"I"ve come over here because Mother insists that a dinner in the woods is no more complete without a fish course than it would be in a New York hotel, and because to tell the truth I have a hankering for a taste of fresh fish myself. Pat, I hope that spring is still open where you put the minnows last fall. Suppose you take this net and pail and see what you can find." He opened a small folding net as he was speaking. "I take it for granted that you youngsters have your belt axes with you, as good Scouts in the woods should. One of you can run over to that alder thicket and cut a dozen straight sticks about three feet long and as thick as my forefinger. The other two can chop holes in the ice. They don"t need to be very big, you know, not over a foot across. I suggest that you scatter them pretty well. It adds to the fun to have them some distance apart, and it multiplies the chances of a good catch. While you are doing that I will start a fire and get things started for lunch."
Sparrer, having no axe, but a stout Scout knife, volunteered to cut the alder saplings while Hal and Walter attended to the holes in the ice.
Hal was radiant. This was one of the things he had counted on, and he had brought from New York a dozen type, as the modern tip-ups for fishing through the ice are called. But when they had started out that morning he had not dreamed that he would have a chance to use them on a snow-shoe trip, and so they were neatly rolled in his duffle bag at the camp.
"Wonder what kind of a rig the Big Chief has got, and how he"s going to use those sticks," said he to Upton as he came up to where Walter was making the ice fly in glittering chips.
"Don"t know, but whatever it is you can bet your last dollar it is all right," replied Walter. "How many holes have you cut?"
"Five; I"m going to chop one more over there toward the north sh.o.r.e. How many have you?" replied Hal.
"Six. That ought to be a good place over there, and that will make the dozen. Here come Sparrer and the Big Chief, and I guess we"ll soon see what the idea is. Pat must have found the spring open, for Sparrer has the pail."
The guess was a good one, for when he peeped in the pail Walter found that it contained a couple of dozen minnows. Together the three walked over to where Hal was just finishing the last hole. The doctor took from under his arm a bundle of short pieces of lath, each about eighteen inches long, tapering toward one end, to which was fastened a bit of red flannel. Two inches from the other end was a hole big enough for one of the alder sticks to pa.s.s through freely. Fastened close to the end, and neatly wound around it, was a short length of stout line on the end of which was a hook with wire snell. Unwinding one of these lines the doctor pa.s.sed one of the alder sticks through the hole in the lath, baited the hook with a lively minnow and dropped it through the hole in the ice. The alder stick was placed across this so that the lath came in the middle and lay on the ice at right angles. A pull on the line would drag the end of the lath down, making it stand upright with its little red signal on the end, and that was all there was to it.
It was simple in the extreme, but quite as effective as Hal"s more elaborate type could have been, as was presently demonstrated. They were just preparing to set the last tip-up when Hal, glancing over to the first one set, saw the red signal and with a wild yell of "We"ve got one! We"ve got one!" started for it at top speed. The others paused to see what the result would be, and saw him yank out a flapping prize.
"It"s a beaut!" he panted as he rejoined them, holding out a handsome pickerel. "Bet it weighs five pounds if it weighs an ounce. Say, this is great!"
The fish was already stiff, but much to their surprise the doctor told them it was not dead, frozen fish often retaining life for some time after being taken from the water. He now left the tip-ups to the care of the three boys, warning them to make frequent rounds of the holes to break the ice as it formed and keep the lines free. The fish he took with him to where Mother Merriam was busy beside the fire, for which Pat was chopping wood.
Pickerel were numerous and hungry, to judge by the way they bit. It was novel and exciting sport to the three city boys. There would be a yell of "There"s one!" and then a wild race to see who could reach it first.
At first they almost invariably forgot in their excitement to take along the bait pail, which meant a second trip for one of them to rebait the hook. Sometimes the signal would drop before they reached it and they knew that the fish was off. Several times there were two signals waving at once and one time there were five. By the time the doctor"s welcome hail of "Din-ner!" came ringing across the ice the bait pail was empty and they had fourteen fish, none under three pounds, and from that up to six. With the first one caught they had a total of fifteen. The doctor smiled as he scanned the eager faces of the young fishermen and then looked at the long row of fish laid out on the snow.
"Enough is plenty," said he, "and I guess this will do for to-day. We want to leave some for the boys next summer. We"ll take the lines up after dinner."
How good that dinner did smell to the hungry boys with appet.i.tes whetted by exercise in the keen air! The snow had been shoveled away nearly to the ground for the bed logs for the fire and ample s.p.a.ce cleared in front and spread with balsam boughs on which to sit. There was a steaming kettle of pea soup and a pot of hot chocolate. The pickerel had been split and, broiled in halves pinned to pieces of hemlock bark, stood before the fire and basted with bacon drippings.
There was a venison steak done to a turn, for the doctor had hung a deer in his ice house at the end of the open season. There were potatoes boiled in their jackets. There was a brown johnny-cake baked in a reflector oven, and to cap all a plate of the doughnuts for which Mother Merriam was famous.
"And you call this a lunch!" cried Walter when he had eaten until he had to let out his belt. "No wonder it required two packs to bring it here.
Well, is there anything to beat this in New York?"
"Not in a tousand years. Oi"m going to run away and live here," declared Sparrer, and while the others laughed he stared with dreamy eyes into the leaping flames of the huge fire Pat had built, and who shall say but that in them he saw the symbols of new hopes and ambitions springing from the colorless, sordid drudgery which until this time had been his life.
After the meal was finished and the dishes washed there was an hour of story-telling by the doctor, ending with the singing of America under the towering snow-laden spruces and then the homeward trip. Thanks to their experiences on the outward trip and the watchfulness resulting therefrom there were no further mishaps, and when they reached camp and kicked off the big webs once more the boys were ready to vote their first day in winter woods all that they had dreamed it would be and more. Also they were quite willing to second and carry by unanimous vote the motion that they seek their beds early in preparation for an early start the next day.
CHAPTER VII
ON THE TRAIL
Day was just breaking when the boys bade farewell to Doctor and Mother Merriam, and with a hot breakfast under their belts started for the trapping camp. As yet Pat had given no hint as to where it was located, and Walter and Hal, respecting his reticence, forbore to ask questions.
Walter did venture to ask if they would reach there before dark.
"No," replied Pat. "We"ll have to make a camp to-night," and advanced no further information.
All their duffle and the supplies which Pat was taking in were loaded on the toboggan, and to this Pat had rigged a sort of harness so that two walking single file could drag it. This relieved them of packs. Walter and Hal each carried his rifle on the chance of picking up a rabbit on the way. The snow-shoes were slung over their backs, Pat explaining that for a time they would follow a broken out lumber trail and it would be easier walking without the shoes than on them.
It was when they turned into this trail that the first suspicion of where they were bound for flashed through Upton"s mind, but he held his peace and settled to the task of doing his share of the pulling. And this proved to be no easy matter. The trail was but roughly broken out by the pa.s.sage of lumber sleds, and it soon became necessary for one to steady the load to keep it from capsizing. It was slow, toilsome work, and when at the end of ten miles Pat called a halt for a rest while he made four cups of hot pea soup by the simple process of melting snow and crumbling into it a roll of erbswurst the others were ready to declare that they had come twenty miles.
As he drank his soup and munched a cracker Walter scanned his surroundings closely. Presently he discovered what he sought, a partially obliterated blaze on a big tree just beyond and to the right of where they were squatting.
"I"ve got you now, old Mr. Foxy!" he cried. "This mysterious camp of yours is the cabin in Smugglers" Hollow, and we"re going to camp to-night at Little Goose Pond. More than that, your partner is Alec Smith. Why didn"t I guess it before? Own up now, old Crafty!"
Quite unabashed, Pat bestowed a grin on Upton. "Three bull"s-eyes," he commented. "I"ve been wondering how long it would take you fellows to catch the scent. Began to think I"d have to rub your noses in it."
"Hurrah!" interrupted Hal, who had been an eager listener. "I never thought of the Hollow, and yet there is no place I should like to go to so much as that. Say, Walt, these heads of ours sure are thick. Don"t you remember that Pat told us that first night in New York that Alec was trapping, and the last he heard of him he was over in the Hollow? Well, we"d make good detectives, we would. I"ve done a lot of wondering about Pat"s partner and what sort of a fellow he would prove to be and whether or not we"d like him. And to think it"s Alec! If you weren"t such a young and tender innocent I"d throw you in the snow and give you a shampoo. What do you say, Walt, to doing it anyway?"
"Come on!" cried Pat, "the two of you, or all three!"
Upton shook his head mournfully. "I"d like to, but it wouldn"t be right.
He isn"t as big as the two of us, and so it wouldn"t do at all. It would be the same as a big fellow picking on a little one. You know I thrashed him once for doing that very thing, and now if we should turn around and do it I"m afraid the force of my beautiful example would be wholly destroyed. I tell you what, you do it alone, Hal."
"He"s too small," declared Hal. "That"s why I wanted you to help. Then my conscience would be only half guilty. I"m going to let him off this time with just a s...o...b..ll."
Suiting his action to the word he landed a big soft s...o...b..ll full on the side of Pat"s head. Pat made a rush for him, but Walter thrust out a foot and sent him headlong into the snow, and before he could regain his feet Hal was on him endeavoring to wash his face with snow. In a second there was the liveliest kind of a snow fight, Upton and Sparrer yelling encouragement with absolute impartiality. It ended with Hal"s smothered cry of "enough" and Pat"s allowing him up just in time to see Walter and then Sparrer unceremoniously pitched into the snow, by way of showing that all Scouts are equal, Pat explained, as he rubbed their faces.
Panting and glowing from the frolic they put out the fire built to heat their soup and were ready to hit the trail again. From this point on the snow-shoes were an absolute necessity, for they left the lumber trail for another ten miles through the woods. This time they were not dependent on the blazed trees as they had been when they went that way in the fall, for some one had been over the trail since the last snowfall, evidently coming out from Little Goose. Pat studied the tracks for a few minutes. Then his face cleared. "It was Big Jim," said he. "I wonder now if he took a look in the Hollow to see how Alec was getting on. He may have been over to the Gillicuddy camp, the trail from which comes in at the pond, you remember, but I have an idea he swung around to see Alec. I wonder now where he saw that fox. I just took it for granted that it was around where he is cutting and didn"t ask any questions for fear of letting the c.o.o.n out of the hole about where we were going. Then when I was alone with the doctor we both forgot all about Jim, there were so many other things to talk about. It may be that he saw that silver gray somewhere along this trail. We"ll keep our eyes peeled for signs."
"How do you know that Big Jim made these tracks?" asked Walter, who had been studying them closely, hoping to find out for himself the clue which made Pat so sure of his man, but unable to see anything distinctive save that they were of odd shape, being nearly round.
"By a combination of two things--the shape of the tracks and the length of the stride," replied Pat. "Jim always uses bear"s-paw shoes, and I don"t believe there are more than half a dozen other pairs in this neck of woods. Then look at the length of the stride. It"s a good three inches longer than mine, and there"s nothing dainty about mine. There isn"t a man in the woods who could take that stride and hold it but Jim Everly. So I"m as sure it was Big Jim as I am that if we don"t get a hustle on we"ll have to camp in the snow, and it"ll be a lot more comfortable at the pond. We"ve got another long hike to-morrow, and we want to be in shape to do it."
For some miles the going was fairly level, and once they had got into the swing of the thing the boys found it comparatively easy. There were two or three mishaps, but these were counted part of the sport. About two miles from their destination they came to a spur of a mountain over which the trail led. In fact, it was the very spur on the other side of which Spud Ely had overrun the trail and got lost the fall previous. Pat called a halt.
"It"s going to be no small job to get this load up there," said he. "We can go around the spur, but to do that will add a good three miles, and in the valley it will be dark before we can reach camp. What do you think? Are you game to try the hill?"
"The hill! The hill! Follow me, comrades, up yonder heights, and drive the enemy from their guns!" shouted Hal, striking a heroic att.i.tude and pretending to flourish an imaginary sword.
"Where lives the Scout, by difficulties pressed, Who will admit a chicken heart possessed?
Who will not rather bravely face the wust And do and dare and conquer or go bust!"
"Bravo!" cried Walter.
"When dares our comrade coin and use a word like wust We"ll take his dare and see who"ll scale yon hillside fust!
Lead on, Mr. Malone. We"ll make it or die in the attempt."
"All right, me brave Scouts," replied Pat. "Up we go! "Tis a chance to see the kind of stuff that"s in the likes of you, for "twill be no child"s play getting this load up there. And when we get up there where you see the bare rock watch your footing. That rock is slippery, and a fall there would be serious."
The next half hour was one of panting, sweating toil. In the first place, as soon as the grade began to rise sharply the boys found that the only way they could progress was by digging their toes into the snow through the toe holes in the shoes, which brought an added strain on the already weary muscles of the calves. It would have been bad enough in view of their inexperience if they had had nothing else to consider, but there was that heavy load, and it grew heavier every minute. As they got higher where the wind had had full sweep there was comparatively little snow, and in some places the bare rock was exposed. Here they found it easier going without the snow-shoes than with them.
Hauling and pushing they worked the toboggan up until at last the spur was crossed.
"Gee whiz!" exclaimed Hal. "I"m sweating like a butcher. That"s what I call work."