The boys put on their hats again, and Frank took a picture of them, gathered around the flag. Then Peanut let out a pent-up whoop. “Never celebrated the Fourth like this before!” he cried. “Golly, but Moosilauke looks big from here!”
It certainly did look big. It seemed to tower over them. The western sun was throwing the shadows of its own summit down the eastern slopes, and the whole great mountain was hazy, mysterious.
“Are we going to climb that?” asked Frank.
“Whew!” said Frank. “Makes my legs ache already!”
“It’s easier than this one,” Mr. Rogers laughed. “Now let’s go back and make camp.”
The party retraced their steps to the north peak where, just below the summit and overlooking the precipitous drop to the Lonesome Lake plateau, was a small but cold and delicious spring.
“How does the water get way up here, is what stumps me,” said Frank.
“I suppose it is rain and snow water, held in the rocks,” the Scout Master replied. “Perhaps some of it comes along the rock fissures from the south peak, but that wouldn’t be necessary. There is a little spring almost at the top of Lafayette over there. We’ll see it in a few days.”
“We’ll come down from Moosilauke, and tramp up the Notch down there below our feet now, till we reach Liberty, climb Liberty, and go right along the ridge to Lafayette, and then down to the Profile House,” was the answer.
The boys looked across the valley to the great rock wall on the further side. The sun was sinking low now, and the shadow of Kinsman was cast across. Even as they watched, this shadow mounted slowly up the steep, scarred sides of Liberty and Lincoln, till only their summits were in sunlight, rosy at first and then amethyst. The far hills to the southwest began to fade from sight.
“Gee, it’s time to make camp!” cried Peanut. “Here’s a good, soft place, on this moss.”
He pointed to a level spot on the summit. Mr. Rogers shook his head.
“Nix!” he said. “We’d be chilled through before morning. Which way is the wind?”
Art picked up a piece of dry grass and tossed it into the air. It drifted toward the southeast.
“All right. We’ll go down into the spruces to leeward, and keep out of it.”
The boys soon found a sheltered level space some fifty feet below the peak, and began to clear out a sort of nest in the tough spruce.