After a short rest they went on again. The way grew rockier. There were
fewer piles of loose stones, but more outcropping rocks, the bare bones of
the earth. Constantly the light dwindled. Their progress grew slower. From
time to time they paused to drink and rest.

"We're never going to make it before dark," said Charley, again pausing to
get his breath. He took a drink and passed the canteen to his companion.

"Then we'll have to make it after dark," said Lew. "For the canteen is
about empty and we've got to have water. I'm so thirsty I could drink a
gallon."

They said no more, but pushed ahead as fast as their weary legs would
carry them.

"We're not far from the top now," Lew said after a time. "I see our old
landmark over to the left. It isn't more than half a mile from that to the
water. We'll make it all right."

But he had hardly gone fifty yards before he stopped and cried out. Before
him lay a blackened, desolate area that stretched the remainder of the way
to the summit. Fire had swept over the spot. But it was not the fact that
fire had been through the region that made Lew cry out. Fire and
subsequent storms had practically leveled the stand of trees between the
spot where Lew stood and the summit. Here and there a blackened tree
thrust its bare trunk upward, limbless, its top gone, a ragged, spectral,
pitiful remnant of what had been a beautiful tree. But mostly the thick
stand of young poles had been laid low even as a scythe levels a field of
grain. And these fallen poles lay in almost impassable confusion, twisted