“This is Piegan Pines,” said the Ranger. “All off for lunch.”
He sprang from his saddle, and he and the forward guide helped the two older women to dismount—and they certainly needed help.
“I can never get back there again,” wailed poor Mrs. Jones, as she flopped down on the grass.
While the party were dismounting, Joe had just time for a quick look about him. They were in a little meadow, maybe half a mile wide, with towering rock walls on both sides, hung with snow-fields and a glacier or two, and, behind, the great shale slide down which they had just come. Only one side, to the south, was open—and there the meadow just dropped off into space. Across the hole, far off and blue, was the great blue mass of Mount Jackson, covered with snow, and the great white and green slopes of Blackfeet Glacier, the largest in the Park. The meadow was full of little limber pines, golden with millions of dog-tooth violet bells, and criss-crossed with tiny ice-water brooks, running in channels over the grass—made, of course, by melting snow on the cliffs above.
“Golly,” thought Joe, “if old Spider and I could only come and camp here!”
But now Mills was telling him to get a quick, cold lunch, and he and the other guide sprang for the packhorses, and got out what was needed, while Mills made a camp-fire beside one of the brooks.
As Joe was making his preparations, he felt Miss Elkins standing beside him, and looked up.
“Are you the cook?” she asked.
“I—I believe so,” Joe stammered, getting red.
“You don’t look very old to be a cook,” said she. “Have you got lots and lots to eat? I could devour a whole butcher shop, I think.”