Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Camp Venture, by George Cary Eggleston, Illustrated by W. A. McCullough
AUTHOR OF A CAROLINA CAVALIER, THE LAST OF THE FLATBOATS, ETC., ETC.
Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1901,
By LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I'm tired, and the other pack mules are tired, and from the way you move I imagine that the rest of you donkeys are tired! called out Jack Ridsdale, as the last of the mules and their drivers scrambled up the bank and gained a secure foothold on the little plateau.
I move that we camp here for the night. All in favor say 'aye.' The motion's carried unanimously.
With that the tall boy threw off the pack that burdened his shoulders, set his gun up against a friendly tree and proceeded in other ways to relieve himself of the restraints under which he had toiled up the steep mountain side since early morning, with only now and then a minute's pause for breath.
This is a good place to camp in, he presently added. There's grazing for the mules, there's timber around for fire wood and I hear water trickling down from the cliff yonder. So 'Alabama,' which is Cherokee eloquence meaning 'here we rest.'
The party consisted of five sturdy boys and a man, the Doctor, not nearly so stalwart in appearance, who seemed about twenty-eight or thirty years old. Each member of the party carried a heavy pack upon his back and each had a gun slung over his shoulder and an axe hanging by his girdle. There were four packmules heavily laden and manifestly weary with the long climb up the mountain.