The two specks of snow were certainly moving. The whole party watched till their necks ached, but the goats had either seen them or were not bound for the lower reaches, anyhow, for they did not come down. Instead, they walked along the cliff wall, and presently disappeared around a headland.
“Why, they’re just like flies!” one of the congressmen exclaimed. “I suppose they were on a ledge. How wide do you reckon it was?”
“Might have been two feet, might have been six inches,” Mills answered. “I’ve seen sheep and goats go around a ledge on a sheer precipice that wasn’t over four inches wide, and stop to scratch themselves on the way!”
“I’m going to climb up there and see how steep that place is!” Bob cried.
“Hooray! Us, too,” said Alice and Lucy. “Come on, Joe.”
Mills was smiling, and Joe thought once more of the story of the Englishman. He told the story now, and Mills smiled again.
“Is it that far, Mr. Mills—now, honestly?” the girls asked.
“Go ahead and try it,” the Ranger said, still smiling. “I’ll come along, like Joe’s friend.”
The five of them started out, worked around the head of the lake, and began at once to climb the long, steep, rough shale pile at the foot of the first cliff. Above this first cliff was another slope, before the cliff began on which they had seen the goats. It was hard going, with thick patches of timber-line scrub spruces which held you like iron and tore like barbed wire, and sharp, irregular rocks of all sizes, and slopes of loose, small stones that gave way underfoot, and even patches of snow. They toiled on, Mills in the rear this time, still smiling, until at last they reached the foot of the first cliff, and looked far down at the lake and their tents. They could see the people there, the horses, even Joe’s fire pit and a tin kettle.
“Why, I could almost throw a stone down on ’em,” said Bob, “yet I feel as if we’d come a long way.”