“That’s the stuff!” cried Walter heartily. “Here’s luck to you, old man! I’m awfully glad we’re friends at last. I’m off to the Durant camp. Got a permit this morning. Never was in a real logging camp, and Pat’s goin’ to show me the whole thing. Keep a stiff upper lip!”
The boys shook hands warmly, and while Walter with a light step and lighter heart hit the trail for the lumber camp Hal resolutely set his face toward Woodcraft. It was not an easy thing that lay before him. It was hard, bitterly hard. He had not realized how hard until he had left Walter and faced the thing alone. Never in his whole pampered life had he had to stand alone on his own feet. Now he faced the severest test a boy can face. Dimly he realized that it was a crisis in his life—a call to his manhood. Could he meet it? Could he?
“I will! I will! I will!” he repeated over and over. “I will! I will! I will!” Presently he began to run, fearing that his courage would fail him before he could find Avery and make a clean breast of matters. When he came in sight of the camp he slowed down. It was going to be even harder than he had thought. Perhaps Avery wouldn’t be there. He found himself hoping that he wouldn’t. Was it really necessary after all to so humiliate himself? Perhaps if he waited a little he could do some big thing that would win the fellows over to him. Other fellows were all the time doing things, why shouldn’t he? There was Billy Buxby with his bee trees and bear. Why couldn’t he do something big like that?
Hal was fighting a battle, the hardest battle that boy or man is ever called to engage in—a battle with self, a fight to a finish for the right to look himself in the face without blushing, a fight for his manhood. Beads of cold perspiration broke out on his forehead. And then he looked up and saw Avery standing in front of the wigwam. The battle would be won or lost in the next few minutes.
For an instant he faltered. Then his jaw shot forward in hard set lines as it had back there in the woods with Walter. “I will! I will! I will!” he muttered. Somehow with every repetition of those little words the way seemed easier. And then in a flash came the idea for the supreme test of the manhood within struggling to come into its own. He began to run once more, to run away from the coward striving to hold him back, from the Hal Harrison he had known so long, that the whole camp knew.
“Chief,” he panted, saluting Avery, “may I—may I see you alone for a few minutes?”
Avery led the way into the deserted wigwam. What passed there is known only to the two lads themselves. When they came out the face of the younger boy was pale, but it bore a look of fixed resolve, and there were lines of character which had wiped out much of the old weakness.
“You are quite sure you want to do this thing, Hal? You know it is not necessary,” said the chief.
“Yes it is necessary—for me,” replied Hal firmly, “and I’ve simply got to do it for—for myself.”
After evening mess Chief Avery requested the Senecas to remain for a few minutes, and after the Hurons had filed out he briefly announced that one of their number wished to say a few words.