The table laid, they watched Ben open the bake-hole and lift out the beanpot. To their surprise, in that hole there were still coals which gleamed the moment the air reached them, and the pot was so hot that it was handled with some caution and difficulty. When the embers were fully removed from the cover, Stone opened the pot, and immediately an aroma rose that brought exclamations of delight from everyone. The beans were smooth and full and brown and perfectly baked.
“I tut-take it all back,” cried Springer. “I offer a humble apology, chef. Say, you’re a wizard.”
“The greatest cook that ever came daown the pike, that’s what he is,” pronounced Crane. “Oh gimme a dip at them beans before I expire.”
Now for breakfast, under ordinary conditions, beans are a hearty food indeed; but the short time they had been in camp had prepared the lads to relish just such heavy food, and digest it, too. Therefore, like the supper of the previous night, this breakfast was voted a tremendous success.
Shortly after breakfast Crane suddenly started up in a listening attitude, and, observing him, the others also listened, hearing the sound of wagon-wheels a short distance away in the woods. A look of almost savage joy contorted Sile’s features as he hissed:
“Here comes that confaounded Dutch boy! Yeou watch me! I’ll scare him into fits.”
But when he hurried forward, eager to put his hands on Carl, he met with a surprise. Drawing the wagon, the old white horse came into view, but the person on the wagon-seat was not Carl. Instead, it was a fat, placid, moon-faced man, who was smoking a huge crooked pipe.
“Hang it!” growled Sile, halting abruptly. “It’s the old Dutchman himself!”
“How you vas, poys?” gurgled Herman Duckelstein, without offering to step down from the wagon. “You can took dose thing vot I haf prought; undt I vill aroundt turn. A crate hurry I vas in.”
“Huh!” exploded Sile. “Where’s that boy of yourn?”