“Here we be, pard,” said Big Jim as he swung his basket to the ground. “You take this pail an’ follow thet trail yonder till you find a spring, while I dig out th’ grub. Reckon you must be hungry. We’ll hev a bit o’ bacon now and a good square meal to-night.”
It was long past noon, and now that the excitement of the journey was over Walter realized how empty his stomach was. He found the spring easily, and when he returned Big Jim already had his basket unpacked and was just starting the fire. He had cut two bed logs about six feet long and eight or ten inches in diameter. These he had flattened on top and one side and had placed side by side, flat sides opposite and some three inches apart at one end, spreading to ten inches at the other. Between these he had built a fire of hemlock bark started with birch bark, which, by the way, is as good as kerosene for starting a fire. In a few minutes he had a bed of glowing coals over which the frying-pan was soon sizzling, and that most delicious of all odors, frying bacon, mingled with pungent wood smoke, assailed the boy’s eager nostrils.
By making the fireplace and fire in this way, Big Jim explained, the frying-pan rested on an even surface, with a steady even heat beneath it, and one could squat beside it in comfort without becoming unduly heated. At the same time the bacon was cooked thoroughly without scorching.
HE HAD BUILT A FIRE
A kettle of water was set over the coals to wash the tin plates, knives and forks when the meal was over. How good that bacon, bread and butter did taste, washed down by clear cold water! It seemed to the hungry boy that he never had eaten such a meal, its one fault being that there wasn’t enough of it. But Big Jim laughed at him, telling him that that was only a lunch, but that he should have a real dinner at sundown.
When the dishes were cleared away Big Jim took his axe and went back into the woods returning presently with half a dozen forked sticks of green wood. Two of these about four feet long were driven into the ground, one at each end of the fireplace. Across them, supported in the forks, was laid a straight young sapling which the guide called a lug-pole. Then he took one of the other sticks and cut it off about three inches above the fork or crotch, leaving a good hand grasp. One branch was cut off some four inches from the fork, the other branch being left long enough so that when a small nail was driven in the end on the opposite side from the short part of the fork and the fork inverted over the lug-stick a pail hung from the nail would swing just over the coals. Other sticks were made in the same way, but of varying lengths. The camp range was then complete.
The long sticks (they are called pot-hooks) were for bringing a kettle close to the fire, while the shorter ones would allow of keeping things simmering without boiling or danger of burning. Moreover, by simply taking up a pot-hook by the hand grasp a kettle could be moved anywhere along the lug-stick away from the hottest part of the fire without burning the hands. It was simple, quickly made, yet for all top cooking as effective as the gas range at home, and Walter felt that he had learned an important lesson in woodcraft.
After the dishes were cleared away Big Jim led the way to a balsam thicket, taking with him two straight sticks about four feet long, hooked at the lower end. With his axe he rapidly lopped over a mass of balsam twigs, showing Walter how to slip them on to the long sticks so that when he had finished they had two big green spicy cylindrical piles of balsam with a hand grasp at the top to carry them by. Returning to camp Jim rapidly made up two beds. Small boughs were laid first, overlapping so that the butts were hidden. A deep layer of the small twigs were then laid on in the same way and behold! a bed a king might covet!