“What shall we do to-day?” Buster Billings asked, when the dishes had been washed and all put away as in a town house. The boys were determined to be as methodical and as cleanly as this very handsome camp demanded of its occupants.
“Seems to me that we ought to lay out all of our stuff to-day, clean our guns, get out the fishing tackle, and generally prepare for the real purpose of our camp,” Frank suggested. “There’s almost a day’s work just getting our staff untangled and cleaned up.”
It did require most of the day. The boys laughed and joked as they worked, and Buster twice found his tackle badly twisted and snarled when he had gone out for buckets of water.
“Wonder where the tramps went,” Lanky said, happening to think of the intruders of the previous day. “Think they found a camp farther along the lake?”
There was nothing else to guess, inasmuch as the men had not come back this way, or, at least, the boys had not seen them come back.
“One of the things we should do, and we ought to do it each day, too,” remarked Frank. “That is, we ought to cut down a tree and put logs on the pile behind the house. When we came here we found logs ready cut and we ought to leave with the pile the same size.”
“Do that on the last day,” suggested Lanky lazily.
“And it won’t be done,” Frank laughed. “To-morrow, before we do anything else, we’re going to take those two axes and cut enough wood to replenish the pile. That’s only fair.”
“I think that’s fair, too,” agreed Lanky. “There are only two axes. Of course there is none for me, and I don’t know who else.”
“One of those axe handles is an exact fit for your hand,” remarked Paul Bird. “You see, you square the length and breadth of your hand and subtract it——”