His tent-mates paid no attention to his objection. Dirk darted into the kitchen and returned with a long butcher-knife, with which he began ripping the seams of the burlap that wrapped the canoe. In a few minutes the casing was torn away, and the beautiful slim craft, painted a bright crimson, lay on the ground with its paddles along its bottom.
Dirk was jumping around excitedly, pointing out the features of the superb workmanship that made the canoe a delight to the eye. “Look at her lines, you fellows! See those soft seats. Those duck-boards on the bottom are to keep your feet dry. I tell you, you have to pay plenty of money for a boat like this! She’s a real Indian canoe, and I gave her a real Indian name, too. See?” He pointed to the shapely bow, where in golden letters was blazoned the name Sachem. “Now, who wants to help me try her out?”
“Yes, let’s try her out!” echoed Eddie Scolter. “Come on!”
“Down to the lake!” shouted Dirk. “Here, Slim, grab hold of that end. She’s light as a feather—we’ll have her in the water in no time!”
Slim Yerkes obediently lifted one end; Eddie, Nig Jackson, and Joey Fellowes seized the sides, and led by the excited Dirk, the group made off down the path to the boat dock, bearing the gleaming canoe aloft, leaving her burlap wrappings to clutter the ground. Lefty, wrestling alone with the heavy churn of the ice-cream freezer, shouted a last warning to them, but by this time his truant comrades were out of sight down the hill, bent on taking part in the first launching of the lovely little vessel.
Brick gazed after them disdainfully, impressed in spite of himself. It was a swell canoe, all right, and no boy could help being proud of it. Think of hitting the Long Trail in a craft like that! But the fellows had no right to leave their squad duty and run off to play with Van Horn’s new toy——
An amazed shout rose from the back of the kitchen. Sax McNulty, who had been working up in the ice-house, digging out large blocks of ice and heaving them down to his young assistants, had finished and returned to the scene to find that his squad, with the exception of the faithful Lefty, had disappeared.
“Hey, what’s happened? Where is everybody, Lefty? Have they walked out on the job?”
Lefty grunted, struggling with the freezer handle that grew stiffer at each turn. “Yeah, Sax—I told ’em not to beat it, but Van Horn just got a canoe, and they all took it down to the lake to christen it.”
“They did, eh? Well, they’ll have to learn that they can’t run away like this when their duty is still to be done. Here, let me take a turn at that, Lefty. When you’re rested, you can chop some more ice. Huh! If you hadn’t stuck to the job, the camp would be missing its dessert this noon, all right!”