“I guess this ends the run of hard luck,” declared the Maine boy, still keeping up his movements, although perhaps unconsciously favoring the injured leg, as any one is apt to do under similar conditions.
“Why d’ye say that?” asked Giraffe.
“Oh! you know they always say accidents come in threes,” Allan replied, cheerfully. “The women folks in our house used always to believe that, anyhow; and this makes three of us hobbling around. If we were at home now, perhaps we’d be wanting to use crutches; but up here in the woods we just grin and bear it like true scouts.”
“Yes,” Giraffe went on, “guess you’re right about women folks believin’ in a broken looking-glass standing for coming trouble, and all such things; though my dad used to say he had all the trouble settle on him in paying for a new mirror. But honest to goodness, fellers, I remember once when my maw, she chanced to drop some dishes, and busted two—what does she do but walks right over to the dresser, gets out a cracked tumbler she must a been keepin’ for just such a time to come along; and I give you my word, I nearly took a fit when she just deliberately smashed that down alongside the broken crockery, and I heard her say, says she: ‘There! that makes three now!’ just as if that ended it.”
“Supper’s ready,” announced Step Hen, when the laughter induced by Giraffe’s little story had subsided.
The coffee tasted just as good as ever. Besides, they had some venison, cooked in the hunter’s primitive way, each piece having been pierced by a long splinter of wood, the other end being stuck in the ground, so that the meat was close enough to the red coals to cook without burning—too much.
Perhaps at home, with a white table-cloth, silver, cut glass, and all the ordinary “fixings” around them, some of those boys might have viewed the suspicious looks of those half-cooked pieces of meat with more or less hesitation. But appetite ruled here, and every one declared it was “just prime.” And if a fellow found that his meat, while scorched on the outside, was nearly raw in the center, why, you know, all good cook’s unite in saying game should always be juicy and underdone, rather than dry and overdone—Step Hen had read it in his mother’s precious cook-book at home, and boldly said so.
When they were done eating they just lay around talking and resting. It was very comfortable, and neither Giraffe nor Step Hen felt in the least like making any change. But they knew that after a while, when the determined scoutmaster thought they had rested long enough, he would give the order that must once more see them limping along the trail, a band of cripples.
Of course the talk was mostly about Bumpus, and what chances they had of finding him unharmed. For, despite the faith Thad professed to have in the extraordinary good luck of the fat scout, there were times when even his stout heart became a prey to misgivings; and in his mind he saw poor Bumpus being badly treated by those two bullies, the timber cruisers.
Latterly Allan had been selecting several good pieces of wood calculated to burn well, and serve as torches.