Page:Boy scouts in the White Mountains; the story of a long hike (IA boyscoutsinwhite00eato).pdf/144

 "No fear," the first speaker laughed, "we are going down over the ridge, the way you just came up. We're doing Moosilauke to-morrow."

"By the Beaver Brook Trail?" the boys asked.

"Yes. Have you been over it? How is it?"

"It ain't," said Peanut. "It was, but it ain't."

"What do you mean?"

"He means it's eroded into pretty steep drops in places," Rob put in. "We thought when we came down that it would be an awful pull up."

"There's a good logging road across the brook, though," one of the men said. "If you'd taken that instead of the trail you'd have had no trouble. I was over it last year."

"I'm glad we didn't," Art said—"at least as long as we were coming down."

Both parties now packed up their loads, took a last good look at the view, with Washington still under the clouds, and said good-bye, the three strangers going off down the ridge, the Scouts turning northwest, and winding down the summit cone, over the rough, broken stones of the path. At the base of the cone, they found the spring, a small, shallow basin in the stones, so shallow that the water had to be dipped gingerly to keep from stirring up the bottom. By the time the last boy had drunk his fill, in fact, there wasn't enough water left to dip. Then the path turned due west, and descended at a