"You can search me," Val answered. "I couldn't tell a tree from a cauliflower. Great place for bears, though."

The trail here was so wide that Joe could trot ahead and ask Mills.

"Yes, they are cedars," Mills said. "They call 'em white cedars, I believe. The wood is much softer than your slow-growing cedar in the East. It's a great forest, isn't it?"

"Makes me sure I want to be a forest ranger," Joe answered. "Val says it's a great place for bears."

"Hi, bears, ma!" yelled Bob. "Val says there's lots of 'em here. Say, Mr. Mills, how soon are you going to show us that bear? You know you promised one to-day."

"You'll see it yet--I never break a promise," the Ranger answered.

They rode on, down through the cedar forest, for a mile more, and suddenly saw light through the trees ahead, trotted into a clearing, and almost immediately found themselves by a good-sized hotel, built out of this very cedar lumber, and on the sh.o.r.e of a big lake.

"Lake McDonald," said the Ranger.

"_And_ a hotel!" cried Mrs. Jones. "You can all camp where you like, but _I'm_ going to have a room with a bath to-night."

"I wouldn't mind one myself," said her husband.

"Me, too," the other congressman put in.

"Well, I suppose that means we have to sleep in a stuffy old room to-night, Alice," said Lucy, "and eat in a dining-room with a lot of people. Oh, dear, I prefer Joe's cooking!"

"Looks as if you were going to have a snap to-night, Joe," said Mills.

"You want a room with a bath, too?"

"Oh, no," said Joe. "I'm going to take my blankets up into those cedars and sleep."

"You are?" Bob cried. "Then I'm with you. We won't be quitters, anyhow.

Us for the rough life--and the bears."

"No, Bob, you'll come to the hotel with the rest of us," said his mother.

"Aw, no, ma, let me go with Joe! Gee whiz, here we come three thousand miles to rough it in the Rocky Mountains and you go and bunk up in a flossy hotel--roughing it with hot and cold water, and a valet to black your boots!"

Everybody laughed, and Mr. Jones said, "Let the boy have a good time, mother. I guess he'll fare as well with Joe as he would in the hotel.

Joe's a Boy Scout, aren't you, Joe?"

"Yes, sir," Joe answered.

It was finally settled that way, and while the party went into the hotel to get their rooms, Joe, the guides and Mills unpacked the horses and stabled them, took the dunnage bags of the party to the hotel, and all but Joe found their quarters in the annex. Joe picked out blankets for two, an axe, some grub and a few cooking utensils, and as soon as Bob came back, the two boys carted them back a few hundred yards into the deep woods, in a wild spot well off the trail, made themselves a fire pit against a big stone, which was so covered with green moss they first thought it was a stump, spread Joe's poncho for a bed, on a raked up and smoothed heap of the dead needles, and then went back to have a look at the lake before supper.

It was still early, and the girls were out on the pier in front. Bob spied a canoe for hire, and promptly engaged it. They all four got in, with Joe as bow paddle and Bob as stern, and paddled straight out into the lake, which was quiet now as the wind died down with the setting sun. As they drew away from the sh.o.r.e, they began to realize what a big lake it is--ten or twelve miles long, with great, dark cedar and evergreen forests coming right down to the water's edge, and by the time they were near the middle, they saw how above these forests here at the upper end rose peak after snow-covered peak, piling up to the Great Divide.

"It looks like a lake in Switzerland, doesn't it?" said Alice.

Joe, of course, had never been to Switzerland, so he looked all the harder.

"Only I like it better," Lucy answered, "because here, except for the hotel and those few cottages near it, you don't see anything but forest and wilderness. It's so wild and lonely! Oh, dear, I'd like to _live_ here!"

"I'd like to sail an ice boat here in winter!" said Bob.

"And I'd like to fish here now," said Joe, as a fish jumped half out of the water just ahead of the canoe.

"Fish! Hooray! Say, Joe," Bob called, "if I get a fish early to-morrow, will you cook him for breakfast?"

"You bet!"

"You horrid things," said Alice. "We'll probably be eating breakfast food and canned peaches in the hotel. I hope you don't get your old fish."

"Ain't that just like a girl!" said Bob.

They paddled slowly and reluctantly back, as the sunset lit the snow-fields on the great peaks to the east, and turned them pink. The supper gong rang as they landed.

"Now, Bob, be back right after supper, if you want to see that bear,"

Mills called, and Joe and Bob hurried to their camp to get a quick supper.

All they bothered with was soup, some fried ham, and pancakes, with tea.

They had large quant.i.ties of those things, however, and didn't stop to wash the dishes.

"This is no time to be fussy," Bob said. "I'll never tell. We gotter see old Mr. Bear."

So they hurried back to the trail, where Joe took out a handkerchief, and tied it to a branch.

"What's the big idea?" Bob demanded.

"Well, it's so dark here now you can just barely see the trail," Joe said. "We could never tell where to turn off by the time we get back.

Don't want to be hunting all night for our camp."

"I get you, Sherlocko," Bob replied. "Now for the bear. Hurry up!"

The entire party was waiting when they reached the hotel, and Mills led the way, back by another road into the cedars, which were now very dark.

A lot of other guests were moving in the same direction. After a way, a strong smell began to a.s.sault the nose.

"Smells to me like swill," said Bob.

"Garbage, Robert, is a nicer word," said his mother.

"Well, it doesn't change the smell any," he answered.

Mills said nothing, but walked on, while the smell grew stronger, and in a moment, by the dim light, they saw that the hotel garbage had been dumped on both sides of the roadway. Just ahead a group of people had stopped, and Mills led the way up to this group.

"There," said he, "I promised you one, but I see five."

"Where? I don't see anything," said Congressman Elkins.

He was standing on the extreme edge of the road, and just as he spoke something big and dark and mysterious gave a grunt and with a crash of broken sticks reared up not six feet from him.

The congressman jumped back and nearly upset Mrs. Jones, who screamed.