CHAPTER XVI

The Climb Up Scott Peak—Bennie Begins Work for a Merit Badge for Hiking

But the night wasn’t very old before everybody had discovered that there is a big difference between sleeping on an air mattress, inside four or five blankets in a sleeping bag, under a tent, and sleeping on the bare ground, in one blanket. Bennie and Spider had slept on the bare ground, to be sure, many a time on their scout hikes at home, but that was always in summer, when it was warm. To be sure, it was summer now, but they were more than 6,000 feet up, on the crest of the Cascades, with snow all around them.

It seemed to Bennie as if he had been asleep only fifteen minutes, when he was waked up by cold. He didn’t fully wake up at first, but only just enough to feel the wind getting down around his neck, and to feel his whole body stiff and uncomfortable. He yanked the blanket tighter around him, and tried to go to sleep again. But, instead, he woke up still more.

At last he was awake enough to prop himself up on one elbow, and look at the fire. It had burned down to a few glowing embers in the stone pit against the lava block. Overhead the stars were extremely bright, but the night itself seemed dark. There wasn’t a sound in the world. Yes! Hark! Bennie’s ears grew alert in the darkness. Far off he heard a roar, starting low, then growing louder, then dying away. At first he couldn’t understand it; then he realized it was a landslide somewhere on a steep slope, perhaps over on the rim of the lake a mile and a half away. He listened again, but there was no further sound—only a whisper of wind in the fir trees close by, and the gentle run of the water in the creek. Suddenly Bennie realized that he was in the very heart of the wilderness, that except for his four companions asleep beside him, there wasn’t a human being within a day’s hike. He also realized that if he didn’t put some wood on the fire pretty quick, it would be out entirely.

So he crawled out of his blanket as gently as he could, and tried to make no noise as he put on more fuel. He blew on the coals till the new wood caught, and then turned his cold back to the flames. As he did so, he saw Spider’s eyes open in the sudden light. Spider blinked a second, and then sat up.

“Hello,” he whispered. “You cold?”

“Gosh, I was most frozen,” Bennie whispered back.

“Me, too. Been sleeping on a rock, right in the middle of my hip. Ow, it’s sore!”

Spider now got up also, and came close to the fire.

When they were warmed up again, they lay down once more, and managed to doze off. But long before morning, Bennie woke to see first Mr. Stone and then his uncle putting more wood on the fire. It wasn’t yet dawn—just the first hint of lightness in the sky—when Bennie finally woke up so cold and so stiff and uncomfortable from the hard ground, that further sleep seemed impossible. He was just rousing himself to put on more wood when he heard Spider stir, and then sit up.

“I’m going to stay up,” he whispered. “Let’s take a trot around to get warm.”

Spider rose, and after building up the fire and huddling over it a few minutes, they walked away from camp.

“Let’s go up the valley to the rim,” Spider said. “We can go on the rim road, and have easy walking. Gee, I’d like to run all the way, and get up some circulation.”

They set out rapidly, and reached the rim in fifteen minutes. It was lighter now, and they could see plainly. The lake at this point was only 500 feet below them, for they had come out on the lowest point on the entire rim. But, even so, they seemed to be looking down into the clouds. They looked up into clouds, too, whole masses of clouds around the peak of Scott, of Dutton Cliff, of Garfield. Then the daylight increased rapidly, the clouds began mysteriously to disappear, holes came in them showing the blue water—and suddenly Spider grabbed Bennie’s arm and pointed half-way down the side.

Bennie looked, and saw a small deer—a mule deer, as it is called—coming rapidly up the steep incline, directly toward them! He could not get their scent from so far below, and he quite evidently hadn’t seen them. On he came, bounding easily up the incline, where a man would have toiled breathlessly.

“Wow! I’d like to be able to go up a mountain like that!” Bennie exclaimed.

Almost at his first word, they saw the deer’s big ears prick up. He landed stock still and rigid, and raised his eyes. Then he saw the two boys above him, and with a single bound, so quick the scouts couldn’t detect how he made the turn, he was off at right angles, along the slope. Working upward as he leapt along, he reached the rim three hundred yards away from them, and disappeared like smoke into a stand of fir.

“What a shot!” breathed Bennie.

“Aw, you couldn’t have hit him in a year,” Spider laughed.

“Why couldn’t I?”

“First place, you can’t shoot well enough, and second place I’d have knocked up your gun,” said Spider. “I wouldn’t shoot a deer as long as I had anything else to eat.”

“He was kind o’ pretty,” Bennie agreed.

“’Tisn’t that so much. But he’s _wild_. He’s part of the wilderness. He belongs to it. Killing a deer is just as bad as knocking off the top of a mountain, or spoiling all the forest trees.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Bennie admitted. “But how about going back and getting grub?”

The sun was up when they reached camp again, and so were the other three campers.

“’Smatter, boys?” asked Mr. Stone. “Getting an appetite before breakfast?”

“So cold we couldn’t sleep,” they answered.

“I was none too warm myself.”

“And I was none too comfortable,” the doctor added.

“Ho!” cried Dumplin’, who was starting the breakfast over the fire, “I never woke up once. Just as warm as anything, and never felt a stone in me all night.”

“Well, who wouldn’t be warm if he was covered with a blubber bed-spread!” Bennie retorted.

“And who wouldn’t sleep soft if he carried his own upholstery?” said Spider.

“All right, kid,” Dumplin’ grinned. “But there are times when it pays.”

The sun was not far up when they finished breakfast, cached the grub and blankets and the packs, and armed only with the alpenstocks, a pocketful of raisins and chocolate, the canteens and cameras, set out for the summit of Scott’s Peak, which rose directly above them, and seemed to be reached, after the first pull up the steep side of the ravine, by a fairly easy incline. The map showed, too, that the distance was less than three miles.

“Three miles—three hours,” said Bennie. “A mile an hour is what the Appalachian Club allows. We’ll be there at half-past nine.”

“Getting sure again, are you?” said his uncle. “This isn’t Mount Washington, where the Appalachian Club climbs. This is Scott’s Peak. It isn’t made of granite, but it’s a spur volcano spit up out of the side of old Mazama, and it’s about 2,500 feet of nice, soft pumice dust from here on.”

It was.

Once over the first scramble up the side of the ravine, they settled down to a steady plod in the soft, volcanic stuff. Their feet sank deep into it. The pitch was greater than it looked, too, and every time they threw their weight on to the forward foot, it sank back a way. Sometimes there were patches of snow they could get on, for partial relief. But mostly this side of the mountain had melted off, and it was just a long, weary, back-breaking grind up the pumice. Did you ever climb a steep pile of sand? Anyhow, you have walked in the deep, dry, soft sand above the tide mark on a beach. You know what hard work it is. The climb up Scott was just like that, only more so. One hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, and part of five, with many a rest, and the sun getting hotter and hotter, before they reached the summit.

“Well, boys, this is the highest you’ve been yet,” said Mr. Stone. “Eight thousand nine hundred and thirty-two feet.”

“Wish there was a tree we could shin to make it an even 9,000,” said Bennie.

Dumplin’ wiped the sweat from his face, and collapsed on the ground, panting. “I wouldn’t climb a barber’s pole,” he announced.

“Well, you can see most of eastern Oregon without sitting up,” his father laughed.

This was certainly true. From the top of Scott, they could look eastward for a hundred miles, over a great plain almost as flat and bare as the sea, a sage brush desert. North and south they could look mile after mile in either direction along the tumbled, snowy world of the Cascade range. And just below them, to the west, they looked down 3,000 feet into the blue hole of Crater Lake.

“There’s most room enough for a feller to breathe, out here,” Bennie remarked. Then he started to drink from his canteen, and discovered it was empty.

“Fill it with snow,” said his uncle.

Dumplin’ had drunk up all his supply, too, so both of them hunted out a snow-bank, dug down to clean snow, and began to stuff it into their canteens. “Gosh! where does it all go to!” Dumplin’ remarked, after three or four minutes.

“Takes a lot of snow to make a little water,” Bennie answered. “Mine’s full—full o’ snow. Now let her melt!”

Presently, after he had eaten his raisins, he took a pull at the canteen, and got about one good swig of water.

“Let’s be going down,” said he.

“Just so you can get a drink?” asked Spider.

“Marvelous, Watson, marvelous,” Bennie laughed. “Why haven’t they given you a job on the detective force?”

But the rest, by now, had emptied their canteens, too, and everybody was thirsty, so down they started. It was easy going down. When the slope was smooth, they set in their stocks as far ahead as they could reach, and then took a long vault, down past them, pulled them out, and repeated. In one hour they had covered the ground it took them five on the ascent.

It was only a shade after two o’clock when they reached their cache, so they shouldered their luggage and hiked on down the valley, away from the lake, for nearly five miles, till they reached a region of grass and flowers and heavy timber, where the Sand Creek had cut down a deep cañon in the volcanic soil and lava, but the strangest cañon you ever saw, because some of the lava was harder than the rest, and the water hadn’t cut this, but left it sticking up all through the gorge, in great, round, water-worn pinnacles. Imagine hundreds of Bunker Hill monuments, round instead of square-cornered, erected helter-skelter at the bottom of a wild cañon, and you have a picture of the pinnacles. Here, near the brink, in sheltered woods, they made their second night’s bivouac.

And this time Bennie woke up only once in the night, and had to be shaken awake in the morning.

“I must be getting fat, like Dump,” he said. “I wasn’t very cold, and I’m not very sore.”

“You’re getting harder,” said his uncle. “If we did this a couple of weeks, we could all sleep out like tops.”

The third day they hiked back to their camp on the rim, using the rim road to get around the cliffs and ridges—a long grind with the heavy packs, but quite uneventful.

And when they got to camp, the doctor announced, “We leave to-morrow, at six o’clock. Everybody out at four-thirty. Won’t need any grub except for tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch, so we can clean up the larder for dinner. Bennie, go over and smile sweetly at the hotel cook, and see if you can coax him to sell you a big beefsteak, and a loaf of bread, and a head of lettuce.”

“Get a lemon meringue pie if he’s got one,” Dumplin’ added.

“The cook’s an awful grouch,” the doctor laughed, when Bennie had gone. “He’ll throw him out of the kitchen.”

Everybody was busy about camp, getting dinner ready, when Bennie returned with a large package. He opened it with a grin. It contained two steaks, a head of lettuce, a loaf of bread—and a lemon pie!

“The cook’s an awful old grouch,” Mr. Stone remarked to Uncle Billy, winking at the boys.

“_How_ did you do it?” demanded the astonished doctor.

“It’s my fatal beauty,” said Bennie airily. And that’s all he would tell.

But to Spider, later, he said, “Remember that fat old guy that used to cook at the White Doe Inn, back home? The one that used to come to all our ball games? Well, he’s the cook at the hotel here now. I knew Uncle Bill was trying to put one over on me, and I didn’t have a notion how I was going to beat him, till I saw who the cook was. He came at me mad as anything, ’cause campers are always trying to buy stuff off him. Looked as if he was going to throw me out. And then I said, ‘Hello, Mr. Leary, coming down to the field to see us play Lenox tomorrow?’—and he recognized me—and, say! I was so glad I gave him all the change from Uncle Billy’s bill.”

“Some luck!” Spider laughed.

“Don’t you tell, now.”

“Not a word. But, boy, I’m going to eat my share of that steak!”

It was a glorious meal, and Dumplin’ kissed the pie plate when it was all over.

After Bennie had carried the pie plate back to the cook, while the rest washed up the dishes, Uncle Billy asked for the Scout Manual, and read what a scout has to do to get a merit badge for hiking.

“To obtain a merit badge for hiking, a scout must:

1. Show a thorough knowledge of the care of the feet on a hike.

2. Walk five miles per day, six days in the week, for a period of three months. This may include walking to and from school or work. He shall keep a record of his hikes daily, preferably in his diary, a transcript to be made an exhibit before the court of honor.

3. Walk ten miles on each of two days in each month for a period of three months; in other words, six walks of ten miles each during the three months.

4. Walk twenty miles in one day.

5. Locate and describe interesting trails, and walk to some place marked by some patriotic or historical event.

6. Write his experiences in these several walking trips with reference to fatigue or distress experienced, and indicate what he had learned in the way of caring for himself as regards equipment such as camping and cooking outfit, food, footwear, clothing and hygiene.

7. Review his ability to read a road map (preferably a Government topographical map), to use a compass, and shall be required to make a written plan for a hike from the map.”

“Number one,” Uncle Billy said. “What have you learned about the care of the feet, Bennie?”

“Wash ’em in cold water when you can, and dry ’em thoroughly. Wear wool socks, and carry two extra pairs. At home we carry adhesive tape, to put over a place that may start chafing, so’s to stop a blister.”

“That’s all right. The best care of the feet, though, is to have stout, easy boots, that _fit_. Well, number two—we haven’t walked five miles a day for six weeks, have we? You’ll have to do that at home. Number three—‘Walk ten miles on each of two days, in each month for a period of three months.’ You can count this hike as ten miles, or its equivalent, on each of three days, for July, all right. We hardly made ten miles the first day, but it was equal to fifteen or twenty of ordinary walking. You did two miles and a half before breakfast the second day, then six up and down the mountain, and six more before camp at night. That’s fourteen and a half, with three of ’em up Scott’s Peak in the pumice.”

“That ought to count for twenty, I’ll say,” Bennie declared. “And how much the last day?”

“Well, with our getting wood for breakfast, and taking a last look at the pinnacles, and your two trips to the hotel, I guess we can call today twenty miles.”

“I’ll take a trot around now, if I need to,” Bennie laughed.

“No, you can sit still. Well, that qualifies you on number four, anyhow, and gives you a good start on number three. Number five you’ll have to do at home. Number six you can attend to some day in camp, and let me see what you’ve written about these three days. Number seven—h’m—you’ve got a lot to learn yet about using maps, I suspect. Go get your map of Crater Lake, and let me see you lay out, with a pencil, what looks like the best way to hike from here to Crater Peak, five miles south of us.”

Bennie worked over this for some time, and then showed the line he had drawn.

“Good!” said his uncle. “I’m glad to see you haven’t drawn an air-line path that plunges you down any 500-foot precipices, or takes you up any 600-foot walls.”

“I learned something on this trip,” said Bennie. “I learned that when they put contour lines close together on a map, it means steep, and if there are a lot of ’em, and they are very close, it means, ‘Detour to the right.’”

“That’s the idea. Well, boy, are you going to stick? Will you write out for me an account of this trip, and the next one we take, too, and try to work for this merit badge?”

“You bet I will!”

“May I, too?” asked Spider.

“Gee, he’s got so many badges now he looks like Marshal Foch,” said Bennie.

“The more the better,” laughed the doctor. “Now, boys, bed! Big Ben is set for 4:30.”

“It’ll take a Big Bertha to wake _me_ at 4:30,” said Dumplin’.

“Oh, you air mattress!” sighed Bennie, as he crawled into his sleeping bag.

Spider answered never a word. He was fast asleep.