CHAPTER III
Fourth of July on Kinsman
As the train passed along the high embankment above the village of Deerfield, Massachusetts, the boys crowded to the windows on the left side of the car, and gazed out upon the meadows where they had camped at the turning point of their first long hike, several years before. The village looked sleepy and quiet, under its great trees.
“Golly, they need waking up again!” Peanut laughed. “Remember how we trimmed ’em in baseball? There’s the field we played on, too.”
But almost before the rest could follow Peanut’s beckoning finger, the train was past. Deerfield was the last familiar spot they saw. Their way led northward, mile after mile, beside the Connecticut River, and they began to get a pretty good idea of what a lengthy thing a big river is.
“Take a good look at that river, boys,” said Mr. Rogers, “because in a few days we are going to eat our lunch at one of its head waters, and you can see what little beginnings big things have.”
In the afternoon, they came in sight of Mount Ascutney, close to the river in Windsor, Vermont.
“That’s only the height of Greylock, which we’ve climbed,” Mr. Rogers told them. “But you’ll begin to see some of the big fellows pretty soon.”
Sure enough, it was not long before Art, who was looking out of the eastern window, gave a cry. “There’s a big blue lump, with what looks like a house on top!”
Mr. Rogers looked. “You’re right, it’s a big lump, all right! That’s the second one we’ll climb. It’s Moosilauke.” He peered sharply out of the window. “There,” he added, “do you see a saddleback mountain beyond it, which looks like Greylock? That’s Kinsman. We’ll celebrate the Fourth to-morrow, on top of him.”
“Hooray!” cried Peanut. “I got two packs of firecrackers in my kettle!”
“How high is it?” asked Frank.
“About 4,200 feet,” Mr. Rogers answered. “That’s only 700 feet higher than Greylock, but I can promise you it will seem more, and there’ll be a different view.”
Peanut was running from one side of the car to the other, trying to see everything. But the nearer they got to the mountains, the less of the mountains they saw. After the train turned up the narrow valley of the Ammonoosuc, at Woodsville, in fact, they saw no more mountains at all. An hour later they got off the train at the Sugar Hill station. So did a great many other people. There were many motors and mountain wagons waiting to carry off the new arrivals. The boys, at Art’s suggestion, let these get out of the way before they started, so the dust would have a chance to settle. It was late in the afternoon when they finally set out.
“How far have we got to go?” asked Frank.
“Seven or eight miles,” Mr. Rogers answered, “if we want to camp at the base of Kinsman. If you’d rather walk it in the morning, we can camp along this road.”
“No, let’s get there to-night! Don’t care if I starve, I’m going to keep on till I see the mountains,” cried Peanut.
The rest were equally eager, so up the road they plodded, a road which mounted steadily through second growth timber, mile after mile, with scarce a house on it. After an hour or more, they came in sight of Sugar Hill village, one street of houses straggling up a hill ahead. They increased their pace, and soon Peanut, who was leading, gave a cry which startled several people walking on the sidewalk. The rest hurried up. Peanut had come to the top of the road, and was looking off eastward excitedly. There were the mountains! Near at hand, hardly a stone’s throw, it seemed, across the valley below, lay a long, forest-clad bulwark, rising into domes. Beyond that shot up a larger rampart, sharply peaked, of naked rock. Off to the left, beyond that, growing bluer and bluer into the distance, was a billowing sea of mountains, and very far off, to the northwest, almost like a mist on the horizon, lay the biggest pyramid of all, which Mr. Rogers told them was Mount Washington.
“Some mountains, those!” Peanut exclaimed. “Gee, I guess we won’t climb ’em all in two weeks!”
“I guess not,” Rob laughed.
They turned to the right now, passing a big hotel on the very crest of the hill, and as they passed, the setting sun behind them turned all the mountains a bright amethyst, so that they looked, as Lou put it, “like great big jewels.”
“It’s beautiful!” he added, enthusiastically.
“Make a poem about it,” said Peanut. “Say, Mr. Rogers, Lou writes poetry. You oughter read it! He wrote a poem to Lucy Parker one day, didn’t you, Lou?”
“Shut up,” said Lou, turning red.
“Well, if I could write poetry, this view would make me do it, all right,” Rob put in. “Now where to, Mr. Rogers?”
“Getting hungry?” said the Scout Master.
“I sure am.”
“Well, in an hour we’ll be at camp. All down-hill, too.”
“Hooray!” cried Art. “This pack is getting heavy.”
The party now turned sharply down the hill toward the east, and the great double range of the Franconia Mountains, which Mr. Rogers named for them. The highest peak on the north of the farther range was Lafayette, 5,200 feet high. The northern peak of the first range was Cannon Mountain, the Old Man’s face being on the farther side of it. To the south the twin summits, like a saddleback, were the two peaks of Kinsman, which they would climb in the morning. As they dropped rapidly down the hill, they suddenly saw to the south, in the fading light, a huge bulk of a mountain filling up the vista. “That’s Moosilauke,” Mr. Rogers said. “We tackle him day after to-morrow.”
It was almost dark when they reached the valley, and turned south along a sandy road with the big black wall of Cannon seeming to tower over them. It grew quite dark while they were still tramping.
“Hope you know your way, Mr. Scout Master,” said Peanut, who had ceased to run on ahead.
“Half a mile more,” Mr. Rogers laughed.
Presently they heard a brook, and a moment later stood on a bridge. The brook was evidently coming down from that great black bulk of Cannon to the left, which lifted its dome up to the stars.
“Halt!” Mr. Rogers cried. “Here’s Copper Mine Brook.”
He led the way through the fence side of the brook, and two minutes later the party stood in a pine grove, carpeted with soft needles.
“Camp!” said the Scout Master. “Art, you and the rest get a fire going. Take Lou’s lantern and find some stones. There are plenty right in the bed of the brook—nothing but. Peanut, come with me.”
The Scout Master led Peanut out of the grove to the south, and up over a pasture knoll a few hundred feet. At the top of the knoll they saw a white house below them, a big barn, and a cottage. Descending quickly, Mr. Rogers led Peanut through the wood-shed, as if it were his own house, and knocked at the kitchen door.
As the Scout Master and Peanut entered, a man and a little boy arose, the man’s face expressing first astonishment and then joyous welcome.
“Well, of all things!” he cried. “Did you drop out of the sky?”
“Mr. Sheldon, this is Bobbie Morrison, otherwise known as Peanut,” said Mr. Rogers. “And how is your Bobbie?”
The little fellow came forward from behind his father’s leg, and shook hands. But what interested him most was Peanut’s sheath hatchet. In two minutes he had it out, and was trying to demolish the wood-box with it—not trying, succeeding! His father had to take it away.
The Sheldon family all came to welcome Mr. Rogers, and when he and Peanut returned to camp they carried milk and eggs and doughnuts.
“That farm,” Mr. Rogers said, “is about the best place I know of to come to stay, if you want to tramp around for a week or a month.”
“They kind of like you, I guess,” said Peanut.
“That’s the kind of folks they are,” answered the Scout Master.
Back at camp, the Scouts had a fire going briskly, and soon supper was sizzling, and the smell of coffee, made from the pure water of Copper Mine Brook, was mingling with the fragrance of the pines, and with another smell the boys at first did not recognize till Art examined a small tree close to the fire, and discovered that it was balsam. They were in the midst of their feast, when Mr. Sheldon appeared, and sat down with them.
“You oughtn’t to take ’em away from here without showing ’em the falls,” he said to the Scout Master. “They are full now—lots of water coming over—and I cut out the trail fresh this last winter. You can do it in the morning and still make Kinsman, easily. At least, you can if they are strong boys,” he added with a wink.
“Humph!” said Peanut, “I guess we’re as strong as the next.”
Then he realized that Mr. Sheldon had got a rise out of him, and grinned.
“What’s the weather going to be to-morrow?” asked the Scout Master.
“Clear,” the other man replied. “I didn’t hear the mountain talking as I came across the knoll.”
“The mountainwhat?” said Rob.
“Talking, we say. You get it real still down here sometimes in the valley, and way up on top there, if you listen sharp, you can hear the wind rushing through the trees. Then we look out for bad weather.”
“That’s a funny way to put it,” Lou mused. “It makes the mountains seem sort of human.”
“Well, you get to know ’em pretty well, living under ’em all the time, that’s a fact,” the man answered. “A good sleep to you.”
“Good-night,” called the Scouts, as he disappeared.
As soon as the supper things were washed, they were ready for bed, curling up in their blankets around the fire, for it was chilly here, even though it was the night before the Fourth—a fact Peanut quite forgot till he had rolled himself all up for the night. He crawled out again, set off a couple of firecrackers, and came back to bed.
“Gee, this is the stillest night beforeIever saw!” he exclaimed.
“Itwouldbe, if you’d shut up,” grunted Art, sleepily.
The next morning Art, as always, was the first up. He rose from his blanket, aware that it was dawn, and rubbed his eyes. Where was the dim black wall of the mountain which had gone up against the stars the night before? He ran out of the grove into a clear space and gazed up Copper Mine Brook into a white wall of cloud. Back the other way, he saw that the narrow valley in which they were was hung along the surface with white mist, as the water of the Lake of the Dismal Swamp used to be; and the western hills beyond it were in cloud. Yet overhead the dawn sky appeared to be blue.
“Guess we’re in for a bad day,” he muttered, peeling off his clothes and tumbling into the shallow, swift waters of the brook. He emitted a loud “Wow!” as he fell into the deepest pool he could find. Was this ice water? He got out again as quickly as possible, and began hopping up and down to dry himself, his body pink with the reaction.
His “Wow!” had wakened the camp, and the rest were soon beside him.
“How’s the water?” asked Peanut.
“Fine!” said Art, winking at Mr. Rogers.
Peanut, without a word, rolled over the bank. His “Wow!” sounded like a wildcat in distress.
“Cold?” asked Rob.
“Oh, n-n-no,” said Peanut emerging with chattering teeth. “W-w-warm as t-t-t-toast.”
The rest decided to cut out the morning bath, in spite of Art’s jeers. Even Mr. Rogers balked at ice water. They were all looking, with much disappointment, at the cloud-covered mountain above them.
“Wait a bit,” said the Scout Master. “This is going to be a fine day—you’ll see.”
Even as they were going back to camp for breakfast, the hills to the west, touched now with the sun, began to emerge from the mist, or rather the mist seemed to roll up their sides like the curtain at a play. By the time breakfast was over, the sun had appeared over Cannon, and the clouds had mysteriously vanished into a few thin shreds of vapor, like veils far up in the tree tops. It was a splendid day.
“Well, I’ll be switched!” said Art.
“The mountains almost always gather clouds, like a dew, at night in summer,” the Scout Master said. “Well, boys, do you feel up to tackling Bridal Veil Falls before we tackle Kinsman?”
There came a “Yes!” in unison. All packs and equipment were left in camp, and shortly after six the party set out in light marching trim up a logging road which followed the brook bed. It led over a high pasture, and finally plunged into a thick second growth forest, where the dew on the branches soaked everybody, but particularly Peanut, who was leading and got the first of it. The path crossed the brook several times on old corduroy log bridges, now nearly rotted away, and grew constantly steeper. The boys were panting a bit. They hadn’t got their mountain wind yet. After two miles, during which, but for the steepness, they might have been leagues from any mountain for all they could see, they began to hear a roaring in the woods above them. They hastened on, and suddenly, right ahead, they saw a smooth, inclined plane of rock, thirty or forty feet long, with the water slipping down over it like running glass, and above it they saw a sheer precipice sixty feet high, with a V-shaped cut in the centre. Through the bottom of this V the brook came pouring, and tumbled headlong to the ledge below.
“Up we go!” cried Peanut, tackling the smooth sloping ledge at a dry strip on the side. He got a few feet, and began to slip back.
The rest laughed, and tackled the slide at various spots. Only the Scout Master, with a grin, went way to the right and climbed easily up by a hidden path on the side ledge. He got to the base of the falls before the boys did.
“A picture, a picture!” cried Frank, as the rest finally arrived. All the party but Frank scrambled up on a slippery boulder, drenched with spray, beside the falls, and Frank mounted his tripod and took them, having to use a time exposure, as there was no sun down under the precipice.
“Now, let’s get to the top of the falls!” cried Peanut. “Is there a path?”
“Yes, there’s a path, but it’s roundabout, and we haven’t time,” the Scout Master answered.
“Ho, we don’t need a path, I guess,” Peanut added. “Just go right up those rocks over there, clinging to the little hemlocks.”
He jumped across the brook from boulder to boulder, and started to scramble up the precipice, on what looked like rocks covered with mossy soil and young trees. He got about six feet, when all the soil came off under his feet, the little tree he was hanging to came off on top of him, and he descended in a shower of mould, moss, mud and evergreen.
“Guess again, Peanut,” the Scout Master laughed, when he saw the boy rise, unhurt. “You can’t climb safely over wet moss, you know—or you didn’t know.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Peanut, ruefully regarding the precipice. “But I did want to get up there.”
“Forward march for Kinsman, I say,” Art put in. “That’s the business of the day.”
They started down. At the inclined plane Peanut decided to slide. He crouched on his heels upon the smooth rock, and began to descend. But the rock sloped inward almost imperceptibly. Half-way down he was on the edge of the water, two feet more and he was in the water. His feet went out from under him, and sitting in the stream (which was only about three inches deep over the slide) he went down like lightning, into the brook below!
The rest set up a shout. Peanut got up upon the farther bank, and stood dripping in the path. He was soaked from the waist down. “Ho, what do I care? It’s a warm day,” said he. But he pulled off his boots and emptied the water out of them, and then wrung out his stockings and trousers. The rest didn’t wait. They went laughing down the path, and Peanut had to follow on the run.
When he caught up, everybody was looking very stern. “Now, Peanut, no more nonsense,” Mr. Rogers said. “You’ll keep to the path hereafter. We want no broken bones, nor colds, nor sore feet from spoiled shoes. Remember, this is the last time!”
He spoke soberly, sternly. “Yes, sir!” said Peanut, not seeing the wink the Scout Master gave the rest.
At camp they shouldered their equipment, stopped at the little store Mr. Sheldon kept in a wing of his house, to buy some provisions and to say goodbye, and at ten o’clock were tramping up the road of the narrow valley, with the blue bulk of Moosilauke directly south of them, Cannon Mountain just behind to the left, up which they had gone half-way to the falls, and directly on their left the northern ridges of Kinsman, covered with dense forest.
Half a mile down the road Mr. Rogers led the way through a pair of bars, and they crossed a pasture, went panting up a tremendously steep path between dense young spruces, passed through another pasture, and began to climb a steep logging road. It was hard, steady plodding.
“I’m gettin’ dry,” said Peanut, “but my pants still stick!”
After a while, the path left the logging road, and swung up still steeper through the trees. Suddenly they heard water, and a moment later were standing on a shelf of rock over a waterfall, which came forth from one of the most curious formations they had ever seen.
“Another chance for you to get wet, Peanut!” laughed Frank. “What is this place, Mr. Rogers?”
“It’s called Kinsman Flume,” the Scout Master answered.
The flume was a cleft not more than eight feet wide, between two great ledges of moss-grown rock. It ran back into the hill two hundred feet, and was at least thirty feet deep. The brook came into the upper end over a series of waterfalls, and ran out of the lower end, where the boys were, down another fall. Frank took a picture of it, and then they crossed the brook at the lower end, and followed the path up along the top. The path brought them into another logging road, which presently came out into a level clearing. As they had not seen the top of the mountain since they entered the woods, everybody gave a gasp now. There, ahead of them, was the summit—but looking just as high, just as far off, as ever! Art pulled out his watch.
“We’ve been going an hour and a quarter—whew!” he said. “I thought we were ’most there.”
“A little bigger than it looks, eh?” Mr. Rogers laughed. “Most mountains fool you that way.”
The party plodded on a way across the level plateau, and then the ascent began again—up, up, up, by a path which had evidently once been a logging road, but had now been eroded by the water, till it was little better than the dry bed of a brook—and not always dry at that. The boys began to pant, and mop their foreheads. Then they began to shift their blanket rolls from one shoulder to the other. The pace had slowed down.
“How about that mile an hour being ridiculously slow, Art?” Mr. Rogers inquired.
“We’re not doing much better, that’s a fact,” Art admitted.
Just as he spoke, a partridge suddenly went up from the path, not twenty-five feet ahead, with a great whir-r-r. When they reached the spot where he rose, they found a tiny, clear spring. Art flung down his burden, and dropped on his knees with his cup.
“Good place for lunch,Isay,” remarked Peanut.
“Me, too, on that,” said Frank.
Rob looked ahead. The path was growing still steeper. He looked back, and through the trees he could see far below to the valley.
“One more vote,” he said.
“Carried,” said Art, running for fuel.
After a lunch of bacon and powdered eggs, the party lolled an hour in the shade, half asleep, and then resumed the climb. The path very soon entered a forest of a different sort. It was still chiefly hard wood, but very much darker and denser than that below. The trail, too, was not a logging road. It was marked only by blazes on the trees, and the forest floor was black and damp with untold ages of leaf-mould.
“I guess we’ve got above the line of lumbering,” said Rob.
“We have,” said the Scout Master.
Art looked about. “Then this is really primeval forest!” he exclaimed—“just what it was when there were only Indians in this country!”
He investigated the trees more carefully. “Why, most of them are birches,” he cried, “but they are so old and green with moss that they don’t look white at all. And look how short they are, for such big trunks.”
“You are nearly 4,000 feet up now, remember,” Mr. Rogers reminded him, “and they are dwarfed by the storms.”
They came presently out of this dim bit of primeval forest into a growth composed almost exclusively of spruce. It was thirty feet high at first, but the path was very steep, and growing rocky, and in five minutes the spruces had shrunk in height to ten feet. The boys scented the summit and began to hurry. They struck a level place, and from it, in gaps between the stunted spruces, they began to get hints of the view. A quick final scramble, and they found themselves on the north peak. Peanut was leading. His clothes were dry now, except for a new soaking of perspiration, and his spirits high. Rob was right on his heels. The rest heard their shouts, and a second later stood beside them on a big flat rock, above the spruces which were only three or four feet tall here, and looked out upon the most wonderful view they had ever beheld. It made them all silent for a moment.
Right at their feet, on the opposite side from which they had come up, the mountain dropped away in an almost sheer precipice for a thousand feet. At the bottom of that precipice was a perfectly level plateau, covered with forest, and apparently two miles long by half a mile wide, with a tiny lake, Lonesome Lake, at one end. Beyond it the mountain again fell away precipitously into an unseen gorge. From out of that gorge, on the farther side, rose the massive wall of Lafayette, Lincoln, Haystack and Liberty, four peaks which are almost like one long mountain with Lafayette, at the northern end, the highest point, a thousand feet higher than the boys. The whole side of this long rampart is so steep that great landslides have scarred it, and the last thousand feet of it is bare rock. It looked to the boys tremendously big, and the one blue mountain beyond it, to the east, which was high enough to peep over seemed very high indeed—Mount Carrigain.
Peanut drew in his breath with a whistle. Lou sighed. “That’s the biggest thing I ever saw,” he said. Then he added, “And the most beautiful!”
To the southeast, below Mount Liberty at the end of the big rock rampart, the boys could see off to the far horizon, over a billow of blue mountains like the wave crest of a gigantic sea—the Sandwich range, with the sharp cone of Chocorua as its most prominent peak. Facing due south, they could see, close to them, the south peak of Kinsman, perhaps half a mile away, across a saddle which was much deeper than it had looked from the base. Beyond the south peak was Moosilauke, seeming very close, and on top of it they could now see the Summit House. To the west, they looked down the slope up which they had climbed, to the valley, where the houses looked like specks, and then far off to the Green Mountains of Vermont.
Peanut grew impatient. “Come on, fellers,” he cried. “This ain’t the top. What are we waiting here for?”
“Oh, let us see the view, Peanut,” said Rob. “What’s your rush?”
“Well, stay and see your old view; I’m going to get to the top first,” Peanut answered. “Where are we going to camp, Mr. Rogers?”
“Back here, I guess. There’s a good spring just over the edge below. We’ll go to the south peak, and then come back.”
Peanut dumped off his pack into the bushes, kneeled down and took out the flag and his firecrackers, and then slipped over the brow and disappeared rapidly along the path which led across the saddle to the south peak.
The rest waited till Art had put some dehydrated spinach to soak in a kettle, and then followed more slowly, seeing nothing of Peanut, for the path wound amid the stunted spruces which were just tall enough to out-top a man. They went down a considerable incline, and found two or three hundred feet of fresh climbing ahead of them when they reached the base of the south cone. They were scrambling up through the spruces when suddenly from the summit they heard a report—then a second—a third—a fourth—then the rapid musketry of a whole bunch of cannon crackers. It sounded odd far up here in the silence, and not very loud. The great spaces of air seemed to absorb the sound.
When they reached the top, Peanut had stripped a spruce of all branches, and tied the flag to the top. It was whipping out in the breeze. As the first boy’s head appeared in sight, he touched off his last bunch of crackers, and, taking off his hat, cried, “Ladies and gentlemen, salute your flag in honor of the Independence of these United States of America, and the Boy Scouts of Southmead, Massachusetts!”
“Peanut’s making a Fourth of July oration,” Frank called down to the rest.
Rob laughed. “From the granite hills of New Hampshire to the sun-kissed shores of the golden Pacific,” he declaimed, “from the Arctic circle to the Rio Grande, the dear old stars and stripes shall wave—”
“Shut up,” said Lou. “This place ain’t the spot to make fun of the flag in. I say we all just take off our hats and salute it, here on top of this mountain!”
Lou spoke seriously. Peanut, who was always quick to take a suggestion, instantly acquiesced. “Sure,” he said. “Lou’s right. Hats off to the flag on the Fourth of July!”
The five Scouts and Mr. Rogers stood on the rock by the improvised flagstaff, and saluted in silence. Then the Scout Master said quietly, “We can see from here a good deal of the United States, can’t we? We can see the granite hills of New Hampshire, all right. We can realize the job it was for our ancestors to conquer this country from the wilderness and the Indians, to put roads and railways through these hills. I guess we ought to be pretty proud of the old flag.”
The boys put on their hats again, and Frank took a picture of them, gathered around the flag. Then Peanut let out a pent-up whoop. “Never celebrated the Fourth like this before!” he cried. “Golly, but Moosilauke looks big from here!”
It certainly did look big. It seemed to tower over them. The western sun was throwing the shadows of its own summit down the eastern slopes, and the whole great mountain was hazy, mysterious.
“Are we going to climb that?” asked Frank.
“Sure,” said Art.
“Whew!” said Frank. “Makes my legs ache already!”
“It’s easier than this one,” Mr. Rogers laughed. “Now let’s go back and make camp.”
The party retraced their steps to the north peak where, just below the summit and overlooking the precipitous drop to the Lonesome Lake plateau, was a small but cold and delicious spring.
“How does the water get way up here, is what stumps me,” said Frank.
“I suppose it is rain and snow water, held in the rocks,” the Scout Master replied. “Perhaps some of it comes along the rock fissures from the south peak, but that wouldn’t be necessary. There is a little spring almost at the top of Lafayette over there. We’ll see it in a few days.”
“How do we get up Lafayette?” asked Art.
“We’ll come down from Moosilauke, and tramp up the Notch down there below our feet now, till we reach Liberty, climb Liberty, and go right along the ridge to Lafayette, and then down to the Profile House,” was the answer.
The boys looked across the valley to the great rock wall on the further side. The sun was sinking low now, and the shadow of Kinsman was cast across. Even as they watched, this shadow mounted slowly up the steep, scarred sides of Liberty and Lincoln, till only their summits were in sunlight, rosy at first and then amethyst. The far hills to the southwest began to fade from sight.
“Gee, it’s time to make camp!” cried Peanut. “Here’s a good, soft place, on this moss.”
He pointed to a level spot on the summit. Mr. Rogers shook his head.
“Nix!” he said. “We’d be chilled through before morning. Which way is the wind?”
Art picked up a piece of dry grass and tossed it into the air. It drifted toward the southeast.
“Northwest,” he said.
“All right. We’ll go down into the spruces to leeward, and keep out of it.”
The boys soon found a sheltered level space some fifty feet below the peak, and began to clear out a sort of nest in the tough spruce.
“Gosh, I never saw anything so tough as these young spruces,” said Frank.
Lou had been examining one he had cut down. “They’re not young,” he answered. “That’s the funny part of it. This one I’ve cut is only four inches through, but it’syearsold. I’ve counted at least forty-five rings. Guess they are dwarfed by the storms up here, like Japanese trees, aren’t they, Mr. Rogers?”
The Scout Master nodded. “I’ve seen ’em only three or four feet high, when they were so thick together, and so tough, that you could literally walk on top of ’em without going through to the ground.”
Peanut dropped his hatchet and slipped down over the rocks to a spot where the trees were as Mr. Rogers had described. He tried to press through, and failed. Then he just scrambled out on top of them, and tried to walk. With every step he half disappeared from sight, while the rest looked on, laughing.
After a few steps, he came back. His hands and face were scratched, and there was a tear in his trousers.
“Excuseme!” he cried. “Gee, the Dismal Swamp has nothing on those mountain spruces! Golly, I begin to admire the man who made this path up here!”
The spruce boughs were so tough, in fact, that only the tips could be used for bedding, and the boys had to trim the branches with their knives to make their bunks on the ground. The camp-fire was built of dead spruce, with some live stumps added, and a kettle of water kept beside it lest a spark ignite the trees close by. Night had come on before supper was ready, and with the coming of night it grew cold, colder than the boys had guessed it could be in July. They put on their sweaters, which, all day, they had been complaining about as extra weight, and they kept close to the fire while Art, with the skill of a juggler, tossed the flapjacks from one side to the other in his fry pan, catching them neatly as they came down. The wind rose higher, and began to moan through the spruces. Far below them was the great black hole of the Notch—just a yawning pit with no bottom. Beyond it the shadowy bulk of Lafayette, Lincoln, Haystack and Liberty loomed up against the starry sky. From this side, not a single light was visible anywhere in the universe. The boys ate their supper almost in silence.
“Gee, this is lonely!” Peanut suddenly blurted out. “I’m going where I can see a light.” He got up and climbed to the summit again, followed by all the others except Lou. They could look westward from the peak, and see the lamps in the houses down in the valley, and the blazing lights of the big hotel on Sugar Hill, and even the street lights in Franconia village.
“Thereissomebody else in the world!” cried Peanut. “Glad of that. I was beginning to think there wasn’t.”
Just as he spoke, a rocket suddenly went up from Sugar Hill, and burst in the air. It was followed by another, and another. The boys yelled at Lou to come and see the fireworks.
“Oh, dear,” sighed Peanut, “why didn’t I bring a rocket—justonewould be better’n none. Wouldn’t it be some sight for the folks down there to see it going up from the top of this old mountain, eh?”
“Thatwouldbe some celebration, O. K.,” Art cried. “My, let’s come again next year and do it!”
Lou slipped back to camp presently, and Mr. Rogers, returning before the rest, found him sitting on a rock overlooking the black pit of the Notch, gazing out into space.
“What is it, Lou?” he said. “A penny for your thoughts.”
“I was thinking,” Lou answered, “that I was never so near the stars before. I suppose four thousand feet isn’t much in a billion miles, but somehow theylookbigger, and I can almost feel the earth rolling over under ’em. It’s the funniest sensation I ever had.”
“You’re a poet, Lou,” said the Scout Master kindly, as he turned to call the rest to bed.
“All hands to bunk!” he shouted. “We’ve had a hard day, with a harder one ahead.”
The Scouts got off their boots and rolled up in their blankets, all of them glad of the chance. Lou blew out the lantern, and turned in, also. The wind which rushed steadily overhead, with a moaning sound, did not reach them down here to leeward of the peak, amid the thick spruces. But it was cold, nonetheless. They lay close together, and drew their blankets tight.
“A funny Fourth,” said Peanut sleepily. “Hope we don’t roll off in our sleep. Good-night, everybody.”
But there was no reply. Every one else was asleep.