Two rather distant cousins of this woodpecker also came into the camp. They were banded three-toed woodpeckers, somewhat more modestly clad in black and white, with yellow silk caps.
Jack noticed that they worked most on the trunks of the higher trees and on the larger limbs, corkscrewing about them and pecking away in modest fashion, as if anxious to escape observation.
One of them crept into a hollow in the bark of a great spruce and stayed there for a long time, and Jack thought that he was taking a nap before starting out for his supper.
For some hours Jack sat there watching the birds and having a delightfully lazy time. Once in a while he looked across the creek to the place where the horses were, and could see two figures, which he knew must be Hugh and Joe. They seemed in no hurry to return to the camp, but had gone beyond the horses and almost to the crest of the hill above the old camp where the bears had been killed.
At length when the birds had all gone off and he felt a little tired of doing nothing, Jack took up his rifle and crossing the tiny stream which lay before the camp, clambered half a mile or more up the mountainside. It was steep, but not bad going.
There was little sign of game, but, presently, on one of the ledges, Jack walked into a little brood of Franklin's grouse; a mother and half a dozen young ones as big as a quail.
At first the old bird seemed rather uneasy, but not sufficiently alarmed to resort to any of the common tricks for leading an intruder away from her young, and Jack sat down on the ground close to them and watched them for a long time. They did not seem very active birds, nor did they display much energy in searching for food. They seemed to him rather lazy, and at last he rose and, leaving them, went on.
From his high perch he could see far into the distance and could now overlook the great cliff lying south of the camp, which he discovered to be the northern boundary of an immense snow field which ran back a long way to a vast mountain and to the ridges which extended from it on either hand.
"My," said Jack to himself, "that will be no fool of a climb to cross that ice and get on those ridges. We will have to do that before very long."