Boy Scouts in Glacier Park

Books by

WALTER P. EATON

The Great Continental Divide and the Game Trail Along the Top

Boy Scouts in Glacier Park

The Adventures of Two Young Easterners

in the Heart of the High Rockies

By

WALTER PRICHARD EATON

Illustrated with Photographs by

FRED H. KISER

W. A. WILDE COMPANY

BOSTON CHICAGO

Copyrighted, 1918,

BY W. A. WILDE COMPANY

All rights reserved

BOY SCOUTS IN GLACIER PARK

To

FRED H. KISER

FOREWORD

Glacier Park is one of the newest, as well as one of the most beautiful, of our National Parks. It is peculiarly fitted to be a summer playground, both for men and women who prefer to travel on horseback and “rough it” by putting up at a hotel at night, and for the true mountain lovers, who delight to use their own legs in climbing, and to sleep under the stars. This book has been written primarily to show Young America just how interesting, exciting, full of outdoor adventure, and full, too, of real education, life in this National park can be. We can promise our boy readers, and their parents, too, that there isn’t any “faking” in this story. The trips we tell about are all real trips, and if you go to Glacier Park you can take them all—all, that is, except, perhaps, the climb up the head wall of Iceberg Lake. You have to have a real mountaineer as a guide, with a real Alpine rope, in order to make that trip. It was fortunate for Tom that one came along. Then, too, unless you stay in the Park over the winter, you haven’t much chance of riding down a mountain on a snow-slide. Possibly you wouldn’t want to. I never knew anybody who took that trip intentionally! Tom and Joe and the Ranger were unlucky enough to take it, and lucky enough to live to tell the tale.

This book isn’t written just to use the Rocky Mountains as a background for adventures which never really could happen to ordinary boys. It is written, on the contrary, to show what fine adventures can happen to ordinary boys, in one of the finest and most healthful and beautiful spots in this great country of ours, if only the boys have pluck, and have been good Scouts enough to learn how to take care of themselves in the open.

And it is written, too, in order to tell about Glacier Park, to make you want to go there and see it for yourself, to make you glad and proud that the United States has set aside for the use of all the public such a splendid playground, and to make you, if possible, more determined than ever to protect this, and all our other parks and State and National forests, from the attacks of the men who are always trying to get laws passed to let them spoil the meadows and the wildflowers with their sheep, or cut the forests for timber, putting their selfish gain above the welfare of the whole people.

W. P. E.

Twin Fires

Sheffield, Massachusetts

1918

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I—Joe Gets Bad News About His Lungs—His “Pipes,” as Spider Called Them

“What’s the matter, Joe, lost all your pep?” asked Tom Seymour, as he slowed his pace down so that his tired companion could keep up with him. It was a Saturday morning in May, and the two boys, in their scout suits, with heavy shoes on, were tramping through the woods, where the spring flowers were beginning to appear and the little leaf buds were bursting out on the trees. Both Tom Seymour and his chum, Joe Clark, loved the woods, and especially in early spring they got into them whenever they could, to see how the birds and animals had come through the winter, and then a little later to watch for the flowers and see the foliage come.

But this day Joe seemed to be getting tired. They were tramping up a hillside, through mould softened by a recent rain, that made the footing difficult, and though Joe was trying to keep up, Tom realized that something was the matter.

“Say, Joe, old scout, what ails you, anyhow?” he asked again.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Joe answered. “I’ve had a cold for a month, you know, and it’s pulled me down, that’s all. Ma’s giving me some tonic. I’ll be all right. But I do get awful tired lately.”

He stopped just then and began to cough.

“I wish you’d shake that old cold,” Tom said. “I’m getting sick of hearing you bark in school—you always tune up just as Pap Forbes is calling on me to translate Cæsar. And if you don’t shake it, you’ll be no good for the team, and how’s the Southmead High School going to trim Mercerville without you on second bag?”

Joe stopped coughing as soon as he could, and demanded, “Well, you don’t think I keep the old thing around because I like it, do you? I’ll give it to anybody who’ll cart it off. Come on—let’s forget it!”

They started up the hill again, which grew steeper as they advanced, and presently Tom realized once more that Joe couldn’t keep up. As he had to breathe harder with the increased steepness, too, he began to cough again.

“Say, have you been to see a doctor?” Tom demanded.

“Oh, sure,” said Joe, sitting down on a rock to rest “Ma had old Doc Jones in first week I was sick, and he gave me some stuff—tasted like a mixture of kerosene and skunk cabbage, too.”

“Doc Jones is no good,” Tom declared. “My father says he wouldn’t have him for a sick cat. He doesn’t even know there are germs. Mr. Rogers told me the Doc thought it was foolish to make us scouts boil the water from strange brooks before we drank it. Haven’t you been to anybody else since, when you didn’t get better?”

“Say, what do you think I am, a millionaire?” said Joe. “I can’t be spending money on fancy doctors, and get through high school, too. Ma’s got all she can handle now, with food and everything costing so much.”

“I know all that, old scout,” Tom answered, putting his hand on Joe’s shoulder. “But I guess it would cost your mother more if you were laid up, wouldn’t it? Now, I’ve got a hunch you need some good doc to give you the once over. Are you tired all the time like this?”

“Oh, no,” Joe replied. “Or only at night, mostly,” he added. “I get kind of hot and tired at night, and I can’t do much work. That’s why I’ve been flunking Cæsar. Old Pap thinks I’m lying down on the job, but I really ain’t. I try every evening, but the words get all mixed together on the page.”

Tom sprang to his feet with the quick, almost catlike agility which, in combination with his thin, rather tall and very wiry frame, had earned for him the nickname of Spider.

“You come along with me,” he said.

“Depends on where you’re going,” Joe laughed.

“Say, I’m patrol leader, ain’t I?”

“You are, but this isn’t the patrol. We aren’t under scout discipline to-day.”

“You are,” laughed Tom. “You’re going to do just what I tell you. Come on, now!”

He grabbed Joe by the wrist and brought him to his feet. Joe didn’t resist, either, though Tom expected a scrap. He came along meekly down the hill, through the wet, fragrant woods. Once on the village street, Spider led the way directly to Mr. Rogers’ house, and ’round the house to the studio, and knocked on the door.

The scout master opened it. He was wearing his long artist’s apron, and had his big palette, covered with all the colors of the rainbow, thrust over the thumb of his left hand.

“Hello, Spider; hello, Joe,” he said. “What’s the trouble? Has the tenderfoot patrol mutinied?”

The boys came in.

“No, sir, but Joe’s windpipes have,” said Tom. He quickly told about his chum’s cold, and how he got tired now all the time.

“Now, cough for the gentleman, Joe,” he added with a laugh.

Joe laughed, too, which actually did set him to coughing.

But Mr. Rogers didn’t laugh. He looked very grave, and began to take off his apron. He washed his hands, put on his coat, and with a short, “Come, boys,” started down the path.

There was a famous doctor in Southmead who didn’t practice in the town at all. His patients came from various parts of the country, to be treated for special diseases, and they lived while there in a sort of hotel-sanitorium. It was said that this doctor, whose name was Meyer, charged twenty dollars a visit. The boys soon realized that Mr. Rogers was headed for his house.

“Say, who does he think I am, John D. Rockefeller?” Joe whispered to Tom.

“Don’t you worry,” Tom whispered back. “He’s a friend of old Doc Meyer’s, all right. He’ll fix it. You trot along.”

They had to wait in the doctor’s anteroom some time, as he had a patient in the office. Finally he came out and greeted Mr. Rogers warmly. He was not a native of Southmead, but had come there only two or three years ago from New York, to have his sanitorium in the country, and he had always been so busy that most of the townspeople scarcely knew him. Tom and Joe, while they had seen him, had never spoken with him before. He was a middle-aged Jew, with gold spectacles on his big nose, and large, kindly brown eyes, which grew very keen as he looked at the boys, and seemed to pierce right through them.

The scout master spoke to him a moment, in a low voice, and then he led all three into his office. It wasn’t like any doctor’s office the scouts had ever been in. It looked more like some sort of a mysterious laboratory, except for the flat-top office desk in the middle, and the strange chair, with wheels and joints, which could evidently be tipped at any angle, or made into a flat surface like an elevated sofa. There was a great X-ray machine, and many other strange devices, and rows of test tubes on a white enameled table, and sinks and sterilizers.

The doctor patted Joe on the head as if he’d been a little boy instead of a first class scout sixteen years old, going on seventeen, and large for his age. He sat Joe down in a chair and asked him a lot of questions first, making some notes on a card which he took out of a small filing cabinet that was like a library catalogue case. Then he told him to undress.

Joe stripped to the waist, and stood up while the doctor tapped his shoulders, his chest, his back, and then listened with his ear down both on his chest and back, and finally he took a stethoscope and went over every square inch of surface, front and back, covering his lungs, while he made the patient cough, say “Ah,” draw in a deep breath, and expel it slowly. Finally he took his temperature, and a sample of sputum.

Meanwhile Tom looked on with a rapidly increasing alarm. He knew a little something about tuberculosis, and realized it was for that he was examining his chum. He knew what a deadly disease it is, too, if it is not caught in time, and he began to feel sick in the pit of his stomach. He wanted to cry out to the doctor and demand that he tell him at once that old Joe did not have this terrible disease—that he was all right, that it was nothing but a cold. But, of course, he said not a word.

The doctor was putting Joe on the scales now, and weighing him.

“A hundred and fifteen,” he said. “How’s that? About your regular weight?”

“Guess there’s something wrong with your scales,” Joe answered, looking at the marker. “I ought to be a hundred and thirty. ’Course, I had more clothes on in the winter, last time I was weighed.”

“Yes, and you ought to have grown some since,” said the doctor. “Well, you will yet. You go home and rest now—sit in the sun this afternoon, and go to bed early, with your window open. Come back here to-morrow morning at ten o’clock, and I’ll know more about you.”

“But I can’t sit in the sun to-day,” Joe cried. “Why, we’ve got a game this after’, and I got to play second.”

The doctor looked at him with his kindly, fatherly smile, but his voice was like a general’s giving a command. “No more baseball for you for the present, my boy,” he said. “You’ve got to keep quiet and rest, if you want to get well quickly.”

“How soon can he play?” Tom put in, excitedly. After he had said it, he thought it sounded as if he were more interested in the team than in Joe, and he was going to explain, but the doctor replied before he had a chance.

“That will all depend on how quiet you make him keep,” said he. “You can come back with him to-morrow if you want, and I’ll tell you some more.”

The doctor spoke softly to Mr. Rogers while Joe was dressing, and then the three went out.

“Say, he doesn’t leave much of you unexplored, does he?” said Joe. “What’s the damage, Mr. Rogers? Gee, I never thought I’d be swell enough to go to Doc Meyer!”

“I guess he doesn’t charge for scouts, when they really need him,” Mr. Rogers answered. “Now, Joe, you go home and do what he told you. I’ll be over to see your mother later, and tell her to keep an eye on you.”

Tom went with the scout master in the opposite direction, his face very grave.

“Is—is—has old Joey got consumption?” he managed to ask, his lips dry and a lump coming up in his chest.

The scout master looked at his young patrol leader, and then put a hand over his shoulder.

“The doctor won’t say for certain till he’s examined the sputum,” Mr. Rogers replied, “but I’m afraid he’s got the beginnings of it. Now, don’t take it hard, and don’t say a word to Joe or his mother or anybody else. He’s young, and it’s just beginning, and we’ll pull him through in good shape, and make a well man of him again. But you must make him do just what the doctor says, and stand by him.”

“Stand by him!” cried Tom, two tears coming into his eyes in spite of himself. “Say, he’s my best friend, isn’t he? What do you take me for?”

“I take you for a good scout,” said Mr. Rogers.

CHAPTER II—Joe Learns How Many Friends He Has, and Achieves a Tent to Sleep In

Tom could hardly sleep that night, for thinking about his friend. The doctor would probably tell him he’d got to go to the Adirondacks to live, or maybe to Colorado or New Mexico; Tom knew that people with bad lungs were sent to those places. But how was Joe going to get there, and how was he going to live when he got there? Joe’s mother was a widow, with two other, younger children, and it was hard enough for her to send Joe through high school, in spite of what he earned in summer driving a mowing machine on the golf links. If he had consumption, the doctor wouldn’t let him work—he would make him keep quiet. How was it going to be managed? Tom kept turning over this problem in his head, till he finally fell asleep for very weariness.

The next day he and Mr. Rogers again went with Joe to Dr. Meyer’s. On the road Tom was silent and serious.

“Say, what’s the matter with you, Spider? You look as if you were going to my funeral,” said Joe.

“Yes, what’s the matter with you?” Mr. Rogers added, giving him a sharp look which Joe didn’t see. “Scouts are supposed to be cheerful, aren’t they?”

“Yes, sir,” Tom answered, trying to grin. But he made rather a poor job of it, he was so worried and anxious.

Dr. Meyer sat them all down in his office.

“Well,” he said, turning to Joe, “how do you feel this morning? Did you keep still as I told you to?”

“You bet he did!” Tom put in.

“We’ll see, we’ll see,” the doctor smiled, putting a thermometer into Joe’s mouth, and picking up his left wrist to feel his pulse.

“Now, that’s better than yesterday,” he added, after examining the thermometer. “You see what resting does. I guess you’ll have to do some more of it.”

“You mean I can’t play second next week, either?” Joe cried.

“I mean you can’t play second for a long time,” said the doctor, gravely.

“Is—is there something the matter with me?” Joe cried, growing a little pale.

“There isn’t much yet, but there will be, if you don’t do what I tell you,” the doctor answered. “You have a case of incipient tuberculosis, that hasn’t developed enough yet so we can’t cure it, and make you weigh a hundred and eighty pounds by the time you are twenty, or even nineteen. You ought to be a big man, you know. But it will all depend on you.”

Tom was leaning half out of his chair to listen.

“What must he do, doctor?” he asked, unable to keep silent.

“Are you going to make him do it?” the doctor smiled.

“I am, or—or bust his old head,” Tom replied, with such heartfelt affection that both the men laughed.

“Do you sleep with your windows wide open at night?” the doctor asked Joe.

“Why—I—I can’t in winter, ’cause ma won’t let me; it makes the room too cold for the kid, she says.”

“What!” Dr. Meyer exclaimed. “Do you sleep with a small brother?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, the first thing you do is to stop that! You must sleep in a room by yourself. It’s not safe for your brother. You must sleep with the windows wide open.”

“Couldn’t he have my tent, and sleep outdoors?” Tom put in.

“Better still,” the doctor replied. “Now, I’m going to make up a list of what you are to eat and drink, and a schedule of how you are to rest, and how much you can walk around.”

“Walk around?” Joe said, bewildered. “I have to walk to school, and back.”

“No you don’t. No more school for you this term,” the doctor answered.

Joe’s jaw dropped. “Why—I—I—I’ll not get promoted into the senior class, then!” he gasped. “Oh, please, I must go to school!”

“Good gracious, here’s a boy that wants to go to school!” laughed Dr. Meyer. “It does you credit, my son, but it can’t be.”

“But it’s been so hard for mother——”

“It would be harder for her if you couldn’t go to school at all—ever, wouldn’t it?” said the doctor, leaning forward and laying a kindly hand on Joe’s knee.

“Yes—yes, sir,” said Joe, who was now pretty white and scared.

“Dr. Meyer,” Tom put in, “oughtn’t Joe to go away somewhere to the mountains—the Adirondacks, or Colorado, or—or some place?”

“Well, he’d undoubtedly mend quicker in the Rockies, if he could be looked after,” the doctor replied. “I wouldn’t say it’s absolutely necessary in his case, but if he knows somebody out there to look after him, and can afford it——”

“’Course I can’t afford it, Spider,” Joe put in. “Quit pipe dreamin’.”

“I’m not pipe dreaming,” Tom replied. “If you’ll get well quicker in the Rockies, you’re going to the Rockies, and I’m going along to take care of you.”

“How are you going to manage it, Tom?” said Mr. Rogers.

“I—I dunno, but I’m going to, somehow. Old Joe’s got to get well and finish high school, and room with me in college, and then we’re going to be civil engineers or foresters, and——”

“But the first thing is to get well,” the doctor interrupted. “You can plan for the Rockies later. Right now we must see about Joe’s diet and daily schedule.”

After he had drawn these up—and it seemed to Joe he’d got to live on raw eggs and milk and cod liver oil, and spend most of his life in a chair on the porch—the two boys and the scout master departed.

It was now Joe who was depressed and glum, and Tom who needed no prompting to be cheerful. The minute he saw his chum in the dumps, he set about restoring his spirits.

“Buck up, old scout,” he cried. “The doc told you it would be all right. Gee, what’s just sitting on the porch for a few weeks? You won’t have to translate any old Cæsar, and I’ll come every day to see you swallowing cod liver oil, and then as soon as I can get it doped out, we’ll hit the trail for the Rocky Mountains. Don’t you want to see the Rocky Mountains?”

“Oh, quit your kidding,” poor Joe answered. “The only way I’ll ever see the Rocky Mountains is in the movies.”

“Don’t you fool yourself. Mr. Rogers and I’ll dope out something yet, won’t we, Mr. Rogers?”

“We’ll put our heads together hard, anyhow,” the scout master answered. “But first, Tom, we must get the scouts together and find a way in which we can all help Joe’s mother, now Joe can’t haul wood and do heavy work.”

“That’s easy, sir. And we must teach all the scouts to stop sleeping with their windows shut, too, mustn’t we?”

“Alas!” said Mr. Rogers. “I thought I had. I guess we’ve got to teach the mothers and fathers to let them open the windows. And that’s not easy, Tom.”

“I s’pose not. Funny how afraid some folks are of fresh air. Well, old Joe’s going to get plenty. I’m going to set up my tent in his yard this afternoon.”

“Not your new tent, Spider, it might spoil it,” said Joe.

“Spoil your grandmother,” Tom retorted. “I guess it’s my tent and I can do what I please with it, can’t I? You go home and drink a tumbler of cod liver oil.”

“I’m going with him, and have a talk with his mother,” said Mr. Rogers. “You can bring the tent after dinner, and if you need a cot bed for it, stop at my house and get my folding camp cot. That’ll be my contribution.”

“Sure, we’ll fix him up so he’ll never want to move into the house again,” cried Tom, hurrying off toward his house.

His tent, a Christmas present from his father and mother, was Tom’s proudest possession. It was made of balloon silk, very thin and light, but water-proof. It could “sleep” two occupants comfortably, and had mosquito netting screens for the flaps, and a little screen curtain for the rear window. It could be erected either on poles or on a rope strung between two trees. Yet the whole tent could be rolled up into a bundle which you could tuck under your arm, and it weighed but fifteen pounds. It cost a considerable sum of money, for Tom’s parents, while not rich, wanted to make Tom a good present that last Christmas as a reward for his improvement in his school work. We might as well tell the truth about it, for a story that doesn’t tell the truth is sure to get found out. Tom, in his sophomore year in the high school, had been a pretty poor student. He was “bright enough,” as his teachers said, but he would not study. He had got interested in so many things that seemed more worth while to him than books—trapping, building a cabin in the woods, football and baseball, and especially the scouts. But after his sophomore year was over, and the summer vacation, too, was nearly done, Mr. Rogers called him into the studio one day and had a long talk with him. The result of that talk was that he came out pretty well ashamed of himself. Here he was a patrol leader in the scouts, Mr. Rogers pointed out, and right end on the high school team, with the prospect of being captain his senior year—in other words, one of the leaders among the boys. It was up to him, then, to set the rest a good example. Besides, he wanted to go to college, did he not, or to a forestry school? Did he not know that there were examinations to be passed? And what good was a surveyor or an engineer or a forester who did not know his business? Did Tom think you could know your business without studying? And that did not mean beginning to study some time in the future—it meant beginning now! Mr. Rogers ended up by telling him he was a bad scout, a bit of a slacker, which got to him more than anything else that was said.

He went out of the studio very sober, and he began to work that fall term as he had never worked in school before. Of course, he soon found out that if he got his lessons every day, it was really very much easier to keep along than it had been when he used to let them slide for two or three days at a time, and then try to catch up. In fact, it was really no trouble at all, and from almost the tail end of the class, he suddenly moved up to number four. His father and mother were so delighted that they gave him the balloon silk tent for Christmas.

As soon as dinner was over, he got this tent out of his closet, wrapped in its canvas bag, took his scout axe and some sticks from the wood-shed to make pegs with, and started for Joe’s house. On the way he stopped for Mr. Rogers’ folding cot bed. He found Joe sitting on the back porch, in the sun, and he made him stay there, though poor Joe wanted to come down and help set the tent up.

There were two trees in the back yard, and between them Tom strung a double strand of clothesline, through the rings on the top of the tent. Then he carefully raked the ground below, and with a shovel filled in a little hollow so that the rain water would drain away and not come in under. Then he stretched the tent, cut his pieces of wood into pegs, and pegged it down. After that, he unfolded and set up the cot bed, and with the help of Joe’s mother made up the bed with blankets, put an old rug on the ground beside it, brought out an old chair, a small table, a candlestick and candle, and a washbowl and pitcher.

“There!” he cried. “That’s good enough for anybody. Now, old Cod Liver, you can sleep outdoors, rain or shine.”

Joe insisted on coming down to see his “new room,” and while they were inspecting it three of the Moose Patrol came into the yard. They had heard the news about Joe—“by wireless, I guess,” Tom said, for he had not told anybody except his own father and mother—and had come to see what they could do to help.

“Say, that’s some swell bedroom, Joe,” said Bob Sawtelle. “Wish I had one like it. Ma wouldn’t always be callin’ me down for spillin’ water on the wall paper.”

“What do you mean, spillin’ water on the wall paper?” Joe demanded. “What do you do, throw it around the room?”

“Aw, no, but a feller splashes around washin’ his face, and dumpin’ the bowl into the slop basin, don’t he?”

“I guess you do,” Tom laughed. “Do you fellows really want to help old Joey?”

“That’s what we’re here for,” said all three.

“All right, we’ll get the kindlings split for the next week, and the coal brought up for Mrs. Clark. Where’s the axe, Joe?”

Joe showed them, and the four boys went at the wood-pile and the coal bin. They split enough kindlings to last at least a week, filled up the wood-box by the kitchen stove and piled more wood behind it and carried up three hods of coal besides a big basket full.

“You’re awful good to do this for Joe and me,” said Mrs. Clark.

“Oh, that’s what scouts are for,” Tom declared. “Some of us are going to come around every day and ’tend to things, so old Joey can mind the doctor, aren’t we, fellows?”

“Sure thing.”

“Ra-ther.”

“You bet.”

“Say, Spider,” Walter Howard suggested, “you ought to call a scout meeting and get everybody in on this—divide it up so one scout comes every day for a week on his way home from school. Why, old Joe’ll be well again before we’ve all had a turn!”

“That’s what I’m going to do, Walt, Tuesday night. Pass the word along.”

“I know what my old man’s goin’ to say,” Bob remarked.

“Well, what’s he goin’ to say? Spring it.”

“He’s goin’ to say, ‘If you boys were asked to split kindlings for your own mothers every day, you’d put up an awful holler.’”

“Oh, sure, mine too,” laughed Walt. “They always say that. Seems as if they thought we were splitting kindlings because we liked to split kindlings, instead of because we like old Joey.”

“That’s the dope,” said Tom. “Funny how folks don’t see things sometimes.”

“Ain’t it?” said Bob. “Well, so long, Joe, old scout. Hope you sleep well in the tent.”

“So long, Bob.”

“So long”—from the others.

“So long, fellows—much obliged.”

Only Tom was left.

“It’s pretty nice to have so many friends,” said Joe, “even if you have to get sick to find it out.”

“Now you’ve found out, you get well again,” Spider laughed. “I’ll stop on my way to school in the morning and see you, and find out what books you want brought home. So long, old top.”

“So long, Spider.”

Tom went out of the gate, or, rather, over it, vaulting it with one hand. Joe’s mother came out on the porch and put one arm around the boy’s neck, and with the other hand felt his forehead.

“I don’t think you’ve got so much fever to-night,” she said.

“It’s ’cause the fellers have cut all the wood and hauled the coal, that used to make me so tired. Gee, they’re good scouts, aren’t they, ma—’specially old Spider.”

“Yes, Joe,” said she, “there are a lot of good people in the world.”

“You bet,” said Joe.

CHAPTER III—Spider Finds a Way to Get to the Rocky Mountains, to “Pump Joe’s Pipes Full of Ozone”

There are no doubt a lot of good people in the world, as Mrs. Clark said, but there is no doubt that a great many of them are forgetful. Tom Seymour found this out in the next few weeks. The scouts meant well, but every two or three days the one whose turn it was to look after the Clark wood and coal and do whatever heavy work there was to be done,—work too heavy for Joe’s little brother and sister—would forget the duty. Tom, however, never forgot, for he went there every day, to study his lessons with Joe so Joe could keep up in his school work, and when the kindlings had not been split or the coal brought up, he did it.

“I don’t know what I should do without you, Tom,” said Mrs. Clark. “I feel guilty, too, because I feel as if you ought to be at home doing it for your own mother.”

Tom laughed. “It’s a funny thing,” he said, “but having this on my mind has stopped my forgetting at home. I used to forget all the time, but now, when I go home, ma’s wood-box is the first thing I think of. I kind of got the habit, I guess!”

Meanwhile Tom was turning over and over in his mind plans for getting Joe out into the high, dry air of the Rocky Mountains as soon as school was over. The first thing to think about was how to raise the money to get there. In his own case, it would be easy, because he had over a hundred dollars in the savings bank, which he had earned in the past five years, or which had been given to him at Christmas, and which he had saved up. But Joe had never been able to save his earnings—he had needed them all for his clothes and to help his mother out. It was Bob Sawtelle who solved that problem.

“Let’s us scouts give a dance and a strawberry festival for old Joey,” he said. “We can all of us pick some strawberries, enough for the feed, an’ get our mothers to make cake, an’ Bill Andrus’s father’ll give us the cream from his dairy, an’ the girls’ll help us serve, an’ everybody‘ll come when they know it’s for old Joey, an’ there’ll be two hundred people there, an’ we’ll soak ’em fifty cents, and that’ll clear ’most a hundred bones, an’——”

“And you’d better take in some breath,” laughed Tom, “while I tell you that’s a fine idea. It’s as good as settled now.”

Tom was so sure of the success of the strawberry festival, in fact, that he began at once to consider what they were going to do when they got out West. Here he had to have Mr. Rogers’ help. The scout master wrote some letters, and a week later called Tom into the studio.

“I think I’ve got it,” he said, “that is, if you are willing to work, and don’t care what you do.”

“That’s me, when it’s for old Joey,” Spider declared.

“Well, here’s the proposition. Ever hear of Glacier National Park?”

“I’ve seen some pictures of it in a magazine,” said Tom. “Looked good to me, too!”

“I guess it’s a pretty fine place, though I was never there. It is up in the northwestern part of Montana, on the Great Northern Railroad, and there are two big hotels in the Park, right under the mountains, and some smaller hotels they call chalets, because they are built like Swiss chalets. A friend of mine who is connected with the railroad tells me these hotels, which open late in June, always need bell-boys. They are so far from any cities, or even any towns of any sort, that it’s hard to get labor out there. Now, I guess you could get a job as bellhop all right, though I don’t know whether Joe’s strong enough to work yet. We’d have to ask the doctor first. If he isn’t, my plan would be for you to take your tent along, and two folding cot beds, and get permission to pitch it out in the woods near the hotel. You wouldn’t have any other use for your money out there, so you could probably support Joe all right, and he could do the cooking. He’s a good cook, isn’t he?”

“Sure—the best in the patrol. He’s got a merit badge for cooking, you know.”

“Of course, they might object to having a tuberculous person in the hotel, but if he kept out in the woods, there wouldn’t be any trouble, my friend says. Besides, Joe isn’t a bad case. He’s plainly getting better all the time. I think we can fix it, if you are willing to take the job, and look after him. Being a bellhop isn’t just the job I’d pick out for you, or any boy, if I had the choosing. You have to be a bit of a bootlick, and people will give you tips, which is against all scout rules.”

“But the tips won’t be for me, they’ll be for old Joey,” said Tom.

“Exactly. And they will be given to you for work you do. They will really be your pay, for you won’t get much other pay. It all depends on how you take them. If you serve people who don’t give you tips as well and as cheerfully as you serve the others, it will be all right. We’ve got to get Joe well, and we can’t pick and choose. So I’ll put it up to you. I guess I can trust you not to become a tip hog. And if you find any better way to earn Joe’s keep out there, where you won’t have to take tips to get your living, you take it, won’t you?”

“You bet I will!” cried Tom. “Maybe I can become a—a cowboy, or something.”

Mr. Rogers smiled. “You’ll have to learn to ride a horse first.”

“Oh, I can ride a horse.”

“You may think you can, but after you’ve seen a real cowboy ride, you’ll know you’re only in the kindergarten class,” the scout master laughed.

Now that it seemed reasonably sure that he could get Joe to the Rockies, and find a way to live after they got there, Tom went at the task of arranging the strawberry festival. Of course, he made Bob Sawtelle chairman of the “festival committee,” because it was Bob’s idea to start with. All the scouts whose fathers or mothers had strawberry beds were “rounded up,” and a list made of how many baskets could be expected. Little Tim Sawyer, who was clever with a pencil or brush, made several posters to hang in the post-office and the stores. Spider himself wrote some notices for the weekly paper. Mr. Martin, who owned Martin’s block, where the festival was to be held, promised them the hall rent free, and as the cream was promised to them, also, and the cakes were made by the mothers, about all they had to buy was the sugar.

“Oh, we’re forgetting the drinks!” Bob suddenly cried, “and the music! We can’t have a dance without music.”

Some of the high school girls, Joe’s classmates, promised to furnish the fruit punch, and serve it, too, so that was easily settled. The music—a pianist and two violins—the boys hired from a near-by town, at a cost of fifteen dollars. With the sugar and a few other little expenses, their total outlay was about twenty dollars. The affair was so well advertised, however, and all the scouts went around selling tickets for so many days in advance, that when the evening came (it was a fine night, too, in June), there were two hundred and fifty people in the hall, and the scouts who took tickets at the door were kept busy till their fingers ached. The strawberries were all used up, and Bob and Tom had to rush out to the drug store to buy ice-cream for some of the late comers. That cut into part of their profits, but of course they could not refuse to give something to eat to the people who had paid for it. When the hard work of serving all these people was over, and the dancing had begun, Bob and Tom took all the money into a back room, and counted it up. With the musicians and the sugar paid for, and the ice-cream from the druggist’s, there was left a little over ninety dollars clear profit.

“Hooray!” cried Tom, “that’ll get old Joey to Glacier Park easy! Now, if I could only hear from my application for a job, we’d start next Monday. School is over. Gosh, there’s no sense hanging ’round here.”

“Bet you hear to-morrow,” said Bob. “I wish I was going, too, Spider.”

“Come along,” cried Tom. “It’s going to be great. I’m going to get a job as a guide, or something, when I get out there and learn the ropes, and climb all over the mountains and maybe see a goat or a grizzly bear!”

“Well, you bring me a bearskin for a rug, and we’ll call it quits,” Bob answered. “I guess next year I’ll get up a strawberry festival for myself. Maybe I can get sick, or something, this winter.”

“A lot you can, you old fatty,” Tom laughed. “You look about as sick as—as a pig before killing.”

Bob nearly upset the pile of money, trying to reach for Tom’s head, to punch it.

Sure enough, the very next day Tom did hear from his application. He rushed over to Mr. Rogers’ studio.

“Look,” he cried. “I get a job all right, but I don’t know just what it means. It says I’m to be in charge of the Many Glacier tepee camp, if I turn out to be big enough, and suit the boss. Otherwise, I’ll be a bellhop in the Many Glacier Hotel. I’ll get forty dollars a month and board at the camp. What’s a tepee camp?”

“You know as much about it as I do,” the scout master said. “I suppose it’s a camp composed of Indian tepees, which the hotel rents to people who’d rather camp out than stay inside. Anyhow, I hope you get that job, for I don’t like to think of one of my scouts taking tips all the time, the way a bellhop gets to do. It’s un-American. Probably Joe could help you ’round the tepee camp, anyway with the cooking. And speaking of Joe, the first thing we must do is to take him ’round to Dr. Meyer’s again, and find out just what he can and can’t do, and what you’ve got to feed him, and so forth. Suppose we go right now.”

The doctor gave Joe another thorough examination, from head to foot, and then put him on the scales. He smiled as the weight had to be pushed twelve pounds beyond where it hung in May.

“You see what rest, food and minding the doctor does,” said he. “Well, my boy, you’re on the mend. As a matter of fact, there isn’t very much the matter with you now except a weakened condition and, of course, a tendency to relapse without proper care. A year in the Rocky Mountains ought to make a well man of you.”

“A year!” Joe exclaimed. “We’re only going for the summer.”

“Well, the summer will help,” said the doctor. “Keep on eating your milk and eggs, if you can get ’em, but probably after you’ve been in the woods a while you won’t worry much about your food—you’ll gobble what you can get, and so long as you feel right, go ahead. I’ll give your friend a clinical thermometer to take your temperature, and you must get weighed once in so often. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a doctor look you over now and then, too, if one comes into the Park. The things you must look out for are over-exertion and exposure. I wouldn’t do anything but light work for a month yet, at least, and no climbing or long walks. If you must go somewhere, go on horseback, at a slow pace. And keep warm and dry.”

“Well, Joe, that’s a fine, encouraging report!” the scout master declared as they left. “You keep on minding the doc, and you’ll be a well man.”

“He’ll keep on minding him, all right, all right,” said Tom, putting his arm around Joe’s shoulder, and then tightening it around his neck till Joe’s head was forced over where he could give it a friendly punch.

Joe started to duck and punch back, but Spider cried, “Here—cut that out! No over-exertion!”—and then the three laughed and hurried on, to make arrangements for the departure of the boys.

Clothing, of course, was the most important thing, and the boys got out their trunks and selected what they would need, with the aid of a folder describing conditions in the Park. They took their scout suits, of course, with leggins, and their heaviest high boots. Tom also added a box of steel spikes and a key to screw them in with. They also took their sweaters, and mackinaws, though it seemed foolish to be taking mackinaws for a summer trip. Then they packed two suits of winter underwear, several pairs of heavy wool socks for tramping, two flannel outing shirts, and rubber ponchos, which both boys had bought the year before when the scouts took a five day hike. Then, of course, they took their knapsacks, and both boys sent for dunnage bags of stout canvas. They took their scout axes and cooking kits, knives, Tom’s camera, compasses, and notebooks to keep diaries in. Tom had a folding camp lantern for which they got a box of candles. For bedding, each packed two pairs of heavy double blankets, and Joe’s mother insisted on making a separate bundle of a winter bed puff, which, as it turned out later, he was glad enough to have. They also put in their winter pajamas, their scout hats, and some old leather gloves. Finally, they got some packages of dehydrated vegetables, soup sticks, powdered egg, army rations, and tabloid tea, to use on walking trips if Joe got strong enough to tramp. Such condensed and light weight rations, Mr. Rogers thought, probably could not be purchased in the Park.

It was a lovely day, almost at the end of June, when the two boys finally started. There had been a scout meeting the night before, at which Bob Sawtelle, who was to act as patrol leader in Spider’s absence, had made a speech for the rest and presented Joe with a pocket camera, the gift of the entire troop. It was a short speech, but to the point.

“Old Joey’s pipes have gone on the blink,” he said, “and he’s got to beat it out West to pump ’em full of ozone. We other fellers thought we’d like to see what he’s seen, when he gets back, so we all chipped in and got a camera. Here it is, Joe, and don’t try to snap Spider with it, or you’ll bust the lens.”

Joe tried to make a speech in reply, but he couldn’t do it. He just took the camera, and said, “Gee, fellows, you’re—you’re all to the good.”

“And don’t you worry about your mother’s coal, either,” Bob added. “We’re going to keep right on fillin’ the hods, and if anybody forgets when it’s his turn, I’m goin’ to beat him on the bean.”

“That’s a good one,” cried little Sam Cowan. “You forgot yourself yesterday!”

“Well, I ain’t goin’ to forget any more, or let you, either,” Bob answered.

Bob and several more scouts, as well as Mr. Rogers, Joe’s mother and little brother and sister, and Tom’s family, were all down at the depot to see the boys off in the morning. There were kisses and some tears from the women, and a scout cheer from the boys, and cries of “Have you got your axe, Spider?” and “Joe, dear, are you sure you put in your comb and brush?” and “Tom, dear, now don’t forget to send mother a postcard just as soon as you get there,” and “Say, Joey, bring home a Rocky Mountain sheep’s head for the clubroom,” and “Hi, Spider, don’t forget a grizzly bear rug for me, so my little tootsies won’t be cold when I hop out of bed.”

The train came, the boys got aboard, it pulled out, and looking back they saw their friends and parents on the platform, waving good-bye, and the church spires and housetops of their village vanishing into the June green of the tree tops.

“Well,” said Tom, “we’re off for the Rocky Mountains!”

Joe rubbed his eyes. “Sure we are!” he answered. “I kind of hate to leave ma, though, and the kids.”

Tom slapped him on the shoulder.

“Sure you do,” he said. “But it’s so you can come back a husky, well man, to look out for ’em better than ever. Don’t you forget that, old scout!”

CHAPTER IV—Tom and Joe Cross the Continent With Their Faces Glued to the Car Window and Reach the Rocky Mountains

Neither Tom nor Joe had ever been West before, even as far as Chicago. As soon as they had changed cars to the through train, not far from their home town, each armed with a ticket about a yard and a half long, and got settled in their seats in the sleeping car, they glued themselves to the windows, and watched the country. There was something new to see every minute—the Berkshire Hills, the Hudson River at Albany, the great factories at Schenectady, the Mohawk River and the Erie Canal, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo. They slept soundly that night, and woke up as they were passing along the southern shore of Lake Michigan. In Chicago they had to change cars again, to another station, and they had time, after seeing that their baggage was transferred, to walk around a little, among the high buildings, and out to the lake front.

“It’s an awful dirty place, strikes me,” said Joe. “All the buildings look as if somebody had spilled soot over ’em.”

“I guess somebody has,” Tom answered. “I guess they burn soft coal here. The air’s full of it. Wait till we get to the Rockies, though; there’s the air!”

The trip from Chicago to St. Paul was even more interesting than the first stage, because after a while the train followed the bank of the Mississippi River (the scouts had a railroad folder with a map spread out in their seat, to see where they were every minute), and there was something thrilling to both of them about the first sight of the great river, which they had heard about all their lives.

“Say, it’s yellow, all right,” Joe exclaimed. “I’d rather go swimming in our old hole back home, I guess. It ain’t so awful big, either.”

“Not way up here. We’re a thousand miles from the mouth. But you’d better not try to jump it, even here—not till you get well,” Tom laughed.

At St. Paul they changed once more, for the final train, the trans-continental limited which would take them right through to the Park.

“Golly, we won’t see any of Minnesota,” Tom complained. “It’ll be dark while we go through that. And look at all those lakes we pass.” He pointed to the map.

“Well, there has to be night as well as day out here, just like home. I guess we can’t do anything about it,” said Joe. “I’m kind o’ glad to sleep, at that.”

“Poor old Joe, I forget you get tired,” Tom cried, penitently. “Seems to me I never want to go to sleep, with so much to see!”

“Oh, I’m not tired any more,—just sleepy,” Joe said, bravely. But Tom saw he was tired, and called the porter to make up the berths.

They woke up in the prairie country of North Dakota—or, rather, Spider did. He was sleeping in the upper berth, of course, so Joe could have all the air possible, and he climbed down as quietly as he could and went into the observation car to see where they were. It was bright sunlight, almost as it would be at home at eight o’clock, yet his watch told him it was only a little after four. He looked out of the window on a strange land—on the prairies about which he had read all his life and never seen before. He had been disappointed in the Mississippi River, but there was no disappointment here. They were more wonderful than he had ever dreamed—just one endless green sea of growing wheat stretching to the horizon, without a hill or a valley, as flat as the floor of the ocean. Indeed, they looked like a green ocean, with the small houses, the big red barns and silos, the little groves of trees behind the barns for a windbreak, rising like islands every mile or so. The whole world here seemed to be grain. Everything was under cultivation, there were no trees at all except the groves planted beside the farmhouses, mile after mile as far as the eye could see to the far horizon rolled the sea of young wheat, or else the golden stubble where the winter crop had been harvested.

For the first time, Tom understood what men mean when they speak of “the great wheat fields of the West,” for the first time he realized the bigness of America. He wanted to go wake Joe at once, and if Joe hadn’t been sick, he certainly would have done so. As it was, he let him sleep till six, and then he couldn’t stand it any longer, and shook him awake.

“Joe! we’re on the prairie!” he cried.

All that day, mile after mile, they traveled through the wheat, with never a break in the vast monotony of the level land, the endless procession of houses and barns far off, like islands in the green sea. The sun did not set till late, and even at nine o’clock they could read on the back platform of the observation car, as the prairie turned dusky, and in the west the lingering sunset was like a sunset over the sea.

“My, it’s been a wonderful day!” Joe sighed, as they went to bed. “I feel as if I’d just been soaked in bigness. I guess the Rockies aren’t any bigger than these prairies. But what gets me, though, is how the kids here go sliding in winter.”

A man on the platform beside them laughed.

“Say, I never saw a toboggan till I went East after I was twenty-one years old,” he said. “But I’ve seen some drifts that were twenty feet high, and that’s quite a hill for us.”

The next morning Tom again was the first awake, and he hurried out to see the prairie once more—but there was no prairie. The world looked exactly as if there had come a great wind or earthquake in the night and kicked the calm prairie sea up into waves. There were still no trees, only a great expanse of grayish grass and wild flowers, but you couldn’t see far from the train in any direction, because the land was so cut up with the billows, little rounded hills and earth waves maybe fifty feet high. This was the cattle country now, and every little while a rough log cabin and log stables, half dug out of the side of a bank, would appear beside the track, and there would be cattle and horses grazing over the slopes. Again Spider waked Joe, and they watched for a cowboy, but none appeared.

As they were eating an early breakfast, the train seemed to be running into more level prairie country again, though it never settled back into the really flat prairies. Presently they stopped at a little town, with a single street of low wooden and brick stores and houses, and no trees, and the two scouts got out to stretch their legs. The first thing they saw as they alighted was a cowboy! Clad in a flannel shirt, with big black fur chaps down his legs and a wide-brimmed felt hat mysteriously sticking on his head, he came dashing up about a mile a minute, kicking up a tremendous dust, and pulling his horse down with a quick sweep that stopped him exactly against the platform. The boys were so interested in him that it was not till they were getting aboard again, at the conductor’s shout, that Joe looked to the west, and cried, “Spider, quick! Look there!”

Tom followed his finger, and, lo! there they were, the Rocky Mountains! As far to the north, as far to the south, as the eye could see stretched the great, blue procession of towering peaks, dazzling white with great patches of snow on summits and shoulders, and seemingly only a few miles away.

“And we could have seen ’em hours ago, if we’d only been looking ahead,” Joe complained, as they took their seats on the observation platform. “They can’t be more’n ten miles off now.”

A big, heavy man who was sitting there laughed loudly.

“Guess you ain’t never been out here before, have you?” he asked.

“No, we never have.”

“Well, this train’s making thirty miles an hour, and we got three hours to go yet before we get to them hills,” he went on. “You chaps remind me of a story, about a friend o’ mine who was prospectin’ up here before the government made a park out o’ Glacier. An Englishman came along one day, and he started out to walk to the base o’ one o’ them mountains before breakfast, so my friend, bein’ just naturally curious, allowed he’d go along too. Fust, though, he sneaked out and got a bite o’ grub. Well, they walked and walked till along about ten o’clock, and the mountain not gettin’ any nearer. By’mby they come to a brook a baby could have jumped, and the Englishman started to peel off his clothes.

“‘What in blazes be you goin’ to do?’ asked my friend.

“‘Well,’ said the bally Britisher, ‘that looks like a brook, but I ain’t taking no chances.’”

Tom and Joe laughed.

“I’ve always heard you could see awfully plain out here,” said Tom. “It must bother you at first sighting a gun.”

“I reckon it does bother a stranger. I seen fellers sight for a goat at four hundred yards, when he was a clean eight hundred, and kick up the dust on the rocks twenty feet below him.”

“Have you hunted goats?” the boys demanded.

“What I’ve not hunted, ain’t,” said the man. “I don’t know what folks want goats for, though. They’re the hardest work to get, and no good when you get ’em. A bighorn, now!”

“What’s a bighorn?” asked Joe.

The man looked at him in profound surprise. “By glory, don’t you know what a bighorn is?” he demanded. “Where do you come from, anyhow? A bighorn’s a Rocky Mountain sheep, the old ram of the flock, with horns fifty inches long that curl around in a circle, and he’s the handsomest, finest, proudest lookin’ critter God Almighty ever made. Wait till you see one!”

“Do you think we can see one in the Park this summer?” the boys asked.

“If you climb up a cliff about seven thousand feet and make a noise like a bunch o’ grass, I reckon maybe you can,” said the stranger.

The next three hours were about the longest the boys had ever spent. They went back into the sleeper as soon as the berths were moved out of the way and they could sit at the window, and with their faces glued to the pane strained their eyes ahead to see the mountains. Whenever the road made a curve, they could see them plainly, a vast, sawtooth range of blue peaks, some of them sharp like pyramids, some of them rounded into domes, marching down out of the north and stretching away to the south as far as the eye could see. Not only were they bigger mountains than the scouts had ever seen, even on a trip the year before to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, but all over them, on their summits, in great patches on their sides, sometimes quite covering an entire peak, were great fields of snow. Here it was about the 4th of July, with flowers blooming in the grass beside the track and a blazing hot sun in the heavens—and the mountains just out there covered with vast fields of snow!

“Gee, I wish the old engineer’d put on some steam!” sighed Joe.

“I wish he would,” Tom answered. “But I guess that snow ain’t all going to melt before we get there. Say, Joe, why do you suppose that range goes right up out of the prairie without any foot-hills? Remember, when we went to the White Mountains we got into smaller mountains long before we reached Washington? They went up like steps. But here the Rockies just jump right up out of the plain.”

“I don’t know—wish I’d studied geology. Maybe the guy who had the friend who walked with the Englishman can tell us.”

Tom shook his head. “I have a hunch he knows more about goats than geology,” said he. “Maybe we can get a book at the Park.”

The mountains were now getting perceptibly nearer. They were becoming less blue, the snow showed more plainly on their sharp peaks and great shoulders, and the boys began to pack up their handbags and get ready to disembark.

Their rear-platform friend, coming through the car, stopped and laughed.

“Don’t go trying to jump no brooks, now,” he said.

“Sure—we’ll throw a stone first,” Spider answered. “Can you tell us why the Rocky Mountains haven’t any foot-hills?”

The stranger seemed to take this very seriously. “They did have once,” said he, “but they was all dug away for the gold and copper.”

Then he passed on, still laughing.

“He’s a good scout,” laughed Joe.

“But I’d hate to have him for a geology teacher,” Tom answered.

The mountains didn’t seem much nearer than they had looked for half an hour when the train finally rolled up to the Glacier Park station and stopped. The boys, together with several tourists, got off, and the minute they stepped on the platform they felt how much cooler it was than back in St. Paul, and how much purer the air.

“Take a big lungful, Joey,” Tom cried. “This is the real old ozone!”

The station is at the gate of the mountains, where the railroad enters the pass which takes it through the range. The mountains here do not look very high, for you are so close under that you do not see much of them. The boys looked up at a ragged wall to the north, covered first with fir timber and then with snow patches on the reddish rocks. Behind them to the east, they looked out over the rolling plains. Close by the station was a big hotel, several stories high, but built entirely of huge fir logs. Even the tall columns in front were single logs.

“I suppose I go up there and report,” said Tom. “Let’s see if our baggage is all here, first”

They found the baggage on the platform, and set out for the hotel, passing on the way an Indian tepee, with pictures painted on the outside, and smoke ascending from the peak. This was the home of old Chief Three Bears, the boys learned, a Blackfeet Indian who lives here by the hotel in summer, and welcomes arriving guests. He was coming down the path, in fact, as the boys walked up, a tall Indian, over six feet, and looking taller still because of his great feathered head-dress. He was very old, but still erect, though his face was covered all over with tiny wrinkles.

The two scouts stopped and saluted him.

Old Three Bears smiled at them, and grunted, “Okeea” (with the accent on the first syllable, and the ee and a sounds slid together). Then he held his blanket around him with his left hand, and putting out his right, solemnly shook both boys by their hands.

“Say, the old Chief’s got a big fist, all right,” said Joe, as they went on. “I’ll bet he was strong once.”

“He must ’a’ been good looking, too,” said Tom. “I didn’t know Indians were so big and—and sort of noble looking.”

They now entered the great lobby of the hotel, which, like the outside, was all made of fir logs, with tremendous trunks, bark and all, used as the columns clear to the fourth story. Hunting out the manager, they learned that they were to take the motor bus for Many Glacier Hotel in fifteen minutes, and they just had time to go to the news stand and secure a government map of the Park and a government report about its geology, before turning in their baggage checks and climbing aboard the bus, a four-seated motor something like a “Seeing New York” automobile. This bus was full, three on a seat, and a moment later the driver cranked his engine, gave a toot on his horn, and they were off.

CHAPTER V—The Scouts Learn Why the Rocky Mountains Have No Foot-Hills and Arrive at Many Glacier