“Yes, boys; let us hear what Ralph has been up to now. I declare, since our experience along the Border I’m prepared for anything.”
“Even what may befall us in the Canadian Rockies, eh, Professor Wintergreen?” asked Ralph. “Well, that lad yonder, if I’m not much mistaken, is our future deputy cook, bottlewasher, and midshipmate.”
They all stared at him. Persimmons was the first to recover his voice.
“Giggling gophers,” he gasped, “as if Hardware hadn’t brought along enough patent dingbats without your adding a live one to the collection!”
CHAPTER II
THE TORRENT
Vacation time had rolled around once more at Stonefell College, which accounts for our finding Professor Wintergreen, Ralph Stetson, and the latter’s chums at this isolated spot in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. Readers of former volumes of this series will at once recall the eccentric professor and his young companion Ralph. Harry Ware and Percy Simmons, however, we have not met before. Jack Merrill and Walt Phelps, the two young ranchmen who shared Ralph’s adventure on the Mexican border, could not be with him on the present vacation, both boys being required at their western homes.
So it had come about that when Professor Wintergreen received a commission to hunt specimens in the Canadian Rockies, Ralph jumped at the chance to accompany him. His father, the railroad magnate, and Ralph’s mother had planned a trip to Europe, but the boy, being given the choice of the Rocky Mountain expedition or the trip across the Atlantic, had, with his characteristic love of adventure, chosen the former without hesitation. His mother grieved rather over this, but his father approved. “King-pin Stetson,” as Wall Street knew the dignified railroad magnate, approved of boys roughing it. He had seen how much good Ralph’s western experiences had done the boy. His shoulders had broadened, his muscles hardened, and his eyes grown brighter during his strenuous times along the border. Not less noteworthy had been his mental broadening. From an indolent attitude toward studies, a condition caused, perhaps, by his former rather delicate health, Ralph’s appetite for learning had become as robust as the rest of him.
There is no space here to detail all that had happened during Ralph’s vacation on the Mexican border. But briefly, as told in “The Border Boys on the Trail,” it included the exciting experiences attendant upon the capture of his chums and himself by a border bandit, and their sharing many perils and adventures on both sides of the frontier. In the second volume, called “The Border Boys Across the Frontier,” the boys discovered the Haunted Mesa, and stumbled by the merest accident upon a subterranean river. The finding of this latter plunged them into a series of accidents and thrilling adventures, exciting beyond their wildest dreams. It is no laughing matter to be captured and suspected as spies by Mexican revolutionists, as the boys found out. But they managed to stop the smuggling of arms across the Border, as readers of that volume know.
“The Border Boys with the Mexican Rangers” showed how courage and skill may be more than a match for villainy and duplicity. With the “Rurales” the boys lived a life brimming to the full with the sort of experiences they had grown to love. The finding of a hidden mine, too, enriched them all and gave each lad an independent bank account of no mean dimension. The following book, which was entitled “The Border Boys with the Texas Rangers,” found the three lads sharing the perils and hardships of the body that has done so much to keep law and order in a much vexed region. Brave, resourceful, and skillful, as their former experiences had trained them to be, the boys found full scope for all their faculties with the Rangers. A band of cattle thieves made trouble for them, and Jack Merrill’s climb out of the Hidden Valley furnished the most thrilling experience of his life.
Dearly would Ralph have loved to share with his former companions the exciting times which he was sure lay ahead of him in the Canadian Rockies. But it was not to be, and so, when young Ware and Percy Simmons both begged to be “let off” from Bar Harbor and Newport, Professor Wintergreen had, on their parents’ request, decided to allow them to come along. The professor’s interests in the Canadian Rockies were purely scientific. His duty was to collect specimens of minerals, and also of animal life, for one of the best known scientific bodies in the east. Ralph, with his knowledge of hunting and woodcraft, was to be relied upon as a valuable aide. Young Ware and Percy Simmons were more or less Tenderfeet, though both had been camping before.
When Ralph had finished relating Jimmie’s story to the others, the professor said:
“I’ll talk to the lad myself. If he proves all that he appears to be from your description, Ralph, we might manage to use him. A boy willing to make himself useful around camp might come in handy.”
So the professor stalked off on his long legs to interview Jimmie, who viewed his approach with awe, while the boys stood in a chattering group about the pile of baggage. It was to be remarked that most of it bore the initials H. D. Ware, of which more anon.
“Wonder what’s become of that guide and the ponies?” spoke up Ralph, while the Professor interrogated the awe-struck Jimmie.
“Don’t know,” responded Hardware, gazing at a dusty track that wound itself up the cliff back of the station for a few yards, and was then lost around a scrap of rock that glittered with “fool’s-gold.” “Ought to be here by now, though.”
“Fiddling fish,” struck in Persimmons at this moment, “there ought to be trout in that stream below there, boys. I’m going down to have a look.”
“All right. We’ll wait for you and give you a hail when the ponies show up. Look out you don’t fall in, though. Those rocks look slippery where the water has dashed over them,” warned Ralph.
“I’m all right,” responded Persimmons airily, and he set out, clambering down the rocky path leading to the brink of the foaming, brown torrent that roared through Pine Pass.
Shortly afterward, the Professor came back with his arm on Jimmie’s shoulder. The man of science, childlike in some things and absorbed in study for the most part, was yet a fairly accurate reader of human nature.
“I’ve been talking to Jimmie, boys,” he said, as he approached, “and he’ll do. He’s been officially engaged as general assistant to our guide with the Wintergreen expedition.”
“Good for you, Jimmie,” smiled Ralph, “and so now your troubles are at an end for a time, anyhow.”
The eyes of the waif filled with tears.
“I dunno jes how ter thank you, boss,” he said, addressing all of them, “but I kin promise you that I’ll make good.”
“Sure of that,” said the Professor kindly, “but I can’t make out why you won’t tell us what brought you to such an out-of-the-way, not to say remote, part of the world as this.”
“I’d tell yer if I could; honest I would, boss,” spoke Jimmie; “but – but I can’t jes’ yet. Some time maybe – ”
The lad broke off, and once more his wistful eyes sought the distant peaks.
“Is them the Selkirks over yonder?” he asked presently.
“Yes; those far peaks are,” said the Professor, also gazing toward the giant ranges in the distance whose crests glimmered with the cold gleam of never-melting snow, “those are the Selkirks.”
“Goin’ that way?” asked Jimmie, his eyes still riveted on the far-flung ranges.
“Yes; we hope to penetrate as far as that. Why?”
“Oh, nuttin’. I hoped you was, that’s all.”
A smile played over Ralph’s lips. He was about to ask Jimmie some bantering question about what he, the New York waif, expected to find in the distant mountains, but at that instant there came a piercing cry.
“Help! Guzzling grasshoppers! H-e-l-p!”
“Gracious!