"Yes, sir," said Tom.
"Can you make a bed?"
"Yes, sir."
"Can you count change?"
"When I"ve got any."
The man laughed, his large shoulders shaking up and down.
"Well, I"ll try you a week--I"ve got n.o.body else. What"s your friend going to do?"
"I brought a tent of my own," Tom explained, "and I thought I could pitch it just into the woods somewhere, out of sight, and we"d live in that, and Joe"s going to get our meals, so"s I can give all my time to looking after the tepees--couldn"t we do that?"
The man turned to Joe. "Are you a good cook?" he asked.
"I can cook camp stuff all right, and make bread, and things like that,"
said Joe.
"Can you throw a diamond hitch?"
"I don"t know--I never tried," Joe replied.
The man tipped back his head and squeaked with mirth again. "That"s like the man who said he didn"t know whether he could play the violin or not--he"d never tried," said he. "My boy, it takes years and years of patient practice to learn to throw a diamond hitch. But if you only could throw one, you could probably help us out this summer as a camp cook on lots of expeditions. We are going to be hard up for cooks this year."
"I bet I can learn!" cried Joe. "I can tie all kinds of knots,--the Becket hitch, and the bowline, and the false reef and the fisherman"s bend, and the sheep-shank and the timber hitch----"
"Whoa!" the man laughed. "Well, we"ll see. Come on now, and get your tent and stuff, and we"ll go over and look at the camp. I suppose, though, you"d like some grub first, wouldn"t you?"
"I could eat a couple of prunes," said Tom.
"I got s.p.a.ce for an olive and an oyster cracker, myself," said Joe.
"Well, pile in there and get a bite," the man said, pointing to a small room where the few helpers he needed in the chalets were eating. The scouts needed no second invitation, after their fifty mile motor ride, and they fell on the food hungrily.
"Say, Big Bertha"s all to the good," Joe whispered to Tom, "if he does talk like a lady."
"Sure he is--he can"t help havin" a squeaky voice," Tom answered. "He"s treating us white, all right."
As soon as they were partially filled up--(they ate until they dared not ask for more)--the scouts went back to the hotel, with two borrowed wheelbarrows, and got their trunks and luggage. Then Big Bertha joined them, and they all three continued to the tepee camp, which was pitched between the trail and the sh.o.r.e of the lake. There were six or eight tepees, of stout white canvas stretched on a frame of lodge pole pines.
Each tepee had a wooden floor and one of them contained a few cooking implements and a small cook-stove. The rest were for sleeping, and contained a couple of cots apiece.
"Now, this camp is used mostly by tourists who are going through the Park on foot," Big Bertha explained. "You are to charge them fifty cents a night per bed. They get the use of the range and cooking utensils free, and they"re supposed to wash "em, but they probably won"t. Your job is to keep the camp clean, have wood always cut up for fires, make the beds, change the linen (you get that from me), collect the fees, attend to the latrine carefully, and--oh, just run the place as if it was the Waldorf-Astoria! The store where they buy grub, and you get yours, is up at the chalets."
"I get you," said Tom. "Doesn"t look as if it had been used much this year."
"It hasn"t. There"s still so much snow on the pa.s.ses that not many hikers have been over. But they"ll be along in a week or so, though. You go ahead and pitch your own tent now, for Joe--somewhere out there in the woods. I guess if you boys are scouts you know how to do it right."
"Is the lake good to swim in?" Joe asked.
Big Bertha looked at him with a funny expression. "Sure," he said. "Try it, after you"ve got your tent up! Oh, and say, look out for porcupines at night, boys."
Only a few feet beyond the tepees the heavy woods began, not high woods, but a thick stand of fir about thirty or forty feet tall. The scouts took the tent and baggage in far enough to be out of sight of the camp, and screened from the view of the hotel across the lake, but still close to the sh.o.r.e. They found a dry, well-drained, level spot, threw a rope over it from tree to tree, and slung the tent. Then they cut pegs, fastened it down, set up their cots inside, and while Joe was making the beds, Spider hauled a lot of rocks up from the edge of the lake and built a fire pit.
"I s"pose it"s going to rain sometimes," he said. "We ought to have a shelter over the kitchen."
"Don"t look now as if it ever rained here," Joe answered, from the tent.
"I"ll build a lean-to over the kitchen while you"re running the camp.
Gosh, I"m goin" to feel like an awful grafter, just doing nothing, while you"re working all the time."
"Aw, cut it out," Tom answered. "You"ll be cooking for me, won"t you?
You"re my housekeeper. I"m going to call you wifey."
"If you do, I"ll put chestnut burrs in your bed," Joe laughed.
"Where are you going to get the chestnuts?" asked Tom. "I don"t see anything around here but evergreen. Come to think of it, I"ve not seen a single hardwood all day."
"Golly, that"s so," Joe answered. "I don"t believe I have. It"s going to be hard cooking with nothing but pine. How"s a feller going to get a bed of coals?"
"I guess he isn"t. But I"ll see what can be done."
Tom went into the woods with one of the axes, while Joe busied himself about camp, making a shelf on a tree for the provisions, getting the trunks stowed away under the cots, rigging up a rough table out of two pieces of board he went back to the tepee camp and hunted up, and planning for a lean-to to be built later as a shelter while cooking.
Tom came back presently, his arms loaded with dry wood.
"All soft," he said, stacking it near the fire-pot. "There"s not a hardwood in the forest anywhere. Come on, now, we"ve got to get a supply cut for the camp, in case anybody comes. If they don"t come, we can cook on the stove there, I guess. It"ll be easier than here."
"And not so much fun," said Joe.
The two boys worked industriously for the next hour, Tom doing the heavy chopping, and got a good pile of wood stacked up beside the stove in the camp. It was nearly five o"clock now, and still no one had appeared, so they went back to their tent, being hot and tired, put on a set of summer underclothes for bathing suits, and ran down to the lake. The bottom dropped away rather gradually, over rough stones, so they could not dive. Tom was the first in. He went in up to his knees, and emitted a yell that echoed from the wall of pines across the water.
"Wow!" he cried, "sufferin" snakes!"
"Is it cold?" said Joe, still standing on the sh.o.r.e.
"Oh, no, it ain"t cold! Oh, no, it"s warm as a hot potato!"
Spider took another step forward and slipped into a hole nearly up to his waist, lost his balance, and went under. He came up spitting water, and made a wild leap for the sh.o.r.e.
"You keep out o" this, Joe," he spluttered. "It"s too cold for you to go in. Talk about glacier water--not for me!"
"I want to try it," pleaded Joe.
"No, you don"t!"--and Spider grabbed him by the arm and dragged him back.
As Tom peeled off his suit and reached for a towel, Joe ran for their little camp mirror.