“That’s what you think now,” the old man answered, becoming serious again;—“that’s what I thought, too, the first time I tasted it. It tasted to me then like a mixture of burnt moccasin leather and boot grease. But wait until you have hit the trail for ten hours in the cold, when you’re too tired to lift your feet from the ground, and you’ll think differently. You’ll agree with me then that a chunk of this pemmican as big as your two fists is only just one third big enough, and tastes like the best maple sugar you ever ate.”
But the boy still made wry faces, and shook his head. “What do they put into it to make it taste so?” he asked. “Or why don’t they flavor it with something?”
“Oh, they flavor it,” Martin explained, laughing. “They flavor it with grease poured all over it after they have dried the meat that it is made of, and pounded it up into fine grains. But take my word for it that when you try it next time, somewhere out there in the wilderness two or three weeks from now, you’ll say that they flavor it just right.”
“But we needn’t worry about that now,” he added. “What we need more than anything else for to-night is a big lot of fire-wood, green and dry both. Take the axe and get in all you can between now and night. I want plenty of wood to use in teaching you how to make two other kinds of fires. Do you suppose you could cut down a tree about a foot in diameter?”
Larry thought he could. Some lumbermen in the Adirondacks had shown him how a tree could be felled in any direction by chopping a deep notch low down, and another higher up on the opposite side. He knew also about stepping to one side and away from the butt to avoid the possible kick-back of the trunk when the tree fell.
So he selected a tree of the right size as near the tent as he could find one, felled it after much futile chopping and many rests for breath, and cut it into logs about six feet long. When he had finished he called the two dogs, put a harness on each, hitched them up tandem, and fastened the hauling rope to the end of one of the logs. Martin had suggested that he do this, so as to get accustomed to driving the dogs, and get the big fellows accustomed to being driven by him.
The dogs, full of energy were eager for the work, and at the word sprang forward, yelping and straining at the straps, exerting every ounce of strength in their powerful bodies. The log was a heavy one, and at first they could barely move it; but after creeping along for a few inches it gradually gained speed on the thin snow, and was brought into camp on the run. Even in the excitement of shouting to the struggling dogs and helping with an occasional push, Larry noticed the intelligence shown by the animals in swinging from one side to the other, feeling for the best position to get leverage, and taking advantage of the likely places.
They seemed to enter into the spirit of the work, too, rushing madly back to the woods after each log or limb had been deposited at the tent, and waiting impatiently for Larry to make up the bundles of wood and fasten the draw rope. Working at this high pressure the boy and dogs soon had a huge pile of fire-wood at Martin’s disposal, and by the time the old hunter had finished his task, had laid in a three days’ supply.
“Now you build a ‘cooking fire,’ such as I made this morning, and get supper going,” said Martin, coming over to the tent; “and while you are doing that I’ll be fixing up another kind of a fire—one called a ‘trapper’s fire,’ which is built for throwing heat into a tent.”
The old hunter then drove two stakes into the ground directly in front of the opening of the tent and six feet from it, the stakes being about five feet apart and set at right angles to the open flaps. Against these stakes he piled three of the green logs Larry had cut, one on top of the other like the beginning of a log house, and held them in place by two stakes driven in front, opposite the two first stakes. Next he selected two green sticks about four inches in diameter and three feet long, and placed them like the andirons in a fireplace, the wall of logs serving as a reflecting surface like the back wall of a chimney. Across these logs he now laid a fire, just as one would in a fireplace.