He gave a shout.
“Don’t miss this!” he cried. “Gee, it’s worth a lost night’s sleep, and then some!”
Sleepy, stiff forms emerged from the tent behind him, and gazed at the sunrise over a world that was white with winter, and yet was summer. Everybody exclaimed with delight—except the Ranger.
“This will make Cleveland hopeless,” was all he said, as he began to pull the fallen tent up out of its drift.
“Well, I’m going to name this old camp Valley Forge,” Robert Crimmins laughed, as he stamped his feet and blew on his fingers, before picking a wild flower for his buttonhole!
CHAPTER XXIII—Up To Chaney Glacier and the Discovery of a Three Thousand Foot Precipice
It was a hard job digging the camp out of the snow, and only the fact that Tom had covered the wood and weighted down the canvas to hold it on gave them dry fuel to cook with. They had no snow shovels, using frying-pans and dippers to clear away the drifts from the fire pit and their packs.
“Valley Forge is the right name,” Mr. Crimmins laughed as he stamped his feet and blew on his fingers, as Robert had done.
But the sun was now up, the air was rapidly warming, and while Joe got the breakfast, Mills and Tom waded out through the snow in search of the horses. They had to go a long way, too, for the wise beasts had simply wandered down the trail into the woods, and kept on descending until they had got below the snow line into rain, where the grass was not covered and they could feed. It was almost two hours later that the Ranger and Tom came driving them back, cross, hungry, and with boots soaked by the snow and clothes soaked by the wet bushes.
So they got a late start that morning.