“Sure; they use TNT. It would take forever to shovel those drifts.”
“Oh, let’s go up and watch ’em!” Bennie pleaded.
“And get the cars mired? No, thank you! We’ll camp by the Rogue River and wait. You can swim and Spider can study birds, and Dumplin’ can wish he was nearer a soda fountain. Come on.”
They turned off the highway at the Rogue River bridge, and the minute they were off the macadam the dust began to fly. Spider looked back into the cloud.
“Glad I’m not in the Stones’ car,” he said. “What makes it so dusty?”
“This soil is all volcanic ash or pumice,” said the doctor, “and it hasn’t rained here, probably, for a month, and won’t for five or six more.”
“It’s the climate,” chuckled Bennie.
Two or three miles up this dusty road, and close to a small, dilapidated looking house, made of boards and huge, hand-hewn shingles or “shakes,” the doctor put the car off the road and into a field which was baked as hard as a brick, with the grass dried up and brown. At the edge of this field was a grove of trees with shiny copper-colored bark and glossy green leaves, called laurel trees, and beyond them the bank plunged sharp down for fifty feet to the rushing green river.
“Camp,” said Uncle Billy, stopping the car. “Here’s where we live for two days at least.”
As soon as camp was made, and wood cut, the entire party ran down the bank to a gravelly beach by the river’s edge, stripped, and plunged into the water. Five yells immediately rose in the stillness, and five bodies came splashing back to shore.