He soon discovered the difference between his new clothes and the “city” ones he had discarded. Even the fury of the blizzard could not force the piercing cold through the thick, soft Mackinaw cloth; and with the exception of the end of his nose, he was as warm as toast as he worked under the hunter’s directions.
One side and the back of their tent was protected from the wind by the wall of rock, and the fire checked the fury of the storm from the front; but the snow drifted in on them from the unprotected side, and they remedied this by stretching a piece of canvas across the gap. It was no easy task, and several times the wind tore it away before they could get it anchored securely, but when it was finally made storm proof the enclosure before the roaring fire was almost as warm and comfortable as a house.
“Now for your equipment,” Martin announced, when everything was secured to his complete satisfaction.
Larry found that a light hunting hatchet and a stout hunting knife had been added to his belt of cartridges, suspended in leather sheaths from loops slipped over the belt. The belt itself was passed through the loops in the jacket, so that the weight came upon his shoulders instead of his waist, and when buckled, drew the coat snugly around him. The gun in its sheath was slung over his shoulder and hung at his left side. His fur mittens were fastened with leather strings to the coat sleeves so that there was no possibility of losing them even when slipped off.
There was a pocket compass in a hunting case about the size of a watch which fitted into an upper pocket of his jacket which had a button flap for holding it. As an additional precaution against losing it a leather string reached from the inside of the pocket and was fastened to the ring. And Larry found that his watch was secured in his watch-pocket in a similar manner.
“We can’t take a chance on losing anything,” the hunter explained; “for there are no jewelry stores along the road that we are going to travel.”
Larry found that there were three water-proof match boxes to be distributed in his trousers’ pockets, and a pocket knife that combined several kinds of useful tools. The matches seemed to be the ordinary parlor kind. But Martin surprised him by taking one, dipping it in a cup of water, and then after wiping it off, lighting it like an ordinary dry match. Even after a match had been floating in the water for several minutes it would light and burn readily.
“They’ve all been dipped in shellac,” Martin explained. “The shellac forms a water-proof coating that keeps out moisture but doesn’t interfere with lighting or burning. So even if your match safe leaks you won’t have to go without a fire.”
In one box which Larry thought contained matches he found six little cubes looking like wax run into little square aluminum cups. Martin explained their use by a simple demonstration. He placed one of them on the ground where he had scraped away the snow, laid a handful of sticks over it, struck a match and touched the wax-like substance. It burst into a bright flame at once, and continued to burn fiercely for several minutes, igniting the sticks about it and helping to keep their struggling flames going until enough heat had been generated to make a steady fire.
“That’s a new fangled thing called ‘solid alcohol,’ used to start a tenderfoot’s fire when he is wet and cold and has no little dry twigs at hand,” said Martin. “An old woodsmen like me ought to throw the stuff away and scorn to use it; and forty years ago I would have done so. But I am wiser now, I hope, and I don’t despise some of the new things as I did then. And I remember two different occasions when I came near losing my life in the snow because my hands were so cold and numb, and the small wood was so scarce, that I came near not getting my fire started at all. So now I am going to take along a few packages of these cubes, and you must do the same. We’ll never use it except as a last resort; but sometime it may come in handy for starting a fire or boiling a cup of tea.