Around the great log fire that night Pat told Doctor Merriam about his trip and his impressions of city life, winding up with the emphatically expressed conviction that while it might be a good place to do business it was no place in which to live, and that he would rather have a cabin in the shadow of Old Baldy than a palace on Riverside Drive.
"So you don't envy Hal?" laughed the doctor.
"I do not!" roared Pat. "I wouldn't give the poorest muskrat pelt I ever took to change places with him."
"Oh, you young savage!" cried the doctor. "Still, I share in a measure your feeling. I have lived in many cities, but you see here I am buried in the woods, and some of my friends wonder why. I'll tell you. It is because here I can live simply, unaffectedly, true to myself and to God. Here," he swept a hand toward the book-lined walls, "are my friends ready to give me of inspiration, comfort, advice, knowledge, whatever I demand or may need. They are not dead things, these books. They are living personalities, which have enriched and are enriching the world. When you boys listen to me you are not listening just to an audible voice. You are listening to an expression of that invisible something that we call the spirit—the true personality. And so it is that the writer of a great or good book never dies. His spiritual expression is there on the printed page just as much as if he were giving expression to it in audible speech. So with all these great and wonderful men and women constantly about me how can I ever be lonely? And then when I step out-of-doors it is directly into the temple of God. His nearness and presence are manifest in every phase of nature. The trees are alive, some of them sleeping, but alive nevertheless, and others not even sleeping. Sometimes I wonder if the very rocks are not alive. The elements seemingly war with one another, but there is nothing mean or petty or base in the mighty struggle, as there invariably is in the conflict of human passions. The Indian sees the Great Spirit in the lightning, and hears him in the rushing wind and the thunder, and is not afraid, but bows in reverence. He has a sense of nearness to the creator and loses it when he is confined in the man-made world of brick and stone and steel and is eager to get back. It is elemental in him. In nature he sees God made manifest. We call him a savage, but I sometimes wonder if he is not more nearly a true child of the Father of all than many so-called civilized men who win the plaudits of the world and seem to forget whence they came and whither they will go.
"But I didn't mean to preach a sermon, but just to give you an idea of why Pat and I prefer to be savages, if you please, and spend our lives with nature. Now, Pat, what are your plans? When do you start in for camp? Haven't heard a word since you left from"—he paused at a warning wink from Pat, and then finished—"your partner. Big Jim was down from the lumber camp this week and reported seeing a silver gray. If you could catch a couple of those fellows that problem of going away to school would pretty nearly settle itself."
"What's a silver gray?" asked Hal, whose knowledge of fur bearers was rather limited.
"A color phase of the common red fox," replied the doctor, "and if not worth its weight in gold it is worth so much that a single skin is often worth twice over the whole of a season's catch of other furs. Why it should be called silver I don't know, for the only silver about it is the tip of the tail. The color is black, and single skins have sold as high as $2,500 and more and $800 to $1,500 is not at all unusual. So valuable are the skins that black fox farming has become an established industry and a pair of black foxes for breeding purposes are worth from $1,000 up. So you see, Jim saw considerable money running loose when he saw that fox."
"Phew!" exclaimed Hal with a low whistle of astonishment. "I didn't suppose there was anything on four legs except blooded live stock worth so much money. Wouldn't it be great if Pat could catch three or four this winter!"
Pat threw back his head and laughed heartily. "Make it a dozen while you're about it, son," said he. "Don't be so modest. I've lived in these woods some years, but I never yet have seen a live black fox, and I've known of only two being caught. If Jim says he saw one he did. There's nothing the matter with Jim's eyesight. I guess I'll have to have a look around the neighborhood where he saw it. As for our plans, Doctor, we are going to spend to-morrow with you and give these tenderfeet a few lessons on snow-shoes. We'll hit the trail for camp bright and early the next morning."
The next day dawned clear and cold and after a hearty breakfast the snow-shoes were brought forth. First Pat explained the tie in common use and showed just how to adjust the rawhide thongs to give free play to the ankles and yet prevent the toes from creeping forward to the crossbars. With the thongs properly adjusted the shoes could be easily kicked off or put on again without untying the knots.
"The chief thing to remember," said he, "is to take a long stride with the toes pointed straight ahead. If you take a short step you will be almost certain to step on the tail of one shoe with the toe of the other and over you go. Now I'll show you how, and you fellows can practice a while out here in front where the snow has been cleared away until you get the hang of the thing. Then we'll make a little trip out into the woods and visit some of the old places, so you can see how different they are from what they were last summer."
"I have a suggestion to make," said the doctor. "While Mother puts up a lunch, you get these youngsters so that they can keep right side up. Then we'll all take a short hike and show Muldoon how real woodmen can have a hot meal when there is three feet of snow in the woods."
"Hurrah!" shouted Hal. "That will be bully! Come on, Walt, and let's see your paces."
For the next fifteen minutes the three boys tramped back and forth in front of the cabin, the shoes clacking merrily amid a running fire of chaff and comment from Pat. Once Sparrer stepped on one of Upton's shoes and sent him headlong, to the huge delight of the others. Again Hal did just what Pat had warned them against, took a short step and tripped himself up. But at the end of a quarter of an hour they had pretty well "got the hang of the thing," as Pat expressed it, and were eager to try it on deep snow.
"There's nothing to it," declared Hal. "I thought there were something to learn, like skating, but this is a cinch. I could keep it up all day," and by way of emphasizing his remarks once more tripped himself up, and sat down abruptly.
"Sure, it's no trick at all," chaffed Walter. "When you can't keep up sit down, and when you're down stay down. There's nothing to it." For Hal, forgetting the width of his present underpinning, had no sooner scrambled to his feet than he had gone down again, because of the overlapping webs.
The doctor and Mrs. Merriam now joined them, for the latter was an expert on shoes and had no mind to miss the outing. Pat and the doctor swung to their backs the packs wherein were the supplies and dishes, and they were off, the doctor in the lead, Mrs. Merriam next, then Sparrer, Hal, Upton and Pat in the rear to keep the tenderfeet from straggling and to pull them out of the snow, he explained.
For a short distance a broken trail was followed. Then the doctor abruptly swung off among the trees where the snow lay deep and unbroken. The three novices soon found that progress here was a very different matter from walking on the comparatively hard surface of the packed trail. The shoes sank in perhaps a couple of inches and it was necessary to lift the feet more, to step high, which put more of a strain on the muscles. Also there was a tendency to step higher than was at all in good form, and to shorten the stride by so doing, losing the smooth easy forward roll from the hips.
Still, all things considered, the three novices were doing themselves proud until in an unguarded moment Hal stepped on the stub of a broken branch of a fallen tree buried in the snow. It caught in the tail of the shoe just enough to break his stride. He took a short step to catch his balance, stumbled and took a beautiful header. At Pat's roar of laughter the others turned to see two big webs wildly waving above the snow and nothing more of the unfortunate Hal. Now being plunged head first into deep snow with a pair of snow-shoes on your feet is a good deal like being thrown into the water with a life preserver fast to your feet—you can't get them down. For a few moments the others howled with glee as they watched the frantically kicking legs and listened to the smothered appeals for help from the luckless victim. Then Pat reached out and loosened the shoes, gripped Hal by the ankles and drew him forth, red in the face from his exertions and spitting out snow. He looked so wholly bewildered and withal so chagrined and foolish that he was greeted with a fresh peal of laughter, to which he responded with a sheepish grin as he tried to get the snow out of his neck and from up his sleeves.
"There's nothing to it, nothing at all!" jeered Walter.
"I didn't know but you thought you heard that black fox down there and were trying to get him," said Pat.
At that instant Upton involuntarily stepped back, a thing for which snow-shoes were never designed, and a second later had measured his length in the snow. Falling at full length he did not disappear as Hal had done, but he was hardly less helpless. Every effort to help himself by putting his hands down was futile. He simply buried his arms to the shoulders in the yielding snow without finding anything on which to get a purchase. Hal was jubilant.
"When you're down stay down!" he yelped. "Laugh at me, will you?"
Walter had by this time managed to kick his shoes off and once free of these was soon on his feet and was enjoying the joke as much as any one. Both he and Hal were up to their hips in the snow, for here among the evergreens it had not packed and flounder as they would they could not get out.
The doctor's eyes twinkled as he picked up Hal's shoes and handed them to him. "Well, boys," said he, "it's high time we were hitting the trail again. Suppose you put your shoes on, and we'll make up for lost time."
Hal took the shoes and then looked helplessly across at Walter, who had just secured his, and it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps the doctor's remark was not so guileless as it seemed.
"How in thunder are we going to?" he demanded, vainly trying to force a shoe down to meet an upraised foot half-way, in the doing of which he once more lost his balance.
"I thought I showed you fellows just how to put your shoes on this morning. A good Scout ought not to have to be shown twice how to do a simple thing like that," said Pat, without cracking a smile. "What kind of Scouts are you, anyway, crying for help the first time you tumble in a little bit of snow?"
"Who's crying for help?" demanded Upton, vainly striving to get a shoe down where he could get his foot into the fastening. "I wouldn't take any help now if I thought I'd got to stay here all day. Take that and that!"
He began to dig furiously with the shoe, throwing the snow with malice aforethought full in Pat's face. Hal instantly took the cue and there was a hasty retreat on the part of their tormentors, in the midst of which Sparrer came to grief and had his turn at the snow-shoer's baptism. In a few minutes Walter had dug away enough snow to get his shoes under him and walked forth in triumph, followed by Hal. Sparrer, anxious to prove himself a good sport, refused all aid. Being small and light he had not sunk in as the others had and managed to get one shoe under him. With this for a support he soon had the other fastened. It was the work of a moment to adjust the first one and he was ready to take his place in line.
There were no more mishaps and as they tramped on through the great still woodland the wonder and the beauty of it silenced them, for it seemed like a vast cathedral in which the human voice would be a profanation of the solemn hush. Upton knew every foot within a radius of two miles of Woodcraft Camp, and for five miles in the direction in which they were heading, and yet not even to Sparrer did the surroundings seem more strange, such is the alchemy of the snow king to make the familiar unfamiliar, the commonplace beautiful. So it was that when at the end of three miles they emerged on the shore of a frozen sheet of water Walter at first failed utterly to recognize it, and it was not until Pat made some reference to the huge pickerel Walter had caught during his first summer at Woodcraft that it dawned on him that this was the very setback where he had discovered Pat's secret fishing grounds and on the shore of which he had given Pat his first lesson in boxing and in the meaning of the word honor.
"I've come over here because Mother insists that a dinner in the woods is no more complete without a fish course than it would be in a New York hotel, and because to tell the truth I have a hankering for a taste of fresh fish myself. Pat, I hope that spring is still open where you put the minnows last fall. Suppose you take this net and pail and see what you can find." He opened a small folding net as he was speaking. "I take it for granted that you youngsters have your belt axes with you, as good Scouts in the woods should. One of you can run over to that alder thicket and cut a dozen straight sticks about three feet long and as thick as my forefinger. The other two can chop holes in the ice. They don't need to be very big, you know, not over a foot across. I suggest that you scatter them pretty well. It adds to the fun to have them some distance apart, and it multiplies the chances of a good catch. While you are doing that I will start a fire and get things started for lunch."
Sparrer, having no axe, but a stout Scout knife, volunteered to cut the alder saplings while Hal and Walter attended to the holes in the ice. Hal was radiant. This was one of the things he had counted on, and he had brought from New York a dozen type, as the modern tip-ups for fishing through the ice are called. But when they had started out that morning he had not dreamed that he would have a chance to use them on a snow-shoe trip, and so they were neatly rolled in his duffle bag at the camp.
"Wonder what kind of a rig the Big Chief has got, and how he's going to use those sticks," said he to Upton as he came up to where Walter was making the ice fly in glittering chips.
"Don't know, but whatever it is you can bet your last dollar it is all right," replied Walter. "How many holes have you cut?"
"Five; I'm going to chop one more over there toward the north shore. How many have you?" replied Hal.
"Six. That ought to be a good place over there, and that will make the dozen. Here come Sparrer and the Big Chief, and I guess we'll soon see what the idea is. Pat must have found the spring open, for Sparrer has the pail."
The guess was a good one, for when he peeped in the pail Walter found that it contained a couple of dozen minnows. Together the three walked over to where Hal was just finishing the last hole. The doctor took from under his arm a bundle of short pieces of lath, each about eighteen inches long, tapering toward one end, to which was fastened a bit of red flannel. Two inches from the other end was a hole big enough for one of the alder sticks to pass through freely. Fastened close to the end, and neatly wound around it, was a short length of stout line on the end of which was a hook with wire snell. Unwinding one of these lines the doctor passed one of the alder sticks through the hole in the lath, baited the hook with a lively minnow and dropped it through the hole in the ice. The alder stick was placed across this so that the lath came in the middle and lay on the ice at right angles. A pull on the line would drag the end of the lath down, making it stand upright with its little red signal on the end, and that was all there was to it.
It was simple in the extreme, but quite as effective as Hal's more elaborate type could have been, as was presently demonstrated. They were just preparing to set the last tip-up when Hal, glancing over to the first one set, saw the red signal and with a wild yell of "We've got one! We've got one!" started for it at top speed. The others paused to see what the result would be, and saw him yank out a flapping prize.
"It's a beaut!" he panted as he rejoined them, holding out a handsome pickerel. "Bet it weighs five pounds if it weighs an ounce. Say, this is great!"
The fish was already stiff, but much to their surprise the doctor told them it was not dead, frozen fish often retaining life for some time after being taken from the water. He now left the tip-ups to the care of the three boys, warning them to make frequent rounds of the holes to break the ice as it formed and keep the lines free. The fish he took with him to where Mother Merriam was busy beside the fire, for which Pat was chopping wood.
Pickerel were numerous and hungry, to judge by the way they bit. It was novel and exciting sport to the three city boys. There would be a yell of "There's one!" and then a wild race to see who could reach it first. At first they almost invariably forgot in their excitement to take along the bait pail, which meant a second trip for one of them to rebait the hook. Sometimes the signal would drop before they reached it and they knew that the fish was off. Several times there were two signals waving at once and one time there were five. By the time the doctor's welcome hail of "Din-ner!" came ringing across the ice the bait pail was empty and they had fourteen fish, none under three pounds, and from that up to six. With the first one caught they had a total of fifteen. The doctor smiled as he scanned the eager faces of the young fishermen and then looked at the long row of fish laid out on the snow.
"Enough is plenty," said he, "and I guess this will do for to-day. We want to leave some for the boys next summer. We'll take the lines up after dinner."
How good that dinner did smell to the hungry boys with appetites whetted by exercise in the keen air! The snow had been shoveled away nearly to the ground for the bed logs for the fire and ample space cleared in front and spread with balsam boughs on which to sit. There was a steaming kettle of pea soup and a pot of hot chocolate. The pickerel had been split and, broiled in halves pinned to pieces of hemlock bark, stood before the fire and basted with bacon drippings. There was a venison steak done to a turn, for the doctor had hung a deer in his ice house at the end of the open season. There were potatoes boiled in their jackets. There was a brown johnny-cake baked in a reflector oven, and to cap all a plate of the doughnuts for which Mother Merriam was famous.
"And you call this a lunch!" cried Walter when he had eaten until he had to let out his belt. "No wonder it required two packs to bring it here. Well, is there anything to beat this in New York?"
"Not in a tousand years. Oi'm going to run away and live here," declared Sparrer, and while the others laughed he stared with dreamy eyes into the leaping flames of the huge fire Pat had built, and who shall say but that in them he saw the symbols of new hopes and ambitions springing from the colorless, sordid drudgery which until this time had been his life.
After the meal was finished and the dishes washed there was an hour of story-telling by the doctor, ending with the singing of America under the towering snow-laden spruces and then the homeward trip. Thanks to their experiences on the outward trip and the watchfulness resulting therefrom there were no further mishaps, and when they reached camp and kicked off the big webs once more the boys were ready to vote their first day in winter woods all that they had dreamed it would be and more. Also they were quite willing to second and carry by unanimous vote the motion that they seek their beds early in preparation for an early start the next day.
Day was just breaking when the boys bade farewell to Doctor and Mother Merriam, and with a hot breakfast under their belts started for the trapping 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 no further information.
All their duffle and the supplies which Pat was taking in were loaded on the toboggan, and to this Pat had rigged a sort of harness so that two walking single file could drag it. This relieved them of packs. Walter and Hal each carried his rifle on the chance of picking up a rabbit on the way. The snow-shoes were slung over their backs, Pat explaining that for a time they would follow a broken out lumber trail and it would be easier walking without the shoes than on them.
It was when they turned into this trail that the first suspicion of where they were bound for flashed through Upton's mind, but he held his peace and settled to the task of doing his share of the pulling. And this proved to be no easy matter. The trail was but roughly broken out by the passage of lumber sleds, and it soon became necessary for one to steady 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 he made four cups of hot pea soup by the simple process of melting snow and crumbling into it a roll of erbswurst the others were ready to declare that they had come twenty miles.
As he drank his soup and munched a cracker Walter scanned his surroundings closely. Presently he discovered what he sought, a partially obliterated blaze on a big tree just beyond and to the right of where they were squatting.
"I've got you now, old Mr. Foxy!" he cried. "This mysterious camp of yours is the cabin in Smugglers' Hollow, and we're going to camp to-night at Little Goose Pond. More than that, your partner is Alec Smith. Why didn't I guess it before? Own up now, old Crafty!"
Quite unabashed, Pat bestowed a grin on Upton. "Three bull's-eyes," he commented. "I've been wondering how long it would take you fellows to catch the scent. Began to think I'd have to rub your noses in it."
"Hurrah!" interrupted Hal, who had been an eager listener. "I never thought of the Hollow, and yet there is no place I should like to go to so much as that. Say, Walt, these heads of ours sure are thick. Don't you remember that Pat told us that first night in New York that Alec was trapping, 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 about Pat's partner and what sort of a fellow he would prove to be and whether or not we'd like him. And to think it's Alec! If you weren't such a young and tender innocent I'd throw you in the snow and give you a shampoo. 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 would be the same as a big fellow picking on a little one. You know I thrashed him once for doing that very thing, and now if we should turn around and do it I'm afraid the force of my beautiful example would be wholly destroyed. I tell you what, you do it alone, Hal."
"He's too small," declared Hal. "That's why I wanted you to help. Then my conscience would be only half guilty. I'm going to let him off this time with just a snowball."
Suiting his action to the word he landed a big soft snowball full on the side of Pat's head. Pat made a rush for him, but Walter thrust out a foot and sent him headlong into the snow, and before he could regain his feet Hal was on him endeavoring to wash his face with snow. In a second there was the liveliest kind of a snow fight, Upton and Sparrer yelling encouragement with absolute impartiality. It ended with Hal's smothered cry of "enough" and Pat's allowing him up just in time to see Walter and then Sparrer unceremoniously pitched into the snow, by way of showing that all Scouts are equal, Pat explained, as he rubbed their faces.
Panting and glowing from the frolic they put out the fire built to heat their soup and were ready to hit the trail again. From this point on the snow-shoes were an absolute necessity, for they left the lumber trail for another ten miles through the woods. This time they were not dependent on the blazed trees as they had been when they went that way in the fall, for some one had been over the trail since the last snowfall, evidently coming out from Little Goose. Pat studied the tracks for a few minutes. Then his face cleared. "It was Big Jim," said he. "I wonder now if he took a look in the Hollow to see how Alec was getting on. He may have been over to the Gillicuddy camp, the trail from which comes in at the pond, you remember, but I have an idea he swung around to see Alec. I wonder now where he saw that fox. I just took it for granted that it was around where he is cutting and didn't ask any questions for fear of letting the coon out of the hole about where we were going. Then when I was alone with the doctor we both forgot all about Jim, there were so many other things to talk about. It may be that he saw that silver gray somewhere along this trail. We'll keep our eyes peeled for signs."
"How do you know that Big Jim made these tracks?" asked Walter, who had been studying them closely, hoping to find out for himself the clue which made Pat so sure of his man, but unable to see anything distinctive save that they were of odd shape, being nearly round.
"By a combination of two things—the shape of the tracks and the length of the stride," replied Pat. "Jim always uses bear's-paw shoes, and I don't believe there are more than half a dozen other pairs in this neck of woods. Then look at the length of the stride. It's a good three inches longer than mine, and there's nothing dainty about mine. There isn't a man in the woods who could take that stride and hold it but Jim Everly. So I'm as sure it was Big Jim as I am that if we don't get a hustle on we'll have to camp in the snow, and it'll be a lot more comfortable at the pond. We've got another long hike to-morrow, and we want to be in shape to do it."
For some miles the going was fairly level, and once they had got into the swing of the thing the boys found it comparatively easy. There were two or three mishaps, but these were counted part of the sport. About two miles from their destination they came to a spur of a mountain over which the trail led. In fact, it was the very spur on the other side of which Spud Ely had overrun the trail and got lost the fall previous. Pat called a halt.
"It's going to be no small job to get this load up there," said he. "We can go around the spur, but to do that will add a good three miles, and in the valley it will be dark before we can reach camp. What do you think? Are you game to try the hill?"
"The hill! The hill! Follow me, comrades, up yonder heights, and drive the enemy from their guns!" shouted Hal, striking a heroic attitude and pretending to flourish an imaginary sword.
"Bravo!" cried Walter.
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 to see the kind of stuff that's in the likes of you, for 'twill be no child's play getting this load up there. And when we get up there where you see the bare rock watch your footing. That rock is slippery, and a fall there would be serious."
The next half hour was one of panting, sweating toil. In the first place, as soon as the grade began to rise sharply the boys found that the only way they could progress was by digging their toes into the snow through the toe holes in the shoes, which brought an added strain on the already weary muscles of the calves. It would have been bad enough in view of their inexperience if they had had nothing else to consider, but there was that heavy load, and it grew heavier every minute. As they got higher where the wind had had full sweep there was comparatively little snow, and in some places the bare rock was exposed. Here they found it easier going without the snow-shoes than with them.
Hauling and pushing they worked the toboggan up until at last the spur was crossed.
"Gee whiz!" exclaimed Hal. "I'm sweating like a butcher. That's what I call work."
"And we're doing it for fun," added Upton. "Funny what a difference the view-point makes. I suppose it's all in the way you look at it whether work is fun or fun is work. I can tell you one thing, and that is that I for one am mighty glad that there isn't another one of those things to cross to-day. I'm afraid I'd lie down and holler quits. What are you rubbing 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 and they reached the familiar lean-to just as dusk was settling down, and there was more than one sigh of thankfulness as the shoes were kicked off for the last time.
"I'm tired enough to drop right down and go to sleep in the snow, but my little 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 when it comes."
"Nothing doing," declared Pat. "This isn't the Waldorf Astoria, but Hotel 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 an exaggerated sigh of contentment. "Haven't I labored all day? Tell the bellhop to take my stuff to my room. I think I'll have my dinner served there."
He ended with a grunt, the result of a sharp poke in the pit of his stomach from an axe handle. "To turn on the heat with," explained Pat sweetly, thrusting the axe into Hal's hands, and pointing to a pile of birch 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 slave driver! That's what you are, a flint-hearted slave driver," he grumbled, albeit with a twinkle that belied his words.
"That depends on how soon you get that wood split," grinned Pat. "If you don'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."
retorted Hal, and forthwith fell to his task with a vim that put Upton on his mettle to break even with him, for Hal was no mean axeman, as Pat well knew. The handling of an axe was one of the things which Hal had learned, and learned well during his three summers in the woods. To the thorough woodsman an axe is a complete tool-chest. With it he can do almost anything that needs to be done from the cutting of fire-wood to the building of a log cabin.
Sparrer was put to work pulling down the hemlock boughs which had been piled in front of the lean-to to keep out the snow, while Pat unpacked things, started the fire and made preparations for the evening meal. This was Sparrer's first experience in a lean-to, and when the boughs were out of the way he examined it with interest. The back and two ends were of logs, the front being open its whole width. The roof was of big sheets of hemlock bark laid overlapping and with a sharp pitch to the back.
On the ground about seven feet from the rear wall two six-foot logs about eight inches through had been staked end to end so that they reached from one side wall to the other. Midway a similar log had been laid across to the rear wall, making two pens, as it were. These had been filled with small balsam boughs thrust at an angle, butts down, so that they "shingled," and packed closely. The result was two beds fifteen inches thick and so springy and comfortable that it made one sleepy just to look at them. It was perhaps three feet from the beds to the open front. In this space at one end was a table two feet square made by driving four stakes into the ground and nailing on a top made of a flattened sheet of cedar bark.
A little snow had sifted in through the protecting boughs and this Sparrer swept out with a fir bough for a broom. Pat, meanwhile, had a kettle of snow melting for water for soup and was mixing up a johnny-cake. The reflector oven was set before the fire to get heated and while Sparrer helped bring in the wood which the two choppers had split 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 always fried bacon."
"To get some of the salt out of it, son," replied Pat. "I'll fry it all right when the time comes. Just you lay out the plates and cups where they will keep warm."
Sparrer ranged the four agate-ware plates, which were really shallow pans so that soup could be served in them as well as dry food, against a stick where they would get warm but not too hot to handle. The erbswurst was crumbled into the now boiling water, a handful of julienne, or evaporated vegetables cut in thin strips, was added, the pan of johnny-cake was put in the oven and the four boys gathered around to watch and wait with many a hungry sniff. The soup was soon ready, and Pat announced the first course. How good it did taste as they sat on their blanket rolls near enough to the fire to enjoy its warmth, each with a pan of the hot soup on his knees.
Before this was finished Pat poured off the water from the bacon and that was soon sizzling and throwing off that most delicious of all odors to a hungry woodsman.
"Course number two!" called Pat as he apportioned the brown slices among the four plates and then drew forth the johnny-cake, baked to a turn, a rich even brown all over with a heart of gold, the very sight of which brought forth gasps of delighted anticipation.
"What's course number three, Mr. Chef?" asked Walter as he prepared to sink his teeth into his quarter of the corn bread.
"Something worth saving your appetite for," replied Pat, re-greasing the pan and pouring in the remainder of his batter for another cake. He poured 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 under a towel.
"Venison, by all that's great!" shouted Hal as the meat began to sizzle on the hot iron. "Why didn't you tell us you had venison, so that the thought 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 mistrust yez have eaten so much already thot 'tis not the loikes av yez will be wanting more than maybe a wee bite. But never ye moind. 'Tis meself will do 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 were finished together to the last scrap and crumb, and along with them went hot chocolate. There was a general loosening of belts, and then Hal broke the silence of contentment which had fallen on the little group.
said he, gazing mournfully into his empty plate.
"Them's my sentiments too," said Walter, when the laugh that followed had subsided. "But any fellow who springs a thing like that has to pay for 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 his duties and carry out the action of this assembly."
After the dishes were out of the way Pat built a huge fire with three great backlogs one above another and slanting back to keep them from rolling down. They were held in place by braces at the back. In front of these smaller logs were piled, the backlogs reflecting the heat forward into the lean-to. Then the blankets were spread on the rough beds, and with all their clothing on, including moccasins, four weary young woodsmen turned in for the night.
Pat was asleep almost as soon as he touched the bed, and Hal and Upton were not far behind him. But to Sparrer, tired as he was, the novelty of his surroundings was too great for immediate sleep, and for a long time he lay staring out at the flickering flames and above them at the brilliant stars, his active imagination keyed to a high pitch. It was like fairy-land to him. Nothing seemed real. He had read and heard of these things, but that he, Eddie Muldoon, could actually be experiencing them, sleeping in a real hunter's camp in the dead of winter, tramping on snow-shoes through great lonely forests, eating such meals as he had never known before in all his short life—meals cooked over open fires in 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 grew less and less, lighted the rough interior, and before it had quite vanished Eddie had slipped from the real which seemed unreal to the unreal which so often seems real in the realm of dreams.
Three times during the night Pat crawled out of his blankets to put wood on the fire, but the other sleepers knew nothing of it. They slept the deep heavy sleep of healthy, tired boys and it mattered not to them that the temperature dropped until the very trees cracked and split with the cold. 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 fire made but a flickering point of yellow light, and wherein was no sound save the heavy breathing of the sleepers, the sputter of hot coals snapping 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 dying embers.
Hal was willing to swear that he had not been asleep more than ten minutes when he was awakened by the beating of a pan with a stick and Pat's roar of "Breakfast! All hands out for breakfast!" He rolled over sleepily so as to look out. Pat was laughing at him. Beyond the firelight and from the tiny strip of sky above the dark tree tops he could see a few pale stars blinking at him weakly.
"Aw, Pat, that's no joke. You may think it's funny, but it isn't," he growled, and there was a note of real anger this time.
"What?" demanded Pat with a deep throaty chuckle.
"You know what—waking a feller up when he's just got to sleep and is dead tired and got a hard day coming!" flared Hal.
"Aisy, aisy, son! Do ye think I would be frying bacon in the middle of the night for a joke? 'Tis meself has been up this good hour and 'tis six o'clock this very minute. 'Twill be daylight by the toime we be ready to start," returned Pat good-humoredly.
Hal had it on the tip of his tongue to say that he didn't believe it, but by this time he was sufficiently awake to smell the bacon and hear it sizzle and sputter in the pan. Moreover, his companions were already kicking off their blankets, and he had the good sense to realize that Pat meant just what he said. Still, it was hard to believe, and it was not until he had reached for his watch that he was convinced that it really was time to prepare for another day's tramp. Then he hastily crawled from his blankets, his good humor fully restored, for Hal was a good sport, and there was nothing of the shirk about him.
"I beg pardon, Pat," said he, as he joined the two shivering figures crowding as close to the fire as they could comfortably get while they watched Pat stir up the pancake batter. "I honestly thought you were up to one of your old tricks and putting something across on us. Doesn't seem as if I'd more than closed my eyes. Phew! but it's cold!"
It was. It was the hour just before the break of day when, perhaps because the blood has not yet begun to circulate freely, the cold seems to have reached its maximum of strength. Beyond the narrow radius of the glow from the fire it seemed to fairly bite to the bone.
"Get busy with the axe and you'll forget it," advised Pat, adding, "It is the courtesy of the woods to leave a little wood ready for the next fellow who may hit camp late, as we did yesterday. You'll have just about time enough to get warmed up before these flapjacks are ready."
"Good idea!" cried Walter, seizing an axe. "Come on, you fellows! Sparrer can lug it in as we split it."
At the end of ten minutes Pat called them to eat, and by that time they had forgotten the cold, for they were in a warm glow from exercise.
"I'll bet it was cold in the night," said Upton as they sat down to bacon, flapjacks and hot chocolate.
"Right you are, my boy," replied Pat. "When I got up the second time it was cold enough to freeze the tail off a brass monkey."
"When you got up the second time! What in the dickens were you up for?" exclaimed Hal.
"To kape yez from freezing to death," grinned Pat. "Did yez think the fire would feed itself?"
"I didn't think anything about it," confessed Hal. "Gee, it must have been cold when you crawled out to start things this morning! Makes me shiver to think of it. I guess the rest of us are the lucky little boys to have everything started for us and a ripping good fire going before we turned out. Do you always get up before daylight in the woods, Pat?"
"Sure," replied Pat. "It's nothing when you're used to it. Most trappers are on the trail by break of day. The days are all too short in winter, anyway, especially when you've got a long trap line to work over. I expect Alec is on the line now. He'll be trying to get through early to-day so as to have things ready for us when we reach the cabin. It's going to be a stiff pull to-day for you fellows, and the sooner we get started the better."
As soon as breakfast was finished the toboggan was packed, the brush piled once more in front of the lean-to and the fire put out by the simple process of throwing snow on it. The cold light of the stars had given way to the colder gray of the dawn as they once more slipped on the shoes and hit the trail around Little Goose Pond. It was then that the three novices realized that they were indeed tenderfeet. They had not gone half a mile before it seemed as if every muscle from their thighs down was making individual and vigorous protest. But they were game, and if Pat guessed their feelings it was not from any word which they let drop.
Gradually the stiffness wore off, and at the end of a couple of hours they were traveling with some degree of comfort. Pat purposely set an easy pace for the first few miles and he kept a watchful eye on Sparrer, for whom he felt personally responsible. As a matter of fact the youngster was standing it even better than the other two. For one thing, he was considerably lighter, and his shoes bore him up better than was the case with his companions. In places where the snow was packed he did not sink in at all, whereas the others broke through slightly, and on soft snow he did not begin to sink as far as they did. Of course this meant far less strain on his muscles, and greater ease in walking.
As they rounded the end of the pond Pat pointed out the place where he had been mistaken for a deer by two city boys and got a bullet through his hat. A little beyond this point they saw the first sign of life since they had entered the woods, the tracks of a hare or snow-shoe rabbit, and with them other tracks which at first glance all but Pat mistook for those of another rabbit.
"You fellows wait here a minute," said he and followed the trail into a thicket of young hemlocks. A few minutes later he called to them to join him. They found him at the farther side of the thicket. At his feet the snow had been considerably disturbed, and there were some blood-stains and torn scraps of white fur. Beyond a single trail led to the foot of a tree and there ended.
"Marten," explained Pat briefly in response to the looks of inquiry. "He ran Mr. Longlegs down here, ate his dinner and took to the trees. I've had a hunch that there were marten in this neck of woods, but haven't had a chance to trap them yet."
Later they put up a flock of spruce grouse, but it was out of season and the boys had too much respect for the spirit as well as the letter of the law to be even tempted to shoot. After the noon lunch Pat quickened the pace somewhat. The temperature had moderated rapidly and the sky was overcast. "It's a weather breeder, and we're in for more snow," said Pat as he scanned the sky with some appearance of anxiety. "I don't like the looks of it. We want to reach the cabin before the storm breaks, and we've got to hit it up faster in order to do it. How are your legs?"
"Still doing business," replied Hal. "The stiffness is out, but I guess I won't object to reaching that little old cabin. How about you, Walt?"
"Same here," replied Upton. "I'm game for the rest of the distance, but the cabin will look good to me, all right, all right. Hope Alec will have dinner ready. I've no sooner eaten than I'm hungry again."