Middle Boy and the Little Boy referred scornfully to the
flannels and sweaters on which I had been so insistent. The Head slept
across the continent. The Little Boy counted prairie-dogs.

Then, almost suddenly, we were in the mountains--for the Rockies seem to
rise out of a great plain. The air was stimulating. There had been a
great deal of snow last winter, and the wind from the ice-capped peaks
overhead blew down and chilled us. We threw back our heads and breathed.

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. We had
scaled Dawson with the aid of ropes, since snowslides covered the trail,
and crossed the Cut Bank in a hailstorm. Like the noble Duke of York,
Howard Eaton had led us "up a hill one day and led us down again." Only,
he did it every day.

Once, in my notebook, I wrote on top of a mountain my definition of a
mountain pass. I have used it before, but because it was written with
shaking fingers and was torn from my very soul, I cannot better it. This
is what I wrote:--

A pass is a blood-curdling spot up which one's
horse climbs like a goat and down the other side
of which it slides as you lead it, trampling ever
and anon on a tender part of your foot. A pass is
the highest place between two peaks. A pass is not
an opening, but a barrier which you climb with
chills and descend with prayer. A pass is a thing
which you try to forget at the time, and which you
boast about when you get back home.

At last came the day when we crossed the Gunsight Pass and, under Sperry
Glacier, looked down and across to the north and west. It was sunset and
cold. The day had been a long and trying one. We had ridden across an
ice-field which sloped gently off--into China, I dare say. I did not
look over. Our horses were weary, and we were saddle-sore and hungry.

Pete, our big guide, whose name is really not Pete at all, waved an airy
hand toward the massed peaks beyond--the land of our dreams.

"Well," he said, "there it is!"

And there it was.

*