“Good gracious, is it a tame partridge?” Art whispered in astonishment.
But his astonishment was still greater when, a moment later, the whole party stood in the path not six feet from the bird, and saw that it was one of a small covey of six. Four of them were feeding on the ground, and making soft, pretty coots, like hens on a hot summer day. Two were perched lazily on the low branch of a hemlock. They paid no attention to the Scouts.
“Gee!” said Frank, “you could knock ’em over with a stick! Let’s have partridge for dinner.”
“Nix!” said Art. “It’s out of season. Besides, I wouldn’t kill anything so tame. I guess they’re not hunted much here. I never saw ’em tame like this before in my life. Down home they’d have been a mile away by now.”
The birds looked up at the sound of his voice, and moved a few feet farther off. Then they began feeding again, the hens following the cock in a sort of procession.
“They certainly are pretty,” Rob said. “I didn’t know a partridge was so pretty. Take a picture of ’em, Frank.”
“Not sun enough in under those trees,” Frank sighed. “I wish I could.”
The boys were reluctant to leave the partridges, but the day was mounting, and they pressed on.
The trees were growing more and more stunted, and rocks began to appear in the trail. Now and then there was a break to the north, and they could see far below to the broad green intervale of Bretton Woods. In another half hour, the forest had shrunk to dwarf shrubs, and they emerged above timber line almost upon the top of Clinton. The summit, however, lay a few hundred feet to the south of them, and shut out the view in that direction. Northward, they could see for a long distance. Westward, too, they looked back at the first mountains toward Franconia. Ahead of them, they saw only a great, bare, rocky ridge rising gradually to the dome of Mount Pleasant, and to the left of this, northeastward, the sloping shoulders of the mountains beyond, falling away to the valley far beneath. Washington was hidden somewhere beyond Pleasant—still six miles away. It was nine o’clock. The dome of Pleasant was free from clouds. The northern sky was blue. Yet the sun was hazy, and southeastward there seemed to be a haze over everything. The wind was cold. Mr. Rogers shook his head, but said nothing.
Sitting down to rest, and ease shoulders from the pull of the pack straps, he pulled the little green Appalachian guide book out of his pocket, and read the “Caution” therein about the Crawford Path: