The teamsters grunted when he shook them, and followed him out of the frowsy, snore-fretted atmosphere of the big camp. They did their morning yawnings and stretching as they walked. When Duty calls “Time!” to a woodsman the body is on the dot, even if the soul lags unwillingly.
The humorists of the woods have it that the cookee pries up the sun when he jacks the big pot out of the bean-hole. For such an important operation, “Dirty-apron Harry” went at it listlessly.
The bean-hole was beyond the horse-hovel, sheltered in the angle of a little palisade of poles whose protection would be needed when the winter’s snows drifted. Harry wearily dragged a hoe in that direction after he had kindled a fire in the cook-house stove. He did not look up to the first pearly sheen of sunrise streaming through the yellow of the frost-touched birches. The glory of the skies would wake him too soon. He gave up the final fuddle of slumber grudgingly, his dull mind still piecing the visions of the night, his soul full of loathing for the workaday world of greasy pots and dirty tins. But when he turned the corner of the bean-hole shelter he dropped out of dreams with the suddenest jolt of his life. A black bear was trying to dig up the bean-pot, growling softly at the heat of the round stones she uncovered. Two cubs sat near by, watching operations with great interest, their round ears up-cocked, their jaws drooling expectantly. The big bear whirled promptly and cuffed the hoe out of Harry’s limp grasp, leaped past him before his trembling legs could move him, and scuffed away into the woods, with her progeny crowding close to her sheltering bulk. The cookee sped in the other direction towards the hovel with as great alacrity.
“Bears?” echoed “Push Charlie,” appearing with his pitchfork at the hovel door. “Stop your squawkin’. I seen half a dozen yistiddy, and all of ’em streakin’ north up this valley. Heard ’em whooffing and barkin’ last night, travellin’ past here on the hemlock benches.” He pointed his fork at the terraced sides of the valley above them.
“It’s only excursion parties bound for the Bears’ Annooal Convention up at Telos Gorge,” suggested “Icicle Ike,” rapping the chaff out of a peck measure.
The cookee, woods-camp traditional butt of jokes, stared from one to the other, trying to recover his composure.
“And Marm Bear there wanted to take along that pot of beans for the picnic dinner,” added Charlie.
“I think it’s goin’ to be a general mass-meetin’ to discuss the game laws,” said Ike. “The boys who were swampin’ the twitch-roads yistiddy told me that deer kept traipsin’ past all day and—well, there goes three now.”
White “flags” flitted through the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing, and a startled “Whick-i-whick!” further up the valley-side hinted at the retreat of still others. Their departure was probably hastened by the cook’s shrill “Who-e-e-e!” the general call for the camp. He came out of the cook-house scrubbing his hands and bare arms with a towel.
“Git that bean-pot here! What are you standin’ round on one foot for?” he demanded, testily. When the cookee began to stutter explanations, brandishing freckled arms to point the route of the fugitives, the cook interrupted, but now there was humor in his tones.