"Well, you'd better make a hole in your talk pretty quick, Jim, if you don't want a bucket of water poured over you," said Jack. "Lie awake as long as you like, but keep quiet and let the rest of us sleep."
CHAPTER XXXVI
A Start Down the Mountain
Just a week later the boys were ready to quit Camp Venture and proceed down the mountain, or as Tom, quoting the mountaineers, put it, they prepared to "git down out'n the mountings."
They had fully accomplished their mission. They had done a great winter's work. They had sent down the mountain every tie they were permitted by their contract to furnish; they had sent down many noble bridge timbers and greatly more cordwood than they had expected to cut. Their work was done, except that before going home they must go to the headquarters of the railroad contractors, at the foot of the mountain, adjust their accounts and collect the money due them.
As the best mountain climber among them, the one who had met and overcome more mountain difficulties in his time than any other, and the one who best knew how to "look straight at things and use common sense," Tom was chosen to direct the perilous descent over the cliffs.
The boys were all heavily loaded, of course. Each had his axe, his blanket, his extra clothing and four days' rations to carry. Each also had his gun and there was one extra gun—the rifle that Tom had captured from the mountaineer—to be carried. "For," said Tom, "while we have no use for the gun, I've agreed to deliver it to its owner whenever he chooses to call for it at my mother's house, and I tell you, boys, a man's first obligation in this world is to keep every promise that he makes no matter what it costs. I'd take that fellow's rifle down the mountain if I had to leave my own behind in order to do it."
"You are right, Tom," said the Doctor, "and boys, I propose that we take charge of that gun and carry it turn and turn about for Tom, for he is otherwise the worst over-loaded fellow in the party."
For Tom had his skins to carry—the panther's hide, three big bear skins, several deer hides, and a large number of pelts from raccoons, opossums, hares, squirrels and other small game.