CHAPTER III
"HIT THE KNOT AND HIT IT HARD!"
"HOW are you coming on, Rufus?" asked Elmer, pleasantly, as he dropped down on the log alongside the perspiring chopper.
Rufus laughed, a little unpleasantly, Elmer thought.
"Oh! I guess I was never cut out for a hewer of firewood, Elmer," he remarked indifferently. "Some fellows may take to that sort of thing, but I incline in the direction of less strenuous employment. I can fiddle with a surveyor"s outfit all day long, tramp through the woods and the brush, cut a path, and enjoy it all; but swinging an ax doesn"t seem to be my forte."
"Then if I were you, Rufus," the other told him, quietly, "I"d shut my teeth together and make it my forte. I never would let a little thing like that get the better of me. Why, I couldn"t sleep easy at night if I did."
Rufus moved a little uneasily at that. He undoubtedly must have guessed that the scout-master meant to reprove him for giving up so soon. Then he shook his head and frowned.
"Oh! there"ll be heaps of other things I _can_ tackle around the camp, besides playing wood-chopper, Elmer, that"s sure. I"ve given it a fair trial, and don"t seem to get the hang of the old thing. Why, it"s lucky, I reckon, I didn"t smash my foot. My hands don"t seem to tackle the ax properly. Alec may be better suited to it."
"It isn"t hard, once you learn," said Elmer.
"Well, I"ve given it a try, and I"m ready to call it off, though I know you don"t like to hear that kind of talk," grumbled Rufus, actually turning redder than ever with confusion as he felt the eyes of the other fastened upon his face.
"That"s not the spirit in which a scout who has any respect for himself should act," Elmer told him, slowly and with a friendly slap on the shoulder. "Deep down in your heart, Rufus, you just know that you _can_ master such a little job as learning how to handle an ax, if only you keep persistently at it, and never give up. A scout on being baffled once or twice just sets his teeth together, takes a fresh grip on himself, and says he"s going to do that thing, no matter if it means trying sixty-seven times. It"s the old maxim of "Pike"s Peak, or Bust,"
which the emigrants across the great plains years ago used to paint on their wagon-tops. And generally they got there, too, remember, Rufus."
Then Elmer got up and took hold of the offending ax.
"Now, if you watch me you"ll see just how I swing it, and bring it down in the exact spot I want to strike," he went on to say, after which he made several strokes and the stubborn piece of oak that had resisted all the efforts of Rufus to split it fell into two slabs.
"Well, that was certainly fine," admitted the boy, wonderingly; "but you"re an old hand at it, Elmer. I"d never be able to do that sort of work."
"Get that notion out of your head in the beginning, Rufus," he was told, sharply. "There"s no reason in the wide world why you shouldn"t make a good axman, perhaps even better than any of us. You"re strongly built, and can put a heap of muscle in the work. At first you"ll strike poorly, until you grow accustomed to landing on a given spot. Practice makes perfect in that particular. And now, there"s one great lesson for you in chopping wood, just as there is for every beginner. Take a look at the stick, see which way it will split easiest; and then if there"s a nasty knot in it, as there was in the one you tackled, strike the blade of your ax straight into the centre of that knot _again and again_, until you succeed in making it give up the ghost. Hit the knot, Rufus, and hit hard! That ought to be a maxim you"d find ringing in your ears every time you feel tempted to be a quitter!"
That last word stung, just as Elmer meant it should. Rufus flushed, and jumped to his feet almost half angrily.
"Here, give me that ax again, Elmer," he said between his set teeth; "and pick out for me the toughest old chunk of oak you can find. We"ll see if I"m a _quitter_. I"ll hit the knot, and hit her hard, to boot; you watch me!"
Elmer hastened to accommodate him. He was secretly congratulating himself on his success so early in the game. It chanced that a second fragment of oak lay near by, and offered a fairly good test, as it, too, had a difficult knot in its heart. He showed Rufus just how to take the right sort of grip on the ax, and several times corrected him when he struck violently. Of course the blows lacked much of the accuracy that long practice gives, and thus considerable energy was wasted; but after he had been working away for five minutes, a lucky stroke caused the thick bit of oak to fall apart. It had been done by keeping up a constant pounding at the centre of resistance, which in this case was that tough knot.
Rufus was perspiring, and short of breath after his exertion, but there was a look of extreme pride on his flushed face, and his eyes kindled also. Indeed, there was good reason for his self-congratulation; he had proven to himself that "where there is a will there is a way"; and possibly for the first time in his life Rufus realized the power that one may command when determined not to give in.
"Well, I did do it, didn"t I, Elmer?" he chuckled, visibly pleased. "And next time I won"t be so ready to throw up the sponge. I was a little bit huffed because you spoke the way you did, Elmer, but now I thank you. I wouldn"t be surprised but that I"d have caught that big fly last summer instead of m.u.f.fing it, and losing the game for our side, if only I"d made up my mind I _could_ hold it, and must."
"That"s the ticket, Rufus," the other told him. "Confidence is half the battle, and the rest is in doing it. But you"ve chopped enough for a while; better change work and give some other set of muscles a chance to get busy."
"Now, that isn"t a bad idea, either, Elmer," Rufus went on to say. "I"d like to take a little turn out of camp before evening comes on, because somehow I seem to have a sneaking notion we"ll run across one of the survey lines close by here. You see, they run down from the bluff across that wide stretch of country toward the setting sun; and by pushing along the ridge we ought to find a slashing."
"Well, if you can coax George, here, to go with you, Rufus," the patrol leader remarked, "I"ve no objections. I can understand how eager you must be to get your location fixed in the start; and I expect you"ll sleep easier tonight if you learn that our camp happens to be near one of the survey lines."
George upon being appealed to readily agreed to go with the greenhorn.
He knew why Elmer had made this arrangement; for as Rufus was quite a novice in most things pertaining to woodcraft, the chances were he would get lost the first thing. If given an opportunity, George, as a first-cla.s.s scout, could begin the education of the tenderfoot thus placed in his charge; and the first lesson would be upon various methods of learning how to make his way through the densest forest when caught without a compa.s.s, and unable even to see the sun so as to know east from the west, the north from the south.
So George took great pride in explaining how the moss on the trees would serve as an almost infallible guide, all else failing.
"You see, in this section of country nearly all the big storms come from the southwest," he told Rufus as they walked on. "The moss is almost always on the north side of the trees, veering just a little toward northeast. Notice that fact well, Rufus, and never forget it. Some time it may save you heaps of trouble; I know it has me, and lots of other scouts in the bargain."
Finding that the tenderfoot seemed to show considerable interest, George went on to tell of other facts connected with the important subject.
"Now," he observed, soberly, "you may think I"m going to a lot of trouble telling you all this, Rufus; but if ever you do get lost in the woods, and keep wandering around for hours, and then have to make a lonely camp, and sit up most of the night listening to the owls and foxes and such things, why, you"ll understand why it"s so important a thing in the education of a scout."
Meanwhile Lil Artha and Alec were trying their hands at the woodpile; for as the elongated scout explained to the Scotch lad, they would have need of considerable fuel during the long evening, as they sat by their fire and talked.
Alec proved to have enough stamina, at least; there was a stubborn streak in his Scotch blood that would never allow him to give up easily.
Nevertheless, Lil Artha knew Alec had faults that must be corrected before he could reach that condition of excellence that all true scouts aspire to attain.
He had a hasty temper, like most red-haired, impulsive boys, and was, moreover, a little inclined to be cruel, especially toward dumb animals.
Lil Artha, himself, had once been the same sort of a chap, and could readily sympathize with Alec; but at that he meant the other should see the error of his ways, and reform. So the tall member of the Wolf Patrol took it upon himself to be a mentor; and who so well fitted for the task as a boy who had had personal experience? No one can preach temperance so splendidly as the man who, himself, has pa.s.sed through the fire of unbridled pa.s.sions, and learned the folly of giving way to them.
Alec was particularly interested in the subject of the reversal of his badge. He had, of course, followed the customary habit of all scouts by fastening this to his coat in the morning in an upside-down position, until he found some opportunity for doing a good deed toward some one, which act allowed him to change its position.
"That was easy enough at home, d"ye mind, Lil Artha," he was saying, as he rested upon his ax, and recovered his breath, "because a fellow would be a gillie if he couldnae find mony a chance to do something for sae sweet a bairn as our little Jessie. But it"s going to be a harder task away up here in the wilderness, I trow."
"Oh! I don"t know about that, Alec," the other told him, encouragingly.
"All you have to do is to keep your eyes about you. There are four chums around, and if at any time, for instance, you took a notion to do my stint of wood-chopping, that ought to ent.i.tle you to turn your badge over, because it would be a good deed, you see."
Alec looked queerly at him, and then laughed.
"But it would be depriving you of your necessary exercise, Lil Artha,"
he hastened to say, "and that I"d hate to do."
"Well, seriously speaking then, Alec, there are endless ways of doing good. You needn"t be confined to lending a helping hand to human beings; a boy who takes a stone out of the shoe of a limping mule is just as much a benefactor as the one who helps a poor old woman across a crowded street, or carries her heavy basket part of the way home from market. I"ve bound up the broken wing of a crow; yes, and I knew a scout who even helped one of those queer little tumble-bugs get his ball up a little rise, after he"d watched him fall back a dozen times, and then claim the right to alter his badge. The rest of the troop laughed at him, but the scout-master hushed them up, and said the boy was right; and that not only had he done a good deed toward one of the humblest of created things, but he had learned a practical lesson in pertinacity and never-give-upitiveness that would be of great value to him all the rest of his life."
"Nae doot, nae doot," muttered the Scotch lad, reflectively, as though Lil Artha"s interesting words had found a firm lodgment in his heart. "I can see where it is a verra interesting subject, this scoutcraft, Lil Artha. And ye ken I"m mair than glad now I took up with it."
"And as you get to be more intimate with the little animals of the woods," continued the experienced scout, "you come to like them as brothers. We usually have a pet squirrel ducking about the camp, picking up the crumbs; and birds will come, too, if you"re kind to them. All those little things help to make an outing more enjoyable, you"ll find, Alec, the deeper you dip into them."
Alec scratched his head as though he found it just a little difficult to understand; he had been raised under such vastly different conditions that it would take some time to change his habits, Lil Artha realized.
Still, he liked the tenderfoot very much, and meant to do all he could to make him see things through another pair of spectacles than those he had used in the past.
Already his lessons in handling the ax had borne fruit, and Alec gave promise of soon becoming an expert at the job. His success also gave the greenhorn a new-born ambition to excel in other branches of scout education. Lil Artha did not believe he would have much trouble in posting Alec; getting him to govern his temper, and be kind to everything that had life, would be another proposition; but constant a.s.sociation with such a fellow as Elmer Chenowith was bound to work a change little short of miraculous, Lil Artha had faith to believe; for he knew personally what the patrol leader was able to accomplish in his quiet, persistent way.
"After you"ve finished with that log, Alec," he told the other, "we"ll start our fire. I want to show you just how to go about that task, because there are a hundred things connected with making a fire that you"ll find mighty interesting."
"Ye don"t say, Lil Artha? I didna ken that there was more than one way to start a blaze, which was to sticket a match to the paper, and let it go at that."
The tall scout laughed delightedly. Really, he would find great pleasure in showing this greenhorn how many curious ways there were of starting a fire. Lil Artha had made this a sort of fad for some time past; and while several tricks were still beyond his comprehension, he had mastered a number of others; so that he could start into the woods minus a single match, or even a burning sun gla.s.s, and make a fire in any one of five different ways.
"Oh! I can see where you"ve got a whole lot to learn, Alec," he told the other. "I"ll promise to show you some interesting things while we"re up here in the Racc.o.o.n Bluff camp. For instance, I"ll make a blaze by rubbing flint and steel together, like the old Indians used to do centuries back on this continent. Then I"ve a little trick with a couple of sticks and some dry tinder to catch the spark."
"Ye maun show me that, for a certainty!" cried the other, "because I"ve read of it in Robinson Crusoe, or some ither book of travel and adventure amang the islands of the sea."