“All right. I could drink a quart or two myself.”
But when they were in the thin woods and, after descending for what seemed the proper distance, had turned to the left, it became evident that finding the spring was not going to be an easy task. After some ten minutes of prospecting along the slope Evan advised giving over the search.
“Let’s get home, fellows,” he said. “It’s getting late, and we may have to hunt here for an hour.”
“I guess that’s so,” Rob agreed. “We’ll suffer the pangs of thirst a while longer. Let’s make a bee-line down the hill and find the path.”
When one’s legs are stiff from climbing up hill the worst punishment one can inflict on them is to require them to take one down again. Theoretically, descending a mountain should be as easy as rolling off the proverbial log. Actually, it is almost as hard on the muscles as going up. Jelly was the first to protest.
“I’ve got to sit down a moment, fellows,” he declared, suiting the action to the word. “My legs are nearly killing me.”
“It’s not a bad scheme,” said Rob, finding a place on a dead log. “Who wants to carry the luggage a while?”
“I’ll take it,” said Evan. “We ought to be pretty near the path, hadn’t we?”
“Yes,” replied Malcolm. “I thought we’d have reached it before this. But it can’t be far away.”
But when they resumed their journey the path remained elusive. They went down for another ten minutes, dodging between trees, sliding and slipping down the slope, tripping over roots and snags and forcing their way through the young growth. At last Rob stopped, clinging to a sapling, and surveyed the tiny space about them left visible by the fog.