CHAPTER XV
With Rob, Art and Peanut Into the Great Gulf
Rob, Art and Peanut were making time down the head wall, but they were also using up shoe leather, for the wall of the Great Gulf is composed of innumerable loose stones, often of a shaly nature, with sharp edges, which turn under the foot. The head wall trail, too, because of its steepness, is not so much used as many others, and at times the Scouts had some difficulty in keeping it. It grew warmer as they descended out of the breeze into the still air of the Gulf, and, as Peanut said, his forehead was starting another brook. They reached timber line in a short time, and before long were in the woods beside Spaulding Lake, where in spite of the leaf-mould on the bottom they paused long enough to strip and have a quick bath in the cold water, which was, however, warm by contrast with some of the brooks they had tried. Then they resumed the trail down the floor of the Gulf, beside the head waters of the Peabody River. The path was rough, full of roots and wet places, and it descended constantly, with waterfalls beside it, and through openings in the trees here and there glimpses of the great cliff walls of Jefferson and Adams to the left. The thrushes were singing all about them, and they came upon several deer tracks, and once upon the mark of a bear’s paw in the mud. They kept looking, too, for the Gulf camp, but it did not appear.
“Say, this old trail is longer than I thought,” said Peanut, “or else there isn’t any Gulf camp.”
At last, however, after nearly an hour’s tramping from Spaulding Lake, they saw smoke through the trees ahead, and came upon the camp, which was a lean-to like that in Tuckerman’s, with the opening placed close up against the perpendicular wall of a big boulder, to throw the heat of the fire back into the shelter.
Two young men, badly in need of shaves, were cooking breakfast.
“Hello, Scouts,” they said.
“Lunching early, aren’t you?” asked Rob.
The men laughed. “This is breakfast,” they said. “We decided to-day to have a good sleep, and we did, all right—thirteen hours! Came over Crawford’s and down the head wall yesterday. Going out to Carter’s Notch to-day. Where are you going?”
“We are bound up the Six Husbands to the Madison Hut,” the boys answered.
The two men whistled. “Well, good luck to you,” they said. “But glad we’re not going with you!”
“Why?” Peanut demanded.
“Because it goes right up the shoulder of Jefferson. Have you seen the shoulder of Jefferson?”
“Sure,” said Art. “What of it?”
“Well, if youhadto work as hard as that, you’d make an awful fuss!” one of the men laughed.
“You talk just like my father,” said Peanut. “Why is it called the Six Husbands’ Trail—if you know so much about it?” he added.
“Search me,” the man replied, “unless because it would take six husbands to get a woman up there.”
The boys laughed, and went on their way. They soon came to the trail itself, and struck up the Six Husbands at last, headed directly for the cliffs of Jefferson and Adams, which seemed to be towering over their heads.
“Itdoeslook like a job, and no mistake!” cried Peanut.
“Well, if somebody can put a trail up it, we can follow ’em, I guess,” cried Art. “This is something like mountain climbing!”
But for half a mile the trail didn’t ascend much. It followed up a brook, and seemed to be headed for the ravine between Adams and Jefferson. Presently they came to a fork in the trail, where the Adams Slide Trail branched off to the east. Here there was a spring, labeled Great Spring on the map, where they filled their canteens, and taking the left fork, the Six Husbands, began at last the real ascent of Jefferson. There was no longer any doubt about its being an ascent, either. The map showed that from the Great Spring to the crossing of the Gulf Side Trail at the summit cone of the mountain was little over a mile, but that mile, as Peanut said, was stood up on end. They plugged away for a while, toiling upward, weighted down with their packs and blankets, which had increased in weight at least fifty per cent. since morning, and then decided to eat lunch before the fuel gave out.
It was hard work chopping up fire-wood from the tough, aged, and gnarled stumps of the dwarf spruces which alone could grow on this cliff side, but they got a blaze at last, and made tea and cooked some bacon—the last they had. It was one o’clock before they were through, and Rob, seeing that Peanut was pretty tired and Art pretty sleepy, ordered a rest for an hour. They spread out their blankets and lay down, in a spot where there was the least danger of rolling off, and soon the two younger boys were fast asleep.
Rob didn’t go to sleep. He watched an eagle sailing on still wings out over the Gulf, and presently, to his consternation, he saw a thin wisp of vapor curling around the ridges far above on Adams. Southwestward, the slopes of Washington were clear, but there was surely cloud coming above them, and they on a little used trail, without Mr. Rogers! Rob’s heart went suddenly down into his boots, and he felt a cold sweat come. Then he pulled himself together.
“Fool!” he half whispered. “If we keep on up, we are bound to hit the Gulf Side Trail. And didn’t Mr. Rogers say that if you kept cool you were much better off? Brace up, old Scout!”
He waited till his heart had stopped thumping, and then he waked the other two.
“We’ve got to be climbing again,” he said; “there’s a cloud coming over Adams.”
“Say, there’s always a cloud coming, seems to me,” said Peanut. “Well, come on then. Gee, I was having a good sleep!”
The three boys rolled up their blankets, and resumed the trail, first taking a good look at the map and fixing the compass direction. The clouds were now plainly visible above them, both around the tops of Adams, Madison and Jefferson, and evidently over on Clay, too. But behind them, across the Gulf, Chandler Ridge was in clear sun, and they could see a motor car going up the carriage road, and even hear a faint cough from its exhaust.
“This is no storm, it’s evidently just a wandering cloud,” said Rob. “But we’d better make all the distance we can in clear going.”
They toiled upward for a full hour, almost hand over hand in places, with the cloud still above them and the Gulf clear below, before they got into the under curtain of the vapor, and began to have trouble in finding the trail. They were feeling their way cautiously, compasses in hand, when suddenly Art, who was leading, uttered a cry, and pointed to the unmistakable cross path of the Gulf Side Trail, carefully maintained and worn by many feet. There was a sign, too.
“Hooray! Here we are! Can’t miss that trail!” yelled Peanut, his feeling of relief escaping in a shout which used up all the breath left in his lungs.
There was, to the amazement of the Scouts, an answering shout from somewhere southwest of them, coming out of the fog—a faint call which sounded like “Help!”