Only bald facts are told in that narrative, mainly unintelligible unless you know what the facts connote. Told to a fellow guide they bring forth nods of silent sympathy. Many experiences of the same sort help him to see the huddled, inexpert figures of saddle-sore dudes, some clad piecemeal, some in the extreme of appropriateness. He knows the exasperating slowness of horses drained of the last ounce of endurance. He, too, has tried to urge on a miscellaneous collection of tired horses, burros and dudes, all wandering in different directions, at differing gaits. He knows the self-respecting guide’s chagrin at losing the pride of his life,--his top-horse, and he knows the condition of Indian cayuses at the end of winter. He has felt unutterable disgust at having to ride a hack. He knows the necessity of keeping patient and courteous under irritation, and the responsibility of getting his party of tenderfeet over a bad divide in a storm with night coming and food scarce, when a slight mishap may accumulate more serious disasters. He knows how weary burros wander in circles so persistently that the most patient guide,--and all guides are patient, they have to be,--wants to murder them brutally. And the sickening scrape of girths on raw, bleeding sores, requiring tender care after treatment of weeks. He knows every party has its foolish, ineffectual members who tire the first mile out, and after that sink into limp dejection, remarking plaintively and often, “This horse is no good,” as they give him a light flick which hits leather or saddle roll, but never the horse, and kick at him without touching him. And geologists! One or two, he knows, can ride and camp and are as good as the guides, but others will want to stop the outfit on the worst spot in the trail, and nearly cause a stampede gathering rocks which the guide must secure to the already overweighty pack. [Illustration: TWO MEDICINE LAKE, GLACIER PARK, MONTANA.] [Illustration: WRANGLING HORSES, GLACIER PARK, MONTANA.] But see how much longer it takes a story Eastern fashion. Once you have the key to the Westerner’s narrative, you get the vividness of these compressed facts. If you have not, he might as well be talking Sanscrit as colloquial English of one and two syllables. You listen and wonder what has happened to your mind: you seem to understand everything he is saying, yet you understand nothing. CHAPTER XXIV THE NAIL-FILE AND THE CHIPPEWA At Many Glaciers they advised us to visit the lovely Waterton Lakes lying in the Canadian extension of Glacier Park. “There’s only one bad place,--north of Babb. It’s flooded for some miles, but all you have to do is climb the canal bank, and run along the top.” As people were always advising us to undertake some form of acrobatics, we stored the canal bank in the back of our minds, and started for Babb and Canada.