“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 ridgepole of the world, and even 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.”