And too often he loses.

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT BY L. D. LINDSLEY
_A high mountain meadow_]

I am afraid of the mountains. I have always the feeling that they are
lying in wait. At night, their very silence is ominous. The crack of ice
as a bit of slow-moving glacier is dislodged, lightning, and the roar
of thunder somewhere below where I lie--these are the artillery of the
range, and from them I am safe. I am too small for their heavy guns. But
a shelving trail on the verge of a chasm, a slip on an ice-field, a
rolling stone under a horse's foot--these are the weapons I fear above
the timber-line.

Even below there is danger--swamps and rushing rivers, but above all the
forest. In mountain valleys it grows thick on the bodies of dead forests
beneath. It crowds. There is barely room for a tent. And all through the
night the trees protest. They creak and groan and sigh, and sometimes
they burn. In a _cul-de-sac_, with only frowning cliffs about, the
forest becomes ominous, a thing of dreadful beauty. On nights when,
through the crevices of the green roof, there are stars hung in the sky,
the weight lifts. But there are other nights when the trees close in
like ranks of hostile men and take the spirit prisoner.

The peace of the wilderness is not peace. It is waiting.

On the Glacier Park trip, there had been one subject which came up for
discussion night after night round the camp-fire. It resolved itself,
briefly, into this: Should we or should we not get out in time to go
over to the State of Washington and there perform the thrilling feat
which Bob, the Optimist, had in mind?

This was nothing more nor less than the organization of a second
pack-outfit and the crossing of the Cascade Mountains on horseback by a
virgin route. The Head, Bob, and Joe had many discussions about it. I do
not recall that my advice was ever asked. It is generally taken for
granted in these wilderness-trips of ours that I will be there, ready to
get a story when the opportunity presents itself.

Owing to the speed with which the North Fork of the Flathead River
descends from the Canadian border to civilization, we had made very good
time. And, at last, the decision was made to try this new adventure.

"It will be a bully story," said the Optimist, "and you can be dead sure
of this: it's never been done before."

So, at last, it was determined, and we set out on that wonderful
harebrain excursion of which the very memory gives me