These, and a dozen questions such as these, passed through their minds as they gazed. Reading his companions' unspoken thoughts and answering them, Snap said at last: 'I reckon we had better go and see.' 'Yes!' said Dick, 'we should be pretty snug up there alongside Okeeheedee as they call this bird of theirs; but it is a mighty stiff climb, and I don't know how we shall get ourselves up, let alone Frank here.' 'Leave me here, Dick,' said Frank; 'the Crows won't dare to come as near the peak as this, and in a day or two I shall be strong enough to come to you, if they are not sick of waiting for us by that time.' 'We'll see you sugared first, old fellow, and then we won't,' replied Towzer. 'Come along out of that,' and, taking one arm, whilst Snap took the other, he helped his brother along until they reached the level of the graveyard. Here the road grew worse, and it soon became a question of rock-climbing, pure and simple. Then it was that the forethought which becomes habitual with the North-western hunter showed itself. From his waist Old Dick unwound a long lariat, and at the first seemingly impossible place got the party out of their difficulties easily enough by throwing the loop over a projecting point a great many feet above them and climbing up by the ladder thus extemporised to the little point itself. The boys followed him one after another, and then Snap and Dick, having instructed Frank to make the rope fast under his arms, hauled him up alongside of them. From here, by using the dizzy little gallery along which the wild goats had gone, the party managed to get to that shoulder over which they had seen the goats disappear. By this time the balloon was comparatively close to them. They could see its car, and that it was anchored by a rope to the rocks over which it hung. They could have seen a man, had one been there, but they saw none. Hoping that if they could attract his attention he would show them the road to his eyrie, the boys whistled again and again. But no answer came, except the echo of their own whistles and the shrill scream of a hawk which they had disturbed from its look-out. 'Deuced odd!' said Snap. 'Asleep or dead, I should think,' said Frank, and the croak of a great raven sailing by below them, so close that they could see its bright yellow eye looking at them, seemed to echo 'Dead! dead!' 'Not a cheerful locality, even for a graveyard,' muttered Snap as the sun was hidden for a second behind the cliffs; 'however, for'ard on!' CHAPTER XXI AT THE TOP 'Beat, I think,' said Snap a little later; and, indeed, it looked as if man could go no higher than the point to which, by infinite toil, the boys had now attained. 'You two stay here a little,' he added to the two Winthrops, 'and take care of the grub and the rifle,' for, in spite of the difficulties of the ascent, Wharton had insisted on bringing one rifle and his 'six-shooter,' as well as a handkerchief full of bread per man.