Joe got out the tea and the cups, and with Alice and Lucy helping, they soon had hot tea on the table, and a big plate of crackers, and a lot of sweet chocolate Mr. Jones bought at the little counter by the manager’s desk.
“Let the wild winds howl; what do we care for your old August blizzards?” said Bob, as he passed his cup to Joe for a second helping.
When tea was over, Joe set about cooking a good, hot dinner, for he had a real stove to work with now, and an oven. He mixed dough for hot biscuit, got out eggs for omelettes, tins of soups, made a batter for griddle cakes, and opened his last can of preserved peaches for dessert.
While he was working, with Val sitting in a corner, telling him stories about broncho busting, there came a sudden stamping of feet on the porch outside, the door opened, and two men, covered with snow, with heavy packs on their backs, almost fell into the kitchen.
Val sprang up and caught one of them as he staggered and was about to tumble. Mills and the manager of the chalet came hurrying in from the front room. Joe jumped to his stove and poured boiling water on some fresh tea leaves.
While the others were getting the two men into chairs, and pulling off their soaked clothes, Joe steeped his tea, and brought each of them a big tin mug full. They swallowed it eagerly, and brightened up. They changed into dry clothes, supplied partly from their own packs and partly from the manager’s wardrobe. “You see,” the man said, “I keep old clothes here for just such emergencies.”
They were from a mid-western city, and had come to Glacier for a vacation. Being fond of walking, and also wanting to do the Park as cheaply as they could, they had decided to hike from point to point. They had already come over Piegan Pass from the south, and stopped last night at the tepee camp at Many Glacier. To-day they had first visited Iceberg Lake, and then, in spite of the threatened rain (it had not rained till long after noon on the east side of the Divide, they said), they had climbed Swift Current Pass, headed for this chalet. They had run into the heavy cloud near the top of the Pass, but did not expect any trouble in finding their way, because the trail is well marked by countless horses. But in the Pass meadow they got the full force of the storm, where the snow hit them, and before they got across, the track was obliterated; the cloud was so dense they could not see fifty feet ahead, and they were almost benumbed with the cold. However, they continued to pick up trail marks here and there, and stumbled down finally till they saw the chalet looming up under the cloud mantle.
“We never expected anything like this, in mid-summer,” one of them said, “or, of course, we wouldn’t have climbed the Pass to-day.”
“You wouldn’t get it once in five years,” Mills answered,—“but there’s always a time, you know. That’s why the chalet’s here.”
The two men were so tired that Joe’s party offered to share dinner with them, relieving them of the task of cooking, since the regular cook employed by the chalet had deserted the day before and all guests now had to shift for themselves. It was quite a party that sat down to table, with Val as waiter and Joe turning the omelettes and tossing the griddle cakes on the stove. They ate by the light of a lamp, though up there, ordinarily, at seven o’clock it would have been bright daylight. Outside the wind howled, the snow flew, and the house shook as if hit by a giant fist as each gust struck it