We did. We put blankets and matches and cooking-things near the canoe just as if we expected we might have to run to it for our lives any second. That didn’t satisfy Mark. He made us fix up a pack full of canned things and potatoes and flour and salt so we could grab it and be off without waiting even to think. And all the time we thought it was just a game. We thought he was playing, while Mark never said a word, but just let us go on thinking so. He wasn’t playing, though. He was looking ahead and getting ready if an emergency came up. Afterward he told me he wasn’t sure we would ever need the boat, but there was just a chance, and if that chance happened we’d need it bad and quick. So he got it ready. That’s why folks always have found it so hard to beat Mark Tidd. He’d sit and figure and figure and guess what might happen, and when he’d guessed every possible thing that could manage to come about he’d get ready for every one of them.
By the time the canoe was all ready it was almost dark. It was the first we’d thought about spending the night all alone in the cabin, way off miles from anybody, and I’ll admit I began to feel pretty funny. I noticed everybody else was getting quiet and not saying much and looking every once in a while into the woods. It was chilly and still.
“L-l-let’s go to bed,” Mark says, after a while.
“Shall—shall we have a guard?” Tallow says, hesitating-like.
“No need,” Mark says.
I began to think I would like to have somebody big—somebody big and so strong that knew so much about the woods. If some one like that had been there to sleep alongside of us not one of us would have worried a mite. But he wasn’t, so we had to do without.
We put out the lights and locked the door, and after quite a while we all went to sleep.
CHAPTER V
The next day we didn’t do much but fuss around. Plunk and Tallow tried fishing for trout with angleworms, but they got only one, and he was a rainbow. Mark found a shady spot and read all the time he wasn’t cooking or eating, and I got out Uncle Hieronymous’s draw-shave and found a piece of seasoned hickory he had stowed away. First off I didn’t know what I’d make of it, but after I’d figured a spell I decided it would be a bow and arrow. I was pretty handy with tools, and this wasn’t the first bow I ever made, by any means. It took me all day to finish it and half a dozen arrows, so my time was filled up all right.
“Tell you what let’s do,” says I, at the supper-table. “Uncle said there was a lake about a mile off with bass and perch in it. What’s the matter with digging some worms and hiking there early in the morning? Maybe we can catch a mess for dinner.”