Finally Mills, without warning, turned out of the gully, close to its top, and swung out on a wide ledge right under the final two or three hundred feet of the climb. On this ledge, which didn’t show from below, was a regular little garden of moss campion and Alpine wild flowers.
“Goat food,” said Mills, shortly. He had hardly spoken a word since the first bad place, and the doctor had been equally silent They sat down to rest on this wide ledge, and looked off at last upon the great prospect below them, with the lake, like a little green mirror now, far beneath.
“Wonderful!” the doctor exclaimed. “A magnificent balcony seat we have in this amphitheatre, and no ushers to bother us. Mills, you’re a good climber—you don’t talk.”
Mills smiled. “Never knew a safe mountain man who did talk on a cliff or a glacier,” said he.
“No, you can’t watch your footing and gabble at the same time. Bah! how I hate a talker on a climb!”
“A man came out here once in a big party,” said the Ranger. “I took ’em up Cleveland. When we hit the real climb, he fetched out a sign from his pack, and hung it on his back. It read, ‘I’m not very sociable when I’m climbing.’”
The doctor and Tom laughed, and the former added, “There’s a wise man!”
The ledge on which they sat, which was like a little secret garden hung up here two thousand feet above the lake, was covered with goat tracks, and Mills pointed out several little caves, too, under overhanging rocks, where, he said, the kids were probably born. Above them, the last three hundred feet of the cliff went up perfectly straight, and Tom didn’t see how they were going to get any farther.
But Mills presently rose and led the way to a “chimney,” which is the name given to an open cleft in a rock wall. This chimney was so narrow that a man could brace his back on one side, and his feet on the other, and climb it just as you climb a well. Of course, it was rough, with plenty of projections to cling to. Mills had the hardest job here, for he had no rope to help him.
The doctor spoke in here, breaking his rule.