The Pathfinders made straight for a blue range of mountains that stood out dark and forbidding in the bright moonlight. The girls were full of enthusiasm, and would have walked much faster had not their guardian insisted on their saving their strength for the more difficult traveling after they reached the hills.
It was three o’clock in the morning when finally they dropped down a sharp incline into the gloomy depths of a rocky canyon. A trickling stream flowed through the canyon and the walls stood high on either side, rising sheer for a hundred feet.
“You will have to wade, girls. But I think we are all sufficiently hardened so that we shall not suffer more than temporary discomfort from getting our feet wet,” said the guardian, with an encouraging smile.
The girls plunged into the brook without hesitation. The water was only ankle deep, but the stones on the bottom of the creek were moss-covered and slippery. Still, they made good progress, really traveling faster than before they had entered the canyon.
At daylight Miss Elting called a halt. She had chosen a place where a dry shelf of rock offered a resting place. The girls threw themselves down flat on their backs. There was no wood with which to build a fire, but Miss Elting produced a small alcohol stove from her pack and made coffee. This with biscuits they had brought proved very refreshing. The guardian did not permit them to remain on the shelf of rock for a long time, fearing that their muscles might become stiffened. Then the journey was taken up again. So full of enthusiasm and determination were the Meadow-Brook Girls that not one of them offered a word of complaint; but when at two o’clock that afternoon, they emerged from the canyon into the open country, Tommy and Margery were limping a little.
Beyond in the haze of a distant valley lay Meadow-Brook. The girls eager to get to their journey’s end pushed on again. After half an hour’s walking, Miss Elting called a halt. She shaded her eyes and gazed off to the west. A thin brown line was crawling slowly along the road.
“It’s the boys!” cried Harriet.
“They’re going to win,” groaned Margery.
“They are not. We must run for it.”
“Yes,” agreed Miss Elting. “But don’t get excited. Keep your lips tightly closed. Breathe through your nostrils and keep your shoulders well back. Don’t keep yourselves rigid, but just trudge along with every muscle relaxed. They don’t see us. Ready! Go!”