"Here," he objected. "Do you think we ought to do that? You know sometimes a tin can gives off poison when you cook in it."
"And we don't know what was in this can," added Van Sant. "We don't want to get ptomaine poisoning. I'd rather unpack ten packs than run any risk."
That was sense. The can looked clean, inside, and the idea of being made sick by it hadn't occurred to us Elks. But we remembered, now, some things that we'd read. So we kicked the can to one side, that nobody else should use it, and Fitz made the soup in a regulation dish from the Red Fox aluminum kit. (Note 62.)
We drank the soup and each chewed a slice of the bear-meat cold. It was sweet and good, and the soup helped out. Then we rolled in our blankets and went to sleep. We all had it on our minds to wake in four hours, and the mind is a regular clock if you train it.
I woke just about right, according to the stars. The two stars in the bottom of the Little Dipper, that we used for an hour hand, had been exactly above a pointed spruce, when I had dozed off, and now when I looked they had moved about three feet around the Pole Star. While I lay blinking and warm and comfortable, and not thinking of anything in particular, I heard a crackle of sticks and the scratch of a match. And there squatting on the edge of a shadow was somebody already up and making a fire.
"Is that you, Fitz?" asked Major Henry.
"Yes. You fellows lie still a few seconds longer and I'll have some tea for you."
Good old Fitz! He need not have done that. He had not been ordered to. But it was a thoughtful Scout act—and was a Fitz act, to boot.
Scouts Ward and Van Sant were awake now; and we all lay watching Fitz, and waiting, as he had asked us to. Then when we saw him put in the tea—
"Levez!" spoke Major Henry; which is the old trapper custom. "Levez! Get up!" (Note 63.)