The fifteenth of April, the day set for the departure, arrived at last. The train left the Union Depot at nine in the morning, and the boys were eager to reach the depot. The car stopped and they hurried into the station where they found a wild and woolly looking group assembled in the corner of the waiting room. They could not wait to get to the woods and were nearly all attired in true lumberjack fashion, only the pallor of their faces betraying them. They hailed the new arrivals with that exaggerated hilarity that only a crowd of college boys can display. And that hilarity instead of subsiding grew steadily with the arrival of every new addition. They joked each other continually, riled the grouchy baggage man almost to madness and “joshed” every porter who showed himself.
When the train came in from St. Paul the crowd surged boisterously forward sweeping everyone before it. Most of the people recognized the joyous buoyancy of youth, and knowing how useless it was to oppose it, yielded good naturedly enjoying it by a sort of reflected pleasure, but a few resented it wrathfully, thereby making themselves ridiculous. On they rushed across the platform and took possession of the smoking car.
CHAPTER XI
That trip to Park Rapids was a memorable one to the boys, as well as to everyone else on the train. Most travelers consider it a dull and tiresome ride but the boys seemed to find a source of never-ending enjoyment in the sameness of the little towns along the road and the long stretches of prairie, broken here and there by patches of jack pine. The almost unbroken series of practical jokes which they played on the trainmen and on each other made the miles slip pleasantly by for the other passengers. It was all done in a good-humored spirit of abandon that angered no one.
The dinner which they devoured at Sauk Center amazed some of the invalid ladies who watched them, but it was only a vague foreshadowing of the meal which they would eat in that same room on the downward trip when their appetites had been whetted by four months of strenuous work in the woods. With a cheer for the town which had fed them so well they boarded the little branch train which was to take them to their destination and resumed their old amusements. At Wadena they welcomed wildly a stray member of the class who had come across on the N. P. to join them. They immediately proceeded to work off on him all the gags which had been developed earlier in the day.
As they neared Park Rapids the spirit of restlessness pervaded the crowd. No sooner had the wheels stopped turning than they boiled out onto the platform amidst the crowd of citizens who had made their regular daily pilgrimage to see the train come in. They lost no time at the station, the baggage could be taken care of in the morning, but swarmed away up the street to the hotel. They selected a cheap hotel—for no matter how much money a man might have at home it was part of the game to keep down the expenses of that trip to the minimum.
Their duffel disposed of, Merton, as manager of the corporation, hurried away to interview the storekeepers to arrange for a shipment of eatables by the stage in the morning and to make an agreement with them for such emergency supplies as they might require through the summer. Scott, with a feeling of pride in his new responsibility, searched the livery stables for two teams, one to haul the baggage and another the groceries they had shipped tip from St. Paul. The others scattered in all directions to explore the town, to sound its resources and locate some amusement for the evening. They returned to the hotel for dinner, a little disappointed, with nothing to report but a moving picture show and a bowling alley.
The whole party was early afoot in the morning to take advantage of the 6:30 breakfast, for there was a big day’s work ahead of them. The former classes had established the precedent of walking to and from camp, and no class now dared fall short of that standard. A twenty-eight mile walk was a big undertaking for men fresh from the classroom, but it had to be done to maintain the class prestige. The people of the town expected it of them and even the stage driver, who had become reconciled to the loss of the fares, took a certain pride in their independence and recited the exploit times without number to the summer boarders who later chanced to be his passengers.
It was found that three of the boys had set out the night before to spend the night at the Fairview Hotel at Arago, half way out, and complete the journey in the morning. Three of the others, inexperienced and not yet imbued with the spirit of the thing, waited for the stage. Four of the remaining ones took the road immediately after breakfast, while Merton and Scott hurried away to get the wagons started. By seven-thirty the two wagon-loads of duffel and groceries were on the road, and the two boys walked gayly on ahead, full of the joy of the open. It was also a precedent that the walkers should reach the camp ahead of the stage and they swung to their work with a will.
The twenty-eight mile walk, such a marvel to those who never walk themselves, was uneventful. At the Lodge, on the south end of Lake Itasca, Scott and Merton overtook the other four walkers, and the six then finished the journey together.