The party had spent another day or two beside the lake when, one drowsy afternoon, Kinnaird, who sat on the hot, white shingle by the water’s edge, with a pair of glasses in his hand, sent for Weston. Miss Kinnaird and Ida Stirling were seated among the boulders not far away.
“I understand that the river bends around the range, and the crest of the first rise seems no great height,” he said. “There is evidently—a bench I think you call it—before you come to the snow, and the ascent should be practicable for a lady. Take these glasses and look at it.”
Weston, who took the glasses, swept them along the hillside across the lake. It rose very steeply from the water’s edge, but the slope was uniform, and as a good deal of it consisted apparently of lightly-covered rock and gravel the pines were thinner, and there was less undergrowth than usual. Far above him the smooth ascent broke off abruptly, and, though he could not see beyond the edge, there certainly appeared to be a plateau between it and the farther wall of rock and snow.
“I think one could get up so far without very much trouble, sir,” he said.
“That,” replied Kinnaird, “is how it strikes me. My daughter is rather a good mountaineer, and Miss Stirling is just as anxious to make the ascent. I may say that we have had some experience in Switzerland, not to mention the hills among the English lakes. Do you know anything about climbing?”
“No, sir,” said Weston; “not as it is understood in Switzerland, anyway. I don’t suppose there’s an ice-ax in the country, and I never saw a party roped. Still, I have been up seven or eight thousand feet several times.”
“What were you doing?” asked Miss Kinnaird.
Weston saw the faint twinkle in Ida Stirling’s eyes, and fancied that he understood it. Very few of the inhabitants of that country climb for pleasure, and it is difficult to obtain any of the regulation mountaineering paraphernalia there; but when the wandering prospector finds a snow-crested range in his way he usually scrambles over it and carries his provisions and blankets along with him. The fact that there are no routes mapped out, and no chalets or club shelters to sleep in, does not trouble men of that kind.
“Once or twice we were on the gold trail,” he said. “Another time I packed for a couple of Englishmen who were looking for mountain goats.”
“Get any?” Kinnaird asked sharply.