“And then Peanut let out a Comanche yell when we did strike the Gulf Side,” put in Art, “with all the wind he had left——”
“Which wasn’t much,” said Peanut.
“—— and out of the cloud, off southwest somewhere we suddenly heard a faint call for ‘Help!’ It sounded awfully strange, kind of weird-like, way up there in the clouds.”
“Wonder if they’ve got the woman down by now?” said Frank.
“Lucky that doctor and the other three men were hiking along here,” Lou put in, “or we’d have had to carry her to the railroad and then walk way back over the whole Gulf Side Trail again.”
“Not me,” said Peanut. “I’d have kissed the mountains good-night, and got aboard the train myself.”
“Where did you strike those four?” asked Rob.
“They were at the hut when we first got there at two o’clock, waiting for the cloud to break,” said Mr. Rogers. “They came up Adams with us to see you fellows signal, for they said the cloud wouldn’t last long. Good trampers, they were, on their annual vacation up here. They know every path like a book.”
The Scouts were discussing signaling and its uses, and Rob was saying that it made him tired to hear people say the Scouts were taught to be warlike, when signaling had proved so valuable that very day as a means of saving life in peace, instead of taking it in war—when steps were heard outside the hut, and a second later two men stood in the door.
“Hello, any room?” they said.