Wade removed his ski, laid the fragments on the snow and folded his coat across them, as a pious Mussulman spreads his prayer-mat. Seating himself cross-legged on the coat, he cast his eyes heavenward, on his face an expression as pure and passionless as that on the countenance of the Sistine Madonna. For a few moments he was silent, as though putting away earthly things and concentrating his mind on the business in hand. Then he began to summon the powers of heaven and the powers of hell and call them to reckoning. He held them all accountable. Then came the saints—every illustrious one in the calendar. Saint by saint he called them and bade them witness the state they had brought him to. Spirits of light, imps of darkness—all were charged in turn.
His voice grew shriller and shriller as his pent-up fury was unleashed. He cursed snow, hill, snags, stumps, trees and ski. He cursed by the eyes, as the sailor curses, and by the female progenitor, as the cowboy. He cursed till his face turned from white to red, from red to purple, from purple to black; he cursed till the veins in knots and cords seemed bursting from his forehead; he cursed till his voice sunk from a bellow to a raucous howl, weakened to convulsive gasps and died rattling in his throat, till brain and body reeled under the strain and he sank into a quivering heap at our feet.
I shall always regret that the eruption of the Park's greatest geyser came after, rather than before, that of Wade. Frankly, the spouting of the mighty Giant seemed a bit tame after the forces we had just seen unleashed over behind the hotel.
Wade, coming through to Norris with us this afternoon, got into more trouble. Unfortunately, too, it was under conditions which made it impracticable to relieve his feelings in a swear-fest. The snow around the Fountain was nearly all gone when we started, and we found it only in patches along the road down to the Madison. After carrying our ski for a mile without being able to use them, we decided on Holt's advice, to take the old wood trail over the hills. This, though rough and steep, was well covered with snow. We all took a good many tumbles in dodging trees and scrambling through the brush, Wade being particularly unfortunate. Finally, however, we reached the top of the long winding hill that leads back to the main road by the Gibbon River. Here we stopped to get our wind and tighten our ski-thongs for the downward plunge. At this point we discovered that the snow of the old road had been much broken and wallowed by some large animals.
"Grizzlies," pronounced Holt, as he examined the first of a long row of tracks that led off down the hill. "Do you see those claw marks? Nothing like a grizzly for nailing down his footprints. Doesn't seem to care if you do track him home."
The last words were almost lost as he disappeared, a grey streak, around the first bend. Carr and I hastened to follow, and Wade, awkwardly astride of his pole, brought up the rear. I rounded the turn at a sharp clip, cutting hard on the inside with my pole to keep the trail. Then, swinging into the straight stretch beyond, I waved my pole on high in the approved manner of real ski cracks, and gathered my breath for the downward plunge. And not until the air was beginning to whip my face and my speed was quite beyond control, did I see two great hairy beasts standing up to their shoulders in a hole in the middle of the trail. Holt was on them even as I looked. Holding his course until he all but reached the wallow, he swerved sharply to the right against the steeply sloping bank, passed the bears, and then eased back to the trail again. A few seconds later he was a twinkling shadow, flitting down the long lane of spruces in the river bottom.
The stolid brutes never moved from their tracks. I made no endeavour to stop, but, adopting Holt's tactics, managed to give a clumsy imitation of his superlatively clever avoidance of the blockade. Venturing to glance back over my shoulder as I regained the trail, I crossed the points of my ski and was thrown headlong onto the crust. Beyond filling my eyes with snow I was not hurt in the least. My ski thongs were not even broken.
My momentary glance had revealed Wade, eyes popping from his head and face purple with frantic effort, riding his pole and straining every muscle to come to a stop. But all in vain. While I still struggled to get up and under way again, there came a crash and a yell from above, followed by a scuffle and a gust of snorts and snarls. When I regained my feet a few seconds later nothing was visible on the trail but the ends of two long strips of hickory. Scrambling up the side of the cut and falling over each other in their haste, went two panic stricken grizzlies.
Wade kicked out of his ski, crawled up from the hole, and was just about to spread his swear-mat and tell everything and everybody between high heaven and low hell what he thought of them for the trick they had played on him when, with a rumbling, quizzical growl, a huge hairy Jack-in-the-Box shot forth from a deep hole on the lower side of the road. Burrowing deep for succulent roots sweet with the first run of spring sap, the biggest grizzly of the lot had escaped the notice of both of us until he reared up on his haunches in an effort to learn what all the racket was about. A push with my pole quickly put me beyond reach of all possible complications. Poor Wade rolled and floundered for a hundred yards through the deep snow before stopping long enough to look back and observe that the third grizzly was beating him three-to-one—in the opposite direction. So profound was his relief that he seemed to forget all about the swear-fest. My companions claim they never knew anything of the kind to happen before.