"I think I'll have a thirloin thteak," answered Tommy.
"A cup of coffee will help me, I am sure," declared Harriet.
"I would eat the frying-pan handle if I couldn't get anything better," added Jane. "Mountain climbing is something like work, eh?"
Janus bolstered up his dry wood in a crotch formed by a jutting rock, and built a fire where one would scarcely have believed it were possible to do so. He got water from a little spring just above them, and by the time Miss Elting had disposed of her patients for the moment the water for coffee was boiling. But there was no setting of a table. To have put a dish down on that slope would have meant to lose it, and they had too few dishes to be able to afford to lose even one.
The coffee was drunk without milk, though lumps of sugar were produced from each girl's blouse pocket and dropped into her cup with much laughter. They made the best of their circumstances; but when, about the middle of the afternoon, Miss Elting informed the guide that she did not think Hazel's ankle would permit of her going any further that day, there was a flurry in the mountainside camp.
The guide declared that they must go on until a suitable camping place were reached, but how he did not say until he had consulted his whiskers and studied the valleys below. He then gravely announced that he would carry Hazel on his back. She promptly declared that she would not permit it, and Miss Elting agreed with her. Then Janus rose to the occasion by telling them that he would make a litter if one of the young ladies thought she could bear up one end of it. Both Harriet and Jane settled the matter by declaring they could carry the litter with Hazel in it.
Janus made the litter by first laying two ropes on the ground about eighteen inches apart. On these at right angles he tied sticks until the affair resembled a carrier belt on a piece of machinery. A loop with a stick rove into it was arranged at each end and a blanket was thrown over the litter, which was then pronounced ready. None of them ever had seen anything like it. The girls feared the litter would sag so that no one could ride on it without being dragged along the ground. Janus said the advantage in a rope litter was that they could go around a bend with it and not break the side pieces, and, furthermore, that it was soft and had plenty of give. Jane winked at Harriet, Hazel looked troubled, while Tommy's face assumed a wise expression.
"Now for the start," called the guide, taking the front end of the litter, after all was in readiness. "The one who takes the other end had better not carry her pack, but lay it on the litter."
"I prefer to have my pack on my back. I know where it is then," remarked Harriet.
"Now, hadn't we better strap Hazel to the litter?" proposed Jane thoughtfully.