A Mountain Boyhood Part 11

The lady pointed to the dead trees, wagged her head, and said:

"Isn't it too bad the alt.i.tude killed them?"

There were green trees a mile farther up the mountain above the dead ones in the glade. Yet my lady insisted that the alt.i.tude had singled out and killed the little grove in the midst of the forest--so we let it go at that.

Of course, some persons really are affected by alt.i.tude, but weariness, lack of muscular as well as mental control, often creates alt.i.tudinous illusion. Of this condition I had an example while guiding a party of three women and one man to the top of Long's Peak. We climbed above timberline, headed through Storm Pa.s.s, and finally reached Keyhole without a single incident to mar the perfect day. The ladies were new, but plucky, climbers; the man rather bl.u.s.tery, but harmless.

Beyond Keyhole lies rough going, smooth, sloping rocks and the "Trough"

with its endless rock-slides that move like giant treadmills beneath the climber's feet. The pace I set was very slow. The man wanted to go faster, but I called attention to Glacier Gorge below, the color of the lakes in the canon, in short, employed many tactics to divert him from his purpose.

My refusal to travel faster excited him, he became extremely nervous and made slighting remarks regarding my guiding ability that ruffled me and embarra.s.sed the ladies. Hoping to convince him of his error, I speeded up. He remonstrated at once, but when I slowed down to our customary pace he still objected, saying we'd never reach the top before dark.

Suddenly he developed a new notion. Climbing out upon a ledge he lifted his arms and poised, as though to dive off the cliff.

"Guide," he called, his voice breaking, "I must jump."

After some confusion we were on our way again, the man within clutch of my hand. All progressed without further trouble until we reached the top of the trough, where we halted to rest and to look down into Wild Basin, memorable scene of my first camp! My charge craftily escaped my clutches, walked out on a promontory, and again threatened to jump.

Secretly I hoped he would carry out his threat.

Before we began scaling the home stretch, I tried to persuade the erratic idiot to remain behind, but he refused. However, we all made the top safely. He relapsed into glum silence, which I hoped would last until we were safely off the peak. But as we stood near the brink of the three-thousand-foot precipice overlooking Chasm Lake, we were startled to hear his voice once more, raised to high pitch.

"I must jump over, I've got to jump," he screamed.

He waved his arms wildly, as though trying to fly. The ladies begged me not to approach him lest he totter from his precarious perch.

Summoning all the authority I could command, I ordered him to come down off the rock. My commandment unheeded, next I humored him and tried to coax him back upon the pretext of showing him something of special interest. But he stood firm, mentally at least, if not physically.

Pus.h.i.+ng the ladies ahead, I hurried on toward the trail. As I started, I waved good-by, and shouted:

"Go on, jump. Get it over with, coward!"

He turned back from the edge, swearing vengeance against me. In abusing me, however, he forgot his obsession to jump.

During the summer of my experience with the man who wanted to jump, I guided a party of three men who behaved in a totally different, but in quite as unexpected, manner. They were three gentlemen from New York, who wished to make a night climb up Long's Peak. It was a beautiful moonlight night. Our party left the hotel at the foot of the Peak at eleven o'clock. Proceeding upward through the shadowy, moon-flecked forest, we sang songs, shouted, listened to the far-away calls of the coyotes in the valley below, and from timberline saw the distant lights of Denver. At one o'clock we reached the end of the horse trail. In two hours the horses had covered five miles and had climbed up thirty-five hundred feet. We were on schedule time. Though the sun would gild the summit of the Peak soon after four in the morning, we would arrive sufficiently ahead of it, to watch it rise.

All at once my troubles began. The three men wanted to race across bowlderfield. It was sheer folly and I told them so, and why, but failed to convince them. They raced. They kidded me for being slow, dared me to race them, and gibingly a.s.sured me that they would wait for me on top and command the sun not to rise until I got there.

They would have their little joke. They waited for me at Keyhole and we moved slowly along the shelf trail beyond. On that they raced again, but not far, for the steep slope of the trough with its slippery stones stood just beyond. Right there they insisted on eating their lunch, an untimely lunch hour for there was hard climbing yet to do.

Not satisfied with emptying their lunch bags, they drank freely of some ice water that trickled out from beneath a s...o...b..nk.

I got them going at last and we had gone only a short way when two of them fell ill. They felt they just had to lie down, and did so, and became thoroughly chilled, which added to their pangs of nausea. After awhile we proceeded very slowly. No longer their song echoed against the cliffs. They broke their pained silence only to grumble at one another.

Midway of the rock-slide of the trough, they stopped, and like balky mules, refused to go forward or turn back. In vain I urged them to start down, a.s.suring them the lower alt.i.tude would bring relief. The sick men didn't care what happened; they craved instant relief by death or any other instantaneous method, as seasick persons always do. Their more fortunate friend looked at them in disgust, as those who have escaped the consequences of their deeds often look at those who have not. He upbraided me for not keeping them from making fools of themselves. I knew argument with him would be futile in his quarrelsome frame of mind. I kept still. His sick companions crawled beneath an overhanging rock, and lay s.h.i.+vering and shaking, too miserable to sleep. Presently he joined them, sputtering at me as the author of all their troubles. His sputterings grew intermittent, ceased. He was audibly asleep.

After a long time one of his pals demanded.

"Who in the ---- proposed this ---- trip anyway?"

The conduct of these men was not unique. Most climbers start out exuberantly, burn up more energy than they can spare for the first part of the trip, and find themselves physically bankrupt before they've reached their goal. The rarefied air of the high country seems to make them lightheaded! The most disagreeable character to have in a party, as in other situations, is the bully, or know-it-all, who spoils everyone's fun. A guide is a trifle handicapped in handling such people, in that his civilized inhibitions restrain him from pus.h.i.+ng them off the cliffs or entombing them in a creva.s.se. I was too small to do them physical violence anyway, so I had to resort to more subtle weapons, the most effective being ridicule. If a joke could be turned on the disturber he generally subsided. The rest of the crowd were profuse in their expressions of grat.i.tude to me for such service rendered.

Such an individual was once a member of a fis.h.i.+ng party I guided to Bear Lake. The trip was made on horseback and we hadn't gone a mile before he urged his horse out of line and raced ahead, calling to some kindred spirit to follow. They missed the turn and delayed the whole party more than an hour while being rounded up.

"Lanky," as the party dubbed him out of disrespect, blamed me for their getting lost, but dropped behind when he saw the half-suppressed mirth of the others. Along the way were many inviting pools, and occasionally we saw a fisherman. "Lanky" soon raised the question of trying out the stream, but was outvoted by the others. He was inclined to argue the matter, but we rode up the trail, leaving him to follow or fish as he desired.

At Bear Lake at that time was a canvas boat, cached twenty steps due west of a certain large bowlder that lay south of the outlet. The boat was small, would safely hold but two persons. As it was being carried to the water, "Lanky" appeared and insisted on having the first turn in it. To this the others agreed, much against my wishes. To save the others from the annoyance of the fellow, I went out with him in the boat.

The trout were too well fed to be interested in our flies, though "Lanky" and I paddled around and across, and tempted them with a dozen lures.

My pa.s.senger became abusive and blamed me for wasting a good fis.h.i.+ng day by bringing the party to the lake. In the midst of his tirade the boat tilted strangely. For a few minutes he shamefully neglected me while he gave his whole attention to righting it.

By sundown the party had caught a few small fish, and were ready to quit. They had gladly let "Lanky" monopolize the boat so as to be spared his society. To "Lanky's" disgust we had caught only two six-inch fish. Just as we started for the sh.o.r.e he made a farewell cast.

Something struck his spinner; his reel sang, his rod bent, and he stood up in the boat, yelling instructions at me. The rest of the party quit fis.h.i.+ng to watch him land the fish. The trout was a big one, and game, but we were in deep water with plenty of room. From the sh.o.r.e came excited directions: "Give him more line!" "Reel him in!" "Don't let him get under the boat!" "Head him toward the sh.o.r.e!" "Lanky" turned a superior deaf ear.

After a tussle of ten minutes a two-pound trout lay in the boat, and "Lanky" raised an exultant yell in which the cliffs of Hallett joined.

Now, indeed, was justice gone astray, when the one disagreeable member of the party had the only luck.

When the last triumphant echo died away, I picked up his prize, inspected it critically, held it aloft for the others to witness. "I'm a deputy warden," I snapped at him disgustedly, "and you don't keep small ones while I'm around." With that I tossed the trout into the lake.

Just as I finished, the boat mysteriously upset, and "Lanky" and I followed the fish.

The early trips I made with parties were mostly short ones for game or fish, but as more and more visitors came each succeeding summer, longer trips became popular. From fis.h.i.+ng, the summer guests turned to trail trips, camping en route and remaining out from five to ten days. To cross the Continental Divide was the great achievement. Everyone wanted to tell his stay-at-home neighbors about trailing over the crest of the continent, and s...o...b..lling in the summer.

The route commonly chosen was the Flattop trail to Grand Lake, where camp was pitched for a day or two; then up the North Fork of the Grand River (known farther south as the Colorado River) to Poudre Lake, where another camp was made. From here they made a visit to Specimen, a mountain of volcanic formation which rises from the lake sh.o.r.e. This peak has ever been the home of mountain sheep. One can always count on seeing them there, sometimes just a few stragglers, but often bands of a hundred or more.

However interesting the day's experience had been, the climax came after camp was made, supper served and cleared away, when a big bonfire was lighted and all sat about it talking over the happenings of the day, singing and putting on stunts. In the tourists' minds the guide and the grizzly were cla.s.sed together; both were wild, strange and somewhat of a curiosity. Nothing delighted them more than to get the guide to talking about his life in the wilds. Most of them looked upon him as a sort of vaudeville artist.

When several parties were out on the same trip they all a.s.sembled around a common campfire. The guides were given the floor, or ground, and they made the most of the occasion. Such compet.i.tion as there was!

Each, of course, felt obliged to uphold the honor of his party and out-yarn his fellows. Their stories grew in the telling, each more lurid than the last. There were thrilling tales of bear fights; of battles with arctic storms above timberline; of finding rich gold-strikes and losing them again.

At first the guides stuck to authentic experiences. But as the demand outgrew their supply, they were forced to invention. They had no mean imaginations and entranced their tenderfoot audiences with their thrilling tales. Around the campfires of primitive peoples have started the folklore of races. These guides were more sophisticated than their rustic mien hinted, the points of their yarns more subtle than the city dwellers suspected.

One evening I reached the Poudre Lake camp at dusk, to find two other parties ahead of mine. The others had finished supper and were gathered around the campfire, with North Park Ned the center of attraction.

"I was camped over on Troublesome crick, an' havin' a busy time with cookin', wranglin' the hosses and doin' all the camp work. The fellers, they was all men, were too plumb loco to help, everything they touched spelt trouble. They admired to have flapjacks, same as we et, for supper, an' they watched jest how I made 'em, an' flipped 'em in the frypan. Then they wanted to do the flippin'."

Ned chuckled quietly to himself and went on:

"I hadn't realized afore that a tenderfoot with a pan of hot, smeary flapjacks is as dangerous as he is with a gun. He's liable to cut loose in any direction. He ain't safe nowhere. One of them I had out was called Doctor Chance; guess he got his name cause other folks took chances havin' him round. Well, Chance was the first flipper. I'd showed him the trick of rotatin' the frypan to loosen the jacks so't they wouldn't stick an' cause trouble. The doctor got the hang of flippin' 'em 'an did a good job 'til he wanted to do it fancy. The plain ordinary flip wasn't good enough for him, no siree. He wanted to do it extra fancy. Instead of a little flip so's they'd light batter side down, the doctor'd give 'em a double turn an' they'd come down in the pan with a splash. He got away with it two or three times; then he got careless--flipped a panful without loosen'n 'em proper--them jacks stuck at one edge, flopped over and come down on doc's hands. We had to stop cookin' and doctor the doctor.

"Then another one of 'em thought he'd learnt how from watchin' the doc, so I set back an' let 'im have all the rope he wanted. It was their party, an' they could go the limit so far as I was concerned. But the new guy slung 'em high, wide an' crooked as a sunfis.h.i.+n' bronc. First thing I knowed there was a shower of sizzlin' flapjacks rainin' where I set, an' I had to make a quick getaway to keep from bein' branded for life. Then he heaved a batch so high they hit a dead limb over the fire an' wrapped aroun' it.

"It was then the next feller's turn, and he started in, while Number Two s.h.i.+nned up the tree to get the jacks off en the limb. Number Four hadn't came to bat yet, so the performance was due to last some time.

I got up on a big rock, outta range.

"Number Two was in the tree; Number Three flippin'; Number Four was a rollin' up his sleeves an' gettin' ready for his turn. The third chef was sure fancy! He juggled them cakes just like a vodeville artist does. Of a sudden he cuts loose a batch that sailed up high an'

han'some, turned over an' c.u.m down on the back of Four's neck--him bein' entertained at the time by the feller in the tree."

Ned had acquitted himself well, his story had the tang of reality in it, and he told it with rare enthusiasm. He was so clever, in fact, that the younger guides, including myself, decided not to enter the story contest that night. But there was one in camp who did not hesitate; Andrews was his name. I had not seen this man on the trail before, so listened as eagerly as the others to what he had to offer.