“Faith, now we will see Alaska; and what we don’t see, Swiftwater is the man to tell us about,” cried the enthusiastic Gerald.
“Well, if we can get him,” said the cautious Don, “there’s nobody we’d like so well.”
“I might as well tell you that it’s all arranged,” said the Colonel. “He was the best man I could find for the work I want done, and I took the first opportunity to arrange with him; but at the same time I am glad that you are all so well satisfied.
“I must have you understand that Swiftwater will be the leader of the party and in all things you will be under his direction. I do not think it will be necessary for me to tell you that the discipline will be perhaps a little more strict than it has been in the ranks of the patrol at home, and while it will not be on an unrestricted army basis, there will be some resemblance and I shall trust to your experience as Scouts to induce in you cheerful acquiescence.”
“It will be something like a campaign then,” suggested Dick.
“It will be a good deal like a campaign,” smilingly replied the Colonel, “and while there will be much that is enjoyable and novel, there won’t be much peaches and cream about it. Plunging into a wilderness as you must, you leave behind all the comforts and most of the sanitary safeguards of civilization, and it is absolutely necessary for the preservation of your health that you adopt certain rules of diet and comfort.”
“Do we have to diet?” inquired Pepper, doubtfully, whose mind reverted to certain milk and porridge days, imposed after an orgy of green fruit and its consequent painful disturbances.
“I didn’t use the word in the sense that you mean, Pepper,” said Col. Snow. “There will be plenty to eat and I hope well prepared, but you must govern yourself as to how you deal with it. Food in most parts of Alaska is a costly proposition, but I guess we shall have enough to go round unless the wild life increases your already healthy appetites.”
“I hae ma doots,” said Don, falling into his Gaelic-accented English, as he often did when he seemed to be wrestling with a problem, “if yon appetite of Pepper’s can increase much wi’out straining the capacity.”
“Look after your own appetite,” said Pepper, growing red, “I read once in a book that four thousand years of oatmeal porridge, three times a day, had wiped out every appetite and spoiled every stomach in Scotland.”