CHAPTER X
A MAIDEN IN DISTRESS
"FELLERS," Skinny had told us, when we were getting ready to start on the hike, "you always ought to carry a rope. Something happens every time when you don't have a rope along."
"It happens when you do," Benny said. "Anyhow, a rope is too much bother. A blanket and a frying pan and things like that are all I want to carry."
"A rope is the thing, just the same. Didn't I lasso the robber last summer out on Illinois River, at Starved Rock? How could I lasso anything without a rope? And didn't we let you down into Horseshoe Canyon with a rope and pull Alice What's-her-name up again?"
"Bet your life we did," Bill put in. "You need a rope when you are camping out or are in a boat on the river, but what good is it in walking seven miles?"
"Maybe it is and maybe it isn't; but, just the same, you'll be sorry if you don't take one along."
He was right, too, for Bill told us afterward that he would have given a good deal for a rope when he was sitting on top of Greylock. He didn't need it for anything, only, he said, it would have been sort of company for him.
Skinny was bound to carry a rope. When he marched down Center Street with it coiled around his shoulders, over his blanket, and with his tomahawk in his belt, people ran out of the stores to look at him.
The road that he took is uphill a good part of the way. It goes up through the foothills of the east mountain and isn't easy walking. We slide down that road sometimes in winter. When the coasting is good we can slide nearly a mile, clear into the village; then hitch on to a bob and ride back again for another.