Returning to the Elkhorn, therefore, we went to work in a new place, a place where some time previously a fire had swept through a strip of the woods, killing the trees, but leaving them standing, stark and bare, but still sound as nuts—just the thing we wanted. Our chief difficulty this time was in getting the felled timbers out from amidst their fellows—for the dead trees were very thick and the mountain-side very steep—but by taking great care we accomplished this without accident. The loading of these big “sticks” would have been an awkward task, too, had we not fortunately found a cut bank alongside of which we ran our wagon, and having snaked the logs into place upon the bank we skidded them across the gap into the wagon without much difficulty.
We had made three loads, and the fine weather still holding, we had gone back for a fourth and last one, when, having got our logs in place on the cut bank all ready to load, Joe and I, after due consultation, decided that we would take a day off and climb up to the saddle which connected the two mountains. We had never been up there before, and we were curious to see what the country was like on the other side.
Knowing that it would be a long and hard climb, we started about sunrise, taking a rifle with us; not that we expected to use it, but because it is not good to be entirely defenseless in those wild, out-of-the-way places. Following at first our little creek, we went on up and up, taking it slowly, until presently the pines began to thin out, the weather-beaten trees, gnarled, twisted and stunted, becoming few and far between, and pretty soon we left even these behind and emerged upon the bare rocks above timber-line. Here, too, we left behind our little creek.
For another thousand feet we scrambled up the rocks, clambering over great boulders, picking our way along the edges of little precipices, until at last we stood upon the summit of the saddle.
To right and left were the two great peaks, still three thousand feet above us, but westward the view was clear. As far as we could see—and that, I expect, was near two hundred miles—were ranges and masses of mountains, some of them already capped with snow, a magnificent sight.
“That is fine!” cried Joe, enthusiastically. “It’s well worth the trouble of the climb. I only wish we had a map so that we could tell which range is which.”
“Yes, it’s a great sight,” said I. “And the view eastward is about as fine, I think. Look! That cloud of smoke, due east about ten miles away, comes from the smelters of San Remo, and that other smoke a little to the left of it is where the coal-mines are. There’s the ranch, too, that green spot in the mesa; you wouldn’t think it was nearly a mile square, would you?”
“That’s Sulphide down there, of course,” remarked Joe, pointing off towards the right. “But what are those other, smaller, clouds of smoke?”