Tom answered by putting the thermometer in his mouth.
“No fever at all—and you’re all sweaty,” he said a minute later. “You really feeling better, old Joey?”
“Sure I am.”
But Tom wouldn’t let him help after supper in getting more wood for the camp. Tom did it all, while Joe sat at first outside the tepees and tried to hear the talk of the hikers about their trip, and later, when Tom was through, moved closer to the “council fire,” built in a ring of stones, at the invitation of the men, and heard them tell of their twenty-two mile hike that day over Piegan Pass from Upper St. Mary Lake. It was fine to sit there, by the warm fire, as the darkness gathered over the great, solemn wall of the Divide, as the lights in the hotel across the lake twinkled on, as the night wind whispered in the pines, and hear the talk of glaciers, and snow-fields, and ten-thousand-foot climbs. It made Joe and Tom long for the day when they could get out, with blanket and knapsack, over the high trails. They went back to their tent at last reluctantly, while the hikers bade them a cheerful good-night.
“Seems as if everybody in the Park was good-natured,” Joe remarked, as he crawled into bed. “Guess it’s the air.”
“I like everybody but the porcupines,” Tom answered, carefully folding what was left of his sweater under his pillow! “I wrote home for a new one to-day, but I’ll hang on to what I’ve got.”
CHAPTER VIII—Joe Gets a Chance at Last to Go Out on a Trip as Camp Cook
The next few days were busy ones for both boys. Tom had hikers to take care of now every day, sometimes only two or three at a time, sometimes much larger parties, so that he had to wheel down more cots from the chalets. There was much to do, cutting wood, hauling water, making beds, raking and burning the litter after each party, for Tom had learned as a scout that one of the worst things a camper can do is to leave any litter behind him, and one of the best ways to collect flies around a camp is to leave scraps and garbage unburned or unburied. He even went over to the hotel and begged a can of stove polish from the kitchen, and each day, after the crowd had gone, polished up the camp stove.
Big Bertha, coming down to look things over, found him busy at this job.
“Well, well,” said he, in his funny, high voice, “I’d know you came from New England. Must have a clean kitchen! The camp looks well, Tom, and nobody’s made a kick yet. I guess we can keep you another week.”