“I am satisfied with Oregon,” Dumplin’ began to sing, in a high falsetto voice to the tune of “Glory, glory, hallelujah.”
“Shut up, do you want to wake everybody else on the rim, just because you’re up?” his father cautioned.
“Time they got up,” Dumplin’ laughed. “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man dopy with sleep in his eyes.”
“Gosh, if he can’t sing, he makes up poetry,” Bennie groaned. “Give him a flapjack, quick.”
As soon as breakfast was over, Mr. Stone and the doctor tinkered the cars for the trip, while the boys struck the tents, deflated and rolled up the sleeping bags, packed their dunnage sacks, and then began to stow the luggage in the cars. It was after seven when everything was at last packed aboard, and Uncle Billy gave the order to start. The engines turned over, reluctant to start after their long idleness, but at last the explosions came, the exhausts spit smoke, and the cars moved out over dry ground, where a week ago had been a snow-drift, headed toward the road.
“Good-bye, old lake!” cried Bennie.
“Au revoir, for me. I’m coming back some day,” said Spider.
“And now where, Uncle Billy?” Bennie added.
“Bend,” said his uncle. “I wish we could go back home on the Sky Line Trail that some day Oregon is going to build into a highway right up along the spine of the Cascades. But at present it is only a ranger’s trail, and it takes weeks to travel it, with an expensive pack train. So we are going by motor up the east side of the range to the town of Bend, and we’ll get a pack train there and go in and sample a bit of the Sky Line Trail, to say we’ve ridden it, and maybe climb a snow mountain.”
“Are we going in on horseback?” Bennie demanded.