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 reenex .
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 reenex facial .
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 summer internship .
