In three minutes more Mr. Jones and his pony and his buckboard were out of sight among the trees, and Sid and Wade were left to their own resources.
It was seven miles due south, and a good deal longer by the road, to the nearest clearing, and all to the north of them was wilderness--woods, lakes, and mountains.
"Now, Wade, how"ll we divide the load? There"s a heap of it."
"Guess we won"t divide it. I"ll show you--here"s the hatchet."
"Go ahead. I"m a greenhorn yet. What are you going to do?"
Wade was too busy to answer, but he quickly had a pair of very slender ash saplings hacked down, trimmed clean, and laid side by side about two feet apart. To these he tied a couple of cross-sticks, six feet from each other. Then he spread his blanket on the ground, laid the frame in the middle, folded the blanket across, and pinned it firmly.
"Looks like a litter," said Sid.
"That"s what it is. Put the tin box of hard-tack in the middle. It"s the heaviest thing we"ve got; weighs ten pounds. Now the bacon; that only weighs five. Now the other things. The guns ain"t loaded; lay "em along the sides. And the fishing-rods. Now we"re ready."
One boy in front between the poles, and one behind, and it was a pleasant surprise to Sid to find how easy it worked. Still, it was a dreadfully long and warm mile and a half over that rough forest path before they came out on the slope that led down to the blue waters of Pot Lake.
"It"s just beautiful," said Sid, as they set down their load for a rest and a look.
"Hist! Let me get my gun."
A cartridge was slipped in like a flash; and then there came another flash, and a report.
"Thought you said it was unsportsmanlike to kill a partridge sitting?"
"So it is, my boy; but it"s a question of dinner. Our breakfast was an early one. Look at "em, will you?"
Sid was looking, and there was a very strong suggestion of dinner in that pair of barely full-grown young birds. Fat, plump, the very thing for a boy whose breakfast had been eaten early. There was a sort of natural "open" on that side of the little lake, and Wade led the way straight to it.
"Just as I expected. The old shanty"s knocked all to pieces. The boards and the nails are there, though. They may be good for something."
"What next? Shall I unpack?"
"Hold up, Sid. Yes, there"s the spring. Down yonder; that"s where we"ll pitch our tent."
"Needn"t do that, yet awhile."
"First thing always. We"re not in camp till the tent"s up."
"Go ahead. Don"t you wish you had the tent poles here now?"
"Not if I had "em to carry besides the other things. We can cut all we want."
As they talked they walked, and they were now standing by the spring, on the slope, not more than a hundred yards from the sh.o.r.e.
"There"s the place for the tent."
"Isn"t one spot as good as another?" asked Sid.
"You don"t want to sleep slanting, do you? That isn"t all, either. That little hump of ground in front of it"s a tiptop fire-place."
"Don"t look much like one."
"You"ll see. Come on and let"s cut some tent poles."
Two five-foot sticks, each with a "crotch" at the upper end, were soon set in the ground about six feet apart, and a ridge pole laid across them.
"You haven"t set "em deep enough," said Sid. "They"d go over too easy."
"No they won"t. The strength of a tent is in the canvas and pegs, not in the poles," said Wade.
He was unrolling the great square piece of strong but light "cotton duck," and in a moment more it was flapping over the poles.
"Stretch it well, and peg it strong. That tent won"t blow down."
"Can"t stand up in it."
"That isn"t what it"s for. In with the supplies. The sun"s as bad as rain would be, for part of "em, spite of the tin boxes."
"Nothing extra--not even b.u.t.ter."
"b.u.t.ter? There"s one roll of it, but the bacon"s the b.u.t.ter for us. Now for the butcher-knives. We must ditch our tent."
"What for?"
"To drain away the water, if it rains. We must cut a V."
The apex of the V was cut pretty deeply on the slope above the tent, and the arms were cut around it till they led out below.
"Water doesn"t run up hill," said Sid. "We"re drained. What next?"
"Fire."
"A day like this? Are you going to cook right away? I"d rather try the lake for some fish."
"Of course we will. But it takes an hour for an open fire to be fit to cook by. Got to have plenty of coals and ashes."
Fuel was plentiful enough, and a rousing fire was speedily blazing on the little hump of ground, a rod in front of the tent.
"Not near enough to set anything on fire. If that hump hadn"t been there, we"d have made one."
As it was, he had levelled it on top a little, and the surface so made was barely two feet across.
Sid was a little curious about such a fire-place, but decided to wait and see what his friend meant.
Wade"s father was an old army officer, and had taken his boy with him on more than one "camping-out" excursion, while Sid was taking his very first lesson.
"That"ll do. Now for some fish. You go ahead, while I pluck the partridges."