d. Then--the naturalist turned and smiled.

"Now we are all right," he said. "_We start to climb soon!_"

XV

DOUBTFUL LAKE

Of all the mountain-climbing I have ever done the switchback up to
Doubtful Lake is the worst. We were hours doing it. There were places
when it seemed no horse could possibly make the climb. Back and forth,
up and up, along that narrow rock-filled trail, which was lost here in a
snow-bank, there in a jungle of evergreen that hung out from the
mountain-side, we were obliged to go. There was no going back. We could
not have turned a horse around, nor could we have reversed the
pack-outfit without losing some of the horses.

As a matter of fact, we dropped two horses on that switchback. With
infinite labor the packers got them back to the trail, rolling,
tumbling, and roping them down to the ledge below, and there salvaging
them. It was heart-breaking, nerve-racking work. Near the top was an
ice-patch across a brawling waterfall. To slip on that ice-patch meant a
drop of incredible distance. From broken places in the crust it was
possible to see the stream below. Yet over the ice it was necessary to
take ourselves and the pack.

"Absolutely no riding here," was the order, given in strained tones. For
everybody's nerves were on edge.

Somehow or other, we got over. I can still see one little pack-pony
wandering away from the others and traveling across that tiny ice-field
on the very brink of death at the top of the precipice. The sun had
softened the snow so that I fell flat into it. And there was a dreadful
moment when I thought I was going to slide.

Even when I was safely over, my anxieties were just beginning. For the
Head and the Juniors were not yet over. And there was no space to stop
and see them come. It was necessary to move on up the switchback, that
the next horse behind might scramble up. Buddy went gallantly on,
leaping, slipping, his flanks heaving, his nostrils dilated. Then, at
last, the familiar call,--

"Are you all right, mother?"

And I knew it was all right with them--so far.

Three thousand feet that switchback went straight up in the air. How
many thousand feet we traveled back and forward, I do not know.

But these things have a way of getting over somehow. The last of the
pack-horses was three hours behind us in reaching Doubtful Lake. The
weary little beasts, cut, bruised, and by this time very hungry, looked
dejected and forlorn. It was bitterly col