“Yes, and we’ll build some shelter lean-tos where we can go and spend the night,” Bennie offered.
“Sure, and we’ll make some easy trails, and some hard ones, with cliff climbs in ’em.”
“Sure, and put warning signs on the bad ones—‘Dangerous—only for experienced climbers.’”
“Like us,” Spider laughed. “Seriously, though, I bet we can do a lot to help the scouts and the town, and everybody, and have a lot of fun, and you and I can survey and map out the trails first, and get our merit badges in hiking that way, at the same time!”
“Great!” cried Bennie.
They continued to lay their plans all the way home, but they forgot them for a day or two in the excitement of greetings, and seeing their parents, and the old town, and all their fellow scouts. Bennie spent half his time for the next few days trying to cut up wood and weed the drive, while half a dozen boys stood around, making him tell them about Crater Lake, and the climb up Llao Rock, and how Dumplin’ fell on Jefferson.
But after the first week was over, and they had settled back into the life of Southmead, Spider and Bennie got together with Mr. Rogers, the scout master, and outlined their trail plans. He was enthusiastic about them, and they set to work at once, with the help of his suggestions. They went out every afternoon till school opened, hiking through the woods and up the small 2,000-foot mountains around Southmead, surveying practical routes for paths, and making sketch maps. After school opened, they had to abandon the daily trips, but got in long ones on Saturdays. By October they had enough work planned out to keep the scout troop busy for months, and the task of opening the trails with scout axes, brush hooks, and pruning shears began.
The first trail opened was an old, steep path, long since overgrown by laurel and other bushes and small trees, up the mountain to the top of the cliffs the boys had climbed the previous winter. It took them five Saturdays, working with a gang of ten scouts, to get this trail, two miles long, cleaned out. By that time, Mr. Stone’s pictures had come, and the scouts made twenty-five dollars by exhibiting them at the Town Hall, so that everybody could see what the Oregon mountains were like. Mr. Rogers kept the money, and the first use made of it was to have three or four white signs made, to mark the newly-cut trail. Every sign carried, in black letters, the name of the trail—“Cliff Path to Monument Mountain,” and, below, the name of the organization erecting it—“Southmead Boy Scouts.”
As soon as these signs were ready, the troop took them out and put them at the proper places—at each end, and at the points where old wood roads crossed, to make confusion.
During the winter, Spider and Bennie hiked on snowshoes many miles, over all the surrounding hills, trail planning, and visited the scouts in the next town, planning with them a foot-trail over the long, rocky ridge of wooded hills between the two villages. When spring came, this work, too, was started, the two troops working from their respective ends. They finally met at the town boundary, erected a shelter there, and had a big camp fire and celebration.