his arms wildly, as though trying to fly. The ladies begged
me not to approach him lest he totter from his precarious perch.
Summoning all the authority I could command, I ordered him to come down
off the rock. My commandment unheeded, next I humored him and tried to
coax him back upon the pretext of showing him something of special
interest. But he stood firm, mentally at least, if not physically.

Pushing the ladies ahead, I hurried on toward the trail. As I started,
I waved good-by, and shouted:

"Go on, jump. Get it over with, coward!"

He turned back from the edge, swearing vengeance against me. In
abusing me, however, he forgot his obsession to jump.

During the summer of my experience with the man who wanted to jump, I
guided a party of three men who behaved in a totally different, but in
quite as unexpected, manner. They were three gentlemen from New York,
who wished to make a night climb up Long's Peak. It was a beautiful
moonlight night. Our party left the hotel at the foot of the Peak at
eleven o'clock. Proceeding upward through the shadowy, moon-flecked
forest, we sang songs, shouted, listened to the far-away calls of the
coyotes in the valley below, and from timberline saw the distant lights
of Denver. At one o'clock we reached the end of the horse trail. In
two hours the horses had covered five miles and had climbed up
thirty-five hundred feet. We were on schedule time. Though the sun
would gild the summit of the Peak soon after four in the morning, we
would arrive sufficiently ahead of it, to watch it rise.

All at once my troubles began. The three men wanted to race across
bowlderfield. It was sheer folly and I told them so, and why, but
failed to convince them. They raced. They kidded me for being slow,
dared me to race them, and gibingly assured me that they would wait for
me on top and command the sun not to rise until I got there.

They would have their little joke. They waited for me at Keyhole and
we moved slowly along the shelf trail beyond. On that they raced
again, but not far, for the steep slope of the trough with its slippery
stones stood just beyond. Right there they insisted on eating their
lunch, an untimely lunch hour for there was hard climbing yet to do.
Not satisfied with emptying their lunch bags, they drank freely of some
ice water that trickled out from beneath a snowbank.

I got them going at last and we had gone only a short way when two of
them fell il