"No one ever yet started off on any big jaunt without forgetting something, you know," Greg explained.
"Well, let every fellow take a look around and see if he can find anything that we ought to have, and haven't," suggested Dick.
Six pairs of eyes did some anxious searching.
It was nearly ten o'clock on the morning after Christmas. Dick & Co. stood in Miller's grocery store, having mounted guard over an extensive supply of groceries, meat and personal belongings. What a stack of stuff there was!
Dick and Dave had been delegated to do the buying. Starting with a capital of thirty dollars, they had expended a little more than nineteen dollars with the butcher and grocer. Joe Miller, the grocer's son, had gone to hitch up a pair of horses to a roomy truck wagon. Their conveyance to camp, some twelve miles distant, was to cost them four dollars, and Miller had made a low price at that. Dave, as the treasurer of the outfit, now had nearly seven dollars left, but of this, four would be required to pay Joe Miller for the return trip.
In addition to food supplies, each of the six boys had brought along underclothing, shirts and an extra pair of shoes. These personal belongings were packed in bags.
Then, besides, each boy had a roll of bedding—a pillow, sheets and old blankets and comforters for each. There were also, either in bedding rolls or in bags, some few toilet articles. There was also a box of old kitchen ware. Tom Reade had brought a Rochester lamp; Greg and Dan had contributed lanterns and Dick a dark lantern.
"I see one thing we haven't got, but ought to have," said Harry Hazelton to Dick.
"What's that?" asked the latter.
"A shotgun. Joe Miller has a good one, and I know he'd lend it to us if we asked him."