"After our fight with the forest fire, when we were in camp at Fort Brady, they don't need to tell any member of the Wireless Patrol to be careful with fire," observed Lew. "But there are lots of people who do need to be warned."
He dipped the canteen in the spring and passed on. "We're almost at the top," he said, "and I'm not sorry."
"The light is already growing fainter," said Charley, "and it will bother us to see before so very long. It's going to get dark awful early to-night. We'd better hustle."
They reached the summit of the pass and started down the other slope. The trail continued. At first it was choked with briars and bushes. But suddenly they found the trail open. It had been cleared of all obstructions and enlarged until it was several feet wide. Even the roots of the bushes had been grubbed out, so that the path was smooth and clean. The cut saplings and brush had been burned in the trail itself, but the work had been done so carefully that never a tree had been scorched. Even the marks of fire had been obliterated by the subsequent grubbing of the roots.
"Bully good!" cried Lew, when he saw the path lying smooth and open before him. "The forest rangers have been making a fire trail of this old path. We can make great time here."
He pushed on at top speed. Charley hung close at his heels. Neither boy said a word, each saving his breath for the task in hand; for with the packs on their backs even a down-hill trail was not easy.
"We can go scout pace here," said Lew over his shoulder, and suiting his action to his words, he broke into a trot. Fifty steps he went at that gait, then walked fifty. Then he ran fifty more. So they went down the mountain in a mere fraction of the time it had taken them to ascend. But long before they reached the bottom, Lew dropped back to a steady walk.
"We've got to save our wind for the climb up Old Ironsides," he said over his shoulder.
It was well he did so. Before them a long, high mountain stretched across their way, like a giant caterpillar. No notch cut through its rugged side, to give an easy way to the valley beyond. Only by climbing directly over the rugged monster could the two boys reach the snug little valley on its far side, where they expected to find the trout teeming tinder the dark pines. Old Ironsides was the rocky barrier that confronted them. Even Stone Mountain was not more rugged and rocky. Like Stone Mountain it seemed to be a mammoth rock pile. Rocks of every size and description covered its steep slope. Mostly the mountain was shaded by a good stand of second-growth timber; but in places there were vast areas of rounded stones, like flattish heaps of potatoes, that for acres covered the soil of the hill so deeply as to prevent all plant growth. Old Ironsides could have been called Stone Mountain as appropriately as its neighbor, for truly it was rock-ribbed. But the stones on its slopes, unlike those of Stone Mountain, contained a small percentage of iron. Hence its name. The nearer slope of this hill was as dry as it was stony. Not a spring or the tiniest trickle of water wet its rocky side for miles. But part way down the farther slope a splendid stream gushed forth among the rocks. It was this spring, or the stream issuing from it, that Charley and Lew hoped to reach before they made their camp for the night.
Thanks to the work of the forest rangers in clearing the fire trail, it looked as though the two boys would reach their goal before dark. Could they have gone straight up the slope of Old Ironsides, they would have come almost directly to the spring itself. But the grade was far too steep to permit that. They would have to zigzag up the hill and find the stream after they topped the crest. Because of the peculiar formation of the land below this spring, the water did not run directly down the hill toward the bottom, but flowed off to one side and made its way diagonally down the slope.