rently secure but
reaching up clutching hands to the unwary. Our noonday luncheon, taken
along the shore, was always on some safe and gravelly bank or tiny
island.

Our second camp on the Flathead was less fortunate than the first.
Always, in such an outfit as ours, the first responsibility is the
horses. Camp must be made within reach of grazing-grounds for them, and
in these mountain and forest regions this is almost always a difficult
matter. Here and there are meadows where horses may eat their fill; but,
generally, pasture must be hunted. Often, long after we were settled for
the night, our horses were still ranging far, hunting for grass.

So, on this second night, we made an uncomfortable camp for the sake of
the horses, a camp on a steep bluff sloping into the water in a dead
forest. It had been the intention, as the river was comparatively quiet
here, to swim the animals across and graze them on the other side. But,
although generally a horse can swim when put to it, we discovered too
late that several horses in our string could not swim at all. In the
attempt to get them across, one horse with a rider was almost drowned.
So we gave that up, and they were driven back five miles into the
country to pasture.

There is something ominous and most depressing about a burnt forest.
There is no life, nothing green. It is a ghost-forest, filled with tall
tree skeletons and the mouldering bones of those that have fallen, and
draped with dry gray moss that swings in the wind. Moving through such a
forest is almost impossible. Fallen and rotten trees, black and charred
stumps cover every foot of ground. It required two hours' work with an
axe to clear a path that I might get to the little ridge on which my
tent was placed. The day had been gray, and, to add to our discomfort,
there was a soft, fine rain. The Middle Boy had developed an inflamed
knee and was badly crippled. Sitting in the drizzle beside the
camp-fire, I heated water in a tin pail and applied hot compresses
consisting of woolen socks.

It was all in the game. Eggs tasted none the worse for being fried in a
skillet into which the rain was pattering. Skins were weather-proof, if
clothes were not. And heavy tarpaulins on the ground protected our
bedding from dampness.

The outfit, coming down by trail, had passed a small store in a
clearing. They had bought a whole cheese weighing eleven pounds, a
difficult thing to transport on horseback, a wooden pail c