The doctor led the way past the shovelers, so they would be out of the range of the falling lumps, uncoiled the rope, tied one end around his waist, flung the other end down the slope, drove his alpenstock deep and firm, braced his feet, and said:
“Now, you all go down to the end, one at a time. Keep a firm hold on the rope. Don’t ever let go with more than one hand. When you get to the bottom, brace your stocks, and Stone, you take up the slack on me as I come down.”
One by one the boys and Mr. Stone faced half sideways to the slope, kept hold of the rope with the right hand, and went down the 125 feet step by step. As Bennie started down, he saw that just above them on the rim were a dozen people, come from the hotel to watch.
“Gee, this is the life!” he shouted.
The boys watched Uncle Billy come down when everybody else was at the rope’s end. He had no rope to help him, of course, but he used his alpenstock with one hand, and drove his boots firmly into the snow with a sideways motion which made a little step for him.
“Guess old Uncle Bill knows his way about,” thought Bennie.
From this point, the operation was repeated, getting them down 250 feet. But by now the shovelers in the path above had worked ahead, and the snow chunks were whizzing past uncomfortably close. They saw that the ravine narrowed ahead of them into a kind of bottle neck, and all the chunks worked into that neck. They would have to pass right through it. No use in yelling up to the shovelers to quit, either. Their job was to get the trail opened as soon as possible. Besides, they were laughing, and the little party down in the ravine knew that meant they were just waiting to get them into the narrow place and bombard them.
“Keep half an eye up the slope this next drop,” the doctor said, “and watch out for cannon balls. Those fellows up there are going to wing us if they can. The chunks won’t break any bones, but they’ll hurt. Once we’re through the neck, we can get round behind that rock, and be out of range.”
“Let her go!” said Mr. Stone.
Nobody lost any time on that next drop. Mr. Stone went first, and no sooner was he out into the narrow groove of the ravine than a perfect avalanche of snow chunks came whizzing down. Most of them got broken up before they reached him, but every now and then one hung together, as big as a shoveler could lift out of the path, and went whizzing by a mile a minute. One of them bounced up just before it reached him, and landed ker-blam against his camera sack, smashing into a thousand pieces, and nearly taking him off his feet.