“Oh, we’ll get back all right, Ray, and don’t you forget it.”
“I certainly shan’t, if we get there.”
It had taken the boys a good while to prepare the steaks and cook them, so by the time they had finished their breakfast it was later than they usually took the road. They hurried off, therefore, with a last regretful look at the fine skin which they were obliged to leave behind.
The elevation had been rapidly increasing and the mountains had become rockier and more precipitous. The sleet which fell the night they were in the cave was the first frozen rain they had encountered, but the snow-covered heights had even before that sometimes seemed very near.
The night after the boys’ adventure with the bear was very cold and they searched for another cave, but unsuccessfully. They found, however, a crevice in the rocks that was large enough for them to crawl into. They could not lie down, but they huddled up close together in their blankets and were warmer than they would have been outside.
The next night the boys found shelter in the mountain village of Bezheeta, which perched at an elevation of about nine thousand feet. The warmth of the rude stone house in which they slept was very pleasant after the exposure of the previous nights. Bezheeta is at the foot of the ultimate great ridge which forms the backbone of the Caucasus Range. The snowy summits towered some three thousand feet above the village, and appeared to the weary boys an almost insurmountable barrier.
There was no dance that night as there had been at the other village where they stopped. The night air was too frosty for such an outdoor function. Consequently the boys were allowed to get to sleep early, and were up correspondingly early in the morning. That enabled them to start out on their last climb long before the sun appeared over the mountain crests.
The trail went up the steep ascent by a switchback which crossed, back and forth, the bed of a foaming stream that came down from a glacier above. At first the walking was good, over hard rock, but presently they reached snow, and tramped for a time through half-frozen slush. That greatly increased the effort necessary to climb the steep trail. The boys slipped and slid, and it sometimes seemed to them that they hardly advanced at all. Their feet became soaked and cold, and altogether they felt very miserable and discouraged.
Then gradually the slush underfoot became firmer and changed to old snow that was packed and frozen hard. Finally the noise of the torrent ceased; that, too, was frozen. Still, up, up, the boys toiled, their packs growing heavier and their breath shorter.
As the day advanced, clouds gathered about the summits, and from these masses snow-squalls swept down across the ravines and ridges. Several of these surging gusts enveloped the boys. At first the flurries of snow were light and rather fun than otherwise, but as the boys gained in altitude the storms increased in density and in severity. Finally, when one came they did not try to breast it, but stopped, in the shelter of some rock if possible, till it passed.