Russ Steele asked the boys whether they could hold out for another hour. “I think we can make the logging camp,” he explained. A chorus of “ayes” answered him.
Shortly after one o’clock, Sandy heard a loud crash in the distance. Right after that Russ Steele rallied the boys around him.
“We’re approaching the logging camp,” he told them. “That noise you just heard was a tree being felled. Sandy, we’d better get these Geiger counters out of sight. No use inviting a lot of questions that we can’t answer. We’ll wrap them up in our shelter halves.”
When that had been taken care of, Russ led the way forward. Gradually the trees began to thin out and diminish in size.
“This is a new stand,” Russ explained. “Nowadays, logging companies do as much replanting as they do cutting. With proper methods of conservation, they hope to undo some of the mistakes of their predecessors.”
A quarter of a mile farther on, they emerged into a large clearing in which a half dozen low, sprawling buildings were situated. There was a great deal of activity in the camp. Across the clearing, a convoy of trucks jammed with lumberjacks pulled out of a dirt road and drew up in front of one building where a long line was forming. Whooping and laughing, the lumberjacks vaulted the tail gates of the trucks and piled over the side-boards.
Russ Steele smiled. “Chow time. That’s the mess hall.”
“What’s their hurry?” Quiz asked.
“I guess you get mighty hungry swinging an ax,” Sandy said. “I read once that a logger eats about five thousand calories a day to keep him going, as compared with the three thousand that the average man needs.”
Jerry grunted. “My old man says I must eat close to ten thousand a day, every time he has to pay the grocery bill.”