“I won’t forget. And don’t you forget you’re coming back some day.”
“A swell chance of forgetting that!” laughed Bennie. “And don’t forget, Dump, that you’re coming East to college, with Spider and me.”
The train was made up now. The boys shook hands and shouted a dozen more messages of farewell as they went through the gates and climbed aboard.
It was dark when the train got up into the Columbia gorge. They saw no more of the Cascade Mountains. The next ones they saw were the Rockies. There was little snow left now, in mid-August, on the Rockies.
“Give me the old Cascades,” said Bennie.
“Just the same, I’d like to stop off a few days and climb the Rockies, and see Glacier Park, and Yellowstone Park, and the Grand Canyon, and——”
“Did you say a few days?” Bennie laughed. “Spider, you and I have got to get busy the next few years, and make a bunch of money, so’s we can really see America.”
“We’ve done pretty well for one summer, at that,” Spider answered. “And I’ll tell you one thing, it’s up to us to do something to pay for it. I’ve got a scheme, too.”
As they traveled homeward, Spider developed his scheme. It was to raise some money for the scouts by showing Mr. Stone’s movies, and with the money have a lot of signs made, to mark trails with. Then Spider and Bennie and the scout master, maybe, would lead the scouts in opening up footpaths for trampers over the highest hills and cliffs around Southmead. Some of these trails used to exist, but they had long since grown over, and the summer boarders were always getting lost trying to find them. But many of the wildest places, the spots where there were the best views, had no trails at all.
“We’ll make trails,” Spider declared.