Dear Bennie:
I start for Crater Lake and the Sky Line Trail on July 1st, leaving Portland by motor. I am a plain, rough man, but I might be improved by your learned society, and our scenery would be honored by your inspection. By all means bring Spider. Spiders are very useful in camp, to cook the bacon in. You’d better come two or three days ahead of the start, so I can look over your outfit. Bring your scout axes, canteens, flannel shirts, khaki breeches, leggings, and things like that. Boots are the most important item—very heavy, and water-proof. You can get good ones here. Bring snow goggles if you have them. Save your rope. I have one, though it isn’t boiled like yours. I always fry my ropes. I’ll write to you later about trains, and more about your equipment. Tell your mother that she is going to have a nice, quiet summer.
Your humble uncle, William Warren.
Bennie read this letter aloud to Spider, and they both emitted a whoop of joy.
“Some bird, old Uncle Bill!” cried Bennie. “Always fries his ropes! I bet he’s got a real Alpine rope—braided and everything. Gee, I’ll bet we climb a real humdinger of a mountain. Maybe Mount Hood! Oh, boy!”
“Say, I’d work every afternoon in the store for the rest of my life, to climb old Hood!” said Spider. “Come on, let’s go look up how high Mount Hood is.”
“I’ve looked it up—it’s 11,225 feet,” said Bennie.
“And Monument is 1,600,” Spider reflected. “More’n 9,000 feet taller than Monument! Wow!”
“It’s going to be a long time till June,” said Bennie.
CHAPTER IV
Bennie and Spider Cross the Continent
It certainly did seem a long while to both the scouts between the time of getting Uncle Bill’s letter and the closing of school in June. But it was a pretty busy time, too. Bennie had to keep on studying, so he could make sure of passing his examinations, and Spider had to put in an hour or two every day in his father’s store. Beside that, they had to have another go at the Monument Mountain cliffs as soon as the snow was gone in the spring, and at about every other rock, big or little, within tramping radius of home. They took the rest of the scouts along on these expeditions, but as nobody but Bennie and Spider were going to Oregon, the others didn’t get so excited about climbing as they did, and soon everybody was playing baseball, leaving Bennie and Spider to practice rock scaling alone.
June came at last, and so did examinations. Bennie passed them easily, for the first time in his life—just because he had got his work from day to day. Then the time came to buy their railroad tickets and get their berths reserved. Before they knew it, their trunks were packed, and they were ready to start on the long journey.