After a time they came to what looked like a wrinkle in the face of the grand old mountain. They proceeded up this with no little caution, not knowing but enemies might be watching there. It was just such a place as outlaws lurking for prey or cowering from officers would be apt to seek. The wrinkle, or gully, led almost to the snow line and finally ended in a little dip which lay between two summits rising side by side, like jagged rows of teeth.
“I’m half starved and half frozen!” Harry declared, as he rested for a time in the depth of what had once been a mountain lake, but which had been drained by the gully. “If I ever get back in little old New York again, I’m going to get Dad to make me a gasoline buggy with a snout nine feet long, and I’m going to push traffic aside on Broadway for the next thousand years.”
“How often have you said that?” laughed Jack.
“Let’s see,” Frank put in, “this is the twelfth trip we boys have taken, either in the interests of the Secret Service or on vacations, so this makes twelve times that Harry has promised never to leave New York again once he gets back there.”
“That’s all right!” Harry grinned. “You fellows ain’t half so hungry as I am or you wouldn’t feel so gay over it.”
“Now, how far are we from camp?” asked Jack.
“About two miles on the level,” Frank suggested, “and about four hundred miles the way the surface of the ground runs.”
After a short rest the boys proceeded south, climbing over jutting spurs, dipping into depressions, and sliding over stony slopes until they were almost too tired to take another step.
“We’ll get used to this in a month or two,” Harry said, sitting plump down on a boulder.
Frank followed the boy’s example, except that he stretched himself at full length, while Jack pushed on a few steps and stood peering over a rim of rock which lay directly in their way.