As this was the first outing they had had it was decided to take sufficient provisions and firewood with them to last until the next day and stay over night if they found encouraging fishing up the stream, and to return before dark on Sunday.
“While I like to make Sunday a pretty good day, when I can,” said the miner, “I think that our necessity for fresh fish and vegetables makes this trip a work of necessity.”
It was decided that two of the boys should stay and guard the camp, and Rand and Jack expressed a willingness to do so when they saw that Pepper and Dick were both anxious to get away from the monotony of the place they had been tied up to for weeks. So with Swiftwater and Gerald poling on one side and Don and Dick on the other, and Pepper at the long steering oar in the rear the boat was pushed off into midstream with a bugle Scout salute from the garrison left behind.
The day was beautiful, and nearly as warm as midsummer in New England. The trip up to the meadows would have proven uneventful except for the unparalleled energy of Pepper, who, as Dick said, was “always sticking his oar in at unexpected times.” As the boat steered easily he attempted to aid the polesmen by pushing at times with his long stern sweep, until at an unexpected moment the blade of the oar slipped between two rocks and down into the soft bottom and stuck there straight upright, dragging the bewildered Pepper, who clung to it, completely off the stern of the boat.
The frightened young Scout, not knowing how deep the water was under him, wrapped his legs around the sweep which remained upright, and clung to it yelling for help.
The impetus of the boat carried the craft on about twenty-five feet before it was stopped by the current, for the polesmen had stopped work and turned around to whoop with laughter and delight when they saw the ridiculous figure perched on the oar in midstream still crying for rescue.
Shouting words of encouragement they let the boat drift slowly down stream again. Before they reached him, Pepper’s strength gave out, and he slid slowly down the sweep, and was preparing to battle for his life in the icy water when his moccasins brought upon a rock in a foot of water, and he pulled the oar loose, and as the stern of the boat reached him stepped aboard with a foolish expression on his face, barely wet to the knees.
It would be cruel to Pepper to record in this history the sarcastic expressions of admiration for his agility and ability “to reach out and grab trouble every time it went by,” as Dick expressed it. There were references to the “champeen pole vault of Alaska; height ten feet; depth, twelve inches,” “veteran oarsman of the Gold,” “Rocked into the Cradle of the Deep,” but the last comment which brought out the old Pepperian red through the tan and the yellow of the mosquito “dope” was a quotation from an old boyhood rhyme made by Gerald, apropos of “appearances.”
| “Willie had a purple monkey, climbing on a yellow stick, Willie sucked the purple monkey and it made him deadly sick.” |