THE MAP
"Yes, fellows, I guess we're in for a lot more adventures; finding that mine isn't going to be so easy—mountains to climb, swift streams to ford, and—"
"Lots of wild animals between us and the gold, Bob Somers," finished Dick Travers, with a chuckle, as he shied a towel in the direction of stout Dave Brandon, who lay in his bunk, with one leg hanging over the side.
"And whoever imagined that good old Wanatoma, just because he thinks the Ramblers saved his life, would have given us his great secret, so that—"
"Listen to him," chirped little Tom Clifton. "Thinks!—thinks! Why, the Ramblers did save his life; isn't that so, Jacky Conroy?"
He turned toward a tall, athletic-looking boy sitting near the stove.
"No mistake about it, Tommy; that forest fire was almost the end of poor old Wanna. And the way he's acted about this gold mine shows he's made of the right stuff. Still—"
The big lad rose to his feet, began to whistle discordantly, and grinned as five pairs of scornful eyes were leveled toward him.
The boys were on a visit to Tim Lovell's uncle, a lumberman and mill owner whose logging camp was situated on the Columbia River in the state of Washington. At first Jack, who was a city boy, had found that roughing it was not altogether to his liking. There were many discomforts; bugs and other insects, both crawling and flying, seemed to have no manners whatever; and his nice white hands sometimes got sadly begrimed with dirt.
But, gradually, life in the deep forest among the lumberjacks had awakened another spirit within him—a determination to show his chums that he could, if he chose, be just as good a woodsman as they. With this dawning of a new feeling, his dislikes began to vanish—that is, when the weather wasn't rainy or cold and the boys didn't drag him too far away from camp.