Uncle Billy smiled. “We may get a little exploring yet, before we get back to Portland. You never can tell. Well, who’s going to sleep tonight?”
“I guess we all are.”
“Till the cold wakes us up,” said Mr. Stone.
“And a rock grows up through our shoulder blades,” said Spider.
“Whenever that happens, put some more wood on the fire,” said Uncle Billy.
Then everybody rolled up in his blanket, feet to the fire, with his pack for a pillow, and in spite of the bare ground, in place of a nice air mattress, was soon asleep.
CHAPTER XVI
The Climb Up Scott Peak—Bennie Begins Work for a Merit Badge for Hiking
But the night wasn’t very old before everybody had discovered that there is a big difference between sleeping on an air mattress, inside four or five blankets in a sleeping bag, under a tent, and sleeping on the bare ground, in one blanket. Bennie and Spider had slept on the bare ground, to be sure, many a time on their scout hikes at home, but that was always in summer, when it was warm. To be sure, it was summer now, but they were more than 6,000 feet up, on the crest of the Cascades, with snow all around them.
It seemed to Bennie as if he had been asleep only fifteen minutes, when he was waked up by cold. He didn’t fully wake up at first, but only just enough to feel the wind getting down around his neck, and to feel his whole body stiff and uncomfortable. He yanked the blanket tighter around him, and tried to go to sleep again. But, instead, he woke up still more.
At last he was awake enough to prop himself up on one elbow, and look at the fire. It had burned down to a few glowing embers in the stone pit against the lava block. Overhead the stars were extremely bright, but the night itself seemed dark. There wasn’t a sound in the world. Yes! Hark! Bennie’s ears grew alert in the darkness. Far off he heard a roar, starting low, then growing louder, then dying away. At first he couldn’t understand it; then he realized it was a landslide somewhere on a steep slope, perhaps over on the rim of the lake a mile and a half away. He listened again, but there was no further sound—only a whisper of wind in the fir trees close by, and the gentle run of the water in the creek. Suddenly Bennie realized that he was in the very heart of the wilderness, that except for his four companions asleep beside him, there wasn’t a human being within a day’s hike. He also realized that if he didn’t put some wood on the fire pretty quick, it would be out entirely.