and they abandoned the enterprise. So it remained for an indomitable Scotchman,
one George Anderson, finally to achieve the feat. Beginning where they had left
off, drilling and climbing for a week, he had at last set foot upon that awful
summit and gazed down into the depths where Mirror Lake reposed, nearly a mile
beneath.
In the years which followed, many bold men took advantage of the huge rope
ladder which he had put in place; but one winter ladder, cables and all were
carried away by the snow and ice. True, most of the eye-bolts, twisted and bent,
remained. But few men had since essayed the hazardous undertaking, and of those
few more than one gave up his life on the treacherous heights, and not one
succeeded.
But Gus Lafee and Hazard Van Dorn had left the smiling valley-land of
California and journeyed into the high Sierras, intent on the great adventure. And
thus it was that their disappointment was deep and grievous when they awoke on
this morning to receive the forestalling message of the little white flag.
“Camped at the foot of the Saddle last night and went up at the first peep of day,”
Hazard ventured, long after the silent breakfast had been tucked away and the
dishes washed.
Gus nodded. It was not in the nature of things that a youth’s spirits should long
remain at low ebb, and his tongue was beginning to loosen.
“Guess he’s down by now, lying in camp and feeling as big as Alexander,” the
other went on. “And I don’t blame him, either; only I wish it were we.”
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
8
“You can be sure he’s down,” Gus spoke up at last. “It’s mighty warm on that
naked rock with the sun beating down on it at this time of year. That was our plan,
you know, to go up early and come down early. And any man, sensible enough to
get to the top, is bound to have sense enough to do it before the rock gets hot and
his hands sweaty.”
“And you can be sure he didn’t take his shoes with him.” Hazard rolled over on
his back and lazily regarded the speck of flag fluttering briskly on the sheer edge
of the precipice. “Say!” He sat up with a start. “What’s that?”
A metallic ray of light flashed out from the summit of Half Dome, then a second
and a third. The heads of both boys were craned backward on the instant, agog
with excitement.
“What a duffer!” Gus cried. “Why didn’t he come down when it was cool?”
Hazard shook his head slowly, as if the question were too deep for immediate
answer and they had better defer judgment.
The flashes continued, and as the boys soon noted, at irregular intervals of
duration and disappearance. Now they were long, now short; and again they came
and went with great rapidity, or ceased altogether for several moments at a time.
“I have it!” Hazard’s face lighted up with the coming of understanding. “I have it!
That fellow up there is trying to talk to us. He’s flashing the sunlight down to us
on a pocket-mirror — dot, dash; dot, dash; don’t you see?”
The light also began to break in Gus’s face. “Ah, I know! It’s what they do in wartime
— signaling. They call it heliographing, don’t they? Same thing as
telegraphing, only it’s done without wires. And they use the same dots and dashes,
too.”
“Yes, the Morse alphabet. Wish I knew it.”
“Same here. He surely must have something to say to us, or he wouldn’t be
kicking up all that rumpus.”
Still the flashes came and went persistently, till Gus exclaimed: “That chap’s in
trouble, that’s what’s the matter with him! Most likely he’s hurt himself or
something or other.”
“Go on!” Hazard scouted.
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
9
Gus got out the shotgun and fired both
barrels three times in rapid succession.
A perfect flutter of flashes came back
before the echoes had ceased their
antics. So unmistakable was the
message that even doubting Hazard was
convinced that the man who had
forestalled them stood in some grave
danger.
“Quick, Gus,” he cried, “and pack! I’ll
see to the horses. Our trip hasn’t come to
nothing, after all. We’ve got to go right
up Half Dome and rescue him. Where’s
the map? How do we get to the Saddle?”
“‘Taking the horse-trail below the Vernal Falls,”‘ Gus read from the guide-book,
“‘one mile of brisk traveling brings the tourist to the world-famed Nevada Fall.
Close by, rising up in all its pomp and glory, the Cap of Liberty stands guard-”
“Skip all that!” Hazard impatiently interrupted. “The trail’s what we want. ”
“Oh, here it is! ‘Following the trail up the side of the fall will bring you to the
forks. The left one leads to Little Yosemite Valley, Cloud’s Rest, and other
points.”‘
“Hold on; that’ll do! I’ve got it on the map now,” again interrupted Hazard. “From
the Cloud’s Rest trail a dotted line leads off to Half Dome. That shows the trail’s
abandoned. We’ll have to look sharp to find it. It’s a day’s journey.”
“And to think of all that traveling, when right here we’re at the bottom of the
Dome!” Gus complained, staring up wistfully at the goal.
“That’s because this is Yosemite, and all the more reason for us to hurry. Come
on! Be lively, now!”
Well used as they were to trail life, but few minutes sufficed to see the camp
equipage on the backs of the packhorses and the boys in the saddle. In the late
twilight of that evening they hobbled their animals in a tiny mountain meadow,
and cooked coffee and bacon for themselves at the very base of the Saddle. Here,
also, before they turned into their blankets, they found the camp of the unlucky
stranger who was destined to spend the night on the naked roof of the Dome.
Dawn was brightening into day when the panting lads threw themselves down at
the summit of the Saddle and began taking off their shoes. Looking down from
the great height, they seemed perched upon the ridge-pole of the world, and even
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
10
the snow-crowned Sierra peaks seemed beneath them. Directly below, on the one
hand, lay Little Yosemite Valley, half a mile deep; on the other hand, Big
Yosemite, a mile. Already the sun’s rays were striking about the adventurers, but
the darkness of night still shrouded the two great gulfs into which they peered.
And above them, bathed in the full day, rose only the majestic curve of the Dome.
“What’s that for?” Gus asked, pointing to a leather-shielded flask which Hazard
was securely fastening in his shirt pocket.
“Dutch courage, of course,” was the reply. “We’ll need all our nerve in this
undertaking, and a little bit more, and,” he tapped the flask significantly, “here’s
the little bit more.”
“Good idea,” Gus commented.
How they had ever come possessed of this erroneous idea, it would be hard to
discover; but they were young yet, and there remained for them many uncut pages
of life. Believers, also, in the efficacy of whisky as a remedy for snake -bite, they
had brought with them a fair supply of medicine-chest liquor. As yet they had not
touched it.
“Have some before we start?” Hazard asked.
Gus looked into the gulf and shook his head. “Better wait till we get up higher and
the climbing is more ticklish.”
Some seventy feet above them projected the first eye-bolt. The winter
accumulations of ice had twisted and bent it down till it did not stand more than a
bare inch and a half above the rock — a most difficult object to lasso at such a
distance. Time and again Hazard coiled his lariat in true cowboy fashion and
made the cast, and time and again was he baffled by the elusive peg. Nor could
Gus do better. Taking advantage of inequalities in the surface, they scrambled
twenty feet up the Dome and found they could rest in a shallow crevice . The cleft
side of the Dome was so near that they could look over its edge from the crevice
and gaze down the smooth, vertical wall for nearly two thousand feet. It was yet
too dark down below for them to see farther.
The peg was now fifty feet away, but the path they must cover to get to it was
quite smooth, and ran at an inclination of nearly fifty degrees. It seemed
impossible, in that intervening space, to find a resting-place. Either the climber
must keep going up, or he must slide down; he could not stop. But just here rose
the danger. The Dome was sphere-shaped, and if he should begin to slide, his
course would be, not to the point from which he had started and where the Saddle