hat cache,
but we had cut loose and were taking the message on once more. Thus we
began our second week out.

The forest fire was about done. Just a little smoke drifted up, in the
distance behind and below. But from our march we could see where the
fire had passed through the timber, yonder across; and that blackened
swath was a melancholy sight. We didn't stop for nooning, and when we
made an early camp the crack had opened out, and was a pass, sure
enough.

Red Fox Scout Van Sant and I were detailed to take the two rifles and
hunt for rabbits. We got three--two cottontails and a jack--among the
willows where a stream flowed down from the pass. The stream was
swarming here with little trout, and Jed Smith and Kit Carson caught
twenty-four in an hour. So we lived high again.

Those Red Fox Scouts had a fine outfit. They had a water-proof silk
tent, with jointed poles. It folded to pocket size, and didn't weigh
anything at all; but when set up it was large enough for them both to
sleep in. Then they had a double sleeping bag, and blankets that were
light and warm both, and a lot of condensed foods and that little
alcohol stove, and a complete kit of aluminum cooking and eating ware
that closed together--and everything went into those two packs.

They used the packs instead of burros or pack-horses. I believe that
animals are better in the mountains where a fellow climbs at ten and
twelve thousand feet, and where the nights are cold so he needs more
bedding than lower down. Man-packs are all right in the flat timber and
in the hills out East, I suppose. But all styles have their good points,
maybe; and a Scout must adapt himself to the country. We all can't be
the same.

Because the Red Fox Scouts were Easterners, clear from New Jersey, and
we were Westerners, of Colorado, we sort of eyed them sideways, at
first. They had such a swell outfit, you know, and their uniform was
smack to the minute, while ours was rough and ready. They set up their
tent, and we let them--but our way was to sleep out, under tarps (when
we had tarps), in the open. We didn't know but what, on the march, they
might want to keep their own mess--they had so many things that we
didn't. But right away a good thing happened again.

"How did Fitzpatrick lose his arm?" asked Scout Van Sant of me, when we
were out hunting and Fitz couldn't hear.

"In the April Day mine," I said.

"Where?"

"Back home."

He studied. "I _thought_ the name of