This was soon accomplished, and Arthur declared that he would have excellent results to show for all their work.
“You’ve got to print a copy for each one of us, too,” remarked Billy seriously. “I’m going to have an enlargement made, which I can frame and hang over the desk in my den at home. Every time I look up at it I’ll remember what it means, and feel thankful that I joined the scouts and that Hugh was along with us! It gives me a cold shiver to think what might have happened if the other three of us had been by ourselves. Neither Bud nor myself would have known enough to put up any objection when you made your bid for shelter, Arthur.”
“Oh! forget that, can’t you?” pleaded Bud. “Let’s move on, fellows, and find something more cheerful to look at than heaps of kindling wood, great splinters, and broken branches every-which-way.”
“Do we start for the bully rocks now, Hugh?” asked Billy, when the artist had gathered his traps together and seemed ready to continue the tramp.
“That’s the next thing on the program; and after we’ve taken what views we want there, why, I’ll show you what I want to try out. It struck me yesterday as we were looking for new nut trees up here, and I saw how fine the cliffs stood up in several places.”
“P’r’aps, Hugh,” chuckled Billy, “you might be aiming to give the Excelsior fire-fighters a few object lessons on how to save people from ten-story tenement buildings; but as we haven’t anything taller than three stories in our town, I don’t see just how they’ll profit by it.”
“Of course I wasn’t thinking of the fire company when I laid out these plans,” the patrol leader said; “but this rope-climbing business is like a good many other things scouts learn: they don’t ever expect to have to depend on such a thing to save either their own life, or that of another person; but if the time ever does come, it’s handy to know how.”
“You’re right there, Hugh,” admitted Billy; “it’s just like a man insuring his house against fire. I don’t reckon anybody ever believes his house is going to burn down; but he only wants to have his mind easy.”
“Well, lots of the stunts scouts learn are just so much insurance, as you might say,” Hugh declared. “And the more a boy stocks up with this stuff, the better he’s equipped for life. That’s where it counts big, I’m telling you.”
“And there is where we tucked ourselves away from the cloud-burst!” announced Billy, being the first to glimpse the queer rocky formations in the shape of shelves, that jutted out for six feet or so from the face of the hill.