d. Doubtful Lake was full of
floating ice, and a chilling wind blew on us from the snow all about. A
bear came out on the cliff-face across the valley. But no one attempted
to shoot at him. We were too tired, too bruised and sore. We gave him no
more than a passing glance.

It had been a tremendous experience, but a most alarming one. From the
brink of that pocket on the mountain-top where we stood the earth fell
away to vast distances beneath. The little river which empties Doubtful
Lake slid greasily over a rock and disappeared without a sound into
the void.

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT BY FRED H. KISER, PORTLAND, OREGON
_Switchbacks on the trail_ (_Glacier National Park_)]

Until the pack-outfit arrived, we could have no food. We built a fire
and huddled round it, and now and then one of us would go to the edge of
the pit which lay below to listen. The summer evening was over and night
had fallen before we heard the horses coming near the top of the cliff.
We cheered them, as, one by one, they stumbled over the edge, dark
figures of horses and men, the animals with their bulging packs. They
had put up a gallant fight.

And we had no food for the horses. The few oats we had been able to
carry were gone, and there was no grass on the little plateau. There was
heather, deceptively green, but nothing else. And here, for the benefit
of those who may follow us along the trail, let me say that oats should
be carried, if two additional horses are required for the
purpose--carried, and kept in reserve for the last hard days of the
trip.

The two horses that had fallen were unpacked first. They were cut, and
on their cuts the Head poured iodine. But that was all we could do for
them. One little gray mare was trembling violently. She went over a
cliff again the next day, but I am glad to say that we took her out
finally, not much the worse except for a badly cut shoulder. The other
horse, a sorrel, had only a day or two before slid five hundred feet
down a snow-bank. He was still stiff from his previous accident, and if
ever I saw a horse whose nerve was gone, I saw one there--a poor,
tragic, shaken creature, trembling at a word.

That night, while we lay wrapped in blankets round the fire while the
cooks prepared supper at another fire near by, the Optimist produced a
bottle of claret. We drank it out of tin cups, the only wine of the
journey, and not until long afterward did we know its history--that a
very great man t