Boy Scouts in the White Mountains: The Story of a Long HikeEaton, Walter Prichard
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Boy Scouts in the White Mountains: The Story of a Long Hike
Eaton, Walter Prichard
Boy Scouts -- Juvenile fiction; Hiking -- Juvenile fiction; White Mountains (N.H. and Me.) -- Juvenile fiction
“We walked up from the Glen cottage to see the sunrise,” the other
replied.
“Oh, dear, I should say we did!” sighed a woman in the party. “If you
ever catch me climbing a mountain again in the middle of the night,
send me to Matteawan at once.”
“Cheer up, Lizzie, we’ll have some sandwiches pretty soon,” somebody
told her.
“Sandwiches for breakfast! Worse and worse!” she sighed. “I don’t
believe there’s going to be any sunrise, either. I don’t see any signs
of it.”
“Let’s shake this bunch,” Art whispered to Peanut. “They give me a
pain.”
The boys ran back, ahead, to the coach house, entered once more, and
bolted the door behind them, lest the new party try to get in.
“Golly, we’ve _got_ to get that bugle, and have the laugh on whatever
his name is--he didn’t tell us, did he? I’m going up after it,” said
Peanut.
He kicked off his shoes, and started on tiptoe up the stairs. Art heard
the floor creak overhead, and then he heard a smothered laugh.
A moment later the man appeared with the bugle in one hand, and
Peanut’s ear in the other. Peanut was still attached to the ear, and he
was trying hard not to laugh out loud.
“Caught you red-handed,” said the man. “Hello, there, Art! You up too?
How’s the weather?”
“Fine,” said Art. “Come on out and wake ’em all up.”
The man looked at his watch, then at the sky through the window. The
east was already light. The stars were paling. You could see out over
the bare rock heaps of the mountain top.
“Come on!” he said.
The three went outdoors. The party with lanterns had already passed the
coach house and climbed the steps to the summit. They could be heard up
there, talking. The man and the boys went around to the south of the
coach house, out of sight of the summit, and setting his bugle to his
lips, tipping it upward toward the now rosy east, the man pealed out
the gay, stirring notes of reveille.
“Oh, do it again!” cried Peanut. “Gee, I like it up here! I know now
why you brought the bugle.”
The man smiled, and blew reveille again.
Before the last notes had died away, they heard stampings in the house
behind them, and cries of “Can it!” “Say, let a feller sleep, won’t
you?” “Aw, cut out the music!”
“Get up, you stiffs, and see the sun rise!” shouted Peanut. “Going to
be a grand day!”
Five minutes later the Scouts and the men were all out of the coach
house, on the rocks beside Art and Peanut.
“It _is_ a good day, that’s a fact,” said Mr. Rogers. “Where’s the best
place to see the sun rise?”
“I’d suggest the top of the mountain,” said the bugler.
It was light now. The east was rosy, and as they looked down southward
over the piles of bare, tumbled rock toward Tuckerman’s Ravine, they
could see masses of white cloud, like cotton batting. Up the steps
they all hurried, and found the lantern party eating sandwiches in the
shelter of the Tip Top House, out of the wind.
“They’d rather eat than see the sun rise,” sniffed Art.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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