“So the part we are on is nearly a hundred years old!” Lou exclaimed.
They plodded steadily upward, by a fairly steep grade, though not a difficult one. The rising sun was now striking down into the spruce and hemlock woods about them, but they noted that it was rather a hazy sun.
“I bet there’s a cloud on Washington,” Art muttered.
“What’ll we do if there is? Can we climb in it?” Frank asked.
“That all depends,” the Scout Master replied, “upon how bad a cloud it is. If we get into a storm up there, a real storm, we’ll beat it back, you bet! I haven’t told you, I guess, that as late as 1900 two men lost their lives on this path in a snow-storm on the 30th of June—that’s hardly more than a week earlier than to-day. Down here it’s midsummer, but up there on the five thousand or six thousand foot level it’s still early spring.”
“Golly!” said Peanut, in such a heartfelt manner that the rest laughed—though they laughed rather soberly.
“I ought to add,” the Scout Master went on, “that W. B. Curtis and his companion, Allen Ormsby, the two men who died, would not have perished, probably, if they had turned back when they first saw threats of bad weather, as they were warned to do, instead of trying to keep on, or even if there had been a shelter hut, as there is now, on the long, bare, wind-swept col between Monroe and the summit cone of Washington. They tried to build a shelter under Monroe, and then left that to press on to the summit. Curtis didn’t quite get to the site of the present hut, but doubtless he would have if the hope of it had been there to spur him on. As it was, he evidently fell and injured himself, and Ormsby died some distance up the final cone, struggling in a mad attempt to get to the top and find aid for Curtis. He had fifty bruises on his body where the wind had blown him against the rocks. Curtis was thinly clad, and he was sixty years old. Two guides, descending, who met them on Pleasant, had warned them not to go on—that there was snow and terrible wind above; but they evidently didn’t realize at all what they were in for.”
“Oh, well, we’ve got blankets, and you know the way,” cried Peanut. “What do we care? Guess we’ll ride out anything that can hit us in July!”
The conversation was suddenly interrupted by a sharp “S-sh!” from Art, who was leading. The rest stopped short, and looked up the path in the direction of his pointing finger.
There, right in the path fifty feet ahead, pecking away at the mould exactly like a hen in the barnyard, was a big brown partridge! The Scouts stole softly toward it, expecting every moment to see it rise and go whirring off through the woods. It did stop feeding, raised its head to look at them, and then hopped up the bank beside the path and began scratching again.