CHAPTER XI
To the Summit, Safe at Last
They dashed to it, and opened the door. The hut was a tiny affair, with a lean-to roof. It faced to the south, with a door so narrow a stout person could barely squeeze in, and one tiny window. It would hold about six people without undue crowding—and here were eight!
“Peanut’s only half a one,” said Art, cracking the first joke since the storm began.
Into the hut, however, all eight of them crowded. Inside, they found two or three blankets hung on a string, and nothing else except a sign forbidding its use in any save cases of emergency.
“I guess this is emergency, all right,” said Rob, as he helped to wrap the girl in a pair of dry blankets, and put the third blanket about her companion. The boys all wrapped up in their own. Rob then got out his first aid kit, and gave the girl some aromatic spirits of ammonia, which revived her so that her hysterical sobbing stopped.
“Here, take my pack,” said Lou, “and use it for a pillow.”
The young man, who was nearly as pale as the girl, and almost as exhausted, took the pack and placed it in a corner. Then they laid the girl on the floor, with her head upon it. Her fiancé bent over her. In cases like this you don’t think of other people being around. He kissed her, and all the boys turned their faces away, and Peanut rubbed the back of his hand suspiciously across his eyes.
“Guess he’s glad we’ve got her safe in here,” Peanut whispered—or rather he spoke in what was merely a loud tone, which amounted to a whisper with the gale howling so outside.
“I guess we’re all glad we’re in here,” Frank replied. “Look out there!”
They looked through the window into what at first appeared to be the thick cotton batting of the cloud, but closer inspection showed them that it was snow. The cloud was condensing into snow!
“Whew!” Peanut whistled, while the tiny cabin gave a shiver as if it were going to be lifted from its foundations.
“Lord, what a gale!” said somebody else.
There was silence in the hut. Everybody was listening to the wind. It was howling outside, seeming to sing over the loose stones of the mountain top, and wail through the chinks of the tiny cabin. It blew incessantly, but every few seconds a stronger gust would come, and as if a giant hand had suddenly hit it, the cabin would shiver to its foundations. And outside was only a great white opacity of snow and cloud!
“Well, well!” cried Mr. Rogers, suddenly, in a cheerful voice, “here we are safe and snug—almost too snug. It’s lunch time. It’s past lunch time. Why shouldn’t we eat? We’ll all feel better if we eat.”
“How are we going to cook anything?” asked Art. “There’s no stove, and no chimney.”
“And no wood,” said Rob.
“There’s a little bit of wood outside the door. I saw it when we came in,” said Frank.
“And a lot of good it would do,” Art answered. “You couldn’t even light it out there in that tornado.”
“We’ve got some cold things,” said the Scout Master. “Come on, out with that can of potted ham, and the crackers we bought in Franconia to eat bacon on, and some sweet chocolate. We’ll do very nicely.”
The Scouts soon had sandwiches made with the crackers and ham, and offered them first to the couple, who, wrapped in blankets, were shivering in the corner. The girl sat up, and she and the man each ate two sandwiches hungrily, and sweet chocolate beside. The girl’s color began to come back.
“Do you feel better now, dear?” the man asked her.
She nodded her head.
“Of course she does,” said Mr. Rogers. “I’ll tell you something now that we are safe in the shelter. There was no time nor chance to tell you out there. I was too busy keeping the trail. It’s this:—about half the trouble on mountains like this comes from funk, just as half the drownings occur from the same cause. Not only do you lose your way much more easily when you get terrified, but your vitality is lowered, and the cold and exhaustion get you quicker. If you keep cool, and your heart is beating steadily, normally, your eye finds the trail better and your body resists the elements. That is why nobody ought to tackle this Bridle Path who isn’t familiar with the mountain, unless he is accompanied by some one whoisfamiliar with it. And, unless the weather is good, nobody should tackle it without a food supply. In fact, I’d go so far as to say they never should, for you can’t depend on the weather here for half a day at a time, or even an hour.”
“I realize that now,” the man said, soberly, as he shivered in his blanket. “They told us down at the Crawford House that it was going to be a gale up here to-day, but I’m afraid we didn’t realize what a gale on Washington meant. I don’t know what would have become of us if we hadn’t met you!”
“Oh, John, don’t!” cried the girl, as if she was going to weep again.
“Well, I call it some adventure!” Peanut cried. “Gee, I’ll bet we’ll all talk about it when we get home! Mr. Rogers had me scared, all right, way back on Clinton, talking about storms and——” (here Peanut, who was about to say “people killed in ’em,” caught Rob’s eye in warning, and added instead) “—— and things. When the clouds hit us, my heart came up into my mouth, and then went down into my boots like a busted elevator, and I got kind of cold all over. I can see how, if I’d been alone, that would have knocked the legs out from under me, all right. But there was Mr. Rogers keeping the trail, so I just plugged along—and here we are! Say, I’m going out in the snow! Snow in July! Hooray! Come on, Art!”
Peanut and Art opened the narrow slit of a door wrapping their blankets close about them while Mr. Rogers shouted to them not to go out of sight of the cabin, and stood outside in the icy cloud. Rob, watching them through the window, saw them scooping the thin layer of snow off a rock, and moulding it into a snowball apiece, which they threw at each other. He could see their mouths opening, as if they were shouting, but the howling of the gale drowned all sound. A few minutes later they came in again, their faces and hands red.
“Say, it’s cold out there!” cried Art, “but the wind is going down a bit, I think, and it looks lighter in the north.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if it cleared up in an hour,” said Mr. Rogers, “and it wouldn’t surprise me if we had to stay here all night.”
“All night!” cried the girl. “Oh, John, we’vegotto get down to-night. Oh, where will mother think we are! They’ll know we were in the storm, too, and worry. Oh, dear!”
She began to sob again, and the man endeavored to comfort her.
“Come, come!” said Mr. Rogers, rather sternly, “you’ve got to make the best of a bad bargain. If we can get to the Summit House later in the day, you can telephone down to the base. Where are your family?”
“They were at Fabyans,” the man answered. “We were all going to Bethlehem this afternoon, after the train got down the mountain. You see, Miss Brown and I wanted to walk up the Crawford Bridle Path, and catch the train down. We started very early. A friend of ours walked it last summer in three hours and a half.”
“Some walking!” said Peanut.
“Well, it’s been done in two hours and thirty minutes,” the Scout Master replied. “But it was done in that time by two men, college athletes, in running drawers, and they were trained for mountain climbing, into the bargain. And they had clear weather to the top. Whoever told you that you could make it ought to have a licking. Of course your family will worry, but you—and they—will have to stand it, as the price of your foolhardiness. We are not going out of this hut while the storm lasts, that’s sure!”
Something in Mr. Rogers’ stern tone seemed to brace the girl suddenly up. She stopped sobbing, and said, “Very well, I suppose there’s nothing to do but wait.”
Then she rose to her feet, and stamped around a bit on her lame ankle, to keep it from getting stiffened up too much, and to warm her blood, besides.
“I’d like to know what the thermometer is,” said Frank. “Must be below freezing, that’s sure.”
Rob was looking out of the window. “I’m not so sure,” he answered. “It has stopped snowing now. Say! I believe it’s getting lighter!”
He opened the door and slipped out of the hut into the cloud. A moment later he came back.
“The north is surely breaking!” he cried. “This cloud bank hasn’t got far over the range. The north wind has fought it back. While I was watching, the wind seemed to tear a kind of hole in the cloud, and I saw a bit of the valley for a second. Come on out and watch!”
All the Scouts went outside, leaving the couple alone within. As soon as they got free of the lee side of the shelter, the gale hit them full force, the cloud condensing on their blankets, which they had hard work to keep wrapped about them. But the sight well repaid the effort. The wind was playing a mad game with the vapors on the whole north side of the range. The great cloud mass below them was thinner than it had been. They could see for several hundred feet along the bare or snow-and-ice capped rocks, which looked wild and desolate beyond description. Farther away, where the rocks were swallowed up in the mists, was a seething caldron of clouds, driven in wreaths and spirals by the wind. Suddenly a lane would open between them, and the rocks would be exposed far down the mountain. As suddenly the lane would close up again. Then it would once more open, perhaps so wide and far that a glimpse of green valley far below would come for a second into view. Once the top of Mount Dartmouth was visible for a full minute. Still later, looking northeast, the great northern shoulder of Mount Clay appeared.
“The clouds are not far down on the north side of the range, that’s a fact,” said Mr. Rogers. “With this north wind still blowing we may get it clear enough to tackle the peak yet. But we don’t want to stand out here in the cold too long.”
Everybody went back to the shelter and waited another half hour, which seemed more like two hours, as Peanut said. Then somebody went out again to reconnoitre, and returned with the information that the cloud was lifting still more, and the northern valley was visible. In another half hour even from within the cabin they could see it was very perceptibly lighter. The hurricane had subsided to a steady gale, which Rob estimated at forty miles an hour, by tossing a bit of paper into the air and watching the speed of its flight. It was warmer, too, though still very chilling in the fireless cabin. In another half hour you could walk some distance from the cabin without losing sight of it, and Peanut and Art went down to the spring behind for water. Then Mr. Rogers took the Scouts back on the trail a short distance and showed them a peep of the two Lakes of the Clouds back on the col toward Monroe.
“We were going to have lunch by those lakes,” he said. “I wanted to show you several interesting things about them. But they’ll have to wait. It’s a regular Alpine garden down there, and it’s coming into flower now. If we get a good day to-morrow, we can take it in, though.”
“Look,” cried Lou, suddenly, “there’s Monroe coming out of the cloud!”
“And there’s Franklin behind it!” cried Frank.
“And there’s a misty bright spot where the sun is!” cried Peanut.
They hastened back toward the shelter to carry the news to the couple within, and even as they walked the clouds seemed to be rolled up by the wind from the northern slopes, and blown off toward the south. Before long, the whole Crawford Trail behind them was practically free from cloud, and the sun, very faint and hazy, was making a soft dazzle on the powder of frost upon the rocks, for the snow was little more than a heavy frost. To the north, they could again see the valley, and the Dartmouth range beyond it, and peaks still farther away, with the sunlight on them.
But the entire summit cone of Washington was still invisible. Standing in front of the shelter, they looked along a plateau of granite and saw it end in a solid mass of cloud.
“Oh, does that mean we can’t go on?” cried the girl.
Mr. Rogers looked at her. “How do you feel?” he said.
“Lame and cold,” she answered, “but I can do it!”
“Well, I feel pretty sure that this storm is over for the day,” the Scout Master replied. “But those clouds will probably take all night to blow off Washington. I can keep the path, I feel pretty sure. It is plain after you reach the actual cone. And, anyhow, we’ve got time enough to circle the cone till we reach the railroad trestle, if worst comes to worst. I guess you’d be better off at the top. Shoulder packs, boys!”
He looked at his watch. It was half-past three. “Now, less than two miles! Keep moving briskly. There’s nothing to fear now. This storm is over, I’m sure. A fire waits on top!”
They started out at a good pace over the plateau of Bigelow Lawn, Lou looking eagerly at the numerous wild flowers in the rock crannies. The snow was already melting, but it only made the trail the more slippery, and this, coupled with the high wind, made walking difficult. The girl and her companion had no poles, so Rob and Art lent them theirs, and Rob walked beside the girl to help her over bad places.
A third of a mile above the refuge they came upon the Boott Spur Trail, leading off to the right, down the long ridge of the spur, southward.
“Tuckerman’s Ravine is in there, to the east of Boott Spur,” said the Scout Master. “It seems to be filled with clouds now.”
The clouds, however, were off the spur, and though now, as the summit path swung rather sharply toward the north and began to go up steeply, they were entering into the vapor about the cone of Washington, it was much less dense than during the morning, and they could see the path ahead without much difficulty. This path was something like a trench in the rocks, apparently made by picking up loose stones and piling them on either side till the bottom was smooth enough to walk on—or, rather, not too rough to walk on.
“This path’s a cinch now,” said Peanut, going into the lead.
Every one, however, as the trail grew steeper and steeper, began to pant, and pause often for breath.
“What’s the matter with my wind?” asked Art. “Is it the fog in my lungs?”
“It’s the altitude,” Mr. Rogers laughed. “It oughtn’t to bother you boys much, though. You are young. I’m the one who should be short breathed. The older you get, the less ready your heart is to respond to high altitudes.”
“I don’t mind it,” sang back Peanut. “Art feels it because he’s so fat!”
They toiled on a few moments more in silence, and then Lou suddenly exclaimed, “Look! a junco!”
Sure enough, out from under a rock was hopping a junco. Art went toward it, and looking under the rock found the nest.
“Well!” he said. “What do you think of that! A junco nesting on the ground!”
“Where else would he nest here?” Lou laughed. “But juncos are winter birds, I thought.”
“Well, ain’t this winter weather enough for you to-day?” said Art.
“The top of Washington is said to be about the climate of Labrador,” Mr. Rogers put in. “That’s why some juncos always spend the summer here instead of going farther north.”
Lou was watching the pretty gray and white bird, as it hopped excitedly over the rocks, almost invisible sometimes against the bare gray granite, and in the whitish mist. “That junco is protectively colored on these rocks, all right,” he said. “But gee, he looks kind of lonely way up here!”
“Lonely!” exclaimed Frank. “I must say, this whole place is the most desolate looking thing I ever saw—nothing but big hunks of granite piled every which way, and no sun and no sky and no earth below you. I feel kind of as if we were the only people in the whole world.”
“So do I,” said Peanut. “I like it, though! Way up in the clouds above everybody—not a sound but the win——”
Just at that moment, seemingly from the gray cloud over their heads, rang out the call of a bugle!
Everybody stopped short, and exclaimed, “What’s that?”
“We aren’t up to the top yet,” said Mr. Rogers. “Somebody must be coming down.”
“Hello, yourself!” yelled Peanut, at the top of his lungs.
There was a sharp toot on the bugle, and as the Scouts moved forward up the trail, they presently saw dim figures above them, moving down. A moment later and the parties met. The newcomers were five men, with packs and poles. One of them had a bugle slung from his shoulder.
“Is Miss Alice Brown in your party?” they called as soon as they came in sight.
“Here I am,” the girl said. “What is it?”
She had gone white again, and hung on Rob’s arm.
“We’re looking for you, that’s all,” said the five men, as the parties met. “Is your companion here?”
“I’m here—we’re both here, thanks to these boys and their leader,” the man replied. “How did you know we were coming up?”
“How did we know?” said the man with the bugle. “Miss Brown’s parents have been spending $7,333,641.45 telephoning to the summit to find out if you had arrived. As soon as we got word that the lower ridges had cleared, we started down to look for you.”
“Oh, poor mamma!” cried the girl.
“Well, she’ll be waiting for you with her ear glued to the other end of the wire when you get up—never fear,” the bugler said. Then he turned to Mr. Rogers. “Where did you ride her out? The shelter?” he asked.
“Yes,” the Scout Master replied. “That shelter certainly justified itself to-day.”
“Good!” said the other. “Score one more for the Appalachian Club. It was the worst July storm I ever saw on the mountain. A hundred miles an hour on top, and the thermometer down to twenty-two.”
He moved on up the trail beside Mr. Rogers and one or two of the Scouts.
“Greenhorns, of course?” he queried, in a low tone, nodding back toward the man and girl. “Tried it without any food, or enough clothes, or even a compass, I’ll bet?”
“Exactly,” the Scout Master answered. “They were following us—expected to make the top in time to catch the train down. Thought it was a pleasant morning stroll, I suppose. They caught us under Monroe, when the weather was first thickening up nasty. The girl had wrenched her ankle, and it seemed wiser to make the shelter than to try to get back to the Mount Pleasant trail, and then way down Pleasant to Bretton Woods, in the teeth of the gale.”
“Quite right,” said the other. “Did you have any trouble with the path?”
“A good deal,” Mr. Rogers answered. “Art, here, and I were picking it up, and we didn’t let on, but it was hard work, especially with that icy gale in your face. It ought to have at least double the number of cairns between Monroe and the summit cone. I really thought I’d lost it once, but we picked up the next cairn before we got nervous.”
“You’re right,” said the bugler. “You’re quite right. They’ve neglected this fine old path for the paths on the north peaks. And it’s more dangerous than any of the north peaks, too. It ought to be remarked.”
As he spoke, they came suddenly into what looked like an old cellar hole in the rocks.
“The corral where the horses used to be hitched after they’d come up the Bridle Path,” said the man. “We’re almost there, now.”
The path became more nearly level, and very soon, through the cloud, they could make out what looked like the end of a wooden bridge. A moment later, and they saw it was the end of a railroad trestle. Another minute, and through the vapors they saw emerge a house, a curious, long, low house, built of stone, with a wooden roof. The house was shaped just like a Noah’s ark.
“The summit!” cried Mr. Rogers. “There’s the old Tip Top House!”
The Scouts gave a yell, and jumped upon the platform at the top of the railroad. From this platform a board walk led up to the door of the Tip Top House. Across the track, steps led down to a barn and a second house, the coach house at the top of the carriage road, which ascends the eastern slope of the mountain.
The girl, as Rob and her fiancé helped her up on the platform, gave a weary sigh, almost a sob, and then, hobbling on her lame ankle, she tried to run up the walk to the Tip Top House. The boys followed a little more slowly, looking first at the cellar hole where the old Summit Hotel used to stand (it was burned down in 1908) and where a new hotel will have been built before this story is published.
It was nearly half-past five when they entered the long, low room of the Tip Top House, and felt the sudden warmth of a wood-fire roaring in a great iron stove.
Dumping their packs in a corner, the boys made for this stove, and held out their hands toward the warmth.
“Gee, it feels good,” said Peanut.
“Feels good on my legs, all right,” said Frank. “I’m kind o’ stiff and tired, I don’t mind saying.”
The girl had disappeared. She had already talked to her mother at the foot of the mountain by the telephone which runs down the railroad trestle, and the wife of the proprietor of the Tip Top House had taken her up-stairs to put her to bed.
“It all depends on what winds Father Aeolus keeps chained, perhaps in the deep caverns of the Great Gulf, or which ones he lets loose to rattle the chains of the Tip Top House”
“It all depends on what winds Father Aeolus keeps chained, perhaps in the deep caverns of the Great Gulf, or which ones he lets loose to rattle the chains of the Tip Top House”
“It all depends on what winds Father Aeolus keeps chained, perhaps in the deep caverns of the Great Gulf, or which ones he lets loose to rattle the chains of the Tip Top House”
“I guess she’ll sleep all right to-night,” said the man with the bugle, who had entered with the boys.
“And she won’t tackle the Crawford Bridle Path with high heeled shoes on very soon again, either!” said Rob. “Are we going to sleep here, too, Mr. Rogers? I don’t believe we’ll want to sleep outside. The thermometer by that window is still down almost to freezing.”
The man with the bugle whispered to them, so the proprietor wouldn’t hear, “Don’t stay here. They’ll stick you for supper and put you in rooms where you can’t get any air. The windows are made into the roof, and don’t open. I got a horrible cold from sleeping here last year. Guess they never air the bedding. We are all down at the coach house. You may have to sleep on the floor, but the window will be open, and you can cook your own grub on the stove.”
“That’s us!” said Peanut. “Say, we want to get some sweet chocolate first, though, and some post-cards, don’t we?”
The Scouts all piled over to the long counter at one side of the room, and stocked up with sweet chocolate, and also wrote and mailed post-cards, to be sent down on the train the next day. The summit of Washington in summer is a regular United States post-office, and you can have mail delivered there, if you want.
“Be sure you don’t scare your families with lurid accounts of to-day!” Mr. Rogers cautioned them. “Better save that till you’re safe home.”
“Why don’t you write out a little account of your adventure forAmong the Clouds?” said the proprietor. “You can have copies sent to your homes, if you leave before it comes out.”
“What’sAmong the Clouds?” the boys asked.
He picked up a small eight page newspaper. “Printed at the base every day,” he said. “It was printed on top here, till the hotel burned. All the arrivals at the summit are put in daily.”
“You write the story, Rob,” cried Art. “When will it be printed?”
“Make it short, and I can telephone it down for to-morrow,” the man said.
“Fine! We’ll all take two copies,” said Peanut. “Save ’em for us. We’ll be around here for two or three days. Hooray, we’re going to be in the paper!”
“You might all register over there while the story is being written,” said the proprietor.
Rob took a pencil and piece of paper and sat down by the stove to write, while the rest walked over to the register. There were very few entries for that day, as you can guess. The top of the page (the day before) showed, however, the names of two automobile parties, who had written, in large letters under their names, the make of the cars they had come up the mountain in.
“Gee, how silly,” said Art.
“Wait,” said Peanut, his eyes twinkling, “tillIregister.”
He wrote his name last, and under it he printed, in big, heavy letters:
Smith and Jerome’s Shoes.
“There,” he cried, “that’s the motorIcame up in! Good ad. for old Smith and Jerome, eh? Might as well advertise our Southmead storekeepers.”
The man with the bugle, who was standing behind the boys, peeked over at the register, and roared with laughter.
“You’re all right, kid!” he said. “I wish the motor parties could see it. It would serve ’em right for boasting about owning a car. Besides, that’s the lazy loafer’s way of climbing a mountain. If I were boss, I’d dynamite the carriage road and the railroad, and then nobody could get here but folks who knew how to walk.”
“You’re like the man on Moosilauke,” said Lou.
“I’m like all true mountaineers,” he answered.
“And Scouts,” said Peanut.
Rob had now finished a brief account of their adventure on the Crawford Bridle Path, and the proprietor went up-stairs to find out the name of the man they had rescued. The girl’s name they already knew.
“Don’t say we rescued them, Rob,” Mr. Rogers cautioned. “Say they overtook us at Monroe, and we all went on together, because we had blankets and provisions.”
“That’s what I havesaid,” laughed Rob. “But it doesn’t alter the facts.”
The proprietor came back with the name, and Rob added to the man with the bugle, “And the names of your party, too?”
“Say five trampers,” the other answered. “I’ll tell you our names later. We aren’t essential to the story.”
“But I would like to know why you have the bugle,” said Rob.
“I’ll tell you that later, also,” the man laughed.
Rob turned his little account over to the proprietor, and the party left the warm house, and went out again into the cloud and the chilling wind.
It was almost like stepping out upon the deck of a ship in a heavy fog. They could see the board walk ahead, as far as the railroad platform—and that was all. The rest of the world was blotted out. The wind was wailing in the telephone wires and through the beams of the railroad trestle, just as it wails through the rigging of a ship. It was getting dark, too. The boys shivered, and nobody suggested any exploring.
“Me for supper, and bunk,” said Peanut.
They crossed the railroad with its cog rail between the two wheel rails, and descended a long flight of steps. At the bottom was the end of the carriage road, which they could see disappearing into the cloud to the east, a barn on the left, chained down to the rocks, and on the right a square, two-story building, the carriage house.
Inside, a lamp was already lighted, and the four men who had come down the mountain with the bugler, as well as the evident proprietor of the house, were sitting about the stove, which was crammed with wood and roaring hotly.
“Well?” said the four, as the Scouts and the bugler entered. “Any more people to go down and rescue?”
The bugler shook his head. “Haven’t heard of any,” he said. “There’s no word of any one else trying the Crawford Path to-day. Anybody that tackled Tuckerman’s will certainly have had sense enough to stay in the camp. That party who came over the Gulf Side this morning with us decided to go down the carriage road, they tell me. I guess we’ve got this place to ourselves.”
“Oh, it’s a good, soft floor,” one of the men laughed. “You boys don’t mind a good, soft floor, do you?”
“Not a bit,” said Peanut. “I always sleep on the floor—prefer it, in fact.”
The others laughed, and the Scouts got off their packs, spread their blankets out to dry, and took off their sweaters.
Then everybody began to prepare for supper. The proprietor of the coach house moved out a table, and put some boards across it to make it larger. The Scouts compared provisions with the five trampers, and found that the strangers had coffee which the boys were rather shy on, and condensed milk, which the boys didn’t have at all, while the boys had powdered eggs and dehydrated vegetables, which the strangers didn’t have. There wasn’t time enough, however, to soak the vegetables.
“You make us coffee, and we’ll make you an omelet,” said Art. “That’s a fair swap. I’ll cook griddle cakes for the bunch.”
“More than fair,” said the bugler. “It’s taking a whole meal from you chaps, while we have more than enough coffee. Here, use some of our minced ham in that omelet.”
“Just the thing!” said Art. “We ate most of ours in the shelter.” He began at once to mix the omelet.
In a short time the party of eleven (the proprietor cooked his supper later) sat down to the rough table, with bouillon cube soup first, and then steaming coffee, omelet made with minced ham, griddle cakes flavored with butter and sugar furnished by the proprietor, and sweet chocolate for dessert.
For a time nobody said much. The men and boys were all hungry, and they were busy putting away the delicious hot food.
“Nothing could keep me awake to-night,” said Peanut, presently. “May I have another cup of coffee?”
“Who else wants more?” asked the bugler, who was pouring.
“Me,” said Art.
“And me,” said the bugler.
“And me,” said Mr. Rogers.
“And me,” said one of the men.
“And I,” said Rob, whereupon the rest all burst out laughing, and Rob looked surprised, for he hadn’t intended to rebuke them by using correct grammar.
“You see the advantages of a college education, gentlemen,” cried Mr. Rogers, while poor Rob turned red.
It was a merry meal. After it was over, the five men pulled pipes out of their pockets, and puffed contentedly, while the boys sat about the stove, and Peanut said:
“Now, Mr. Bugler, tell us why you have the bugle.”
Much to the boys’ surprise, the man addressed blushed.
“Gee, you boys will laugh at me!” he said, like a boy himself. “But I’ll tell you. I toted this bugle up from Randolph yesterday. We came in around through the Great Gulf, and up the Six Husbands’ Trail——”
“Some trail, too!” the other four put in.
“—— and back over Adams to the Madison Hut. We spent last night there, and came over the Gulf Side this morning. We’d reached Clay before the bad weather hit us. The summit cone held it back. And we got to the carriage road before it got so thick that you couldn’t see at all. Lord, how the wind blew coming around Clay! Honestly, I didn’t know if we could make it.”
“But the bugle?” said Peanut.
“Oh, yes, the bugle. I was forgetting the bugle, wasn’t I?”
“You were—maybe,” said Peanut.
The rest laughed.
“Well, now I’ll tell you about the bugle,” the speaker went on. “When I was in college a chap roomed next to me who could punt a football farther than anybody I ever knew——”
“How far?” asked Art.
“Well, I’ve seen him cover seventy yards,” was the answer.
“Some punt!” cried Peanut. “Did that make you buy a bugle?”
“Say, who’s telling the story?” the man said. “No, it didn’t make me buy a bugle, but this chap who could punt so far bought a cornet. What do you suppose he bought a cornet for?”
“I can’t imagine whyanybodyshould buy a cornet,” put in one of the other men.
“Shut up, Tom,” said the bugler. “Well, he bought a cornet so he could learn to play it, and after he had learned to play it (keeping everybody in the dormitory from studying while he learned, too!), he spent a summer vacation in the Rocky Mountains, and carried that cornet up to the highest peaks that he could climb, and played it. He learned to play it just for that—just for the joy of hearing horn music float out into the great spaces of the sky. Also, he made echoes with it against the cliffs while he was climbing up. After that summer he never played it again.”
“Why didn’t he see how far he could punt a football from the top of Pike’s Peak?” Peanut grinned.
“He used up all his breath playing the cornet, and couldn’t blow up the ball,” said the man.
Lou wasn’t taking this story as a joke, however. “And you brought your bugle up here, to play it from the top of Washington?” he asked. “I think that’s fine. Gee, I wish you’d go out and play taps before we go to bed!”
The man looked at Lou keenly. “Soyouunderstand!” he said. “These Philistines with me don’t, and your young friend Peanut there doesn’t. They have no music in their souls, have they? You and I will go outside presently, and play taps to the circumambient atmosphere.”
“Some language,” snickered Peanut. “What we’ll need isn’t taps, though, but reveille to-morrow.”
“Cheer up, you’ll get that all right,” the man laughed.
They all sat for a while discussing the day’s adventure, and planning for the next day, if it was clear. The five men were going down over the Davis Path, and as that path leads along Boott Spur, the Scouts decided to go with them, leaving them at the end of the spur, the Scouts to descend for the night into Tuckerman’s Ravine, while the others kept on southwest, over the Giant’s Stairs, to the lower end of Crawford Notch.
“But we want to visit the Lakes of the Clouds first,” said the Scout Master. “We scarcely got a peep at ’em to-day.”
“Suits us,” said the man called Tom. “We’ll have time, if we start early. I’d like to see the Alpine garden myself.”
“And now for taps,” cried the bugler.
He and Lou got up, and went out-of-doors. The rest followed, but the first pair slipped away quickly into the cloud, going down the carriage road till the lamp of the coach house was invisible.
The universe was deathly still save for the continual moaning of the wind. There was nothing at all visible, either stars above, or valley lamps below—nothing but a damp, chillywhite darkness. Lou was silent, awed. The man set his bugle to his lips, and blew—blew the sweet, sad, solemn notes of taps.
As they rose above the moaning of the wind and seemed to float off into space, Lou’s heart tingled in his breast. As the last note died sweetly away, there were tears in his eyes—he couldn’t say why. But something about taps always made him sad, and now, in this strange setting up in the clouds, the tears actually came. The man saw, and laid a hand in silence on his shoulder.
“You understand,” he said, presently, as they moved back up the road, and that was all he said.
Back in the coach house, the proprietor showed them all the available cots up-stairs. There were two shy, so Art and Peanut insisted on sleeping down-stairs by the stove. They wabbed up an extra blanket or two for a bed, made their sweaters into pillows, and almost before the lamp was blown out, they were as fast asleep as if they had been lying on feathers.