Tom was lying at the foot of the tree.
By the light of the Doctor's torch three charges of buckshot were quickly driven into the beast's vitals, and at last he lay still.
Then, all attention was given to Little Tom. Throwing his torch upon the ground the Doctor called out:
"Build a fire right there, boys, as quickly as you can. I must have light by which to examine the boy's wounds."
Willing hands produced the desired light within a very few moments, and stripping off part of Tom's clothing, the Doctor discovered that the beast had dealt him two vicious blows with his horridly armed claws, one tearing his left arm severely and the other lacerating his chest. After a hurried examination, the Doctor said:
"He can stand removing to the camp if you'll carry him gently, boys, and I can treat him better there than here." Then he gave a few hurried directions as to the best way of carrying the wounded boy, and the others very lovingly obeyed his instructions in removing their comrade to the main camp fire.
"Now," said the Doctor, "remove all his clothing as quickly and as gently as you can."
This was done and the Doctor carefully examined the wounds.
"It's all right, boys," he said, presently. "Tom is very painfully hurt, but the 'painter' didn't know enough of anatomy to deliver his blows in vital parts. Tom will get well, but he's fainting now. Lower his head and throw a gourdful of cold water into his face and another over his chest."
It was no sooner said than done, and no sooner was it done than Tom revived. After blinking his eyes for a moment, he asked:
"Did you fellows finish the painter?"
"Indeed we did," answered Jack; "but it's you old fellow, that we're concerned about now."
"That's all right," said Tom, "but that fellow's hide is worth a good many dollars, and better than that, we're rid of him. If I hadn't shot him he would have dropped from a tree upon some one or other of us, and in that case he wouldn't have left anything for the Doctor to do."
Meanwhile the Doctor was carefully cleansing the boy's wounds and drenching them in water in which disinfectant tablets from his pocket case had been dissolved. Here and there it was necessary to draw the edges of deep gashes together by a stitch or two with a surgical needle. "But the main thing," the Doctor expounded, "is to cleanse and disinfect the wounds. Nature itself," he added, "will repair any wound that does not involve a vital part, if it is cleansed and kept clean. The danger always is that the wound will become infected, that inflammation and blood poisoning will set in and kill the patient. Fortunately, we surgeons know now how to prevent that, and I'll answer for it that nothing of the kind shall happen to little Tom."
"But what is it that causes the inflammation and blood poisoning?" asked Harry.
"Microbes," answered the Doctor; "little things that you can't see without a microscope—and some that you can't see with one. The greatest advance that was ever made in medical and surgical science was the discovery of the fact that nearly all diseases and all hurtful and dangerous inflammation is due to the presence of microbes in a wound. The moment the Doctors found that out they set to work to kill the microbes. They studied them under the most powerful microscopes. They tried all sorts of experiments with them till they learned how to kill them. Thus they discovered two greatly good things—antiseptic surgery first and after that aseptic surgery. Antiseptic surgery aims to kill all the evil germs that are already in a wound. Aseptic surgery aims to keep all evil germs out of the wounds that the surgeon must make."
"Would you mind giving us some illustrations, Doctor?" asked Jack.
"Certainly not, if you are interested," said the Doctor.
"I have practiced both antiseptic and aseptic surgery on little Tom to-night, so his case will serve to illustrate both. I have washed all his wounds with a solution of bi-chloride of mercury, commonly called corrosive sublimate, for the purpose of killing all the germs that may have got into them from that beast's claws or in any other way. That was antiseptic surgery. Then, wherever I found it necessary to take a stitch or two, I have used ligatures drawn directly out of a disinfecting solution, and perhaps you observed that I thoroughly disinfected my needles and other implements by passing them through a blaze before using them. So, also, as to my hands. Before touching Tom's wounds I thoroughly scoured my hands in a solution of corrosive sublimate, so that they might not carry any possible infection to the scratches. All that is aseptic surgery. In the hospitals, where all conditions can be controlled they do this aseptic business completely. First of all, they have an operating table made of glass, which absorbs nothing and could be easily and perfectly cleansed after each operation by mere washing with water. But not content with that they scour the table with a disinfecting solution immediately before every operation. Then the surgeon, his assistant, and all the attendants are clad in garments that have been rendered 'sterile' as they call it, by roasting. So of all the towels and sheets and everything else employed about the patient's person. Everything is sterilized. The bandages and the thread or the catgut to be used are drawn from thoroughly disinfected supplies. The surgeon's instruments of every kind are laid in a panfull of a disinfecting fluid, and there are so many of each that if any one of them is accidentally dropped its use is abandoned and another is used in its stead. But come! Little Tom, you are comfortable now. Why not tell us how it all happened?"
"Well, you see," answered little Tom, "when I heard that cry and located it, I knew what it meant. I knew it was a painter or a catamount, or a puma, or a panther, or a mountain lion—or whatever else you choose to call it, for it bears all those names and some others. And I knew what it was after. It wanted that last leg of venison of ours, but it wasn't over particular. If it couldn't get the venison it was quite ready to take any one of us boys instead.
"It's a smart beast, the panther. It sneaks on its prey and springs upon any animal, human or other, that it may fancy, for lunch. And yet it is a fool in some ways. It suffers itself to grow enthusiastic now and then, though that is very rare, and when that happens it gives that excruciating yell that we heard. I never heard that except once, before to-night.
"Well, when I heard it, I knew what it meant. I knew that unless somebody killed that panther, that panther would kill somebody in this company. At his second yell I located him pretty accurately, though, of course, you can't depend too confidently upon that, as the beast often runs a dozen yards in a few seconds. So I took your gun, Doctor, and went out to find the gentleman. For a time, I couldn't get a sight of him, but after awhile he yelled again, and I 'spotted' him. I crept up in the very dim light till I got a good view of him, crouching on a limb, and evidently planning to spring upon me and accept me in lieu of the venison. Then I fired three bullets through him with that splendid repeating rifle of yours, Doctor, and then I had an illustration of the old adage about 'the ruling passion' being 'strong in death.' For, instead of dropping to the ground, as I had expected him to do, the beast sprang twenty or thirty feet forward and attacked me with his hideously long and sharp claws. He tore me to ribbons at his first onset, but then the three bullets I had given him from your gun seemed suddenly to dishearten him. So I managed to creep out of his way and call to you fellows to come to my rescue. The rest of the story you fellows know better than I do. For the next thing I recollect was when you doused me with the water so that I should become conscious of the prick of the Doctor's needles, as he sewed me up. By the way, Doctor, am I seriously hurt?"
"Seriously, yes," answered the Doctor. "But not dangerously, I think. You're going to have a good long rest in one of our beds over there in the new house, but surgery is now so exact a science that I think I can promise you an entirely certain recovery within a few days, or a few weeks at furthest, if you'll be a good boy and obey my instructions."
"I say, boys," called out Tom, "how fortunate we've been in bringing a Doctor along, even if we did have to resolve half his age away! Doctor, I never met any other boy of only sixteen years old who knew half as much as you do! Now, I'm tired. I'm going to sleep. Call me when it comes my turn for guard duty."
And with that the boy sank to sleep. But there was no call upon him that night or for many nights yet to come, for sentinel service.
CHAPTER VIII
The Condition of the Moonshiners
The next day the boys moved from their temporary shelter into their permanent winter quarters, building a fire in front of the door and making themselves as comfortable as they could under the circumstances.
Meantime the Doctor and Jack had got the chute ready. It was a strong, rough structure of stout poles, forming a sort of trough, beginning on a level with the ground at the turn of the hill and extending with a heavy incline for twenty yards or so over the steep brow of the mountain. It was supported by strong hickory and oak posts and braces throughout its length. Any piece of timber placed in its upper end and gently impelled forward would quickly traverse it to its farther end and there make a tremendous leap and a long slide down the steep, into the depths below.
Little Tom, greatly to his disgust, was peremptorily ordered into bed by command of the Doctor, but two of the boys had volunteered to strip off that valuable panther skin for him, salt it and stretch it out on the logs of the cabin to dry.
It was on Saturday that the boys removed to their new quarters, and the next day, being Sunday, was to be spent in resting. But Little Tom, as he lay there in his broom straw bed about midday on Saturday became troubled in his mind about the provisioning of the garrison.
"We've eaten up the last of the venison to-day," he said, "and there isn't an ounce of fresh meat in the camp. If I didn't hurt so badly, and if the Doctor wasn't such a tyrant, with his arbitrary orders for me to lie still, I'd go out this afternoon and get something better than salt meat for all of us to eat to-morrow. Why don't some of you other fellows go? If you can't get a deer, you can at any rate kill a turkey or a pheasant or two, or some partridges or squirrels, or, as a last resort, some rabbits. Oh, how my head aches! Go, some of you, and get what you can."
With that the poor bed-ridden boy turned over in his bunk and sought sleep. But Ed Parmly and Jim Chenowith acted upon his wise suggestion. A few hours later they returned to Camp Venture bearing three hares and seven squirrels on their shoulders, and dragging a half-grown hog by withes.
"I don't know but what we've made a mistake," said Ed to Jack; "the hog may belong to the moonshiners, and if so, they'll present their bill in a fashion that we sha'n't want to have it presented."
"Never mind about that," called out Tom, from inside the house. "We're at war with those people, you know, and in war you capture all you can of the enemy's supplies. But why can't you let a fellow see your game?"
The boys dragged the shoat into the hut, and Tom, expert huntsman that he was, had only to glance at it in order to pronounce it one of the wild hogs of the mountains, and anybody's property.
"Don't you see," he said, "that although it is only a half-grown shoat, it has tusks already. No domesticated hog ever developed in that way. And besides, the moonshiners haven't any hogs or anything else, for that matter. They are the poorest and most starved human beings I ever saw or heard of. I passed a week as a prisoner in one of their huts once, and I never dreamed of such poverty or such indolence. So long as they have corn pones or anything else to distend their stomachs with, they simply will not exert themselves to get anything better. They won't even go out and shoot a rabbit if they've got anything else to eat. You simply can't conceive of their poverty or of the indolence that produces it. If one of them owned a hog he'd kill it without taking the trouble to fatten it, and he'd eat it to the picking of the last bone before he would exert himself to procure another morsel of food."
"When was it, Tom, that you learned all this?" asked Harry.
"A year ago. You remember the time I went hunting and didn't get back for two weeks?"
"Yes, but tell us—"
"Well, that time I was captured by the moonshiners and held for a week as a spy. I didn't say anything about it at home except confidentially to Jack, for fear mother would worry when I went hunting again. But I tell you fellows you never dreamed of the sort of poverty that those men and their families live in. I don't know whether they are poor because they lead criminal lives, or whether they lead criminal lives because they are poor. But I do know that that fellow told the truth the other night when he said that they do not usually have enough to eat. You saw how starved he was. That's the chronic condition of all of them; and yet these mountains are full of game and any man of even half ordinary industry can feed himself well by killing it.
"The trouble is they are hopeless people. They have no ambition, no energy, no 'go' in them. They drink too much of their illicit whiskey for one thing, I suppose, but I don't think that's the bottom trouble. They seem to be people born without energy. They like to sit still in the sunshine, unless there is a revenue officer to hunt down and shoot. I suppose they are what somebody in the newspapers calls 'degenerates'—people that are run down even before they are born."
"But tell us, Tom," broke in Harry, "how did you get away from them?"
"Why, I watched my chance," answered Tom, "till one day I 'got the drap' on my jailer, to employ their own language. With a cocked gun at his breast, I made him promise not to follow me, and then I retreated 'in good order' as the soldiers say, down the mountain, with both barrels cocked. But really, fellows, you can have no idea of the abject poverty or the inconceivable indolence of these people. The little energy they have is expended in making illicit whiskey and sneaking it down the mountain without getting caught. Many of them have already served long terms in prison, but they regard that merely as a manifestation of the law's injustice, just as they do the hanging of one of their number now and then, when he is caught shooting an agent of the revenue. They don't understand. They are as ignorant as they are poor, and their poverty exceeds anything that it is possible for us to conceive."
By this time Tom's scant strength was exhausted, and after muttering: "That's anybody's wild hog," he turned himself over in bed and went to sleep.
CHAPTER IX
A Sunday Discussion
"I say, Tom," said the Doctor, on Sunday morning, after the breakfast things had been cleared away, and the first fire had been lighted in the new fireplace, "I want to ask you something about your experience on your hunting trips."
"Go on, Doctor. No boy of sixteen—and we've voted you to be of that age—can ask me anything that I'll hesitate to answer."
"Thank you," said the Doctor, with a laugh. "Now, think of me as exactly sixteen and tell me all about it. As I understand, you have frequently spent from a week to ten days in the mountains, living exclusively upon what you could kill."
"So far, Doctor, you are absolutely right," answered the boy, who, having laid aside his headache, was disposed to be facetious.
"Well, that must have been animal food exclusively," said the Doctor.
"Absolutely," answered Tom. "I had always a little of the mineral food salt to season it with, but as for bread or potatoes, or anything else of a vegetable character, why I simply couldn't get them."
"All right. Now, the theory is that a man must have starchy foods in order to keep in good health. You had no starchy food for from a week to two weeks at a time on each of these occasions, but lived exclusively on meat. Now, what effects of this diet did you observe?"
"None whatever, except that little Tom Ridsdale had a mighty keen relish for bread when he got home again."
The Doctor then asked detailed questions as to particular symptoms, to all of which the substance of Tom's replies was that in his case no symptoms whatever had manifested themselves. "I think, Doctor," he added, "as the result of my own experience that a healthy young human animal like me, when living night and day in the open air and taking a great deal of exercise, can eat pretty much anything he pleases that we commonly recognize as food, or rather anything of that kind that he can get—without much danger of injuring himself. No, I don't know so well about that. Once, I got hurt in the mountains, and lived for a week in a barn, eating nothing but corn. I was all right in a general way, but I suffered a good deal with cold. When I got out and killed a 'coon and roasted and ate it, the weather seemed suddenly to warm up."
"Precisely," answered the Doctor. "The fat of the coon furnished you with fuel, and you needed it. The more I study the subject, the more firmly convinced I become of two things—first, that man is essentially a carnivorous, or meat-eating animal, and second, that while starchy foods are desirable as a part of his diet, they are not absolutely necessary to him, except at comparatively long intervals. You know a baby simply cannot digest starchy foods at all. It would starve to death with a stomach full of them. Every baby lives exclusively upon the animal food milk."
"Yes," answered Jack, "but so does every colt and every calf. Yet, neither horses nor cows eat any animal food whatever after they cease to be colts and calves."
"That is true," said the Doctor, meditatively. "I hadn't thought of that." Then, after a minute's thought, he added—"but neither cows nor horses have any carnivorous teeth whatever, any teeth fit for the chewing of meat, while man has. Besides that, physicians have observed that behind almost every case of obstinate, low fevers and that sort of debilitated disease, there is a history of underfeeding, and particularly of an insufficient use of meat, whether as a matter of necessity, or merely as a matter of choice. Persons who eat no meat, or very little meat, may seem very robust so long as positive disease does not attack them, but when they contract maladies of a serious sort, they are very likely to show a lack of stamina, a deficiency of recuperative power."
"Then you don't believe at all, any more than we meat-eating Virginians do—in the doctrines of the vegetarians?" asked Jack, as he finished the hind legs of a broiled squirrel.
"It will be time enough," answered the Doctor, "to consider the doctrines of the vegetarians when they agree among themselves as to what those doctrines are."
"Why, how do you mean?" asked Tom.
"Well, some vegetarians held a congress, or a convention, or something of that sort in New York a little while ago. There were only fifty-seven of them present, I believe, and yet they managed to split their congress up into four groups, each antagonizing the views of all the others with something approaching violence of temper."
"What were their differences?" asked Tom.
"Well first of all there was a group who advocated the eating of vegetable matters only, except that they saw no harm in the use of milk, eggs, cheese and butter. Next there was a group who bitterly condemned milk, eggs, cheese and butter as animal foods, tending to inflame evil passions and utterly to be rejected, though they ate milk biscuit and butter crackers. This second group looked with favor upon all fruits and vegetables, but here a third group took issue with them, contending that only those vegetables should be eaten which grow above ground, and utterly rejecting the thought of eating potatoes, parsnips, beets, turnips, onions, carrots, radishes and other things that develop beneath the surface of the earth. Finally there was a fourth group that agreed with the third except that they made a plea in behalf of celery, on the ground that it is naturally a plant growing above ground and is artificially imbedded in earth only by way of making it tender and palatable."
"But how about circuses then?" asked Tom.
"I don't understand," the Doctor answered.
"Why how can anybody go to a circus without eating peanuts? And about three-fourths of all the peanuts are developed under ground by burying the blossoms."
"It's all very funny," said Jack. "But the funniest thing about it is the fetish worship of that word 'vegetable.' Patent medicines are often advertised as 'purely vegetable,' as if that settled the question of their harmlessness. Yet I know at least a dozen 'purely vegetable' plants that grow in these woods which are poisonous."
"Of course," answered the Doctor, "and for that matter the most virulent poisons known to man are 'purely vegetable.' There's strychnia for example, as purely vegetable in its origin as apple-butter itself is. And there are others, such as morphine, stramonium, and nux vomica and worst of all hydrocyanic acid, commonly called prussic acid. That is so deadly that it is almost never made or kept in its pure state, because a single whiff of its fumes in the nostrils would kill almost instantly. Yet it is an extract of peach pits or bitter almonds."
"Well now I say," broke in Tom, "let's return to the subject of foods, for I am hungry, and I'm going to declare war on the Doctor if he doesn't let me have some light thing to eat like a chop from that wild boar or something of an equally digestible sort."
"Well, we'll see about that," said the Doctor, going to Tom's bed and examining and redressing his wounds. After the inspection he said:
"You were entirely right, Tom, when you called yourself a perfectly healthy human animal a little while ago. I never yet saw wounds heal in the way they are doing on you. So you may sit up for dinner to-day, and you may have whatever you want to eat."
"All right!" cried Tom, hastily scrambling out of bed. "My clamor is for pork. How are you going to cook the pig boys?"
After a little consultation, it was decided to hang the shoat before the great fire in the new fire place, and roast it whole.
"After all, it doesn't weigh more than forty pounds, and that isn't much to divide between six of us," said Harry, laughingly.
"And besides," added Ed, "roast wild shoat is as good cold as hot, or rather better. So we'll roast the gentleman whole, and I for one volunteer to sit down before him and baste him so that all the juices that belong to him shall be found succulently pervading his muscular structure."
"I'll help in that," called Jim Chenowith from outside the cabin, where he was just finishing a turn of guard duty.
Thus the little company rested and grew strong during the Sunday, and by bed time they were eager for the morning and the hard, outdoor work of tree felling that it would bring with it. With a great glowing blaze in the fireplace, which each sentinel replenished with wood before summoning his successor to take his place, the log hut seemed a delightful place to sleep in.
CHAPTER X
Beginning Work
The Doctor was the first "boy" to crawl out of bed in the morning. He carefully inspected his weather instruments and reported:
"It's a stinging morning. Thermometer only ten degrees above zero outside; wind North-northwest, and blowing at twenty miles an hour; barometric pressure very high, indicating prolonged clear and cold weather; hygrometer indicating a minimum of moisture in the atmosphere, promises a clear sky and a bright sun to-day."
"Good!" shouted the other boys. "Now for a hearty breakfast to begin with."
"Well I for one am going to begin with an invigorating cold bath," said the Doctor seizing a sponge and two towels and running nearly naked through the biting air, to the spring under the cliff. After a shudder of hesitation all the other boys gave chase to him.
The bathing trough was not yet in place, but by dipping sponges into the sluiceway that flowed out of the spring, and rapidly drenching their bodies with the intensely cold water, gasping for breath as they did so, they all set their blood aflow and their skins a-tingling. Then, vigorously rubbing themselves with towels as they went, they ran to the cabin and there dressed before a mighty fire of freshly replenished logs.
"Why does a bath like that feel so good after it's over?" asked Jack. For answer the Doctor gave a little physiological explanation which need not be repeated here. He ended it with this dictum: "For a man or woman or boy in full health, whose heart and lungs are sound, there is no such tonic in the world as a very cold bath on a very cold morning." Then suddenly he called out:
"Why hello, Tom! you didn't bathe, did you?" observing the boy vigorously polishing his back with a sharp Turkish towel.
"Oh, didn't I though. I've done that sort of thing every morning since I was a very little fellow, except when I hadn't the chance to do it."
"But Tom," said the Doctor in much concern, "I'm afraid this was very imprudent. Some of your wounds are still unhealed, and you might take cold in them."
"Why, Doctor, you have just been telling us how a cold morning bath renders it nearly impossible for one to take cold, by reason of the stimulated skin and full circulation."
"Still," answered the Doctor doubtfully, "I didn't mean all that to apply to a fellow who was cut into ribbons by a catamount's claws only a few nights ago. At any rate you mustn't wear those wet bandages, so the other boys will have to get breakfast while I take them all off and replace them with dry ones."
With that he hastily slipped on a scanty covering of clothes and set to work to re-dress Tom's wounds.
"Well bless my soul!" he exclaimed presently.
"What's the matter Doctor? Anything gone wrong with that shoulder?" asked Tom.
"Gone wrong! Well I should say not. I never in my life saw the process of healing advance so rapidly. Why I gave that big scratch two weeks at least to get well in, and if I'm not absolutely blind it is practically healed up already. Bring a light one of you! There, hold it so," and with a strong magnifying glass, the Doctor minutely examined the wounded part. Then he sat back and said:
"Tom Ridsdale you are certainly the healthiest human animal I ever saw or heard of. Why a surgeon in private practice wouldn't make his salt if all his patients recovered after your fashion. You are practically so nearly well that I am going to leave off all your bandages, only holding this newly healed cut together with a strip or two of rubber plaster for extra safety. But I certainly never saw anything like it!"
"Perhaps that's because you never before had a perfectly healthy, out-of-door boy like me as a surgical patient."
"Of course that's it. But now that I've taken off all your bandages and given you leave to eat whatever you want, you must be good enough to obey my orders in other respects. Otherwise, you might spoil this splendid result."
"I will, Doctor. Honestly, I'll do whatever you tell me."
"Well, we're going to begin chopping now, and I peremptorily forbid you to do any work for a day or two—at least, until the healing of those lacerated muscles is complete and their union firm. It would be very easy now to tear the wounds open again, and if you did that they would not heal again in a hurry. So, you must do no chopping, no lifting, no work of any kind for the present. Promise me that and in return I'll faithfully promise to release you from the restraint at the first moment when I think it safe to do so."
"All right, Doctor," answered Tom, "I'll potter about and 'keep camp' till you say I may go to work. And in the meantime I'm going to make some soup out of our scraps and bones. It will warm you fellows up when you come in cold and hungry from your chopping in this excessively cold air."
With that Tom got out their biggest camp kettle, threw all the meat fragments into it, broke up all the bones with a hatchet, and threw them in, and then filling the kettle nearly full of cold water, set it on the fire to boil.
The other boys, after breakfast, had taken their axes and gone out to begin the work of chopping. First of all, they built a fire near the timber they were about to cut, so that benumbed hands and half frozen feet might be warmed as occasion required. They all had good axes, and they all knew how to use them expertly, for these boys had been brought up in a heavily timbered country and had been used all their lives to chopping.
"Now, let's begin right," said Jack Ridsdale, "and then we'll go on right. There are two ways to fell trees in a forest, a right way and a wrong way. The wrong way is to fell them in any way that comes handy, regardless of any incidental damage that may be done as they fall. The right way is so to fell your big tree that in falling it won't smash any of the smaller trees standing around. You see, we aren't going to cut down any tree that isn't big enough to make railroad ties—that is to say any tree that isn't full seven inches in diameter. In doing that, if we take a little care, we can save all the smaller trees, and in the course of a year or two they will grow up, and we fellows can come out here and spend another winter in chopping. It all depends upon the way in which we do our work this time, whether these lands remain a splendid forest or become a desolate waste with all the soil washed off for lack of roots to hold it, and with no hope of anything ever growing upon them again."
Then Jack, who was an expert woodchopper, explained to all the others how to chop down a tree so as to make it fall wherever the chopper wishes it to fall.
"Now, another thing," added Jack. "You, Doctor, have had less experience than the rest of us, in this business, and perhaps you'd best practice on the easier part of it first. I propose that instead of cutting down trees you devote yourself to-day to making cordwood out of the unused parts of the trees we cut to build our house with. There are several cords of good wood in them. You can cut the branches into round wood and split the rest with the mauls and wedges and gluts." A glut is a big wooden wedge used to supplement the work of the axe and the iron wedge. The Doctor assented readily—the more because he had learned, during his sojourn in Virginia how to cut and split wood with very tolerable skill, but had never yet practiced the art of felling trees.
With brisk axes expertly wielded by strong arms, the party had goodly piles of ties and timbers and cordwood ready for the chute before noon, and as they were not to begin sending it down the hill until three o'clock the next day, they had every prospect of making a good showing with their two days' work.
CHAPTER XI
An Armed Negotiation
Just before noon, Tom carefully removed all the bones and meat fragments from his soup kettle. Then he mixed up some corn meal dumplings and dropped them into the kettle, after the southern culinary fashion. These would answer as a sufficient substitute for bread, and as for meat, the company was to dine that day on the cold roast wild boar.
Just as Tom dropped the last of the dumplings into the kettle, he looked out through the half-open door and saw an ugly looking mountaineer creeping stealthily, and with his rifle in hand, up over the little cliff to the east of Camp Venture. His attention was evidently riveted upon the chopping boys, the scene of whose labors lay to the northwest of the house. Apparently, the man supposed the hut to be empty and intended to pass to the south of it, using it as a secure cover for his approach to the boys chopping.
Tom was a person distinctly quick of apprehension. In an instant, he saw what the man's plans were, and in another instant he had seized and cocked the Doctor's repeating rifle, which had fortunately been left in the hut.
As the mountaineer stealthily crept by the cabin, Tom "drew a bead" on him at not more than six paces distant, and called out:
"Lay down your gun instantly, or I'll shoot."
There was nothing to do but obey without a moment's loss of time. The mountaineer dropped his gun.
"Now, step inside," commanded Tom, still keeping the magazine rifle in position for instant and deadly use. "Step inside. I want to talk with you."
The man obeyed.
"Now, sit down on that stool," said Tom, "and tell me what you're up to. Come, now! No lying! Tell me what you were sneaking into this camp for!"
The man, who seemed much surlier and was certainly much brawnier than the former visitor to the camp, hesitated. Tom stimulated his utterance, by saying:
"Come, speak up! My patience is about exhausted, and I'm not going to wait for you to think of something false to say. Answer, or I'll shoot."
"Don't shoot, pard!" pleaded the man. "I didn't mean no harm. I only come to negotiate like."
"Then why were you sneaking and creeping upon my comrades with your rifle at full cock?"
"Well, you see, we fellers what lives up here in the mountings has to be keerful like. I wanted to make a bargain with you fellers, but if I'd 'a' walked into your camp regular like, why mebbe some on you'd 'a' shot me unbeknownst like. So I thought I'd just creep up like a catamount and git the drap on some on you, an' then tell you, simple like, as how I didn't want to do you no harm if you'd do us fellers no harm. I wanted to negotiate, that's all."
"Well, I don't like your way of negotiating," answered Little Tom, still keeping his rifle in poise against his hip ready for instant use. "I don't like to negotiate with a man that's 'got the drap on me' as you say. But now that I've 'got the drap' on you instead, I don't mind opening diplomatic relations—I don't suppose you know what that means, but never mind. Go on and tell me what it is you want."
"Well, you see," said the mountaineer, "first off we wanted you fellers to clear out'n here and git down out'n the mountings. We sent a man to you to negotiate that, an' you used him up so bad that he ain't no 'count no more in such business. Well, you won't go. We all seed that clear enough an' at first we was a plannin' to come over here with our guns and jes' exterminate you all. But then we knew what a hullabaloo that would raise. You see, it would 'a' give us away, like, an' next thing we know'd the revenue agents would 'a' come up here with a pack o' soldiers at their back, an' us fellers would 'a' been shot down like rabbits. So we held a little confab, like, an' we decided to let you fellers stay up here in the mountings ef you'd agree to behave decent, like."
"How exceedingly kind of you!" ejaculated Tom, derisively. "And how considerate! But go on; I didn't mean to interrupt. In what particular way do you exact that we shall behave ourselves in order to win your gracious permission to remain here on land that belongs to us?"
"Now, you're a gittin' at the pint," answered the man. "We're willin' to let you alone ef you'll let us alone. We're willin' to let you stay in the mountings an' cut all the timber you like, ef you won't bother us in any way."
"In what way have we bothered you?" asked Tom, who was growing steadily angrier with the man's extraordinary insolence.
"Well, you see, you fellers has planted your wood chute jist edzackly wrong."
"How so?"
"Well, ef you should send anything down that chute it would run right through a little shanty we've got down there under the cliff."
"An illicit still, you mean?" asked Tom.
"Well, as to that—"
"Never mind. You needn't lie about it. I understand. Now, as I catch your meaning, you want us to change the direction of our wood chute, so as to spare an illicit still that you have set up down there under the cliff, to hide it from the revenue officers. You've located that still on my mother's property, without leave or license, for she owns the whole of this side of the mountain down to its very foot; you are using her timber to fire up with under your still, without paying her a cent for it. In brief, you are thieves and robbers, and you have the insolence now to come here and demand that we shall change our chute in order to leave you undisturbed in your robbery of the government on the one hand and of my mother on the other. Very well, we will do nothing of the kind. At five minutes after three o'clock to-morrow afternoon we shall begin sending timber down through the chute. If you can remove your criminal apparatus by that time we'll not interfere with you. If you can't get it away by then, you'll simply have to take the consequences. But, at any rate, you can yourselves get out of the way, so that our timbers will not hurt you personally.
"Now go! Get away from here—no, don't pick up your rifle; I'll take care of that. You people have declared war on us, and in war it is not the custom to return arms to men captured and turned loose, I believe. I don't want your property, but I'm going to keep it for the present. If you'll come peaceably to my mother's house down in the town there, after we fellows go home, I'll give your rifle back to you. But not now, when you want it to shoot some of us with. Go now! and whether you get your still out by three o'clock to-morrow or not, be very careful that neither you nor any of your comrades remain there after that hour, for then the chute will begin to carry its load."
The evil-visaged man slunk away over the cliff by which he had ascended, and down the mountain. There was revenge written in every line of his countenance, and Tom quite well understood that he and his comrades must take care of themselves. Just as the fellow was marching away, with Tom's rifle leveled at him and with his own rifle lying upon the ground as a spoil of war, the rest of the company came up, but they did not interfere. They trusted Tom as a strategist, and they instantly saw that this was an "incident closed" as the diplomatists say. When the fellow was completely gone, Tom lowered the hammer of his rifle, restored it to its place, picked up the captured gun of the mountaineer, lowered its hammer to half cock, and carefully bestowed it in a convenient corner.
"What is it, Tom?" eagerly asked the others.
"Wait a minute!" said the boy, "till I dish up the soup. I hope it isn't spoiled, and as for the rest, I'll tell you all about it after dinner."
CHAPTER XII
A Midnight Alarm
When the boys were well under way with the business of eating dinner, they again asked Tom to tell them the nature of his "negotiation" with the moonshiner.
"Well, I'll tell you what he said and what he demanded and what answer I made. But you must bear in mind that what he said may not have been true, and what he demanded may not have been what he really wanted. You see, I had 'got the drap' on him and naturally he made his explanations as plausible and his demands as small as he could. I had caught him creeping up with a cocked gun in his hand, evidently to take a shot at some one of you fellows, meaning, when the murder was done, to slip back over the rocks yonder without being seen or recognized by anybody. Thanks to the cat that scratched me, I was here to head him off in that. Then he pretended only to want us to remove our chute. I suppose that was a fetch, just to secure a way of escape from the awkward position in which I and your splendid rifle, Doctor, had placed him. They may have a still down there in the line of the chute, or they may not. But they have a still and perhaps several of them somewhere about here and so they are determined to drive us down the mountain. That, at least, is my reading of the riddle."
"It is pretty certainly correct," said Jack, after thinking for a moment. "At any rate that's the understanding upon which we must base our proceedings. We must not for one moment relax our vigilance; we must not be caught napping; we mustn't let any of those people 'git the drap' on us. They have declared war on us, and we must defend ourselves at every point."
The dinner was eaten in doors by all except Harry Ridsdale, who sat outside acting as a sentinel, and took his dinner on a log. After dinner, and again the next morning, Tom volunteered to act as sentinel, inasmuch as the Doctor would not yet let him chop, or hew ties, or lift logs, or do any other work that might reopen his now nearly healed wounds.
Promptly at five minutes after three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, the first product of their industry was sent thundering down the chute. It was a huge timber thirty feet long and full two and a half feet thick at its smaller end. Jack had cut it at a point very near the mouth of the chute, and by united efforts, with handspikes and the slope of the hill to assist them, the company had rolled it into place.
Jack took out his watch and observed the time carefully.
"Three o'clock was the time agreed upon with the railroad people for having everything clear down there in the valley," he said, "but according to railroad usage we'll allow five minutes for variation of watches."
When the time was fully up the boys at the forward end of the great timber withdrew the handspikes with which they had been holding it securely in place. At the same time those at the rear end of it gave it a push with their handspikes. The log slid slowly into the chute, then with a grinding noise slipped rapidly through it, gave a great leap, and went careering down the precipitous hill, making a noise as of thunder.
Tom, with the Doctor's rifle over his shoulder—for he was acting as sentinel—had come to observe this splendid beginning of their winter's work. As the great timber bounded down the hill, and an echo of its final fall came back to announce its arrival at its destination, Tom quietly remarked:
"There may have been a distillery in the path of that log yesterday, but I wouldn't give much for the remains of it now."
"No," said Jack, "but there's money in that stick of wood. We must send down as many such as we can, and what remains of the tree from which I cut it will make many railroad ties and a lot of cordwood."
Then Jack examined the chute to see what effect the passage of the great timber had produced upon it. He found that pretty nearly all the bark had been stripped off the poles of which the chute was made. That was an advantage, inasmuch as it rendered the chute smoother for the passage of lighter timbers, which would presently render its surfaces glass-like in their polish. On the other hand the great timber in its passage had done no harm of any kind to the structure.
"That's a tribute, Jack," said Ed, "to your skill and the Doctor's, as engineers. For if that great stick didn't break any of your poles or twist any of the posts on which they rest, nothing else that we shall send down the hill will. I call it good construction, when a chute made of such stuff as you have used, carries such a weight as that without giving way anywhere."
"Yes," answered Jim Chenowith, "and, of course, the strain on the chute will never be so great again, now that the bark has been stripped off its poles. It must have been a tremendous trial when that big log slid down, resting so heavily on the poles as to strip off every particle of bark that it touched!"
"Thanks for your compliments, boys," said Jack, "but now we've got to set ourselves to work. Between now and six o'clock we've got to send down all the ties that we've got ready, and all the cordwood besides. So quit talking and come on."
It was hard work. The railroad ties were so heavy that it required two boys to each to handle them comfortably, and the supply of cordwood was large enough to tax all the industry of the camp to complete the work before six.
In the meantime Tom had gone to the cabin to prepare supper, keeping up his sharp lookout all the while.
After supper had been disposed of, Tom quietly took his own double-barreled shot gun, slipped a charge of buckshot into each of its chambers, belted a loaded cartridge holder round his waist, and went out "just to look around," he said. Tom was so given to this sort of prowling, both by day and by night, that none of the boys attached any importance to his present movements. Had they thought anything at all about it, they would have felt certain that little Tom had gone out only to stroll around the outskirts of the camp, as it was his habit to do.
Instead of that, however, he walked straight to the chute and presently clambered over the edge of the cliff, and by holding to bushes dropped to a ledge below. Thence, he had a very precipitous but practicable path before him for at least half way down the mountain.
Hard working and early rising as the boys were, they enjoyed their evenings in front of the great fireplace in their hut, and usually they did not go to bed till ten o'clock. This gave them three or four hours of enjoyable fireside conversation, and, as they arose sharply at six in the morning during these short days it left them eight hours for sleep, and that is quite enough for any well man, however hard he may have worked in the open air during the day.
But when bedtime came and little Tom did not reappear, they all began to feel uneasiness. Still, it was well understood in the camp that "Little Tom knows how to take care of himself," and so one by one the boys went to bed, all but the sentinel.
About midnight, Jim Chenowith, who had been on guard, came into the hut and aroused his comrades.
"I say, fellows," he said, in a deprecative voice, "I hate to disturb you, but I'm getting uneasy about Tom. It's twelve o'clock now, and he hasn't returned to the camp."
Instantly the entire party sprang out of bed and each began to slip into his clothes.
"We must build a bonfire," said the Doctor, as a first suggestion. "You see, Tom may have lost his way, and it isn't easy to find one's way about in these mountains of a dark night. If we build a bonfire, he will be able to locate the camp. If anything worse has happened to the boy, why we will—"
The Doctor did not complete his sentence, but the other boys understood, and with one voice they answered in boy vernacular: "You bet we will!"
CHAPTER XIII
A Night of Searching
The bonfire was quickly built and stout, willing hands piled upon it the brush left over from their chopping till the blaze of it rose thirty feet into the air, illuminating the entire mountain side.
So far as anybody could plan there was nothing else to be done while the night lasted, except scour the woodlands and thickets round about, hallooing now and then; but nothing that the boys could do produced any result. Hour after hour passed and still Tom did not appear.
"It would be useless," said Jack, "to go off into the darkness to look for him. We simply must wait for daylight, particularly as we don't know what direction he took. Possibly by daylight we may track him. But unfortunately there is no snow on the ground."
"Unfortunately there will be snow on the ground before daylight comes," said the Doctor, who had conceived a great affection for little Tom, "and it will obliterate whatever tracks the boy may have made. All the indications are for snow, and indeed it is beginning to snow now. I tell you, boys, we must make some torches and study the ground by their light. Perhaps we may find Tom's tracks before the snow covers them."
The suggestion was no sooner made than it was carried out, and by the light of great, flaring torches the whole party minutely scanned the ground, beginning at the cabin door, and prosecuting their researches in every direction.
After an hour of this work, the Doctor called out from a point near the chute:
"Come here, boys!" and when they came he said:
"Tom went over the bank at this point. See! Here are his tracks in the soft earth, and look! There are the bent and broken bushes by which he let himself down over that cliff. Thank heaven we know now in what direction to look for him as soon as morning comes. It would be useless suicide to attempt to follow his trail now."
"Well, I don't know," said Jack. "But I'm ready for that sort of suicide in behalf of little Tom. Give me your best torch, boys! I'm going to follow the trail down the mountain. You see Tom may have slipped off a cliff somewhere down there and broken his legs or rendered himself helpless in some other way. I'm going to follow him right now, and the rest of you can come after daylight—which isn't more than half an hour off now."
"No!" said the Doctor. "If you think best to follow the trail now, we're going with you, every one of us. But first let us get our guns and some necessaries. If Tom is hurt anywhere down there I must have some appliances with which to dress his wounds. If he has fallen into the hands of the moonshiners we must rescue him, and to that end we must have guns and ammunition. Let us go over his trail by all means, but let us go prepared to do him some good when we find him!"
To this thought there was unanimous assent, and instantly the Doctor and Jim Chenowith hurried back to the house to bring surgical appliances, guns and ammunition. Meantime Jack, who was greatly excited turned to the two boys who remained with him, and said, in a voice so cold and calm that they knew it meant intense emotion—
"Boys! If the moonshiners have caught little Tom and done any harm to him, I am going to drive every moonshiner out of these mountains and into a penitentiary or better still to a gibbet, if I have to give my whole life to it. Will you join me in that? And if I get killed will you promise to go on with the work?"
By that time the others had returned, and they had caught enough of what Jack had said to understand its purport. For answer the Doctor grasped Jack's hand and said with emotion: "To that purpose I pledge my whole life and all of my fortune! If those beasts have dealt foully with little Tom, I'll hire and bring here from Baltimore a hundred desperately courageous men, every one of them armed with the latest magazine rifle there is and commissioned by the revenue chief, and I pledge you my honor that when I am through with the job there will not be a moonshiner left in these mountains! I'll do that, Jack, if I have to hang for it."
The other boys responded with enthusiasm, "We'll be with you in that job, Doctor, without any hiring!"
"Thank you, comrades!" That was all that Jack could say before the strain upon him overcame even his iron nerves, and for a moment he lost consciousness. It was only for a moment, however. At the end of that time Jack led the way over the cliff, five torches lighting the journey. Presently daylight came, and the torches were thrown away.
The trail that Tom had made of broken bushes, cliff growing saplings, bent down in letting himself drop over bluffs and declivities, and boot marks where he had scrambled over a ledge, was not very difficult to follow for a space. But then came a long stretch of shelving rock entirely bare, with a dense forest growth beyond, where the leaves that had fallen in the autumn were still a foot deep, and beyond that point it was impossible to trace Tom's course. After earnest endeavors to recover the trail, the effort was abandoned, and sadly the little company made their way back to camp by a circuitous route, for they could not climb again the cliffs over which they had managed to clamber down.
On the way back they were encouraged by the hope that they might find Tom in the camp, when they got there, but in this they were disappointed.
They were all disposed to sit down and mourn dejectedly, but at that point the Doctor's scientific knowledge came to the rescue.
"See here, boys," he said; "we've got some strenuous work to do for Tom's rescue, and we must do some clear and earnest thinking before we begin it, in order that we may do it in the best way. We're exhausted. We have passed a night with only two hours or less of sleep, and we've eaten nothing for fifteen hours, for it's now after nine o'clock. In the meantime we have made a tiresome journey down the mountain and back again and worse still—for worry is always more wearing than work—we have undergone a great stress of anxiety. Now we're going to do all that human endeavor can do to rescue Tom. To that end we must have strength in our bodies and alertness in our minds. We must have breakfast at once and a hearty breakfast at that."
None of the boys had an appetite, but the Doctor insisted and presently there was a breakfast served, consisting of bacon, cut into paper-thin slices and broiled on the sharpened point of a stick, held in a blaze from the fire; corn pones baked to a crisp brown in a skillet, and a brimming pot of hot and strong coffee. For butter on their bread, the boys had a mixture of the drippings from their recent roasts—the venison, the wild boar, the rabbits and the rest—all of which drippings they had carefully saved for that purpose.
Appetizing as such a breakfast was to hardworking, sleep-losing and exhausted boys, not one of them felt the least relish for it. It required all of the Doctor's urging to make them even taste their food, till presently Harry, who stood outside as a sentinel, threw down his gun and started away at a break-neck pace, calling out at the top of his voice as he went:
"There's Tom! There's Tom! There's Tom, and he's all right!"
With that the whole company abandoned breakfast and rushed out to greet the returning boy. They plied and bombarded him with questions, of course, until at last he said pleadingly:
"Please, boys, I'm awfully hungry and tired. I'll answer all your questions after awhile. Just now the only things you really want to know are that I'm back safe and sound, and that nothing worse has happened to me than the loss of a night's sleep, a good deal of anxiety about you fellows, and the getting up of a positively famished appetite. I say," he added, as he entered the cabin, "who broiled that bacon?" and as he asked the question he picked up two or three slices of it and thrust them one after another into his mouth.
"I did," answered Ed, "and now that you're back, Tom, I'm going to eat a lot of it too."
"Well cut three or four times as much more of it," Tom said, slipping still another slice of the dainty between his teeth, and following it with a mouthful of corn pone, "and I'll help you toast it. But don't let's talk till we eat something to talk on."
Ed quickly cut a great plateful of the bacon slices, and every boy in the party except the one on guard duty, sharpened a stick and helped in the broiling.
Tom had brought their appetites back with him.
CHAPTER XIV
Tom Gives an Account of Himself
"Now first of all," said Tom, when breakfast was over and the boys again began questioning him as to his night's adventure,—"first of all if I ever disappear again you're not any of you to worry about me. You all say that 'little Tom knows how to take care of himself,' and I believe I do, particularly when I have a double-barrelled shotgun with me and forty cartridges loaded with buckshot in my belt.
"Now to explain. I was curious to find out how far the moonshiner who 'negotiated' with me at the muzzle of your magazine rifle, Doctor, was telling the truth, and how far he was lying. So I made up my mind to climb down the mountain, following the line of our chute, and find out whether or not that big timber had made a wreck of an illicit still down there. Of course it hadn't. That was only an 'explanation' invented by the fellow for immediate use, when he was caught sneaking up here to shoot some of us. His sole purpose was to drive us 'out'n the mountings' as these people put it. His plan was to sneak up here behind the house and shoot some one or other of us, and thus compel us to 'git down out'n the mountings.' He thought we'd all be out there chopping and that after dropping one of us he could slip away unseen and of course unrecognized. He thought that then we'd quit. He didn't know that that cat had scratched me so badly that the Doctor had condemned me to stay here at the house, and so he was taken completely by surprise when I levelled that repeating rifle at him, at less than six paces distance. So he resorted to humanity's last resource, lying. I remember reading in a book somewhere that Queen Elizabeth said that 'a lie is an intellectual way of meeting a difficulty.' Well that fellow was very intellectual. He lied 'to the queen's taste'—even Queen Elizabeth's taste. He told me that he had come up here to ask us fellows to change the direction of our chute, lest it demolish his still down there—though of course he didn't admit that it was a still. I wanted to find out about that and so I slipped away and climbed down the mountain. I found the still all right—indeed I found three of them—on my mother's land, but there isn't one of them in the line of our chute or within a quarter of a mile of it. All that was a fable made up to cover the moonshiner's murderous mission.
"Well when I found the stills in full blast I made up my mind to watch their operations for a time. I was securely ensconced upon a ledge which I thought inaccessible from below, but it wasn't. For presently those fellows threw out their pickets, and one of them climbed up to my particular ledge, to keep 'watch and ward' there. There were only two things for me to do. Either I must shoot the fellow and take my chances of running away over a difficult track with which the moonshiners were familiar while I was not, or I must crouch away somewhere where the moonshining picket was not likely to see me.
"As the more prudent of the two courses open to me, I chose the latter. There was a sort of half cave there, a crevice in the rocks, and I crawled into that, and there I stayed all night, with my gun at full cock and with Little Tom every instant on the alert. My plan was to keep myself hidden as long as I could, and if discovered to get in the first shot, and then run as fast as I could. Fortunately I was not discovered, and about half past six o'clock the stills ceased operations and the pickets were called in. Then I made my way around the side of the mountain and got back to camp.
"There, that's the whole story of Little Tom's night adventure. Now let's get to work at our chopping, for I am well enough now to do my share and I hereby declare my independence of the Doctor."
"That's all right," said the Doctor, "but if you break open any of those wounds, I'll order you to bed again."
"But wait awhile," interposed Jack. "There's something serious in all this. Obviously these people don't intend to make open war upon us. Their plan is to sneak upon us and now and then to shoot one of us from some hiding place, in order to drive us out of the mountains. Now we've got to look out for that. We can do it in two ways. First we can send a slab down the chute with a message in it asking our friends down below to send up the revenue officers and a company of soldiers to arrest all these men, telling the revenue people that we'll show them the stills and the men. In other words we can 'carry the war into Africa' as the Romans did, and put these fellows on the defensive instead of ourselves standing in that position. Or, if we don't care to do that—and there are reasons against it—"
"What are the reasons against it?" asked Little Tom, whose disposition it was always to take the offensive in a righteous controversy.
"Well, not more than a dozen or twenty of these mountaineers are actively engaged in this illicit distilling business, but all the rest of the mountaineers are their friends and most of them are their relatives, for these mountaineers have intermarried until almost every one of them is the near kinsman of all the rest. Now if we call in the assistance of the revenue officers and the troops behind them, the best that we can hope for is to put a dozen or so of them into jail, while possibly two or three of them will be shot in the mélee. That will leave the rest of them to make war upon us, with the assistance of all the men of the mountains."
"Well what's the other plan," asked Tom, who very reluctantly gave up the idea of aggressive fighting.
"We must so place a sentinel every day that no man can come within rifle range of us without being discovered and stopped—with a bullet if necessary. Fortunately our camp is so placed that there are only two points at which it can be reached, and fortunately again there is one sheltered point—out there under the cliff—from which a sentinel can see anybody approaching by either of the only two roads that lead into our camp. My plan is to keep a sentinel always under the cliff out there."
Jack had so thoroughly thought the matter out that it needed no discussion. His plan was instantly adopted, one boy was sent to the sentry's post under the cliff, and the rest made a late beginning of the day's work of wood chopping.
CHAPTER XV
Two Shots that Hit
The days passed rapidly now, as they always do when people are busily at work, and little by little the boys sent a great number of ties and timbers and many cords of wood down the chute.
One evening Tom and Ed were "playing on the piano." That is to say they were grinding axes by the firelight. For when the grind-stone was provided with a proper frame and set up in the house, Tom insisted upon calling it the piano, though some of the boys wanted to consider it as a sewing machine or a typewriter. One thing was certain, it must be kept in doors. Otherwise the water would freeze upon it, rendering it useless.
As Tom and Ed played upon the piano immediately after supper, Tom said to the Doctor:
"Tell us some more about beans?"
"I don't clearly catch your meaning," answered the Doctor.
"Why you once began telling us how valuable beans were as human food," said Tom, "and as those that I ate for supper are sitting rather heavily upon my soul, I want to be encouraged by hearing some more about how good they are for me."
"Wait a minute," said the Doctor. Then he went to his medicine case and put a small quantity of something white into a tin cup. After that he opened the camp box of baking soda and added half a teaspoonful of that article; then he dissolved the whole mixture in a cupful of water and handed it to Tom.
"There! Drink that!" he said, "and I think you will be in better condition to listen to what I may have to say about beans."
Tom swallowed the mixture and then insisted upon hearing about beans.
"Well," said the Doctor, "the most interesting thing I know about beans is that without them the great whaling industry which brought a vast prosperity to this country a generation or two ago, would have been impossible."
"How so?" asked Jack.
"Why you see in order to make whaling voyages profitable the sailing ships that carried on the business, had to be gone for four years at a time, and of course they had to carry food enough to last that long. For meats they carried corned beef and pickled pork. For vegetables they had to carry beans because they are the only vegetable product that will keep so long. There were no canned goods in those days, so it was beans or no whaling."
"Didn't they get fearfully tired of four years' living on nothing but beans and salt meats?"
"Of course. And of course they managed sometimes to pick up some fresh food, like sea birds' eggs or the sea birds themselves—though they are very bad eating because of their fishy flavor; and sometimes, too, the whaling ships would stop at ports on their way to the North Pacific whaling waters and buy whatever they could of fresher food. But in the main the men on whaling voyages had to live on salt meat and beans, and one of their most serious troubles was that they suffered a great deal from scurvy. By the way, that's something that we must look out for."
"That was caused by eating too much pickled meat, wasn't it?" asked Tom.
"They thought so then," said the Doctor, "but we have another theory now. That's a very curious point. For a long time it was confidently supposed that there was something in the salt meats that gave men scurvy. After a while it was discovered that it was something left out of the pickled meats that produced that effect. It seems that the brine in which meat is pickled extracts from the meat certain nutritious principles which are necessary to health, and that it is the lack of these nutritious principles that gives men scurvy. So an old whaling captain, with a sound head on his shoulders, concluded that the thing needed to prevent scurvy was for the men to consume the brine in which the meat was pickled. He ordered that the brine should be used instead of water in mixing up bread, cooking vegetables and the like."
"Did the thing work?"
"Yes, excellently, and the plan was adopted in all the Canada lumber camps where scurvy was as great an enemy to success as it was on the whaling vessels themselves. Another thing they do in the lumber camps is to quit cooking their potatoes the moment that symptoms of scurvy appear. Raw potatoes seem to have a specific effect in preventing and even in curing scurvy."
"Scurvy is a sore mouth, isn't it?" asked Tom.
"Not by any means," answered the Doctor. "Sore mouth is one of the earliest and mildest symptoms of the disease, and nobody knows what sore mouth means till he has had a touch of scurvy. It means that the mouth in all its membranes is afire, and that everything put into the mouth,—even though it be a piece of ice—burns like so much molten iron. But the mouth symptoms are only a beginning. Presently the knees and other joints turn purple and become excruciatingly painful. Then they suppurate, and in the end amputation becomes necessary. There are few worse diseases than scurvy, and we boys must protect ourselves against it by every means in our power. It threatens us with a much more serious danger than any that the moonshiners can bring upon us."
"By the way," said Jack, "the moonshiners seem to be letting us alone now. Perhaps they have given us up as a bad job."
"That's just what they want us to think," responded Tom. "They are lying low, in the hope that we'll accept precisely that idea and relax our vigilance. That is the one thing that we mustn't do on any account. That reminds me that it's time for me to go and relieve Jim Chenowith on guard duty."
"Well, before you go, Tom," said the Doctor, "I want to suggest that you take a day off to-morrow and get some fresh meat for us. We have lived on salt meat for five or six days now, and a big snow may come at any time to cut us off from fresh meat supplies. Besides our provisions are very sharply limited in quantity and we mustn't use them up too rapidly. We don't want scurvy in the camp and we don't want a starving time. So boys I propose that Tom, as the best huntsman in the party, be detailed and ordered to devote to-morrow to the duty of getting some game for our larder."
The suggestion was instantly and unanimously accepted. Then spoke up Harry Ridsdale:
"It'll be a hard day's work for Tom, as there's a slippery, soaplike snow on the ground, and he needs to be fresh for it. So I volunteer to take his turn on guard to-night and let him get in a good, straightaway sleep."
"Good for you, Harry," said Jack. But Tom protested that he was perfectly ready to stand his turn of guard duty and insisted upon doing so. The others unanimously overruled him, however, and so Harry shouldered his gun and went to relieve Jim Chenowith as picket. Before going he said:
"Now, fellows, there is to be no more talking to-night, for when the Doctor talks I want to listen. I've a whole catechism of questions to bother him with, but it's bed time now and you fellows must crawl into your bunks at once, without any further chatter. To bed, every one of you!"
As it was full ten o'clock the boys accepted the suggestion, and in a few minutes afterward, Camp Venture sank into silence, while Harry stood guard out there under the cliff, and the stars glittered above him in a wintry sky. Meantime the logs blazed and sputtered lazily in the great fireplace, and the night wore on, with no disturbance in the hut except when a sentinel came in, woke up his successor, replenished the fire and crept into his broomstraw bed.
About four o'clock the boys were startled out of sleep by the crack of a rifle, and the instant response of both barrels of a shotgun.
They were up and out in a moment, for it was their habit just then to sleep in their clothes and even in their boots, and for each to keep his gun by his side ready for instant use.
Running as fast as possible, they quickly joined Ed Parmly, who was on picket at the time, and hurriedly questioned him.
He reported that the rifle shot had come from the edge of the cliff over which the road down the mountain led. He added:
"I sent two charges of buckshot in that direction, but without aim, of course, as it is too dark to see. I reloaded at once, and while I was doing so I heard a groan off there. Perhaps we'd better look the matter up."
Just then came another groan, and, at Tom's suggestion, torches were lighted and an exploration made.
Just over the edge of the little cliff they found a mountaineer. He was in a state of collapse, nine buckshot having passed through the fleshy part of his thigh, cutting arteries and big veins enough to cause profuse hæmorrhage.
"The man is badly hurt," said the Doctor. "We'll carry him to the hut at once and see what can be done for him."
Willing hands lifted and carried the fainting man, and once in the hut the Doctor called for all the torches that could be lighted. Hurriedly he inspected the man's wounds, taking up an artery and putting a compress on a severed vein as he went. Finally he said:
"Fortunately none of the buckshot struck the bone. It is only a flesh wound though it is a very bad one. By the way"—the Doctor was seized with a kindly thought—"Ed Parmly is probably more anxious about this thing than any other boy in the party, and he is still out there on picket. Suppose one of you fellows goes out there to relieve him and let him come in to find out the amount of damage done by his shot."
The thought appealed at once to the kindly feelings of the boys and they all instantly volunteered, but Jack, as the next in order on the sentry list, claimed the privilege of relieving Ed.
When Ed came in he first of all wanted to hear whether or not the man he had shot in the darkness was likely to die of his wounds.
The Doctor promptly reassured him on that point.
Then Ed said:
"Well, Doctor, if you are quite through with him, suppose you look at a little scratch that he gave me. I didn't want to say anything about it, but maybe it is better to have it attended to."
The Doctor turned instantly and began stripping off the boy's clothing. He found that a bullet, striking him in the left side, had passed between two ribs, almost penetrating the hollow of the lower chest, but without quite doing so. It was one of those wonderful vagaries of bullet wounds that would kill in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, but which in the hundredth case do a minimum of damage.
The Doctor having satisfied himself that no vital organ had been touched, carefully disinfected the wound and swathed it in bandages. As he did so he said to the boy:
"Why didn't you tell us at the start, Ed, that you were wounded?"
"Well you see," said Ed, "I was more concerned about the other fellow. It isn't a pleasant thing to kill a man, even when you've got to do it in self defence. So as I knew by his groans that he was worse hurt than I was, I didn't say anything about what his bullet had done till you were through with the job of dressing his wounds."
"Will you permit me to remark," said the Doctor, "quite casually and in parentheses as it were, that you, Ed Parmly, are a hero? I haven't met a great many heroes in my time, but you are one of the few. Now you're going to bed, and I'm going to play tyrant over you till this wound gets well. But upon my word, I never knew two shots fired in darkness that did their work so effectively as yours and that mountaineer's did."
With the instinct of his science the Doctor had no thought of questioning the wounded moonshiner. But Tom had no scientific training and no particular scruples concerning the matter. So he turned to the mountaineer, who was occupying his bed, and asked in a peremptory voice:
"Why did you shoot Ed? What harm had he done you? What right had you to shoot at him."
"Well, you see," said the mountaineer, taking up the familiar parable, "we fellers what lives up here in the mountings can't afford to have no intruders around. You fellers is intruders, and we're agoin' to drive you out'n the mountings. You mout as well make up your minds to that fust as last. We's done give you notice to quit, fair and square. You won't quit. So all they is fer it is to kill you an' that's what we've set out to do."
"But, my friend," said the Doctor, whose training had taught him to regard reason as the ultimate court of appeals in human affairs, "we are here with a perfect right to be here. We have in no way interfered with you or your friends. You have absolutely no right to interfere with us."
"All that don't make no difference whatsomever," answered the mountaineer. "We fellers what lives up here in the mountings don't want no spies an' nobody else up here. You fellers has got to get out'n the mountings an' that's all about it."
"But what right have you?" asked the Doctor, "to drive us out?"
"Well, we ain't a discussin' of rights now," answered the mountaineer. "We're a talkin' business. You fellers has got to git out'n the mountings."
Here Tom broke in, with his hot temper:
"So that's your last word, is it? Well, now let me give you our last word. We are going to stay here. We are going to defend ourselves in our rights, and now that you've threatened to kill us, and tried to kill us, we've a perfect right to do a little shooting on our own account, and I give you warning that if any one of you is caught in this camp, or anywhere near it, we'll understand that he has come here to carry out your threats, and we'll shoot him without waiting to ask any questions. As for you, we ought to send you to jail for shooting one of our party. I for one vote to do that. We can lock you up in the penitentiary for that offense, and we're going to do it. Just as soon as the Doctor says you're able to travel, I'm going to take you down the mountains at the muzzle of a gun, and put you in jail. I'm tired of this thing."
This aspect of the case had not presented itself to the minds of the other boys, but they approved Tom's plan instantly. The right thing is always and obviously to appeal to the law for redress where a wrong has been done, and perhaps the jailing of the mountaineer, under a charge of "assault with intent to kill"—an offense punishable by a long term of imprisonment,—might deter the others from like offenses.
"Well, it's pretty hard," said the mountaineer. "I've just got out only three months ago, after a year in prison, for nothin' but helpin' some other fellers to make a little whiskey without a payin' of the tax; an' now I've got to go back to grindin' stove lids for nothin' but shootin' at people that stays in the mountings in spite of all our warnin's."
Obviously the man was utterly incapable of realizing the nature or the atrocity of his crime. Obviously, also, he was incapable, as his comrades were, of seeing that anybody but themselves had a right to stay in the mountains when they objected.
But Tom was bent upon carrying out his idea of taking the man down the mountain and bringing him to trial for shooting Ed, and the other boys fully sanctioned it.
"It may teach these people," said Jack, "that there are other people in the world who have rights. That will be a civilizing lesson."
"Yes," said Tom, "and besides that, it will lock up a man who seems to know how to shoot straight even in the dark. Anyhow, I've made up my mind. As a 'law-abiding and law-loving citizen' I'm going to put that fellow into jail, and send him afterwards to the penitentiary for a ten years' term, if I can, for shooting Ed Parmly with intent to kill him. It will be a wholesome reminder to the rest of these moonshiners that they had better not shoot at us fellows. So, just as soon as the Doctor says he's able to travel, I'm going to escort him down the mountain and deliver him to the sheriff of the county. In the meantime, daylight is breaking and it's time for you fellows who have the job in charge to begin the preparation of breakfast."
So, after all, Tom did not get much sleep as a preparation for his game hunting trip of the coming day.
CHAPTER XVI
The Doctor Explains
Ed's wound did not incapacitate him for the task of standing guard over the wounded and captured mountaineer. Ed was able to get out of bed and sit about the house with a gun slung casually across his knees or his shoulder, as the case might be, and the mountaineer perfectly understood that Ed did not mean for him to escape, by any possible chance, even when his strength should return. So he was content to lie still and reflect as he did, that "this is better than the prison anyhow."
Tom went hunting, as the Doctor had suggested that he should. Three of the boys continued the chopping, while one stood guard—a duty that had been made more imperative than ever by the mountaineer's declaration of the fixed purpose of the moonshiners.
When Tom returned in the evening he was overladen with game, as it was his custom to be on his return from a hunting expedition. He had two big wild turkey gobblers, a great necklace of fat squirrels, nearly a dozen hares and a small deer which he had dragged down the mountain because of his inability to carry it with his other load upon him.
"Here's meat enough," he said, "to last till Christmas anyhow," for it was now well on into December, "and I've seen a big turkey gobbler that I mean to get for our Christmas dinner. He can't weigh less than twenty or twenty-five pounds, and he's a shy, wise, experienced old boy; but I've found out what his usual rambles are and if the Doctor will lend me that long range rifle of his, I'll promise to get that bird for Christmas. I don't believe it would be possible to get within shot gun range of him."
"Oh, you can take that gun, Tom, whenever you please," answered the Doctor. "In fact, I'm going to give it to you right now. Only I'll ask you when you go down the mountain with our prisoner, to mail a letter for me, in which I will order another gun of the same sort."
"But, Doctor," said Tom, in protest, "I didn't mean—"
"Of course you didn't," answered the Doctor. "If you'd meant anything of the kind, I wouldn't have thought of giving you the gun. As it is, I don't know anybody living that could make a better use of such a gun than you can. So it is yours, and I'm going to send for another just like it for myself. In the meantime, I'll borrow your shotgun for such casual uses as our camp life may require. Of course, you'll need the shot gun also, sometimes, but the rifle's yours, and I am sure it could not be in better hands."
The boy made his acknowledgments as best he could, and the best part of them was his fondling of the rifle itself in loving appreciation. But in his embarrassment over the Doctor's generosity, he wanted to turn the subject of conversation, and as supper was by this time over, he said:
"Now, Doctor, you were telling us the other night something about the old-time whaling ships. Won't you tell us to-night something about the modern ocean steamers?"
"Yes," broke in Jack. "You see, you are the only 'boy' among us who has ever seen a ship, and I believe you have crossed the ocean several times."
"Yes, many times," answered the Doctor, meditatively, "and there are many points of interest about a great modern ocean steamship, which it will please me to tell you about if it will interest you to hear."
The boys expressed an eager desire to hear, and so the Doctor proceeded.
"In the first place," he said, "there is nothing in the world so complete, so independent, so self-reliant, as a first-class steamship. She has everything on board that she can possibly need, or else she has the means of making it for herself. She makes her own electric lights, and every stateroom is supplied with them. She does not carry fresh water for drinking and cooking use, because she has a distilling apparatus capable of producing all needed fresh water from the salt water of the sea. This is a great advantage. If you have ever read sea tales, you know that in cases of long detention, one of the worst of troubles in the old days was that the water became foul and the use of it bred disease. The modern steamship always has a supply of perfectly pure distilled water."
"But, Doctor," asked Ed, "suppose one of the big steamers should break down at sea, with her machinery out of order, and wallow around out there on the waves for a month or two, wouldn't the crew and passengers all starve to death?"
"That could hardly happen," said the Doctor, "for reasons which I will explain presently. But even if it did happen, the crew and passengers would not starve, for the reason that every great ocean liner carries in her hold enough food to last her passengers and crew for fully six months, although I believe the law requires them to carry only one month's supply."
"How many are there on board usually?"
"Oh, that varies with every voyage. The big ships often carry three or four hundred first-class passengers and have crews numbering from seventy to one hundred men. But some of them carry, also, a large number of steerage passengers. I once crossed from Italy on the North German Lloyd's steamer Ems, when we had only twelve first class passengers, five second class and fifteen hundred in the steerage."
"And she carried food enough for all those people for six months?" asked Jack, in wonder.
"Yes, and more."
"What sort of food was it?"
"Beans by scores of tons; corned beef and mess pork by hundreds of barrels, and an almost unlimited supply of canned meats and vegetables," answered the Doctor.
"Now, as I said," the Doctor resumed, "no great steamer is ever likely to be delayed for a month or anything like a month, at sea. In the first place, each of them carries a skilled chief engineer and a corps of competent assistant engineers, a force of blacksmiths and machinists, and better still, duplicates of all those parts of her engines that are liable to break down. I remember one voyage on the American liner Berlin, when in midocean one of our cylinders cracked and threatened to burst under the steam pressure. The captain stopped the ship and the engineers and machinists cut that cylinder out. We lay there for twenty hours in a surging sea, and then proceeded, running with only two of our three cylinders in use."
"But what an awful bobbing about you must have got," said Ed, "lying out there on the sea, with no headway."
"Oh, no!" answered the Doctor. "Our bow was kept always toward the oncoming waves, so that we rode rather more easily than if we had been running under steam, for if we had been running we should have laid our course straight for New York, taking the waves from any direction. As it was, we got them dead ahead."
"But how did they hold the bow always toward the coming waves?" asked Ed.
"By the use of what they call 'sea anchors.' These are great hollow cones, made of iron. At the big end of each a cable is fastened, and the anchors are thrown overboard, usually three or four of them. Of course, it is impossible in deep seas to send an anchor down to the bottom, but these big cones catch the water, and by their dragging in it, they hold the ship pretty nearly stationary, and, more important still, they keep her head always pointed toward the wind and waves, so that she rides easily. Whenever a ship breaks down at sea she hoists three great black disks into her rigging. These mean to any ship that may approach, that the steamer is 'not under control'—that is to say, that as she is not running, she has no power to steer to one side or the other or in any other way to keep out of the path of the approaching vessel. Then, the approaching vessel steers clear of the disabled steamer, and usually she hoists a set of signal flags, asking if the steamer needs or wants any assistance, and the steamer replies with another set of flags giving her response to the offer. The flag signalling system has been so completely perfected by international agreement that two captains can carry on any conversation they please by means of it, even though neither can speak a word of the other's language.
"Now this is the other reason why no steamer is ever likely to lie crippled on the ocean for a month or any thing like it. There are regular pathways on the ocean over which all the regular line steamers pass. So, while the ocean is so immense that you may steam over it for days without seeing a vessel of any kind, nevertheless no steamer is likely to lie disabled for more than a few days without sighting some other that stands ready to render assistance. If the disabled steamer needs anything the other furnishes it. If she is too far broken down in her machinery to repair it at sea, the other will generally take her in tow. If she is likely to sink—the most unlikely of all things—the other will take off her crew and passengers and leave the ship to her fate."
"Why do you say, Doctor, that sinking is the most unlikely of all things?" asked Jack. "I should think it the most likely."
"Not at all," the Doctor replied. "The modern steamship is perhaps the most perfect product we have of scientific precision in construction. As well as you know that twice two makes four, the builders of a modern steamship know to the uttermost pound the amount of strain that any wave blow can put upon any part of the ship, and they provide for it four times over. Except in case of collision in a fog, the great ocean liner simply cannot sink at sea. If you took her out to mid ocean and there abandoned her, she would float securely until some current should drive her on rocks or some other sort of shore. At sea, she is absolutely unsinkable, except as I say by collision, and that is as true when she is carrying thousands of tons of freight as at any other time."
"It is very wonderful," said Jack.
"Of course it is. If I were called upon to name the modern seven wonders of the world, I should unhesitatingly put the ocean greyhound first in the list. But come boys! It is past our bed time, and we've heavy work to do to-morrow in getting those three great timbers ready to send down the chute."
"I'm awfully sorry," said Tom.
"Sorry—for what?" asked the Doctor.
"Why, now that you've told us so much about the great ships, I want to hear more. I've at least a hundred questions to ask you."
"Very well," said the Doctor. "The winter will be long and we'll have abundant opportunities of evenings to ask and answer all the questions we please. But just now our business is to get to bed and to sleep, or rather that's the business of you other fellows. My business is to go out and relieve Jim Chenowith as our picket guard. So good night boys, and good, refreshing slumbers to you!"
With that the Doctor shouldered a gun, first carefully examining its cartridges, and strode out into the bitterly cold night to do his turn at guard duty. He had indeed made himself a boy among boys, and he had won all hearts.
CHAPTER XVII
Christmas in Camp Venture
As breakfast was in course of preparation the next morning, Ed brought a large dripping pan and set it in front of the fire.
"Now you fellows," he said, "who are broiling bacon on the points of sharpened sticks, will please let the fat from it drip into this pan, and you'll kindly do the same from now till Christmas."
"What's up Ed?" asked Jack. "What do you want us to do that for?"
"Why the Doctor insists that I must stay indoors till after Christmas, so quite naturally it is going to fall to me to cook the Christmas dinner. I take it for granted that little Tom is going to get that big turkey gobbler he told us about, and I'm going to cook it properly—or as nearly so as the limited resources of Camp Venture will permit. To that end I shall want some drippings from broiling bacon. So save all the fat you can, boys, from now until Christmas."
The boys asked no questions, knowing that Ed Parmly was by all odds the best cook in the camp, but they saved all they could of the drippings from the slices of bacon that they were toasting in the fire.
Three days before Christmas, Tom took his rifle and went out on the mountain in search of his big turkey. He brought back some game—Tom never failed to do that—but he came back without the big turkey, though it was well after nightfall when he arrived at the camp. Some of the boys were disposed to joke him about his failure, though of course in a friendly way.
"That's all right fellows," answered Tom. "But I've promised you that big turkey, and I'm going to deliver the goods."
"How can you speak so confidently, Tom?" asked Harry. "You've missed getting him to-day and you may miss getting him to-morrow and next day."
"But I shan't do that," answered Tom with that confidence which is born of knowledge and skill. "I know where that turkey and his flock are roosting to-night, and I'll be there before daylight to-morrow morning. I'll be right under him when he wakes, and I'll have my shot gun with me, for the range to a roost is short. I'll have that turkey gobbler here before noon to-morrow, or I'll admit that I'm no hunter."
"But suppose he quits his roost during the night and wanders away somewhere," suggested the Doctor, who knew nothing of the habits of wild turkeys.
"Turkeys never do that," answered Tom. "When once they go to roost they stay there till the dawn broadens into full daylight. Nothing could persuade them to quit their perches much before sunrise, and before that time I'll have that stately gentleman flung over my shoulder."
Accordingly Tom left camp about two hours before the daylight came, and about ten o'clock he returned, bearing the gigantic gobbler, in triumph, and with it two smaller turkeys which he had also killed.
"There you doubters!" he said as he flung down the birds, "I promised you a turkey dinner for Christmas and I've kept my word. It only remains for Ed to cook the big bird properly and I haven't the least doubt that he'll do that. The other two will keep in such weather as this as long as we care to keep them. What with the game we already have on hand, and these three turkeys, I think we're in no pressing danger of an outbreak of scurvy in camp, are we Doctor?"
"So long as you are around, Tom," answered the Doctor, "I shall feel no apprehension of scurvy, and still less of starvation."
Tom had shown his spoil at that part of the camp where the other boys were chopping. Having done so he carried the turkeys to the house and delivered them over to Ed, who, incapacitated for other work by his wound, had made himself at once sentinel in charge of the prisoner and company cook.
As soon as Tom left the choppers, Jack stopped his work, and said to the others:
"I say, boys, Tom was a Christmas baby, and this coming Christmas day will be his eighteenth birthday. Isn't there any way in which we can celebrate it?"
"Yes," answered the Doctor, "We'll give a big dinner in his honor on that occasion and surprise him with it. I have been jealously saving a few onions and potatoes that I brought up the mountain in my pack. I have carefully guarded them against frost as well as against use, meaning to keep them all winter in case scurvy should appear among us. But evidently Tom is taking care of that by keeping us abundantly supplied with fresh meat. So I'm going to suggest to Ed that on Christmas day he roast the onions in a pan or skillet and bake the potatoes in the ashes. That, with the big turkey, will give us a dinner fit for princes."
"Good!" cried the others, "and we'll pretend to forget all about it's being Tom's birthday," added Jim Chenowith, "till the dinner is dished up in his honor. Then we'll congratulate him."
Ed fell in with the plan with all heartiness when he was told of it. He was a notably good cook considering that he was a boy, and he was determined to produce the best result he could with the meagre means at his disposal.
On Christmas morning he took the giblets of his big turkey—the gizzard, liver, heart, the outer ends of the wings and the upper part of the neck, and put them on the fire to stew.
Then he puzzled his brain over the question of a stuffing for the gigantic turkey. He had no wheaten bread of any kind, and he doubted that corn bread could be made to answer. Just then he remembered that a box of crackers, two-thirds full, remained among Camp Venture's stores. He hunted them out and took as many of them as he needed. He toasted each to a rich crisp brown. When all were toasted he reduced them to crumbs. Next he mixed the crumbs together with the bacon fat drippings that he had made the boys save from their broiling. He added just enough water to make the mass half adhere together. Then he chopped up one small onion and mixed it with the stuffing. After adding a little chopped bacon and a liberal supply of black pepper, he pressed the whole mass into the hollow of the big bird and hung the turkey up before the fire to roast, placing a dripping pan under it, setting it whirling at the end of a string, and from time to time basting it with the drippings that fell into the pan.
A little later he placed the potatoes in the hot embers to bake. He put the onions into a skillet and placing live coals under and upon the lid of that utensil, left them to roast. Still later he made up some corn pones and set them to bake in another skillet. Finally, just before dinner time, he brewed a great pot of coffee.
But in the meantime he had taken the giblets off the fire, chopped them to a mince meat and poured them into the dripping pan that had reposed under the turkey as it roasted. Into this he poured the water in which the giblets had been stewed and added a little of the cracker crumbs for thickening, a little salt and a liberal supply of pepper. This done he stirred all together vigorously and produced a gravy of which even his mother—the best cook he had ever known—might have been proud.
At the very last he dug the potatoes out of the ashes, split open one side of each and inserted, in the mealy depths, a freshly broiled slice of bacon. This was to replace the butter which he had not.
Then he called the boys to dinner, but as the day was warm he served the meal on an improvised table out of doors, from which both points of possible invasion of the camp could be fairly well observed. He did this in order that the whole company, sentinel and all, might sit down together in celebration of Christmas and of little Tom's birthday.
When the little company assembled, each member of it grasped Tom's hand and warmly congratulated him, and when the boy learned how they had exerted themselves to make his natal day one to be remembered, he fairly broke down with affectionate emotion. It was assigned to him to carve the great turkey gobbler, which in the absence of scales on which to weigh him, the boys pretty accurately estimated at twenty-six pounds. Jack served the roast onions, which were done to a beautiful brown, and Ed himself dished out the potatoes, roasted to a hard crust without and enticing mealiness within.
The coffee was drunk with the meal after the manner of the country, and of course there was no milk to go with it, but these healthy, happy, out-of-door boys enjoyed that Christmas dinner as they had never enjoyed a dinner before.
Just as they were finishing the eating of it something struck and penetrated the clapboards that formed the extemporized table. Tom instantly glanced at the mark made, estimated direction and, turning, sent a bullet from his long range rifle toward the point from which he believed the shot to have come. A moment later there came another shot and another, and this time Tom saw the smoke of the rifles from which they came. He aimed carefully but quickly, and fired two shots in reply.
"There!" he said. "They are shooting from long range, or what they regard as such, up there on the mountain. They think we have nothing but shot guns and their plan is to shoot at us from too great a distance for us to shoot back. I reckon those three bullets of mine will give them a new idea of the situation, for this rifle carries at least twice as far as any they have."
Apparently Tom was right, for after his shots were delivered no more was heard from the assailing mountaineers.
"Now that teaches us a lesson," said Jack. "Our house door faces directly south and up the mountain. There are points up there from which those rascals can fire right into our house through the door, whenever they feel so disposed. We must stop that right now."
"But how?" asked the Doctor.
"By building a bullet proof barricade of poles right here, ten feet in front of our door," answered Jack. "We can easily do it this afternoon and still get some chopping done."
Jack's suggestion was adopted instantly and the boys set to work at once to carry it out. They set up some poles about fifteen feet high and six feet apart, burying their lower ends deep in the earth. Then they set up a second line in the same way about eight inches in front of the first line. Next they placed in the space between the two lines a tier of poles about five inches thick and so closely fitted together as to be bullet proof. Then for complete safety they cut small brush into pieces, and with them filled in what space remained between the two lines of poles.
"Now then," said Jack, "Camp Venture is in a state of defence. But it needs offensive as well as defensive advantages. We are pretty well protected against stray bullets by the wooden barrier we have erected, but we must also be able to shoot over it whenever that becomes necessary. Let's build a platform inside of it, so that one of us standing on it can see everything beyond and shoot as from a breast work, if those fellows insist upon shooting as a condition of the game."
So the boys built the platform of poles, with a little ladder leading up to it, and as it gave a full view of every part of the camp, it was decided that the sentry should thereafter be stationed there in a protected position, instead of being required to expose himself out under the cliff.
CHAPTER XVIII
Parole
During the next week or two after Christmas the boys made notable progress with their chopping, for even the Doctor had by this time become as expert as any of them in wielding an axe, while the other boys, who could scarcely be more expert with that implement than they were at the beginning, acquired a good deal of extra skill in the particular work they were now doing. They more readily recognized the use to which each piece of timber could be put; they acquired new deftness in shaping railroad ties to their destined use, so that the work was done more quickly and with a smaller expenditure of time and force; especially they learned and invented many devices to facilitate their handling of the great bridge timbers, of which they were now sending many down the chute.
All of them except Ed chopped all day. Ed volunteered to take the duty of camp guard upon himself all day every day, so long as his wound should incapacitate him for the hard work of chopping. There was double guard duty to do now of course, for in addition to the guarding of the camp there was the prisoner to watch. But now that the barricade with its platform was built in front of the hut, Ed was confident of his ability to watch both inside and outside, particularly as the wounded man was pretty nearly helpless still, and the boys took all the guns with them when they went chopping, except the one that Ed was using as sentinel. There was still another advantage in the fact that there was now nearly a foot of snow on the ground, and it would have been easy to see a man toiling over its white surface at a great distance.
So Ed played cook and camp guard all through the days and was excused from all night duty.
In the meantime there was no more trouble from the mountaineers, except that the wounded one in camp continually bewailed his fate and indulged in dismal forebodings of the long term he must serve in prison. Finally one Sunday, when his wounds were nearly well again, he said:
"It ain't so much for myself I care. I kin stand purty nigh anything. What I'm thinkin' about, boys, is my wife an' my little gal. You see my wife she's consumptive like an' not much fit fer work, an' my little gal, she's only six year old. So I don't know what's to become of 'em when I'm sent up, an' that'll be mighty soon now, as I'm gettin' well enough to walk."
"Now listen to me a minute," said Tom in a voice as stern as he could make it with the tears that were in it—for the picture presented to his mind of that poor invalid wife and still more of that little six year old girl left to struggle with that mountain poverty and starvation which he knew something about, had touched all that was tender in his nature.
"Now listen to me! I'm going to have a plain talk with you. The only reason you are to go to prison is that you tried your best to kill Ed. Why didn't you think of your wife and little girl before you committed that crime? Answer me honestly now!"
"Well, I will, Tom. You see I ain't much account. I ain't enough account to own a little share in one o' the stills that does a purty poor business up here in the mountings. So I has to live on odd jobs like, an' at best I barely manage to keep a little bread and meat in the mouths of my wife an' little gal an' a calico dress on their backs. No, that ain't edzacly the truth nother, an' as you an' me is talkin' fair an' square now, I don't want to misrepresent nothin'. I'll own up that oncet—just oncet I bought the little gal a doll down there in town, jest becase she seemed so lonely an' longin' like as she looked at it. It cost me five cents."
By this time all the boys had business with their handkerchiefs, which they felt it necessary to go out of doors to attend to.
After awhile Tom mastered himself sufficiently to say:
"Go on! Tell us why you shot Ed?"
"Well, as I wuz a tellin' you," resumed the mountaineer, "I ain't no account an' so I has to live by odd jobs. Well, when you fellers come up here, the other fellers made up their minds that you must go back, an' so they decided like to have you persecuted till you did go. So, as they didn't want to take the risk of the job theirselves, they come to me an' another feller—that feller what got his arm broke in your camp—"
"Yes, I remember him," said Tom; "go on and tell us all about it."
"Well, they come to us two no 'count fellers, him an' me, an' says, says they, 'ef you two fellers'll do the job we'll see as how you an' your families will have enough, meal an' meat, to last till blackberry time.' You see, we no 'count fellers always looked forrard to blackberry time. Ef we kin pull through till the blackberries is ripe, we're all right for a spell. Well, nuther on us liked the job, but we didn't see no way out'n it. So he come fust an' twicet. The second time he got too bad hurt like to go on with the job, an' so then I took it up. My pard he had reasoned and argified with you an' you wouldn't listen. So the fellers what was hirin' of me says, says they, 'Bill, you've got to shoot. If you kin drap one o' them fellers without gittin' caught they'll quick enough git out'n the mountings.' That's why I shot Ed. You see yourselves as how I couldn't help it."
All that Tom had tried to tell his comrades about the squalid poverty of the poorer class of mountaineers had made no such impression upon their minds as the prisoner's simple narrative. They were horrified at the destitution which he pictured and shocked at the dullness and perversion of his moral sense, manifested by his confident assumption that they would see that in trying to kill Ed he had done nothing wrong or unusual. Here was that degradation of mind and soul which frankly regards crime—even including the murder of innocent persons—as a legitimate means of livelihood—like the picking of blackberries—a degradation which nevertheless leaves the soul capable of emotions of affection and tender pity such as this man so manifestly felt for his invalid wife and his "little gal."
Unhappily this degradation, this perversion of the moral sense, is not confined to mountain moonshiners. There is very much of it in our great cities and it is the thing that gives the police force their hardest work. It is also the source of the most serious danger that threatens all of us.
The man had evidently finished with what he had to say, and as for the boys, they had from the first left this man's case in Little Tom's hands. Their throats ached too badly now with a pained pity, for them to make even a suggestion. So Tom took up the conversation.
"Now I want to say something to you," he said, "and I want you to try to understand me. You and I are talking, fair and square, as you said a little while ago, aren't we?"
"That's what we is, Tom," answered the man; "an' whatever you say'll be right, I don't doubt; but you see may be I won't quite understand it, like. I'll do my best. But I ain't got no eddication like. All I know is how to write my name, and may be print a few words on paper. The sergeant major taught me that when I was in the army."
"Then you served in the army?" asked Tom, somewhat eagerly.
"Yes, I was conscripted, but after I was conscripted I thought I mout as well be a good soldier as a bad one an' so I fought all I could. I never did make it out quite clear in my head what they was a fightin' about, but I says to myself, says I, 'Bill,' says I, 'you're in for this thing an' they's only one thing to do, an' that is fight as hard as you kin on the side yer on.'"
"Well if you were in the army," interposed Tom, "you know what a parole is?"
"Oh, yes, I know that. I had one o' them things oncet. That's how I got out'n the army. I was tooken pris'ner along with a lot of other fellers, an' after talkin' to us a lot, the officers what had us pris'ners sort o' explained the parole business to us, an' after we signed papers promisin' not to fight no more, they let us go home, tellin' us that ef we was caught fightin' agin they'd hang us. Fur a long time I was afraid the conscript officers would ketch me, an' make me fight again, but when one on 'em did ketch me at last he tole me he couldn't make me fight agin, 'cause I was a prisoner on parole. So I know mighty well what a parole means, though at first we all thought it meant a pay-roll an' that we was to be paid for not fightin'."
"Well you understand it better now," said Tom. "You understand that when a man is paroled, he promises not to fight again, and if he does, and is caught at it, he gets shot?"
"Oh, yes, I understand all that now. I was only tellin' you how as I didn't know fust off."
"Well, now that we're 'talking fair and square,' as you say, I want to say that I think you ought to go to state prison for a long term for shooting Ed, and I intended at first to send you there. Perhaps I may do so yet. But now, if Ed will forgive you for shooting him—I'll ask him presently—I'm going to put you on parole, just because of your sick wife and your little girl. You have been in our camp for several weeks now. You know what we are here for. You know that we are not here to bother your friends or to interfere with them in any way."
"Oh, any fool could see that!" exclaimed the man.
"Very well, then. I am going to make you sign a parole and then send you home, but mind, if you violate your parole I'll go down the mountain and bring enough soldiers up here to capture the last one of your gang and send all of you to prison. I know where some of your stills are, and I can find all the others. So you had better keep your parole, and your friends had better let us alone. Are you ready to sign the parole?"
The man rose from the chair on which he was sitting and threw his arms about Tom.
His expressions of gratitude were rude in the extreme, but at least they were genuine, and he finished in tears as he exclaimed:
"Oh, thank goodness I can go back now an' look after the wife an' little one, an' you kin bet your bottom dollar ef the other fellers makes any trouble fer you fellers, Bill Jones'll be here to help you agin 'em. I'm a goin' to explain things to 'em. I'm agoin' to give it to 'em straight, an' then ef they make trouble fer you, I'll be with you."
Tom drew up the parole and Jones signed it with extraordinary pride in his ability to write his own name in clumsy printing letters, with the "J" turned backwards. But strong man as he was, the tears kept coming into his eyes as he said over and over again:
"You're mighty good to me, Tom! All you fellers is mighty good to me. An' I'm agoin' to teach that little gal o' mine when she says her 'now I lay me' to wind it up with 'God bless Tom an' the other fellers.'"
With that he wiped away his tears with the back of his hand for lack of a handkerchief.
The next morning the mountaineer insisted upon departing in spite of the Doctor's assurance that he was not yet well enough to make the journey.
"I must, Doctor," he said. "You see, I don't know what's happened to my wife an' my little gal while I've been gone."
"Very well," answered the Doctor, "only I want to add a promise to your parole. I want you to promise me that if your wounds give you trouble you'll either come here yourself, or if you can't do that, you'll send for me to go to you and dress them." Then seeing that the man was about saying something emotional the Doctor quickly added:
"You see, I'm a Doctor, and it hurts my pride to have a case that I attend go bad. So if you have any trouble with your hurts you are to come to me or send for me at once."
Then after such rude adieus as the mountaineer could make, he started off up the mountain, the Doctor accompanying him a part of the way, upon pretense of wanting to see whether or not he was really fit to walk and carry his gun, which had of course been restored to him. But the Doctor had another purpose in view. Just before parting with the mountaineer he took a twenty dollar bill from his pocket and pressed it into the man's hand.
"There!" he said. "Perhaps that will keep meat and bread in your cabin till the blackberries get ripe," and with that he suddenly turned on his heel and rapidly strode back toward the camp, giving the man no chance to refuse the gift or to thank him for it.
But while the Doctor had taken every possible precaution to prevent any of his comrades from seeing what he did, the sentry on the platform saw and reported the facts. So when the Doctor returned to camp and set to work with his axe, the boys were quietly discussing a little plan of their own, talking in low tones, as they worked.
That night at supper Jack opened the subject, saying:
"Doctor, we shall be very sorry to part with you, but you have forfeited your right to remain in our camp. You have violated your parole."
"Why, how? What can you mean?" asked the Doctor in bewilderment.
"Why, you agreed to be one of us boys, and to 'share and share alike' with us in work and in everything else. Now, this morning you gave that mountaineer some money out of your own pocket, basely trying to conceal the fact from us. Even yet we don't know the amount of your gift. Now, we have unanimously decided not to submit to any such proceeding."
"But my dear Jack," interrupted the Doctor—
"But my dear Doctor," broke in Jack, "hear me out. What we have decided is to require you to tell us the amount of your benefaction to that man, so that we may owe you our share of it until we go down the mountain in the spring and collect our money. We are sharing and sharing alike in every thing or nothing, so out with it! How much money did you give the man?"
"But Jack, permit me to explain," said the Doctor. "You see, if I gave that fellow any money, it was of my own impulse and without any consultation with you. It was a bit of personal almsgiving in which I have no right to let you share. I did it solely to relieve my own mind, not yours. It wasn't a company transaction at all, and besides I could well afford it inasmuch as by coming up here with you boys and sharing your camp life this winter I have cut off nearly the whole of my personal expenses and am actually saving money."
"Now listen!" said Jack. "We all wanted to give that poor fellow some money with which to feed his wife and little girl 'till blackberries get ripe' next summer, and we should have done so if any of us had had any money. So in relieving your own mind you have relieved ours just as much. We all shared alike in the cost of fitting out this expedition. We have all shared alike in the building of our house and in all the other camp work. We have all shared alike in guard duty, in danger and in everything else, and we're going to do so to the end of the chapter. So we're going to share alike in this gratuity of yours, our shares to be paid to you as soon as we collect our money down below. So you must tell us how much you gave the man, or else our whole partnership and comradeship will be at an end. Come, Doctor, tell us all about it!"
"Well," said the Doctor, "I don't think it fair to let you boys share in what was a purely personal bit of almsgiving, done without any sort of consultation with any of you, but as you insist I will say that I gave the man a twenty dollar bill."
"All right," said Tom. "That gives us a chance to impose upon you. It is three dollars and thirty-three and a third cents apiece for us. We'll never pay that third of a cent, doctor, and so you'll be out a cent and two-thirds besides your own share in the gift. That will help to buy another doll for 'the little gal,' and I suppose you won't mind the expense."
"No," said the Doctor, "but what can be done to relieve these people's wretchedness and lift them up?"
Not one of the boys could answer the question. Perhaps there was no answer. There often is none to questions of that kind.
CHAPTER XIX
A Stress of Circumstances
The next few weeks brought nothing of adventure to the boys. Their work went on wonderfully well. They sent down the mountain innumerable ties and all the cordwood that the trees yielded after the ties were cut. They sent down also a large number of great timbers for use in bridge building and the like, but nothing occurred to justify the name of their camp—Camp Venture.
Their firelight conversations were briefer and less spirited than before, because they were working so strenuously now that they were over-weary when supper was done, and they went to bed at least an hour earlier than they had done before. The earlier novelty of camping had at last worn out and with it the excitement that tends to keep people awake.
Nevertheless they constituted a happy company, all the more so because their work was producing larger results even than they had anticipated. They were sending down the mountain more ties, more cordwood and many more of the high-priced bridge timbers than they had expected to send.
Looking over the accounts one evening in February, when the snow was beginning to melt, Jack said:
"Boys, we've already accomplished more than we expected to do during the whole winter and spring. If we keep it up at the same rate we shall earn quite twice the money we expected to make. So Camp Venture is clearly a success. It is getting so well along in the year now that we need not fear deep snows or avalanches, or anything of that sort to bother us or interfere with our work."
"Nevertheless," said the Doctor, returning from an examination of his scientific instruments, "we're in for a snow storm to-night. It is already beginning and so far as my instruments are to be trusted, it is likely to be very heavy, with high winds."
The boys all went out and took a look at the sky. There was as yet no wind of any consequence, but the snow, in fine, dry, meal-like flakes, was coming down in a way that promised a heavy fall.
About nine o'clock the boys went to bed—all but Harry Ridsdale, who stayed outside as the sentry. About ten o'clock the wind rose to a gale and the roaring of it awakened the Doctor, who instantly arose and with a brand from the fireplace to serve as a torch, went out to consult his instruments. When he returned his stamping and brushing off of snow aroused the others, and the howling of the tempest brought them all into a very wide-awake condition.
"I say, boys," said the Doctor, throwing the brand he had carried into the fire again, "this is an awful night. The snow is coming down in blankets, the wind is blowing at a rate which is between a whole gale and a hurricane, and of course the snow is drifting terribly."
"All right," said Jack. Then he went to the door and called,—"Come in here, Harry! We shall have no use for pickets to-night."
In answer to some questions he said:
"No mountaineer is going to prowl about the hills in such a storm as this. If he did he would be smothered in a snowdrift before he got a hundred yards from his cabin door. We're perfectly safe for this night without a sentry, so we'll all crawl into our bunks and go to sleep."
The soundness of Jack's opinion was obvious enough, and so no more sentries were posted that night. The fire was reinforced with some big logs and all Camp Venture ventured for once to go to sleep.
The hours passed on. The wind howled more and more fiercely, and but for the solidity of its thick log walls the house would have shaken in a way to wake the heaviest sleeper. As it was the boys slept on undisturbed. Finally the fire burned low, so that it gave very little light in the cabin. Little Tom waked and feeling no need for further sleep he got up and piled on some additional logs. Then he went back to bed, but somehow his eyes would not close again. The other boys also waked up, and, turn over as they might, could not go to sleep again. Finally Harry, seeing that all were awake, called out:
"I say, fellows, let's get up and have some breakfast. I for one am hungry."
"So am I," answered Jack, springing out of bed.
"So say we all of us," responded Tom. "By the way, what time is it?"
Harry fumbled among the Doctor's belongings and looked at that gentleman's watch.
"Doctor, you forgot to wind your watch last night. It has run down at a quarter past nine."
"No, I didn't," answered the Doctor, leaping out of bed, where he had lazily lingered for a time. "I certainly wound it before I went to bed."
With that he went across the cabin, took the watch, looked at it, and then put it to his ear.
"It's running all right," he presently said, whereupon the other two members of the company who had watches brought them out.
All pointed to a quarter past nine.
Just then Jack opened the door and something like half a ton of snow fell into the house, but no light came with it.
"Boys!" he cried, "we're utterly snowed in. It is a quarter past nine in the morning, but the house is completely buried in snow! You see there is no light coming in even through the loosely laid roof, while the Doctor's windows are as black as midnight. Yet by looking up the chimney you can see daylight plainly. The fire has kept that open."
"Can there have been twenty odd feet of snowfall in a single night?" asked Harry in astonishment.
"No, certainly not," answered the Doctor. "We're caught in a snowdrift, that's all. You see with the fearful gale that has been blowing all night the snow has drifted greatly and now that I think of it, our house is peculiarly well situated to be caught in a drift."
"How so, Doctor?"
"Why, the wind has been from the north, northwest, or very nearly north. Our house stands on a plateau on the northerly side of the mountain. Less than a hundred feet south of it, rises a high cliff. That, of course, catches all the snow that comes on a north, northwest wind. Then again the house itself is an obstruction, catching and holding all the snow that strikes it. The snow storm has been a tremendous one, probably a three-foot fall, and we are caught under all of it that ought to have been scattered over several miles of mountainside."
"Let's postpone the explanations, fellows," broke in Tom, who always devoted himself to the practical, "and give our attention for the present to the problem of What to Do Now. That is after all the thing to think about in every case of emergency, and this is a case of emergency if ever there was one."
"How do you mean, Tom?" asked Jim Chenowith.
"Why, in the first place, we have less than a quarter of a cord of wood in the cabin, and, after such a storm, it is likely to turn very cold. So we must first of all dig a passageway to one of our wood piles, or else we must freeze to death. We can't get to the spring, of course, and if we did, it would be frozen up. But we can get all the water we need by melting snow. The worst of our problems is that of a food supply."
"That's so," said Jack, in something like consternation. "We haven't a pound of fresh meat on hand and I remember that you, Tom, intended to go out with your gun to-day to get some. We have eaten up all our hams and bacon, and we haven't anything left except the coffee, two small pieces of salt pork, some corn meal and the beans."
"That means," said Tom, "that we've got to dig our way out of here in a hurry, and we haven't a shovel in the camp."
"No," said Jack, "but we've got a pile of leftover clapboards over there in the corner, and we can soon make some snow shovels. Let's get to work at that."
After a breakfast on corn pones—for the pork must be saved for use with the beans—the boys set to work to manufacture rude shovels that would do as implements with which to handle snow. For handles they used such round sticks as they found in their meagre supply of fire wood.
In half an hour the whole company of boys were armed for an attack upon the snowdrift. In the meantime Tom had thought out methods.
"First of all," he explained, "we must attack the snow directly in front of the door, and work our way to the top of the drift. We must shovel that snow into the house, because we haven't any where else to put it. We'll put on all the kettles we have and reduce as much as we can of the housed snow to water for use in drinking, cooking, washing and so forth. When we break through to the top, we can shovel the snow to the right and left till we open a passageway to the wood pile."
"It's going to be mighty hard work," said Ed, "for the snow is so soft that we'll sink up to our waists in it."
"Yes," answered Harry, "but light snow like that will be easier to handle than if it had settled and frozen."
With that the boys set to work to break a passage from the door to the top of the snowdrift. When they had accomplished that they found, to their sorrow, that it was still snowing heavily, a fact which threatened to undo much of their work after it was done. Still the snow was dry and light, and standing up to their waists in it, they shovelled it to right and left, making a passageway through it that led towards their nearest wood supply. They did not pause for a midday meal, and yet when night came they had not reached the wood pile, while the snow continued to fall as heavily as ever. Fortunately the high wind had gone down, so that no more great drifts were blown into their trench.
They had not tried to dig to the ground in making their passageway. They had simply created an upward incline from the door of their house to the top of the drift, and then dug a sort of inclined trench towards the wood pile.
"Now I say, fellows," said Jack, as they left off work to get such supper as they could, "we've got to keep this thing up all night. We have barely wood enough left to get supper and breakfast with, and we simply must get to that wood pile by morning. Of course we can't all work all night; we must have some sleep; so I propose that we divide the company into three shifts of two boys each, one shift to keep up the work of shovelling while the others sleep. We'll let each shift work for an hour and then wake up the next shift to take its place. That will let every fellow have two hours' sleep between his one hour spells of work."
The plan seemed in all respects the best that could be devised. Three sticks of wood were all that now remained in the cabin and it was decided not to burn any of these during the night, but to save them for use in cooking breakfast in the morning. Breakfast, it was agreed, should consist of a kettle of corn meal mush, with two slices of salt pork and a pint of coffee to each member of the party. The boys would have foregone the pork, saving it for a worse emergency, but the Doctor advised against that course.
"With so much work to do," he said, "we shall need the strength that comes from meat."
"And besides," said Tom, "this snow will pack down pretty soon and freeze over with a crust hard enough to bear a man. As soon as that happens I am going out to get some game."
The night's work was awkwardly pursued, owing to the darkness, which was rendered intense by the continued and very heavy snow fall. But while they had not reached the wood pile by daylight, they were nearing it and in fact believed themselves to be almost over it—for they had made their trench a shallow one, in order to hasten their advance. So, when the working shift was called to breakfast, Harry reported:
"We're almost over the wood pile. After breakfast, when we all get to work, we'll soon make a sloping path down to it. As it is still snowing, without a sign of quitting, I move that when we reach the wood, we all set to work to bring a houseful of it in here, against emergencies."
"That's our best plan," said the Doctor. "If we are destined to live on starvation rations and it should turn very cold, as is likely, we must have artificial heat to replace that which a full supply of food would make. A starving man practically freezes to death. So the first thing is to bring into our cabin as large a supply of wood as it will hold. Luckily we have plenty of it. There are twenty cords at least in that first pile."
With that the boys set to work on their scant breakfast of coffee, mush and salt pork.
CHAPTER XX
In Perilous Plight
After breakfast the boys began again the snow digging for their wood pile. They had somewhat miscalculated its locality, and so when they reached the ground with their descending path, the wood pile was not there. Nor could they easily correct their reckoning until little Tom came to the rescue with his keen eyes and his alert intelligence. Climbing to the top of the snowdrift and standing, hips deep in the soft snow, he studied the trees round about, or so much of them as protruded above the snow. It was Tom's excellent habit to observe things closely, even when there was no apparent occasion to observe them at all, and he had observed that one of the trees between which the wood had been ranked up had a peculiar knot on it about thirty feet from the ground, caused by some injury received while yet it was young. So he looked for that tree. The snow had so changed the aspect of the landscape that all its recognizable features had disappeared, but Tom remembered that peculiar knot and eagerly looked out for it. Presently he discovered it, in spite of the fact that a mass of snow that had collected on top of it seriously impaired its proportions. Instantly he called out directions to the boys to carry their pathway south toward the tree in question.
"But we're already south of the wood pile," said Harry. "Your plan will take us directly away from it. It is north of here, I tell you."
"All right," answered Tom. "I know where the wood pile is, and if I am wrong I'll do all the rest of the digging myself. Only if you'll dig in the direction I tell you, you'll come to it in about forty feet."
So confused were the geographical perceptions of all the boys, and so confident were they that Tom was wrong, that they made earnest protest against digging in the direction indicated by him. But his insistence was so resolute, and their faith in his sagacity was so strong, that after making their protest they yielded and pushed the snow excavation in the direction he had indicated. An hour's digging brought as its reward the discovery of the wood pile, and instantly every fellow set to work to carry wood into the house over the very imperfect pathway, which was being every hour rendered less and less passable by the continuing snow fall. By working hard, however, they managed to fill all the spare space in the house with wood and to pile five or six cords more around the doorway.
As they used about half a cord a day in ordinary winter weather, and from a cord and a half to two cords a day when the thermometer sank low, this was not a large supply. But at least it would ward off the present danger of freezing, and now that the way was open to the wood pile, and could be kept open by a little shovelling now and then, they could get more from time to time, as they might need it.
It was past nightfall when this work was completed. The boys had not stopped for a midday dinner, but Ed, with the foresight of an accomplished cook, had put a kettle of beans on to boil about midday, with just enough pork in it to give the beans a relish, and when night came he dished up the meal.
"There's no bread, boys," he said, "because we can't afford two dishes at one meal now. But you remember the Doctor told us that beans are bread as well as meat, and so that's all I have provided."
After supper the boys were very tired from their hard day's work, and yet they were disposed to talk, and at any rate it would not do to go to bed until their supper of boiled pork and beans should have had time to digest.
"If this snow continues," said Ed, "we fellows will pretty soon have to take our beans without the pork. I have a little of that bacon dripping left and I'll use that while it lasts. But unless we get some sort of supplies within three days we shall be out of meal."
"Are we so near the end as that?" asked Jack.
"Yes. We have nothing left now except two small pieces of salt pork, about twenty pounds of corn meal, and the beans. The pork and the meal won't last us more than two or three days, and as for the beans, well, we have less than half a peck of them left."
This announcement was received with something like consternation.
"We're nearing the starving point," said Jack. "We must recognize the fact and put ourselves at once upon starvation diet. I move that the Doctor take charge of such provisions as are left to us, with full power, to dole them out in the best way to keep life in us till the conditions change."
"Good!" cried all the boys in chorus, and so the motion was carried.
"If worse comes to worst," said Tom, "I'll take my gun, break my way out of here, and kill something fit to eat, at whatever risk. The game of every sort is starving now as well as we are. The turkeys, deer, rabbits and all the rest of them will be out on the mountains hunting for something to eat on those spots that the wind has blown clear of snow. It will be curious if I don't get some of them."
"We'll permit nothing of the kind," said Jack, "till the snow stops and freezing weather makes a crust upon it. To go out now would simply mean suicide. You wouldn't live to get out of this snowdrift, and if you did, you'd perish in the next one, Tom."
"Probably," answered Tom, in a meditative voice. "But I'd rather die that way, in an effort to save the whole company than stay here and starve like a rat in a hole."
"But," broke in the Doctor, "we are not yet starving. We are hungry, of course, having had an insufficient supply of food to-day. And we'll be hungrier to-morrow, and still hungrier next day. But as I reckon it we have food enough, at least to keep life in our bodies for three or four days to come if we hoard it carefully and eat only so much as is necessary to sustain life. By that time the weather will have changed in some way, and we shall have found some means of supplying ourselves."
So it was decided that Tom should not court death by attempting to go out upon the mountain under existing conditions.
"By the way, Doctor," asked Ed, "what are your weather predictions?"
"I can't make any," answered the Doctor. "It is still snowing hard; the barometer is low; the wind, which amounts to nothing, has shifted to the south-west—a bad quarter, suggesting more snow—and so far as I can see there is no promise of severe cold weather, which is what we most want now."
In this melancholy plight the boys went to bed, and, thanks to their high health and extreme weariness, they slept soundly.
CHAPTER XXI
An Enemy to the Rescue
The plan had been to set to work next morning to dig the house out of the snow; that is to say, to dig away a space around the cabin. But the Doctor forbade it.
"The more force we expend in work," he said, "the more food we must have, and as we have pretty nearly no food now, we absolutely mustn't expend any force unnecessarily. We must simply rest to-day, doing no more shoveling than is necessary to open a little larger area around the door, and to keep our path to the wood pile open."
That day, the next and the next were passed in idleness and with growing hunger. The snow ceased for a time on the second day, but the severe cold weather which alone could release the boys from their terrible plight, did not come. On the third day, the snow began to fall again in a pitiless and discouraging way, and by that time the food supply had run so low that the Doctor's dole of it was too small even to ward off the severe pangs of hunger.
Tom said that night: "Boys, I don't care what the consequences are, I'm going to break out of this to-morrow morning or perish in the attempt. I'd rather die in a snow bank, fighting for a chance, than sit here and slowly starve to death. My strength is already waning, and before it goes altogether I'm going to make an effort to get some food. If I wait longer I sha'n't have either the strength or the courage to go at all."
This time nobody interposed an objection, but foreseeing Tom's need, and knowing that he would accept nothing not shared equally by the others, the Doctor deliberately dealt out a larger supply of beans than usual that night. The meal was all gone. The pork had been eaten up, and after the Doctor gave out this supper, which it would take till eleven or twelve o'clock at night to cook, there was left only about two quarts of beans in the camp, and absolutely not an ounce of food of any other kind.
In ordinary circumstances, if the boys had been thus shut up in their cabin and deprived of physical activity, they would have held long talks and learned much. Especially they would have beset the Doctor with questions, the answers to which would have interested them. But now they were too hungry for material food, too starved of body and far too depressed in mind to care for conversation of any kind. They simply sat still and starved, in gloomy silence, and under the terrible oppression of hopelessness and helplessness. All but Little Tom. His courage survived, and as he sat before the fire waiting for the beans to cook, he was resolutely planning ways and means by which, if possible, to make the morrow's expedition successful. The chances, he knew, were a hundred to one against him, and he was trying, by the exercise of a careful foresight, to bring that one chance in a hundred within his grasp.
Presently he took off his boots and drove the heaviest nails there were in the camp into their heels, letting the heads protrude more than a quarter of an inch below the surface.
"What's that for, Tom?" asked Jack, in listless fashion.
"To keep me from slipping," Tom answered, "in climbing over rocks with snow or ice on them."
"But you're not really going to try this thing to-morrow, are you? It will be madness to attempt it."
"Probably," answered Tom. "But madness or sanity I'm going to make the attempt. I don't see anything particularly sane in staying here in camp and trusting to a quart or two of beans to keep life in six already starved boys. I'd rather die trying than sitting still. So I'm going to start at daylight."
There was no use in arguing, particularly as the argument was manifestly all on Tom's side. So all the boys remained silent.
"I'm going to take two guns," said Tom, presently, "the rifle and a shot gun, so as to lose no chance of any game, big or little. I'll pretty certainly lose one of the guns before I get back if I ever get back at all."
Nobody said anything in reply. Tom's remark had been addressed to nobody in particular. Indeed it was rather a reflection out loud than a remark.
Then Tom proceeded to get his ammunition belt ready. The rifle was already loaded in its magazine, with fourteen cartridges. For the shot gun, Tom put into his belt, twenty cartridges loaded with nine buckshot each, and twenty that carried turkey shot—these last for game smaller than deer.
"I'll kill anything I see," he said, presently, "from a skunk to a big buck deer. We are hungry enough now to eat any sort of meat that may come to our hand."
Just then a noise was heard on the snow-covered roof—a noise as of scratching and slipping. Nobody heard it but Tom, but his senses were already in that condition of alertness which the morrow's work would require for its success. So, without saying anything to his comrades, Tom took the rifle, opened the door, and went out to see what the matter might be. He reflected as he did so, that it was probably only some slipping of the snow and ice upon the clapboards, but at any rate he wanted to see for himself the cause of it.
A few minutes later the boys inside the hut were startled by two cracks of a rifle and a heavy fall, just in front of the door. They seized their guns and rushed out, stumbling over something at the door as they did so.
"Look out there!" called Tom, eagerly; "don't risk a blow from his claws yet. He may have life in him still. Let me give him one more bullet to make sure."
With that Tom advanced and fired once more into the carcass of the large black bear that he had already killed.
"It's pretty hard, isn't it?" said Tom.
"What is?" asked the Doctor.
"Why, to shoot a friend that had come to our rescue as that fellow did."
"I don't understand."
"Oh, yes you do, or at least you ought to," answered Tom, in whom the long continued, but now released, nervous strain, had wrought an irritable mood. "Don't you see that fellow came here just in time to rescue us from starvation—for I had hardly a hope of getting back with any game from to-morrow's expedition—and he brought a huge supply of bear's meat with him, under his skin. By the way, boys, skin him carefully, as his hide will be a valuable addition to my collection of pelts. I have the painter's coat, a deer's hide, the skins of several raccoons and opossums, thirty or forty squirrel and hare skins, and now this bear's thick overcoat will greatly increase the value of my collection. Skin him carefully, but quickly, for we're going to have a dinner of bear beef before we go to bed, and we'll eat bear beef to our hearts' content till the weather releases us from our prison. I'm not going out for game to-morrow."
CHAPTER XXII
All Night Work
The bear was dragged into the cabin. Jack picked out a bent stick of round wood, and with an axe quickly sharpened its ends into points, making of it a "gambrel" stick, about two and a half feet long. Inserting its sharpened ends under the big tendons of the animal's hind legs, he had him ready to hang up for dressing. Meantime, another of the boys had driven another stick in between two of the upper logs of the cabin, letting its end protrude a foot or two into the cabin. Four of the boys seized the bear, which weighed not much less than two hundred pounds, and after some exertion succeeded in hanging it, head downwards, upon this stick. Then, with sharp knives, they set to work to skin it.
"Oh stop!" cried Ed. "I know a better plan than that. If you wait to skin the bear, we sha'n't get any meat to eat before morning. Treat him as a butcher treats a deer or calf. Cut him open, and give me the heart, liver and kidneys to cook, and you can skin him afterwards just as well as before. In the meantime I'll be getting supper."
The boys were much too nearly famished to dispute over any suggestion that promised to hurry meal time, so they did at once what Ed had bidden them do. They ripped the animal open, removed the viscera, detached the heart, liver and kidneys, and delivered them into Ed's hands.
Ed washed them and cut them into small bits, discarding the gristle-like linings of the heart. Then he put the whole mass into the kettle in which the beans were cooking, adding a goodly piece of the bear's fat and a pint or two of water.
"It'll be a new dish," he muttered to himself—"'bear giblets and beans'. But if I'm not mistaken nobody in this company will hesitate to eat of it."
"I say, fellows," he called out presently, "save every ounce of that fat! We'll need it for cooking purposes if ever we get anything besides bear beef to cook."
"By the way, Tom," said Jack, as he worked at the task of skinning the bear, "how did this fellow come to be prowling around our cabin?"
"He was hungry, like the rest of us," answered Tom. "The snow has cut off his customary sources of supply, so he set out, precisely as I intended to do in the morning, to find something to eat. Bears always do that when the snow is heavy. They have often gone down, in hard winters, to the Piedmont region—sometimes as far as Amelia or Powhatan county. They are searching for something to eat—corn in a crib if they can get at it, or pork in a barrel, or a robust boy if they can't get anything better. This fellow was hunting for anything he could find, and, unluckily for him, he found me, with my rifle. What a splendid gun that is, by the way, Doctor! Every shot I fired at the big beast went right through him and hurtled off into the air beyond."
"That's the nitro powder," said the Doctor.
"By which you mean—what?" asked Tom.
"Why, nitro powder is smokeless powder. It is mainly composed of nitro-glycerine, and it has an explosive force many times greater than that of ordinary gunpowder. That is what gives to the guns that are loaded with it so much greater a range than ordinary guns have. You see, it starts the bullet with a vastly greater velocity than that of a bullet propelled by the explosion of ordinary gunpowder, and so the missile goes very much faster, with very much more force, and in a much straighter line, and the gun is more accurate and greatly deadlier in its aim."
"Well, now I want to say," interrupted Ed, "that I've got a supper ready which will go to the spot with a much surer aim than any bullet ever did in the world."
The boys responded instantly, as a matter of course. They were literally starving, or so nearly so, that they afterwards confessed that they had had great difficulty in resisting the temptation, while skinning the bear, to cut off mouthfuls of the meat and consume it raw.
There was, of course, no criticism, therefore, upon Ed's new dish of "bear giblets and beans," and not until the last morsel of it was consumed, did any boy in the party relinquish his assiduous attention to it.
"Now," said Jack, "we can go to work again. To-morrow, we'll dig the house out of the snowdrift any how."
"Yes," said Tom, "and as I needn't go hunting now, I'll help in that. The snow has settled a good deal by its own weight now and it will settle a good deal more before morning."
"Why?" asked Ed.
"Because it is raining," said Tom, "and nothing settles snow like a drizzling rain."
"It is now two o'clock," said Jack, "and I for one am going to bed."
"Better sit up for half an hour longer," said the Doctor.
"Why?" asked Jack.
"Because our stomachs are full. They have been seriously weakened by several days of starvation, and are apt to do their work rather badly for a time. Let's give them a chance."
"But, Doctor," said Jack, "I have noticed that all the animals lie down and sleep as soon as they have fed heartily. Why isn't it a good thing for men to do the same thing? Men are after all, animals on one side of their nature."
"Yes, I know," said the Doctor, "and I have known physicians to argue in that way in favor of late suppers. But experience hardly bears out the argument. A man may sleep well on a heavy meal, but often he gets up with a bad taste in his mouth and with a morbid craving for food, which means that he hasn't properly assimilated the food that he has already eaten."
"What do you mean by 'assimilating' food?" asked Tom, adding: "I'm afraid you'll think me very ignorant."
"Not at all," replied the Doctor. "Most people don't understand that. You see, there are two distinct processes by which we turn food to account in building up our bodies, making strength and heat, and generally carrying on the processes of life. One of those processes is digestion, and the other assimilation. Digestion simply reduces the food which we have eaten to a condition in which it can be assimilated. By assimilation certain organs of the body take up the food thus prepared for them, convert it into blood and send it through the system to nourish it. In the passage of the blood through the arteries and veins, it leaves deposits of muscle here, fat there, bone in another place, and so on. This is a very rude statement of the matter, but it is sufficient to show you what I mean, at least in a general way. Very well. It does a man no good whatever to digest his food if he doesn't assimilate it. No matter how perfectly the stomach does its work, the body is not nourished unless the organs charged with the function of assimilating the digested food do theirs also. Once, in a hospital, I saw a little baby die of actual starvation, although it had an abundance of food, and digested it perfectly. It simply could not assimilate."
"But what has that to do with our going to bed at two o'clock in the morning?" asked Jack, who was disposed to be a trifle cross as the result of the long starvation and strain.
"Only this," answered the Doctor, "that unless we give our weakened stomachs a little chance to digest our food properly before we go to sleep, the process of assimilation will be very imperfectly performed and we shall not be as perfectly nourished as we need to be. Still, I think we might safely go to bed now," added the Doctor, "as the half hour is gone, and it is now two thirty"—looking at his watch.
With that the exhausted company prepared for bed. Jim Chenowith was the first to approach the bunks, under which the earthen floor was a little lower than in the rest of the cabin. As he did so, having slipped off his boots, Jim called out:
"Hello! What's this? I say, fellows, we have a creek here under our beds!"
A hasty examination confirmed his statement. There was a vigorous stream of water running directly under the bunks, and worse still, as an exploration with torches soon revealed, the water was not only running in under the lower logs of the hut, but was also pouring through every opening it could find in the chinking of the walls above, and streaming into the bunks.
The Doctor hastily went outside to study conditions and, returning, said:
"There's a terrific rain on, boys, and the thermometer stands at fifty. So the snow is melting rapidly, and the two things together—the rain and the melting snowdrift—are flooding us."
Tired and sleepy as Jack was, he rose instantly to the occasion.
"There's no sleep for us to-night, boys!" he said. "We must go to work at once and dig the house out of the snowdrift. Get some fatwood torches ready and let's go to work."
The boys responded quickly, and presently all of them except Ed, whom the Doctor forbade to do any further work that involved strenuous physical exertion, were engaged in shoveling the snow away from the house and opening a passageway around it fully eight feet wide.
By daylight this was accomplished. It put an end to the inflow of water through the chinking of the upper logs; but, as Tom expressed it, there was still "a young river" flowing into the house, from the bottom of the snow bank, underneath the lower logs of the hut. Not only was all the warm rain flowing through the snow bank, but in its passage it was dissolving a great deal of the snow, and so the volume of water flowing out at the bottom and running into the house was quite double that which the rain itself would have supplied.
"We ought to have made a bank of earth around the lower part of the cabin," said the Doctor, after studying the situation for a time.
"True," said Jack, "but we had no tools with which to do it. Neither have we any now. So I don't see what is to be done."
"I do!" said Tom, the alert of mind. "I do, and it is perfectly simple."
"What's your idea, Tom?" asked Jack.
"Why, to make the snow protect us against itself."
"But how?"
"Why, by building a little snow bank between the big snow bank and the house, hammering it into solid ice, with our mauls, and in that way making a ditch that will carry off the water around the end of the house and down over the cliff."
"That's a superb idea, Tom," said Jack, "and we'll get to work at it at once. I'd give the proceeds of all my winter's work for a head half as good as yours, Tom."
"Oh, pshaw!" said Tom. "My head isn't of much account. It is only that I look straight at things and try to use common sense."
"Yes," said the Doctor, "and that is what we call 'genius' in science. It is the men who 'look straight at things and try to use common sense' who do the great things in science. Darwin did that, and so did Asa Gray, and Edison, and Agassiz, and all the rest of them. Scientific genius is nothing in the world but common sense, reinforced by a habit of observation."
But there was no further time for talk. The boys quickly built a low snow embankment between their house and the great snowdrift, and beat it down with their mauls, into a condition of solid ice. With this barrier to aid them they succeeded in compelling the water from the rain and the melting snow to flow in a sort of ditch around their house, and to cease flowing through it.
Inside, however, the condition of things was deplorable. The earthen floor under the bunks was a mud hole. The broom straw that constituted the beds was soaking wet, and the task of drying it promised to be no easy one.
"We've simply got to sleep on hard clapboards for two or three nights," said Ed.
"Well, what of that?" asked Tom, "I've often slept on much harder beds than clapboards make."
"For example?" asked Jim.
"Well, I've slept on big rocks for one thing."
"Why did you do that? Why didn't you sleep on the softer ground?"
"Because the softer ground was much too soft, being mud. I've slept on two rails placed about eight inches apart, with one end stuck into a fence so as to keep me out of the mud, and a pretty good bed rails make. Finally, I have slept on the worst bed there is in the world."
"What is that?"
"Why, a pile of pebbles. That's the very worst there is, but you can sleep on it, if you've got to. Now, let's have some breakfast, Ed, and after devouring a proper quantity of bear steak, I'll show you fellows how a healthy fellow who has worked all night can sleep on clapboards in spite of the daylight that the Doctor's rag windows are letting in, now that we've shoveled the snow away from them."
Ed had breakfast already well under way. It was to consist solely of bear steak and coffee, for coffee was their one supply which was not exhausted, and during the starving time they would hardly have endured their hunger but for that resource.
"But," said Jack, as they ate their breakfast, "what are we going to do with that bear meat? It won't keep long in this soft weather. By the way, Jim, throw another stick on the fire. It's cold."
"So it is," said the Doctor, who had just come in after a consultation with his scientific instruments. "The thermometer has sunk twenty degrees within the last hour, and stands now at two degrees below freezing. It will go much lower, for the barometer is rising and the wind has shifted to the northwest. We're in for a trip to the Arctic regions without doing any traveling to get there."
"Let's hang the bear out of doors, then," said Jack. "It will freeze there."
"Yes, and every carnivorous animal in these woods will come and eat for us," said Tom, whose authority on the habits of wild creatures was accepted by all the boys as final.
"Besides," said the Doctor, "it isn't necessary. Our bear will freeze hanging just where he is, by the door there."
With that he arose, went outside, and brought in a thermometer, which he pinned to the bear's carcass.
"We're down to twenty-six degrees outside now," he said, "and it is growing steadily colder." Then, after waiting for five minutes, he consulted the thermometer that he had hung upon the bear, and announced:
"It stands at thirty-three degrees—fruit-house temperature."
"What do you mean by 'fruit-house temperature?'" asked Tom.
"Why, don't you know? The houses in which fresh fruits of the summer are preserved for winter use are kept always at a temperature of thirty-three degrees. If the temperature were higher than that, the fruits would ferment and decay. If it were a single degree lower they would freeze—for thirty-two degrees is the freezing point. But at a temperature of thirty-three degrees nothing decays and nothing freezes. So they keep the fruit houses always at that temperature, and they keep fresh strawberries and peaches and all the rest of the fruits all winter in nearly as good condition as when they were picked."
"Well, what do they do with a boy," asked Tom, "who has worked all night and is mightily sleepy, except let him go to bed, even if it is the usual time for going to work, instead? Good morning, and pleasant dreams to all of you."
With that Tom rolled himself up in his blanket and lay down upon the clapboard flooring of his bed, taking a stick of wood with him for a pillow. The rest immediately followed his example and in spite of adverse conditions, they were all presently sound asleep.
CHAPTER XXIII
A Loan Negotiated
"Zero weather, boys, and below," called the Doctor, who was first to wake, about four o'clock that afternoon, and who, before waking the others, had gone out to inspect his weather recording instruments. "The bear hanging here by the door is frozen hard, and so is all the water in the house. So all that want a bath will have to join me in a roll in the snow out there."
With that he shed the scant clothing that he had on him and, rushing out, plunged into a snow bank. The rest, determined not to be out-done in robustness, quickly followed him, and after a vigorous rubbing with their coarse towels, they felt like entirely new persons.
"How glad our friends will be," said Tom, "when they hear that each of us is 'another fellow.'"
"That's an old joke, Tom," responded Ed.
"Yes, to other people, perhaps, but not to this crew of new people, every one of whom has proclaimed himself 'a new man' after that snow bath."
"Now, we can accomplish something," said Jack. "The rain and natural settling have reduced the depth of snow out there where we're chopping to two or three feet, and in this weather the surface of it will be as hard as ice itself. So we'll all drive nails in our heels to-night, as Tom has done with his, and early to-morrow we'll set to work again with the axes."
Ed was already broiling some slices of juicy bear beef, and had a big pot of coffee ready for use. As they ate supper, Harry said:
"This bear beef is delicious, of course, but I would give something pretty if I had an ash cake or a pone of bread to go with it. It may be true that a healthy person can live on meat alone for a good while, but it is a good deal more comfortable to have some bread with it."
"And it is more wholesome, too," said the Doctor. "Man was made to eat a mixed diet, and it isn't well for him to live too long on meat without starchy food, or starchy food without meat. I'm going to observe the effects of this exclusively meat diet on all of us very closely."
"Any how," said Jack, "the Indians, when they go on their big hunting trips or on the war-path, used to live on meat alone for weeks and months at a time. So I don't think we'll starve while our bear lasts, and before it is gone we can depend on Tom to provide something else. Now that the snow is hard, Tom will go prowling about the mountains before many days pass."
"Oh, we shan't starve," said the Doctor. "But it has been a good many days now since we had any bread, and we are all beginning to feel the need of it. The beans we had with our bear giblet stew were a very imperfect substitute for bread, and the quart or so of beans that we have left are not to be used at all so long as we keep fairly well. I'm saving them for hospital diet. How the Doctors in the hospitals would laugh at the suggestion of a bean diet in illness! And yet we may have to come to that for lack of any other starchy food."
"What is it you fear, Doctor?" asked Jack.
"Why, I fear that an exclusive diet of meat may result in some sort of inflammation or other disturbance of the digestive organs. If that happens, even a few beans, boiled without meat, may save a life. At any rate, I am going to keep the beans for such an emergency."
All this while Tom was taking no part in the conversation. Tom was thinking—"looking straight at things and using common sense." Presently, he took his gun and went out to "take a look at the situation," he said. On his return, he reported that "everything is frozen as hard as a brick, and if the moonshiners ever intend to attack us, now is their time. We must put out a sentinel at once. As I want to think a little I'll take the first turn, and the rest of you fellows can arrange as you like for the other turns."
"One thing I want to suggest," broke in the Doctor. "The cold is intense. The thermometer is considerably below zero. It will be cruel to keep any boy on guard outside for any prolonged time. So I propose that while this weather lasts we run the guard duty in half hour shifts. That will give each boy half an hour out there in the cold, and two hours and a half in which to sleep and get warm before he has to go on duty again."
"It's an excellent idea," said Jack, "and we'll arrange it so."
"All right," said Tom, "only as I am taking the first and best turn, I'll stay out for an hour."
The fact was, though Tom did not mention it, that the boy wanted a full hour in which to think out some plans that he had vaguely conceived. It was always Tom's habit to try to better the conditions in which he was placed, instead of accepting them as inevitable. Whenever anything was wrong and uncomfortable, Tom began asking himself if there might not be some way in which he could make it right and comfortable. He could endure hardship with a plucky resolution that often astonished others; but he never endured hardship without giving all his energies to the task of ridding himself of it if that were possible. It was a familiar saying among those who knew him that "Little Tom Ridsdale never will admit that he is beaten, and so at last he never is beaten."
As Tom paced up and down the platform, stamping his feet and clapping his hands against his sides to keep them from freezing, the Doctor came out with a burning brand to consult his weather instruments. When he had done, Tom called to him, saying:
"Would you mind coming up here for a minute or two, Doctor?"
"No, certainly not," answered the Doctor. "Do you want to go in and warm yourself?"
"No; oh, no," answered Tom, quickly. "I only want to consult you a little."
The Doctor mounted the platform, and after some hesitation, Tom asked:
"Do you happen to have any more money in your pockets, Doctor?"
"Yes, of course. I always keep a little money with me."
"Would you mind lending me two dollars in the common interest of the company, I giving you an order on our paymaster down below for that amount, to be paid to you out of my share when we collect?"
"Yes," answered the Doctor. "I would mind that very much. In fact, I positively decline to lend you any money on any such terms, Tom. But if you want some money, be it two dollars, or ten, simply as from one friend to another, and without any 'orders' on paymasters, you can have it."
Tom understood, and he did not contest the point. He pressed the Doctor's hand and said:
"Well, then, let me have two dollars, please?"
"Make it five," said the Doctor.
"No," answered Tom. "Two dollars will be quite enough. Somebody in the mountains might murder me for five dollars. And, besides, nobody up there could change the bill. So, if you will let me have two one dollar bills I shall be grateful."
"What are you going to do, Tom? Nothing rash, I hope."
"I don't know yet what I'm going to do," answered Tom. "And please don't say anything to the other boys about it. I'll be gone from here when they get up in the morning. Maybe I'll bring back some game. You see that bear won't last very long with six hearty men eating three meals a day off it, with no other food to help fill up."
The Doctor saw that Tom did not want to talk of his plans—it was always Tom's way to keep such things to himself—and so he asked no more questions, but went to the doorway for light, selected two one dollar bills, and returning, placed them in Tom's hand. Then Tom said:
"Now, Doctor, you fellows are not to worry about me if I don't turn up when you expect me. I shall probably be away from camp for several days—may be a week, or possibly even more than that. Don't worry, in any case. Remember that I know how to take care of myself."
The Doctor promised, but it was with much of apprehension in his mind. He saw that Tom was looking forward to his projected expedition with a good deal less of confident hope than he usually manifested on such occasions, and he gravely feared that the boy was planning to take some serious, if not even desperate, risk. He knew that Tom was daring to a fault, and that when he had formed a purpose he pursued it to its ultimate accomplishment or failure, with no regard whatever to the risks run, except that prudent forethought and circumspection which might enable him to avoid threatened evils.
CHAPTER XXIV
In the High Mountains
Tom's second tour of guard duty ended at four o'clock in the morning, and he woke the Doctor to succeed him. Then, without attracting the other boys' attention, he rolled his blanket into a compact bundle and strapped it high upon his shoulders. He next loaded his cartridge belt with twenty buckshot cartridges on one side and twenty cartridges that carried turkey shot on the other. He put a box of matches into one pocket and two thick slices of bear beef into another. Finally, he took one of the empty meal bags, carefully folded it up and thrust it into the breast of his hunting shirt.
Thus equipped he sallied out, and bidding the Doctor good morning as he passed the picket post, started off up the mountain. He had to pick his way very carefully till daylight came, and by that time he had passed well over the side of a ridge and was completely out of sight of Camp Venture.
Selecting a suitable spot where the wind had swept a rock clear of snow, he laid aside his gun and blanket, and set to work to build a little fire and cook one slice of his meat for breakfast. The other he reserved for a late dinner.
As he moved on after breakfast, he came upon a flock of quails—or partridges, as they are more properly called in Virginia. They were helplessly huddled under the edge of a stone and were manifestly freezing to death. For when Tom, who was too much of a sportsman to shoot birds in the covey, tried to flush them, meaning to shoot them on wing, they were barely able to flutter about on the ground, and wholly incapable of rising in flight.
"I may as well have them," said the boy, "seeing that they'll be frozen to death in another half hour." So, after a little scrambling, he caught the eleven birds and quickly put them out of their suffering. Drawing some twine from a pocket, he strung the birds together and threw them over his neck for ease of carrying.
The mountain up here was rugged and uneven, scarred and seamed with chasms and deep hollows. Tom devoted all his energies to peering into these as if searching for something. At one time, as he was hunting for a place from which to get a good view of a small but deep ravine, he flushed a flock of wild turkeys, seven or eight in number, and scarcely more than twenty feet distant from him. Curiously enough, he let them scamper away without so much as taking a shot at them.
That was exceedingly unlike little Tom Ridsdale, and obviously it meant something. But what it meant did not appear. But shooting makes a noise and attracts attention. Tom did not want to attract attention.
About two o'clock in the afternoon, Tom carefully reconnoitered a spot where great blocks of stone had fallen from cliffs above to a ledge below lying loosely there and making small caverns. Having satisfied himself that neither human habitation nor any human being was within miles of this little hiding place, Tom collected some sticks and built a little fire in one of the crevices between the great blocks of stone. Here, he cooked and ate his remaining piece of bear beef. Then he opened his blanket, rolled himself in it, and disposed himself to sleep, in a half sitting, half lying posture with his head and shoulders resting against the rock.
"I must get a little sleep now," he said to himself, "as I didn't get any too much last night, and, of course, can't take any at all to-night. For if I slept without a fire in this weather, I'd freeze to death, and it would never do to build a fire up here at night, when it could be seen for miles away."
Healthy boy that he was, he fell almost immediately into slumber, and it was nightfall when he woke. He took the risk of throwing two or three small sticks on his well-hidden fire, in order to broil one of his partridges for his supper. That done, he repacked his blanket, took up his gun, and set out again on his search for that something for which he had been looking all day.
All night long Tom toiled about, up and down hills, over rocks and cliffs, through snow that was now beginning to soften as the weather was growing milder, but the search resulted in nothing. When morning came, the well-nigh exhausted boy sought out what seemed a safe spot for the purpose, created a little fire, cooked three partridges and ate them, seasoning them with a little salt which he always, on his hunting trips, carried in a little India rubber tobacco bag. Then he stretched himself out for a sleep, no longer fearing to freeze, as the weather had become very much warmer than before.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon when Tom awoke. As he did so, he felt a hand pulling at that part of his blanket in which his head was wrapped—for all huntsmen and all soldiers, when they sleep in the open, even in the warmest weather, find it necessary to wrap up their heads.
