“Gee, that’s the life!” Tom cried. “We simply got to learn to ride horseback, Joe. I bet they’ve been over a pass, or something, to-day.”
“I bet some of ’em are going to eat off the mantelpiece to-morrow,” Joe replied.
They went back by way of the camp, to see if any hikers had arrived, and then got their supper, a rather smoky job, with only soft wood to cook by. But they were too hungry to mind the smoke. After supper they walked around to the great hotel, which was not yet lighted up, for though it was now seven o’clock, it was still broad daylight, and bought souvenir post-cards to send home to their parents and the other scouts. As yet the hotel had few guests, for the season had hardly begun, the snow had lain so late on the passes that year, but there was music and bustle about the place, just the same, and another party on horseback was just galloping in, so the boys could watch the tired riders dismount, and the cowboy guides drive the horses away, down the road to their night feeding on the lower meadows. Joe longed to ask one of those cowboys to show him what that mysterious thing, a diamond hitch, was, but he did not have the nerve.
It was still quite light enough to read a newspaper when they returned to camp. Nobody had come, and as it had been a hard day, and Tom saw Joe was tired, he gave orders to turn in, though the lights in the great hotel across the lake, under the vast wall of Allen Mountain, were just twinkling on.
“Seems foolish to go to bed by daylight,” he said, “but it’s nine o’clock, and you’re a sick little wifey.”
“You’ll be a sick little hubby, in about a minute and a quarter,” Joe retorted, swinging at him. “Still, I feel as if I could sleep, daylight or not.”
“Come here,” Tom went on, “and let’s see how your old temperature is. If you’ve got a fever to-night it means you got to stay still for the next week, and rest up.”
He shook down the little clinical thermometer Dr. Meyer had given him, and put it under Joe’s tongue. “Smoke that a while,” he laughed.
After a couple of minutes he took it out again and inspected it.
“Ninety-eight,” said he. “That’s normal, ain’t it? Hooray, old Joey, no temperature even after this day! I guess you’re getting better, all right.”