CHAPTER IV
Moosilauke
Everybody was awake early the next morning. “Gosh, I didn’t sleep very well!” said Peanut, shivering as he built up the fire. “Here it is the fifth of July, and me wrapped up in an army blanket, with a sweater on—and cold. Kept waking up, and getting closer to Art. He’s kind o’ fat and makes a good stove.”
“Should think you did!” said Art. “You woke me up about forty-’leven times bumping your back into mine. I wasn’t very cold. Been warmer, though.”
“If it’s cold here,” put in Rob, “at four thousand feet, what’ll it be on Washington at six thousand?”
“I guess we’ll sleep inside on Washington,” said Mr. Rogers.
“Oh, no!” cried Art.
“Well, you can bunk outside, and the rest of us’ll go in,” laughed Frank. “Look, there’s the sun!”
Sure enough, in the east, across the white cloud which hung below them in the Notch, and beyond the wall of the Lafayette range, a great red ball was rising. It seemed to heave up above the mists as though somebody was pushing it from underneath, and as it got up and cast its rays across the Notch to their feet, Lafayette looked like a huge island of rock above a white sea of vapor. This vapor rolled up and blew away as they were eating breakfast. The morning was fine and clear. Mr. Rogers pointed toward Moosilauke. “That’s where we’ll be at night,” he said.
“It doesn’t look possible!” said Lou.
“It won’t be, if we don’t start,” said Art. “Got your flag, Peanut, or did you leave it on the south peak?”
“I got it, all right,” Peanut replied. “Are we ready? How far is it, Mr. Rogers?”
“Hm—four miles down this mountain,—ten to the base of Moosilauke—five miles up—nineteen miles.”
“A pickle,” said Peanut, and pack on back he plunged over the summit, and down the path into the spruces, the rest trailing behind.
“Go after him, Rob,” said the Scout Master, “and hold him back. He’ll tire his front leg muscles all out, if he doesn’t break his neck.”
Rob went, and held Peanut by main force till the rest came up.
“You couldn’t have held me,” cried Peanut, “if I hadn’t wanted to say that we could go down easier with poles. We ought to have brought our poles. What can we cut for ’em?”
“Moose wood,” said Art. “I saw moose wood a bit further down, as we came up.”
So the party plunged on, finding the steep descent quick work, the chief difficulty being not to go too fast. At the first sign of moose wood, Art gave a cry, and soon the whole party had cut staves six feet long.
“I’m going to leave this pretty green and white bark on mine, and cut my initials in it to-night,” Lou announced.
“A good idea,” the rest agreed.
Shouldering their packs again, they put out the staves ahead of them, threw their weight forward, and with this assistance descended with even greater rapidity and much more safety. They stopped in the Flume only long enough for a drink, and again plunged down. As they came out into the level pasture near the base, Peanut slowed down.
“Wow,” he said, wiping his forehead, “that looks easy, but you really work awful hard holding in!”
“You’ll know you’ve worked about to-morrow,” Mr. Rogers laughed.
They made the four miles to the road in a little over half an hour, which, as Art said, is “going some.”
It was less than eight o’clock when they faced the ten miles of road to Moosilauke.
The first thing to attract particular attention was the village of Easton, through which they passed half an hour later. Of the half dozen houses in the village, two were quite abandoned. There was a tiny store, and a small sawmill, and that was all. Beyond the village they passed an abandoned church. Then followed two or three small houses, also abandoned, and then nothing but the narrow, sandy road, winding through woods and fields, with Kinsman growing farther behind them on the left, and Moosilauke nearer straight ahead. They went for more than an hour without meeting a single wagon or motor, and after they left Easton they did not see a human being.
“Pretty lively little road, this,” said Peanut.
“Makes you think of Broadway, New York,” laughed Rob.
“Look!” said Lou. “Moosilauke isn’t blue any longer. You can see the green of the forest.”
“You can see whatwasa forest,” said Mr. Rogers. “The paper company have stripped it.”
“Why paper?” asked Peanut.
“Why paper!” Art sniffed. “You poor boob, don’t you know that paper is made out of wood pulp?”
“I thought it was made out of old rags,” Peanut answered.
“It is,” said Rob.
“Well—what——”
Everybody laughed. “Newspaper is made of wood pulp—spruce and balsam almost entirely,” said the Scout Master, taking pity on Peanut. “Linen paper, such as the kind you write letters on, is made out of linen rags. The newspapers use up so much paper for their great Sunday editions, especially, that they are really doing almost more to strip the forests than the lumbermen, because they don’t even have to wait till the trees get good sized.”
“Why can’t they use anything except spruce and balsam?” asked Lou. “Won’t other kinds of wood make paper?”
“They’ll make paper,” said Mr. Rogers, “but the fibre isn’t tough enough to stand the strain of the presses. You know, a newspaper press has to print many thousands of copies an hour; it runs at high speed. The paper is on a huge roll, and it unwinds like a ribbon into the press. It has to be tough enough so that it won’t break as it is being unwound. There’s a fortune waiting for the man who can invent a tough paper which can be made out of cornstalks, or something which can be grown every year, like a crop. Think how it would save our forests! I’m told that every Sunday edition of a big New York newspaper uses up about eleven acres of spruce.”
“Gee, Sunday papers ain’t worth it!” Art exclaimed.
“They are not, that’s a fact,” Mr. Rogers agreed.
“I don’t see,” Lou put in, “why a paper mill couldn’t buy up a great tract of woodland, and then forest it scientifically, taking out the big trees every year, and planting little ones. I shouldn’t think it would cost any more than it would to haul lumber to the mills from all over creation.”
“It wouldn’t, Lou,” said Mr. Rogers, “but we in America haven’t learned yet to do things that way. Our big mills and business concerns are all too careless and selfish and wasteful. And the public is paying the penalty. Look at that——”
They had come around a bend in the road, close to the north shoulder of the mountain now, and could see how all the upper slopes had been stripped down to bare soil by the lumbermen.
“That soil will probably dry out, landslides or fires will come, and it may be a thousand years before the mountain is forested again,” Mr. Rogers exclaimed. “It’s a perfect outrage!”
The party presently came into a crossroad, running east and west. It was a bit more traveled than the one they were on. They turned down it to the left, and reached a curious settlement, or rather the remains of a settlement. There were several rough, unpainted board houses, a timber dam across a small river, and everywhere on the ground lay old sawdust, beginning to rot down, with bushes growing up through it.
“This is Wildwood. It’s all that remains of a lumber town,” said Mr. Rogers. “The mill stood by that dam. They cleared all this end of the valley many years ago, and sent their lumber on teams down the Wild Ammonoosuc valley to the railroad.”
The party now turned south again, crossed the Wild Ammonoosuc at the dam, and began ascending gradually along a road which seemed to be making for the notch on the west side of Moosilauke.
“Only two miles more to the base,” said the Scout Master.
Art looked at his watch. “It’s only eleven o’clock,” he said. “Couldn’t we have a swim in that brook down there? I’m awful hot.”
“Me, too,” said Peanut. “And my bloomin’ old boot is hurting my heel. I want to fix it.”
“That’s because you got it so wet yesterday,” said Rob. “For heaven’s sake, take your clothes off before you go in to-day!”
Everybody turned from the road to the brook, which was almost a small river. It came down from the sides of Moosilauke, and evidently joined the Wild Ammonoosuc near the dam. In a moment five boys and a man were sticking their toes into it gingerly, and withdrawing them with various “Ouches!” and “Wows!”
“Cowards!” cried Art. “Here goes. What’s cold water?”
He selected a pool between two big stones, and went all under. The rest followed suit. There was no place deep enough to swim in, however, and they all very soon came out, and dried themselves on the bank.
“My, that makes you feel better, though!” Frank exclaimed. “Nothing like a bath on a hike to set you up!”
“I got a blister,” said Peanut, who was examining his heel. “Oh, dear, who’s got the first aid kit?”
Rob had it, of course, as he was always the doctor. He put some antiseptic on the blister, which had burst, dressed it, and bound it firmly across with surgeon’s plaster, so the shoe could not rub it.
“You wouldn’t have had it if you hadn’t got your feet so wet yesterday,” he said. “The leather dried stiff. Perhaps you’ll behave now.”
“Yes, doctor, what is your fee?” Peanut grinned.
The other five pairs of feet were all right, and the march was resumed. At noon they emerged out of the woods into a small clearing on the west side of Moosilauke. There was a tiny hotel in this clearing, and nothing else. On the right, a second, but much lower mountain, Mount Clough, went sharply up. Due south was a deep gap, like a V, between Clough and Moosilauke—the notch which led to the towns south.
“Here’s where the path begins,” said the Scout Master. “We’ve done fourteen miles, at least, this morning. I guess we’ll have lunch.”
“Let’s get up into the woods first, by a spring,” the boys urged, so they entered on the path, which immediately began to go up at a steepish angle through a forest of hard wood—a very ancient forest.
“Looks as if it had never been lumbered,” said Art. “Wow! look at the size of those maples and beeches!”
“The paper men don’t want hard wood, thank goodness,” Mr. Rogers answered. “We’ll get about a mile of this.”
They soon found a spring beside the path, and under the shadows of the great trees they made a fire and cooked lunch. Then, for an hour, everybody rested, lying on his back and listening to the beautiful songs of the hermit thrushes. Peanut and Art and Frank went to sleep, while Lou and Rob and Mr. Rogers talked softly. It was a lazy, peaceful hour, up there in the great forest. At two o’clock Rob beat a tattoo on his frying-pan, to wake up the sleepers, and ordered the march to begin.
For the next two hours it was steady plodding. The Benton Path, by which they were climbing, was clear and good. They came out of the hard timber forest in a little over half an hour, into slash land, now growing up into scraggly woods, full of vines and brambles, and presently the path wound to the edge of a steep ravine, where they could look down at the tumbling waterfalls of the brook they had swum in that morning, and across the ravine to the stripped northern shoulders. The second hour of climbing was merely monotonous ascent, toilsome and slow, with no view at all. They had now put four miles below them, and the signs of lumbering ceased. They were getting close to timber line, where the stunted spruces were not worth cutting. For a little way the path grew less steep, and they quickened their pace. The trees were now no higher than bushes. They saw the summit ahead, though the house seemed to have disappeared; and the view opened out. Westward they could see to the Green Mountains, and beyond the Green Mountains, like a blue haze, the Adirondacks. At their feet they began to notice tiny mountain cranberry vines. Peanut tasted one of the half ripe cranberries, puckered up his face, and spit it hastily out. The path grew steep again. The trees vanished. The way grew rocky, with cranberries between the rocks everywhere. At last only the final heave to the summit seemed to confront them. Peanut, forgetting his lame heel, panted up ahead, and emitted a cry of disappointment.
“Gee whiz,” he shouted back, “there’s the Summit House a quarter of a mile away!”
“You’ll learn yet that you’re never on the top of a mountain till you get there,” Mr. Rogers laughed.
But this final quarter mile was nearly level—or seemed so after the steep climb—and they were soon at the Summit House, with the view spread out to all four parts of the compass.
What a view it was! But all the boys concentrated their gaze in one direction—northeast. There, thirty miles or more away, over the top of the Lafayette range, they saw Mount Washington again, for the first time since the first Sugar Hill view, saw even the Summit House on its cone. That was the final goal of their hike—the high spot—and beside it all the billowing sea of blue mountain tops between paled to insignificance.
“She looks a long way off!” said Art.
“And me with a blister,” sighed Peanut. “But it’s Pike’s Peak—I mean Washington—or bust!”
The party now turned their attention to the Summit House, which was a two-story structure of fair size, built partly of stone, with great chains going over it to lash it down.
“I suppose if it wasn’t chained down it would blow away in winter,” said Art. “Strikes me we’re going to get some blow, even to-night.”
The west did, indeed, look windy, with great clouds suddenly piling up. But the Scout Master said you could never tell much about mountain weather—at least he couldn’t. They entered the little hotel to see the inside. Several people were there already. At the back of the room was a big stove, with a fire in it, too. To the boys, who had but just arrived after their hot climb, the room seemed uncomfortably warm.
“Going to spend the night here? Don’t know whether I’ve got room for you all,” said the proprietor.
“No, we’re going to sleep out,” Rob answered him. “We never sleep inside on a hike.”
“Well, I reckon you’ll need your blankets,” the man said. “The water froze here last night, in the rain barrel.”
“What’s that?” put in Peanut, who was examining picture post-cards. “Say, I move we go back down a way to camp.”
“I do too, if you’re going to try again to warm yourself between my shoulder blades,” said Art.
Everybody laughed, and a man came forward from behind the stove—a funny looking man, with big, hobnail shoes and big, shell-rimmed spectacles.
“Which way are you going down the mountain in the morning?” he asked.
“By the Beaver Brook Trail,” Mr. Rogers answered.
“Oh, that’s all right, then,” said their new acquaintance. “You stay up here long enough to see the sunset, and then I’ll take you down the trail into the woods beyond the head of Jobildunk Ravine. You’ll keep warm in there, all right.”
“Can you find your way back, sir?” asked Lou.
The man’s eyes twinkled. “If I can’t, I deserve to be lost,” he answered. “I’ve lived a month on top of this mountain every summer for more years than I care to confess.”
“Gee, it must be slow up here all that time!” said Peanut.
“What do you mean, slow, young man?” the other asked.
Peanut fumbled a moment for words. “Why, nothing doing—no excitement,” he finally replied.
“Ah, youth, youth! Happy, happy youth!” the stranger exclaimed. “You love excitement, eh? Well, you’ll get some going down the Beaver Brook Trail to-morrow. By George, I’ve a great mind to give you some now! How far have you walked to-day?”
“Nineteen miles,” said Peanut, shifting uneasily on his sore heel, and beginning to repent what he had said. Somehow, as Art whispered to Frank, the man looked as if he could “deliver the goods.”
“No, that’s far enough,” the stranger replied, after a long pause, as if for reflection. “I won’t dare a man who’s hiked nineteen miles—or a boy either.”
“Oh, if it’s a dare——” Peanut began.
“No, sir, won’t do it; you can’t bluff me into it!” the man laughed. “But if you think there’s no excitement on Moosilauke, you stay here a few days, and let me take you botanizing a bit, say into Jobildunk.”
“What’s that name again, sir?” asked Rob.
“Jobildunk,” the man answered. “It is a big ravine discovered by three men, named Joe, Bill and Duncan. So they made a portmanteau word, and named it Jo-bil-dunc after all three. The ‘k’ got put on later, I suppose. Come on out of this hot room, you chaps, and see my playground.”
“I like him,” whispered Rob as they followed him through the door.
He was a small man, but they soon found he was tremendously active. In front of the hotel was a road. The summit of Moosilauke is about a mile long, nearly level, but highest on the north end, where the hotel is. This road ran all the way along the summit, to the southern end, where it vanished around the little south peak. It was a crushed stone road, all right, for there was nothing but stones to make it of. It was just a white ribbon, winding amid the gray boulders and mountain cranberry plants. The man led the way rapidly down it, and the tired boys had all they could do to keep up. Half a mile from the Summit House he stopped, leaped on a boulder beside the road, and pointed back.
“Here’s my favorite view,” he said. “The little gray Summit House away up there at the end of the white road, against the sky, the white road running the other way down toward the valley world, and all off there to the west, just space and sunset!”
It was pretty fine. The sun was now descending into the western cloud bank, and turning the clouds to rose and gold. It looked hundreds of miles away.
“Do those clouds mean rain?” asked Art.
“Nary a drop,” said the man. “Hello!—here’s anArgynnis atlantis!”
He made a mad dive with his hat, put it quickly over a low plant, and drew from under a beautiful butterfly, all gold and silver, with a black border around the wings.
“The small mountain fritillary,” he said. “Often comes up here, but shouldn’t be here with the wind so strong. What I’m looking for really is anOeneis semidea, an arctic butterfly which they say is found only on Mount Washington. He’s gray, like the rocks. Looks like a two inch piece of lichen. Haven’t found one yet, though. You watch this fritillary follow the road down the mountain, now.”
He let the butterfly go, and sure enough, it started down the road, flying not more than three feet above the ground, and as long as the boys could watch it, it was keeping to every turn and twist.
“He knows the way down!” laughed the man. “And he knows he has no business up here when it’s so cold, with night coming on. He’ll get down, though, at that rate.
“And now, boys,” continued this odd man, “you be as wise as the butterfly! Back to the hotel, shoulder packs, and to your camp!”
He led the way again up the road. He walked so fast that the five boys and Mr. Rogers were all panting. But he himself was not out of breath in the least. He laughed at Peanut.
“Anyhow, I get my wind good in a month up here,” he said, “even if it is ‘slow’ and I’m old enough to be your grandfather!”
“You’ve not walked nineteen miles to-day,” said Peanut.
“No, but I’ve walked sixteen,” the man replied. “I’ve been down nearly to North Woodstock and back, by the Beaver Brook Trail. You’ll know what I mean when you see that trail.”
Peanut was silent.
At the Summit House the boys bought some post-cards showing the view from the top, Frank took a picture of the sunset, to label “Moonlight from Moosilauke,” and they all picked up their packs and followed their new leader. He took them back over the path they had come up for a few hundred feet, and suddenly plunged sharp to the east. They began at once to go down. Soon the path skirted the edge of a great gorge, which was like a gigantic piece of pie cut out of the mountainside, with the point toward them. The sides were almost precipitous, and covered with dense spruce.
“That’s Jobildunk Ravine. Want to go down it with me, my young friend?” the man asked Peanut.
“Thanks—not till after supper,” Peanut grinned.
As they were on the east side of the summit, it quickly grew dark. The man led the way unerringly, however, along a level stretch of path beside the ravine, and presently plunged into the woods. They were now below timber line. In a few moments he halted.
“Got a lantern?” he said.
Lou lighted the camp lantern, and the man showed them a spring, close to the path. “Plenty of dead wood on the trees—lower branches of those spruce,” he added. “Good-night, all!”
“Oh, stay and have supper with us!” cried all the Scouts together.
“Well, since you urge, I will,” said he. “Don’t make me cook, though. I’m a bad cook.”
“You sit down, and be company,” Peanut laughed.
The boys rather showed off in getting supper ready. Art made the fire pit and the fire, Peanut and Frank gathered wood, Rob brought water and fixed up the props and cross-bar to swing the kettle from, and then cleared out a space for sleeping, cutting spruce boughs for the bed. Lou, meanwhile, got out enough food for the meal, and began to mix the flapjack dough. Mr. Rogers, like the stranger, was not allowed to do any work.
“Well, you’ve got five of the Gold Dust twins here, for sure!” the man laughed.
“They’re Boy Scouts, and used to making camp,” Mr. Rogers answered.
“They surely are used to it,” the man said. “I tell you, it’s a great movement that trains boys for the open like that!”
The Scouts, hearing this, redoubled their efforts, and bacon was sizzling, coffee boiling, flapjacks turning, in a very few moments more.
Supper was a merry meal. The fire was restocked with fresh wood after the cooking had been done, and blazed up, throwing reflections into the trees overhead and quite paling the light of Lou’s lantern, which swung from a branch. Their new friend joked and laughed, and enjoyed every mouthful. When supper was over, he pulled several cakes of sweet chocolate out of his pocket, and divided them for dessert. “Always carry it,” he said. “Raisins and sweet chocolate—that makes a meal for me any time. Don’t have to cook it, either.”
He sat with his back against a tree after the meal, and told stories of the mountain. “I used to tramp over all these hills every vacation,” he said, “and many a good time I’ve had, and many a hard time, too, on Washington, especially. I was caught in a snow-storm one June on the Crawford Bridle Path and nearly froze before I got to the Mt. Pleasant Path down. The wind was blowing a hundred miles an hour, at least, and went right through me. I couldn’t see twenty feet ahead, either. Luckily, I had a compass, and by keeping the top of the ridge, I found the path without having to take a chance on descending through the woods. But nowadays, I’m getting old, and this fellow Moosilauke is more to my liking. A big, roomy, comfortable mountain, Moosilauke, with a bed waiting for you at the top, and plenty to see. Why, he’s just like a brother to me! I keep a picture of him in my room in New York to look at winters, just as you” (he turned to Rob) “keep a picture of your best girl on your bureau.”
Rob turned red, while the rest laughed at him. To turn the subject, Rob said hastily:
“Why is the mountain called Moosilauke?”
“It used to be spelled Moose-hillock on all the maps when I was a boy,” the man replied. “People thought it meant just that—a hill where the Indians used to shoot moose. But finally somebody with some sense came along and reasoned that the Indians would hardly name a mountain with English words, when they had known it for generations before they ever heard any English. He began to investigate, and discovered, I’m told, that the Pemigewassett Indians—the tribe which lived in the valley just to the south—really called it Moosilauke, which means, as far as I can make out, ‘The great bald (or bare) mountain,’ because the top has no trees on it. The Indians never climbed it. They never climbed mountains at all, because they believed that the Great Spirit dwelt on the tops. I fancy they held Moosilauke in particular veneration—and right they were; it’s the finest old hill of ’em all!”
“You like the mountains, don’t you, sir?” said Lou.
“You bet,” the other answered. “They are about the biggest and solidest things we have, and the only folks who get to the top of ’em are folks with good legs, like you boys. I like people with good legs, but I don’t like lazy people. So on the mountains I’m sure of good company. It’s the only place I am sure of it—except, of course, in my own room, with the door locked!”
Peanut led the laugh at this.
Before their new friend rose to go, he told them something of the trail down the mountain. “It’s an Appalachian Club trail,” he said, “but it’s not so well kept up as those on the Presidentials, and it’s almighty steep in places. You’ll find it good fun. When you get to the bottom, turn to the left and have a look at Beaver Meadow. It’s an acre or more across, and was really cleared by beavers. You can still see the ruins of their old dam. Then go through Lost River, and you’ve seen the best of that region. Good-night, boys, and good hiking!”
“Will you be all right in the dark, around the head of the ravine?” asked Mr. Rogers.
“The soles of my feet are as good a guide as my eyes on this path,” the man laughed.
But Peanut jumped up, took the lantern, and insisted on escorting him along the path till it had passed the head of the ravine. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, when Peanut reappeared, he found the rest ready for bed. Rob gave Peanut’s sore heel a fresh dressing, and then everybody turned in, lying close together for warmth. As they were dozing off, Peanut suddenly exclaimed, “Hang it!” in a loud tone.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Art crossly. “Go to sleep!”
“I forgot to carve on my stick how far we’ve walked to-day,” said Peanut.
“Well, you can do it to-morrow, can’t you? Shut up now!”
“Oh, very well,” said Peanut, relapsing into silence, and then into sleep—the sleep of the utterly weary.