Suddenly, just as the chain had stretched till the log began to move, some weak link snapped and with a rebound like that of a cannon it flashed over the hillside, catching one man and toppling him over with a broken leg. The camp cook, whose accomplishments varied from the ability to deliver an impromptu and usually unsolicited sermon to that of calling off the numbers at a stag dance, was summoned in haste and from a long black bag that went with the framed diploma that hung at the head of his bunk, this unusual individual administered surgical treatment. The injured man took it philosophically,—his out of door constitution would repair the damage with more than average speed,—and the work of getting out the big log proceeded as before.
They also watched, fascinated, as the logs at a camp further back were sent down a crude slide that slanted sheer to a sizeable lake. Ace threatened to try riding a log some time, but Norris rendered one of his rare ultimatums on that score.
“Let’s take plenty to eat!” bargained Pedro, who was beginning to suspect it was no afternoon stroll he had embarked upon. “Hadn’t we better ’phone old Lester to lay in some extra supplies?”
“There is always fish,” Norris reminded him.
“One gets tired of fish. I say let’s take plenty of grub, if we’re going away off where for weeks we may not see a living soul to buy a pound of bacon of. Eating’s half the fun of camping. And if we get up there on the John Muir Trail, we can’t even catch fish, can we—always?”
“That’s the stuff!” seconded Ace. “If we aren’t tied too tightly to the problem of rustling grub, we will be freer to roam where we please. But gosh! Won’t it take a whole train-load of burros to pack enough stuff? Five men, three times a day, that’s fifteen meals. And thirty days would make it 450 meals. Besides we’ll eat just about double the normal number of calories,—the way I feel already. And twice 450 meals is 900.”
“Whoa, there!” begged Norris. “How much can a burro carry, anyway? We can’t take all our food, or we’ll have such a pack-train we won’t have time for anything but donkey driving, and if we carry feed to keep them going on the trail, we’ll have to take more burros to pack the feed, and they will have to have feed too, and—there’s no end to it.”
“Well, of course we’ll fish, when we can,” amended Pedro. “And we can take compact rations, dried stuff, instead of watery canned goods. They’re just as good, aren’t they? Only the water’s been taken out of them, and we can put it back in each night before we eat it. What’s the use of packing tin cans that are mostly full of water?”
“I wouldn’t call canned peaches mostly water,” retorted Ace, who though less dependent than the plumper Pedro on his three square meals per day, was even more particular what those three meals tasted like.
“It isn’t only the juice,” said Pedro. “The peaches themselves are half water. Dried peaches are the same thing except for that, and two pounds of dried peaches will go a whole heap farther than a two-pound can, let me tell you!”