Our travelers found themselves on the outskirts of such a place some time before noon on the day mentioned. Mountain Jim had at first thought of making a detour up a mountain side, but after a consultation it was decided to press on through the desolate waste, where charred trunks stuck up like the blackened stumps of teeth in an old man’s jaws.
As they plunged into the brulee they found their ponies sinking over the fetlocks in the ashes. In places, huge piles of trunks, burned through at the base, lay like barriers across their path, and it was necessary to go around them to find a passable way. Long before they were out of the wretched place the water in their canteens was gone, and their throats were clogged and lips cracked from the dry, acrid dust that rose in clouds. From time to time the boys were compelled to rub their eyes to relieve the tingling smart in them, and speedily their faces were blackened like those of coal heavers. A more sorry-looking party it would be hard to imagine than that which, hour after hour, painfully wended its way through the burned forest. Not a sprig of green, not a rill of water refreshed their sight. No birds or animals could be seen or heard. On every side was nothing but black desolation.
Ralph and young Ware rode ahead, side by side, while behind straggled the rest of the party. Mountain Jim brought up the rear behind the pack animals, which needed urging with whip and voice through the desolation of the brulee. Now and then, far off, they could hear the crash of some forest giant as its burned-through trunk gave way and it came smashing to the ground with a roar like thunder, not infrequently bringing two or three of its mates with it.
Jim had warned the boys and the professor to be on the lookout for such things, and as Ralph and Harry Ware rode along they kept a bright and vigilant watch for any tree that looked as if its fall was imminent.
“Gee whiz! I feel like an ant that has lost its way in the ashes of a camper’s fire,” was the graphic way in which Hardware expressed his feelings, as for the twentieth time that morning he tried to clear his throat of ashes.
They ate a hasty lunch, of which, the boys declared, ashes formed the chief ingredient, for the dry, implacable gray dust appeared to sift into every mouthful they tasted. A long stop was out of the question. There was no knowing how far the brulee extended and they must push on and get to water, for already the ponies were beginning to show signs of distress. The poor animals’ sweaty sides were caked with gray dust till they all appeared of one uniform drab color. For the matter of that, the travelers themselves were no better off. Like a dull monochrome, they were cloaked in ashen gray from head to foot.
Hardly speaking, for their spirits were at the lowest ebb in this ghastly ruin of a majestic forest, they pushed on. The only life in the brulee appeared to be the black flies and mosquitoes which bit till they drew blood, further annoying them.
“I thought I’d rough it in the West,” muttered Ralph once as his pony tumbled over a blackened trunk that lay across the trail, “but this beats anything I’ve ever experienced,—pah!” and he spat out a mouthful of ashy dust.
The afternoon wore on, and still they stumbled along through the brulee without any signs of its coming to an end. As far as they could see the forest of blackened trunks extended, the same carpet of ashen dust was everywhere. The sun, growing lower, hung like a glowing ball of copper in a red sky, seen through the dust that they kicked up as they moved painfully along.
The horses were driven half mad by the biting flies, and their fetlocks were cruelly bruised and cut by the charred logs and rocks. It was heartbreaking traveling, but of a kind that must befall sooner or later everyone who ventures into the wilds of the Canadian Rockies.