Joe sat up and threw back the blankets. “Golly, I’m sore and stiff,” he said, rubbing himself. “Been sleeping on a cot, and I’m soft, I guess.”
“You also did twenty-two miles yesterday,” Mills remarked. “Well, I haven’t told ’em yet, but we’re going to do only seven to-day, and then have a side trip for the young folks. Guess Mother Jones will want to stay in camp and help you get supper.”
“She’d better try!” cried Joe, springing up at the word “supper,” for it reminded him that it was his job to get breakfast. He had a quick wash in the brook which ran past the camp, and set about making some biscuit, bacon and eggs, coffee and flapjacks. His fire was going merrily, and in its heat he had begun to get warm (for the night chill was still in the air, and you could almost see your breath), when he saw Congressman Elkins poking a sleepy face out of the men’s tent flap, with his hair all tousled, and his body bent half double. He spied the fire, and made a hobble for it.
“Say, Joe, let me get some of that heat, will you?” he said.
“Sure,” Joe laughed. “Didn’t you have blankets enough?”
“I had five—ought to be enough, in the third week of July, you’d think. But I shivered all night, and every time I shivered a new branch in our wonderful bough bed found a fresh spot on my anatomy to puncture. I’m beginning to think Mrs. Jones is right about this roughing it stuff.”
“No, sir, she isn’t,” Joe answered, as he set his batter of biscuit over the fire. “Only you have to learn how to do it, and get hardened to it a bit, too. How’d you have the blankets?”
“How’d I have ’em? Over me, of course.”
“That’s the trouble,” said Joe. “The secret of sleeping warm is to have ’em under you, too. That’s where as much cold comes as from above, even in a bed. You roll yourself up in ’em to-night and see if you’re not warm.”
“Where’d you learn all this?” the congressman asked. “You look pretty young to be a camp cook. Live around here?”