Westy Martin in the Yellowstone

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

It was midmorning when Westy awoke, finding his companions still sleeping soundly. His joints were stiff and he found it soothing to his knees to hold his legs out straight. But he was not exactly tired. It was the aftermath of fatigue.

The sun was well up over the little mountain lake, glinting the water as it made its slow progress across the blue sky. How cheering it was! It seemed to radiate hope. How companionable—like a friend from home. The same genial sun that rose over the hills at Temple Camp and flecked the lake there with its glinting light. And here it was in the Rocky Mountains! What a change it wrought in the country and in the award boy’s spirit. Oh, he could do anything now, and all was well!

He stretched one leg out stiff and held it that way and lingered upon the ineffable relief that this afforded his knee.

Westy did not know how far they had walked in the brook during the night, nor in what direction, but the great mountains seemed still to be far away. He tried to identify the landscape with that he had last been able to see, which was from his vantage point in the big elm, but there was nothing recognizable now, only the brook.

He had thought that perhaps daylight would find them amid the wild fastnesses they had seen from a distance. But as he looked about he saw that the immediate neighborhood was not forbidding though it was wild and unpeopled. Could it be that he was in the heart of the Rockies? In such a place as Lewis and Clark, for example, had camped in their adventurous journey of exploration? The Rockies that he had dreamed of were always in the distance, holding themselves aloof as it seemed, from these hapless pilgrims. It was strange. Was he, in fact, in the Rockies?

He was, indeed, only the Rockies were too big for him. He had expected to find them under his feet. He had thought of them as something quite limited and distinct. Of course, there were dizzy heights and remote passes, terrible in their primeval wildness, and these it was not vouchsafed him to visit. But he was in the vast, enchanted region, just the same. Had he not escaped from train robbers in these very wilds? He, Westy Martin?

He felt in his pocket and made sure of the precious wallet of which he was the proud custodian. It was there, smooth and bulging; the whole thing was real. He had slept and awakened and the whole thing was real. If he had shot a grizzly, as Dan Darewell in the Rockies by Captain Dauntless had done, he could hardly be more incredulous of his own achievement. He began to reflect how it had all happened.

He was glad that the others were not yet awake. Their sprawling attitudes bespoke rest rather than grace. There seemed no danger of their rousing. He did not know whether they were farther from the Yellowstone Park than they had been the day before or nearer to it. If their journey of the night had tended in a fairly straight course toward it then they might be now within four or five miles of it, perhaps even less.

There was no particular direction which attracted Westy’s gaze; he just gazed about. Mountains, mountains, mountains! They appalled him. He could see the mountains, but not the way through them. And they seemed impenetrable. One thing did attract his attention; this was a great tree far off, one of those big, lonely trees which serve as landmarks. From the position of the sun he thought this was south. But this fact afforded him no enlightenment. East, west, north, south, were all the same; there was no telling where Yellowstone Park was.

Then suddenly, he noticed something else which did arouse his interest. Beyond the tree was a little dab of gray in the clear sky. He thought it a tiny cloud, but it dissolved even as he watched it. Immediately another appeared a short distance from where it had been and likewise dissolved. Then another.