Up they went and still upward.  Across bare rock patches, through brushy growths and among dense stands of young trees, the two boys forced their way, ever ascending, ever working upward toward the summit.  Now they made their way to the right, now to the left, and sometimes they climbed straight upward in their efforts to avoid obstacles.

“Gee!” cried Charley after they had been climbing for some time.  “This is what I call tough going.  Let’s have a drink.”

They sat down on a stone to rest.  Perspiration was pouring down their faces.  Both boys were breathing hard.  The canteen was uncorked and they took a good drink.

“Not too much,” cautioned Lew, as Charley started to take a second draught.  “You can’t climb if you fill up too full.”

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 and tangled and in places heaped in towering masses.  A barbed wire entanglement would hardly have been a worse obstacle.  To penetrate the mass, even in the light of noon, would have been no easy work; but to cross the area now, with dusk fast deepening to darkness, was indeed a difficult task.

“Well,” said Lew, after a few searching glances at the burned area, “we’ve got to go on, and we might as well plow straight through it.  I can’t see that one way looks any easier than another.”

They went on, slowly, painfully.  Now they were forced to crawl underneath a fallen tree, now to climb over one.  Again and again their way was completely blocked by high barriers of interlocked trunks and branches.  Sometimes they had to mount the fallen trunks and cautiously walk from one to another.  Darkness came on apace.  They could hardly see.  The flash-light was brought forth, the last drop in the canteen swallowed, and they started forward on their final push.