The Boy Scouts in A Trapper's Camp

by Thornton W. Burgess

"How in thunder are we going to?" he demanded, vainly trying to force a shoe down to meet an upraised foot half-way, in the doing of which he once more lost his balance.

"I thought I showed you fellows just how to put your shoes on this morning. A good Scout ought not to have to be shown twice how to do a simple thing like that," said Pat, without cracking a smile. "What kind of Scouts are you, anyway, crying for help the first time you tumble in a little bit of snow?"

"Who's crying for help?" demanded Upton, vainly striving to get a shoe down where he could get his foot into the fastening. "I wouldn't take any help now if I thought I'd got to stay here all day. Take that and that!"

He began to dig furiously with the shoe, throwing the snow with malice aforethought full in Pat's face. Hal instantly took the cue and there was a hasty retreat on the part of their tormentors, in the midst of which Sparrer came to grief and had his turn at the snow-shoer's baptism. In a few minutes Walter had dug away enough snow to get his shoes under him and walked forth in triumph, followed by Hal. Sparrer, anxious to prove himself a good sport, refused all aid. Being small and light he had not sunk in as the others had and managed to get one shoe under him. With this for a support he soon had the other fastened. It was the work of a moment to adjust the first one and he was ready to take his place in line.

There were no more mishaps and as they tramped on through the great still woodland the wonder and the beauty of it silenced them, for it seemed like a vast cathedral in which the human voice would be a profanation of the solemn hush. Upton knew every foot within a radius of two miles of Woodcraft Camp, and for five miles in the direction in which they were heading, and yet not even to Sparrer did the surroundings seem more strange, such is the alchemy of the snow king to make the familiar unfamiliar, the commonplace beautiful. So it was that when at the end of three miles they emerged on the shore of a frozen sheet of water Walter at first failed utterly to recognize it, and it was not until Pat made some reference to the huge pickerel Walter had caught during his first summer at Woodcraft that it dawned on him that this was the very setback where he had discovered Pat's secret fishing grounds and on the shore of which he had given Pat his first lesson in boxing and in the meaning of the word honor.

"I've come over here because Mother insists that a dinner in the woods is no more complete without a fish course than it would be in a New York hotel, and because to tell the truth I have a hankering for a taste of fresh fish myself. Pat, I hope that spring is still open where you put the minnows last fall. Suppose you take this net and pail and see what you can find." He opened a small folding net as he was speaking. "I take it for granted that you youngsters have your belt axes with you, as good Scouts in the woods should. One of you can run over to that alder thicket and cut a dozen straight sticks about three feet long and as thick as my forefinger. The other two can chop holes in the ice. They don't need to be very big, you know, not over a foot across. I suggest that you scatter them pretty well. It adds to the fun to have them some distance apart, and it multiplies the chances of a good catch. While you are doing that I will start a fire and get things started for lunch."

Sparrer, having no axe, but a stout Scout knife, volunteered to cut the alder saplings while Hal and Walter attended to the holes in the ice. Hal was radiant. This was one of the things he had counted on, and he had brought from New York a dozen type, as the modern tip-ups for fishing through the ice are called. But when they had started out that morning he had not dreamed that he would have a chance to use them on a snow-shoe trip, and so they were neatly rolled in his duffle bag at the camp.

"Wonder what kind of a rig the Big Chief has got, and how he's going to use those sticks," said he to Upton as he came up to where Walter was making the ice fly in glittering chips.

"Don't know, but whatever it is you can bet your last dollar it is all right," replied Walter. "How many holes have you cut?"

"Five; I'm going to chop one more over there toward the north shore. How many have you?" replied Hal.