, down at the beaver pond--and then,
with a drizzle and a spatter, the rain reached us, too.

We sat hunched, under our hats, and took it. We might have got under
blankets--but that would have given us soaked blankets for night, unless
we had stretched the tarps, too; and if we had stretched the tarps then
the rest of our packs would have suffered. The best way is to crawl
under a spruce, where the limbs have grown close to the ground. But not
in a thunder storm. And it is better to be wet yourself and have a dry
camp for night, than to be dry yourself and have a wet camp for night.

Anyway, the rain didn't hurt us. While it thundered and lightened and
the drops pelted us well, we sang our Patrol song--which is a song like
one used by the Black feet Indians:

"The Elk is our Medicine,
He makes us very strong.
The Elk is our Medicine,
The Elk is our Medicine,
The Elk is our Medicine,
He makes us very strong.
Ooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

And when the thunder boomed we sang at it:

"The _Thunder_ is our Medicine--"

to show that we weren't afraid of it.

The squall passed on over us, and when it had about quit we untied the
burros and started on again. In just a minute we were warm and sweating
and could shed our coats; and the sun came out hot to dry us off.

We crossed the ridge, and on the other side we saw Dixon's Park. We knew
it was Dixon's Park, because the timber had been cut from it, and
Dixon's Park had had a saw-mill twenty years ago.

Once this park had been grown over with trees, like the side of the
ridge where we had been climbing; but that saw-mill had felled
everything in sight, so that now there were only old stumps and dead
logs. It looked like a graveyard. If the mill had been watched, as most
mills are to-day, and had been made to leave part of the trees, then the
timber would have grown again.

Down through the graveyard we went, and stopped for nooning at the
little creek which ran through the bottom. There weren't any fish in
this creek; the mill had killed the timber, and it had driven out the
fish with sawdust. It was just a dead place, and there didn't seem to be
even chipmunks.

We had nooning at the ruins of the mill. Tin cans and old boot soles and
rusted pipe were still scattered about. We were a little tired, and more
rain was coming, so we made a fire by finding dry wood underneath slabs
and things, and had tea and bread and butter. That rested