CAMP WICKASAW, ’04
But, after all, the reality was not so bad as what Rooke had described. The letters were not three feet high, and even an eagle would have experienced difficulty in reading them a quarter of a mile away. But it was bad enough, and Dan and Bob scowled wrathfully. Then they climbed the fence and set off across the meadow to get a nearer view. Presently they reached a sort of terrace of tumbled boulders and stones, some of them crumbling and some as impregnable as when they had fallen, which was banked up under the cliff. Bushes and weeds had grown up between them, and it was all the two could do to thrust themselves through; and when, after a minute or two, they had gained the edge of the towering mass of rock their legs and arms were scratched and their jerseys and trunks torn.
“Phew!” said Bob, looking ruefully at his wounds, “that’s a merry place to come through, isn’t it? I hope those Wickasaws got as much as we did!”
Above them the cliff arose at a steep angle for some twenty feet, and from there sprang almost straight into air. That first twenty feet could be climbed in places if one used care, and it was evident that the Wickasaw fellows had climbed it.
“Probably two of them went up there,” said Bob, “and one sort of steadied the other while he painted. But it was a risky thing to do.”
“Pshaw,” answered Dan, “that wasn’t very hard. The trouble is, they’ve got their old patent-medicine sign up as high as any one can reach. And it will be mighty hard work to paint it out, besides taking a whole lot of paint.”
“That’s so,” said Bob, craning his head back to look. “But it’s got to be done somehow.”
Dan was silent for a moment; then, “No, it hasn’t, either!” he exclaimed suddenly.
“What do you mean?”