“Well, you eat like a well man, I must admit,” said Spider, reaching for what was left.
CHAPTER IX—Over Piegan Pass to St. Mary Lake, Underneath the Precipices
Promptly at seven, Joe was at the Ranger’s cabin. He had already cooked Tom’s breakfast, and Tom was over at the camp, helping the hikers to get theirs. The sun had long been up, and the day was clear and perfect. In fact, there hadn’t yet been a rainy day since the scouts reached the Park. But Mills had told Joe to bring his rubber poncho, so he had it with him. He was to ride Popgun, of course, and the Ranger and he put their personal equipment of blankets, tent, extra clothing, ponchos, axes, and the like, on the Ranger’s packhorse, and started for the big hotel.
“I’ve got hold of a good extra man,” Mills said. “With so many skirts in the party, we’ll have a big pack-train, for they insist on sleeping out instead of going to the chalets. I was over last night to see ’em.”
“Where are we going to-day?” Joe asked.
“Piegan Pass,” Mills answered, “and make camp to-night by the lake. That’s twenty-two miles. To-morrow we’ll go to Gunsight Lake—that’s only seven, and it’ll be all they’ll want after to-day—and rest up, and let ’em climb Blackfeet Glacier if they want to.”
At the hotel the two cowboy guides, one of them not very much older than Joe, were already on hand with the horses and Joe’s equipment of stores, and the cooking kit, and three tents, and innumerable blankets. It made such a pile of stuff that you’d have thought it would need a regiment of horses to carry it, but Mills and the two guides went about the task of packing it on to the backs of five horses, and so well did they stow it away, properly balanced on either side and made fast with ropes in diamond hitches, that the horses didn’t seem to mind it in the least, though they looked more like camels than horses. It was eight o’clock before this work was done, and by that time the tourists appeared, with their dunnage bags, which had to be packed on two more horses.
Joe had never seen a congressman before, except once when he went to a political rally and he could not help staring at the two men as they approached, and wanting to laugh. Beside Mills and the two cowboys, they looked so unfitted for this job of riding a horse over the high trails! They looked about as unfit as the cowboys would have looked in Congress. Both of them still wore long trousers and ordinary boots, though they had bought themselves flannel shirts and soft hats at the hotel store, and sweaters. Their wives were not very much better equipped, though both of them had bought khaki divided riding skirts (for nobody is allowed to ride a side saddle in the Park). Beside the two congressmen and their wives, there were two girls about twenty, and a boy about Joe’s age. One of the girls was the daughter of Congressman Elkins of New Jersey, the other two of Congressman Jones of Pennsylvania. All three of the young people, Joe noted, were better equipped. The girls had regular riding breeches and leather leggins, like a man’s, and the boy had khaki riding breeches and high boots.
As soon as their dunnage bags had been packed on two more horses, the job of getting the women into their saddles began, and then getting the stirrups adjusted right. The girls and young Jones were up and ready long before their mothers were, and making uncomplimentary remarks.
“Say, ma,” called young Jones, “if your horse bucks, grab his tail. That always stops ’em.”