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.