They had never seen an automobile rigged like Uncle Billy’s. It was a powerful five-passenger car, with extra braces on the running-boards. First the doctor screwed a kind of iron fence on one running-board which came up as high as the tops of the doors. Then, on the other, he set two boxes, also as high as the doors, and as deep as the running-board. These boxes opened not at the top, but at the front, with hinged doors. Inside of them were shelves. On the shelves of one he stood the provisions—the canned fruits, the condensed milk, and all the other things they were going to take at the start. The other was filled with camp dishes. When the boxes were full, the doors were shut and locked, and the boxes strapped firmly to the car.
Then, on the other side, in the space between the fence and the side of the car, went the heavy canvas bags containing the tent and the three sleeping bags. These bags were wonderful things. They rolled up and went into canvas sacks. But when you unrolled them, you found inside a tire pump, and you pumped them up with air, making a nice pneumatic mattress to sleep on. Inside the canvas flap which strapped over this mattress were several warm blankets.
“Say, boy!” cried Bennie. “This beats sleeping on old hemlock boughs, the way we have to at home, eh, Spider? Remember the way the boughs used to get all full of sticks about one A. M. last summer?”
“I’ll say so. We’re going to sleep so well on these we’ll forget to wake up.”
“Oh, no you won’t! Not with me in camp,” the doctor smiled.
After the running-boards were loaded, Uncle Billy got out a wonderful camp stove, which collapsed into three pieces, with the funnel also shutting up, and put the whole thing into a canvas sack, which lay on the floor of the car. Then he put in three folding camp stools and a folding table. Finally he handed each boy a stout khaki dunnage bag.
“Now,” said he, “get all your stuff into those two bags! No suitcases allowed on this trip! Your two bags and mine, and the canteens and our cameras and the alpenstocks and the fried rope, and overcoats and one of you boys and anything else we’ve forgotten have all got to go on the rear seat.”
“Think I’ll sit in front with you,” said Bennie.
“Think I’ll ride with the Stones,” said Spider.
“Not with Dumpling in the car, you won’t!” Bennie laughed—“unless he travels in a trailer on behind.”