Bert Wilson in the Rockies

by J. W. Duffield

"They were lively scraps, all right," admitted Tom, "but we had to go out of the country to get them. In the little old United States, we've got too much civilization. Everything is cut and dried and pared and polished, until there are no rough edges left. Think of the fellows that made this trip across the continent sixty years ago in their prairie schooners, getting cross-eyed from looking for buffalo with one eye and Indians with the other, feeling their scalp every five minutes to make sure they still had it. That was life."

"Or death," put in Dick skeptically.

"Then look at us," went on Tom, not deigning to notice the interruption, "rolling along smoothly at fifty miles an hour in a car that's like a palace, with its cushioned seats and electric lights and library and bath and soft beds and rich food and servants to wait upon us. We're pampered children of luxury, all right, but I'm willing to bet that those 'horny-handed sons of toil' had it on us when it came to the real joy of living."

"Tom was born too late?" chaffed Bert. "He doesn't really belong in the twentieth century. He ought to have lived in the time of Ivanhoe, or Young Lochinvar, or the Three Musketeers, or Robin Hood. I can see him bending a bow in Nottingham Forest or breaking a lance in a tournament or storming a fortress by day, and at night twanging a guitar beneath a castle window or writing a sonnet to his lady's eyebrow."

"Well, anyhow," defended Tom, "those fellows of the olden time had good red blood in their veins."

"Yes," assented Dick drily, "but it didn't stay there long. There were too many sword points ready to let it out."

And yet, despite their good-natured "joshing" of Tom, they, quite as much as he, were eager for excitement and adventure. In the fullest sense they were "birds of a feather." In earlier and ruder days they would have been soldiers of fortune, cutting their ways through unknown forests, facing without flinching savage beasts and equally savage men, looking ever for new worlds to conquer. Even in these "piping days of peace" that they so much deplored, they had shown an almost uncanny ability to get into scrapes of various kinds, from which sometimes they had narrowly escaped with a whole skin. Again and again their courage had been severely tried, and had stood the test. At home and abroad, on land and sea, they had come face to face with danger and death. But the fortune that "favors the brave" had not deserted them, even in moments of deadliest peril. They were accustomed to refer to themselves laughingly as "lucky," but those who knew them best preferred to call them plucky. A stout heart and a quick wit had "many a time and oft" extricated them from positions where luck alone would have failed them.

And most of their adventures had been shared in company. The tie of friendship that bound them together as closely as brothers was of long standing. Beginning at a summer camp, five years earlier, where chance had thrown them together, it had grown increasingly stronger with every year that passed. A subtle free masonry had from the start made each recognize the others as kindred spirits. Since this first meeting their paths had seldom diverged. Together they had gone to college, where their athletic prowess had put them in the first rank in sports and made them popular among their comrades. On the baseball diamond they had played their positions in brilliant fashion, and on the football gridiron they had added to their laurels. When Bert had been chosen to go to the Olympic games abroad, his "pals" had gone with him and exulted in his glorious victory, when, in the Marathon race, he had beaten the crack runners of the world. Nor were they to be denied, when his duty as wireless operator had carried him over the Pacific to meet with thrilling experiences among the yellow men of Asia. In every time of storm and stress they had stood with him shoulder to shoulder, and faced life and death with eyes wide open and unafraid. They were worthy lieutenants of a brave and intrepid leader.

For, that he was their leader, they themselves would have been the first to admit, although he would have modestly disclaimed it. He never asserted leadership, but it sought him out of its own accord. He had the instinct, the initiative, the quick decision, the magnetic personality that marks the born captain. It was not merely that he was endowed with strength of muscle and fleetness of foot and power of endurance that placed him in a class by himself. He might have had all these, and still been only a superb specimen of the "human animal." But, above and controlling these qualities, was the indomitable will, the unflinching courage, the gallant audacity that made him the idol of his comrades.

The college year just ended had been a notable one, marked by victories on track and field. Together with the high rank he had reached and held in his studies, with which, unlike many athletes, he never allowed sport to interfere, it had taxed him heavily in mind and body. And it was with unfeigned delight that he now looked forward to a long season of recreation and adventure on the ranch in Montana, toward which he and his friends were speeding.