THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
It was just about an hour after dawn, and the sun had hardly got started on his journey toward the zenith, when two boys in the khaki garb of scouts arrived at the house to which Walter Douglass had been carried on a litter.
Mr. Witherspoon on coming out to get a breath of air before breakfast was announced was surprised and pleased to see Tom and Josh.
“Why, this is splendid of you, boys!” he remarked, as they came toward him. “Of course you were anxious to know about your comrade. We got him safely home, and called the doctor, who said he would not have to set the limb again, since you scouts had done the job in first-class style. It’s a feather in your cap, for he is sure to tell it everywhere. Now, what makes you look so glum, Josh?”
That gave them a chance to explain. When the scout master heard of the latest outrage of which the Tony Pollock crowd had been guilty, he was much annoyed.
“We thought,” Tom went on to say, “that perhaps by coming over here before you got started we might influence the gentleman to spare us a small amount of coffee, a strip of bacon, and some sort of tin to make the coffee in.”
“No harm trying,” Mr. Witherspoon immediately remarked; “and it does you credit to have thought up such a scheme. I’ve found him an accommodating gentleman. If he has anything he can spare I’m sure we’ll be welcome to it.”
When the matter was mentioned to Mr. Clark, he immediately offered to help them out as far as he could do so.
“I can give you plenty of eggs,” he said, “and enough coffee for several meals. It happens that I’m shy on bacon just now, and intended to run in to town to stock up either to-day or to-morrow, when I have my eggs to dispose of. What I can spare, you’re entirely welcome to.”
Nor would he allow them to pay a cent for what he handed over to them.
“What I’ve heard about you boys from Mr. Witherspoon here has aroused my interest greatly,” he told Tom and Josh as they were about to depart; “and I’d be glad to know more about such a splendid movement as this promises to be. You must keep me informed of your progress. I would appreciate an occasional letter. Then, if it happens that your account of the outing is ever put in print, Tom, remember me with a copy.”
“I certainly will, sir,” the patrol leader promised, for he realized that the gentleman and his wife led a lonely life of it, removed from association as they were, with most of their fellows.
They reached the camp in three-quarters of an hour after leaving the house, and received a noisy welcome from the rest of the boys, who gave their leaders the regular scout salute as they came into camp.
Then once again the affair was discussed, this time with Mr. Witherspoon to listen and give occasional comments. It ended in their original plan’s being sustained. They would not give up, and would try to carry out the plan as arranged before the hike was started.
Tom had an idea that they must be near the cabin of Larry Henderson, the naturalist whom he had met in Lenox, at the time of the snowball battle with the Pollock crowd.
“He gave me directions how to find his cabin,” Tom explained to his companions when they were discussing this matter, “and I believe we must be somewhere near there right now. I asked Mr. Clark, and what he could tell me only confirmed my idea.”
“But Tom, do you think we could get some supplies from him?” asked Josh.
“There’s a reasonable chance of that,” he was told. “I understood him to say he always kept a supply of all sorts of food on hand. It was to lay in a lot that took him down to Lenox that time, you know.”
“Then goodness knows I hope we can run on his shack to-day,” said Felix fervently. “We want most of all coffee, potatoes, onions, bacon, ham, and, well anything that can stop the gap when ten campers are half starved.”
“Shall we get started right away, Tom?” asked George, who looked distressed, as though he had not been wholly satisfied with the amount of his breakfast.
“There’s nothing to delay us, since we have no tents to come down,” Tom told him. “Every fellow fold up a blanket, and make his pack ready.”
“It’s going to be marching in light order with us nowadays,” sighed Felix, “with all our good stuff stolen. That’s the only compensation I can see about it.”
“Tom, you’ve studied your chart good and hard, let’s hope,” commented Josh; “so we won’t run any chance of going past the place without knowing it?”
“He gave me certain land marks that I couldn’t very well miss seeing,” explained the patrol leader.
“According to my way of thinking,” Felix was saying, “we must be half around the foot of Big Bear Mountain by this time.”
“You’ve got the right idea of it,” admitted the one who carried the chart; “and Mr. Henderson’s cabin isn’t far away from here. That crag up on the side of the mountain was one of the things he told me about. When we can get it in a direct line with that peak up there we will be within shouting distance of his place.”
Tom continued to keep on his guard as they pressed onward. Every one was alive to the necessity of finding the cabin of the old naturalist as soon as possible. Farms were so rare up here that they found they could not count on getting their supplies from such places; and the possibility of going hungry was not a pleasant prospect.
After all it was an hour after noon when Tom announced the fact that the several land marks which had been given to him were in conjunction.
“The cabin must be around here somewheres,” he said, positively.
Hardly had he spoken when Josh was noticed to be sniffing the air in a suspicious fashion.
“What is it, Josh?” asked the scout master.
“I smell smoke, that’s all,” was the answer.
Others could do the same, now that their attention was called to the fact.
“With the breeze coming from over that way, it ought to be plain enough we must look for the cabin there,” remarked Tom.
The further they advanced the plainer became the evidence that there was a fire of some sort ahead of them. Presently they got a whiff of cooking, at which some of the hungry scouts began to sniff the air like war horses when the odor of burnt powder comes down the breeze from the battlefield.
“There it is!” exclaimed one of the watchful boys, suddenly.
Yes, there stood a commodious cabin right in the midst of the thick woods. It was a charming site for the home of one who loved nature as much as the old naturalist did.
When a vociferous shout rang forth a form was seen to come quickly to the open doorway. It was the same genial Larry Henderson whom some of the scouts had once rescued from the unkind assault of the bully of Lenox and his crowd, as they pelted the lame man with hard ice balls.
He welcomed them to his little home with a heartiness that could not be doubted, and soon a royal dinner was being prepared for the whole party. While this was being dispatched later on, the owner of the woods cabin listened to the story of the great hike over Big Bear Mountain, as told by the boys.
Everything seemed to interest him very much indeed, and when last of all they told him how some unscrupulous boys had stolen most of their supplies, meaning to break up the hike, Mr. Henderson looked pleased.
“Don’t let a little thing like that deter you, boys, from carrying out your original proposition,” he remarked. “I can spare you all you want in the way of supplies. Yes and even to a coffee-pot and an extra frying-pan. An enterprise as splendidly started as this has been must not be allowed to languish, or be utterly wrecked through the mean tricks of such scamps as those boys.”
He was pleased when they gave him a round of hearty cheers, such as could only spring from a group of lively, wide-awake American boys.
Afterwards he showed Tom and some of the others many things that interested them more than words could tell. Indeed, so fascinating were the various things he took the trouble to explain to them, that the scouts only wished they could stay at the cabin in the woods for a number of days, enjoying his society.
It was decided that they must remain there at least until another morning, which would give them a night with the naturalist and hunter, a prospect that afforded satisfaction all around.
Tom soon saw that Mr. Henderson had something on his mind which he wished to confide to him; consequently he was not much surprised when he saw him beckon to the leader of the Black Bear Patrol to join him.
“Tell Mr. Witherspoon to come, too, and also that bright chap you call Rob,” remarked the recluse. “It is a little matter that may interest you and I think it best to lay the story before you, and then let you decide for yourselves what you want to do. Still, from what I’ve seen up to this time of your character, I can give a pretty shrewd guess what your answer will be.”
Of course this sort of talk aroused a good deal of curiosity in both Tom Chesner and Rob Shaefer, and they impatiently awaited the coming of the scout master.
“And now I’ll explain,” Mr. Henderson told them, when he found three eager pairs of eyes fastened on him. “I chanced to be about half a mile away from home an hour before noon to-day when I heard angry voices, and discovered that several persons were about to pass by, following a trail that leads straight into the worst bog around the foot of Big Bear Mountain.”
“I warrant you that it must have been the four young rascals who robbed our camp, that you saw,” ventured Mr. Witherspoon.
“I know now that it was as you say,” continued the other. “At the time I might have called out and warned them of the peril that lay in wait for them if they should continue along that misleading trail, but when I looked at their faces, and heard a little of the vile language they used, I determined that it would be a very unwise thing for me to let them know I lived so near.”
“And you allowed them to go on past, you mean, sir?” questioned Mr. Witherspoon.
“Yes, I regret to confess it now,” came the reply, “but at the time it seemed to be simply ordinary caution on my part. Besides, how was I to know they would pay the slightest heed to anything I might say? I did not like their looks. But since then I’ve had grave doubts about the wisdom of my course, and was more than half inclined to start out, lame though I am, to see whether they did get off the only safe trail, and lose themselves in the bog.”
“Is it then so dangerous?” asked Mr. Witherspoon; while Tom was saying to himself that perhaps the chance so ardently desired by poor Carl might be coming at last.
“There are places where it might be death itself to any one who got off the trail, and became bewildered. The mud is deceptive, and once one gets fast in it an hour or two is apt to see him swallowed up; nor will his fate ever be known, for the bottomless mire of the bog never discloses its secrets.”
Tom drew a long breath.
“If you will show us the way there, sir,” he told the naturalist, “we will certainly accompany you.”