'Deuced odd!' said Snap.
'Asleep or dead, I should think,' said Frank, and the croak of a great raven sailing by below them, so close that they could see its bright yellow eye looking at them, seemed to echo 'Dead! dead!'
'Not a cheerful locality, even for a graveyard,' muttered Snap as the sun was hidden for a second behind the cliffs; 'however, for'ard on!'
CHAPTER XXI
AT THE TOP
'Beat, I think,' said Snap a little later; and, indeed, it looked as if man could go no higher than the point to which, by infinite toil, the boys had now attained.
'You two stay here a little,' he added to the two Winthrops, 'and take care of the grub and the rifle,' for, in spite of the difficulties of the ascent, Wharton had insisted on bringing one rifle and his 'six-shooter,' as well as a handkerchief full of bread per man.
'Dick, you will come with me, won't you?' he asked, and, as the old trapper nodded his head in assent, he added, 'Very well, then: do you get a good grip of something so that you could hold my weight up if necessary, and give me the other end of that lariat round my waist.'
The place to which they had attained was a narrow ledge of granite, ending in a niche in the rock, with an overhanging roof to it. Above was a smooth needle of solid rock, broken and ragged at the summit, but for two hundred feet as smooth and perpendicular as a pillar of marble. There were no crannies in this into which to insert toes and fingers, however strong and daring. The storms and snows of ten thousand years had worn the granite until its face was polished like the face of a jewel, and it was hard as a diamond.
'I don't think even the Alpine Club could tackle that,' Frank had said when they first saw the peak.