When the boys turned out at seven o’clock in the morning they found Sam Skinner already on the observation platform, his black pipe glowing and his eyes busy with the landscape.

“We just passed Calais,” said Sam, “where the old Sioux reservation used to begin. ’Tain’t like the old days though. They ain’t many of the old braves about now—too many clothes, store beef and wagons,” he explained. “But for about seventy-five miles—as far as Whately—ten years ago, you could a seen plenty o’ the old blanket boys hangin’ around these stations.”

“Where are they?” asked Frank.

“Most of ’em dead, I reckon,” answered Sam sucking on his pipe. “Them ’at ain’t have houses and some of ’em plows and wheat binders. But here’s some!” exclaimed the hunter springing suddenly to his feet.

At that moment, through the cloud of dust[143] following the swiftly moving train, could be seen moving along on a near-by road, a party of Indians. Two men, their blankets drawn closely around them, walked stoutly ahead of an unpainted wagon drawn by two ponies. In the wagon a squaw, her blanket about her hips, held the reins and, clinging to the sideboards and yelling as lustily at the passing train as white urchins, three children were jumping about excitedly in the wagon bed behind.

Old Sam jerked his pipe from his mouth and, his hands to his face, emitted a cry that startled the boys. At the sound of it the two braves paused and then—as Sam repeated the call—with astounded looks they raised their right hands above their heads. “Injun for ‘howdy,’” explained Sam with a laugh as the train left the Indians far behind.

“Where are they goin’, do you suppose?” asked Phil. “Huntin’?”

“Probably to the nearest town to attend the ten-cent picture show,” said Sam. “Their huntin’ days are over. Them Injuns can buy beef.”

It was Frank’s and Phil’s first sight of Indian land.

[144]

“This is too flat and treeless for huntin’ along here, isn’t it?” was Frank’s next question.

“The kind o’ huntin’ we do now ain’t the kind we used to do,” answered Sam recharging his pipe. “This is old buffalo ground and the best in the west in its day. My folks was English,” went on Skinner reminiscently, “and they came out to the Assinniboine River Valley in Canada when I was a baby. But from the time I was old enough to help in camp I can remember the buffalo hunts each fall. All them settlers—maybe several hundred—would trail for weeks to get down here near the Missouri River. But it wasn’t huntin’—it was the kind o’ work they do now in slaughter houses. We’d line up and march against them buffaloes like soldiers; and we had officers, too, to see that every one done his work. When the bugle blew, killin’ stopped for the day and all hands turned in to take care o’ the meat and the hides. And that went on sometimes for a month—the settlers followin’ the buffaloes till our wagons were full.”

“Full of what?” asked Phil innocently.

[145]

“My boy,” went on Sam, “them buffaloes was our winter’s provisions. Part of the meat was smoked or ‘jerked’ as we called it; the rest of it was ground up with the fat to make pemmican—that’s the way we used most of it—and the hides had to be cured. They was our profit, for even then we shipped ’em by the thousand to England. When the hunt was over we made the long march back to the Assinniboine. There’s buffalo yet,” he continued thoughtfully, “but not around here. Up on the Mackenzie River, nearer the Arctic Ocean than these prairies, there’s a few hundred animals that you might call buffaloes, but they ain’t the old prairie bull with a hump higher’n a man and wicked little eyes snappin’ out from a head hangin’ most on the ground. But,” continued Mr. Skinner, “buffaloes is buffaloes and I ain’t never goin’ to be satisfied till I’ve taken Mr. Mackworth up there on the Mackenzie. Huntin’ sheep with a spyglass may be sport all right but, for me, give me a good pony and the trail of a buffalo and I’ll be ready to quit.”

And this was only a sample of Sam Skinner’s[146] talk all day. At breakfast and later as the train passed out of the Fort Peck reservation, he reeled off tales of the wonders of the Bear Paw Mountains to the south; the Sweet Grass big game country to the north. Lord Pelton and Captain Ludington were as curious about this as the inexperienced boys. But, at seven o’clock that evening, hunting and Indian tales came to a temporary end; the train, as if approaching a stone wall, thundered up to Midvale—the town at the foot of the main range of the Rocky Mountains.

There were no gradually ascending foothills. From the almost flat but flower-spotted grassy prairie—for the sage brush is almost unknown here—the dusty travelers were whirled like the flash of a moving picture into the wonders of the mountain world. Midvale marks the southern boundary of the Glacier National Park—the old Lewis and Clark reservation that extends into the heart of the mountains, and 135 miles north to the Canadian boundary.

There was no thought of dinner. From seven o’clock until darkness finally blotted out the view of peak and range; of chasm and precipice;[147] of matted and tangled forest; mountain streams and veil-like falls, the entire party sat on the observation platform. It was “Ah” and “Oh,” “Here, quick,” and “Look there,” until necks were stiff and eyes ached.

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Captain Ludington.

“Them trees?” queried Sam Skinner. “You bet they are; all o’ that. You couldn’t make five mile a day in ’em. And we got a good deal o’ that down timber in the Elk River Valley. It’s easier to look at than to cut a trail through.”

Then came dinner after one of the longest and fullest days the boys had ever known. The branch line, on which the Teton was to be hauled to Michel and across the Canadian border into Canada, left the main line at Rexford—well up in the mountains. The limited was due there at a little after midnight. There the special car would be sidetracked to await the leaving of the branch road train at four o’clock the next day.

Mr. Mackworth suggested that every one turn in as there would be plenty of time later for sight-seeing. But the boys, visiting the rear[148] platform after the evening meal, were so entranced with the scene that they hastened to summon the others of the party. The laboring train had crawled well up into the ruggeder mountain heights. And now, on a higher level, it was whirling along on the shoulder of the mountains; swinging around great cliffs on a roadbed cut in their face; now and then shooting through a tunnel or over a spidery trestle, and then getting new impetus on a tangent following the bed of some foaming stream.

The moon had risen and all the world in sight was either the black of the chasms or the silvery glisten of moonlit pines. But what interested Frank and Phil was not so much this glory of nature’s panorama as the song of the train as it sped in and out of narrow places; panted under new grades or breathed full and deep under restful downward grades, and then vied with the echo of its own engine noises as they were caught up and hurled back by unseen precipices.

“There,” exclaimed Frank, grasping Captain Ludington’s arm, “you can tell we’re goin’ up again even when you can’t see anything. Listen!”

[149]

“Chuc-a-chung, chuc-a-chung-chuc-a-chung,” rolled back from the engine.

Then the “chuc-a-chung” stopped for an instant, only to be heard off to the left as if miles away.

“That means,” explained Frank, “we’re rounding a curve and gettin............