ce. I could cook; but I would
not cook for that outfit. There were too many; they were too hungry.
Besides, I had come on a pleasure-trip, and the idea of cooking for
fifteen men and thirty-one horses was too much for me. I made some cocoa
and grumbled while I made it. We lunched out of tins and in savage
silence. When we spoke, it was to impose horrible punishments on the
defaulting cook. We hoped he would enjoy his long walk back to
civilization without food.

"Food!" answered one of the boys. "He's got plenty cached in that bed of
his, all right. What you should have done," he said to the teamster,
"was to take his bed from him and let him starve."

In silence we finished our luncheon; in silence, mounted our horses. In
black and hopeless silence we rode on north, farther and farther from
cooks and hotels and tables-d'hote.

We rode for an hour--two hours. And, at last, sitting in a cleared spot,
we saw a man beside the trail. He was the first man we had seen in days.
He was sitting there quite idly. Probably that man to-day thinks that he
took himself there on his own feet, of his own volition. We know better.
He was directed there for our happiness. It was a direct act of
Providence. For we rode up to him and said:--

"Do you know of any place where we can find a cook?"

And this man, who had dropped from heaven, replied:

"_I am a cook._"

So we put him on our extra saddle-horse and took him with us. He cooked
for us with might and main, day and night, until the trip was over. And
if you don't believe this story, write to Norman Lee, Kintla, Montana,
and ask him if it is true. What is more, Norman Lee could cook. He could
cook on his knees, bending over, and backward. He had been in Cuba, in
the Philippines, in the Boxer Rebellion in China, and was now a trapper;
is now a trapper, for, as I write this, Norman Lee is trapping marten
and lynx on the upper left-hand corner of Montana, in one of the empty
spaces of the world.

We were very happy. We caracoled--whatever that may be. We sang and
whistled, and we rode. How we rode! We rode, and rode, and rode, and
rode, and rode, and rode, and rode. And, at last, just when the end of
endurance had come, we reached our night camp.

Here and there upon the west side of Glacier Park are curious, sharply
defined treeless places, surrounded by a border of forest. On Round
Prairie, that night, we pitched our tents and slept the sleep of the
weary, our heads pillowed