“Yes, and who’ll go with me?” said Tom. “Can’t go alone. Besides, didn’t we come out here for you to get well? Forget it, wifey.”
“Oh, I don’t care what you call me to-day,” Joe laughed. “I’ve had too good a time—and I’m going to find a way for you to, now. You wait—something will turn up.”
Something did—and that very night, just after the party Tom expected went into the chalets, too tired to camp.
Yet the turn-up did not look a bit promising when it arrived. It was a small man, with big steel spectacles, enormous hobnail boots, a huge pack, a blanket roll, and a coil of curious, soft rope around his waist. He was a man about forty years old, and didn’t look as if he could carry such a load two miles. Yet he came down the trail at six o’clock erect and brisk, and said casually he’d come that day from the Sun Camp, over Piegan Pass.
“That’s twenty-two miles!” the boys exclaimed.
“Is it?” said he. “I should hardly have called it so far. Have you a cook here?”
“Why, yes,” said Tom. “Joe’s a cook. Folks at camp generally get their own meals. I’d hardly know how to charge.”
“I hate my own meals,” the man said. “That’s why I always take a pocket full of raisins for lunch. You get me dinner and breakfast, and I guess we can reckon out a fair payment. Am I alone in the camp to-night?”
“There was a party coming,” Tom said, “but they were so tired, they went to the chalets. I don’t expect anybody else.”
“Too bad,” the man said. “Not that I pine for company, but I do want to find somebody to climb with me. Here I’ve brought an Alpine rope all the way out here, and I can’t find a soul to shin a precipice.”