[Illustration: 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
[Illustration: W. A. Wilde Company]
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.