"Can we not go down a little bit?" said Maria Angelina gently. "Farther down again we might find the right path. . . . Up here—I think we are on the wrong mountain."
Turning, Johnny looked about. Ahead of him were overhanging slabs of rock.
Irresolution vanished. "That's the top now," he declared. "We are just coming up the wrong side, that's all. I'll say it's wrong—but here we are. I'll bet the others are up there now—lapping up that food. Come on, Ri-Ri, we haven't far now to go."
In a gust of optimism he held out his hand and Maria Angelina clutched it with a weariness courage could not conceal.
It seemed to her that her breath was gone utterly, that her feet were leaden weights and her muscles limply effortless. But after him she plunged, panting and scrambling up the rocks, and then, very suddenly, they found themselves to be on only a plateau and the real mountain head reared high and aloof above.
Under his breath—and not particularly under it, either—Johnny Byrd uttered a distinct blasphemy.
And in her heart Maria Angelina awfully seconded it.
Then with decidedly assumed nonchalance, "Gosh! All that way to supper!" said the young man. "Well, come on, then—we got to make a dent in this."
"Oh, are you sure—are you sure that this is the right mountain?" Maria Angelina begged of him.
"Don't I know Baldy?" he retorted. "We're just on another side of it from the others, I told you. Come on, Ri-Ri—we'll soon smell the coffee boiling."