He stopped, panting. “There, I’ll ring her like that fifteen minutes before mealtime and then just three hard taps when the meal is ready.”
It was certainly an effective gong. It had first been used in that neighborhood as an instrument of torture, by a crowd of settlers in a charivari party for a newly married couple some two miles to the north. The distinctness with which it was heard on the school ground on that occasion had been sufficient proof of its efficiency and it had straightway been appropriated by the students.
The ravenous boys forgot their lunch of only two hours before and did full justice to the supper with a will that did the old cook’s heart good. Then as the night was pretty cold they adjourned to a roaring fire in the bunkhouse and soon to a welcome bed.
CHAPTER XII
All the next day the boys were busy as badgers making garden, sawing wood for the cookshack, fixing up the tennis court and putting the camp in shape generally. The gangs were well organized for so early in the season and did their work quickly. Merton and Scott, who had scoured the country to the northward in search of eggs and butter reported a supply sufficient for the first half of the summer at least. They also brought back with them two cows which they had purchased through correspondence with the foreman. Night found them feeling very much at home, with much of the preliminary work completed. Professor Mertz had kept a friendly eye on them all day, showing them better methods in their work, running the gasoline engine for the woodsaw and helping them out of difficulties at every turn, but interfering very little with their plans.
The rest of the week was devoted to their real introduction to the forest. At eight o’clock in the morning with their lunches on their belts they set out with Professor Mertz, sometimes on foot and sometimes in the scow, but always with the assurance that they would get all the walking they wanted before they returned to camp. Occasionally a road or trail would take them where they wanted to go, but more often they plowed through the untracked forest, through densely tangled alder and hazelnut brush, across spongy tamarack swamps or grass meadows, into the fragrant thickets of balsam second growth or over the open pine ridges, skirting the shores of lakes or clambering over piled up windfalls. The only rests were when Professor Mertz waited for some of the stragglers to come up for general consultation on some new species, often one with which they had all been familiar in the classroom, but failed to recognize in its new surroundings. Hour by hour these strangers became less frequent and they greeted old friends enthusiastically. It was fascinating work, and led them on mile after mile almost without realizing how far they were going till they found themselves at four in the afternoon some five or six miles from home, with a race for supper ahead of them. Most of them were well used to walking but they had done the greater part of it on roads or pavements, and they found this cross country work a very different thing. It was only pride and nerve which kept them up with the long strides of the professor as they “hiked” back to camp; they all admitted being tired.
When Scott thought that the park was little more than twenty thousand acres in extent, and that all their hikes had covered but a very small portion of it he began to realize what a really princely estate he would have if he could only fill those conditions.
Among the other things that they had seen on their trips, especially when they were on the lake, were the numerous columns of smoke, thin gray lines in the early morning expanding toward mid-day into great black storm clouds which fanned out over the whole sky and cast a gloom over everything. To the inexperienced boys the columns seemed always to be in exactly the same location, but the woodsmen could see them advancing, retreating, sidestepping, like trained fighters, and, knowing the country as they did, could explain almost every movement. They watched the fires unceasingly, for it was so dry that only a high wind from the right direction was needed to bring any one of them down on the park with a terrific sweep that would be hard to stop. The older men prayed for rain to relieve the unheard of drought and put a stop to the fires, but the boys longed for a chance to try themselves against those great smoke-breathing monsters.
One evening when they had returned late from a long tramp, Scott was thoughtfully watching a great black formless mass standing out against the western twilight and thinking regretfully that it must be ten miles away. There was no wind and the great wavering column boiled upward till it seemed lost in space.
“Fire, fire, everywhere,” he murmured, “and not a spark to fight.”