44 The Mountaineer 



Alone in a flat, in the strange city of Seattle, dun- 

 nage too heavy to be packed alone, no expressman 

 known, or persuadable even if known ; this first impres- 

 sion on the hapless easterner was one of dismay, 

 promptly developing into fright. Had she not come 

 across the continent to take that dunnage to Fairfax, 

 and now even before she had seen them, was she not 

 already being left behind by these speedy mountain- 

 eers? 



The cloud-veiled mountain at this moment seemed 

 further off than Washington, D. C, and much more im- 

 possible. Fortunately, however, entreaties over the 

 'phone and cries of ''help, help," resounding through 

 the flat, brought to the rescue a stalwart Swede of the 

 Ray H. Butler Company, who swept the dunnage into 

 the bag and had it down to the N. P. R. tracks before 

 its owner's preliminary mountain heart-beat had fallen 

 to ordinary again. 



Impression No. 2 came at the station Saturday 

 morning as one of gratified relief. Here was a large 

 group of people looking almost as queer as she did. 

 This depot memory consists largely of boots; partly 

 also of knapsacks, bandannas or strange-cornered pack- 

 ages of luncheon, worn before, behind, sideways, "'any 

 old way." Also there was a look about the crowd no- 

 ticeably superior, if not actually condescending, to the 

 other people at the station who did not have a good 

 time, a mountainous time, so conspicuously advertised 

 all over them. 



I suppose that only in the west would a person start 

 off up a mountain with seventy-two people, half a 

 dozen of whom only she had been hastily introduced to ; 

 the other sixty-six she was to become acquainted with, 

 without even knowing their names, for several days or 

 a week. Not the least interesting of train impressions 

 was the friendliness at once evident, which belongs, of 



