“Now you spoil it all when you say if, Harry. It isn’t necessary to say that. We’re sure to see them from up here. We’ve got them, sure, Harry.”
There was some reason for his hopefulness. Bulwagga Mountain is, indeed, a mighty grand stand built on the shore of Lake Champlain. It is long and narrow, its length running parallel with the lake. There are two peaks, precisely placed, one at the northern, one at the southern, end of the ridge. By reason of Bulwagga Bay, the northern half of the mountain actually forms the shore, descending sheer like a great wall, as if to crowd the railroad into the water. The southern half sits back like a dress circle in a theater, or rather the lake flows wide of it, leaving a stretch of flat, wooded country between. Here the mountain slopes down from its southerly peak, admitting of a descent, if you are cautious and care to undertake it; but there is no way to descend from the northern peak eastward except to go to the edge and jump off, a method which has never been popular with tourists.
On his western extent old Bulwagga is more amiable. There is a road which works its way up toward the northern peak, as many a tired horse knows, but it does not get to the top; and you alight and plod on till you look straight down into the bay and can see the ruins of the Crown Point fortress on the end of the chubby peninsula. The southerly summit looks down with lofty scorn upon the touring parties that make the ascent of his brother peak, for he encourages no sightseers to come too near and trifle with his lonely majesty.
It is all very well for Bulwagga to raise his twin crowns proudly and make a great show to summer boarders, but I can tell you that he might better bow his heads in shame, for he has a most bloody and disreputable history. I dare say there is not a mountain along the whole stretch of Lake Champlain and Lake George that has gotten itself mixed up in so many massacres. For years its fastnesses echoed with warwhoops and with the cries of the dying. It was a favorite stronghold of the savage and treacherous Mohawks. But all that is past.
It was the baffling, lonely, wild southerly peak of old Bulwagga that the boys had succeeded in mounting. There was no road, no path, nothing but their compass to guide them. They had come up from the west and the spot where they threw themselves down commanded an unobstructed view of the stretch of woodland between them and the lake. As they looked down, a sudden jut of white smoke rose under the precipitous northern end of the mountain, the column traveling diagonally across the base of the peninsula toward the lake.
“Listen,” said Harry, and they heard the distant rattle of a hidden train, as it rushed across the peninsula to regain the shore.
“My, but it’s lonely up here, isn’t it, Harry? When are we going to eat, anyway?”
“As soon as little Gretchen brings in the firewood. I’ve got to sit right here so as to keep that woods down there in view. It wouldn’t be safe for me to move.”
“It wouldn’t, wouldn’t it?” said Gordon, pushing his staff against Harry’s chest and toppling him over backward. “Get up and pitch camp, you lazy thing!”
They set to work putting up their shelter, and in a little while the frying pan sent forth its savory odor.