“Get out and walk, then,” Mills called back. “Grab hold of your horse’s tail, and let him pull you up.”
“Say, what you giving us?” said Bob. “Think I want to go down the hill again backwards?”
Mills laughed. “Think these horses are mules?” he answered. “See, this is the way.”
He got off his horse, grabbed it by the tail, and to everybody’s surprised amusement, the horse started up, with the Ranger scrambling behind him, half climbing, half being pulled along.
Every one else got off, too, and in single file, each person clinging to his horse’s tail, they began the ascent again. The horses, being considerably longer legged than men, climbed faster up the high steps than a man could do alone, but with the horse’s tail to hang on to, you could manage to keep up. Everybody laughed at first, yelling at one another, but in three minutes the yells had ceased, and in five, the laughter. No one had any breath left for that. If Joe had thought, he probably would have been frightened, for he was certainly disobeying the doctor, but he was having too good a time to remember doctors, and as even the lack of breath did not make him cough, he had nothing to remind him. Panting, covered with perspiration, the two congressmen were about ready to quit. They presently reached a more level place, a high upland meadow covered with flowers, and mounting again rode up and across this, and came at last near the lower edge of a great snow-field, which stretched away southward for three miles, broken here and there by peninsulas and islands of rock, and stretched upward clear to the summit of the Divide over their heads, at an angle of about forty-five degrees at first, but much steeper near the top.
“The biggest glacier in the Park,” said Mills.
“Where?” said Mr. Elkins. “All I see is snow.”
“I know it—too bad, but we had so much snow last winter it’s not melted off yet. But take my word for it, that’s all ice underneath.”
“Hooray, let’s climb out on it!” Bob shouted.
“Not for me—I’ve climbed enough to-day,” his father said, still puffing.