At six o’clock that night the two boys stood on the summit of Bulwagga Mountain, or on one of the summits, for Bulwagga has two peaks. It was the hardest afternoon’s work they had ever undertaken. Long before they threw down their burdens, two thousand feet above sea level, Gordon had ceased to talk and devoted his breath to panting. It was a tough, tedious climb, but the game was well worth the candle. They looked off upon an endless landscape, dotted here and there with toy houses and pigmy villages. “What’s the use of sawing wood and laying bricks and building houses and churches,” said Harry, “if that’s all they amount to?”
Indeed, Bulwagga, standing silent and serene, close to the shore of the great lake, seemed to belittle everything. There lay Crown Point, a modest little cluster of tiny buildings. There lay the lake, almost under them, with all its little juttings and indentations plain to view. There was the Crown Point peninsula curving out into the middle of the lake and pointing northward like a great, clumsy thumb. Inside it was Bulwagga Bay.
Once upon a time, more than three centuries ago, the adventurous Champlain sailed up this great lake which bears his name, with an exploring party of merry Frenchmen. Instead of turning their prows eastward into the narrow channel formed by the peninsula, they sailed gayly into Bulwagga Bay, supposing that an open path lay before them. But the bay proved to be a trap. Down out of the fastnesses of the old mountain came the Mohawk savages, and the gay little company was caught like a rat. Harry, who knew the history of the lake, now saw just how it had happened. Many a time and oft had the bloody Mohawks made good use of this deceptive bay, and many who were caught and slaughtered there supposed they had reached the end of the winding sheet of water, for there was no sign posted on the end of the peninsula informing the explorer to turn to his left.
But now the old mountain, which had so long been the secret ally of the bloody Mohawk tribe, gave up the secret, as if to say: “You see how we worked it. Wasn’t it a great scheme?”
“Harry,” said Gordon, “I’m all in—let’s rest.”
“Your motion is unanimously carried,” said Harry, sitting down on a rock. “If I saw the camp ten feet in front of me now, I wouldn’t budge. Now that’s just about where I think the smoke was,” he continued, pointing down into the woods which extended from the base of the mountain to the lake; “and if I’m right, we’ve got a grandstand view on them, provided there’s a moon. Just as soon as they get their old logs blazing, we’ve got them. If—”
“Now you spoil it all when you say if, Harry. It isn’t necessary to say that. We’re sure to see them from up here. We’ve got them, sure, Harry.”
There was some reason for his hopefulness. Bulwagga Mountain is, indeed, a mighty grand stand built on the shore of Lake Champlain. It is long and narrow, its length running parallel with the lake. There are two peaks, precisely placed, one at the northern, one at the southern, end of the ridge. By reason of Bulwagga Bay, the northern half of the mountain actually forms the shore, descending sheer like a great wall, as if to crowd the railroad into the water. The southern half sits back like a dress circle in a theater, or rather the lake flows wide of it, leaving a stretch of flat, wooded country between. Here the mountain slopes down from its southerly peak, admitting of a descent, if you are cautious and care to undertake it; but there is no way to descend from the northern peak eastward except to go to the edge and jump off, a method which has never been popular with tourists.
On his western extent old Bulwagga is more amiable. There is a road which works its way up toward the northern peak, as many a tired horse knows, but it does not get to the top; and you alight and plod on till you look straight down into the bay and can see the ruins of the Crown Point fortress on the end of the chubby peninsula. The southerly summit looks down with lofty scorn upon the touring parties that make the ascent of his brother peak, for he encourages no sightseers to come too near and trifle with his lonely majesty.
It is all very well for Bulwagga to raise his twin crowns proudly and make a great show to summer boarders, but I can tell you that he might better bow his heads in shame, for he has a most bloody and disreputable history. I dare say there is not a mountain along the whole stretch of Lake Champlain and Lake George that has gotten itself mixed up in so many massacres. For years its fastnesses echoed with warwhoops and with the cries of the dying. It was a favorite stronghold of the savage and treacherous Mohawks. But all that is past.
It was the baffling, lonely, wild southerly peak of old Bulwagga that the boys had succeeded in mounting. There was no road, no path, nothing but their compass to guide them. They had come up from the west and the spot where they threw themselves down commanded an unobstructed view of the stretch of woodland between them and the lake. As they looked down, a sudden jut of white smoke rose under the precipitous northern end of the mountain, the column traveling diagonally across the base of the peninsula toward the lake.
“Listen,” said Harry, and they heard the distant rattle of a hidden train, as it rushed across the peninsula to regain the shore.
“My, but it’s lonely up here, isn’t it, Harry? When are we going to eat, anyway?”
“As soon as little Gretchen brings in the firewood. I’ve got to sit right here so as to keep that woods down there in view. It wouldn’t be safe for me to move.”
“It wouldn’t, wouldn’t it?” said Gordon, pushing his staff against Harry’s chest and toppling him over backward. “Get up and pitch camp, you lazy thing!”
They set to work putting up their shelter, and in a little while the frying pan sent forth its savory odor.
“Let’s have some more of those bacon sandwiches, Harry. Where are the figs?”
“All gone. Want coffee?”
“I certainly do.”
“It’ll keep you awake.”
“Never! A brass band wouldn’t keep me awake up here.”
“All right, hand me over that egg powder. Could you eat an omelette?”
“Could I? Here you go, catch this—catch this chocolate, too.”
“What’s that for?”
“Scrape some into the egg powder, Harry. It’ll make a sort of chocolate omelette.”
“Why not put some cereal in, too, while we’re about it?”
“Just the idea, and we’ll have a new breakfast food—choc-chocerealeg.”
“Reminds you of the Champastic Motor,” laughed Harry. “I wonder how the little chap’s getting on with his model.”
“We’ll get him in the troop, hey, Harry?”
“By all means.”
After supper, to which both did full justice, they sat back to await the darkness. They had hoped to see some smoke which might indicate a cook fire, in the woods below, but supper time had come and gone and there had not been the faintest suggestion of any. It was true their outlook was by no means limited to the woods directly east of them. By shifting their position somewhat they could scan the country far to the west and south. But the woods to the east afforded an ideal spot for a camp; there was the lake just beyond—it was just such a spot as Red Deer would have chosen and near enough to show the trained vision of a scout the smoke of its cook fire. But there was none, and both boys rather dreaded the approach of darkness with, perhaps, its greater disappointment. For Gordon enthusiastically, and Harry quietly, had set their hopes all day on what a view from this old mountain might reveal.
“I know one thing,” said Harry, “and that is, if we stay here over to-morrow, I’m going to find a place where little fishes dwell. Methinks I could dally with a fried trout, Sir Gordon.”
“But why should we hang around here over to-morrow, Harry?”
“Because, my son, we don’t happen to be weather-vanes on the top of a steeple. If we don’t spy anything down there, we’ve got to get over that way till we can command the west,—savvy?”
“That’s a good expression, Harry, ‘command the west.’”
“You like it?”
“It’s all right.”
“If I happen to use an expression you don’t like, just mention it.”
“The pleasure is mine,” said Gordon.
Ten o’clock arrived—eleven. No sign of a camp-fire. Weary, sleepy, and disappointed, they turned in for the night.
The morning broke damp and foggy, with a drizzling rain veiling the country roundabout. The wind was east, the sky dull and heavy, giving no promise of clearing.
“Rain before seven,
Clear before eleven,”
sang Gordon, cheerfully. “It’ll be a good day for fishing, anyway. I’m going after minnows. We’ll see if that trickle of water doesn’t broaden out some, hey?”
“I can tell you that without going,” said Harry. “It does. It flows into the lake.”
“Rises in Bulwagga Mountain,” said Gordon, “takes an easterly course, and flows into Lake Champlain. Correct; be seated, Master Lord.”
“A little south by east,” said Harry, looking at his map.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Gordon answered. “A sail on the weather bow, Cap’n.”
“Look here, Kid, we’ll have to stick it out up here to-day, and if there’s any sign of clearing by afternoon we’ll move over through this clump where we can command the west.”
“Don’t talk about commanding the west, Harry. Last night you were going to command the east, and now the east has got you rattled. I don’t see us commanding this old country at all. It seems to me the country is having a great laugh on us. Look at this game that we’re mixed up in now. This rain wasn’t on the map, was it? You give me a pain with your ridges and outlooks and things—and so does Red Deer with his blackboard charts! You call this a peak? I don’t see any peak to it. It’s a jungle—that’s what it is! Where’s the peak?”
“We’re on it.”
“Harry, you’re crazy. There’s no sign of a peak here.”
“Isn’t that other one a peak, Kid? Well, over there this one looks the same.”
“All right,” said Gordon, as if to make allowance for his friend’s peculiarities, “only don’t talk about ‘commanding the west.’”
“Getting discouraged, Kiddo?”
“No, I’m trusting to luck. I’m usually lucky. I found a quarter and a dime and a gold ring and a watch charm last year, and I believe I’ll run up against camp—that’s all.”
“Good for you! Well, now, give me your ear. I was just going to rise to remark when you made your little speech, that we’ll go over to the western side of this sharp peak, this tack point, this spire—”
“And the first and the last,
And the future and the past.
And the first and the last—”
sang Gordon, doggedly.
“Keep still!”
“Well, then, you keep still.”
“Kid, all you need is an apple. Now listen to your patrol leader. It’s a scout’s duty to obey his leader. You need to brush up on the law a little.”
“I suppose that precipice over there is what you call a contour line,” said Gordon, with deep sarcasm.
“That’s what Uncle Sam’s surveyors call it, but, of course, anything you say—”
“And when it comes to the law,” continued Gordon, “you just want to read up General Baden-Powell—what he says about chivalry. It’s a scout’s duty to recount his adventures to maidens.”
“Well, if I’d recounted a thrilling adventure like a rescue, she might have cried, Kid.”
“Maidens don’t cry—they weep.”
“Well, this mutiny has got to be put down, anyway,” said Harry. “I order you to di............