Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Table of Contents | Complete Story

Before descending to camp, they cached the toboggan in as protected a place as they could find and anchored it by means of the rope to the neighboring rocks, so that it would not be lifted up and thrown back down the slope by the night winds that whip these altitudes like a winter gale at sea.

After the toil of the day, sleep yielded less easily to the interruptions of the cold, so the night seemed reasonably short.

At five A. M., on the Fourth of July, the mobilized patrol stood round their extinguished camp fire, all ready for the final ascent. It was the Fourth of fair weather for which they had hoped no cloud, or fog, or threat of rain. The white slopes stretched upward before them in the starlight.

They took only their alpenstocks, their pack equipment, their extra clothes, the ice ax, the flashlights, the compass, some hardtack and chocolate which they carried in their pockets, and the pigeons, the first of which they meant to turn loose when they reached the cache of the toboggan. In addition, Sheriff Taylor carried a canteen of water at his belt.

"Forward march! " he called, and soon the crusted snow was crunching under their feet.

They reached the sled at nine o'clock. A boy took one of the pigeons and warmed it under his sweater, while Sheriff Taylor with a sharp-pointed pencil wrote a note in tiny script. He fastened this into the band on the pigeon's leg, and the boy, with a final stroke of a caressing hand along its glossy back, let the messenger fly.