Page:Boy scouts in the White Mountains; the story of a long hike (IA boyscoutsinwhite00eato).pdf/256

 About fifty yards before the top of the Fan was reached, the two climbers ahead turned to the right, and made their way along a shelf on the ledge which they called a "lead," toward a patch of scrub. One by one, the boys followed them, using extreme caution on the narrow shelf. At the patch of scrub, they could look on up the head wall, and see that the mass of rocks which made the Fan had been brought down by frost and water in a landslide from the top, and made a gully all the way to the summit. To climb the wall, you had to use this gully. It looked quite hopeless, but the stout man started right up, the tall man following him, zigzagging from one lead, or shelf, to another. The boys followed.

"Gee," said Peanut, "wish it hadn't rained so lately. These rocks are slippery. And I don't like walking with the ground in my face all the time."

"I think it's fun," said Art.

"Me, too," said Frank. "But I don't like to look back, though."

They followed two or three leads up the gully, till they were perhaps a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet above the floor of the ravine below. Then Mr. Rogers, looking up, saw Peanut, in the lead, looking about for the next lead, and, after finding it, trying with his short legs to straddle the gap between it and the spot where he stood. His foot slipped, and if Art hadn't been firmly braced right behind him, so