“Sam,” said Hosmer, “gimme a pipe o’ that smokin’ o’ yourn—it smells like reg’lar tobacco. I see I got to tell these boys about Baldy.” As he emptied his odorous pipe and refilled it with some of Sam’s tobacco—which, by the way, came from Mr. Mackworth’s private stock—the two boys sank on the floor at Grizzly’s feet.
“They ain’t agoin’ to be no start to it like a book story,” began Hosmer between puffs, “because they wasn’t no special beginnin’ to what I seen Ol’ Baldy do to a couple o’ lions—us only seein’ the end o’ it. So long as ye don’t know the lay o’ the land, it’s hard to tell ye whar the Bench is. Mr. Mackworth ain’t never been to it an’ he’s hunted ’bout as fur as the next one ’round here. Most gin’rally we all work up the Elk River Valley, huntin’ the hills right an’ left along the river till we git to the Fordin’ an’ then foller up that stream ur Goat Crick to head waters. Well, ef ye take Goat Crick trail to Norboe Mountain, an’ that’s better’n sixty mile from here, an’ then turn north ye kin git to the Bench by goin’ about forty mile furder north. An’ it’s some goin’ I’ll promise ye,” continued Hosmer. “That’s why we customary turned south at Norboe an’ worked the Herchmer’s.”
“Pretty high mountains, eh?” asked Frank.
“Not so high in the way o’ peaks, but gin’rally high,” went on the hunter inhaling the fragrance of his new tobacco like a perfume and contentedly crossing his legs, one of which he swung back and forth placidly. “It’s all good game country but a lot o’ folks don’t know it. The only deestrict ’at’s at all like the Bench ’at I know of is Old Crow’s Nest Mountain whar the C. P. cuts through the Rockies over on the divide. It stands out on a knob o’ ground that’s kivered with lodge pole pines. Them jack trees, seein’ ’em from a good ways off, reaches out like a blanket. An’ the Bench is punched right up through the middle o’ the blanket like a big choc’late drop, bare an’ brown. When the snow’s on it, it’s a picter. Raisin’ above them green jack pines, it’s so glarin’ white ye’d think it wuz sugar, but it ain’t; ain’t nothing sweet about it either in the way o’ bus’ness sich as mine. Ye’d think, lookin’ at the Bench over them long rollin’ stretches o’ green pine from the next range, that ye could walk up one side o’ it an’ down the other like them Egyptian pyrimids, bein’ nothin’ but big handy steps. Sich they air, but not fur men when ye come up to ’em; them steps is fifty an’ a hundred feet high. An’ they’s landin’s back o’ each o’ ’em. But how air ye goin’ to git on ’em? They is sheep trails up some o’ ’em but in most places not even them. They is places on the bench ’at the sheep jist nacherly walks up the walls an’ I seen ’em do it. Ye can’t foller ’em,” asserted Hosmer, “an’ ye don’t need to try. Therefore and hence,” he continued authoritatively, “ye kin rest assured they is a plenty o’ sheep thar, ur was, eight year ago.”
The boys were brimming with happiness. Nothing could be better suited to their desires.
“I suppose you call it the Bench because of those steps?” suggested Phil. “The sheep live on these steps I suppose, movin’ around the mountain to keep in the sun.”
“I call it the Bench,” continued Hosmer, “because it is—the top bein’ flattened off as I calc’late. It kind o’ looks like a dome an’ purty nigh a peak from the foot o’ the mountain. But ef ye see it fur enough off on a clear day, ye’ll see the top is a big bench slopin’ toward the east, as I reckon, ’though they ain’t no range over east whar ye kin git a look at it. My own idee is that there’s a sort o’ flat summit there or mebbe a sort o’ purtected basin whar the real climbers o’ them sheep go. Leastwise they don’t hang around much on the steps.”
“Couldn’t a man get up there if he was a good climber?” asked Phil, who had Koos-ha-nax and Old Indian Chief in mind.
“Fur be it from me to say positive what any man kin do ur can’t. There may be places whar a man could git his toes in here and there but I ain’t never found ’em.”
“But there might have been a trail years ago that a man could use, even if it’s gone now?” persisted Phil.