They now turned north, away from the motor road, ate some lunch under the shade of an aspen and willow thicket, amid the Persian carpet of prairie wild flowers, and then all the afternoon pushed on toward the great limestone tower, with the whole pile of the Rocky Mountain chain beside them for company. Late in the day they reached a rushing stream, which came down from a cañon just south of the big mountain. This was the north fork of Kennedy Creek, and they turned up it by a trail, the lowering cliffs of Chief now rearing up almost over their heads, and went into the mouth of the valley, and up till the main tower of Chief was east of them, and they were under the south wall of the spine which connected the peak with the main range behind. Here they made camp, in a little meadow beside the stream, with pine woods all about, and while Tom and the Ranger pitched the tents, with Robert Crimmins giving enthusiastic help, Joe built his fire pit and began to get supper. The two older men, who were pretty sore after the thirty mile ride, hobbled about snipping some boughs for their beds.
It was a good supper Joe gave them, however, and the camp was in as delightful a post as a man could ask, and around the big fire, when the food had all been eaten, the whole party sat or lay on the grass, in the fine democracy of the open trail, the assistant Secretaries of State beside the boy scouts from Southmead, and the jokes and stories went around.
But Mills “sounded taps,” as he called his bedtime order, very early, as he planned a six o’clock getaway in the morning, and that meant getting up at half-past four. The next day they were to climb Chief. The Ranger looked long at the stars before he came into the tent he and the scouts were using.
“Boys, a good day to-morrow,” he said, “but it looks like a storm after that.”
“Well, let her rip, after to-morrow,” Tom answered. “To-morrow, though, I’m goin’ up old Chief, even if I have to climb with nothing but my hands, and I feel now’s if I would have to!”
“Poor old tenderfoot!” Joe laughed.
“Gee, it isn’t my foot,” said Tom, so comically that Joe and the Ranger roared with mirth, as they rolled up in their blankets.
CHAPTER XXI—The Climb Up the Tower of Chief Mountain, the Indian Relic on the Summit and An Eagle’s Nest
How Mills managed to wake up just at the time he wanted to, without any alarm clock, the scouts never were able to fathom, but he always could. He was awake and shaking them at four-thirty the next day. Joe was up on the instant, and putting on his outer clothes, but Tom groaned when he tried to move, and fell back into his blankets with an “Ouch!”
“Your sick friend strikes me as better than you are,” Mills taunted him.