Pack Train Descending to Hunt’s Cove. Mount Jefferson in the Distance.

Boy Scouts at Crater Lake

A STORY OF CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK AND THE HIGH CASCADES

By
WALTER PRICHARD EATON

Illustrated with Photographs
FRED H. KISER

W. A. WILDE COMPANY
BOSTON CHICAGO

Copyrighted, 1922,
By W. A. Wilde Company
All rights reserved
Made in U.S.A.

FOREWORD

(For Parents and Similar People)

It seems to be generally assumed that a story for boys must be crowded full of adventures, and the assumption is doubtless based on experience. This would be all right if the adventures were also based on experience. Unfortunately, however, such is not always the case, and then the result is something that may possibly satisfy an immediate craving of the boy for excitement, but in the long run can only confuse his sense of reality. It is probably more important, in a boy’s development, to clarify his sense of reality than it is to feed his imagination. His imagination, normally, needs very little prodding to carry him away from reality. That is why tales of actual adventure, such as the records of explorers, hunters, and the like, are so worth while for boys. They feed the imagination while, at the same time, keeping touch with the real. They have the lure of fiction, and the solidity of fact.

It has been my steady purpose, in the Boy Scout series of stories which I have written, to bear this in mind. I have not described places with which I was unfamiliar, nor created adventures it was impossible for boys to experience. In the volume preceding the present one, “Boy Scouts in Glacier Park,” I endeavored to give some adequate idea of that beautiful National Park, and hence of a section of the Rocky Mountain wilderness, and the actual adventures one may now encounter therein. Our friend, Bill Hart, of movie fame, may be relied on to supply the other sort of Wild West adventure, without any need of help from me. The response of my young readers was so pleasantly encouraging that I am asking them, in this book, to go still farther West, into another National Park, Crater Lake, and into the Cascade wilderness of Oregon. Whitman’s ride for Oregon was long ago, and today they are building a macadam highway where his horse left a solitary track.

The Cascade Mountains afford numerous opportunities for snow climbing—and anyone who has practiced this noble sport does not need to be told that it supplies plenty of adventure. Snow mountains have a way of withdrawing themselves many miles from human habitation, and a pack train is scarcely to be afforded save by those who have reached years of comparative discretion, so I have no fear of sending youngsters out alone to start up the Roosevelt Glacier. If, however, I can inspire some few of them to persuade their fathers to take them into the high places, I know that both they and their fathers will ultimately thank me.

But chiefly, in the end, I want young America to know and to love and to preserve what is left of the American wilderness.

W. P. E.

Twin Fires, Sheffield, Massachusetts.

CONTENTS

I. [Bennie Visits the Public Library and Gives Spider a Surprise] 13 II. [Bennie Takes the Rope Up His First Cliff] 19 III. [How Bennie Earned a Trip to Oregon] 31 IV. [Bennie and Spider Cross the Continent] 39 V. [All Aboard for Crater Lake!—and Dumpling in the Other Car] 50 VI. [Bennie and Spider Have to Make After-dinner Speeches, and Bennie’s Knees Knock] 57 VII. [Held Up by the Snow, with the Thermometer at 86°] 68 VIII. [Up the Rim of Crater Lake at Last, Through the Snow-drifts] 75 IX. [The Mountain That Fell Into Itself] 83 X. [Down the Rim to the Lake—The Boys Ski on a Crater Snow-drift in July] 88 XI. [Dumplin’ Tests the Strength of a Snow Cornice on Garfield Peak] 106 XII. [Bennie Climbs the Mast of the Phantom Ship and Knows He Has Done Something] 113 XIII. [The Scouts Are Driven Ashore by a Storm and Have to Climb Llao Rock—and They Learn a Lesson] 122 XIV. [Bennie Takes a Day Off to Do a Good Turn—He Washes All the Dirty Clothes] 137 XV. [The Long Hike—The Scouts Find Packing Grub and Blanket Rolls Up and Down Cliffs is Hard Work] 144 XVI. [The Climb Up Scott Peak—Bennie Begins Work for a Merit Badge for Hiking] 154 XVII. [Good-bye to Crater Lake, and a Motor Trip to Bend] 167 XVIII. [The Boys Encounter “Pep,” Who Promises Them a Bear Hunt] 174 XIX. [The Bear Hunt—In Which the Boys Discover that the Bear Doesn’t Do All the Hard Work] 178 XX. [Bennie Achieves a Dog, and the Party Puts Out a Forest Fire] 206 XXI. [The Pack Train Has to Toboggan Into Hunt’s Cove, and Bennie Puts “Action” Into It] 221 XXII. [The First Attempt at Jefferson—Dumplin’ Almost Falls to Death—The Hardest Work the Boys Ever Did] 234 XXIII. [The Summit is Conquered!] 262 XXIV. [Back Over the Divide—A Horse Turns Three Somersaults Down the Snow Slope] 273 XXV. [Bennie Loses Jeff, but Brings Home Something Else to Last Him Many Years] 280

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE [Pack Train Descending to Hunt’s Cove. Mount Jefferson in the Distance. (Frontispiece)] 222 [Crater Lake—Wizard Island, and Over it Llao Rock] 80 [Campers at the Rim of Crater Lake. Mid-July Snow in Foreground] 88 [The Boys Sliding Down Wizard Island Crater (Enlarged from a Movie)] 98 [The Boys Walking on the Snow Cornice of Garfield Peak (Enlarged from a Movie)] 108 [Looking Across Hunt’s Cove to Jefferson. Dotted Line Shows Route of Climb; Arrow Points to Place Where Dumplin’ Slipped] 252 [Crossing the Divide Near Mount Jefferson, on July 25th. Three Fingered Jack in Distance] 274 [Saint Peter’s Dome and Columbia River. Mount Adams in Far Distance] 286

Boy Scouts at Crater Lake

CHAPTER I
Bennie Visits the Public Library and Gives Spider a Surprise

Bennie Capen was sitting in the public library reading a book. Miss Lizzie Cox, the librarian, was watching him with some suspicion. Bennie was not what you might call one of her regular customers, and she was surprised to see him come in, ask for a certain book, and take it off to the reading table. She certainly watched him as if she suspected a nigger in the wood-pile somewhere. Bennie had a reputation in Southmead, but it wasn’t exactly a reputation for bookishness. Some people said he was a “bad boy,” some people laughed and said he was “full o’ pep,” and some people, including Mr. Rogers, the scout master of Bennie’s troop, said the trouble with Bennie was that his engine was too powerful for the chassis. Anyway, Miss Lizzie Cox, behind the delivery desk, frowned as she watched him through her gold-rimmed glasses, as if she expected to see him throw the book at little Bob Walters, across the table, or pull the hair of Lucy Smith, who was consulting the encyclopædia preparatory to writing a composition on “The Products of the Philippine Islands.”

However, Bennie did none of these things. He read steadily in his book, after first looking at all the pictures, and emitting several low whistles, each one of which brought a sharp, admonitory rap of her pencil on the desk from Miss Cox, and a loud “Silence!” Bennie grinned cheerfully each time, and went on reading and looking at the pictures. His eyes were bright, and every now and then he ran his fingers excitedly through his brown hair, till it stood straight up on his forehead.

By and by little Bob Walters returned the bound volume of St. Nicholas and went out. Lucy Smith exhausted the products of the Philippine Islands (or her own patience), and took refuge in “Vogue.” From the streets outside came the shouts of a snowball fight. But Bennie kept on reading. Finally the door opened, and another scout came in, a tall, slender boy with two books under his arm. He saw Bennie as he was walking up to the desk, and stopped, surprised. Then he stole over on tiptoe, and looked over Bennie’s shoulder at the book.

“Gosh all hemlock, Bennie,” he whispered, “plugging to get a hundred per cent in physical geography? You don’t care how much of a shock you give your dear teacher, do you?”

Bennie looked up, with his usual grin. “’Lo, Spider,” he said. “Say, this old book is some humdinger, I’ll tell the world.”

“Don’t tell the world so loud, or Miss Cox’ll be out over the desk,” Bob Chandler whispered back, catching a sight of the librarian’s face out of a corner of his eye. “What is the book?”

Bennie turned back to the title page, and Spider read, “On British Crags and Alpine Heights.”

“Say, wait a minute—look at this picture,” said Bennie, turning the pages to find it. “Here it is. Look at that old cliff! And pipe where that guy is climbing. Oh, boy! That’s only one, too. ’Most every picture’s like that, or more exciting, and it tells how somebody fell off most of ’em, and was killed, and——”

“Silence!” from Miss Lizzie Cox.

“Old crab!” whispered Bennie. “Well, I gotter finish this chapter ’fore closing time.”

“Why don’t you take the book out? I’d like to read it, too,” Spider whispered.

“Haven’t got a card,” Bennie confessed. “Guess I don’t read as much as I ought to.”

“Guess you don’t,” said Spider. “Here, give it to me. I’ll take it out for you.”

“How’d you ever know about it, anyhow?” he asked, when they were outside the building, on the snowy sidewalk. “Gave me some shock to see you sitting in the library!”

“Mr. Rogers told me about it,” Bennie answered. “We got to talking about mountains, and climbing, and he said to go ask for this book and see what real climbing is like. Oh, boy! I wish we had something like those old what d’you call ’ems—spitzes—around these diggings.”

“A spitz being what?” Spider laughed.

“Here, give me the book—I’ll show you. It’s a German word, I guess—means spire, maybe—I don’t know. Never studied Dutch—probably wouldn’t know if I had—but anyhow they’re tall, sharp rocky peaks, pretty nearly straight up, in the Alps somewhere, and you climb ’em with your teeth and your toe-nails.”

The two scouts paused in the middle of the sidewalk, while Bennie hunted out a picture of several men, roped together, climbing the precipitous face of one of the Dolomites, and their faces were over the book, looking at the thrilling photograph—when, blam, came a snowball, crashing into Bennie’s side.

He thrust the book into Spider’s hands for safe-keeping, stooped for a handful of snow, and dashed around the corner of the post-office after the vanishing pair of heels.

When he came back he was grinning. “Fresh guy, that Tenderfoot,” he said. “His ma won’t need to wash his face for supper tonight. Come on, let’s go to my house and look at those old pictures some more.”

They were soon curled up on the couch in his father’s library, with the book first on one lap and then on the other. After they had looked twice at every picture, they read aloud to each other parts of the text, especially the most exciting parts they could find, but skipping the descriptions of scenery and the long foreign names. The Welsh names were worse than the German.

What interested them most, however, were the pictures that showed how the rope is used, both in climbing and descending, and the passages about it.

“I wish we had a braided rope!” Spider exclaimed.

“Guess we could get some sort of a rope, all right,” said Bennie. “But where are we going to get the—the spitzes to use it on? Those old mountains make ours look like pimples.”

“Oh, they’re not so bad—they’re something, anyway,” Spider answered. “I bet you’d need a rope to climb the cliffs on Monument Mountain, and maybe, if the snow gets deep, we’d have to cut steps in it to get up to those cliffs. Might try it.”

“Sure, we could try it. But you wouldn’t slide far enough to hurt yourself if you did slip going up to the cliffs, and I bet nobody could climb right up the cliffs themselves.”

“I bet the man who wrote this book could,” said Spider. “We never really tried it. What do you say if we get a rope and have a go at ’em, next Saturday, eh?”

“You’re on!” cried Bennie. “We’ll get the old rope tomorrow, after school. Going to take the troop along?”

“Not on your life! We’ll ask Mr. Rogers, though. We don’t want too many. Those cliffs aren’t going to be a picnic, I’ll tell the town.”

“You’ve said it,” Bennie assented. “Well, so long till tomorrow. Don’t forget to bring some money for that old rope.”

“And don’t you forget that book’s out on my card,” Spider laughed. “Won’t do it any good if you throw it at the cat.”

Bennie made as if to throw it at him, and he ducked quickly out of the door.

CHAPTER II
Bennie Takes the Rope Up His First Cliff

The next afternoon the two scouts emerged from Seymour’s store with a hundred feet of brand new half-inch rope, and ran directly into a group of half a dozen of their fellow scouts.

“Hi! Get on to Spider and Bennie!” someone cried. “What you goin’ to do, Bennie, rope a steer?”

“Goin’ to hang yourselves?” somebody else demanded.

“Goin’ to tie up the cat?” came from a third.

“Going to have some spaghetti for supper?” said a fourth.

“Goin’ to fish for minnows through the ice with it?” asked still another.

“No, we’re goin’ to tie up a pound of candy for our dear teacher,” Bennie replied. “Come on, Spider, these guys are too bright for us.”

“Don’t trip over your skipping rope, dearie,” taunted one of the scouts. Bennie hurled a snowball at him and then he and Spider dodged away from a shower of pursuing missiles.

“Well, they didn’t learn much that time,” Spider laughed, as they entered Bennie’s back yard, went into the barn, and threw an end of the rope over a rafter, so that both ends dangled to the floor.

“Now we’ll try coming down the doubled rope,” said Bennie.

He climbed out on the rafter, grasped both strands of the rope, and slid down. Spider followed him.

At the bottom they surveyed their bare palms ruefully.

“Feels as if it was full of splinters,” said Bennie.

“It’s too stiff—it’s like a piece o’ wood,” Spider complained. “Guess it isn’t much like the braided ropes Alpine climbers use. What are we going to do about it?”

“Ask Mr. Rogers,” said Bennie. “We haven’t told him about it yet, anyhow. Come on. Wait a minute, though. No use getting any more questions fired at us.”

He took one end of the rope and pulled the other end down over the beam. Then, while Spider played it out, he spun around and wound it around his body. After that, he put on his mackinaw.

“You look ’s if you weighed about two hundred,” Spider laughed.

“I feel like Houdini,” said Bennie.

They found the scout master at home, and told him their plans, and about the rope. He laughed, and grabbing the loose end, spun Bennie around like a top, while he unwound it.

“The first thing to do is to wrap a piece of twine around both ends, so it won’t unravel,” he said, “and then boil it for a day in your mother’s wash boiler—if she’ll let you.”

“Will you go with us Saturday?”

“Sure thing. But let’s take a couple more of the troop along. Not a lot. It may be dangerous. We’ll take Billy Vance and Tom Shields, eh? They are strong and careful.”

“Well, not any more,” said Bennie. “Gee whiz, we don’t want to let ’em all in on this right off the bat.”

“What kind of a scout are you?” Mr. Rogers asked. “Want to hog all the fun?”

Bennie reddened. “No, it isn’t that,” he said, “but me and Spider sort of discovered this, and we want to try it out first. A lot of ’em would only laugh. I got it out of a book.”

“Ho, that’s it!” laughed the scout master. “You don’t want to be caught reading a book! Well, I’ve a good mind to assemble the whole troop, and tell ’em the glad news. Cheer up, though, I won’t. The shock might be bad for ’em.”

“He’s got your number,” said Spider, as the two scouts left.

Bennie grinned, but he looked a little sheepish.

It took a lot of explaining before Mrs. Capen would let the boys have the wash boiler, but finally they persuaded her, and slipped the coil of rope into the water, leaving it there all night to boil.

The next day the water was a dark brown color, but the rope, after they took it out and stretched it as hard as they could from the barn around a tree and back again, dried out much softer than it had been, so that it could be easily handled. And, to complete their happiness, that night it began to snow again heavily.

“I hope it don’t stop till Saturday, and there’s six feet on the level!” cried Bennie.

There weren’t six feet, but there were more than two, badly drifted, when Saturday dawned bright and clear. When Mr. Rogers and the four scouts set out for the cliffs, two miles away, they were on snowshoes. Bennie carried the rope, carefully coiled, over his shoulder, and he had a scout hatchet in his belt, to cut steps with. Each member of the party had an alpenstock, also, some of them made by taking the guard off old ski poles, some merely by sharpening a five foot length of pole. The snow was deep, but it was also fine and powdery, so that even on snowshoes they sank well in, and had to take turns breaking trail.

“It doesn’t look to me as if we’d have to cut many steps,” said the scout master.

And it turned out that they didn’t, much to Bennie’s disgust. To reach the base of the cliffs, it was necessary to climb for 300 yards or more up a pile of rocks, of all sizes and shapes, which in ages past had been broken off from the precipice above, and now lay in a vast heap at the base, making a kind of wild, irregular stairway, and just about as steep as a flight of steps. Bennie had hoped that these rocks would be packed over hard with snow, so they would need to cut steps up the slope. But, alas! it takes far deeper snows, and snows that do not melt in spring, to form such a slope.

What they found, instead, was that the snow had filled in between the rocks just enough so you couldn’t tell whether your foot was going to sink six inches or six feet, and blown off the top of the rocks, making them slippery as glass. Of course, they had to leave their snowshoes at the base. To get up the pile meant nothing more than hard work and scraped shins. Billy and Tom, the two other scouts who had come along, began to complain.

“Say, is this your idea of fun?” said Tom. “You don’t need a rope for this, you need shin guards.”

“Yeah, where’d you get this Alpine stuff, anyhow?” said Billy, as one foot went down between two hidden stones and he half disappeared from sight.

“You wait till we get to the old cliff up there!” Bennie answered hopefully.

The party paused and took a look at the cliff wall, now towering just above them. They had all climbed the mountain many times by the path, but none of them, not even Mr. Rogers, had ever tackled the cliff face. It was 200 feet high, most of it a sheer precipice, and nobody in town had ever dreamed of trying to climb it.

“Gosh!” Tom exclaimed. “We can’t climb that!”

“Well, we’re going to try,” Bennie replied. “It’s not a patch on a lot in that book, is it, Spider?”

“You’ve said it,” Spider answered.

After a few minutes more of hard scrambling, they stood directly under the face of the precipice. Being straight up, it was quite bare of snow, except on a few ledges here and there, and at this point nobody could have climbed it. There was nothing to get even a finger hold on.

“Well, go on up with your rope, and throw us down an end,” Tom taunted.

“We’ll have to work around till we can find a chimney, won’t we?” Bennie asked the scout master.

“Or a ladder,” Billy added.

They moved along under the beetling face of the rock, going in up to their waists in the snow which had drifted against the base, until they came to a sort of gully which divided the main cliff from an out-thrown spur like a bowsprit. This gully was very steep, about sixty-five degrees, and was partly filled with snow. A few laurel bushes grew in it here and there, and it evidently led up to a ledge, because at the top a little pine tree was growing, a hundred feet above their heads.

“If we can get up anywhere, it’s here,” the scout master announced.

Bennie uncoiled the rope and fastened one end around his waist, so his hands would be free. Then he started up the gully. There was no question of cutting steps—the snow was too soft. All he could do was to tread it down under his feet and trust to its holding him without sliding down until he could reach up to a laurel bush and pull himself a bit higher. Twice he slid back. Once his mittens slipped on a bush, and he came down ten feet before he could get a hold on something. Then he took his mittens off, and climbed bare handed. Those below heard him give a yell of triumph just as the last of the rope was apparently going up after him, and then they saw him come out on the ledge and tie his end of the rope around the pine tree.

“Come on!” he called. “All fast! Wow, but my hands are cold!”

The others came up easily enough, for they had the rope to pull on, and soon they were all standing on the tiny ledge, a hundred feet above the base of the cliff.

“Well, Tom, the old rope was some help, eh?” Bennie demanded.

“Where do we go from here?” was Tom’s reply.

“Yes, where do we go?” the scout master laughed.

“Right over to the next ledge,” said Bennie, pointing to another ledge, on the same level, about ten feet away, with next to nothing but bare cliff between.

“Oh, do we!” said Billy.

“Sure,” Bennie replied. “This is a traverse. That’s what you call ’em, isn’t it, Mr. Rogers?”

“Sure, it’s a traverse all right. I don’t like the looks of it, either.”

“Same here,” said Tom. “Gosh, if you slipped getting over there—good night!”

He looked down the sheer hundred foot drop, and pulled back quickly.

But Bennie already had the rope pulled up, and one end around his body, under his arms, again.

“Here, Mr. Rogers,” he said, giving the scout master the coil. “You take a brace and play me out. I’ll get the rope over to the other ledge, and tie one end there, and then you can put it ’round the tree, and throw me the other end. Then you’ll all have a railing to cross with.”

Mr. Rogers looked worried. “Now, go slow and watch your step, Bennie,” he cautioned. “Here, Spider, take hold of this rope behind me, so two of us’ll have a grip.”

Bennie took off his mittens again, and beat the snow from the crevices of the rock ahead of him till he could get a good grip with his fingers. Then he shoved his feet out on the tiny ledge below, hardly six inches wide, and slowly, cautiously, made his way toward the other landing. He had only ten feet to go, but in the cold, without gloves, and with the rocks slippery from snow, it was painful work, and he wasn’t sure if his fingers would stand it without letting go, they soon pained him so. Mr. Rogers watched him anxiously, as he played out the rope. The others held their breaths.

But he got there, and a shout went up from everybody. He blew on his fingers and then tied his end of the rope around a tree on the new ledge, while the scout master passed the other end around the first tree, and then threw the end across. When that end, too, was tied, a double rope stretched across the gap between the ledges, and the rest could put it under an armpit, hold it fast with one hand while they grabbed the cracks of rock with the other, and come over in perfect safety. Then they pulled the rope over to them, and started on.

“Some traverse!” Bennie cried. “I thought once I’d have to let go, though, my fingers got so cold.”

“Summer’s the time for this sort of work,” said the scout master.

Billy, who had said nothing for several minutes, looked back at the traverse, and down into the drop of space below.

“I was scared pink,” he said, “and I don’t care who knows it.”

“I wasn’t scared, ’cause I knew Mr. Rogers and Spider would hold me,” said Bennie. “Still, I’d have gone a ways at that, and kind of dangled.”

The new ledge led around a corner, and then upward for twenty feet, and brought them to a pile of jagged rocks which could be climbed without a rope, by brushing off the snow, till they were only twenty feet below the top of the cliff. Here there was only one way up. By grabbing any little handholds they could find, it was possible to climb up about a dozen feet to a tiny ledge, one at a time, and get into a narrow upright crack, about two feet wide. This crack led right to the summit, and you could work up it by pushing with your feet and hands on one side and your back on the other. At least, that is what Bennie declared.

“It’s a chimney!” he cried.

“Well, I wish there was a fire at the bottom of it,” sighed Tom, hitting his hands together.

Bennie started to tie the rope under his arms, but Spider grabbed it.

“Say, whose card did you take that book out on?” he said. “My turn now.”

After considerable feeling around for toe-holds, Spider got to the ledge, and into the chimney. When he stood erect, the top was only a few feet over his head, so he soon had his fingers above the rim, and pulled himself out and vanished. A moment later they heard his “All fast!” and with the rope to climb with, the rest were speedily beside him on the snow-covered summit of the mountain.

Everybody gave a shout as the prospect burst on them—the 200 foot drop at their feet to the bottom of the cliff, and then the long steep slope below, and then the valley farms and roads, all lying under a dazzling carpet of white, and the far-off village and still farther away more blue mountains.

“I was never on a mountain in winter,” said Spider. “Gee, it’s great!”

“You’ve said it!” cried Tom and Billy.

Bennie didn’t speak for a moment.

“Say, it sort of makes a feller feel queer,” he said, finally. “I mean, all this bigness!”

“It’s the altitude, Bennie,” Tom remarked. “Goes to people’s heads, sometimes.”

“Shut up,” Bennie retorted, good-naturedly. “Just the same, I know now why men go bugs on mountain climbing.”

The descent was more rapid, and even more exciting, than the climb. They used the doubled rope, pulling it down to them after they had made a fifty foot descent (the rope was a hundred feet long), and speedily reaching the traverse.

Here Bennie and Spider offered to let either Tom or Billy carry the rope across to make the railing, but both of them said, “Not on your life!” in one voice, and most decidedly. So Spider took it across, and when everybody was over, Bennie tied one end around the tree, tossed the rope down the gully the full hundred feet, and told the rest to slide down it.

“How you going to get down?” Tom asked.

“You’ll see.”

When the last man was down, Bennie doubled the rope around the tree, and slid on the two strands till he reached a laurel bush in the gully. There he hung on, pulled his rope down, slipped it around the bush, and came the rest of the way, in a shower of snow.

Fifteen minutes later they were down again at their snowshoes, and as they put them on and tramped out across the fields away from the mountain they looked back up at the cliffs, rising sheer and naked toward the blue sky.

“Doesn’t seem as if we could have got up there, does it?” Bennie cried.

“Now it’s all over, seems as if it was great sport,” Billy laughed. “But while you’re doing it—say, I wasn’t thinking of much but keeping hold of that old rope!”

“That’s a very good thing to think of, too,” said the scout master. “Boys, I want you to promise me one thing, on your honor as scouts. That’s dangerous work, especially at this time of year. I want you to promise me you won’t try to take any of the other, smaller boys up there. We don’t want any nasty accident in our troop. Will you?”

“We promise,” they all said, soberly.

“Wow! I’d like to go to the Alps!” Bennie burst out, a moment later. “Say, Spider, let’s you an’ me go climb one of those spitzes.”

“All right,” said Spider. “We’ll start tomorrow.”

“Just the same,” Bennie added, seriously, “I’m going to climb a real mountain some day, if it takes a leg.”

“It’ll take two of ’em, not to mention two hands, a strong back and a good head,” Mr. Rogers laughed.

“A good head, did you hear that, Bennie?” said Tom.

Bennie answered with a handful of snow.

CHAPTER III
How Bennie Earned a Trip To Oregon

At dinner that night Bennie was so full of his adventure on Monument that he described it to his father and mother in minute detail.

“Good gracious, Bennie! don’t you ever dare to do such a thing again!” his mother cried. “I don’t see what Mr. Rogers is thinking of to take the scouts up such a place,” she added to her husband.

“Guess Rogers knows his way around,” Mr. Capen answered. “A boy’s got to have a certain amount of excitement to keep him out of mischief.”

“Sure!” said Bennie. “You’ve said a mouthful!”

“Bennie!” his mother cut in sharply. “I won’t have you talking that way at my table, and to your own father.”

“Aw, Ma, it’s just slang—what’s the harm?”

“One harm is, that it doesn’t show proper respect for your father,” she answered.

“Sorry,” said Bennie. “Gee, I respect Pa all right. And say, Pa, can’t I go somewhere this summer vacation where there are real mountains? Gee, I want to climb a real mountain! Will you let me go out to Oregon and see Uncle Bill?”

Mr. Capen didn’t answer for a moment. Finally he laid down his knife and fork, looked sharply at his son, and replied, “Why should I?”

“Well, why shouldn’t you?” was all Bennie could think of at first. Then he added, “Uncle Bill said he’d take me on a trip in Oregon some time, if we’d come out there, and a feller ought to see his own country. Everybody says that—see America first. Guess it’s the best way there is to study geography and history and—and things.”

“H’m,” said his father slowly. Then again, “H’m. Well, young man, do you know what you are asking? Do you know what it costs to get to Oregon and back? It costs a lot of money, I can tell you, and if you went, your mother and I would have to stay at home while I earned it, so you’d have to travel alone.”

“Let him go across the continent alone?” exclaimed Mrs. Capen. “I guess not!”

“Oh, gosh, you’d think I was a baby,” Bennie protested.

“No, we don’t think you are a baby,” his father answered, “but we do think you are unreliable, and that you don’t do your school work faithfully, and you don’t do the things we ask you to do around the place. How about that dead apple tree you were going to cut up this week?”

“Oh, gee! I forgot it,” Bennie said.

“Exactly. You forgot it. You evidently forgot to study your history and your Latin, this week, too, I gather from what the principal told me to-day. Now, when you act this way, all I say is, why should I let you go to Oregon, or anywhere else? What have you done to show me that you’ll make real use of your opportunities? Your friend Bob Chandler, now, I’d trust. He’d keep his eyes open and learn a lot, because he learns every day at home.”

Bennie hung his head. Then he looked up at his father.

“Say, Pa, if I get good marks all the rest of the year, and if I come to the bank every Saturday morning and help you, and if I prune all the apple trees, may I go to Oregon?”

“How do you know your Uncle Billy wants you?” his mother demanded.

“I bet I can fix that all right. Say, Pa, can I?”

“You get the good marks for a month, son, and work on the apple trees, and come to the bank—and at the end of the month we’ll see,” his father answered.

“Gee, that’s easy!” Bennie shouted.

After dinner he started to call up Spider and suggest going to the movies. He got as far as the telephone, in fact, and then hesitated. It was a hard fight for a minute, but he won out. Slowly he turned away from the ’phone, walked up to his own room, got out his textbooks, and began to study.

His father was watching him, from the library. When he had gone upstairs, Mr. Capen laughed.

“The boy’s gone to study,” he said to his wife. “It took a mountain to make him!”

During the next month Bennie had more than one battle with himself, and he didn’t always win out, either. But, on the whole, he did better than his father had ever dreamed he would. Spider helped him, too. Bennie had told nobody but Spider the reason for his reformation, and he had added a hope that maybe his uncle would suggest that he bring Spider along. Spider’s father owned the largest store in town, and Spider thought that if he promised to work in it spare hours that spring and the next winter, his father would let him go.

“’Sides,” Bennie said, “if you should go, Ma and Pa would let me, I bet, ’cause they think you’re what they call ‘responsible.’ So you just got to help me stick at these old books.”

Spider was a natural student. He liked to study, and it came easy to him. So day after day he made Bennie come over to his house after supper, and studied with him. When Bennie tried to talk, he said, “Shut up!” After a couple of weeks, Bennie began to make the discovery that the only way to get a lesson learned, or any job done, is to go right ahead and do it. He set himself a regular hour every day to prune in the apple orchard, and he studied hard in the school periods, and in the evenings. At the end of the month, his father called him into the library.

“Well, son,” he said, “you’ve certainly bucked up. Your report card here doesn’t look natural. Neither does the orchard.”

“Can I write to Uncle Bill now?” Bennie grinned.

“Not yet,” said his father. “You’re doing fine, but this is only one month. I’ve got to see if you can keep the habit. If you do as well next month, you may write.”

“Easy,” said Bennie.

He didn’t really mean that “easy,” but as a matter of fact, it was much easier than it had been the first month. He was getting the habit. Before the second month was over, Tom had called him “teacher’s pet,” and been knocked into a slushy snow-drift and had his neck stuffed with snow.

“I’ll teacher’s pet you!” Bennie laughed, finally letting him up.

At the end of the second month Mr. Capen told him he could write to his uncle, and if his uncle would let him come to Oregon and take him on one of his mountain trips, Bennie could go—“providing, of course, you pass all your examinations in June,” his father added. “It’s up to you.”

“I’ll pass all right!” Bennie said, joyfully. “And say, Pa, if Spider’s father’ll let him go, do you suppose Uncle Bill would mind if he went with me? Gee, it would be great to have old Spider along!”

“I’m sure Uncle Billy wouldn’t mind, and I know your mother would feel a lot easier about your going,” Mr. Capen said. “I’ll see Spider’s father today.”

“Golly, you’re some dad!” cried Bennie.

“Well, I feel I’ve got more of a son than I had two months ago,” said Mr. Capen.

Bennie hadn’t seen his Uncle Bill (a younger brother of his mother’s) for three or four years. He lived in Portland, Oregon, where he was a very successful doctor, and every summer he took a vacation in the mountains, to get himself fit for his winter grind. Bennie remembered him as a tall, strong, good-natured man, who always came to see Mrs. Capen on his rare trips East, and always talked to Bennie about what fun it would be to show him “a real country”—meaning Oregon. Bennie liked him, but it was hard, at that, to sit down in cold blood and invite yourself for a visit, and, still worse, to invite somebody else to go with you! Bennie began, and tore up, two or three letters before he got one that he thought would do. This is what he sent:

Dear Uncle Bill:

The last time you were East you pulled a lot of talk about showing me “a real country.” I guess you never thought I could get that far to see it, so you were safe. But I’ve been plugging hard this winter and got such high marks that Pa thought I was sick and Ma sent for the doctor, and he says I need a change or I’ll know too much. So I’m all ready to be shown that country of yours. And there’s a chum of mine here, an awful good scout, Bob Chandler (Spider, we call him), who doesn’t believe Oregon is so much, either, and he’d go along, too, if you asked him real polite. Besides, if he came, Ma would let me come. Ma thinks if I go alone a Pullman porter will think I’m a dress suitcase and pull me off the train at Omaha, or something. And I guess it’s kind of fresh my suggesting this about Spider’s going, but he’s an awful good scout, and he and I have been climbing Monument Mountain on a rope. Shall I bring my rope? It is 100 feet long, and we boiled it on the stove so it is soft. If we do come what clothes shall we bring?

Your loving nephew, Bennie.

P.S.—Mother and Father are both well and send their love.

B.

The chances are that before this letter was sent, Bennie’s mother had written to her brother. But if she did, Bennie didn’t know it. He mailed his letter, and counted the days it would take to reach Portland. In twice that time he ought to have an answer. At the end of the week he and Spider were haunting the post-office.

Then, one day, the answer came. Bennie tore it open, and this is what he read:

Dear Bennie:

I start for Crater Lake and the Sky Line Trail on July 1st, leaving Portland by motor. I am a plain, rough man, but I might be improved by your learned society, and our scenery would be honored by your inspection. By all means bring Spider. Spiders are very useful in camp, to cook the bacon in. You’d better come two or three days ahead of the start, so I can look over your outfit. Bring your scout axes, canteens, flannel shirts, khaki breeches, leggings, and things like that. Boots are the most important item—very heavy, and water-proof. You can get good ones here. Bring snow goggles if you have them. Save your rope. I have one, though it isn’t boiled like yours. I always fry my ropes. I’ll write to you later about trains, and more about your equipment. Tell your mother that she is going to have a nice, quiet summer.

Your humble uncle, William Warren.

Bennie read this letter aloud to Spider, and they both emitted a whoop of joy.

“Some bird, old Uncle Bill!” cried Bennie. “Always fries his ropes! I bet he’s got a real Alpine rope—braided and everything. Gee, I’ll bet we climb a real humdinger of a mountain. Maybe Mount Hood! Oh, boy!”

“Say, I’d work every afternoon in the store for the rest of my life, to climb old Hood!” said Spider. “Come on, let’s go look up how high Mount Hood is.”

“I’ve looked it up—it’s 11,225 feet,” said Bennie.

“And Monument is 1,600,” Spider reflected. “More’n 9,000 feet taller than Monument! Wow!”

“It’s going to be a long time till June,” said Bennie.

CHAPTER IV
Bennie and Spider Cross the Continent

It certainly did seem a long while to both the scouts between the time of getting Uncle Bill’s letter and the closing of school in June. But it was a pretty busy time, too. Bennie had to keep on studying, so he could make sure of passing his examinations, and Spider had to put in an hour or two every day in his father’s store. Beside that, they had to have another go at the Monument Mountain cliffs as soon as the snow was gone in the spring, and at about every other rock, big or little, within tramping radius of home. They took the rest of the scouts along on these expeditions, but as nobody but Bennie and Spider were going to Oregon, the others didn’t get so excited about climbing as they did, and soon everybody was playing baseball, leaving Bennie and Spider to practice rock scaling alone.

June came at last, and so did examinations. Bennie passed them easily, for the first time in his life—just because he had got his work from day to day. Then the time came to buy their railroad tickets and get their berths reserved. Before they knew it, their trunks were packed, and they were ready to start on the long journey.

Bennie noticed that his mother didn’t say very much the night before, but just sat and looked at him, while he was going over the tickets with his father, and folding them into a new pocketbook, with $100 in new bills, which Mr. Capen had brought home from the bank. Bennie put the purse into an inside pocket, and went over to his mother.

“Gee, Ma,” he said, “you’d think I was going to the North Pole or somewhere, instead of just to visit Uncle Bill. Nobody’s going to speak cross to your little Bennie, or make him take any wooden money, or hit him over the bean. Don’t you worry. I guess me ’n’ Spider can take a railroad trip without anybody needing to worry.”

But though he spoke with a laugh, Bennie didn’t feel very much like laughing, because when his mother looked at him, and tried to smile, he saw the tears behind her eyes, and he knew, somehow, that it wasn’t because she was afraid for him, but because he was going to be away from her so long. He couldn’t quite understand this, but he loved his mother tremendously, and it made him want to weep, too. In about one minute he was weeping, and so was his mother, with an arm about his shoulder.

Mr. Capen looked up in surprise.

“Hello!” he said. “Hello! So you don’t want to go, eh?”

Bennie straightened up, and gulped hard, trying to swallow his sob in a grin.

“Where—where do you get that stuff?” he demanded.

“Well, you don’t seem very cheerful about going.”

“It was ’cause Ma wasn’t cheerful,” said Bennie.

“I’m cheerful, dear,” said his mother, smiling at him. “I wasn’t crying because I was sad, but just because—because—well, you won’t understand, but because you’re so big and grown up now, and can go away by yourself.”

“Well, I don’t see’s that’s anything to cry about, for a fact,” said Bennie.

“Bennie,” his father remarked, “you have never been a mother.”

“You said a mouth——”

“Bennie! slang, to your father!” said his mother.

“You have uttered a truthful remark, sir,” grinned Bennie.

The next day Mr. and Mrs. Capen and Spider’s father and mother came down to the depot with the two scouts. Half a dozen of their troop were there, too, and the last thing they heard as they waved from the car window, was the scout yell. The last thing Bennie saw was his mother’s face. She was smiling bravely at him, and keeping the tears back.

In about an hour the boys had to change to a through train, which took them to Chicago. At Chicago they would have to spend the afternoon and early evening, and then take the Northwest Limited on the Union Pacific, which took them right to Portland, Oregon. They had their tickets in their pockets, and their berth checks, and about once in fifteen minutes they felt of themselves, to see if the precious pocketbooks were still there.

Neither Bennie nor Spider had ever been West before, and as long as daylight lasted they sat close to the window. But it was dark all too soon. When the train entered Syracuse, and traveled, apparently, right down the main street, the two scouts looked right into the lighted shop-windows, but out in the country they saw nothing. So they went to bed, each with his precious pocketbook under his pillow.

They were up at daylight, and dressed long before the other passengers began to come into the washroom. Now they saw the Great Lakes beside the track, like the ocean, and rolled through the smoke of Gary, where the great steel mills are, and saw Lake Michigan, and almost before they knew it, were in Chicago.

The boys had careful directions what they were to do in Chicago. They were to get right aboard the transfer ’bus and ride over to the Northwestern station, checking their suitcases there. Then they could walk around the city, if they liked. It is a queer sensation to arrive in a great city which you have never seen before. Bennie and Spider, after the ’bus had rolled them quickly across the bridge to the other station, and they had checked their bags, walked out into the street, without any idea where they were, and turned east to see the town. They recrossed the bridge, walked a few blocks, and were suddenly in the Loop. The streets were none too wide. The elevated railroad roared and thundered overhead. The great buildings towered into the air. Trolleys, motors, thousands of people crowded the way from wall to wall.

“Some burg!” Bennie exclaimed. “Little old New York hasn’t got much on this village. I didn’t know Chicago was so big.”

“Guess we haven’t got everything in the East,” Spider answered.

They walked on till they reached Michigan Boulevard, that splendid great avenue which sweeps down by the lake shore, and they wondered how Chicago stands for the smoke of the trains between the Boulevard and the beach.

“Why don’t they make the old railroad electrify itself?” Spider asked. “Gee, it’s turned all the marble sooty black.”

It was a hot day, and getting hotter, so they finally went out on a pier and sat in the breeze till it was time to hunt up a place for supper.

After supper they walked around the Loop, which was now filled with theatre crowds, and then back to the station, got their bags, and hunted out the track their train was to go on. The rear observation platform had an illuminated red sign hung out behind, with the name of the train—“Northwest Limited.” It gave them a thrill to see those words! And that train for three days would be their home. As soon as the gates were open, they got aboard and hunted out their berths.

The next morning, when they woke, the train was rushing through Iowa. Mile after mile after mile of rolling country, dotted with farmhouses, great red barns, little wood lots close beside them, and endless acres of sprouting corn, and tall wheat, as far as the eye could see. Mile after mile, and never a town, but always the fields of corn and wheat, the herds of cattle, the great red barns.

“Golly!” Bennie exclaimed. “We don’t know what a farm is, do we?”

“I never saw so much corn in my life—I didn’t know there was so much,” Spider answered.

That day they passed through Omaha, and were still bowling along through the endless oceans of corn in Nebraska when night came. It was terribly hot now, and dusty and dirty. Spider wiped his face, and when he looked at his handkerchief, it was black! Bennie said he felt as if somebody had poured cinders down his back.

“Wait till you wake up tomorrow,” said the brakeman, who overheard them, “and you’ll see snow.”

“You look sort of honest,” Bennie laughed, “but I don’t believe you.”

“All right,” said the brakeman. “Want to bet?”

“Can’t,” said Bennie. “All my money’s in hundred dollar bills.”

“We cross the height of land in Wyoming before you’re awake,” the trainman went on. “We’re up 7,000 feet or more there—in Wyoming.”

“You mean the Rocky Mountains? Do we cross ’em at night?” cried Spider. “Gee, what tough luck.”

“Not much mountains where we cross. But you’ll see mountains, all right, if you don’t sleep all the morning—and snow, too.”

“Bring me some now, I want to take it to bed with me,” said Bennie.

Spider, whose turn it was to sleep in the lower berth that night, pulled up the curtain as soon as it was daylight, and looked out. He gave a jump, reached up and poked Bennie awake, and began to dress. In ten minutes the boys were out on the observation platform, staring hard. The train was in Wyoming now, on a vast, high plateau, a country that didn’t look like anything they had ever seen. It rolled away to the horizon in every direction, like a tossing, oily gray sea, without a tree on it, apparently without any grass on it worth mentioning, but covered with pale green sage bushes in clumps here and there. It was a naked, desolate looking land, and yet they saw great droves of cattle wandering over it, and now and then a white strip of road, and finally, all of a sudden as the train rounded a bend, seemingly right beside the track a couple of miles away, a huge blue mountain covered completely on top with a cap of white snow, and streaked with snow all down the ravines on its northern side.

The scouts gave a yell of joy at the sight. “A snow mountain!” they cried.

“Do I win or not?” said the brakeman, appearing behind them. “That’s the mountain. Pretty soon, off south, you’ll see some higher ones, down in Utah.”

“How far is it to that mountain—about five miles?” Bennie asked.

It looked two, but he thought he’d add a few.

The trainman grinned. “I wouldn’t try to walk it before breakfast,” said he. “It’s about twenty or thirty, I reckon.”

That day they rolled along through endless miles of the naked cattle country, that in the East would have seemed like a desert. No New England cow could have lived on it, Spider declared. Then they began to get into the Idaho mountains, on the branch line, and turned and twisted down cañons with the naked red hills folding up in front of and behind the train. They went to sleep in Idaho and woke up in Oregon—woke up to see more mountains, and more snow—long ranges of mountains to left and right with snow on the summits, though it was now almost July first, and hot as Tophet in the train.

The train presently began to climb an endless grade, up and up and up, getting over the pass of the Blue Mountains, and into heavily timbered country—real woods at last, after the long ride through the prairie and the sage brush. On and on went the train, till at last it reached the Columbia River, and the excited boys, braving the cinders that swirled in on the observation platform, sat out there and saw at last below them the great green river rushing swiftly along, cutting its way through the high, rocky banks.

These banks began to get higher and steeper. They were entering the gorge of the Columbia, where it cuts through the Cascade range. Soon the banks were real precipices, 1,000, 2,000 feet high. At The Dalles, they picked up the Columbia Highway, the most wonderful motor road in America, and could see where it was cut right out of the sides of the cliffs in places. When the train stopped at Hood River, a lot of people got off to stretch, the boys with them, and a man took them down the platform and said, “Look!”

They looked to the south, and there it was! Shooting up apparently right behind the depot, shaped like a cone, dazzling white, tall, stately, beautiful against the sky—Mount Hood! These were the eternal snows! There was a real climb!

Bennie just gasped for a second. Then he found his tongue. “It—it’s just as big as I thought it would be!” he said.

“It’s the finest thing in the world,” said the man. “I live in Portland, and every clear day I look at it, sixty miles away, and it’s like a friend.”

“Is it hard to climb?” Spider asked.

“No,” said the man. “It’s a cinch. If you’re looking for a climb, go down and tackle Jefferson.”

“Never even heard of it,” said Bennie.

“There are a lot of things out here you eastern folks never heard of,” the man answered.

The boys wanted to ask him more, but just then the conductor called “All aboard,” and they lost him in the rush.

For the next hour they were busy looking at the scenery, at the great river on one side, and the great cliff walls on the other, with thousand-foot waterfalls leaping down almost on the train, and the Columbia Highway running alongside of the track in places, in other places disappearing and coming into sight again far up on top of some headland.

“Gee, I wish we were in a motor!” Spider sighed.

“Maybe Uncle Bill will take us this way in his,” said Bennie.

Now the cliffs grew lower. The river was through the gorge. Presently the river disappeared, and the train ran through level land a little way, and the houses began to get thicker and thicker. They crossed another river on a drawbridge, and saw tramp ships lying up to the docks, and on the other side rolled into the Portland depot.

At the train gate, looming up above the crowd, Bennie spied the head of his uncle, and in another minute he had him by the hand, and was introducing Spider, and Uncle Billy was putting the dress suitcases into his car, and then they were off through the streets of Portland, with the lights coming on, the darkness falling.

“I guess you boys are pretty hot and tired, eh?” said Uncle Bill. “Of course, you never have any hot weather in the East.”

“It’s about like this Christmas time at home,” Bennie answered. “I was just wishing I had an overcoat.”

“You’ll wish you had a couple before I get through with you,” said Uncle Bill. “I heard to-day there are seven feet of snow yet on the rim of Crater Lake. We’ve got to camp up there. It’ll be pretty slippery, too, getting down to the water. Guess we’ll have to fry a couple of ropes.”

“Boil mine—about four minutes,” said Bennie.

His uncle laughed as he put the car up a steep grade out of the business section to the heights overlooking the city. The residences look right out over the town, and now they could see the checkerboard squares of the streets, marked out with electric lights. They stopped at the doctor’s house, and he showed them in, his housekeeper meeting them.

“Now beat it and get a bath,” he said, “and then grub! Hurry up, for I’m all ready to eat, and if you keep me waiting, I’ll have to begin on one of those ropes.”

“Say, he’s a regular scout,” said Spider, as they were cleaning up.

“Boy, I got a hunch we’re going to have some good time!” answered Bennie from the tub.

CHAPTER V
All Aboard for Crater Lake!—and Dumpling in the Other Car

When the boys came downstairs, Uncle Billy, who was a bachelor, led the way at once into the dining-room, and they began to eat.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said, as he carved the meat. “How’d you boys like to be movie actors?”

“Oh, you Charlie Chaplin!” Bennie grinned. “Sure, I’d like it. Spider, though, ain’t beautiful enough.”

“Of course, he hasn’t your classic Greek features,” said Uncle Billy, looking hard at Bennie’s snub nose. “But maybe he can ride a horse. Can you ride a horse, Bennie?”

“Sure—I guess so. I never tried.”

“Can you, Spider?”

“Not very well, sir. I have ridden our old delivery horse a good bit, though, but mostly bareback.”

“You see, Bennie,” the doctor laughed, “he’s going to be a better actor than you are, after all, in spite of your fatal beauty.”

“What do you mean, actors, anyhow?” Bennie demanded. “What’s the big idea?”

“Well,” the doctor explained, “we’re not going alone on this trip. I have a friend, a business man here in Portland, who is a fine amateur photographer. He’s got a new movie camera now, that he wants to experiment with. He wants to take a sort of scenic picture of the Oregon mountains, so he’s coming along, in his car, with his son, Lester. You and Spider and Lester and I have got to be the troupe. Whenever he sees a nice precipice he wants to shoot, we’ll have to do a Douglas Fairbanks up the side of it, or make a Pearl White jump down a thousand-foot waterfall. How does that strike you?”

“Uncle Billy,” Bennie said, very solemnly, “you have come to exactly the right people. Spider and me—I—are the original human flies. We walk up precipices before breakfast every day at home.”

“With a boiled rope?” his uncle laughed. “Well, I’m glad you’re trained for the job. Wait till you see Lester Stone, though. He’s the real athlete! Slender, wiry, hard as nails!”

“How old is he?” the scouts asked, instantly alert and a little bit jealous. They’d show him eastern boys could be hard and athletic, too!

“Just about your age,” the doctor answered carelessly. “He and his father will be over to meet you after dinner.”

It wasn’t long after dinner before the door-bell rang, and the scouts heard Uncle Billy greeting somebody in the hall. A moment later he ushered in a big six-footer of a man, and a boy who was just about as wide as he was high.

“My nephew, Bennie Capen, and his old college chum, Spider Chandler,” said Uncle Billy. “Boys, this is my college chum, Dick Stone. And this is Dick’s willowy and athletic little son, Lester. I’m trying to get some flesh on his bones, because the poor little thing has been puny since childhood.”

Mr. Stone shook hands so hard that Bennie winced, and then they shook hands with Lester, who had a round, pink face like a cherub and eyes that danced merrily.

Bennie and Spider couldn’t help bursting out laughing.

“What’s the matter?” Uncle Billy asked solemnly. “Did somebody make a joke? I never can see a joke!”

“You can make one, all right,” Bennie laughed. “Gee, you said Lester was wiry and hard.”

“What’s the joke in that?” the doctor demanded, looking very stern. “He is! Only the wires are insulated. You poke his arm and see if he isn’t hard.”