“Oh, for a pair of field-glasses!” Rob cried. “Do you think they can get us?”
“If we can get them, they can,” Peanut answered. “Here goes!”
“Woman hurt, bring help, Gulf Side,” he signaled, very slowly.
They both watched, breathless, for the answer, but it was impossible to make out whether they were understood or not.
“Here, you take one flag, and stand up here; you’re taller,” Peanut said, jumping off the rock. “I’ll stand below you. That’ll separate the two more. Now, again!”
Very slowly, holding each letter a long time, and running a few steps to left or right with their flags, they signaled once more, the same message.
This time they saw the answering flags change position. “Good old Lou, he’s done the same trick,” Peanut cried. “Look, I can read it now!”
“Well, I can----G-o-t-y-o-u! Got you!” Peanut shouted. “They’ll be here! How long will it take ’em?”
“Oh, half an hour, I should say,” Rob answered. “Come back, now. Maybe the woman has fainted again.”
“Gee, why do people try to climb mountains when they don’t know how?” said Peanut, as they descended again toward the little group of figures below them.
“Help is coming!” they cried, as they drew near.
“Well, you boys were certainly sent by Providence!” the man exclaimed.
They all made the injured woman as comfortable as they could while they waited. There was still a little water left in the Scouts’ canteens, and they made a cold bandage around her ankle, which Rob decided was not broken. Then there was nothing to do but sit and wait. It seemed hours, though it was really less than thirty minutes, when over the east shoulder of Jefferson, where the Gulf Side Trail skirts the precipitous wall down into the Great Gulf, came the rescue party, almost on the run--Mr. Rogers, Frank, Lou, and four men.
One of these men, it speedily turned out, was a doctor, and he took charge at once, while Rob watched him admiringly, for Rob was going to be a doctor, too. He felt of the injured ankle carefully, while the patient winced with pain.
“No broken bones,” he said, “just a bad sprain. You should wear stout, high boots for such work, madam.”
(“Just what we told her,” Art whispered.)
“And now,” the doctor added, “she’s got to be carried to the nearest point on the railroad. Jim, you start along now to the summit house, and telephone down for a train to be sent up immediately. We’ll get her to the track at the point where the West Side Trail crosses, just below the Gulf tank.”