"We're not doing much better, that's a fact," Art admitted.
Just as he spoke, a partridge suddenly went up from the path, not twenty-five feet ahead, with a great whir-r-r. When they reached the spot where he rose, they found a tiny, clear spring. Art flung down his burden, and dropped on his knees with his cup.
"Good place for lunch, I say," remarked Peanut.
"Me, too, on that," said Frank.
Rob looked ahead. The path was growing still steeper. He looked back, and through the trees he could see far below to the valley.
"One more vote," he said.
"Carried," said Art, running for fuel.
After a lunch of bacon and powdered eggs, the party lolled an hour in the shade, half asleep, and then resumed the climb. The path very soon entered a forest of a different sort. It was still chiefly hard wood, but very much darker and denser than that below. The trail, too, was not a logging road. It was marked only by blazes on the trees, and the forest floor was black and damp with untold ages of leaf-mould.
"I guess we've got above the line of lumbering," said Rob.
"We have," said the Scout Master.
Art looked about. "Then this is really primeval forest!" he exclaimed—"just what it was when there were only Indians in this country!"
