this time was quite dry. An hour later, Hugh mounted his horse and they again set out up the trail.

Jack did not clearly see how they were going to get into the valley of the other fork, as the way appeared blocked by the lake on their left, which seemed to run to the very bases of the mountains which lay on three sides of it. However, he followed Hugh and asked no questions.

Joe, however, said, “How do you suppose we’re going to get into that valley, Jack? Are we going to swim this lake?”

“You can’t prove it by me,” said Jack. “But I reckon Hugh will find a way.”

“That’s so,” said Joe, “White Bull knows how to travel in the mountains. I guess we’ll get there.”

Hugh followed the trail that they had now passed over several times, until he had reached the head of the lake, and then turning off into the forest to the left, began to pick his way toward the mountains that lay west of the lake. Before long they came to the stream along which they had traveled in the morning. It was wide, but not deep, and the bottom was hard. There was much pine timber and a good deal of marshy land through which they passed slowly and with some difficulty, but at length they came to higher ground where progress was better.

As they went on they could see sometimes through the trees the water of the lake on the left; while to the right the mountainside rose above them.

After a mile or two of this travel they came to more marshy meadow ground and then entered a belt of forest, and passing through this, found themselves in a wide willow-grown park, which evidently had once been the bed of a shallow lake.

Mountains rose on either side, and to the left they could hear the murmur of the stream. This stream they crossed and following it up, before long found themselves on the border of another long, narrow lake, hemmed in on both sides by mountains. The timber on this side grew thickly, and Hugh, instead of trying to go through it, kept out a little way in the lake, riding just beyond the overhanging branches of the trees and in water which was from six inches to a foot deep. The bottom was hard gravel—good going.

The country was absolutely wild and undisturbed, and Jack expected every moment to see or hear game in the timber. He kept looking and listening for this so intently that he neglected the bare sides of the mountains across the lake, until Joe, who was just before him, driving the pack horses that followed Hugh, turned and making a sign to attract his attention, pointed to the mountainside. Then Jack saw, lying down on the face of the cliff, far above the water and really at a great distance from him, a monstrous white goat. He was greatly impressed by the beast, which, as it lay there with its head lowered, its long beard nearly reaching to the ground, the hump on its back and its low hind quarters, reminded him very much of a buffalo.