AN ENCOUNTER IN THE PINE WOODS
"Help! Chase 'em off, somebody! Help a fellow, won't you? Ouch! they're murdering me by inches. Oh! my stars, what can I do?"
"It's hornets!" shrieked X-Ray, always as quick as a flash.
"Mebbe a swarm of yellow jackets!" suggested Ethan. "I can see something whirling around over his head. Gee! what if he runs here and gives us a dose? The cabin for mine."
"Hold on," called out Phil, taking in the situation, and then raising his voice he shouted to the terrified Lub: "Throw off your hat as you run. There, that'll attract some. Now your coat. Never mind a sting or two, but do as I say."
Lub, accustomed in matters of this kind to letting some one else do his thinking for him, hastened to obey.
Immediately afterward he was heard calling piteously:
"There's some after me yet, Phil, and oh! how they do hit you! I'm beginning to swell up right now. How'll I get away from the swarm, Phil? You tell me what to do, and quick!"
"Run for the lake and jump in!" called out Phil. "Duck under, and keep there as long as you can stand it."
Without thinking twice, and only too willing to blindly obey, Lub galloped straight to the shore of the lake. He happened to strike a little bank, where the water was quite deep.
"Here I go!" they heard him shout, and then came a tremendous splash.
"Oh! my!" gasped X-Ray, "that settles our fishing for this morning! He'll scare every trout in the lake with his threshing around!"
Ethan was bubbling over with laughter, and even Phil had hard work to keep from giving a shout when upon reaching the shore they saw what was going on.
Lub stood in water up to his chin. He kept bobbing his head in an anxious effort to locate any determined insect that still hovered near by. Occasionally he would duck entirely out of sight, and move along a dozen feet, as though in hopes of eluding the enemy in this way.
Taking pity on the poor fellow Phil assured him the coast was clear, and that he was safe in coming out.
Such a woe begone figure he presented.
It seemed like a shame to laugh, but the boys could not have helped it had their lives depended on keeping sober faces.
Besides looking like a drowned rat, poor Lub found that his face was already swelling up. His jaws looked as they may have done when he had the mumps. One eye threatened to be lost altogether, on account of the puffiness all around it. His nose had received due attention, and even his hands had failed to come through the scorching fire unscathed.
Despite all this Lub tried to grin, although the effort was, as X-Ray said pretty much of a "ghastly failure."
"I know I'm a sight to behold, fellows," whimpered Lub. "I guess I deserve all I got, too, for being such a fool. But how was I to know that old hornets' nest almost lying on the ground under the bush was loaded!"
"What did you take it for?" asked Phil.
"Why," replied Lub, "I supposed it was a regular giant puff-ball, one of the toad-stool kind that go off with a crack and a puff of smoke when you kick 'em."
"Then you actually kicked it?" cried Phil.
"Just what I did—oh! murder!" gasped Lub, feeling of his enlarged head in dismay.
"And it went off, all right, I bet you?" asserted Ethan, uproariously.
"A million of 'em came hustling out and started to eating me up," Lub went on to explain, plaintively. "I killed 'em in droves, but there was always a fresh lot. Then I ran—you saw how I had to carry on. Guess it wasn't any laughing matter to me! And it isn't right now. If I keep on swelling like I am I'll bust. Talk to me about having the big head—bein' President of the United States wouldn't make my cranium swell any more. Phil, ain't you going to do something for a chum that's had trouble?"
"Sure, I am," announced Phil, readily. "Ethan, find some mud, and let it be clay if you can. Hurry and get it here. While you're doing it I'll take the sting out with ammonia. It's lucky I thought to fetch some along."
Lub only too willingly put himself wholly in the hands of his friends. The ammonia smarted at first, but by degrees the pain began to disappear, as the poison was neutralized by the remedy.
"I have to be careful not to let a drop of it get in your eyes, because it would smart terribly," Phil told the patient.
"Yes, I know even now how a dog feels when you squirt some of this stuff in his eyes with those little ammonia pistols," Lub remarked.
The process was continued until Ethan arrived with the clay.
This was fastened on the best way possible by the use of Lub's big red bandanna handkerchief.
Phil had insisted on taking a snap shot of the victim of the hornets before he had his face bound up. He also got another view after this operation had been completed.
"I'm doing this partly for your own good, Lub," he explained. "Perhaps it'll make you feel bad to see how pride always swells before a fall. But then it's going to be a valuable lesson to you."
"And you'll never kick again before you're dead certain what kind of a puff-ball it is, because some happen to be inhabited," X-Ray told him.
As Lub would very likely not be fit for anything during the rest of that day, Phil took charge, while the rival fishermen were out in the canoe.
All the while he enjoyed having the little girl around. She seemed like a real ray of sunshine.
"Whatever will we do without her, Phil, if her father blows in here any time and carries her off?"
Lub said this in a muffled tone, for he was tied up good and fast, but he meant every word of it.
"Perhaps we might get him to let her stay with us," said Phil, showing that he, too, had been thinking along those lines; "if one of you fellows agreed to give up your bunk to 'daddy' and sleep on the floor with me."
"I'd do that, and more, for the sake of keeping her here," declared Lub.
The fishermen reported at noon.
X-Ray seemed in high spirits, and Ethan correspondingly depressed. It was easy to see which way luck had gone that morning.
"Well, there's another day coming," said Phil, hopefully.
"Yes, and I mean to start in and show him a few wrinkles from now on," Ethan declared; at which the other laughed scoffingly as he remarked:
"Oh! so you've just been playing off all this time, have you? Seemed to me you put in your best licks right along. I'll have to think up a few dodges myself, if that's the game."
"Everything square and above board, boys," warned Phil.
"As fair as can be, Phil. Neither of us would want to play a mean trick," said Ethan, and his rival echoed his words.
After lunch Phil told them it was their turn to look after the camp while he took a stroll.
"Be careful about letting Mazie stray off," was what he told them the last thing, ere starting away, camera in hand.
He had managed to develop his two flashlight pictures, and so far as he could tell from the films they appeared to be clean-cut good ones. Ethan after inspecting the negatives had expressed the opinion that they looked "fine."
From various indications Phil began to believe he had the other interested in the work, and that it would not be long before Ethan might be counted as one of those who call it fascinating.
Phil was thinking of all this as he walked along. Numerous other things came into his mind also. He even wondered whether some accident might not cause him to come upon Mazie's father, and what "daddy" would prove to be.
Somehow the boy had come to believe the man could not be bad, or he would never have held the affection of that dear little heart; and he knew from many signs that Mazie certainly fairly worshiped her father.
Altogether the trip up to Lake Surprise was turning out delightfully all around.
There might be a few things associated with it that would not always be a happy memory with some of his chums. For instance, there was the episode of the hornets' nest which poor Lub had kicked on the impulse of the moment, thinking it only a harmless "puff-ball." He would shiver every time some buzzing sound reminded him of his wild flight; but even then Lub had learned a lesson he could never forget.
Phil kept his camera ready for instantaneous use. He knew that if by any great good luck he "jumped" a deer that had been lying down, and sleeping in the heat of the day, it would require considerable presence of mind and a quick action in order to snapshot the animal at close quarters.
Being somewhat of an experienced hunter, Phil had been careful when starting out to head into the wind. This was done so that a deer would not discover his presence through any sense of smell, until he was close up.
Once given a fair chance, and he believed he was capable of handling the situation.
As luck would have it his course took him through the very same neck of the woods where on the previous day he had found Mazie, only now he had gone half a mile and more beyond that spot.
All at once as Phil carefully pushed through a screen of bushes he heard a scrambling sound. Some animal jumped to its feet, and Phil, as he took note of the dun color, the immense size, the mule-like ears, the square muzzle and the two-thirds grown horns knew that he was face to face with the king of the Adirondack woods—a bull moose!