CHAPTER IX
The Crawford Notch
The road kept on going down, too, through the woods. The driver told them that this was Three Mile Hill, and nobody disputed him. It was certainly three miles. All the cars they met coming up were on the lowest speed, and chugging hard. At the bottom, they came into the little village of Franconia, and behind them they could see the mountains they had been climbing, piled up against the sky.
“How about grub?” Art suddenly exclaimed. “We’ve got to stock up before we start to-morrow. In fact, we haven’t enough for supper to-night—and it’s Sunday.”
Nobody had thought of that, but Mr. Goodwin’s chauffeur was equal to the emergency. He drove to the storekeeper’s house, who opened the store, and sold them what they needed.
“Suppose I’m breaking the law,” he said, “butIshouldn’t want to see you fellers go hungry!”
Then they got in the car again, turned eastward, climbed a hill past the Forest Hill Hotel, and spun along the Gale River road toward Bethlehem, a pretty road through the woods, beside the rushing Gale River. After a few miles, the road climbed a long hill, away from the river, and suddenly, at the top of the hill, they looked out across the valley to the whole panorama of the White Mountains. To the right, a little behind them, rose Cannon and Lafayette. Directly south was the sharp cone of Garfield, then the two tall Twins, then, still far to the east, but nearer than they had yet seen them, the blue Presidentials, with Washington clear of cloud, and the Summit House showing.
“Some sight!” exclaimed Peanut.
They now came speedily into Bethlehem, a town high upon a hill, with many hotels and many stores and summer houses, along a single street, a street a mile long, with golf links at one side of the road, and many people in gay summer clothes walking up and down. The chauffeur drove the length of the street and back (stopping, at Peanut’s demand, to get sodas at a drug store) and then turned the car eastward once more, toward Mount Washington.
The going was good, and the driver “let in the juice,” as Peanut expressed it. They rushed along at thirty miles an hour, with Mount Washington getting closer every moment.
The Scouts took off their hats, and the warm wind blew through their hair.
“Pretty fast walking we’re doing to-day!” cried Peanut.
In less than an hour, in fact, they had swung with the bend of the rushing Ammonoosuc River into a considerable level plain, and found themselves in the midst of a settlement. There were two or three railroad tracks, cottages, a small hotel, then a big hotel—the Fabyan House, and a junction railroad station, and then, still closer to the great wall of the Presidential range, which now loomed up directly in front of them, the Mount Pleasant House, and half a mile to the left, across a beautiful green golf course, the huge bulk of the Mount Washington Hotel.
“Golly, that hotel is as big as Mount Washington itself,” said Art.
The chauffeur laughed. “Yes, and the prices are as high,” he said.
They now passed along the road, between the two hotels, headed south, and then began to go up-hill, leaving the Presidential range more and more on their left. Soon they lost sight of Washington, with the curving line of the railroad up its flank. After two miles, they lost sight of all the range. On their left was only a high, wooded slope. On their right was the same. In front of them a white hotel and railroad station suddenly appeared, and in front of that was only a narrow defile between the two hills, just big enough to let the road and railway through.
“The Crawford House!” said Mr. Rogers. “And ahead is the gateway to the Crawford Notch. All out!”
They got out of the motor beside the hotel, and thanked the chauffeur for their trip. They had come twenty-seven miles farther on their way since two o’clock, and it was not yet four!
“Now,” said Mr. Rogers, when the car had turned back home, “the Crawford Bridle Path starts right here in these woods across from the hotel. That’s it, there. I move we tote our stuff up it far enough to make camp, and then take a walk down into the Notch.”
“Second the motion,” said Frank.
Picking up their burdens, the boys walked a quarter of a mile eastward, by a beaten path that ascended at a comfortable angle, not far from a brook. Presently they found a pool in the brook, hid their stuff in the bushes fifty feet from the path, and hurried back to the Crawford House.
Just below the hotel and the railroad station was a small pond.
“That pond,” the Scout Master said, “is the head waters of the Saco River. We are on a divide. Behind the hotel, the springs flow north into the Ammonoosuc, and thence into the Connecticut. They empty, finally, you see, into Long Island Sound. The water of this lake empties into the Atlantic north of Portland, Maine. Yet they start within two hundred yards of each other.”
Just south of the little pond, the boys noticed a bare, rocky cliff, perhaps a hundred feet high, rising sharp from the left side of the road. The top was rounded off.
“Look!” said Lou. “That cliff is just like an elephant’s head, with his trunk coming down to the road!”
Mr. Rogers laughed. “They call it the Elephant’s Head,” he said. “You’re not the first to discover the resemblance.”
When they had passed the Elephant’s Head, they saw that the gate of the Notch was, in reality, not wide enough to admit both the carriage road and the railroad. The railroad, on their right, entered through a gap blasted in the solid rock. A few steps more, and they were in the gate themselves, and the wonderful panorama burst upon them.
They saw that the railroad kept along the west bank of the Notch, high above the bottom, but the carriage road plunged directly down, beside the Saco River (at this point but a tiny brook). On the west side of the Notch Mount Willard rose beside them, and south of that Mount Willey shot up almost precipitously, the latter being over four thousand feet high. On the east side was the huge rampart of Mount Webster, also four thousand feet high, and nearly as steep, with the long white scars of landslides down its face.
“Well!” said Peanut, “the Franconia Notch was some place, but this one has got it skun a mile. Gee! Looks as if the mountains were going to tumble over on top of you!”
“They did once, on top of the Willey family,” said Mr. Rogers. “Come on, we’ll walk down till we can see how it happened.”
The road plunged rapidly down-hill, into the forest at the bottom of the Notch. They met one or two motors chugging up, and having a hard time of it. In one case, everybody but the driver was walking, to lighten the load.
“I came down this hill on a bicycle once—only once,” said the Scout Master. “It was back in 1896, when everybody was riding bicycles. I was trying to coast through the Notch. Somewhere on this hill I ran into a big loose stone, head on, and the bicycle stopped. I didn’t, though. The man with me couldn’t stop his wheel for nearly a quarter of a mile. Finally he came back and picked me up, and took me back to the Crawford House, where they bandaged up my head and knee. Somebody brought the wheel back on a cart.”
“Say, it would make some coast on a bob-sled, though!” cried Peanut. “Wouldn’t be any rocks to dodge then.”
“And there’d only be about ten feet of snow in here to break out, I reckon,” Art answered.
“Nearer thirty,” said Mr. Rogers.
Over two miles below the Crawford House they came to the site of the old Willey House, and saw through the trees to the west the towering wall of Mount Willey, scarred still by the great landslide, seeming to hang over them.
“There’s where she started,” said Mr. Rogers, pointing to the top of the mountain. “It was back in late August, in 1826, that the slide came. There had been a drought, making the thin soil on the mountain very dry. Then came a terrific storm, a regular cloudburst, and the water went through the soil and began running down on the rocks underneath. That started the soil and the trees on it sliding, and they gathered headway and more soil and debris and rocks as they came, the way a snowball gathers more snow, and presently a whole strip of the wall was thundering down.
“There had been a smaller slide in June, which had terrified the family, and Willey had built a sort of slide-proof shelter down the road, in case another came. It wasn’t so far away that the family didn’t have time to get to it, if they started when they heard the slide first coming, and nobody has ever been able to explain why none of them got there. James Willey, a brother of the dead man, however, always said that his brother’s spirit came to him in a dream, and told him that the terrible rain, which had caused a rise of twenty-four feet in the Saco, made them fearful of being drowned, and when the water reached their door-sill, they fled not to the shelter hut, but higher up the slope. Then, when the slide came, they were too far away from the hut to escape. They had evidently been reading the Bible just before they fled, for it was found open in the house.”
“In the house?” cried Peanut. “Didn’t the house get swept away?”
“No, that’s the oddest and saddest part of the story. The slide split on a great boulder or ledge behind the house, and if they’d stayed in it, not a soul would have perished. As it was, Mr. and Mrs. Willey, five children, and two hired men were all killed. Three bodies were never found. Only the dog escaped. He appeared at a house far down the road, the next day, moaning and howling. He was seen running back and forth for a few hours, and then he disappeared and was never seen again. It was two or three days before the floods went down enough to allow rescue parties to get up the Notch, however.”
“Let’s go see the rock that split the slide,” said Lou.
Mr. Rogers led the way behind the site of the old house, and showed them the top of the rock, above the ground.
“This boulder was thirty feet high in 1826,” he said. “The landslide, as you see, nearly buried it; but it split the stream, and the debris all rushed in two currents on either side of the house, uniting again in the meadow in front. The house stood for many years after that. I think it was destroyed finally by fire.”
“But what gets me is, why should anybody want to live in such a lonesome spot, anyhow?” said Peanut. “Gee, it’s getting dark down here already.”
“Well, there was no railroad in those days,” Mr. Rogers answered, “and the road through the Notch was the main artery of travel to the northern side of the mountains. I suppose the Willey House made a good stopping place for the night. Let’s go up to the railroad now, and get a look at the engineering job, which was a big thing in its day—and is still, for that matter.”
They climbed some distance through birch trees up the steep western wall of the Notch before reaching the railroad. Once upon it, they saw the great gap in the hills to far better advantage, however, than from the road below. Willey shot up directly over their heads, as steep a long climb, probably, as there is anywhere east of the Rocky Mountains. The Scouts came very near deciding to give up a day from Washington, and tackle it. Directly across the Notch they could see the whole long, beetling brow of Webster.
“It kind of looks like the pictures of Daniel,” said Peanut. “Stern and frowning.”
“And the slides are the furrows in his forehead,” laughed Rob.
But it was looking north that the view was most impressive. The railroad hung dizzily on the side wall, with the rocks apparently tumbling upon it from the left, and it about to tumble down the rocks to the right. It curved eastward a mile or two ahead, and at the bend, facing down the Notch, was the precipitous southern wall of Mount Willard, almost a sheer rock cliff a thousand feet high. As the party walked up the track, the cliff grew nearer and nearer, and as the daylight faded in this deep ravine, it seemed more and more not to be straight up, but to be hanging forward, as if ready to fall on top of them.
“I’d hate to be in here during a thunder-storm,” said Lou. “It’s—it’s kind of terrible!”
They came through the gate of the Notch at six o’clock, and there was the Crawford House in daylight, and above it, on the slope of Clinton, were the rays of the sun!
“Good little old sun,” said Peanut. “Wow! I’d hate to live where it set every day at four o’clock.”
They now hurried up the Bridle Path to their camp, and Peanut tied the flag to a tree, in honor of the first camp on the Washington trail, while the others began preparations for supper or cut boughs for the night.
When the supper dishes were cleared away, they heard a faint sound of music coming up to them from below. Peanut pricked up his ears.
“Concert at the Crawford House!” he said. “Let’s go down and hear it.”
“It sounds pretty nice right here,” said Mr. Rogers.
“Aw, come on!” Peanut urged. “We can get post-cards there, too, I guess. Art wants to send one to his Pinkie.”
“Shut up!” said Art. “What you really mean is that you want to get some candy.”
“No, I don’t. I got some left from this afternoon.”
“You have!” said Frank. “You old tightwad! Why don’t you pass it around?”
“’Cause I sat on it by mistake,” Peanut answered. “Come on down to the hotel.”
“Maybe we’d better,” Rob put in. “We can all send a card home to our folks.”
“Not forgetting Pinkie,” said Peanut to Art, as he ducked down the path, stumbling in the dark.
Lou took the lantern, and tied his handkerchief to a bough over the entrance to the camp. The rest waited till this was done, and followed behind him. They didn’t catch Peanut till the very bottom.
“That was easy,” he said. “I’m like the old geezer on Moosilauke—got a sixth sense in the soles of my feet. Besides, if you get off the path, you bump into a tree, which knocks you back in.”
The brightly lighted windows of the Crawford House were open, and the sound of the orchestra was floating out. Many people were walking up and down on the veranda. They were all dressed elaborately, many of the men in evening clothes. The little party of five boys and a man, in flannel shirts and khaki, attracted much attention as they entered the lobby of the hotel.
“Gee,” Art whispered, “think of coming to the mountains for a vacation, and having to doll all up in your best rags! That’s not my idea of fun.”
“It’s my idea of the ultimate zero in sport,” laughed Rob.
Peanut had at once found the post-card stand, and was offering Art a “pretty picture for Pinkie” as the latter came up.
“All right!” Art laughed. “I’ll send it!”
But he wouldn’t let anybody else see what he wrote.
The others all sent cards home, and, not to be outdone by Art, they sent cards also to the girls they had met in Lost River. Peanut found a picture of the top of Mount Washington to send to Alice, and he carefully drew a picture of himself upon the topmost rock, like this:
On the other side he wrote, “The persevering Peanut on the Peak.”
“Guess that’s some alliteration!” he said. “Mr. Rogers, what painter’s name began with P?”
“Perugino,” said the Scout Master.
“Do you mind spelling it—slowly?”
Mr. Rogers spelled it, and Peanut added on the card—“Painted by Perugino.”
“Guess that’ll hold her royal highness for a while!” he laughed.
Then he bought a stamp, and triumphantly dropped the post-card in the letter box.
The boys sat on the veranda for a while, listening to the music, until Rob and Mr. Rogers noticed that Art’s eyes were closed, and Peanut’s head bobbed down upon his chest every few minutes, and Frank and Lou were yawning.
“Bunk!” said Rob.
Lou relit the lantern, and they climbed back up the path to camp.
“We are on the way up Washington at last,” said the Scout Master as they were rolling up in their blankets. “At this time to-morrow, we’ll be asleep on the highest point east of the Rockies, and north of Virginia.”
“Hooray,” said Peanut. “Let Per—Per—Perugino know, please.”