And the incident ended without any torn fur flying its flag of pain on the summer air.
The flag of feud between the two boys, Starrie Chase and Nixon, was not, however, immediately lowered. Coombsie—a studious, thoughtful lad—had the unhappy feeling of having brought two strange fires together which might at any moment result in an explosion that would be especially disastrous on this the first day of his cousin’s visit to him.
But as one lad has remarked: “Two boys cannot remain mad with each other long: there’s always too much doing!”
And everybody knows that sawdust smothers smouldering fire! It did in this instance. After about ten minutes of “grouchy” but uneventful tramping, the forest explorers came to a logging camp, a rude shanty, flanked by a yellow mountain of sawdust where a portable sawmill had been set up during the preceding winter and taken down in spring.
In spite of the fact that so much lay before them to be seen in the woods—if haply they might arrive at the various points of heart’s desire—it was not in boy-nature to refrain from scaling that unstable, shelving sawdust peak for a better view onward into those shadowy woods. And a lusty sham battle ensued, in the midst of which Leon found occasion to repay the trick played on him with the pitchfork seeds by slipping a handful of sawdust inside the scout’s khaki collar.
“Whew! that’s worse than the devil’s pitchforks,” groaned the latter, writhing and squirming in his tan shirt.
But does not a trifling discomfort under such circumstances enhance while curbing the enjoyment of a boy, tying him to earth, when his young spirit like an aeroplane, winged with sheer joy of life and youthful daring, feels as if it could spurn that earth sphere as too limited, and, riding on the breeze of heaven, seek adventure among the clouds?
In such a mood the four boys, drinking in the odor of the pine-trees as a fillip to delight, were presently exploring the loggers’ shanty, with its rude bunks, oilcloth-covered table, here an old magazine, there a worn-out stocking, relics of human habitation.
“Nobody occupies this camp during the summer, ” said Leon. “I think Toiney Leduc and another man worked up here last winter.”
“I’m pretty sure that Toiney did! Look there!” The scout was unfolding a piece of charred paper pinioned in a corner by a tomato can; it was a printed fragment of a French-Canadian voyageur song, at sight of which the boys made the shanty ring with:—