CHAPTER X

Down the Rim to the Lake—The Boys Ski on a Crater Snow-drift in July

The two scouts were first awake the next morning. They took no more time getting dressed than the law allowed, for it was shivery cold, and then went outside the tent to wash. The sun was just coming up, and the night mists still hung around the sides of the rim and over the water of the lake, which was so still that it was exactly like a huge bright blue mirror, six miles wide, in which everything hung upside down. The water in the pails at the side of the tent had a skim of ice over it!

Bennie broke the ice and poured some water in a basin, dousing it on his face and spluttering with the cold. They went over the snow-drifts to the tap to get more water, and the snow was crusted and held them up so that their hobnailed boots crunched and squeaked on it.

“And this is July 7th!” said Spider. “Well, you thought your uncle was joshing about the radiator last night, didn’t you?”

“I sure did,” Bennie answered. “Didn’t realize what a difference altitude makes.”

After they had brought the water, and made a fire in the stove, the scouts went off after a wood supply, while the rest were dressing. They wandered a long way back down the slope, through the forest, and tried to imagine, as they looked back, that instead of being cut off at the rim the mountain went on up another 8,000 feet.

“I guess if it did, we’d be on a glacier here, instead of just snow,” said Spider. “Look, Bennie, at those flowers coming up within a foot of this drift! I’m going to collect a lot of flowers on this trip, and get a merit badge in botany, too. Why don’t you get after some merit badges?”

“Aw, gee, what good am I at botany and stuff like that?”

“Well, you could go after one in forestry. We’ll be seeing a lot of real forests. And there’s hiking, and camping. Oh, lots of ’em.”

“Got your manual with you?”

“Sure.”

“Well, let’s look ’em up later, and see what chance a dub like me has,” Bennie answered. “But this ain’t getting us much fire wood.”

They were so far from the camp ground now that dead wood was plentiful, and they returned to camp over the drifts and the bare clearings where the wild flowers were just sprouting—spring in July—dragging dead limbs enough to last two or three days. The smell of coffee and bacon greeted them as they came up the last slope to the camp.

“By the way,” Spider asked at breakfast, “what was the name of this mountain before it fell into itself?”

“Who was there to name it, you poor fish?” laughed Bennie.

“I never thought of that!”

“It has a posthumous name, though,” said Mr. Stone.

“Come again—come again!” Bennie said. “What kind of a name?”

“Ho, I know what that means!” put in Dumplin’, his mouth full of wheat cakes.

“What _what_ means?” the rest demanded.

“P-p”—he swallowed hard, and then got it out—“posthumous.”

“Well, what does it mean?”

“It means something that comes after you’re dead. If a man writes a book that ain’t printed till he’s dead, it’s a posthumous book.”

“My son,” said Mr. Stone, “I am proud of you.”

“Not to say surprised at him,” the doctor laughed.

Dumplin’ grinned triumphantly, and reached out for more cakes.

“Well, what was its p-p-posthumous name?” Bennie demanded.

“They call the mountain Mount Mazama. You see, there’s a famous club of mountaineers in Portland, who are called the Mazamas, and that’s why the name was given to this vanished peak.”

“Mazama—sounds sort of Indian.”

“It is—it’s the Indian word for a mountain goat.”

“That’s us,” said Bennie. “When do we leap lightly down the rim to the water?”

“As soon as you’ve washed the dishes,” said his uncle.

The sun was well up when they started, and the chill had gone from the air. You could hardly believe water had frozen two hours before. Mr. Stone carried his movie camera, which weighed fifty pounds, on his back in a knapsack made for it, Dumplin’ carried the tripod, also in a sack, Bennie and Spider carried their canteens filled with spring water, their cameras, and the lunch in knapsacks. The doctor had two canteens and the coil of 125 feet of soft alpine braided rope. Everybody had an alpenstock. As the little procession passed the hotel, the people there looked at them curiously.

“You evidently mean business,” somebody said.

“We’re going down to the lake,” said the doctor.

“I wouldn’t try it, if I were you,” the other man replied. “Two chaps went down yesterday, and they had a pretty bad time. They say it’s extremely dangerous.”

“We’ll take a chance,” said Uncle Billy.

The trail starts down just east of the hotel. It is a wide footpath cut in the soft lava and the powdery pumice and conglomerate of the slope, switchbacking down a sharp ravine. But this ravine was now almost filled with snow, so that the path was buried, and the descent had to be made over the bare snow slope, at an angle of fifty degrees. If you once started slipping, there was nothing to stop you for a thousand feet. The park gang of a dozen men or more, with shovels, were just attacking the snow at the top, shoveling out the path and tossing the snow chunks on to the slope, down which they slid and bounded like a bombardment.

The doctor led the way past the shovelers, so they would be out of the range of the falling lumps, uncoiled the rope, tied one end around his waist, flung the other end down the slope, drove his alpenstock deep and firm, braced his feet, and said:

“Now, you all go down to the end, one at a time. Keep a firm hold on the rope. Don’t ever let go with more than one hand. When you get to the bottom, brace your stocks, and Stone, you take up the slack on me as I come down.”

One by one the boys and Mr. Stone faced half sideways to the slope, kept hold of the rope with the right hand, and went down the 125 feet step by step. As Bennie started down, he saw that just above them on the rim were a dozen people, come from the hotel to watch.

“Gee, this is the life!” he shouted.

The boys watched Uncle Billy come down when everybody else was at the rope’s end. He had no rope to help him, of course, but he used his alpenstock with one hand, and drove his boots firmly into the snow with a sideways motion which made a little step for him.

“Guess old Uncle Bill knows his way about,” thought Bennie.

From this point, the operation was repeated, getting them down 250 feet. But by now the shovelers in the path above had worked ahead, and the snow chunks were whizzing past uncomfortably close. They saw that the ravine narrowed ahead of them into a kind of bottle neck, and all the chunks worked into that neck. They would have to pass right through it. No use in yelling up to the shovelers to quit, either. Their job was to get the trail opened as soon as possible. Besides, they were laughing, and the little party down in the ravine knew that meant they were just waiting to get them into the narrow place and bombard them.

“Keep half an eye up the slope this next drop,” the doctor said, “and watch out for cannon balls. Those fellows up there are going to wing us if they can. The chunks won’t break any bones, but they’ll hurt. Once we’re through the neck, we can get round behind that rock, and be out of range.”

“Let her go!” said Mr. Stone.

Nobody lost any time on that next drop. Mr. Stone went first, and no sooner was he out into the narrow groove of the ravine than a perfect avalanche of snow chunks came whizzing down. Most of them got broken up before they reached him, but every now and then one hung together, as big as a shoveler could lift out of the path, and went whizzing by a mile a minute. One of them bounced up just before it reached him, and landed _ker-blam_ against his camera sack, smashing into a thousand pieces, and nearly taking him off his feet.

“The idiots!” Uncle Billy said. “I’d like to throw ’em all down here head first. Go ahead, Dump. Your father’s round the bend now.”

“You’re an easy mark, Dumplin’!” yelled the boys, as poor Lester slid down the rope into the path of the whirling missiles. “Hi! look out—here comes a big one!”

Lester ducked, and a block of snow bounded right over his head. Bennie had no such luck when he started, though. He dodged a couple, but a third chunk caught him right in the head, smashed wetly around his neck and ears, and he felt the water trickling down inside his shirt as he hurried, half blinded, around the rock to shelter. Spider and the doctor soon joined them, Spider nursing a bump on the leg from a snow chunk with a stone in it.

“Great idea of a joke, those guys have,” said Bennie. “Funny thing, Dumplin’ never got hit at all, and he’s the easiest mark. Where do we go from here?”

The doctor looked around. Straight down below them was a long slope of pumice and gravelly looking stuff, at a very steep angle, with a few trees and lava blocks breaking it up, and patches of snow.

“Here,” he said, and threw out the rope.

Bennie started first. His feet seemed to hold well in this soft ground, and he let his hand just slide along the rope, seeing how fast he could walk down. Suddenly the ground just slipped away under him. He sat down, and began to slide. His hand, held too loosely on the rope, was yanked off. He grasped for the rope again, but it was out of reach. For one sickly, awful moment, he saw the lake and the rocks hundreds of feet below him, and thought he was going to land down there—or what was left of him. Down, down he slid, six feet, eight feet, hit a patch of snow and went faster, while he tried vainly to dig in with hands and heels. Then, as suddenly as the first slip, he realized that in ten feet more he’d hit a tree growing on a tiny flat place by a piece of solid lava. A second, and his feet struck the roots with a thump, and he stopped abruptly.

When the rest got to him, he was still sitting there, trembling a little, and trying to clean off his clothes. His uncle’s face was white, but all he said was:

“I thought you knew how to climb, Bennie. I see you’ve got to be taught to keep a hold on the rope.”

“It—it came so sudden.”

“It always does come sudden,” his uncle answered. That was all he said. That was all he ever said about it the whole trip. But it was all he needed to say. Bennie felt deeply ashamed. He had failed on the very first climb! He resolved then and there that the next time he’d hang on to that rope with a death grip.

“Were you scared?” Spider whispered to him, as they got down to the trail where the snow had melted off, and could walk the last few feet of the way. “Gee, I was scared blue when I saw you goin’, till I spotted the tree, and knew you were goin’ to hit it. Hadn’t been there, though, you’d been a goner. Golly!”

“Sure I was scared,” said Bennie. “Didn’t have time to think much about it, though, before I hit the good old roots.”

Dumplin’ now dropped alongside.

“If it had been me,” he said, “I’d have knocked the tree down, and gone right on.”

“You’d ’a’ made an awful splash in the lake,” Bennie laughed, though his voice still trembled a little.

There were only three boats at the landing, and none of the boatmen had yet come down that day. They were waiting for the trail to be opened. But the hotel manager had told Uncle Billy how to find the oars, and loading the cameras and lunch into a couple of the skiffs, they pushed off, Bennie insisting on rowing one boat, and Lester the other. The lake was very still as they floated out over its blue water.

“It don’t look more’n ten feet deep to me,” said Bennie, glancing over the side. “There’s the old bottom.”

“Look up at the cliffs and take ten more strokes, and then look down,” said Mr. Stone from the other boat.

Bennie did so.

“Jiminy crickets and little jumping hoptoads!” he exclaimed. “Why, there isn’t any bottom!”

Sure enough, the bottom had dropped completely away. They were floating on what seemed like a bottomless blue liquid.

“I feel as if we were sort of hanging in a piece of the sky,” said Spider. “I never had such a funny sensation.”

The doctor smiled. “You’ve got the Crater Lake blues,” he said. “It scares some people.”

“I like it,” said Spider. “Gee, it’s wonderful!”

Bennie glanced over his shoulder at Wizard Island, which looked about a quarter of a mile away, headed his bow for it, and started to pull again.

“We’ll be there in a jiffy,” he said.

“How far do you think it is?” his uncle asked.

“’Bout a quarter of a mile.”

“It’s almost two, in a straight line.”

“Gee!” said Bennie.

From the level of the water, Crater Lake was quite a different place. Instead of looking down from the rim, you looked up, and the cliffs that hemmed you in seemed far higher and far steeper. They looked as steep as they really are. The high points around the rim—Garfield Peak, Dutton Cliffs, Llao Rock, Glacier Peak, the Watchman, were all snow-capped, and in many places the snow came down the rim ravines in great white wedges like capital V’s, almost to the blue water. The hotel looked like a little Noah’s ark.

“Say, if a guy got caught down here and had to go on shore where he couldn’t get to the trail, what would he do? Could he climb out?” Bennie asked.

“There’s a trail out over there on the east, at that lowest place,” said the doctor. “The rim is only 500 feet high there. Those two are the only trails. You might be able to climb out at some other points. A photographer once climbed up under Llao Rock and worked along the base of the lava precipices till he reached the top of the rim. But if I was caught down here in most places, I’d sit tight till a boat came for me.”

“You needn’t die of thirst, anyhow,” Spider laughed.

Slowly Wizard Island drew nearer, and at last Bennie pulled into a little cove, and they hauled the bow up. Lester pulled his skiff in a moment later. Wizard Island, all around the base, seemed to be composed entirely of huge blocks of blackish-brown lava, out of which evergreens mysteriously grew—big, fine trees, too. They scrambled up over these blocks, and soon found a trail winding up the steep slope through the woods. The lava blocks ceased now, and the whole little mountain was composed of a fine material much like cinders from a locomotive. In fact, the baby volcano now resembled nothing so much as a huge cone of cinders, covered with trees. Up and up they toiled, Mr. Stone panting under the weight of his movie camera, and at last reached the summit. Before anybody even looked about, the canteens were unslung and half emptied. Then they looked.

The top of Wizard Island was a perfect circle, like Crater Lake itself, only a tiny circle, two or three hundred feet across. Inside was a crater, about a hundred feet deep, and now filled on the south side, where the sun didn’t hit it, with a huge snow-drift pitching steeply down to the bottom.

“Ah! I thought so!” cried Mr. Stone. “Boys, get busy. I’m going to take a movie of you sliding down a crater on the snow. Try it once standing up, and see if you can keep your feet.”

The three boys ran out on the drift to the edge, and stepped over. The snow was soft enough so that they sank in a little and pushed enough snow ahead to bank up after ten or a dozen feet. When it did this, it would pitch you head foremost unless you were spry and jumped over the bank in time. The first try all three boys went headlong a quarter of the way down, and made the rest of the trip on their stomachs. They got up and struggled back up the steep incline.

By this time the camera was set up and focussed.

“Good!” said Mr. Stone. “Now get out of the picture a way, and when I say ‘Shoot’ come walking in to the edge. Stop there a moment and point, as if you were daring each other to go down. Then all slide. Keep your feet if you can. At the bottom, get up quickly, and come scrambling back. Ready? Get on your marks, shoot!”

The three boys came into the picture as the crank ground and the camera clicked. They stopped at the rim, and began to act.

“I dast you to slide down!” said Bennie, forgetting this was a movie, and nobody would hear his voice.

“Ho!” said Dumplin’, “that’s nothin’.”

He tossed off his cap. Spider tossed off his. The three of them stepped over the rim, and shot down. Dumplin’ got a third of the way and spilled, head foremost. A second later Spider followed him. Only Bennie got to the bottom on his feet. He yelled and waved his arms in triumph, and all three started scrambling and slipping back up the drift, digging into the snow with heels and hands. As they came up over the rim again, the camera stopped clicking.

“Good,” said Mr. Stone. “That’s a dandy.”

“Some Douglas Fairbanks, eh?” cried Bennie. “Gee, Dumplin’, you sure did a comic fall. Bet that would get a laugh on the screen.”

“My hands are cold—and I’m sweating,” said Lester. “That’s going some.”

“It’s the climate!” came from three mouths at once.

They now walked around the little rim, and on the west side of the island saw, at the base of the cone, a flat space of a few acres, with a tiny little pond in it.

“This is a volcano within a volcano, and that is a lake inside of a lake,” the doctor pointed out. “You don’t often find that. Now let’s eat some lunch, and go down and see if we can catch a fish or two for supper.”

They sat, hatless and coatless, in the shade of a little tree beside a snow-drift, and ate their lunch, finishing up the last of the water in the canteens, also. Then they descended to the boats. Mr. Stone mounted his camera in the bow of one boat, with Lester to row, while Spider rowed the other, the doctor sat as passenger, and Bennie got out the collapsible rod his uncle had brought, jointed it, and adjusted the tackle.

“Don’t seem fair to fish for trout with a spinner, as if they were nothing but pickerel,” he declared. “Wish we had some flies.”

“We want the fish to eat,” said the doctor, “and Stone wants a picture. We’ll use the surest way to get ’em. Now, Spider, row very slowly and just as steadily as you can, just offshore, around the rocks. Keep an even pace—that’s the main thing. If the spinner yanks, the fish get suspicious.”

Their boat crept softly along, with the Stones’ boat not far behind, Mr. Stone sitting by the camera as if it were a machine gun pointed at them.

Suddenly the line, trailing behind, tightened, Bennie gave a cry, there was a leap and a silver flash in the water astern, and the fight was on!

“Play him, play him!” the doctor shouted. “Keep on rowing, Spider. Give Stone a chance to shoot! Bring him up slowly, Bennie, don’t lose him!”

“I won’t lose him,” Bennie answered grimly. “Gee whiz, what a trout! He pulls like a whale!”

Slowly he reeled in, and then had to play out again, as the fish made a dash past the boat. But the big spinner hook was too much for him, and after three or four minutes he was alongside, giving his last kicks and splashes in the water.

“Swing around, swing around, so the camera can get this!” called the doctor.

As the boat swung, Lester pulled nearer, the camera kept on clicking, and Bennie, reaching over, grabbed the line short and hauled the trout into the boat, holding him up to show his size.

“Some baby!” he cried, breathless with excitement. “He weighs about four pounds. What kind of a trout is he?”

“They put eastern brook trout into this lake,” said Uncle Billy. “There were no fish here till it was stocked.”

“Eastern brook trout!” Bennie exclaimed. “Well, that’s the funniest looking eastern brook trout _I_ ever saw. I guess something happened to ’em.”

“It’s the climate,” Spider chuckled.

“I think it is myself, and no joke,” said the doctor. “They are certainly a different fish, both to look at and to eat, than the brook trout we used to catch back home. You catch one now, Spider.”

Spider took the line, and caught a trout. Then the doctor got one, and the line was passed to Lester, who lost the spinner in a rock on the bottom, but, with a new hook, caught still a fourth fish.

“That’s enough to last us; now for home,” came the orders.

“I wonder if they’ve got the trail cleared yet? Don’t much want to face that bombardment again,” said Mr. Stone.

“They’ll be through digging for the day, anyhow, before we get in,” said Uncle Billy.

The long shadows from the western walls were out across the water when they reached the landing and tied up the boats. There was no sign of shovelers on the trail, but no sign, either, that the gang had got to the bottom. They had to make the first half of the climb as best they could, scrambling up the treacherous slopes with the aid of the alpenstocks and the rope which the doctor dragged up ahead and fastened at convenient points. Half-way up, however, they reached the spot where the trail breakers had quit work, and they were glad enough of the path and the easy grade the rest of the way. Their packs were getting heavier and heavier, and the doctor was taking shifts on the camera, before they finally dragged themselves over the rim, into the sunlight again.

Bennie was carrying the four trout proudly when they passed the hotel, and a crowd came out to see the catch. At least a score more motors had arrived during the day, and the hotel bus was arriving with a load of people. At their camp, they found two new tents pitched close to theirs, the cars bearing California license plates.

“Well, our privacy is gone,” sighed Mr. Stone.

“I don’t care, if they haven’t got a crying child along, to keep us awake,” the doctor said.

“Nothing could keep me awake tonight,” said Bennie, flopping down on the ground.

“And nothing could wake me tomorrow morning,” puffed Lester, flopping down beside him.

“Well, don’t go to sleep till you’ve cleaned those fish for us,” Uncle Billy laughed. “And, Dump, you get water, and, Spider, you make the fire.”

The smell of boiling coffee and sizzling trout brought new life to everybody. And how they ate! The fish meat was reddish in color, more like salmon than eastern brook trout, but it certainly tasted good, and there was enough for everybody, with potatoes, and bread, and coffee and stewed fruit.

When supper was over and cleared away, and they were sitting around the little camp fire, in their sweaters again, for the evening chill had descended with the sun, a man strolled over from the near-by camp.

“Kind o’ cold up here,” he remarked.

“Drained your radiator?” Mr. Stone asked.

“No. What you giving us?”

“Just as you like,” Mr. Stone replied. “If you like a busted radiator, it’s up to you. I don’t care.”

“You mean to tell me it’ll freeze up? Why, it was eighty-eight in the shade in Medford this morning.”

“It was probably hotter than that in Los Angeles,” said Uncle Billy, with a wink at Mr. Stone.

“No, sir!” the other man retorted. “No siree, Bob. We have the finest climate in Southern California there is in the world. Never too hot, and never too cold.”

“It’s the climate,” chuckled Bennie.

“You bet your life it’s the climate, kid,” said the man.

“Funny, another man from California once told me the same thing,” Mr. Stone smiled. “I’ll have to go down there some day and try it.”

“You’d better. No place like it.”

“What are you doing in Oregon?” Uncle Billy suggested.

“Oh, just taking a look around. Pretty nice little lake here, but you ought to see the Yosemite.”

“I’ve been to Coney Island,” Bennie grinned, falling into the game.

“I’ve seen a picture of Venice by moonlight,” said Dumplin’.

“I’ve been up Bunker Hill Monument. It is 224 feet high,” said Spider.

The Californian began to get wise to the fact that he was being guyed, and moved off. They watched him. He went past their cars and glanced at the ground under the hoods to see if they had really been drained. Then he went over and drained his own.

Mr. Stone laughed. “Push any button on a Californian, and you’ll start a record about the finest climate in the world.”

“It’s the climate,” said Bennie, solemnly. “Let’s see, where did I see that? Oh, yes, on a big banner across the road in a city down in California.”

“A hit, son. I admit it,” Mr. Stone answered. “We do a lot of bragging ourselves. At that, we’ve got a pretty nice climate.”

“I move that the next man who says ‘climate’ has to wash all the dishes for the next three days,” said Dumplin’. “All in favor.”

A great shout of “Aye!” went up, and on that they turned in.

“Praises be to the man who invented the air mattress,” sighed Bennie, as he crawled wearily into his sleeping bag. “Oh, you pneumatic kid!”

“Had enough hard work to satisfy you?” his uncle asked.

“Till about eight A. M. tomorrow,” Bennie answered. “Good night, friends. Please tell the bellhop to bring me hot water at 7:30.”