“Wait and see,” Barry said, and we did, but kept wondering, “Why on earth?” We got two other rocks also, while the rest of the gang helped put up the tents and made things ready for our first night’s sleep. I had a tingling feeling all inside of me, and just knew we were going to have the most wonderful time of our lives.
It didn’t take us long to get supper over, which we cooked ourselves on a little two-burner pressure gas stove which Barry had brought along, he not wanting us to take time to cook in real Indian style, which we would most of the time.
“Ouch!” different ones of us said to each other and all of a sudden started slapping around at mosquitoes.
“Here—rub this on,” Barry said, “and be careful not to get any too near your eyes and lips.” He handed us a couple of bottles of mosquito lotion and we smeared our bare hands and ankles and necks and ears and faces with the sickenishly-sweetish-smelling stuff, and right away it was just like there wasn’t a mosquito in the world.
Santa came over and we all sat around the camp fire, with the pretty sparks and flames playing above the beds of coal and the four large roundish rocks in the middle of it.
After we’d all listened to Barry tell us an honest-to-goodness Bible story about something that had happened on Galilee Lake once, we all took turns telling made-up stories. It was Little Jim who suggested we all make up Paul Bunyan stories and since it was a good idea, we decided to try to see who could make up the best one, and so we started. First, though, Barry told us the thrilling and very interesting Bible story, which maybe I ought to tell you here myself, ’cause it was one of the best stories a real red-blooded gang of boys ever heard.
All of us were in a sort of half circle around the camp fire, on blankets and also on each other, some of us leaning up against each other, like right that minute I was against Poetry.... “Get over,” Poetry said to me. “Don’t crowd so close.”
“I’m trying to get warm,” I said. “It’s cold. I’m using you for a windbreak.”
And Circus said to Poetry—“You’re a windbreak when it’s cold, and when it’s hot we lie behind you in the shade,”—Poetry, as you know, being fat as a small cow. Most of us giggled, except Poetry.
“It happened like this,” Barry began,—and I noticed Little Jim reach into his vest pocket, and pull out his New Testament to look up the place where Barry was getting the story from. I did the same, and so did most of the gang, except Tom Till who had forgotten to bring his. I looked at him and he swallowed like he was embarrassed, so I reached out mine to him and he sort of looked on, although I knew he couldn’t see very well, and wasn’t very good at reading the Bible anyway. Besides it was more interesting to watch Barry’s brown face and his one all-gold front tooth sparkling in the firelight when he talked.