“This is the place,” said John, in high glee; “we’ll have the hemlock to make a fire under, and the old pine for our bedroom.”
He got into the tree, and scraping some dry splinters from the inside of it, struck fire with his flint and steel, and kindled them. It was not John’s design to build his fire in the old pine, only to kindle it there, because it was a dry place. He now took the blazing wood up, and put it on the ground under the hemlocks, and the rest fed the flame with dry pieces torn from the inside of the pine, till they had a bright blaze. By this light they stripped bark from the birches, picked up pitch knots, and dragged dead branches, which, though wet on the outside, the fire was now hot enough to burn. They now threw themselves upon the ground, which was thoroughly dried by the tremendous heat.
“A maple is a beautiful tree to look at,” said John; “but give me an old hemlock for a rain-storm, and to build a fire under.”
Charlie, to whom such scenes were altogether new, was in raptures.
“I didn’t know before,” he said, “that you could make a fire in the woods in a rain-storm. I never saw any woods till I came to this country, and don’t know anything about such things as you and Fred, that have been brought up in them.”
“There are always places,” replied John, “in thick forests,—hollow trees, the north-west side of logs, and in hollow logs, where the wet never gets: in those places you can always find dry stuff, and, when you get a hot fire, wet or green wood will burn.”
“It seems so wild and independent; no dukes, and earls, and gamekeepers to watch you, but just go where you please, kill and eat. We will go some time, and do what we were telling about,—live wild,—won’t we, John?”
“Yes; after father gets home. You get Uncle Isaac to tell you about how the Indians do, and I will, too.”
“Yes; and I shall learn to shoot better with a gun by that time, and you will learn to shoot with a bow. I tell you what, I like to contrive and make shifts, and get along so, better than I do to have everything to do with, or have everything done for me. I’m such a fool, I expect I shall hate to give up my birch-bark sail when I get a good one.”
“So do I. Ben is the greatest for that, and so is father; you can’t get either of them in so tight a place that they can’t get out of it. It seems to come natural to them to contrive; they don’t have to stop and think about it, like other folks do.”