He was a sight; wet and dirty and sweaty from running, and scared.
"What are you doing? Camping?" I asked.
He nodded. "We started for Duck Lake, with nothing but blankets and what grub we could carry; but we got to chasing around and we missed the trail and now we don"t know where we are. Gee, but we"re wet and cold.
Where"s your camp?"
"Back on the ridge."
"Got a fire?"
"Uh huh," I nodded. "Sure."
"Come on," he said. "We"ll go and get the other fellow and then we"ll camp near you so as to have some fire."
"All right," I said.
He led off, and I picked up the rabbits and followed. He kept hooting, and the other boy answered, and we went down into the gulch where the creek flowed. Now, that was the d.i.c.kens of a place to camp! Anybody ought to know better than to camp down at the bottom of a narrow gulch, where it is damp and nasty and dark. They did it because it was beside the water, and because there was some soft gra.s.s that they could lie on.
(Note 25.)
The other boy was about seventeen, and was huddled in a blanket, trying to scratch a match and light wet paper. He wore a big Colt"s six-shooter on a cartridge belt about his waist.
"Come out, Bat," called the boy with me. "Here"s a kid from another camp, where they have fire and things."
Bat grunted, and they gathered their blankets and a frying-pan and other stuff.
"Lookee! This beats rabbit," said the first boy (his name was Walt); and he showed me what they had killed. It was four grouse!
Now, that was mean.
"It"s against the law to kill grouse yet," I told him.
"Aw, what do we care?" he answered. "n.o.body knows."
"It"s only a week before the season opens, anyhow," spoke Bat. "We got the old mother and all her chickens. If we hadn"t, somebody would, later."
Fellows like that are as bad as a forest fire. Just because of them, laws are made, and they break them and the rest of us keep them.
We climbed out of the gulch, and I was so mad I let them carry their own things. The woods were dusky, and I laid a straight course for camp. It was easy to find, because I knew that I had hunted with my back to it, in sound of the water on my left. All we had to do was to follow through the ridge with the water on our right, and listen for voices.
I tell you, that camp looked good. The boys had two fires, a big one to dry us by and a little one to cook by. (Note 26.) One of the tarps had been laid over a pole in crotched stakes, about four feet high, and tied down at the ends (Note 27), for a dog-tent, and spruce tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and brush had been piled behind for a wind-break and to reflect the heat.
Inside were the spruce needles that carpeted the ground and had been kept dry by branches, and a second tarp had been laid to sleep on, with the third tarp to cover us, on top of the blankets. The flags had been set up. Fitzpatrick was cooking, Major Henry was dragging more wood to burn, the fellows were drying damp stuff and stacking it safe under the panniers, or else with their feet to the big blaze were drying themselves, the burros were grazing close in. It was as light as day, with the flames reflected on the trees and the flags, and it seemed just like a trappers" bivouac.
Then we walked into the circle; and when the fellows saw the rabbits they gave a cheer. After I reported to General Ashley and turned the two boys over to him, I cleaned the rabbits for supper.
The two new boys, Bat and Walt, threw down their stuff and sat by the fire to get warm. Bat still wore his big six-shooter. They dropped their grouse in plain sight, but n.o.body said a word until Bat (he was the larger one) spoke up, kind of grandly, when I was finishing the rabbits:
"There"s some birds. If you"ll clean "em we"ll help you eat "em."
"No, thanks. We don"t want them," answered General Ashley.
"Why not?"
"It"s against the law."
"Aw, what difference does that make now?" demanded Walt. "There aren"t any game wardens "round. And it"s only a week before the law goes out, anyway."
"But the grouse are dead, just the same," retorted General Ashley. "They couldn"t be any deader, no matter how long it is before the law opens, or if a game warden was right here!" He was getting angry, and when he"s angry he isn"t afraid to say anything, because he"s red-headed.
"You"d like to go and tell, then; wouldn"t you!" they sneered.
"I"d tell if it would do any good." And he would, too; and so would any of us. "The game laws are made to be kept. Those were our grouse and you stole them."
"Who are you?"
"Well, we happen to be a bunch of Boy Scouts. But what I mean is, that we fellows who keep the law let the game live on purpose so that everybody will have an equal chance at it, and then fellows like you come along and kill it unfairly. See?"
Humph! The two kids mumbled and kicked at the fire, as they sat; and Bat said: "We"ve got to have something to eat. I suppose we can cook our own meat, can"t we?"
"I suppose you can," answered General Ashley, "if it"ll taste good to you."
So, while Fitz was cooking on the small fire, they cleaned their own birds (I didn"t touch them) and cooked over some coals of the big fire.
But Fitz made bread enough for all, and there was other stuff; and the general told them to help themselves. We didn"t want to be mean. The camp-fire is no place to be mean at. A mean fellow doesn"t last long, out camping.
They had used bark for plates. They gave their fry-pan a hasty rub with sticks and gra.s.s, and cleaned their knives by sticking them into the ground; and then they squatted by the fire and lighted pipes. After our dishes had been washed and things had been put away for the night, and the burros picketed in fresh forage, we prepared to turn in. The clouds were low and the sky was dark, and the air was damp and chilly; so General Ashley said:
"You fellows can bunk in with us, under the tarps. We can make room."
But no! They just laughed. "Gwan," they said. "We"re used to traveling light. We just roll up in a blanket wherever we happen to be. We aren"t tenderfeet."
Well, we weren"t, either. But we tried to be comfortable. When you are uncomfortable and sleep cold or crampy, that takes strength fighting it; and we were on the march to get that message through. So we crawled into bed, out of the wind and where the spruce branches partly sheltered us, and our tarps kept the dampness out and the wind, too. The two fellows opened their blankets (they had one apiece!) by the fire and lay down and rolled up like logs and seemed to think that they were the smarter.
We let them, if they liked it so.
The wind moaned through the trees; all about us the timber was dark and lonesome. Only Apache and Sally, the burros, once in a while grunted as they stood as far inside the circle as they could get; but snuggled in our bed, low down, our heads on our coats, we were as warm as toast.
During the night I woke up, to turn over. Now and then a drop of rain hit the tarp tent. The fire was going again, and I could hear the two fellows talking. They were sitting up, feeding it, and huddled Injun fashion with their blankets over their shoulders, smoking their old pipes, and thinking (I guessed) that they were doing something big, being uncomfortable. But it takes more than such foolishness--wearing a big six-shooter when there is nothing to shoot, and sleeping out in the rain when cover is handy--to make a veteran. Veterans and real Scouts act sensibly. (Note 28.)
When next I woke and stretched, the sun was shining and it was time to get up.
CHAPTER VI
A DISASTROUS DOZE
The two fellows were sound asleep when we turned out. They were lying in the sun, rolled up and with their faces covered to keep the light away.
We didn"t pay any attention to them, but had our wet rub and went ahead attending to camp duties. After a while one of them (Walt, it was) turned over, and wriggled, and threw the blanket off his face, and blinked about. He was bleary-eyed and sticky-faced, as if he had slept too hard but not long enough. And I didn"t see how he had had enough air to breathe.