“Then you must have fur mittens that are lined with wool; several pairs of woolen mittens to wear when you are building your log cabin, heavy fur caps and fur lined sleeping bags. Of course there will be towels and handkerchiefs and all of that sort of small stuff.”
As the storekeeper enumerated the various items of clothing, he brought them forth and laid out two piles, one for each of the boys.
“Now let me tell you something about taking care of these fur clothes; if you expect them to last you for more than a month take my advice and keep them dry, or if they do get wet, don’t wait but stop where you are, build a fire and dry them then and there. I don’t care how low the quick falls you can’t get cold in one of these suits.
“Oh, yes; I almost forgot your eye shades but they are absolutely necessary in traveling over the snow on bright days,” and he produced a queer looking pair of goggles without any glasses in them. “These are Esquimo shades and I wouldn’t give a cent for any other kind,” he said as he handed the boys a pair.
They examined them closely and found that they were made of wood and where the lenses were supposed to be in a pair of goggles there were thin pieces of wood instead with a couple of slits in them to let the light through. Jack and Bill put them on and made puns and had fun over and out of them. Jack pretended he was a college prof and then gave an imitation of Teddy Roosevelt. Not to be outdone, Bill gave an imitation of Jack giving an imitation of him, and then he wound up by pretending he was Judge Gilhooley of the Harlem Police Court and promptly sentenced himself to pay a fine of seven dollars and twenty-three cents for falsely (or badly) impersonating Hizzoner.
Jack McQuesten laughed at their antics until his sides ached and the boys laughed too, and altogether Circle wasn’t such a bad town as they had painted it.
“You’ll take these eye shades more seriously when you have to use them and you’ll thank your Uncle Jack for giving them to you, for they leave no bad after effects as glass goggles do when you take them off.
“Next comes the hardware,” he went on explaining as he had to a thousand, yes ten thousand, tenderfeet, in the past, and he thoroughly enjoyed living over again those golden days. “I call everything hardware that you can’t eat, wear, use for medicine, hunt or fish with, except the dogs.
“You’ll need quite a lot of hardware including snowshoes and sleds, a wall tent, tarpaulins and compasses, for traveling. For building your cabin you will want a five-foot crosscut saw, a rip and a hand saw, an ax, hammer and some other carpenter tools, besides nails, hinges, rivets and such like traps.
“For cooking a folding sheet-iron stove, pans, coffee pot, tin plates, cups, knives, forks and spoons. You say you’ve got a good single barrelled repeating shotgun and a hunting knife apiece? You must take along plenty of loaded shells and I will fix up all of the fishing tackle you want. For your prospecting outfit you must take a prospector’s pick and a miner’s pick with a steel point, a shovel with a round point such as we use up here, a magnet, a few pounds of quicksilver, a gold pan, a small gold scale to weigh your winnings on and a magnifying glass.