When they reached camp they put the packs on their animals and returning, pitched their tent in a pretty little grove of stunted spruces, close to the edge of a tiny rivulet, where wood was plentiful and there was some grass.
From here they could look out on a dozen splendid mountain peaks, some of them covered with perpetual snow, and with great fields of white snow on the sides of others that seemed to indicate glaciers flowing down their slopes.
Early next morning the three set out to explore this alpine valley, or rather, the mountains which surround it. Opposite them, to the west, rose the huge mountain along whose sides they had now passed several times. To the south of it was a saddle, beyond which again rose a rocky ridge, rising toward a point that was hidden from view by the high cliff to the south, over which came the great water fall that fed the large stream which was the main river. Opposite this saddle, and so to the east of the camp, was a valley in which grew some pine timber, and which seemed to rise by a gentle ascent to very high rocky peaks that were bare of snow.
“Which way shall we go, Hugh?” said Jack. “We have a lot of country to travel over, though of course we don’t know how far we can go in any direction.”
“No,” said Hugh, “we’ve got to learn that for ourselves. Now the horses are a little tired; they’ve been traveling pretty steadily for two or three days now, what do you say to leaving them to feed here and crossing over the creek and walking up that snow slope to yon saddle, and seeing what there is on the other side of it? I reckon that here we’re about as close to the Divide as we can get, and I guess likely that if we can reach that crest of rock that lies above the snow and look over it, we’ll be seeing waters that flow into the Flat Head Lake, and so into the Pacific Ocean. If we can get up on to that ridge, we may be able to see what it is that lies off to the south of us here, which is toward the Cut Bank Pass.”
“I’d like to do that,” said Jack. “How do you feel about it, Joe?”
“Well,” answered Joe, “I’d like to see it, only I don’t want to go sliding round, the way I did the other day. I tell you I was scared that time. I couldn’t hold myself back, and I didn’t know what was going to happen to me.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “I was scared, too. It would be pretty bad luck if one of us got hurt and had to be nursed up here in the mountains, or packed in to the Agency to find a doctor.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “you boys have got to be careful wherever you go, and you must think about what your carelessness might cost other people.
“Now, if we go up over that snow, we’ve got to try to fix ourselves out for it. We’d better each one of us take a kind of walking stick to hold on with, and a rope, so that if we get in any place where the going is right bad we can tie ourselves together, and go mighty careful, one at a time, the way Jack was telling us the other day that those mountain-climbing fellows do in Europe. I’ll take the ax and go over into this small timber across the creek, and cut some sticks for us to use.”