“Let’s get her to the trail,” Rob suggested, “and then one of us will have to go for help. What’s nearer, Washington or the Madison Hut? Look at the map, Art.”
“We must be on the edge of the Monticello Lawn on the south shoulder of Jefferson,” Art replied. “It’s about an even break, but it’s nearer to Adams, where our crowd is waiting for us.”
“Well, we’ll get her to the path, and decide,” Rob said. “Stretcher!”
The boys made a stretcher with their coats and staffs, and Rob and the man took the ends, while the woman, who was large and heavy, was helped up, groaning with pain, and sat on it. It was quite all they could do to carry her, and the poles sagged dangerously. Art went ahead with the compass, walking almost due east, and they reached the Gulf Side Trail and lowered the stretcher.
“Now,” said Rob, “two of us had better go for help to Adams. Art, you and I will, I guess. Peanut, you wait here and make the lady as comfortable as you can in our blankets.”
“Hold on!” Peanut cried. “See, the cloud is breaking up! Maybe we can signal. That would be quicker.”
The clouds were surely breaking. They didn’t so much lift as suddenly begin to blow off, under the pressure of a wind which was springing up. The top of Jefferson was visible through a rift even as the party watched, and presently a shaft of sunlight hit them, and the whole upper cone of Jefferson was revealed, a pyramidal pile of bare, broken stone.
“Give me the staffs and two towels,” Peanut cried. “I’ll have help here in half an hour!”
Rob went with him, and the two Scouts, forgetting how weary they were, began almost to run up the five hundred feet of the summit cone, without any path, scrambling over the great stones without thought of bruised shins.
When they reached the peak, the clouds were entirely off the range—they had disappeared as if by magic—and the sharp cone of Adams to the northeast, almost two miles away in an air line, was plainly visible. As they stood on the highest rock, a flash of light sprang at them from the other summit.