g back," Warde said. "But this isn't a case
of ringing front door bells and getting on the right side of people.
Maybe scouts like Nature, but Nature doesn't care much about scouts."

"You said something," I told him. "But, gee whiz, we don't want to turn
back."

He said, "Well, there's no use crying till we're hurt. We've got to find
out how steep it is below and that ought to be easy."

He started throwing off his jacket.

"Only you'd better be careful," I said. "That ledge is kind of
slanting."

"It's all full of bushes," he said.

"How will you get up again if you have to come back?" one of the fellows
asked him.

"A couple of you can reach down," he said. "There's a good foothold up
on top here."

I didn't like the idea of his doing that. But I didn't like the idea of
turning back either.

After leaving Little Valley I guess we had all begun to think it would
be easy going on account of there not being any streets or houses in our
way. Because, one thing, scouts are used to the open country. We never
thought about running into anything like that. It came all of a sudden,
like, and there we were with the big tree on the ridge across the
valley, plain to see, and we couldn't seem to get any farther. Gee
williger, it was pretty hard for any of us to think about turning back
then, after going right straight for that tree all day long.

"I don't know about that," Westy said. He's always careful.

Warde said, "Well, what are we going to do then? Turn back? We could go
north and down the hill where it's easy, but that wouldn't be a bee-line
hike."

I said, "This is a bee-line hike; it's either straight west or home,
victory or defeat. No beating around the bush."

"That's us!" they all shouted.

Warde said, "Well, then, we've either got to go on or turn back. And I'm
going to find out which we have to do. There's no use standing here
talking about it. If we're beaten, we might as well know it. We can be
good losers, I hope. We can either go down this hill or we can't and I'm
not going to say we can't till I _know_ we can't. That's the kind of a
scout I'm--going to be."

"You mean it's the kind of a scout you _are_," I told him. "And I'm glad
to have you in my patrol, I'll tell you that!"

"Maybe this hill can _beat_ me," he said; "but it can't _fool_ me. Here,
hold my jacket."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE LEDGE

If it hadn't been for that slanting ledge a little below us we could
have looked dow