“Take a big lungful, Joey,” Tom cried. “This is the real old ozone!”
The station is at the gate of the mountains, where the railroad enters the pass which takes it through the range. The mountains here do not look very high, for you are so close under that you do not see much of them. The boys looked up at a ragged wall to the north, covered first with fir timber and then with snow patches on the reddish rocks. Behind them to the east, they looked out over the rolling plains. Close by the station was a big hotel, several stories high, but built entirely of huge fir logs. Even the tall columns in front were single logs.
“I suppose I go up there and report,” said Tom. “Let’s see if our baggage is all here, first”
They found the baggage on the platform, and set out for the hotel, passing on the way an Indian tepee, with pictures painted on the outside, and smoke ascending from the peak. This was the home of old Chief Three Bears, the boys learned, a Blackfeet Indian who lives here by the hotel in summer, and welcomes arriving guests. He was coming down the path, in fact, as the boys walked up, a tall Indian, over six feet, and looking taller still because of his great feathered head-dress. He was very old, but still erect, though his face was covered all over with tiny wrinkles.
The two scouts stopped and saluted him.
Old Three Bears smiled at them, and grunted, “Okeea” (with the accent on the first syllable, and the ee and a sounds slid together). Then he held his blanket around him with his left hand, and putting out his right, solemnly shook both boys by their hands.
“Say, the old Chief’s got a big fist, all right,” said Joe, as they went on. “I’ll bet he was strong once.”
“He must ’a’ been good looking, too,” said Tom. “I didn’t know Indians were so big and—and sort of noble looking.”
They now entered the great lobby of the hotel, which, like the outside, was all made of fir logs, with tremendous trunks, bark and all, used as the columns clear to the fourth story. Hunting out the manager, they learned that they were to take the motor bus for Many Glacier Hotel in fifteen minutes, and they just had time to go to the news stand and secure a government map of the Park and a government report about its geology, before turning in their baggage checks and climbing aboard the bus, a four-seated motor something like a “Seeing New York” automobile. This bus was full, three on a seat, and a moment later the driver cranked his engine, gave a toot on his horn, and they were off.