Some little time was spent in making up the bundles and in putting them in places of safety in the trees. Then they saddled the horses, and climbing the steep game trail that led to the valley above, found themselves once more on the high bench on the mountainside. Here on the flat rocks there were still great expanses of snow, but it was melting fast, and clear torrents of water ran toward the river in the valley below.
Among the rocks was the same wealth of wild flowers that they had seen when they were here before, but the flowers were much more advanced and many of the blossoms had withered and seemed now to be forming seed-pods.
They had not gone far when an old mother ptarmigan hopped up in front of them and performed the familiar ruse of fluttering along the ground with hanging wings, as if wounded. They looked carefully for the chicks, which they knew must be near at hand, but could not see them. No doubt they were lying immediately under their eyes hidden in crevices of the rock, looking just like the little stones that were scattered everywhere.
Across the valley the green timber was now showing black above the paler grass which carpeted the soil, and Joe said, “I reckon we can camp over there all right, White Bull.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “it looks so, doesn’t it? Anyhow, we’ll go over and see. You can’t always tell so far off as this.”
They crossed the stream at its head among the great rounded boulders that had been carried down by the ice, and the roar of the fall coming over the precipice almost deafened them. When they had left it a little behind, Jack asked Hugh, “Where do you suppose all that water comes from?”
“Why,” said Hugh, “I reckon it comes from an awful lot of snow and ice that lies on the mountainside up above there. I wouldn’t be a mite surprised if up there we were to find a glacier two or three times as big as the one where you killed the sheep. There’s an awful lot of room back between this place where the water falls over and the tops of the mountains. We’ll get there in the course of a day or two, if we find a good camping place, as I think we will.”
Hugh’s prediction as to the possibility of camping here was right. The snow was gone, the ground had dried off, and the grass had started thick and green.
Hugh seemed well pleased and selected a place for the camp, declaring that the best thing they could do would be to go right back, pack up and move here.
“It’s true,” he said, “there isn’t feed enough just now to keep the horses, but we can turn them loose over across the creek, where there is good feed, and can bring them in here and tie them up nights, if we want to. I don’t believe that they’ll go off, even if we leave them over there, though it’s rather far from camp, and of course something might scare them and give us some trouble to hunt them up.”