The Boy Scouts in A Trapper's Camp

by Thornton W. Burgess

The doctor and Mrs. Merriam now joined them, for the latter was an expert on shoes and had no mind to miss the outing. Pat and the doctor swung to their backs the packs wherein were the supplies and dishes, and they were off, the doctor in the lead, Mrs. Merriam next, then Sparrer, Hal, Upton and Pat in the rear to keep the tenderfeet from straggling and to pull them out of the snow, he explained.

For a short distance a broken trail was followed. Then the doctor abruptly swung off among the trees where the snow lay deep and unbroken. The three novices soon found that progress here was a very different matter from walking on the comparatively hard surface of the packed trail. The shoes sank in perhaps a couple of inches and it was necessary to lift the feet more, to step high, which put more of a strain on the muscles. Also there was a tendency to step higher than was at all in good form, and to shorten the stride by so doing, losing the smooth easy forward roll from the hips.

Still, all things considered, the three novices were doing themselves proud until in an unguarded moment Hal stepped on the stub of a broken branch of a fallen tree buried in the snow. It caught in the tail of the shoe just enough to break his stride. He took a short step to catch his balance, stumbled and took a beautiful header. At Pat's roar of laughter the others turned to see two big webs wildly waving above the snow and nothing more of the unfortunate Hal. Now being plunged head first into deep snow with a pair of snow-shoes on your feet is a good deal like being thrown into the water with a life preserver fast to your feet—you can't get them down. For a few moments the others howled with glee as they watched the frantically kicking legs and listened to the smothered appeals for help from the luckless victim. Then Pat reached out and loosened the shoes, gripped Hal by the ankles and drew him forth, red in the face from his exertions and spitting out snow. He looked so wholly bewildered and withal so chagrined and foolish that he was greeted with a fresh peal of laughter, to which he responded with a sheepish grin as he tried to get the snow out of his neck and from up his sleeves.

"There's nothing to it, nothing at all!" jeered Walter.

"I didn't know but you thought you heard that black fox down there and were trying to get him," said Pat.

At that instant Upton involuntarily stepped back, a thing for which snow-shoes were never designed, and a second later had measured his length in the snow. Falling at full length he did not disappear as Hal had done, but he was hardly less helpless. Every effort to help himself by putting his hands down was futile. He simply buried his arms to the shoulders in the yielding snow without finding anything on which to get a purchase. Hal was jubilant.

"When you're down stay down!" he yelped. "Laugh at me, will you?"

Walter had by this time managed to kick his shoes off and once free of these was soon on his feet and was enjoying the joke as much as any one. Both he and Hal were up to their hips in the snow, for here among the evergreens it had not packed and flounder as they would they could not get out.

The doctor's eyes twinkled as he picked up Hal's shoes and handed them to him. "Well, boys," said he, "it's high time we were hitting the trail again. Suppose you put your shoes on, and we'll make up for lost time."

Hal took the shoes and then looked helplessly across at Walter, who had just secured his, and it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps the doctor's remark was not so guileless as it seemed.