“You wait!” cried Tom to the rest. “He isn’t near enough to get hurt, but he’ll be about the most astonished man in Wyoming in just one minute and three quarters.”
The camper proceeded to dip up a bucket full of water with great coolness, and, having taken a comfortable seat on a ridge of “formation,” was just proceeding to immerse his wash, when up came “Old Faithful’s” head. In less time than it takes to tell it, the great, roaring, boiling jet was hurling itself far aloft, and descending in floods of hot, sulphurous water. The man had given one startled look over his shoulder at the first outbreak, and then fled like a deer, leaving his property to be reclaimed later in the day. The sight of his ludicrously startled face and flying heels was irresistible, and the boys screamed with laughter.
Beside the great, active geysers, there were multitudes of hot springs, some of them many feet wide and deep, with treacherous, overhanging banks and exquisitely tinted depths of turquoise and sapphire, through which arose a continuous train of silvery bubbles. There was a story told, that summer, of a lady who had neglected the precautions which others took, and straying carelessly among these springs, broke through the thin crust of sulphurous deposit. She was instantly drawn out, but not before she was terribly scalded.
While the Percivals were at the “Upper Geyser Basin,” they were invited to witness a queer sight in the edge of the woods about a quarter of a mile from the hotel, just at dusk. One of the men employed about the place began to call coaxingly, “Barney! Barney!” And now a dark form appeared among the pines, and out came a huge black bear. He approached timidly within a few feet of the silent group, now advancing, now bounding lightly away at the cracking of a twig, and took several pieces of raw meat from a stump near by. When his silent meal was finished, he gave the spectators one inquiring look, and wheeling round, disappeared in the shadow of the forest.
All this time it was very cold, especially at night when, although it was in August, ice formed over pools about the hotel.
Reluctantly the tourists left the wonders of the “Upper Basin” behind, and drove on toward the next point of interest, Yellowstone Lake.
“Give us the points, Tom,” Randolph sings out, as the driver cracks his whip and the wagon rattles down the road. “Tell us about the Lake.”
“Nearly eight thousand feet above the sea,” rejoins Tom. He is so ready with his figures that skeptical Kittie declares he makes them up, whenever his memory fails him.
“Perhaps you think,” rejoins Thomas, with dignity, “that the Lake doesn’t cover one hundred and thirty-nine square miles, and hasn’t a hundred miles of shore line, and isn’t chock-full of splendid trout, and hasn’t a beautiful beach of obsidian five miles long, ‘reflecting the sun’s rays like brilliant gems,’ and doesn’t”—