TWO RECRUITS

When we got up in the morning, the mountains still had their night-caps
on. White mist was floating low about their tips, and lying in the
gulches like streams and lakes. Above timber-line, opposite us, was a
long layer of cloud, with the top of old Pilot Peak sticking through.

This was a weather sign, although the sun rose clear and the sky was
blue. Nightcaps are apt to mean a showery day. (Note 22.) We took our
wet rub, ate breakfast, policed the camp and killed the fire, and
General Ashley put camphor and cotton against little Jed Smith's back
tooth, to stop some aching. Maybe there was a hole in the tooth, or
maybe Jed had just caught cold in it, after being wet; but he ought to
have had his teeth looked into before he started out on the scout.
(Note 23.) Anyway, the camphor stopped the ache--and made him dance,
too.

We crossed the creek, above the beaver pond, and struck off into the old
survey trail that cut over the ridge. The brush was thick, and the trees
had sprung up again, so that really it wasn't a regular trail unless
you had known about it. The blazes on the side trees had closed over.
But all the same, by watching the scars, and by keeping in the line
where the trees always opened out, and by watching the sky as it showed
before, we followed right along.

After we had been traveling about two hours, we heard thunder and that
made us hustle the more, to get out of the thin timber, so that we would
not be struck by lightning. (Note 24.) The wind moaned through the
trees. The rain was coming, sure.

The trail was diagonally up-hill, all the way, and if we had been
cigarette smokers we wouldn't have had breath enough to hit the fast
pace that General Ashley set. The burros had to trot, and it made little
Jed Smith, who is kind of fat, wheeze; but we stuck it out and came to a
flat place of short dried grass and bushes, with no trees. Here we
stopped. We were about nine thousand feet up.

From where we were we could see the storm. It was flowing down along a
bald-top mountain back from our camp at the beaver pond, and looked like
gray smoke. The sun was just being swallowed. Well, all we could do was
to wait and take it, and see how bad it was. We tied Sally and Apache to
some bushes, but we didn't unpack them, of course. The tarps on top
would keep the grub from getting wet.

The storm made a grand sight, as it rolled toward us, over the timber.
And soon it was raining below us