“That ought to count for twenty, I’ll say,” Bennie declared. “And how much the last day?”
“Well, with our getting wood for breakfast, and taking a last look at the pinnacles, and your two trips to the hotel, I guess we can call today twenty miles.”
“I’ll take a trot around now, if I need to,” Bennie laughed.
“No, you can sit still. Well, that qualifies you on number four, anyhow, and gives you a good start on number three. Number five you’ll have to do at home. Number six you can attend to some day in camp, and let me see what you’ve written about these three days. Number seven—h’m—you’ve got a lot to learn yet about using maps, I suspect. Go get your map of Crater Lake, and let me see you lay out, with a pencil, what looks like the best way to hike from here to Crater Peak, five miles south of us.”
Bennie worked over this for some time, and then showed the line he had drawn.
“Good!” said his uncle. “I’m glad to see you haven’t drawn an air-line path that plunges you down any 500-foot precipices, or takes you up any 600-foot walls.”
“I learned something on this trip,” said Bennie. “I learned that when they put contour lines close together on a map, it means steep, and if there are a lot of ’em, and they are very close, it means, ‘Detour to the right.’”
“That’s the idea. Well, boy, are you going to stick? Will you write out for me an account of this trip, and the next one we take, too, and try to work for this merit badge?”
“You bet I will!”
“May I, too?” asked Spider.