Tent Ten had been assigned, as their squad-work the next morning after the council, to filling the large refrigerator in the pantry behind Ellick’s large, airy kitchen. This duty required that they ascend to the towerlike structure that housed the summer’s supply of ice for Camp Lenape. In mid-winter, when the lake was sheeted over with a crystal mass some six inches thick, a gang of men always came with saws and teams of horses to harvest the ice and store it, between layers of sawdust, in the Lenape ice-house for the use of the campers the following season.
It was the plan of the brothers to enter the ice-house, dig out the embedded blocks required, and send these down the chute to their waiting tent-mates, whose job it would be to wash away the sawdust and transport the ice to Ellick’s gaping refrigerator. Armed with ice-tongs and a large miner’s pick, Jake and Jerry climbed to the upper door of the edifice, and entered its chill gloom.
“Come on, work fast, if you don’t want to freeze!” advised Jerry. He raised the pick and began clearing away the thick crust of sawdust in one corner of the place, but paused as his brother made no move to aid him. “Hey! Earn your keep, man! Don’t stand star-gazing all morning!”
Jake was staring upward. The ice-house was solidly built, but at one corner of the roof the sunlight slanted through a narrow crevice. The watcher had for an instant seen that spot of light cut off by the passage of a small body. Jake pointed. “Something up there, Jerry!”
Jerry’s eyes were more accustomed to the darkness. “Why, you cluck, that’s only Billy the crow! Hello, Billy!”
“Hello, Billy!” the cackling echo drifted down from the roof. “Billy the crow! Awr-rck!”
“He probably lives up there,” went on Jerry in a matter-of-fact tone. “Now, are we going to finish this job, or do I have to do it alone? Come out of your trance!”
Slowly Jake took his eyes from aloft, scraped away the sawdust with his foot, and clutched the half-revealed cake of ice with his tongs. “Fire away! But I got an idea, Jerry—and as soon as we chuck enough ice down, I’m going to try it out.”
The boys worked swiftly and silently after this, panting and shivering slightly as they uncovered one slab of ice after another and sent them crashing down the chute, after a shouted warning to their toiling comrades on the ground.
“There, guess that’ll hold Ellick for a while,” said Jerry at last, resting from his labors. “Now, what’s this bright idea of yours, Jake?”