CHAPTER XX
CLIMBING A GREAT MOUNTAIN
At breakfast the next morning it was decided that they should try tolearn something about the great mass of ice that lay in the basin southof the camp, which supplied the water for the river that fell over thecliff.
"Now, if we're going up there," said Hugh, "we've got a long tramp overthe ice, and we want to go as well fixed as we can. We ought to have onegun with us, but we must go roped and take our sticks along. We may findthat the ice up there slopes sharply and is smooth, and we ought to havesomething to help ourselves with."
"All right," chimed in both boys, "you tell us what to do and we'll doit."
"Well," said Hugh, "the first thing is to point the ends of thosewalking sticks again, then shove them into the fire to harden. Next takesome charcoal and break it up in your fingers and blacken your noses andcheek bones and your faces under the eyes. Each one of you ought to havea handkerchief or a rag to tie around your heads over the bridge of yournose if the sun gets very bright. That's a good protection againstsnow-blindness."
The preparations that Hugh advised were soon made, and the sun had notyet showed itself above the eastern mountains when the three set out onfoot. For several hundred yards they had to climb a steep slope, andthen as they went on toward the precipice, they came to a level bit ofland, over which were strewn immense masses of stone, huge monolithsthat made Jack think of the stories that he had read about the ruins inthe old places of worship of the Druids.
Beyond this level land was a talus fallen from the cliff and then amorainal trough, up which they passed to the ice above. From this pointthe whole basin of the great glacier was spread out before them, andHugh began to examine it with a view to making the ascent by the easiestand safest path.
Hugh studied the situation with the field glasses for a long time andthen, passing them to Jack, asked, "What do you see, son? Which roadseems to be the best?"
"Well, Hugh," answered Jack, after he had looked over the ground, "it'sa little hard for me to say, for I don't know much about these places.The shortest way, of course, is to cross over to the right and try toclimb up the rocks there, but the snowslides and rockfalls seem to becoming down all the time, and I shouldn't suppose that would be safe.The same thing is true about going close to the mountains on the left,and, of course, we can all see that we can't go up in the middle. Itlooks to me, too, as if the ice were steeper on the right hand than itis on the left, so I should say that it was better to keep to the left,just as near the middle of the glacier as we can without getting inamong crevices."
"What do you say, Joe?" asked Hugh.
"I don't know," said Joe. "I guess I'll just follow where you go, but itseems to me that Jack's talk is good."
"Yes," said Hugh, "I think so, too, and I believe that's the best wayfor us to go. I ain't so much afraid of falling in those cracks in theice as I am of being hit by one of those rocks that comes down athousand feet or two. Even a little bit of a rock could crack a man'shead open, and if one of those big rocks ever hits him I believe itwould go right through him.
"I think Jack is right and we'd better go where he has said. Now, beforewe start, we must tie ourselves together with this rope, and if we getto a place where the ice is any way cracked we'll have to go prettyslowly, so that only one man can fall in at a time, and the other twocan pull him out."
They started without further delay; and now for two or three hoursfollowed a slow plodding walk up the face of the ice. Sometimes theycame to a long crevasse, which they had to go around, but at no time didthey approach very near the edge of the snowfalls. Several times,however, they passed near great stones which had fallen from themountain far out onto the ice.
At one point, when they had passed over three-fourths of the distance,they heard a low, rumbling sound behind them, and, turning, all threewere in time to witness the fall of a great avalanche, which threwitself far out onto the ice.
It was afternoon when they found themselves immediately under the ridgeof rocks which was their destination, and a little search showed them aplace where they could get off the ice and on to the rocks, and theywere soon reclining on the grassy soil crowning the slope. There theyrested while Hugh smoked a pipe, and then went on. To their left, thatis on the side of this ridge of rocks opposite from the one by whichthey had approached, lay another great mass of ice, which, however,sloped the other way, and which Hugh said must run into the Flat Head orelse into the head of Cut Bank River.
The crest over which they were passing was substantially level, andbefore them stood the tall rounded summit of the great mountain, the topof which they hoped to reach.
When they had come to the end of the ridge, it was a short climb down tothe ice, and passing over this for a short distance, they came to morerocks and, surmounting these, found themselves at the edge of adome-shaped snow bank, which seemed to stretch away by a gentle slope tothe very top of the mountains. To the north was the slope they had tocross, and immediately below the edge of this a tremendous drop ofperhaps a thousand feet to another ice field below.
"Here's a bad place," said Hugh; "if this snow is real hard there's achance that some one of us may slip. We must go across slowly. Come tothe edge and then we will go forward, one at a time, always keeping therope tight between us, the two men that are standing still anchoringthemselves solidly by means of their sticks. If one of us should sliphe'll need all the help the other two can give him."
Hugh put his gun down on the rocks and said, "I reckon I'll leave thathere till I come back. I may want both my hands crossing this snow."
When they started they proceeded with great caution, following Hugh'sinstructions. Occasionally the snow was so hard that it was impossiblefor them to dig their feet into it, and it was even difficult for themto punch their sticks down into it. Each one as he advanced went slowlyand carefully, while the other two stood still to support him in caseanything happened.
If the traverse was slow, it was steady and safe; and before very longthe three found themselves clambering over the broken rock near the topof the mountain. At the moment, they had little thought for thewonderful view, since the minds of all were turned toward the summitwhich lay before them, and now only a few steps distant.
A moment later and the peak was gained, and the three threw themselvesdown in a sheltered place among the great rocks that formed the mountaincrest, where the view was entrancing in its extent and grandeur.
In all directions, as far as they could see, mountains lay beyondmountains. Far away to the north were two which seemed higher than anyof those nearer at hand. The whole circle of the horizon could be seenexcept that, to the north, the view was interrupted by the tall mountainclose to them, which equaled in height the one on which they weresitting, and behind them to the south was another peak equally high.Away to the westward the eye traveled without interruption over lowerrocky peaks and great stretches of forest, until it met other mountainranges running north and south, so far away that only their dim outlinescould be seen. To the north there was no such low country as to thewest, for peaks and ridges thrust their sharp points up toward the sky,and one gained the impression of a world set on edge. Although theycould not see them, they knew that between the ridges and beyond eachpeak lay some narrow valley or canyon, and that only by following suchwater courses could the country be traversed.
Immediately before and below them lay the great ice that they had justpassed over, and behind or to the south, that other extensive ice field,which Hugh now said flowed into a tributary of the Flat Head River, andwhich, years before, had been named after a man who crossed themountains through the Cut Bank Pass, the Pumpelly Glacier.
"I tell you, Hugh," said Jack, "this is a wonderful place up here. Itbeats anything I ever saw. I can't help wondering how these mountainsgot tipped up in this way, and what the force was that changed them fromlevel or rolling ground to these sharp peaks and ridges."
"Well, son," replied Hugh, "you can't prove it by me, but I e
xpect thatmost of these valleys, if not all of them, were cut out by the ice, justas we see below us this valley here being cut out."
"I suppose that is so," Jack replied, "but it doesn't seem quitepossible to me."
"Well," answered Hugh, "you must remember that if our understandingabout these glaciers is correct, they may have been working forthousands of years, and if they only ground away six inches or a foot ofthe rock under them in each year, a thousand years or so would make amighty deep valley. And besides that, I reckon that in those ancienttimes these glaciers were a heap bigger and heavier than they are now,and maybe they moved a lot faster, and in that case they'd work a lotfaster, wouldn't they?"
"I suppose they would," agreed Jack. "But it's mighty hard to realizesuch things. You see we human beings are such little bits of things, andwe live so short a time, that it's mighty difficult to comprehend theforces of nature that never stop working."
"You bet your life it is," said Hugh. "It's only within a few years,since I began to talk to people who understood something about thesethings, that I began to look back a little. In my young days, so long asI had my blankets and a few charges of ammunition I never thought muchabout what was behind me or what was ahead. Of course, I always lookedout for myself as well as I could, but I never thought very much aboutthe world and the things that are going and have gone on in it. But oflate years it's different, and when a man does think about those thingsit kind o' takes his breath away once in a while."
"That's so," replied Jack. "People say that we can't count the stars inthe sky, and that we can't understand how many miles away from the earththe sun or the moon is, and, of course, that's true, but it's just ashard for us to understand some of the things that are going on rightunder our noses, as it is to understand time or space."
Up on this mountain peak the wind blew cool, and it was not long beforethey were ready to turn about and begin the descent.
"We'll go back the way we came," said Hugh, "and we want to go just ascarefully over this snow as we did when we were coming up. Only one manmust move at a time, and the others must fix themselves firmly, so as tohold him if he slips."
The traverse back across the snow was made in safety, and before verylong they found themselves on the low rocky ridge over which they mustdescend to return over the ice.
Before leaving it they sat down under the lee of the ridge in the warmsun, and while Hugh smoked a pipe the others looked out over the widewhite field before them.
Presently Joe called out, "Look at the sheep," and pointed in front ofhim.
Jack looked, and at first could see nothing, but after Joe had told himwhere to look, he saw half a dozen tiny dark objects moving swiftlyabout without order over the ice a couple of miles away. Borrowing theglasses, he looked at them, and could plainly see that they werefour-legged animals running to and fro over the ice field, apparentlyplaying with each other.
Hugh looked at them and said that they were indeed sheep, as Joe hadsaid, but confessed that he only called them sheep because he knew thatno other animals could be found in such a place.
In the soil of the rocky ridge where they were sitting Jack discoveredsome beautiful pink flowers, but neither Hugh nor Joe could give them aname. They grew on exceedingly short stems from little round bunches ofgreen leaves shaped like a pincushion and with the general aspect ofwhat Jack remembered in Eastern gardens as phlox.
He would have liked to take some of these flowers back with him to havethem identified, but had no way of carrying them.
Still roped together, the three once more descended to the ice, andstarted toward camp.
The walking was easier now, partly because it was down hill and partlybecause the snow had been softened by the sun's heat and gave them abetter foothold.
Hugh advised the boys to tie their handkerchiefs over the bridge oftheir noses, and to pull their hats well down on their foreheads toshield their eyes as much as possible from the glare of the sun.
As they went on down the glacier, they could see that even since theyhad passed up in the morning new cracks had opened in the ice and somethat they had gone around on the way up had lengthened. Two or three ofthese were so narrow that they could step across them, but Hugh stillkept as far from the rocks as the broken condition of the glacier wouldpermit.
They were walking along, the boys perhaps a little carelessly, thoughHugh's vigilance never seemed to relax, when Jack's left foot seemed tomeet with no resistance as it struck the snow, and in a moment he was ina crack or hole in the ice far above his waist. Luckily he had turnedhis staff as he fell, so that it reached across the crack and held him,and but little strain came on the ropes which attached him to hiscompanions. Hugh had heard the fall and had braced himself, and a secondlater Joe had done the same.
It took but a moment to pull Jack out onto the hard ice, and Joe, makinga detour to the left, avoided the opening into which Jack had fallen.When they were all once more together and on the hard ice, Hugh said toJack, "Son, you're old enough not to have done a trick like that."
"Yes, Hugh," replied Jack, "I know that now, and I'm sorry and ashamed.If I had followed in your tracks, I wouldn't have given you and Joe ascare, and I wouldn't have had one myself. Every now and then I do somestupid thing that makes it seem as if this was my first trip out West,and I didn't know anything at all. I was thinking of something elsebesides the trail and looking off toward the valley, and I left yourtracks and tumbled into that hole."
"Well," replied Hugh, "of course, you're new to traveling around on theice. You can't be expected to know much about it, but you can beexpected to look out for yourself as well as you know how, and to tryhard not to make other people uncomfortable. I guess Joe was scared upgood when he saw you go down, and I know I wasn't a bit comfortable."
"No," said Jack, "I know you weren't and I know it's a good thing foryou to talk to me in this way. Your talking doesn't make me feel anyworse than I feel already, and I hope I've learned a lesson, but, ofcourse, I don't know."
"We all make mistakes every day," said Hugh, "and it's no ways likelythat you've made your last; only, as I've told you before, try not tomake the same mistake twice. If you do that it shows that you don'tlearn anything."
The rest of the way to camp passed without adventure, and when theyreached the moraine above the cliff, they took off the ropes andscrambled down the rocks, when a short walk, and a slide by the boysdown a long snow bank, brought them to the little stream by which thetent was pitched.
The sun hung low over the western mountain and all were hungry aftertheir long walk, and they at once busied themselves getting supper.
All through the evening Jack's heart was low. He was sorry to have madesuch a blunder as he had, and knew that his carelessness haddisappointed Hugh. It was certainly humiliating to have done what hefelt Hugh might justly call a "fool trick."
As they sat around the fire, Hugh, who for some time had been smokingthoughtfully, said, "Well, boys, we've seen quite a lot of things uphere on this patch of mountains, and time is passing. What do you say toturning around and going back? I'd surely like to stay up here longer,but we must remember that son here has got to get back East, and we havequite a little way to go before we strike the railroad. I reckon if weroll to-morrow morning we ought to be able to get down to the inlet bynight. We can stop there for a day or two and hunt and fish a little,and then pull out for the Agency and from there go to Benton."
"I suppose we've got to go before long, Hugh," replied Jack. "I wascounting up the days only the day before yesterday, and figured that wehadn't much more time here in the mountains. I hate to go, but there'snothing else to do, I suppose.
"It seems to me that each year I dislike more and more to go back. I'venever had such good times as I've had with you. I think of them allwinter when I'm back in New York; for about six months I think of thegood time I had last year, and then for the other months I think of thegood time I'm going to have next year. I hope we'll have lots more ofthem."
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sp; "Yes," said Hugh, "I hope we will. I don't know, though; I'm gettingold, and I don't think I get about quite as easily as I used to. Ofcourse, I can ride and walk as far as I could when you first came out,but it's sure that a time is coming when I'll get crippled up and won'tbe able to do as much as I can now. I've got some old hurts thatsometimes bother me a whole lot now in winter, when I'm not movingaround very much, and the older a man gets the more things like thattrouble him."
"Well," said Jack, "you can still ride farther and do more than any manI ever saw, and I guess it will be a long time before you are laid up."
The next morning Hugh roused the boys while it was still only gray dawnand sent them across the creek to bring in the horses, and by the timethey returned breakfast had been cooked, the tent taken down and many ofthe packs made up, and an hour or two later the little train wasretracing its steps toward the lower country.
As they started, Hugh said, "Of course, we could make quite a cut off indistance by going down on this side of the creek and I don't believewe'd have much trouble, but then none of us have been over the ground.We might find some place where we couldn't get the horses down easily,and worse than all, we might have trouble crossing the river. It'll takeus an hour or more longer perhaps to go around the way we came, but thatway we know we can keep out of trouble, and that's the way we bettergo."
All day long they traveled down the river, following the trail that theyhad made coming up. At one point, one of the horses mired in a bog-holeand there was some difficulty in getting him out, but by pulling andurging and getting some willow brush and throwing it under him so thathe could get his front feet on it, he finally managed to pull himselfout without having his load taken off.
As they were passing through an open place, from which they could seethe towering precipice of the great mountains across the creek, Joeremarked, "I think I see three bears."
All stopped and looked in the direction in which he pointed, and there,sure enough, far up on the precipice above them, they saw one very largebear and two much smaller ones, industriously feeding below the ledges.They did not see the travelers, but were much too far off to be shot at.Joe asked Hugh at what he estimated the distance, and Hugh said,"Anywhere from six hundred yards to half a mile."
Of course, Jack was strongly tempted to suggest that they should stophere and try to hunt the bears, but he knew that the prospect of gettingthem was small and so said nothing about it, and after watching theunconscious animals for a time, the train moved on.
The sun was only an hour or two high when they descended the point ofrocks and struck into the open trail along the upper lake. Here Hughincreased the speed of his horse, and the boys, keeping the pack horsesup, reached the inlet just before dark and made camp.
Jack the Young Explorer: A Boy's Experiances in the Unknown Northwest Page 23
