Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains

by George Cary Eggleston

"There you doubters!" he said as he flung down the birds, "I promised you a turkey dinner for Christmas and I've kept my word. It only remains for Ed to cook the big bird properly and I haven't the least doubt that he'll do that. The other two will keep in such weather as this as long as we care to keep them. What with the game we already have on hand, and these three turkeys, I think we're in no pressing danger of an outbreak of scurvy in camp, are we Doctor?"

"So long as you are around, Tom," answered the Doctor, "I shall feel no apprehension of scurvy, and still less of starvation."

Tom had shown his spoil at that part of the camp where the other boys were chopping. Having done so he carried the turkeys to the house and delivered them over to Ed, who, incapacitated for other work by his wound, had made himself at once sentinel in charge of the prisoner and company cook.

As soon as Tom left the choppers, Jack stopped his work, and said to the others:

"I say, boys, Tom was a Christmas baby, and this coming Christmas day will be his eighteenth birthday. Isn't there any way in which we can celebrate it?"

"Yes," answered the Doctor, "We'll give a big dinner in his honor on that occasion and surprise him with it. I have been jealously saving a few onions and potatoes that I brought up the mountain in my pack. I have carefully guarded them against frost as well as against use, meaning to keep them all winter in case scurvy should appear among us. But evidently Tom is taking care of that by keeping us abundantly supplied with fresh meat. So I'm going to suggest to Ed that on Christmas day he roast the onions in a pan or skillet and bake the potatoes in the ashes. That, with the big turkey, will give us a dinner fit for princes."

"Good!" cried the others, "and we'll pretend to forget all about it's being Tom's birthday," added Jim Chenowith, "till the dinner is dished up in his honor. Then we'll congratulate him."

Ed fell in with the plan with all heartiness when he was told of it. He was a notably good cook considering that he was a boy, and he was determined to produce the best result he could with the meagre means at his disposal.

On Christmas morning he took the giblets of his big turkey—the gizzard, liver, heart, the outer ends of the wings and the upper part of the neck, and put them on the fire to stew.

Then he puzzled his brain over the question of a stuffing for the gigantic turkey. He had no wheaten bread of any kind, and he doubted that corn bread could be made to answer. Just then he remembered that a box of crackers, two-thirds full, remained among Camp Venture's stores. He hunted them out and took as many of them as he needed. He toasted each to a rich crisp brown. When all were toasted he reduced them to crumbs. Next he mixed the crumbs together with the bacon fat drippings that he had made the boys save from their broiling. He added just enough water to make the mass half adhere together. Then he chopped up one small onion and mixed it with the stuffing. After adding a little chopped bacon and a liberal supply of black pepper, he pressed the whole mass into the hollow of the big bird and hung the turkey up before the fire to roast, placing a dripping pan under it, setting it whirling at the end of a string, and from time to time basting it with the drippings that fell into the pan.