The Border Boys in the Canadian Rockies. Goldfrap John Henry

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СКАЧАТЬ Persimmons to Ralph, as the latter helped him up the rocky path, “and to think that I classed that kid in with Hardware’s dingbats! But that’s what he is, too,” he added with a sort of an inspiration; “Hardware’s got his bags and boxes full of fool fishing dingbats and cooking dingbats and chopping dingbats, but this one of yours, Ralph, is the greatest ever, he’s a life-saving dingbat. What can I give him?”

      “Not money, if you take my advice,” said Ralph dryly. “While you were down and out there the professor offered him some, and his eyes blazed and he turned quite pale as he refused it. ‘I’ve joined this expedition to be generally useful, and that was only one of my jobs, see,’ was what he said.”

      “Waltzing wombats! I hope he never has to be useful in just that way again,” breathed Persimmons fervently, as they reached the top of the trail.

      “I hope not. But how did you ever come to get in such a fix?”

      Persimmons explained that he had been looking at some wonderful trout disporting themselves in a pool some distance above where the tree trunk stretched out over the waters of the torrent. In some way his foot had slipped, and before he knew what had happened he was whirled out into midstream.

      Hurried along, brushed by out-cropping rocks and bits of drift timber, he had caught at the first thing that offered, which happened to be the trunk that so providentially stretched out above the torrent.

      “Bounding beetles! but it was a close shave, I tell you,” he concluded fervently. “I don’t think I could have held on a minute longer when Jimmie got that rope to me; but when I felt it, new strength seemed to come to me and I could help you fellows drag me ashore.”

      For a consideration, the agent drew on his stores, and they made a hearty breakfast after this adventure. Jimmie, of course, was the hero of the occasion, although no one could have accused him of seeking honors. The boy looked actually embarrassed as they each, in turn and in chorus, told him over and over what they thought of his plucky act.

      They were still eating when there came a clatter of hoofs on the cliff above.

      “Something comin’ down the trail,” observed the agent; “shouldn’t wonder if that’s your man now.”

      “I hope so, indeed,” said the professor, “this delay is most annoying.”

      Emerging from the depot they saw a strange cavalcade coming down the dusty trail. In advance, on a wiry buckskin cayuse, rode a figure that might have stepped out of a book. His saddle was of the gaily rigged ranger’s type. But it was the person who sat in it with an easy grace that was more striking to the eye than any of his caparisons.

      He was of medium height, it appeared, but of so powerful a build that his breadth of chest and massive loins seemed better fitted for a giant. His hair and beard were curly and as yellow as corn silk, his face fiery red by constant exposure to sun and wind and snow, while his eyes, deep-set in wrinkles, were as blue as the Canadian sky above them. His clothes were of the frontiersman’s type, and on his massive head was a colorless sombrero, badly crushed, with several holes cut in its crown.

      Behind him came, in single file, four wiry looking little cayuses, saddled and bridled ready for their riders. These were followed by three pack animals of rather sorry appearance, but, as the party was to learn later, of proved ability on the trail.

      “You Professor Summered?” he hailed, in a deep, hearty voice, as he saw the professor and the boys standing in a group outside the little depot, eying him with deep interest and attention.

      “Wintergreen, sir! Wintergreen!” exclaimed the professor rather testily.

      “Oh, ho! ho! Beg your pardon. I’m Mountain Jim Bothwell, at your service. Sorry to be late, but the trail up above is none too good.”

      He struck his pony with his spurs, and the whole procession broke into an ambling trot coming down the trail in a cloud of yellow dust toward the waiting group of travelers.

       CHAPTER V

      THE START FOR THE ROCKIES

      “Great Blue Bells of Scotland!”

      Mountain Jim Bothwell uttered the exclamation as he gazed at the immense pile of baggage labeled H. D. Ware.

      “Say, who is H. D. Ware, anyhow? He goin’ to start a hotel hereabouts? When’s the wagons comin’ for all this truck?”

      “That’s my camping equipment,” struck in “H. D. Ware,” looking rather red and uncomfortable under the appraising blue eye of Mountain Jim.

      “Young feller,” spoke Jim solemnly, “you’d need an ocean liner to transport all that duffle. We ain’t goin’ to sea; we’re goin’ inter the mountains. What you got in there, anyhow?”

      “Dingbats,” said Ralph quietly, a mischievous smile playing about his mouth.

      “Dingbats? Great Bells of Scotland, what’s them?”

      “The things that the sporting goods catalogues say no camper should be without,” exclaimed Ralph; “we told him, but it wasn’t any good.”

      “Well, my mother said I was to have every comfort,” said poor Hardware, crimsoning under the guide’s amused scrutiny. “When we were camping in Maine – ”

      “When you were camping in Maine, I don’t doubt you had a cook – ”

      Hardware nodded. He had to admit that, like most wealthy New Yorkers, his parents’ ideas of “a camp” had been a sort of independent summer hotel under canvas.

      “Well, young fellow, let me tell you something. From what the professor here wrote me, you young fellers came up here to rough it. I’m goin’ to see that you do. The cooking will mostly be done by you and your chums; your elders will – will eat it, and that’ll be sufficient punishment for them.”

      “But – but I’ve just engaged a lad to aid with the cooking and help out generally,” struck in the professor.

      “That’s all right,” responded Mountain Jim airily, eying Jimmie, whose clothes, since they had been dried by the agent’s cook stove, looked worse than before, “that kid seems all right, and he can take his turn with the others. In the mountains it’s share and share alike, you know, and no favors. That’s the rule up this way.”

      The boys looked rather dismayed. Already the standards of the city were being swept aside. Evidently this mountaineer looked upon all men and boys as being alike, provided they did their share of the work set before them.

      Ralph, alone, whose wild life on the Border had already done for him what the Rockies were to perform for his companions, viewed the guide with approval. He knew that out in the wilderness, be it mountain or plain, certain false standards of caste and station count for nothing. As Coyote Pete had been wont to say in those old days along the Border, “It ain’t the hide that counts, it’s the man underneath it.”

      “First thing to do is to sort out some of this truck and see what you do need and what you don’t,” decided Mountain Jim presently. “Most times it’s the things that you think you kain’t get along without that you kin, and the things you think you kin that you kain’t.”

      “That’s right,” agreed Ralph heartily. “Daniel Boone, on his first journey into Kentucky, managed to worry along on pinole and salt, and relied СКАЧАТЬ