"No, we need neither matches nor gunpowder. I can start a fire anywhere, and so can you, Master Tad," returned Cale.
"I shall believe it after this," nodded Tad.
"Now if you will drive a couple of stakes into the ground on the windward side of the fire, and fasten the blanket up, I think the fire will stay where it is for the rest of the night, unless the wind shifts in the meantime. Come, boys, get the packs under the tent. Make yourselves useful unless you are in no hurry for your supper."
This had the desired effect. The boys hustled. Their good humor returned instantly. Wet as they were—and they could have been no wetter had they jumped into a pond—they forgot all about discomfort in their eagerness to get ready for their late supper. The campfire had been built close to the front of the tent, whose roof, sloping back away from the fire, caught and deflected the heat down over the browse, drying that out very rapidly, filling the little tent with warmth.
"This is what I call fine," declared Chunky, throwing himself down on the browse.
"Come out of that," commanded Tad. "We are not ready to loaf yet. Bring the saddles in and stow them in the corner. Every man must do his part now."
Stacy grumbled at this, but obeyed Tad's command, knowing that if he did not Tad would be after him with a sharp stick. Mr. Vaughn cooked the supper. There was not a great variety—bacon, biscuit and coffee, the water for which had been brought from a nearby spring.
"You see," said Cale, while doing the cooking, "how necessary water is to a camp. Had we not staked down our ponies by the spring here before leaving them this forenoon we would be in a fix now and obliged to go to bed supperless. It would have been a thankless task to look for a spring at this time of the night in the rain. However, I don't need to tell you this. You have been through it before."
"We have," answered Tad. "We have learned the value of water from sad experience."
"So have I," agreed the fat boy. "I use it for washing every day."