CHAPTER XI. RALPH’S VOLCANO.

Mountain Jim’s examination of the trails left by the errant ponies showed that they had scattered in three distinct directions. This confirmed him, he said, in a belief he had previously formed that the animals had been frightened during the night by a bear or mountain lion, the latter called, in that part of the country, a cougar.

No tracks of either wild beast was to be seen, but that by no means proved that they had not been in the vicinity. Horses can scent either a cougar or a bear at a considerable distance when the wind is toward them, and there are few things that more terrify a pony than the near presence of one of these denizens of the northern wilds.

Jim assigned himself to one trail, Persimmons and Hardware to another and Ralph to a third.[104] The professor and Jimmie were to remain in camp and wash dishes and set things to rights, and then Jimmie was to assist the professor in gathering specimens of rock from the cliffs in the vicinity.

It was odd to see how, in an emergency, a man like Mountain Jim, who probably had little more scholarship than would suffice to write his own name, took absolute leadership over the party. The professor, whose name was known to a score of scientific bodies all over the country as a savant of unusual attainments, obeyed the son of the Rockies implicitly. Such men as Jim are natural leaders, and in situations that call for action automatically assume the supremacy over men of theory and book learning.

Jim explained his reason for assigning Ralph to follow a lone trail while the other two lads had been ordered to accompany each other. Ralph had plainly shown his skill as a ranger and had the experience of his life on the Border behind[105] him. The other two, while self-reliant and plucky, had not had the same experience, and therefore the guide deemed it best not to send either out alone.

With hearty “So-longs” the three searching parties set out, striking off in a different direction up the mountain side. It was rough country, with beetling masses of gray rock cropping out now and then amidst the somber green of the Douglas firs and great pines. Here and there cliffs of great height and as smooth as the side of a wall, towered sharply above the forest, and beyond lay a “hog-back” ridge of considerable height. Beyond this, although they could not see them from the valley, the boys knew that mountain range after mountain range was piled up like the billows of an angry sea, with the higher peaks of the Rockies raising their crests like snow-crowned monarchs beyond and above all.

Each boy carried a canteen of water, his rifle, and a supply of bread and chocolates. Of course[106] they also carried their small axes, slung in canvas cases at their belts, and matches in waterproof boxes. These same waterproof match safes were, in fact, among the few “Dingbats” approved by Mountain Jim.

“Dry matches have saved many a man’s life,” he was wont to say.

It was lonesome in the deep woods into which Ralph plunged, after bidding adieu to his comrades. The trail, too, was hard to follow, and kept the lad on the alert, which was as well perhaps, for it kept him from thinking of the solitude of the mountain side. No one who has not penetrated the vast solitudes of the Canadian Rockies can picture just what the boding silence, the utter solitude of the untrodden woods is like. And yet the life in the wilds grows upon men till they love it, as witness the solitary prospectors, packers and trappers to be met in all the wilder parts of the American continent.

As he trudged along toilsomely, Ralph kept a[107] look out for game as well as for the trail, for the camp larder needed replenishing with fresh meat, and he was anxious to bring home his share. In this way he covered some three or four miles, now losing the elusive trail, now picking it up again. The mountain side was steep and rocky and strewn with the fallen trunks of forest giants. But Ralph’s muscles were tough, and clean living and athletics had given him sinew and staying power, so that he was conscious of but little fatigue after a long stretch of such traveling.

Almost as skillfully as Coyote Pete might have done in those days in the southwest, the boy read the trail. Here the ponies had galloped. There they had paused and nibbled grass; in other places, broken boughs or abrasions on a fallen tree trunk marked their path. There were two of the ponies; but just which pair they were, Ralph had, of course, no means of determining.

One thing was plain, they must have been badly[108] frightened; for as has been said in the mountain solitudes, as a rule, ponies will stick close to camp. They appear to dread being separated from human companionship, and few packers or trailers ever find it necessary to tether their animals.

At last the ridge was topped and beyond him, by clambering on a rock, Ralph looked into a deep valley with ridge on ridge of mountains rising beyond it, and beyond them again some snow-capped peaks of considerable height. He scanned the valley as closely as he could, but big timber grew thickly on its sides and bottom and he was not able to see much. There were some open spaces, it is true, but in none of these could he see anything of the missing ponies.

Ralph sat himself down on the flat-topped rock he had climbed, and pulling a bit of chocolate out of his pocket, began to nibble it. He was munching away on his lunch when he saw an odd-looking gray bird, not unlike a partridge, sitting in[109] a hemlock not far from him. The bird did not appear to be scared and regarded the boy with its head cocked inquisitively on one side.

“Well, here goes Number One for the pot,” thought Ralph to himself.

He raised his rifle, and taking careful aim fired at the gray bird. But his hand was shaking somewhat from the exertions of his climb, during which he had had to haul himself over many rough places by grabbing branches, and his bullet flew wide.

“Bother it all,” exclaimed the boy impatiently. “I am a muff for fair.”

But to his astonishment, although the bullet had nicked off some leaves and showered them over the bird’s head, it had not moved. It still sat there giving from time to time an odd sort of croaking sound, not unlike the clucking of a barnyard “biddy.”

“I know what you are now,” chuckled Ralph to himself, for the fact that the bird did not stir[110] helped him to recognize its species from a description given the night before by Mountain Jim, “you’re a ‘fool-hen,’ and you are certainly living up to your name.”

He fired again, and this time the “fool-hen” paid the penalty of its stupidity, for it fell out of the tree dead. Ralph ran forward, picked it up and thrust it into the hunting pocket of his khaki coat.

“It was a shame to shoot you,” he muttered to himself; “too easy. I believe the stories that Jim told about knocking fool-hens out of trees with stones, now that I’ve seen what dumb birds they are. But this isn’t finding those ponies,” he went on to himself. “Guess I’ll strike off down in the valley. There may be some sort of pasture there where they’ll have stopped to feed.”

Suddenly he stopped and sniffed the air suspiciously. An odd, rank odor was borne to him on the light wind.

“Sulphur spring!” he exclaimed half aloud.[111] “Reckon I’ll take a look at it. It can’t be far off; it’s strong enough to be right under my feet. At any rate I shan’t need any other guide than my nose to find it.”

Sniffing the tainted air like a hound on the trail, Ralph set out down the mountain side. As he went the odor grew more pronounced. A few minutes later he came upon a pile of rocks heaped in an untidy mass on the mountain side. From the midst of them a stream of yellowish white fluid was flowing.

“Phew!” exclaimed the boy, “here’s my sulphur spring, sure enough. I guess if it was near to civilization there’d be a big health resort here. Smells bad enough to be good for anything that ails you; but—not for me, thank you.—Hullo! What in the world was that?”

Ralph paused and listened intently. Through the forest came a dull booming sound, and the earth appeared to shake as if agitated by a small[112] earthquake. The boy looked about him apprehensively.

“Well, what in the world!” he began. And then, “It can’t be anybody blasting. Mountain Jim said there was no mining hereabouts. What can it be?”

For some odd reason the recollection of the man on the rock recurred to him. His heart began to pound rather faster than was comfortable.

“Pshaw!” he exclaimed, to quiet his nerves, “I’ve got nothing to fear. I’ve got my rifle and—Great Scott! It’s raining!”

That was the boy’s first thought as a gentle pattering resounded amidst the trees about where he stood.

He looked upward; but the sky was clear; the sun shining brightly. Clearly the pattering was not caused by rain.

“What in the world can it be?” he exclaimed, considerably startled. “Sounds as if somebody was throwing stones or gravel at me.”

[113]

The next minute a large globule of mud struck him in his upturned face. Apparently it had fallen from the sky. It was followed by a perfect storm of the mud dobs. They pattered about him in a shower, spattering his clothes and hands.

“It’s raining mud!” gasped the astonished boy, completely at a loss to account for the phenomenon.