CHAPTER VII
ON THE TRAIL
Day was just breaking when the boys bade farewell to Doctor and MotherMerriam, and with a hot breakfast under their belts started for thetrapping camp. As yet Pat had given no hint as to where it was located,and Walter and Hal, respecting his reticence, forbore to ask questions.Walter did venture to ask if they would reach there before dark.
"No," replied Pat. "We'll have to make a camp to-night," and advanced nofurther information.
All their duffle and the supplies which Pat was taking in were loaded onthe toboggan, and to this Pat had rigged a sort of harness so that twowalking single file could drag it. This relieved them of packs. Walterand Hal each carried his rifle on the chance of picking up a rabbit onthe way. The snow-shoes were slung over their backs, Pat explainingthat for a time they would follow a broken out lumber trail and it wouldbe easier walking without the shoes than on them.
It was when they turned into this trail that the first suspicion ofwhere they were bound for flashed through Upton's mind, but he held hispeace and settled to the task of doing his share of the pulling. Andthis proved to be no easy matter. The trail was but roughly broken outby the passage of lumber sleds, and it soon became necessary for one tosteady the load to keep it from capsizing. It was slow, toilsome work,and when at the end of ten miles Pat called a halt for a rest while hemade four cups of hot pea soup by the simple process of melting snow andcrumbling into it a roll of erbswurst the others were ready to declarethat they had come twenty miles.
As he drank his soup and munched a cracker Walter scanned hissurroundings closely. Presently he discovered what he sought, apartially obliterated blaze on a big tree just beyond and to the rightof where they were squatting.
"I've got you now, old Mr. Foxy!" he cried. "This mysterious camp ofyours is the cabin in Smugglers' Hollow, and we're going to campto-night at Little Goose Pond. More than that, your partner is AlecSmith. Why didn't I guess it before? Own up now, old Crafty!"
Quite unabashed, Pat bestowed a grin on Upton. "Three bull's-eyes," hecommented. "I've been wondering how long it would take you fellows tocatch the scent. Began to think I'd have to rub your noses in it."
"Hurrah!" interrupted Hal, who had been an eager listener. "I neverthought of the Hollow, and yet there is no place I should like to go toso much as that. Say, Walt, these heads of ours sure are thick. Don'tyou remember that Pat told us that first night in New York that Alec wastrapping, and the last he heard of him he was over in the Hollow? Well,we'd make good detectives, we would. I've done a lot of wondering aboutPat's partner and what sort of a fellow he would prove to be and whetheror not we'd like him. And to think it's Alec! If you weren't such ayoung and tender innocent I'd throw you in the snow and give you ashampoo. What do you say, Walt, to doing it anyway?"
"Come on!" cried Pat, "the two of you, or all three!"
Upton shook his head mournfully. "I'd like to, but it wouldn't be right.He isn't as big as the two of us, and so it wouldn't do at all. It wouldbe the same as a big fellow picking on a little one. You know I thrashedhim once for doing that very thing, and now if we should turn around anddo it I'm afraid the force of my beautiful example would be whollydestroyed. I tell you what, you do it alone, Hal."
"He's too small," declared Hal. "That's why I wanted you to help. Thenmy conscience would be only half guilty. I'm going to let him off thistime with just a snowball."
Suiting his action to the word he landed a big soft snowball full on theside of Pat's head. Pat made a rush for him, but Walter thrust out afoot and sent him headlong into the snow, and before he could regain hisfeet Hal was on him endeavoring to wash his face with snow. In a secondthere was the liveliest kind of a snow fight, Upton and Sparrer yellingencouragement with absolute impartiality. It ended with Hal's smotheredcry of "enough" and Pat's allowing him up just in time to see Walter andthen Sparrer unceremoniously pitched into the snow, by way of showingthat all Scouts are equal, Pat explained, as he rubbed their faces.
Panting and glowing from the frolic they put out the fire built to heattheir soup and were ready to hit the trail again. From this point on thesnow-shoes were an absolute necessity, for they left the lumber trailfor another ten miles through the woods. This time they were notdependent on the blazed trees as they had been when they went that wayin the fall, for some one had been over the trail since the lastsnowfall, evidently coming out from Little Goose. Pat studied the tracksfor a few minutes. Then his face cleared. "It was Big Jim," said he. "Iwonder now if he took a look in the Hollow to see how Alec was gettingon. He may have been over to the Gillicuddy camp, the trail from whichcomes in at the pond, you remember, but I have an idea he swung aroundto see Alec. I wonder now where he saw that fox. I just took it forgranted that it was around where he is cutting and didn't ask anyquestions for fear of letting the coon out of the hole about where wewere going. Then when I was alone with the doctor we both forgot allabout Jim, there were so many other things to talk about. It may be thathe saw that silver gray somewhere along this trail. We'll keep our eyespeeled for signs."
"How do you know that Big Jim made these tracks?" asked Walter, who hadbeen studying them closely, hoping to find out for himself the cluewhich made Pat so sure of his man, but unable to see anythingdistinctive save that they were of odd shape, being nearly round.
"By a combination of two things--the shape of the tracks and the lengthof the stride," replied Pat. "Jim always uses bear's-paw shoes, and Idon't believe there are more than half a dozen other pairs in this neckof woods. Then look at the length of the stride. It's a good threeinches longer than mine, and there's nothing dainty about mine. Thereisn't a man in the woods who could take that stride and hold it but JimEverly. So I'm as sure it was Big Jim as I am that if we don't get ahustle on we'll have to camp in the snow, and it'll be a lot morecomfortable at the pond. We've got another long hike to-morrow, and wewant to be in shape to do it."
For some miles the going was fairly level, and once they had got intothe swing of the thing the boys found it comparatively easy. There weretwo or three mishaps, but these were counted part of the sport. Abouttwo miles from their destination they came to a spur of a mountain overwhich the trail led. In fact, it was the very spur on the other side ofwhich Spud Ely had overrun the trail and got lost the fall previous. Patcalled a halt.
"It's going to be no small job to get this load up there," said he. "Wecan go around the spur, but to do that will add a good three miles, andin the valley it will be dark before we can reach camp. What do youthink? Are you game to try the hill?"
"The hill! The hill! Follow me, comrades, up yonder heights, and drivethe enemy from their guns!" shouted Hal, striking a heroic attitude andpretending to flourish an imaginary sword.
"Where lives the Scout, by difficulties pressed, Who will admit a chicken heart possessed? Who will not rather bravely face the wust And do and dare and conquer or go bust!"
"Bravo!" cried Walter.
"When dares our comrade coin and use a word like wust We'll take his dare and see who'll scale yon hillside fust!
Lead on, Mr. Malone. We'll make it or die in the attempt."
"All right, me brave Scouts," replied Pat. "Up we go! 'Tis a chance tosee the kind of stuff that's in the likes of you, for 'twill be nochild's play getting this load up there. And when we get up there whereyou see the bare rock watch your footing. That rock is slippery, and afall there would be serious."
The next half hour was one of panting, sweating toil. In the firstplace, as soon as the grade began to rise sharply the boys found thatthe only way they could progress was by digging their toes into the snowthrough the toe holes in the shoes, which brought an added strain on thealready weary muscles of the calves. It would have been bad enough inview of their inexperience if they had had nothing else to consider, butthere was that heavy load, and it grew heavier every minute. As they gothigher where the wind had had full sweep there was comparatively littlesnow, and in some places the bare rock w
as exposed. Here they found iteasier going without the snow-shoes than with them.
Hauling and pushing they worked the toboggan up until at last the spurwas crossed.
"Gee whiz!" exclaimed Hal. "I'm sweating like a butcher. That's what Icall work."
"And we're doing it for fun," added Upton. "Funny what a difference theview-point makes. I suppose it's all in the way you look at it whetherwork is fun or fun is work. I can tell you one thing, and that is that Ifor one am mighty glad that there isn't another one of those things tocross to-day. I'm afraid I'd lie down and holler quits. What are yourubbing your legs for, Sparrer?"
"Just feeling of 'em to get wise if dey's all dere," replied Sparrer.
The remainder of the trail to Little Goose was comparatively easy andthey reached the familiar lean-to just as dusk was settling down, andthere was more than one sigh of thankfulness as the shoes were kickedoff for the last time.
"I'm tired enough to drop right down and go to sleep in the snow, but mylittle tummy won't let me," confessed Hal. "Ring for the waiter, please,and have him bring me a planked steak with half a chicken on the side,grapefruit salad, and a pot of coffee with real cream. Wake me up whenit comes."
"Nothing doing," declared Pat. "This isn't the Waldorf Astoria, butHotel de Shivers; heat and food supplied only to those who pay in labor,all bills payable in advance."
"That's me!" Hal seated himself on the pile of stuff and gave vent to anexaggerated sigh of contentment. "Haven't I labored all day? Tell thebellhop to take my stuff to my room. I think I'll have my dinner servedthere."
He ended with a grunt, the result of a sharp poke in the pit of hisstomach from an axe handle. "To turn on the heat with," explained Patsweetly, thrusting the axe into Hal's hands, and pointing to a pile ofbirch logs.
Hal got to his feet with a groan and a grimace and followed Upton who,with another axe, had already started for the wood-pile. "You're a slavedriver! That's what you are, a flint-hearted slave driver," he grumbled,albeit with a twinkle that belied his words.
"My tummy, oh, my tummy! It gives me such a pain! I wonder will it ever Feel really full again!"
"That depends on how soon you get that wood split," grinned Pat. "If youdon't get a move on it will be so dark you can't see what you are doing,and I give you fair warning--no wood, no dinner."
"Let it never be said I am ever a shirk When a dinner depends on the way that I work,"
retorted Hal, and forthwith fell to his task with a vim that put Uptonon his mettle to break even with him, for Hal was no mean axeman, as Patwell knew. The handling of an axe was one of the things which Hal hadlearned, and learned well during his three summers in the woods. To thethorough woodsman an axe is a complete tool-chest. With it he can doalmost anything that needs to be done from the cutting of fire-wood tothe building of a log cabin.
Sparrer was put to work pulling down the hemlock boughs which had beenpiled in front of the lean-to to keep out the snow, while Pat unpackedthings, started the fire and made preparations for the evening meal.This was Sparrer's first experience in a lean-to, and when the boughswere out of the way he examined it with interest. The back and two endswere of logs, the front being open its whole width. The roof was of bigsheets of hemlock bark laid overlapping and with a sharp pitch to theback.
On the ground about seven feet from the rear wall two six-foot logsabout eight inches through had been staked end to end so that theyreached from one side wall to the other. Midway a similar log had beenlaid across to the rear wall, making two pens, as it were. These hadbeen filled with small balsam boughs thrust at an angle, butts down, sothat they "shingled," and packed closely. The result was two bedsfifteen inches thick and so springy and comfortable that it made onesleepy just to look at them. It was perhaps three feet from the beds tothe open front. In this space at one end was a table two feet squaremade by driving four stakes into the ground and nailing on a top made ofa flattened sheet of cedar bark.
A little snow had sifted in through the protecting boughs and thisSparrer swept out with a fir bough for a broom. Pat, meanwhile, had akettle of snow melting for water for soup and was mixing up ajohnny-cake. The reflector oven was set before the fire to get heatedand while Sparrer helped bring in the wood which the two choppers hadsplit Pat sliced bacon and put it on to parboil in the frying-pan,having melted snow to make water enough to cover it.
"Wot youse doing that for?" asked Sparrer. "Oi thought youse alwaysfried bacon."
"To get some of the salt out of it, son," replied Pat. "I'll fry it allright when the time comes. Just you lay out the plates and cups wherethey will keep warm."
Sparrer ranged the four agate-ware plates, which were really shallowpans so that soup could be served in them as well as dry food, againsta stick where they would get warm but not too hot to handle. Theerbswurst was crumbled into the now boiling water, a handful ofjulienne, or evaporated vegetables cut in thin strips, was added, thepan of johnny-cake was put in the oven and the four boys gathered aroundto watch and wait with many a hungry sniff. The soup was soon ready, andPat announced the first course. How good it did taste as they sat ontheir blanket rolls near enough to the fire to enjoy its warmth, eachwith a pan of the hot soup on his knees.
Before this was finished Pat poured off the water from the bacon andthat was soon sizzling and throwing off that most delicious of all odorsto a hungry woodsman.
"Course number two!" called Pat as he apportioned the brown slices amongthe four plates and then drew forth the johnny-cake, baked to a turn, arich even brown all over with a heart of gold, the very sight of whichbrought forth gasps of delighted anticipation.
"What's course number three, Mr. Chef?" asked Walter as he prepared tosink his teeth into his quarter of the corn bread.
"Something worth saving your appetite for," replied Pat, re-greasing thepan and pouring in the remainder of his batter for another cake. Hepoured off all but a little of the bacon fat from the big frying-pan,and then dropped into it a slice of meat which he had kept hidden undera towel.
"Venison, by all that's great!" shouted Hal as the meat began to sizzleon the hot iron. "Why didn't you tell us you had venison, so that thethought of it would have helped us up that pesky hill?"
"Tis the docthor's contribution to the joy av living," responded Pat,deftly flipping the steak over to sear the other side. "But I mistrustyez have eaten so much already thot 'tis not the loikes av yez will bewanting more than maybe a wee bite. But never ye moind. 'Tis meself willdo justice to the docthor and his gift."
"Don't you believe it!" roared the three in unison.
The steak and the second johnny-cake were done together and werefinished together to the last scrap and crumb, and along with them wenthot chocolate. There was a general loosening of belts, and then Halbroke the silence of contentment which had fallen on the little group.
"My tummy, oh, my tummy! It has now another pain! I wish that it were empty That it might be filled again,"
said he, gazing mournfully into his empty plate.
"Them's my sentiments too," said Walter, when the laugh that followedhad subsided. "But any fellow who springs a thing like that has to payfor it. I move that Hal wash the dishes. All in favor say aye."
Three ayes made the woods ring. "All opposed say no!"
Hal's "No!" was shouted at the top of his lungs.
"'Tis a vote," declared Walter. "Mr. Harrison will now attend to hisduties and carry out the action of this assembly."
After the dishes were out of the way Pat built a huge fire with threegreat backlogs one above another and slanting back to keep them fromrolling down. They were held in place by braces at the back. In frontof these smaller logs were piled, the backlogs reflecting the heatforward into the lean-to. Then the blankets were spread on the roughbeds, and with all their clothing on, including moccasins, four wearyyoung woodsmen turned in for the night.
Pat was asleep almost as soon as he touched the bed, and Hal and Uptonwere not far be
hind him. But to Sparrer, tired as he was, the novelty ofhis surroundings was too great for immediate sleep, and for a long timehe lay staring out at the flickering flames and above them at thebrilliant stars, his active imagination keyed to a high pitch. It waslike fairy-land to him. Nothing seemed real. He had read and heard ofthese things, but that he, Eddie Muldoon, could actually be experiencingthem, sleeping in a real hunter's camp in the dead of winter, trampingon snow-shoes through great lonely forests, eating such meals as he hadnever known before in all his short life--meals cooked over open firesin the great wonderful out-of-doors, couldn't be. And yet here he was.
The fire died down until only a deep glow, a warm ruddy glow which grewless and less, lighted the rough interior, and before it had quitevanished Eddie had slipped from the real which seemed unreal to theunreal which so often seems real in the realm of dreams.
Three times during the night Pat crawled out of his blankets to put woodon the fire, but the other sleepers knew nothing of it. They slept thedeep heavy sleep of healthy, tired boys and it mattered not to them thatthe temperature dropped until the very trees cracked and split with thecold. They were as warm and comfortable as if in their own beds at home.Overhead the stars shone down on a great white world wherein the firemade but a flickering point of yellow light, and wherein was no soundsave the heavy breathing of the sleepers, the sputter of hot coalssnapping off into the snow, the occasional crack of a frost-riven tree,and the soft stamp of a snow-shoe rabbit gazing wonder-eyed at the dyingembers.
The Boy Scouts in A Trapper's Camp Page 8