"We'll just carry them with us, Lew. We won't take any chances on death by snake-bite. These mountains are full of rattlers and copperheads."
"And we won't take any chances on being bitten in this thicket, either," answered Lew. "We'll put the pup in ahead of us."
They whistled in the dog and sent him scouring through the thicket. But either there had been no more snakes within it or else all had fled, for the dog raced eagerly about but found nothing to alarm him.
Confidently the boys now pushed into the interior of the thicket. At the very heart of it lay the spring. It came bubbling up through pure, white sand, and had formed a deep basin, over the lower edge of which the crystal water went rippling away through the thicket.
"We'll put our tent right here," said Charley, indicating a level spot beside the spring basin. "We'll have to clear away some of the bushes to make room for it. We can use what we cut as a screen, though nobody would ever see a tent away in here, especially one of brown khaki, like ours."
He drew his little axe and began clearing a space for the tent, cutting the rhododendron stems a little below the surface of the ground. Lew piled the branches at one side. Then the tent was dragged in and set up, the rope being used as a ridge and tied to two strong saplings. The sides of the tent were squared and pegged down.
"Drive the pegs tight, Lew," directed Charley. "We don't want to have anything crawling under the sides. Thank goodness, we have a sod cloth."
After they had completed this task and set about bringing in the duffel, Charley remarked, "We can't go in and out this way, on our hands and knees. We've got to make a path. We'll find the best way out and trim the bushes so that we can walk upright."
"We'd better not make the path straight," said Lew. "If we zigzag it, nobody will know it really is a path."
After they had picked out a level route they trimmed back the rhododendron branches so that they could walk through the thicket, though the branches at the very edge were left undisturbed. The cut branches were added to the screen about the tent. Then the duffel was carried in and stowed in the tent.