Chums of the Camp Fire

by Lawrence J. Leslie

Even the wildcat seemed to be pretty friendly on this occasion, and growled in a lower key than usual when Toby was pushing the meat scraps through the openings between the bars of its cage.

Toby was mentally exulting in the possibility that his collection might soon be added to by the coming of that partly grown black bear cub, which Bandy-legs had half promised to let him have.

He even figured out just where he would keep Nicodemus fastened, and what kind of a cage he would have to construct for him; because he had never fully liked the one now being used as a place of shelter for the cub, Bandy-legs not being much of a carpenter, to tell the truth.

It was with his mind filled with future triumphs in this line of collecting wild animals that Toby sat him down to supper that evening. He was unusually quiet, because he was thinking, and planning, and seeing visions of great things to come to pass in the distant future.

When his father asked him how the frog hunt had come out he did manage to arouse himself sufficiently to narrate some of the particulars, especially Steve's getting such a monster hermit frog, his falling into the pond, their making a fire to dry his clothes, and finally how he stopped the runaway horse under a misunderstanding and never got even so much as a word of thanks from the pretty inmate of the buggy.

Now at home, when he knew his folks were taking note of his manner of speech, it was singular how free from stuttering Toby's language could be. He just gripped himself, and was careful to speak slowly and distinctly, pronouncing every word as though he were a foreigner trying to pick up English.

And after all that is the only true way for a stammering boy to cure himself; if Toby had been as careful when among his chums as he was at home, he would have undoubtedly thrown the habit away long ago. But then there were plenty of causes for excitement in a warm baseball game, or when indulging in a swimming match, which he did not encounter at home; and this excitement was the main cause for his failure to speak distinctly.

He sat reading until it was bedtime, for he happened to have an interesting book, taken from the public library, and all about the different animals seen by a traveler in the heart of the African forest. It was highly embellished with colored pictures, supposed to be produced from photographs which this daring explorer had taken while concealed near some waterhole, where the animals of the forest were in the habit of coming to drink nights, and a flashlight camera helped catch them true to nature.

All of this is told with an object in view. It would serve to explain why Toby must have dreamed that he too was a bold traveler in this foreign wilderness, and reveling in the wonderful sights to be met with there.

Once during the night he was awakened by the rush of the wind, as the storm that Max had told them would come along during the night, swooped down upon Carson to blow a few trees over, and hit the tall steeple of the Methodist church again, possibly wrecking it for the fourth time in as many years.