Читать книгу The Camp Fire Boys at Log Cabin Bend; Or, Four Chums Afoot in the Tall Timber - St. George Rathborne - Страница 7

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It was some time before the boys could settle down again to sleep. Perk often believed he could catch a distant yap from the ranging hound, and it never failed to give him a thrill. The beast had seemed both big, and inclined to be savage; and Perk could not help shuddering to think of his getting loose from his leash and coming on the cringing lunatic somewhere in the lonely timber.

But finally even the anxious Perk succumbed, and when he again opened his eyes it was to find that daylight had come, with Elmer outside starting up the fire, and some one else rattling the tin pans, as if getting ready for a jolly breakfast.

As that was encroaching on his private preserves, Perk hastened to bob up and assure the others he would soon be on deck, prepared to make a mess of his savory “flapjacks,” as he had solemnly promised to do the very first morning in camp.

Soon every one was busily engaged, for there was bound to be “heaps” of work laid out for that wonderful day. Amos was examining the dilapidated roof of the cabin and settling just how they should go about rendering it waterproof; Wee Willie beat some batter in a tin vessel, under the eye of the self-constituted master of ceremonies (for Perk had actually donned a snow-white peakless cap, fashioned after a regular chef’s headgear, doubtless meaning to have no dispute regarding his recognized rights to the exalted title); while Elmer had taken to looking around outside, especially over in the quarter of the leaning birch tree.

He came over to the fire a little later, and Wee Willie at once detected indications in his face that made him suspicious.

“You’ve discovered something new, Elmer, now don’t deny it!” he immediately asserted.

“What is it?” hastily demanded Perk.

“Well,” said Elmer, quietly, “it’s just this; whoever that man may be, he came back again during the night!”

This information caused all of the others to show fresh interest. Perk was just in the act of tossing aloft his first flapjack, and in his nervousness he actually missed connections, so that the delectable morsel ignominiously fell into the ashes, and was thus lost.

“It wasn’t up to the mark, anyhow,” the nervous cook hastened to say in apology; “first off the pan shouldn’t be eaten, I always claim. But you did give me a jolt, Elmer, when you said that.”

“How do you know?” questioned Wee Willie; “run across the sign, did you?”

“He walked completely around the cabin twice,” stated the other. “From the indications I’d say he must have been a heap surprised to discover that it had occupants; for I take it, he could hear some of us breathing pretty hard.”

“Huh! needn’t all look right at me,” Wee Willie hastened to snap, as he colored up amidst his freckles. “I made out to lie on my side the whole live-long night, I’d take my affidavy on that. I admit that once in a while I do snore; but that’s when I roll over on my back, and have been gorging at supper on such things as mince pie and other heavy stuff. Go on, Elmer!”

“I know what you are thinking,” Elmer continued; “how could I decide that the man didn’t make those marks before we came? I’ll tell you what proof I have right now. In the first place there isn’t much dew in the tracks, which I reckon would indicate that the footprints were made shortly before dawn. Am I right there, Wee Willie? You’re well up in woodcraft, and ought to be able to say.”

“Sounds good to me,” grunted the other, wagging his head violently in the affirmative, while a pleased expression on his thin face told how much he felt complimented by having Elmer defer in this fashion to his judgment.

“Well, I had another good proof,” Elmer went on to say, with one of his reassuring smiles. “Where the tracks crossed the marks left by Collins and his pal they overlapped; that is, this footprint broke into the ones made by the two guards from the asylum!”

“Splendid work, Elmer!” cried Perk, this time succeeding brilliantly in tossing up his second flapjack, which alighted successfully in the pan, with the browned side up. “Guess he did come prowling around then, and like as not tried the door more’n once. Say, I’m real glad I fastened it as well as I did.”

“What do you suppose he wanted?” queried Amos, looking even more serious than was his habit.

“Not being a mind reader,” Elmer told him, “I couldn’t say; but to make a stab at it I’d guess he hoped we’d gone along, and he could have his old cabin to himself again.”

“Well, it’ll always be a big mystery who and what this chap can be,” Wee Willie concluded. “I only hope now he knows we’re stopping here he’ll take the hint, and keep off the grass. It’ll go rough with any hobo we catch bothering our traps, let me tell you. Here, put that one on this warm plate I’ve got on this flat stone alongside the fire, Perk. It makes a beginning, and we can soon be starting in to feed.”

“Somebody open that bottle of maple syrup,” observed the bustling cook a little later on, as another “cart-wheel” cake went turning over in the air, to be caught dexterously again in the pan. “And when I get a third one ready you’d better start in eating while they’re fresh and hot. The coffee’s done; and of course I don’t mean to commence until somebody can spell me here.”

In good time they were doing full justice to Perk’s famous flapjacks; which each and every camper solemnly declared when passing up his pie-tin for more were really unequaled by anything served at the breakfast table at home.

Of course Wee Willie presently insisted on taking Perk’s place, so that the chef might take the edge off his own appetite; until finally all of them declared they could not swallow another bite, and with three cakes left over.

“For munching on between meals, if any one wants a snack,” Perk explained, as he put them aside. “Nothing to be wasted in this camp—that is, except perhaps the first tryout in a batch.”

Then they commenced to do things, each one having jotted down certain tasks that should be attended to without delay.

Elmer and Wee Willie took upon their shoulders the mending of the cabin roof; patching up sundry apertures between the logs of the walls, where the dried mud had long since fallen away through the action of time and weather combined; and also renewing the broken hinge on the cumbersome door.

Perk insisted on cleaning up the breakfast things; somehow he loved to serve in the capacity of cook, and his mates seemed perfectly willing to have it so, strange to say.

As for Amos, already he had his precious camera out, and announced his intention of searching the immediate neighborhood, in hopes of securing some unusual picture.

“I’d like above all things to find a late partridge on her nest,” he was explaining ere he sauntered forth. “I’ve always wanted to get a picture of the bird on her eggs, or strutting around with her chicks; but I’m afraid it’s a heap too late in the season for such a thing to happen.”

“As a rule the early brood is pretty well grown by now,” commented Elmer; “still, I remember finding a nest with eggs in it as late as this, and you might be just lucky enough. Wish you success, Amos; and if I can help you in any way let me know.”

“Perhaps you may when I get a chance to set a camera trap at night, so some cunning ’coon, or frisky mink, will take his own picture. That’s my ambition, you know, Elmer, though I’m not building my hopes too high, not wanting to be disappointed.”

“I wouldn’t stray too far away, if I were you, Amos,” hinted Wee Willie.

“Oh! I’m a pretty fair woodsman,” insisted the other, “and I reckon now the chances of my getting lost are small. But I’ll just wander around the Bend here, and sort of get my bearings, as well as keep one eye out for anything that appeals to me.”

“And keep the other on the watch for signs of that tramp, or lunatic, Amos,” Perk insisted on warning him solicitously.

So Amos walked away, carrying his camera along with him. Elmer looked after him with an expression akin to concern on his young face, which shrewd Wee Willie was quick to notice.

“Something seems to be bothering him, don’t you think, Elmer?” the latter asked in a low tone so that Perk might not hear what he said.

“Y-es, I’ve thought so myself lately,” admitted Elmer, slowly; “though you remember, Amos has always been a sobersides of a chap ever since we came to know him. There’s a sort of family trouble weighing down on him, I reckon; something that is no one else’s business. I’d like to comfort him if only I knew how to go about it; but I don’t want to kick in where outsiders have no right. But let’s change the subject, Wee Willie; I dislike talking about any of my chums.”

They worked industriously for an hour and more, and under their clever tactics the roof began to show decided signs of improvement. Indeed, already one-half of its surface had been rendered impervious to water, after the boys had succeeded in thatching it with bark stripped from certain trees, and overlapping like the shingles on an ordinary house.

“By the time we get through we needn’t be afraid of the heaviest kind of a rainfall,” said Elmer, confidently; “unless it’s accompanied by a fierce wind, such as might strip all this off in a jiffy.”

“Where’s Perk gone?” asked Wee Willie; “I thought I heard him saying something just then, but it sounded as if he was off somewhere.”

“I saw him prowling around in the brush yonder ten minutes ago,” Elmer informed him. “Like as not he’s just bent on seeing if there’s a good spot for fishing at the Bend here; because, you know Perk dearly loves to pull in the frisky black bass, or the striped perch, as well as eat the same.”

“Listen! wasn’t that him speaking again?” hissed Wee Willie, stopping his task of fastening a strip of pliable bark with small round tins, through each of which a nail could be driven, such as are used to secure tarred paper to the roofs of chicken coops and other small outbuildings.

“No, you don’t, not this time, you nasty thing!” Perk was heard saying half in disgust, and with a tinge of consternation in his tones. “Curl up again, and shake your old locust rattle as much as you please, who cares?”

“Perk!” shouted Elmer excitedly, recognizing a certain dreadful sound that now floated to his ears, “back away! Don’t fool with a rattlesnake, you silly! Back water, and in a hurry!”