le and left home. They weren't
fighters, anyhow.

"One time the braves were down hunting and an awful storm came up--a
kind of waterspout--and when they got back to their rock they found
their little staircase had been all broken to pieces, and only a few
steps were left hanging away up in the air. While they were camped
at the foot of the rock, wondering what to do, a war party from the
north came along and massacred 'em to a man, with all the old folks
and women looking on from the rock. Then the war party went on south
and left the village to get down the best way they could. Of course
they never got down. They starved to death up there, and when the
war party came back on their way north, they could hear the children
crying from the edge of the bluff where they had crawled out, but
they didn't see a sign of a grown Indian, and nobody has ever been
up there since."

We exclaimed at this dolorous legend and sat up.

"There couldn't have been many people up there," Percy demurred.
"How big is the top, Tip?"

"Oh, pretty big. Big enough so that the rock doesn't look nearly as
tall as it is. The top's bigger than the base. The bluff is sort of
worn away for several hundred feet up. That's one reason it's so
hard to climb."

I asked how the Indians got up, in the first place.

"Nobody knows how they got up or when. A hunting party came along
once and saw that there was a town up there, and that was all."

Otto rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful. "Of course there must be
some way to get up there. Couldn't people get a rope over someway
and pull a ladder up?"

Tip's little eyes were shining with excitement. "I know a way. Me
and Uncle Bill talked it all over. There's a kind of rocket that
would take a rope over--life-savers use 'em--and then you could
hoist a rope-ladder and peg it down at the bottom and make it tight
with guy-ropes on the other side. I'm going to climb that there
bluff, and I've got it all planned out."

Fritz asked what he expected to find when he got up there.

"Bones, maybe, or the ruins of their town, or pottery, or some of
their idols. There might be 'most anything up there. Anyhow, I want
to see."

"Sure nobody else has been up there, Tip?" Arthur asked.

"Dead sure. Hardly anybody ever goes down there. Some hunters tried
to cut steps in the rock once, but they didn't get higher than a man
can reach. The Bluff's all red granite, and Uncle Bill thinks it's a
boulder the glaciers le