Lester doubled his fist, and tightened the muscles of his arm, and Bennie and Spider hit him above the elbow. To their amazement, he was hard—at that point, anyway. They looked at him with new respect.
“Just the same,” Bennie said, “I hope you fried that rope good and plenty.”
(“He looks just like an apple dumpling,” Spider whispered to Bennie, a minute later.)
(“Sure, let’s call him Dumpling,” Bennie whispered back.)
(“Guess we’d better not begin right now,” Spider suggested. “That guy’d make a great guard on our football team.”)
(“If he fell on the ball, it would explode,” laughed Spider.)
The rest of the evening was spent in going over the maps of Oregon, to lay out their trip, and in planning equipment. They were to be gone six weeks or more, and expected to camp all the time. As they were going to get from place to place in only two motor cars, which between them had to carry five passengers and all the equipment, it took close figuring. The scouts, of course, didn’t have much to say about all this. They just sat and listened, because they were guests, and, besides, they had never been off on such an expedition.
But what fun it was only to listen! Have you ever been off on a camping trip? Of course you have. So you know the joy of getting together a day or two before the start, each person with a list of things he thinks ought to be taken, and then going over the lists, checking them off to see that nothing is being taken that is not needed, and nothing is forgotten that is needed. It’s almost as much fun as the trip itself.
The scouts soon discovered that Mr. Stone was as jolly as Uncle Billy, and that “Dumpling” was even fuller of fun than his father. Before an hour had passed, the scouts were calling him Dumpling to his face, and then his father and the doctor took it up; but Dumpling himself only grinned the broader and said, “Ho, I don’t care what you call me, so long’s you call me to dinner.”
The next morning the boys were up early, and out of the house, to get a glimpse across the city of the white pyramid of Mount Hood against the eastern sky. They spent that day hard at work with the doctor getting the equipment out and sorted and packed into the car.