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Up the switchback to a green plateau we went, meeting our first ice there, and here again that miracle of the mountains, meadow flowers and snow side by side. Far behind us strung the pack-outfit, plodding doggedly along. From the rim we could look back down that fire-swept valley toward Heart Lake and the camp we had left. But there was little time for looking back.
We dropped three pack-horses over cliffs in two days, but got them again, cut and bruised, and we took out our outfit complete, after two weeks of the most arduous going I have ever known anything about. When the news that we had got over the pass penetrated to the settlements, a pack-outfit started over Cascade Pass in our footsteps to take supplies to a miner.
Before going to Belton for our trip with the pack-outfit, we rode again for two weeks with the Howard Eaton party through the east side of the park, crossing again those great passes, for each one of which, like the Indians, the traveler counts a coup Mount Morgan, a mile high and the width of an army-mule on top; old Piegan, under the shadow of the Garden Wall; Mount Henry, where the wind blows always a steady gale.
Getting a pack-outfit ready for a long trip into the wilderness is a serious matter. We were taking thirty-one horses, guides, packers, and a cook. But we were doing more than that we were taking two boats! This was Bob's idea.
Passing a pack-outfit on the trail is a difficult matter. The wise little horses, traveling free and looked after only by a wrangler or two, do not like to be passed. One of two things happens when the saddle-outfit tries to pass the pack. Either the pack starts on a smart canter ahead, or it turns wildly off into the forest to the accompaniment of much complaint by the drivers.
Until the pack-outfit arrived, we could have no food. We built a fire and huddled round it, and now and then one of us would go to the edge of the pit which lay below to listen. The summer evening was over and night had fallen before we heard the horses coming near the top of the cliff.
"Bartley, I see that you're set on chousin' around the country with that warbling waddie just to hear him sing, as you say. I say you're a dam' fool. "But you're the kind of a dam' fool I want to shake hands with. You aren't excited and you don't play to the gallery; so if there's anything you want on this ranch, from a posse to a pack-outfit, it's yours.
For a pack-outfit, the west side of Glacier Park is ideal. The east side is much the best so far for those who wish to make short trips along the trails into the mountains, although as yet only a small part, comparatively, of the eastern wonderland is open. There, one may spend a day, or several days, in the midst of the wildest possible country and yet return at night to excellent hotels.
Peter had insisted there was someone outside, and they had taken a chance by going in search of them. He was John Cummings, a fox trapper, and the storm had caught him fifty miles from his cabin. He was traveling without a dog-sledge, and had only a pack-outfit. Breault, the third man, had regained his wind, and was listening to him.
Peter had insisted there was someone outside, and they had taken a chance by going in search of them. He was John Cummings, a fox trapper, and the storm had caught him fifty miles from his cabin. He was traveling without a dog-sledge, and had only a pack-outfit. Breault, the third man, had regained his wind, and was listening to him.
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