-Fitz as spryly as any of us. Having
only one good arm made no difference to him, and he never would accept
help. He was independent, and we only kept an eye on him and let him
alone. The bowlders petered out; and now ahead was another slope, with
more snow patches, and short dead grass in little bunches; and it ended
in a bare outcrop: the top!

Our feet weighed twenty-five pounds each, our knees were wobbly, we
could hear each other pant, and my heart thumped so that the beats all
ran together. But with a cheer we toiled hard for the summit, before
resting. We didn't race--not at fourteen thousand feet; we weren't so
foolish--and I don't know who reached it first. Anyway, soon we all were
there.

We had climbed old Pilot Peak! The top was flat and warm and dry, so we
could sit. The sky was close above; around about was nothing but the
clear air. East, west, north and south, below us, were hills and valleys
and timber and parks and streams, with the cloud-shadows drifting
across. We didn't say one word. The right words didn't exist, somehow,
and what was the use in exclaiming when we all felt alike, and could
look and see for ourselves? You don't seem to amount to much when you
are up, like this, on a mountain, near the sky, with the world spread
out below and not missing you; and a boy's voice, or a man's, is about
the size of a cricket's chirp. The silence is one of the best things you
find. So we sat and looked and thought.

But on a sudden we did hear a noise--a rattling and "Hee-haw!" And here,
from a different side, came Apache again. He had got past those
bowlders, somehow. With another "Hee-haw!" he trotted right up on top,
in amidst us, where he stood, with a big sigh, looking around, too.

This was the chance for us to map out the country ahead, on the other
side of the pass. So we took a good long survey. It was a rough country,
as bad as that which we had left; with much timber and many hills and
valleys. Down in some of the valleys were yellow patches, like hay
ranches, and forty or fifty miles away seemed to be a little haze of
smoke, which must be a town: Green Valley, where we were bound! Hurrah!
But we hadn't got there, yet.

Major Henry made a rough sketch of the country, with Pilot Peak as base
point and a jagged, reddish tip, over toward the smoke, as another
landmark. Our course ought to be due west from Pilot, keeping to the
south of that reddish tip.

We had a little lunch, and after clean