OF all the trails in the McDonald country, there is none more travelled, or more worthy of the toil than that which leads to the Piegan glacier. From the moment we stand in expectant readiness in the little clearing behind the log cabins comprising the hotel, a new phase of existence has begun for us. So strange are the place and the conditions that it seems we must have stepped back fifty years or more, into that West whose glamour lives in story and song. Strong, tanned, sinewy guides who wear cartridge belts and six-shooters, load grunting pack-horses and "throw" diamond-hitches in businesslike silence. When at last all is ready, the riders mount the Indian ponies or "cayuses"—Allie Sand, the yellow cow pony; Babe, the slumbrous; Bunchie, but recently subdued, and Baldy, nicknamed "Foolish" because of the musical pack of kettles, camp stoves and sundries that jingle and jump up and down upon his back, lightening the way with merriment for those who follow. With a quickened beating of the heart, the good cheer and Godspeed of friendly voices ringing in our ears, we take leave of the last haunt of civilization and strike out into the virgin solitude of heaven-aspiring peaks.

As the feeling of remoteness smites the spirit when we pass beyond the railway station of Belton and follow in creaking wagons the shadow-curtained road to the lake, so now it returns with stronger impulse, calling to life new emotions begotten of the Wild. The world-rush calms into the great stillness of untrodden places, the world-voices sigh out in the murmuring breeze, the petty traffic of the cities is forgotten in the soulful silence of the trees. And out of this newly found affinity with the Nature forces, the love of adventure thrills into being, together with the fine scorn of danger and the resolve to do that which we set out to do no matter what the cost or the peril. Here the "white feather" is the greatest badge of dishonour, and he who fails through cowardice to win his goal is a man among men no more. This spirit is the faint, far-off echo of the hero-bearing days of the early West.

Our guide is a stocky, little man of soldierly bearing, clad in khaki suit and cow-boy hat, whom his fellows call "Scotty." He is brown with exposure, smoothly shaven, and his keen, blue eyes are slightly contracted at the corners from the strain of peering through vast distances—a characteristic of men who follow woodcraft and hunting. He rides ahead silently but for a rebuke to the slumbrous "Babe," such as, "Go on, you lazy coyote," or a familiar, half-caressing remark to Bunchie, the ex-outlaw, who is his favourite. Indeed, he, like most men who have ridden the range, has the habit of talking to the ponies as though they knew and understood. And who can be sure they do not?

The forests begin as soon as the bit of clearing is passed, then single file the little cavalcade moves on through huckleberry fields, purplish-black with luscious, ripe berries, where bears come to feed and fatten, where, also, thirsty wayfarers stop to eat the juicy fruit. The pines clasp branches overhead in a lacy, broken roof whose pattern of needle and burr shows in dark traceries against patches of blue sky remote and far beyond. A thick, sweet shadow dappled now and again with splashes of yellow sun tempers the air which presses its cool touch upon our brows. On either hand a dense, even lawn of tender green fern and mist-maiden covers the earth and through the silence sounds the merry clamour of a stream. It ripples gaily along between wooded banks, breaking into little crests of foam upon the rocks, showing through the glassy medium of its waters, every stone and pebble of its speckled bed polished and rounded by ceaseless flowing. The horses splash through the creek and upon the opposite side begins anew the delicate lawn of mist-maiden and fern, so freshly, tenderly green with the pale greenness of things that live away from the sun, so ephemerally exquisite as to embarrass coarse, mortal presence. It is a spot fit for fairies to dance upon; fit for wood-nymphs and white hinds to make merry in; fit for the flute-like melody of Pan to awake to dancing echoes as he calls the forest sprites unto high revelry.

A forest ranger joins us. He is tramping to the Gunsight Pass with his axe upon his shoulder and his kit upon his back, to repair the trail to the Great St. Mary's Lakes.

The shades of brown and green, the shadow threaded with an occasional strand of gold, are livened by crimson patches of Indian Paint Brush, bluebells, white starry lilies called Queen's Cups, trembling feathers of coral pink, sun-yellow and white syringa. Beneath the overhanging verdure, around and upon the mossy rocks, the ever-present twinflowers open their delicate petals and sweeten the air, and from clumps of coarse grass rise cones of minute white blossoms, the bear-grass, one of the most curious of the mountain flowers. This ranger knows the common names of nearly all the plants, and at every turn new varieties spring up. He stops to gather each kind of bloom until we have a great bouquet—a potpourri of all the floral beauty of the multitudes that people our path.

The way is very fair, ministering to the senses; troops of new, forest forms and colours pass before the eye, the mingled sweets of the flowers, the pungent mould and balsam of spruce and pine breathe sensuously into the nostrils, and the fingers of the wind caress and soothe as they pass. Through the voiceful silence, sounds that are on the borderland between fancy and reality, thrill for a moment, then are lost in the grand chorus of trees and rushing rivers. A stream of volume and velocity flowing through a deep gorge falls twice in its downward rush. These two falls, the Wynona and Minneopa, flash great, white plumes among steeps of green forest.

With sharp descent and stubborn climb, the trail, that seems the merest thread, untangles its skein and leads, at length, into a small basin partly enclosed within sheer, naked rock-walls, whence three delicate silver streams trickle down and join the creek that waters a little park. Beyond, the peaks loom up masterfully, sheathing their icy lances in the clouds. High over the lip of the mighty rock-wall, rising like the giant counterpart of an ancient battlement, lies the glacier. Up that precipitous, overhanging parapet we must make our way, but where the footing or how the ascent is to be won, fancy cannot fathom, for it would seem no living thing save a mountain goat, a bighorn sheep or an eagle could scale this stronghold of Nature. Across the basin, where there is a gentler slope, the mountain side is dotted with groups of tall, spire-like pines. The level meadow is grassy and shaded with small spruce of the size of Christmas trees. And in this peaceful spot, girt with grim, challenging steeps, the tinkle of the stream sounds pastorally sweet, while the more distant and powerful roar of the three tumbling streams chants a solemn undertone to the merry lilt.

Here the camp is made. A fire crackles gaily and our tents are pitched beneath the trees. Suddenly a shadow falls,—dimly, almost imperceptibly. The sun has gone. It is only six o'clock in mid-summer, but so lofty are the barrier-heights that even now we are in a world of shade,—shade of a strangely luminous kind, hinting of ruddy lights that are obscured but not quenched. Through the quiet, echo the whistle of the marmot, the metallic whirr of contentious squirrels going off like small alarm clocks, and the mellow, drowsy note of bells ringing to the rhythmic crop of browsing ponies. So the long beautiful twilight settles over the mountains until the sounds are stilled save the tinkling bells and the water-voices singing their ceaseless song. The forest sleeps. Long, mystical fancy-bearing moments and tens of moments pass, and something of awe closes down with the gloaming. Then through the dim, monkish grey shadow pulses a red-gold stream of light that runs in long, uneven streamers across the face of the grim, dark walls, transfiguring them into radiant shapes of living golden-rose. In that effulgence of glory, lost peaks gleam for a second out of the dusk and vanish into nothingness again, snowy diadems flash into being and fade like a dream. The life-blood of the day ebbs and flows, sending out long, slender fingers to trace its fleeting message on the rocks, then with a deepening, crimson glow it flickers and is fled. Night settles fast and the flare of the camp fire, shedding its spark-spangles in brilliant showers, reclaims one little spot from the devouring blackness. It is a magical thing—this campfire, and the living ring around it is an enchanted circle. Perhaps its warmth penetrates even to the heart, or perhaps the bond of human fellowship asserts itself more strongly when only the precarious, flamboyant fire-light, leaping and waning, throwing forth a rain of sparks, or searing grey with sudden decline, separates our little group from utter desolation. Whatever the charm may be, it falls upon us all, and with eyes fixed on the ember-pictures or raised to the starry skies, we listen to tales of the long ago and of a present as unfamiliar as the past. The reserve of our guide is quite broken and he tells in a low, reminiscent voice, of wonder-spots in the range,—for he knows its every peak and gorge,—of the animals that dwell in its solitary recesses and of how the Piegan Glacier got its name.

The Piegan Indians are a branch of the Blackfeet tribe, and in the early days they were almost as noted horse raiders as the Absarokes who flourished near the Three Tetons, in the country of the Yellowstone. Back and forth across the passes they came and went in their nefarious traffic, secure from pursuit among the horns of these lonely heights. The vicinity of the eternal ice-fields, probably this little basin itself, sheltered the shadowy bands, and thus the glacier became known by their name. Still, you may look in vain on the maps for Piegan Glacier; you will find it called Sperry instead. The old name was discarded for that of a Professor who spent some weeks exploring its crevasses and under whose supervision a corps of college students spent a part of one summer's vacation, building the glacier trail. Yet there are those who love the old names as they love the traditions for which they stand, and to them the glacier will forever bear the time-honoured title of these Indians who have long since disappeared from its solitudes.

As the hours pass we draw from our guide and story-teller something of himself. Little by little, in fragmentary allusions and always incidentally, during that even-tide and the days following, we learn thus much of his life. He was born in those troublous days of Indian fighting on the frontier, shortly after his father, an army officer, was ordered out on campaign against the Sioux. When he was but a few weeks old word came to his mother that her husband had been killed, and she, sick and heart-broken, died, leaving besides this infant one other boy. The two children were left to the care of the officers at Fort Kehoe, but they were separated while both were so young that they did not realize the parting nor remember each other. Our guide became the ward of a lieutenant who had been a friend of his father. He played among the soldiers and Indian scouts at the Fort until he came to the age when he felt the desire to learn, then he went East to school, afterwards to college, always returning in the summer to ride the range or to lose himself in the mountains. And when the college days were done that old cry of the West, that old craving for the life that knows no restraint nor hindering bonds, beckoned him back inevitably as Fate. Again and again he had gone forth on the world's highway, once to serve in Cuba in the war with Spain, where in a yellow-fever hospital he met for the first time his older brother, who even then was dying of the pestilence, but always he returned to the freedom of the wilderness. He is a type in himself, who belongs to the time of Lewis and Clark, rather than to this century—a man who lives too late. And there is about him, for all his carefree indifference to the world, something of indefinable pathos. He is quite alone—he has no kinsfolk and few friends. He is a man without a home but the forests, who has renounced human companionship for the solitudes, without a love but the mountains, to whom the greatest sorrow would be the knowledge that he might never look upon them again.

A cloud, heavy with rain, drifts across the sky, and big, cool drops splash with a hissing noise in the fire, upon our upturned faces, upon the warm, flower-sown earth which exhales, like incense, the odours of sun-heated soil and summer shower. The bright flames deepen to a blood-red glow and ashes gather like hoar frost on the cooling logs and boughs. The circle around the fire disperses to seek the narcotic gift breathed by the pines, sung as a lullaby by the voices of trees and streams.

The start for the glacier is made while the day is young. Pack horses and camp are left behind and with the guide leading the way, the tortuous climb is begun. Sheer as those rock-walls seemed to be, there is a footing for the careful ponies, as from narrow ledge to ledge they turn and zigzag up the mountain-face; and naked as those steeps appeared, they are animated with frisking conies and marmots, and hidden among the stones are rarely exquisite flowers. Here the mountain lilies grow, blossoms with brown eyes in each of their three white petals, covered with soft, silvery fur which makes them seem of the texture of velvet. These lilies are somewhat similar to the Mariposa lily of the California Sierras. The ground-cedar, a minute and delicate plant; strange varieties of fern and moss, and everchanging, unfamiliar flowers appear as we ascend, until, wheeling dizzily hundreds of feet above the basin upon the slight and slippery trail, with things beneath dwarfed by distance into a pigmy world and things above looming formidably, the increasing altitude shears the rocks and leaves them bare and grim. The air grows sharp with icy chill, great billowy, low-trailing clouds drag over the mountain-tops, down the ravines and float in detached banners in free spaces below. Broad stretches of snow lie ahead. The painstaking ponies pick their way across them, for it is fifteen feet down to solid ground. Sluggish streams creep between banks crusty with old ice, and pretty falls, broken into lacy meshes of foam, cascade down a parapet of rock and baptize us as we pass. In this spot the stone wall has been worn into a grotto where the water plays as in a fountain. From every little fissure ferns dart their long green lances and feathery fronds, and the rocks are grown over with moss.

From our eyrie we look down into a small lake called Peary's, sunk within dark and desolate cliffs, shattered and ground down into fantastic forms. It is but partly thawed and its cold, blue-green centre is enclosed in opaque, greenish-white ice and drifts of snow. Indeed snow is everywhere in broken drifts—in the furrowed mountain-combs and along the level in smooth white stretches. Close to the margin of the ice-sealed shores is a grotesque, sapless, scrubby vegetation, as strange in its way as the brilliant-hued waters or the rocks that impress us with huge antiquity and elemental crudeness, as though we stood face to face with Earth's infancy, close in the wake of ebbing, primeval seas. But for all the savage roughness and arctic chill this is a scene to cherish and remember—the blue cup of heaven, flecked with a thistledown of clouds, the black menace of shivered rock-crests, the dazzle of the snow and the darkly beautiful waters that are neither blue nor green yet seemingly of both colours, held fast in the circle of cold, pale ice.

Above this lake, down an overhanging wall, are more little falls, indeed the whole country is interlaced with them as though the life-blood of the mountains flowed in silver veins upon the surface. Within the hollow over the stone barrier lies Nansen's Lake, even more frigid in its ice-sheath, more palely green in the little patch of water which the sun has laid bare. And although the mountains soar tremendously, yet ever and anon the course lies upward over the frowning brows, over the very crowns of the Range, until the high peaks, stripped of atmospheric illusion, stand stark and naked to the gaze. There is in this sudden intimacy with the fellows of the clouds, the veiled lords of upper air, an awe which we feel before powers incomprehensible. At last the trail ceases; overhead are cliffs no horse could climb. The guide ties the ponies, and with a stout rope clambers ahead up a smoothly sculptured parapet. We follow him and find ourselves on a bleak waste which leads to a small basin, strewn with great boulders and lesser rocks, dark and of the colour of slate. Growing upon these rock-heaps are masses of flowering moss starred by tiny pink buds and blossoms, or white spattered with the crimson of heart's blood. And now the guide begins to whistle—a long, plaintive note which is answered presently by a similar sound and a shrill, infantile treble, cheeping, cheeping among the stones. Then from the security of her home a Ptarmigan, or Arctic Grouse, hops into the open with her family of five chicks jumping on her patient back, and tumbling, the merest puff-balls, at her feet. She chirps softly to them, proud and dignified in her maternity, ever watchful of her pretty little brood. She is dressed in Quakerish summer-garb of mottled grey, the feathers covering her to the utmost extremity of her toes. Once the winter snows descend, these birds become as white as the frigid regions which they inhabit. Ordinarily they are very wild, but this little mother, knowing only friendliness from human visitors, comes forth trustfully with her beloved young, suffers them to be handled and caressed and she, herself, with wings dropped in the semblance of a pretty courtesy, jumps into the hand of the guide, and from that perch feeds daintily on the pink and white buds of the moss, as fragilely lovely as the snowflakes to which they appear strangely akin. Indeed, the bird, the flowers and the environing snow all seem more of the cloud-land than of the earth.

But there is a sequel to the story of this little grouse, which is, unhappily, a tragedy. Not long after she greeted us, giving an air of friendliness to the forbidding, wind-swept rocks, a Tyrolese came hunting through the mountains. He made his camp near the home of the Ptarmigan and her little ones, and one day when the guide came calling to her there was no answer but the empty whistling of the wind. He called again and again; he searched among the crags and the rock-heaps, then he came upon the ashes of a camp-fire and the mottled feathers and silken down of the Ptarmigan and her chicks. She had been betrayed at last by her trustfulness, and she and her brood had been cruelly sacrificed to the blood-lust and appetite of that enemy of poor dumb things—the man with the gun.

From the mossy basin of the Ptarmigan we climb with ropes up a broken escarpment and there upon the very lip of the glacier are blossoms so unearthly in form and colour as to seem the merest ghosts of flowers. One is a dark, ocean-blue bell and another an ashen-green thing furred over with a beard as soft and colorless as a moth's wing. From this eminence a stormy, wind-tossed little lake, the Gem, flashes angrily-bright waters beneath snow splashed, wonderfully stratified peaks, and there, through a gateway in the mountains, spreading out in a vast plateau of white, lies the glacier, undulating in frozen waves like a polar sea. Even under its shroud of snow one can trace its course by the seams and wrinkles of a congealed current. It is flanked on all sides by the savage, beetling peaks marshalled in endless ranks like the spears and unsheathed lances of war-gods in their domain midway between earth and heaven. Out across the death-white pallor of snow, in the death-chill of the ice-fields, we strike out slowly, cautiously, for the surface of the ice, now hidden by snow, is cleft by crevasses even to the mountain's core, and a misstep, a fall into their depths would be doom. Far away over the white stretches, a gaunt, spectral coyote watches our painful progress. On and on we go by a tusk-like peak, the "Little Matterhorn," and ever on to a point where the giant panorama unfolds its mountain-multitudes, its barricaded lakes, and the echo breaks into a chorus that peals out as though each separate crest were possessed of a brazen tongue. These grimly naked heights, split and rent with elemental shocks and the resistance to huge forces, are the cradle of the lightning and the thunder-bolt, the citadel whence the storm-hosts ride down on blackwinged clouds upon the world. And even now phantom troops of clouds come gliding up out of the moist laps of the valleys, out of lakes and streams, passing in shifting wraith-shapes over the mountains, spreading their filmy scarfs across the sky until the livid expanse of snow, showing colourlessly in the grey light, brings to one a vivid picture of the ice-age, of a frozen world and the cold, pitiless illumination of a burnt-out sun.

Fine, pricking points of snow cut with the sharpness of needle-thrusts; the wind whips through the bleak gaps in the Range and over the glacier, gathering cold and speed as it comes. A chilling numbness deadens our feet and hands. So, wind-buffeted, storm-driven, with the trumpeting gale in our ears, we turn back from the kingdom where Winter is unbroken, and descend through alternate shadow and sun into the blooming beauty, into the golden Summer that swims in the world below, whence snow and cold are only hinted of in a white-breasted, mountain-kissing cloud.