Boy Scouts in California; or, The Flag on the Cliff

By G. Harvey Ralphson
CHICAGO M. A. DONOHUE & CO.
Copyright 1913 by M. A. Donohue & Co. CHICAGO Made in U. S. A.
“Black bear steak!”
“Grizzly bear, black bear, or cinnamon bear?”
“This is cinnamon bear! You don’t suppose members of the Black Bear Patrol, Boy Scouts of America, would do a cannibal stunt by eating black bear, do you? That wouldn’t be right.”
Jimmie McGraw of the Wolf Patrol, City of New York, and Frank Shaw, of the Black Bear Patrol, also of New York City, were broiling bear steak over a glowing bed of embers just below the timber line on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It was early morning in September, and the sunshine lay like a mist of gold over the broken country.
Away to the north rose the peaks of the Matterhorn, approximately 13,000 feet above sea level. Still nearer, Twin Peaks lifted their white heads 12,000 feet in the air. To the east lay Mono lake, salt and brackish to the taste, partaking of the desert, but bright and glistening now under the rays of the early sun.
To the south Warren Peak stood guard over the head waters of the Tuolumne river. Westward the tumbling waters of Rancheria creek dropped down from crag to crag on their winding way to the Pacific, nearly three hundred miles distant. Here and there granite peaks lifted white foreheads above the green of the pines.
It was a glorious scene, and the Boy Scouts were thoroughly in harmony with it. The smoke of their campfire lifted in a straight line to the blue of the sky, and the fragrance of their steak and coffee permeated the sweet air.
The boys shivered a trifle as they gathered closer about the embers, but they knew that before many hours the chill of the night would be swept away. While the boys tended the steak and coffee, a voice came from a cave at the rear. They both turned in that direction.
“Does this hotel serve meals to guests in their rooms?” the voice asked.