Man Offers Nothing To Equal Beauties Of The Yellowstone Old Faithful And This Geysers; . Scarface And The Grizzlies. A Ranger Story. (Bv RENN DRUM.) From Salt Lake City, Utah, on in to the Eagle Ranger Pass entrance to Yellowstone the automobile tour ist catches other glimpses of the old west similar to those in western Texas. Artzona. New Mexico and Nevada. But for a halt day's ride beyond Salt Lake the car travels! through more of the fertile, irrigat- J ed Utah farms before reaching the ; Idaho line. The route through Idaho is by way of Pocatello and Idaho Falls and through the Blackfool Indian reservation, where the Indians arc very little removed from the primi tive stage existing when the white man first dared enter the west, ex cept that many of the redskins now have dilapidated motor ears which carry them to and from their source of fire-water. For the most part the red men are as indolent and shift less there as are Indians everywhere and about the only sign of life one sees in the glaring sunlight around the tiny, thatch-covered shacks on the prairie will be a bony horse grazing upon the withered grass, ora fat squaw, her long skirts trailing In the dust., hanging slits of beef on the roof to dry. Sugar beets and Irish potatoes are the two big crops of the state and about the only livelihood other than stock raising and cattle grazing. These western cities, however, are ; Just as modern as our eastern cen ters of population. The collegiate youths wear their red and green suspenders and have their hair lard ed. while their girl friends exhibit, ''just as many bare legs and lust as much sophistication as the flappers of the East. The majority of the •'soda, sheets,” thereabouts are girls, for i young man there may look collegiate, but he doesn’t last long unless he exhibits enough physical prowess and daring to hold down a man's job—and a man's job in the terms of the West Is man size Into Yellowstone. The traveller leaves Idaho and hits the lower edge of Montana just before driving into Wyoming and the Yellowstone. Back East the opinion prevails that there could be no trip to the West without a visit to Yellowstone, for the great national park is one Of America's institutions, and it should be for no other one place so typifies the great out-of-doors, the wide open spaces, and an idea as to hbw America looked before Chris Columbus cajoled his Queen into sending him west looking for a new land. Old Faithful geyser is generally ac eepted as the outstanding scene in the park, and it is entitled to the honor, but there are hundreds of scenes and sights scattered over the hundreds of acres of virgin forests and towering peaks which not only enchant but awe the sightseer. Among them are the Giant geyser, the Grotto, the Rocket, the Drag on's Mouth, and the water terrace formations, including Cleopatra's Terrace, one of the most mystifying beauties in the world; the Paint Pots, the Mud Volcano, Crystal Falls, the Yellowstone Grand Can yon, and Yellowstone lake. Several days may be spent rambling through the travelled portions of the park with new sights greeting the eye around each comer—or perhaps it may be a bear looking for his daily sweet. There are miles and miles of the park, which have never been traversed by any but the hardened government rangers, «h#e auto horns have never been heard, and where to the animals and birds a man is a strange sight unless he be a government ranger who knows *his birds and animals as the average “civilized" man knows the various parts of his car. The Park Clock. If your watch ts falling to keep the proper time. It may be adjusted by timing It with Old Faithful. This gigantic, geyser spouts its steaming water high into the air every 65 minutes, and in the many years it has been watched it has not varied in going off more than a few sec onds. Hundreds sit by with watches in hand to time it. After spouting the stream of boiling water settles slowly back into the large hole from which It emits. Then for 40 minutes those who watch see nothing but steam, as if from a kettle, issuing from the mouth of the geyser. But after 40 minutes or so one hears the water getting nearer .the surface, sloshing about as It gets warmer. About five minutes before it erupts the steam, mixed with a small stream of water, in great clouds fills the air above. And Just as the second hand ticks off the last of the 65 minutes the huge stream of boil ing water leaps high Into the sky where it plays for 10 or 15 minutes before quieting down to start all over again. At night now a large searchlight, In varying colors, plays upon the geyser when it is in action. Human* are permitted only a very few sight# of such grandeur and indescribable j beauty. The other geysers, of which there are scores in the Geyser Basin sec tion, vary in formation and size— the Rocket resembling a fireworks rorket, and so on. All have their particular individual appeal. A Bear Story. What has come to be one of the most appealing parts of Yellowstone Is a mixture of man and nature, the twilight lectures by a grizzled rang er Rt the Bear Feeding Ground, the ranger dividing time in telling his romantic story with the big bears hp knows so well. Black bears ai*e seen everywhere about the park.. Not pets, for the rangers tell you a bear never becomes a pet, but bears which have never heard a gun fire, and know not what fear is. These are black bears, remember; the grizzlies are seldom seen and they are the real sights of the wild life there. The ranger who lectures from the back of his horse Is one of the most Interesting personages the writer has even encountered, and the story h* tells of wild life and of the win ters where none but hardy men can exist was the most Interesting story the writer has ever heard or read depicting actual happenings and events. The average newspaper reader hUs read of the better known sights of Yellowstone in pamphlets, government texts, and feature stor ies, so this narrative will, for a time, confine itself to the ranger and his story. The Bear Feeding Ground is nothing more than a low platform built back from the settled portions of the camp near the edge of the mountain wilderness All refuse from the lodges and hotels is dump ed there each evening to attract the bears, and a short distance away is the open-air stadium in which hun dreds sit each evening of the sum mer to hear the ranger and the story the Department of the In terior has finally persuaded him to tell. Another ranger sits near the crowd with his high-powered rifle as protection for the hundreds who listen should one of the bears de cide to "go crazy," and the crowd appreciates the ranger and his rifle near the end of the lecture, as dusk settles over the wild scene, and a few of the giant grizzlies shuffle down from the mountainside to drive the frightened black bears away so that they may partake of the luncheon No one ever plays with a grizzly, because no one ever has the desire. At the outset of his lecture the ranger tells of the grizzlies. The ranger, incidentally, was educated in the east and is a naturalist. To the book learning he received in the east he has added many years of actual experience spent with the bears and wild life back in the un travelled mountains, seeing no hu man for months except the ranger who is his pal. The grizzly bear, he says, has never mixed breeds and has nothing to do with other bears or other animals He ts to the rug ged west what the lion is to the jungle—king of his domain. "If there are no sudden hand claps, a grizzly or so may wander in to the platform before I get through talking,-' informs the ranger. At that time a half dozen or more black bears are already shuffling about him as they fight over the meat re fuse. The black bear is more afc customed to civilization. "The animal of animals in the park," the ranger continues, "is Old Scarface, boss of the grizzlies, and so far as we are able to tell the oldest of the animals here. In .sonic fierce combat in his early days a huge wound laid open his face, therefore his name. We estimate that he is 17 or 18 years old and he weighs 900 pounds-or more. Per haps you'll see him before the evening is over.” nna so we aid. ,\enr the end o£ the lecture the hundreds of hearers had become so wrapped up in the ranger's unusual story that they had momentarily forgotten the black bears pawing over tne food on the platform, when suddenly every black bear made a wild dash for the timber, apparently terribly frightened. “Be quiet," urged the ranger, "X believe you're going to see a sight ” Then from the bushes shuffled the thing that scared the black bears within an Inch of their lives It was Old Scarface himself. A giant beast, weighing almost as much as a horse, but built low upon the Rround. The circus cages contain nothing like him. In a moment or two he was joined by a couple of other grizzlies, but it was most too dark to see them, and the ranger kept talking in a level voice asking that no one make a sudden noise to frighten them. ‘‘The natural tone will not scare them away. My voice to these residents of the wild means nothing more than the song of the birds, and the creaking oi the trees in the wind. A sharp noise, though, will send them charging back into the forest.” Soon a stick broke and the griz zlies, led by Old Scarface, were gone with a rush back to their lairs, or tree-beds, high in the mountainside. The ranger first told of the hab its of the bears; how the mother bear, the best mother of all an;- j mals, trains her young cubs to j hold up tourists for their eats and; how to protect themselves. On the. j first spring after their birth the mother bear takes her two cubs, they are usually two cubs io a lit ter (a Gertrude and a Willie, the ranger terms them) and places them in the roadway. Tills takes place early in the spring just after the snows melt and before the tour ists begin arriving. Each day she makes them sit there on their haunches waiting for what they do not knowr. She stations herself on a ledge nearby to watch. If they leave, she gives them a spanking with her big paw, a tiny little slap tumbling them back 10 or 15 feel. They never need'but one spanking. Eventually a baggage-covered flivver comes around the bend. The cubs wonder what it is. but upon the ledge the mother bear gives the ov der to sit tight and the cubs do. The car must stop and the mother bear makes her young remain before the car in hold-up fashion, even if she has to lend her aid, until the tour ists dig in their luncheon box and toss the cubs a sweet morsel to cat. Then they shuffle back to the roadside to await the next, car. In jn hour or so, in mid-tourist sea son, they get their fill and then shuffle back to the mountains. No auto tourist leaves Yellowstone i without one or two holdups. “Suppose.” some one asks, ‘‘that j you don't have anything to eat in your car?" '■Well,” the ranger answers. “That's just too bad: you have to remain there until the next cat comes along and hope that he has a bar of Hershey's fo toss the cubs.” Real Winters. All the rangers seen in the paik are not full-time rangers, the lec turer-naturalist explains. Many of them are college boys serving only during the tourist season as guides and assistants. During the winter only the tough old-timers can stand the graff. There is a reason, or sev eral reasons. which the ranger gives—and therein is his most re markable story. Early in October, when the first signs of early snow appear, everything leaves the park except the rangers. Their horses ajid other domestic animals must be taken below “the level.” They cannot live through the winter. There is a bustle of activity. The full time rangers must store in their huts about the mountains, thous ands of feet above sea level where it gets the coldest in America, then provisions for the six months . f snow. From November until late spring they never have any con tact with outside life and the rang er sees no one but his pal. Two men stay to each hut, to keep one from going insane from lack of hu man companionship, and those two men patrol their allotted area. They travel by skiis over the top of tire snow, which at many points hides the smaller trees. “It takes us a week to ski across n territory you could drive over in two hours tn your car. me ranger informs. "We take time about break ing the trail with our skils; I go it: front 15 minutes, then my pal. If one of us makes a misstep some where tn a 20-foot drift. It's Just too bad (that’s their Kismet ex pression in the west.) A man tn the Rockies in the winter with a broken leg has about as much chance as a horse with a broken leg. One m?