The boys went with Hugh, and in a few minutes returned with three long slender poles, from which, with ax and knife, all the branches and roughness were soon trimmed. Hugh pointed the larger ends of the poles and then told the boys to thrust them into the fire so that they might become charred and hardened. In that way they would last and be effective much longer. Then Hugh took a couple of sling-ropes off the pack saddles, and coiling them up, put one over his right shoulder and under his left arm, and gave the other to Joe, who carried it the same way.
It was but a few minutes’ walk over meadows, green with new springing grass and bright with wild flowers, to the ledges down which they passed to get to the stream. This was easily crossed by springing from rock to rock, and a little later they were slowly trudging over the old snow upon an icefield.
Just before reaching the snow, Hugh pointed out little brooklets running through the drift and gravel, whose milk-white waters showed that they came from under a glacier.
“You remember, I reckon, son,” he said to Jack, “what Fannin told us about the way the masses of ice and the loose rocks under it ground up the soil and rock over which the ice passed, and made the water milky with this powdered rock. This must be what we see here, and we can be sure, I reckon, that this is a glacier.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “I guess there’s no doubt about that, especially when we see that big moraine off there to the right. That must have been made by the glacier, though it looks as if that had been done a long time ago.”
“That’s what,” said Hugh, “a long time ago. But seeing that moraine there makes me think that maybe it would be a good plan to get on that and walk along as far as it goes. I’ve seen these glaciers sometimes that were all cracked and full of holes, and sometimes the holes were bridged with snow, so that a man might break through the snow and fall into one of them. Let’s get on the moraine and walk along that, and then when we have to walk over the snow, rope ourselves together.”
Edging to the right, they soon came to the steep-sided moraine, and after a little search found a place where they could ascend it and walk along its very sharp crest. It was a place for careful walking, since the crest was a sharp knife-edge and they had to walk with one foot on either side of the ridge, with a drop of fifty or sixty feet below if a misstep were made. Before they had gone very far, Joe, who was bringing up the rear, called, “I don’t like this very much. I am afraid I am going to fall.”
“Nonsense,” said Hugh, “you won’t fall, but if you feel as if you were going to, you better sit down astride of the ridge, take your rope and tie one end of it about your waist and throw the other end to Jack. Then he can tie that about his waist, and I’ll throw my rope back and he can tie himself to that, too.”
Joe stopped and stood there for a moment and then called out, “No, I’m all right now. Go ahead and I’ll follow, but don’t go too fast.”
They went on very deliberately, and presently Hugh reached the end of the moraine and stepped off on to the snow, where a moment later he was joined by Jack and Joe.