During the next week or two after Christmas the boys made notable progress with their chopping, for even the Doctor had by this time become as expert as any of them in wielding an axe, while the other boys, who could scarcely be more expert with that implement than they were at the beginning, acquired a good deal of extra skill in the particular work they were now doing. They more readily recognized the use to which each piece of timber could be put; they acquired new deftness in shaping railroad ties to their destined use, so that the work was done more quickly and with a smaller expenditure of time and force; especially they learned and invented many devices to facilitate their handling of the great bridge timbers, of which they were now sending many down the chute.
All of them except Ed chopped all day. Ed volunteered to take the duty of camp guard upon himself all day every day, so long as his wound should incapacitate him for the hard work of chopping. There was double guard duty to do now of course, for in addition to the guarding of the camp there was the prisoner to watch. But now that the barricade with its platform was built in front of the hut, Ed was confident of his ability to watch both inside and outside, particularly as the wounded man was pretty nearly helpless still, and the boys took all the guns with them when they went chopping, except the one that Ed was using as sentinel. There was still another advantage in the fact that there was now nearly a foot of snow on the ground, and it would have been easy to see a man toiling over its white surface at a great distance.
So Ed played cook and camp guard all through the days and was excused from all night duty.
In the meantime there was no more trouble from the mountaineers, except that the wounded one in camp continually bewailed his fate and indulged in dismal forebodings of the long term he must serve in prison. Finally one Sunday, when his wounds were nearly well again, he said:
"It ain't so much for myself I care. I kin stand purty nigh anything. What I'm thinkin' about, boys, is my wife an' my little gal. You see my wife she's consumptive like an' not much fit fer work, an' my little gal, she's only six year old. So I don't know what's to become of 'em when I'm sent up, an' that'll be mighty soon now, as I'm gettin' well enough to walk."
"Now listen to me a minute," said Tom in a voice as stern as he could make it with the tears that were in it—for the picture presented to his mind of that poor invalid wife and still more of that little six year old girl left to struggle with that mountain poverty and starvation which he knew something about, had touched all that was tender in his nature.
"Now listen to me! I'm going to have a plain talk with you. The only reason you are to go to prison is that you tried your best to kill Ed. Why didn't you think of your wife and little girl before you committed that crime? Answer me honestly now!"
"Well, I will, Tom. You see I ain't much account. I ain't enough account to own a little share in one o' the stills that does a purty poor business up here in the mountings. So I has to live on odd jobs like, an' at best I barely manage to keep a little bread and meat in the mouths of my wife an' little gal an' a calico dress on their backs. No, that ain't edzacly the truth nother, an' as you an' me is talkin' fair an' square now, I don't want to misrepresent nothin'. I'll own up that oncet—just oncet I bought the little gal a doll down there in town, jest becase she seemed so lonely an' longin' like as she looked at it. It cost me five cents."
By this time all the boys had business with their handkerchiefs, which they felt it necessary to go out of doors to attend to.
After awhile Tom mastered himself sufficiently to say:
"Go on! Tell us why you shot Ed?"
"Well, as I wuz a tellin' you," resumed the mountaineer, "I ain't no account an' so I has to live by odd jobs. Well, when you fellers come up here, the other fellers made up their minds that you must go back, an' so they decided like to have you persecuted till you did go. So, as they didn't want to take the risk of the job theirselves, they come to me an' another feller—that feller what got his arm broke in your camp—"
"Yes, I remember him," said Tom; "go on and tell us all about it."
"Well, they come to us two no 'count fellers, him an' me, an' says, says they, 'ef you two fellers'll do the job we'll see as how you an' your families will have enough, meal an' meat, to last till blackberry time.' You see, we no 'count fellers always looked forrard to blackberry time. Ef we kin pull through till the blackberries is ripe, we're all right for a spell. Well, nuther on us liked the job, but we didn't see no way out'n it. So he come fust an' twicet. The second time he got too bad hurt like to go on with the job, an' so then I took it up. My pard he had reasoned and argified with you an' you wouldn't listen. So the fellers what was hirin' of me says, says they, 'Bill, you've got to shoot. If you kin drap one o' them fellers without gittin' caught they'll quick enough git out'n the mountings.' That's why I shot Ed. You see yourselves as how I couldn't help it."
All that Tom had tried to tell his comrades about the squalid poverty of the poorer class of mountaineers had made no such impression upon their minds as the prisoner's simple narrative. They were horrified at the destitution which he pictured and shocked at the dullness and perversion of his moral sense, manifested by his confident assumption that they would see that in trying to kill Ed he had done nothing wrong or unusual. Here was that degradation of mind and soul which frankly regards crime—even including the murder of innocent persons—as a legitimate means of livelihood—like the picking of blackberries—a degradation which nevertheless leaves the soul capable of emotions of affection and tender pity such as this man so manifestly felt for his invalid wife and his "little gal."
Unhappily this degradation, this perversion of the moral sense, is not confined to mountain moonshiners. There is very much of it in our great cities and it is the thing that gives the police force their hardest work. It is also the source of the most serious danger that threatens all of us.
The man had evidently finished with what he had to say, and as for the boys, they had from the first left this man's case in Little Tom's hands. Their throats ached too badly now with a pained pity, for them to make even a suggestion. So Tom took up the conversation.
"Now I want to say something to you," he said, "and I want you to try to understand me. You and I are talking, fair and square, as you said a little while ago, aren't we?"
"That's what we is, Tom," answered the man; "an' whatever you say'll be right, I don't doubt; but you see may be I won't quite understand it, like. I'll do my best. But I ain't got no eddication like. All I know is how to write my name, and may be print a few words on paper. The sergeant major taught me that when I was in the army."
"Then you served in the army?" asked Tom, somewhat eagerly.
"Yes, I was conscripted, but after I was conscripted I thought I mout as well be a good soldier as a bad one an' so I fought all I could. I never did make it out quite clear in my head what they was a fightin' about, but I says to myself, says I, 'Bill,' says I, 'you're in for this thing an' they's only one thing to do, an' that is fight as hard as you kin on the side yer on.'"
"Well if you were in the army," interposed Tom, "you know what a parole is?"
"Oh, yes, I know that. I had one o' them things oncet. That's how I got out'n the army. I was tooken pris'ner along with a lot of other fellers, an' after talkin' to us a lot, the officers what had us pris'ners sort o' explained the parole business to us, an' after we signed papers promisin' not to fight no more, they let us go home, tellin' us that ef we was caught fightin' agin they'd hang us. Fur a long time I was afraid the conscript officers would ketch me, an' make me fight again, but when one on 'em did ketch me at last he tole me he couldn't make me fight agin, 'cause I was a prisoner on parole. So I know mighty well what a parole means, though at first we all thought it meant a pay-roll an' that we was to be paid for not fightin'."
"Well you understand it better now," said Tom. "You understand that when a man is paroled, he promises not to fight again, and if he does, and is caught at it, he gets shot?"
"Oh, yes, I understand all that now. I was only tellin' you how as I didn't know fust off."
"Well, now that we're 'talking fair and square,' as you say, I want to say that I think you ought to go to state prison for a long term for shooting Ed, and I intended at first to send you there. Perhaps I may do so yet. But now, if Ed will forgive you for shooting him—I'll ask him presently—I'm going to put you on parole, just because of your sick wife and your little girl. You have been in our camp for several weeks now. You know what we are here for. You know that we are not here to bother your friends or to interfere with them in any way."
"Oh, any fool could see that!" exclaimed the man.
"Very well, then. I am going to make you sign a parole and then send you home, but mind, if you violate your parole I'll go down the mountain and bring enough soldiers up here to capture the last one of your gang and send all of you to prison. I know where some of your stills are, and I can find all the others. So you had better keep your parole, and your friends had better let us alone. Are you ready to sign the parole?"
The man rose from the chair on which he was sitting and threw his arms about Tom.
His expressions of gratitude were rude in the extreme, but at least they were genuine, and he finished in tears as he exclaimed:
"Oh, thank goodness I can go back now an' look after the wife an' little one, an' you kin bet your bottom dollar ef the other fellers makes any trouble fer you fellers, Bill Jones'll be here to help you agin 'em. I'm a goin' to explain things to 'em. I'm agoin' to give it to 'em straight, an' then ef they make trouble fer you, I'll be with you."
Tom drew up the parole and Jones signed it with extraordinary pride in his ability to write his own name in clumsy printing letters, with the "J" turned backwards. But strong man as he was, the tears kept coming into his eyes as he said over and over again:
"You're mighty good to me, Tom! All you fellers is mighty good to me. An' I'm agoin' to teach that little gal o' mine when she says her 'now I lay me' to wind it up with 'God bless Tom an' the other fellers.'"
With that he wiped away his tears with the back of his hand for lack of a handkerchief.
The next morning the mountaineer insisted upon departing in spite of the Doctor's assurance that he was not yet well enough to make the journey.
"I must, Doctor," he said. "You see, I don't know what's happened to my wife an' my little gal while I've been gone."
"Very well," answered the Doctor, "only I want to add a promise to your parole. I want you to promise me that if your wounds give you trouble you'll either come here yourself, or if you can't do that, you'll send for me to go to you and dress them." Then seeing that the man was about saying something emotional the Doctor quickly added:
"You see, I'm a Doctor, and it hurts my pride to have a case that I attend go bad. So if you have any trouble with your hurts you are to come to me or send for me at once."
Then after such rude adieus as the mountaineer could make, he started off up the mountain, the Doctor accompanying him a part of the way, upon pretense of wanting to see whether or not he was really fit to walk and carry his gun, which had of course been restored to him. But the Doctor had another purpose in view. Just before parting with the mountaineer he took a twenty dollar bill from his pocket and pressed it into the man's hand.
"There!" he said. "Perhaps that will keep meat and bread in your cabin till the blackberries get ripe," and with that he suddenly turned on his heel and rapidly strode back toward the camp, giving the man no chance to refuse the gift or to thank him for it.
But while the Doctor had taken every possible precaution to prevent any of his comrades from seeing what he did, the sentry on the platform saw and reported the facts. So when the Doctor returned to camp and set to work with his axe, the boys were quietly discussing a little plan of their own, talking in low tones, as they worked.
That night at supper Jack opened the subject, saying:
"Doctor, we shall be very sorry to part with you, but you have forfeited your right to remain in our camp. You have violated your parole."
"Why, how? What can you mean?" asked the Doctor in bewilderment.
"Why, you agreed to be one of us boys, and to 'share and share alike' with us in work and in everything else. Now, this morning you gave that mountaineer some money out of your own pocket, basely trying to conceal the fact from us. Even yet we don't know the amount of your gift. Now, we have unanimously decided not to submit to any such proceeding."
"But my dear Jack," interrupted the Doctor—
"But my dear Doctor," broke in Jack, "hear me out. What we have decided is to require you to tell us the amount of your benefaction to that man, so that we may owe you our share of it until we go down the mountain in the spring and collect our money. We are sharing and sharing alike in every thing or nothing, so out with it! How much money did you give the man?"
"But Jack, permit me to explain," said the Doctor. "You see, if I gave that fellow any money, it was of my own impulse and without any consultation with you. It was a bit of personal almsgiving in which I have no right to let you share. I did it solely to relieve my own mind, not yours. It wasn't a company transaction at all, and besides I could well afford it inasmuch as by coming up here with you boys and sharing your camp life this winter I have cut off nearly the whole of my personal expenses and am actually saving money."
"Now listen!" said Jack. "We all wanted to give that poor fellow some money with which to feed his wife and little girl 'till blackberries get ripe' next summer, and we should have done so if any of us had had any money. So in relieving your own mind you have relieved ours just as much. We all shared alike in the cost of fitting out this expedition. We have all shared alike in the building of our house and in all the other camp work. We have all shared alike in guard duty, in danger and in everything else, and we're going to do so to the end of the chapter. So we're going to share alike in this gratuity of yours, our shares to be paid to you as soon as we collect our money down below. So you must tell us how much you gave the man, or else our whole partnership and comradeship will be at an end. Come, Doctor, tell us all about it!"
"Well," said the Doctor, "I don't think it fair to let you boys share in what was a purely personal bit of almsgiving, done without any sort of consultation with any of you, but as you insist I will say that I gave the man a twenty dollar bill."
"All right," said Tom. "That gives us a chance to impose upon you. It is three dollars and thirty-three and a third cents apiece for us. We'll never pay that third of a cent, doctor, and so you'll be out a cent and two-thirds besides your own share in the gift. That will help to buy another doll for 'the little gal,' and I suppose you won't mind the expense."
"No," said the Doctor, "but what can be done to relieve these people's wretchedness and lift them up?"
Not one of the boys could answer the question. Perhaps there was no answer. There often is none to questions of that kind.
The next few weeks brought nothing of adventure to the boys. Their work went on wonderfully well. They sent down the mountain innumerable ties and all the cordwood that the trees yielded after the ties were cut. They sent down also a large number of great timbers for use in bridge building and the like, but nothing occurred to justify the name of their camp—Camp Venture.
Their firelight conversations were briefer and less spirited than before, because they were working so strenuously now that they were over-weary when supper was done, and they went to bed at least an hour earlier than they had done before. The earlier novelty of camping had at last worn out and with it the excitement that tends to keep people awake.
Nevertheless they constituted a happy company, all the more so because their work was producing larger results even than they had anticipated. They were sending down the mountain more ties, more cordwood and many more of the high-priced bridge timbers than they had expected to send.
Looking over the accounts one evening in February, when the snow was beginning to melt, Jack said:
"Boys, we've already accomplished more than we expected to do during the whole winter and spring. If we keep it up at the same rate we shall earn quite twice the money we expected to make. So Camp Venture is clearly a success. It is getting so well along in the year now that we need not fear deep snows or avalanches, or anything of that sort to bother us or interfere with our work."
"Nevertheless," said the Doctor, returning from an examination of his scientific instruments, "we're in for a snow storm to-night. It is already beginning and so far as my instruments are to be trusted, it is likely to be very heavy, with high winds."
The boys all went out and took a look at the sky. There was as yet no wind of any consequence, but the snow, in fine, dry, meal-like flakes, was coming down in a way that promised a heavy fall.
About nine o'clock the boys went to bed—all but Harry Ridsdale, who stayed outside as the sentry. About ten o'clock the wind rose to a gale and the roaring of it awakened the Doctor, who instantly arose and with a brand from the fireplace to serve as a torch, went out to consult his instruments. When he returned his stamping and brushing off of snow aroused the others, and the howling of the tempest brought them all into a very wide-awake condition.
"I say, boys," said the Doctor, throwing the brand he had carried into the fire again, "this is an awful night. The snow is coming down in blankets, the wind is blowing at a rate which is between a whole gale and a hurricane, and of course the snow is drifting terribly."
"All right," said Jack. Then he went to the door and called,—"Come in here, Harry! We shall have no use for pickets to-night."
In answer to some questions he said:
"No mountaineer is going to prowl about the hills in such a storm as this. If he did he would be smothered in a snowdrift before he got a hundred yards from his cabin door. We're perfectly safe for this night without a sentry, so we'll all crawl into our bunks and go to sleep."
The soundness of Jack's opinion was obvious enough, and so no more sentries were posted that night. The fire was reinforced with some big logs and all Camp Venture ventured for once to go to sleep.
The hours passed on. The wind howled more and more fiercely, and but for the solidity of its thick log walls the house would have shaken in a way to wake the heaviest sleeper. As it was the boys slept on undisturbed. Finally the fire burned low, so that it gave very little light in the cabin. Little Tom waked and feeling no need for further sleep he got up and piled on some additional logs. Then he went back to bed, but somehow his eyes would not close again. The other boys also waked up, and, turn over as they might, could not go to sleep again. Finally Harry, seeing that all were awake, called out:
"I say, fellows, let's get up and have some breakfast. I for one am hungry."
"So am I," answered Jack, springing out of bed.
"So say we all of us," responded Tom. "By the way, what time is it?"
Harry fumbled among the Doctor's belongings and looked at that gentleman's watch.
"Doctor, you forgot to wind your watch last night. It has run down at a quarter past nine."
"No, I didn't," answered the Doctor, leaping out of bed, where he had lazily lingered for a time. "I certainly wound it before I went to bed."
With that he went across the cabin, took the watch, looked at it, and then put it to his ear.
"It's running all right," he presently said, whereupon the other two members of the company who had watches brought them out.
All pointed to a quarter past nine.
Just then Jack opened the door and something like half a ton of snow fell into the house, but no light came with it.
"Boys!" he cried, "we're utterly snowed in. It is a quarter past nine in the morning, but the house is completely buried in snow! You see there is no light coming in even through the loosely laid roof, while the Doctor's windows are as black as midnight. Yet by looking up the chimney you can see daylight plainly. The fire has kept that open."
"Can there have been twenty odd feet of snowfall in a single night?" asked Harry in astonishment.
"No, certainly not," answered the Doctor. "We're caught in a snowdrift, that's all. You see with the fearful gale that has been blowing all night the snow has drifted greatly and now that I think of it, our house is peculiarly well situated to be caught in a drift."
"How so, Doctor?"
"Why, the wind has been from the north, northwest, or very nearly north. Our house stands on a plateau on the northerly side of the mountain. Less than a hundred feet south of it, rises a high cliff. That, of course, catches all the snow that comes on a north, northwest wind. Then again the house itself is an obstruction, catching and holding all the snow that strikes it. The snow storm has been a tremendous one, probably a three-foot fall, and we are caught under all of it that ought to have been scattered over several miles of mountainside."
"Let's postpone the explanations, fellows," broke in Tom, who always devoted himself to the practical, "and give our attention for the present to the problem of What to Do Now. That is after all the thing to think about in every case of emergency, and this is a case of emergency if ever there was one."
"How do you mean, Tom?" asked Jim Chenowith.
"Why, in the first place, we have less than a quarter of a cord of wood in the cabin, and, after such a storm, it is likely to turn very cold. So we must first of all dig a passageway to one of our wood piles, or else we must freeze to death. We can't get to the spring, of course, and if we did, it would be frozen up. But we can get all the water we need by melting snow. The worst of our problems is that of a food supply."
"That's so," said Jack, in something like consternation. "We haven't a pound of fresh meat on hand and I remember that you, Tom, intended to go out with your gun to-day to get some. We have eaten up all our hams and bacon, and we haven't anything left except the coffee, two small pieces of salt pork, some corn meal and the beans."
"That means," said Tom, "that we've got to dig our way out of here in a hurry, and we haven't a shovel in the camp."
"No," said Jack, "but we've got a pile of leftover clapboards over there in the corner, and we can soon make some snow shovels. Let's get to work at that."
After a breakfast on corn pones—for the pork must be saved for use with the beans—the boys set to work to manufacture rude shovels that would do as implements with which to handle snow. For handles they used such round sticks as they found in their meagre supply of fire wood.
In half an hour the whole company of boys were armed for an attack upon the snowdrift. In the meantime Tom had thought out methods.
"First of all," he explained, "we must attack the snow directly in front of the door, and work our way to the top of the drift. We must shovel that snow into the house, because we haven't any where else to put it. We'll put on all the kettles we have and reduce as much as we can of the housed snow to water for use in drinking, cooking, washing and so forth. When we break through to the top, we can shovel the snow to the right and left till we open a passageway to the wood pile."
"It's going to be mighty hard work," said Ed, "for the snow is so soft that we'll sink up to our waists in it."
"Yes," answered Harry, "but light snow like that will be easier to handle than if it had settled and frozen."
With that the boys set to work to break a passage from the door to the top of the snowdrift. When they had accomplished that they found, to their sorrow, that it was still snowing heavily, a fact which threatened to undo much of their work after it was done. Still the snow was dry and light, and standing up to their waists in it, they shovelled it to right and left, making a passageway through it that led towards their nearest wood supply. They did not pause for a midday meal, and yet when night came they had not reached the wood pile, while the snow continued to fall as heavily as ever. Fortunately the high wind had gone down, so that no more great drifts were blown into their trench.
They had not tried to dig to the ground in making their passageway. They had simply created an upward incline from the door of their house to the top of the drift, and then dug a sort of inclined trench towards the wood pile.
"Now I say, fellows," said Jack, as they left off work to get such supper as they could, "we've got to keep this thing up all night. We have barely wood enough left to get supper and breakfast with, and we simplymustget to that wood pile by morning. Of course we can't all work all night; we must have some sleep; so I propose that we divide the company into three shifts of two boys each, one shift to keep up the work of shovelling while the others sleep. We'll let each shift work for an hour and then wake up the next shift to take its place. That will let every fellow have two hours' sleep between his one hour spells of work."
The plan seemed in all respects the best that could be devised. Three sticks of wood were all that now remained in the cabin and it was decided not to burn any of these during the night, but to save them for use in cooking breakfast in the morning. Breakfast, it was agreed, should consist of a kettle of corn meal mush, with two slices of salt pork and a pint of coffee to each member of the party. The boys would have foregone the pork, saving it for a worse emergency, but the Doctor advised against that course.
"With so much work to do," he said, "we shall need the strength that comes from meat."
"And besides," said Tom, "this snow will pack down pretty soon and freeze over with a crust hard enough to bear a man. As soon as that happens I am going out to get some game."
The night's work was awkwardly pursued, owing to the darkness, which was rendered intense by the continued and very heavy snow fall. But while they had not reached the wood pile by daylight, they were nearing it and in fact believed themselves to be almost over it—for they had made their trench a shallow one, in order to hasten their advance. So, when the working shift was called to breakfast, Harry reported:
"We're almost over the wood pile. After breakfast, when we all get to work, we'll soon make a sloping path down to it. As it is still snowing, without a sign of quitting, I move that when we reach the wood, we all set to work to bring a houseful of it in here, against emergencies."
"That's our best plan," said the Doctor. "If we are destined to live on starvation rations and it should turn very cold, as is likely, we must have artificial heat to replace that which a full supply of food would make. A starving man practically freezes to death. So the first thing is to bring into our cabin as large a supply of wood as it will hold. Luckily we have plenty of it. There are twenty cords at least in that first pile."
With that the boys set to work on their scant breakfast of coffee, mush and salt pork.
After breakfast the boys began again the snow digging for their wood pile. They had somewhat miscalculated its locality, and so when they reached the ground with their descending path, the wood pile was not there. Nor could they easily correct their reckoning until little Tom came to the rescue with his keen eyes and his alert intelligence. Climbing to the top of the snowdrift and standing, hips deep in the soft snow, he studied the trees round about, or so much of them as protruded above the snow. It was Tom's excellent habit to observe things closely, even when there was no apparent occasion to observe them at all, and he had observed that one of the trees between which the wood had been ranked up had a peculiar knot on it about thirty feet from the ground, caused by some injury received while yet it was young. So he looked for that tree. The snow had so changed the aspect of the landscape that all its recognizable features had disappeared, but Tom remembered that peculiar knot and eagerly looked out for it. Presently he discovered it, in spite of the fact that a mass of snow that had collected on top of it seriously impaired its proportions. Instantly he called out directions to the boys to carry their pathway south toward the tree in question.
"But we're already south of the wood pile," said Harry. "Your plan will take us directly away from it. It is north of here, I tell you."
"All right," answered Tom. "I know where the wood pile is, and if I am wrong I'll do all the rest of the digging myself. Only if you'll dig in the direction I tell you, you'll come to it in about forty feet."
So confused were the geographical perceptions of all the boys, and so confident were they that Tom was wrong, that they made earnest protest against digging in the direction indicated by him. But his insistence was so resolute, and their faith in his sagacity was so strong, that after making their protest they yielded and pushed the snow excavation in the direction he had indicated. An hour's digging brought as its reward the discovery of the wood pile, and instantly every fellow set to work to carry wood into the house over the very imperfect pathway, which was being every hour rendered less and less passable by the continuing snow fall. By working hard, however, they managed to fill all the spare space in the house with wood and to pile five or six cords more around the doorway.
As they used about half a cord a day in ordinary winter weather, and from a cord and a half to two cords a day when the thermometer sank low, this was not a large supply. But at least it would ward off the present danger of freezing, and now that the way was open to the wood pile, and could be kept open by a little shovelling now and then, they could get more from time to time, as they might need it.
It was past nightfall when this work was completed. The boys had not stopped for a midday dinner, but Ed, with the foresight of an accomplished cook, had put a kettle of beans on to boil about midday, with just enough pork in it to give the beans a relish, and when night came he dished up the meal.
"There's no bread, boys," he said, "because we can't afford two dishes at one meal now. But you remember the Doctor told us that beans are bread as well as meat, and so that's all I have provided."
After supper the boys were very tired from their hard day's work, and yet they were disposed to talk, and at any rate it would not do to go to bed until their supper of boiled pork and beans should have had time to digest.
"If this snow continues," said Ed, "we fellows will pretty soon have to take our beans without the pork. I have a little of that bacon dripping left and I'll use that while it lasts. But unless we get some sort of supplies within three days we shall be out of meal."
"Are we so near the end as that?" asked Jack.
"Yes. We have nothing left now except two small pieces of salt pork, about twenty pounds of corn meal, and the beans. The pork and the meal won't last us more than two or three days, and as for the beans, well, we have less than half a peck of them left."
This announcement was received with something like consternation.
"We're nearing the starving point," said Jack. "We must recognize the fact and put ourselves at once upon starvation diet. I move that the Doctor take charge of such provisions as are left to us, with full power, to dole them out in the best way to keep life in us till the conditions change."
"Good!" cried all the boys in chorus, and so the motion was carried.
"If worse comes to worst," said Tom, "I'll take my gun, break my way out of here, and kill something fit to eat, at whatever risk. The game of every sort is starving now as well as we are. The turkeys, deer, rabbits and all the rest of them will be out on the mountains hunting for something to eat on those spots that the wind has blown clear of snow. It will be curious if I don't get some of them."
"We'll permit nothing of the kind," said Jack, "till the snow stops and freezing weather makes a crust upon it. To go out now would simply mean suicide. You wouldn't live to get out of this snowdrift, and if you did, you'd perish in the next one, Tom."
"Probably," answered Tom, in a meditative voice. "But I'd rather die that way, in an effort to save the whole company than stay here and starve like a rat in a hole."
"But," broke in the Doctor, "we are not yet starving. We are hungry, of course, having had an insufficient supply of food to-day. And we'll be hungrier to-morrow, and still hungrier next day. But as I reckon it we have food enough, at least to keep life in our bodies for three or four days to come if we hoard it carefully and eat only so much as is necessary to sustain life. By that time the weather will have changed in some way, and we shall have found some means of supplying ourselves."
So it was decided that Tom should not court death by attempting to go out upon the mountain under existing conditions.
"By the way, Doctor," asked Ed, "what are your weather predictions?"
"I can't make any," answered the Doctor. "It is still snowing hard; the barometer is low; the wind, which amounts to nothing, has shifted to the south-west—a bad quarter, suggesting more snow—and so far as I can see there is no promise of severe cold weather, which is what we most want now."
In this melancholy plight the boys went to bed, and, thanks to their high health and extreme weariness, they slept soundly.
The plan had been to set to work next morning to dig the house out of the snow; that is to say, to dig away a space around the cabin. But the Doctor forbade it.
"The more force we expend in work," he said, "the more food we must have, and as we have pretty nearly no food now, we absolutely mustn't expend any force unnecessarily. We must simply rest to-day, doing no more shoveling than is necessary to open a little larger area around the door, and to keep our path to the wood pile open."
That day, the next and the next were passed in idleness and with growing hunger. The snow ceased for a time on the second day, but the severe cold weather which alone could release the boys from their terrible plight, did not come. On the third day, the snow began to fall again in a pitiless and discouraging way, and by that time the food supply had run so low that the Doctor's dole of it was too small even to ward off the severe pangs of hunger.
Tom said that night: "Boys, I don't care what the consequences are, I'm going to break out of this to-morrow morning or perish in the attempt. I'd rather die in a snow bank, fighting for a chance, than sit here and slowly starve to death. My strength is already waning, and before it goes altogether I'm going to make an effort to get some food. If I wait longer I sha'n't have either the strength or the courage to go at all."
This time nobody interposed an objection, but foreseeing Tom's need, and knowing that he would accept nothing not shared equally by the others, the Doctor deliberately dealt out a larger supply of beans than usual that night. The meal was all gone. The pork had been eaten up, and after the Doctor gave out this supper, which it would take till eleven or twelve o'clock at night to cook, there was left only about two quarts of beans in the camp, and absolutely not an ounce of food of any other kind.
In ordinary circumstances, if the boys had been thus shut up in their cabin and deprived of physical activity, they would have held long talks and learned much. Especially they would have beset the Doctor with questions, the answers to which would have interested them. But now they were too hungry for material food, too starved of body and far too depressed in mind to care for conversation of any kind. They simply sat still and starved, in gloomy silence, and under the terrible oppression of hopelessness and helplessness. All but Little Tom. His courage survived, and as he sat before the fire waiting for the beans to cook, he was resolutely planning ways and means by which, if possible, to make the morrow's expedition successful. The chances, he knew, were a hundred to one against him, and he was trying, by the exercise of a careful foresight, to bring that one chance in a hundred within his grasp.
Presently he took off his boots and drove the heaviest nails there were in the camp into their heels, letting the heads protrude more than a quarter of an inch below the surface.
"What's that for, Tom?" asked Jack, in listless fashion.
"To keep me from slipping," Tom answered, "in climbing over rocks with snow or ice on them."
"But you're not really going to try this thing to-morrow, are you? It will be madness to attempt it."
"Probably," answered Tom. "But madness or sanity I'm going to make the attempt. I don't see anything particularly sane in staying here in camp and trusting to a quart or two of beans to keep life in six already starved boys. I'd rather die trying than sitting still. So I'm going to start at daylight."
There was no use in arguing, particularly as the argument was manifestly all on Tom's side. So all the boys remained silent.
"I'm going to take two guns," said Tom, presently, "the rifle and a shot gun, so as to lose no chance of any game, big or little. I'll pretty certainly lose one of the guns before I get back if I ever get back at all."
Nobody said anything in reply. Tom's remark had been addressed to nobody in particular. Indeed it was rather a reflection out loud than a remark.
Then Tom proceeded to get his ammunition belt ready. The rifle was already loaded in its magazine, with fourteen cartridges. For the shot gun, Tom put into his belt, twenty cartridges loaded with nine buckshot each, and twenty that carried turkey shot—these last for game smaller than deer.
"I'll kill anything I see," he said, presently, "from a skunk to a big buck deer. We are hungry enough now to eat any sort of meat that may come to our hand."
Just then a noise was heard on the snow-covered roof—a noise as of scratching and slipping. Nobody heard it but Tom, but his senses were already in that condition of alertness which the morrow's work would require for its success. So, without saying anything to his comrades, Tom took the rifle, opened the door, and went out to see what the matter might be. He reflected as he did so, that it was probably only some slipping of the snow and ice upon the clapboards, but at any rate he wanted to see for himself the cause of it.
A few minutes later the boys inside the hut were startled by two cracks of a rifle and a heavy fall, just in front of the door. They seized their guns and rushed out, stumbling over something at the door as they did so.
"Look out there!" called Tom, eagerly; "don't risk a blow from his claws yet. He may have life in him still. Let me give him one more bullet to make sure."
With that Tom advanced and fired once more into the carcass of the large black bear that he had already killed.
"It's pretty hard, isn't it?" said Tom.
"What is?" asked the Doctor.
"Why, to shoot a friend that had come to our rescue as that fellow did."
"I don't understand."
"Oh, yes you do, or at least you ought to," answered Tom, in whom the long continued, but now released, nervous strain, had wrought an irritable mood. "Don't you see that fellow came here just in time to rescue us from starvation—for I had hardly a hope of getting back with any game from to-morrow's expedition—and he brought a huge supply of bear's meat with him, under his skin. By the way, boys, skin him carefully, as his hide will be a valuable addition to my collection of pelts. I have the painter's coat, a deer's hide, the skins of several raccoons and opossums, thirty or forty squirrel and hare skins, and now this bear's thick overcoat will greatly increase the value of my collection. Skin him carefully, but quickly, for we're going to have a dinner of bear beef before we go to bed, and we'll eat bear beef to our hearts' content till the weather releases us from our prison. I'm not going out for game to-morrow."
The bear was dragged into the cabin. Jack picked out a bent stick of round wood, and with an axe quickly sharpened its ends into points, making of it a "gambrel" stick, about two and a half feet long. Inserting its sharpened ends under the big tendons of the animal's hind legs, he had him ready to hang up for dressing. Meantime, another of the boys had driven another stick in between two of the upper logs of the cabin, letting its end protrude a foot or two into the cabin. Four of the boys seized the bear, which weighed not much less than two hundred pounds, and after some exertion succeeded in hanging it, head downwards, upon this stick. Then, with sharp knives, they set to work to skin it.
"Oh stop!" cried Ed. "I know a better plan than that. If you wait to skin the bear, we sha'n't get any meat to eat before morning. Treat him as a butcher treats a deer or calf. Cut him open, and give me the heart, liver and kidneys to cook, and you can skin him afterwards just as well as before. In the meantime I'll be getting supper."
The boys were much too nearly famished to dispute over any suggestion that promised to hurry meal time, so they did at once what Ed had bidden them do. They ripped the animal open, removed the viscera, detached the heart, liver and kidneys, and delivered them into Ed's hands.
Ed washed them and cut them into small bits, discarding the gristle-like linings of the heart. Then he put the whole mass into the kettle in which the beans were cooking, adding a goodly piece of the bear's fat and a pint or two of water.
"It'll be a new dish," he muttered to himself—"'bear giblets and beans'. But if I'm not mistaken nobody in this company will hesitate to eat of it."
"I say, fellows," he called out presently, "save every ounce of that fat! We'll need it for cooking purposes if ever we get anything besides bear beef to cook."
"By the way, Tom," said Jack, as he worked at the task of skinning the bear, "how did this fellow come to be prowling around our cabin?"
"He was hungry, like the rest of us," answered Tom. "The snow has cut off his customary sources of supply, so he set out, precisely as I intended to do in the morning, to find something to eat. Bears always do that when the snow is heavy. They have often gone down, in hard winters, to the Piedmont region—sometimes as far as Amelia or Powhatan county. They are searching for something to eat—corn in a crib if they can get at it, or pork in a barrel, or a robust boy if they can't get anything better. This fellow was hunting for anything he could find, and, unluckily for him, he found me, with my rifle. What a splendid gun that is, by the way, Doctor! Every shot I fired at the big beast went right through him and hurtled off into the air beyond."
"That's the nitro powder," said the Doctor.
"By which you mean—what?" asked Tom.
"Why, nitro powder is smokeless powder. It is mainly composed of nitro-glycerine, and it has an explosive force many times greater than that of ordinary gunpowder. That is what gives to the guns that are loaded with it so much greater a range than ordinary guns have. You see, it starts the bullet with a vastly greater velocity than that of a bullet propelled by the explosion of ordinary gunpowder, and so the missile goes very much faster, with very much more force, and in a much straighter line, and the gun is more accurate and greatly deadlier in its aim."
"Well, now I want to say," interrupted Ed, "that I've got a supper ready which will go to the spot with a much surer aim than any bullet ever did in the world."
The boys responded instantly, as a matter of course. They were literally starving, or so nearly so, that they afterwards confessed that they had had great difficulty in resisting the temptation, while skinning the bear, to cut off mouthfuls of the meat and consume it raw.
There was, of course, no criticism, therefore, upon Ed's new dish of "bear giblets and beans," and not until the last morsel of it was consumed, did any boy in the party relinquish his assiduous attention to it.
"Now," said Jack, "we can go to work again. To-morrow, we'll dig the house out of the snowdrift any how."
"Yes," said Tom, "and as I needn't go hunting now, I'll help in that. The snow has settled a good deal by its own weight now and it will settle a good deal more before morning."
"Why?" asked Ed.
"Because it is raining," said Tom, "and nothing settles snow like a drizzling rain."
"It is now two o'clock," said Jack, "and I for one am going to bed."
"Better sit up for half an hour longer," said the Doctor.
"Why?" asked Jack.
"Because our stomachs are full. They have been seriously weakened by several days of starvation, and are apt to do their work rather badly for a time. Let's give them a chance."
"But, Doctor," said Jack, "I have noticed that all the animals lie down and sleep as soon as they have fed heartily. Why isn't it a good thing for men to do the same thing? Men are after all, animals on one side of their nature."
"Yes, I know," said the Doctor, "and I have known physicians to argue in that way in favor of late suppers. But experience hardly bears out the argument. A man may sleep well on a heavy meal, but often he gets up with a bad taste in his mouth and with a morbid craving for food, which means that he hasn't properly assimilated the food that he has already eaten."
"What do you mean by 'assimilating' food?" asked Tom, adding: "I'm afraid you'll think me very ignorant."
"Not at all," replied the Doctor. "Most people don't understand that. You see, there are two distinct processes by which we turn food to account in building up our bodies, making strength and heat, and generally carrying on the processes of life. One of those processes is digestion, and the other assimilation. Digestion simply reduces the food which we have eaten to a condition in which it can be assimilated. By assimilation certain organs of the body take up the food thus prepared for them, convert it into blood and send it through the system to nourish it. In the passage of the blood through the arteries and veins, it leaves deposits of muscle here, fat there, bone in another place, and so on. This is a very rude statement of the matter, but it is sufficient to show you what I mean, at least in a general way. Very well. It does a man no good whatever to digest his food if he doesn't assimilate it. No matter how perfectly the stomach does its work, the body is not nourished unless the organs charged with the function of assimilating the digested food do theirs also. Once, in a hospital, I saw a little baby die of actual starvation, although it had an abundance of food, and digested it perfectly. It simply could not assimilate."
"But what has that to do with our going to bed at two o'clock in the morning?" asked Jack, who was disposed to be a trifle cross as the result of the long starvation and strain.
"Only this," answered the Doctor, "that unless we give our weakened stomachs a little chance to digest our food properly before we go to sleep, the process of assimilation will be very imperfectly performed and we shall not be as perfectly nourished as we need to be. Still, I think we might safely go to bed now," added the Doctor, "as the half hour is gone, and it is now two thirty"—looking at his watch.
With that the exhausted company prepared for bed. Jim Chenowith was the first to approach the bunks, under which the earthen floor was a little lower than in the rest of the cabin. As he did so, having slipped off his boots, Jim called out:
"Hello! What's this? I say, fellows, we have a creek here under our beds!"
A hasty examination confirmed his statement. There was a vigorous stream of water running directly under the bunks, and worse still, as an exploration with torches soon revealed, the water was not only running in under the lower logs of the hut, but was also pouring through every opening it could find in the chinking of the walls above, and streaming into the bunks.
The Doctor hastily went outside to study conditions and, returning, said:
"There's a terrific rain on, boys, and the thermometer stands at fifty. So the snow is melting rapidly, and the two things together—the rain and the melting snowdrift—are flooding us."
Tired and sleepy as Jack was, he rose instantly to the occasion.
"There's no sleep for us to-night, boys!" he said. "We must go to work at once and dig the house out of the snowdrift. Get some fatwood torches ready and let's go to work."
The boys responded quickly, and presently all of them except Ed, whom the Doctor forbade to do any further work that involved strenuous physical exertion, were engaged in shoveling the snow away from the house and opening a passageway around it fully eight feet wide.
By daylight this was accomplished. It put an end to the inflow of water through the chinking of the upper logs; but, as Tom expressed it, there was still "a young river" flowing into the house, from the bottom of the snow bank, underneath the lower logs of the hut. Not only was all the warm rain flowing through the snow bank, but in its passage it was dissolving a great deal of the snow, and so the volume of water flowing out at the bottom and running into the house was quite double that which the rain itself would have supplied.
"We ought to have made a bank of earth around the lower part of the cabin," said the Doctor, after studying the situation for a time.
"True," said Jack, "but we had no tools with which to do it. Neither have we any now. So I don't see what is to be done."
"I do!" said Tom, the alert of mind. "I do, and it is perfectly simple."
"What's your idea, Tom?" asked Jack.
"Why, to make the snow protect us against itself."
"But how?"
"Why, by building a little snow bank between the big snow bank and the house, hammering it into solid ice, with our mauls, and in that way making a ditch that will carry off the water around the end of the house and down over the cliff."
"That's a superb idea, Tom," said Jack, "and we'll get to work at it at once. I'd give the proceeds of all my winter's work for a head half as good as yours, Tom."
"Oh, pshaw!" said Tom. "My head isn't of much account. It is only that I look straight at things and try to use common sense."
"Yes," said the Doctor, "and that is what we call 'genius' in science. It is the men who 'look straight at things and try to use common sense' who do the great things in science. Darwin did that, and so did Asa Gray, and Edison, and Agassiz, and all the rest of them. Scientific genius is nothing in the world but common sense, reinforced by a habit of observation."
But there was no further time for talk. The boys quickly built a low snow embankment between their house and the great snowdrift, and beat it down with their mauls, into a condition of solid ice. With this barrier to aid them they succeeded in compelling the water from the rain and the melting snow to flow in a sort of ditch around their house, and to cease flowing through it.
Inside, however, the condition of things was deplorable. The earthen floor under the bunks was a mud hole. The broom straw that constituted the beds was soaking wet, and the task of drying it promised to be no easy one.
"We've simply got to sleep on hard clapboards for two or three nights," said Ed.
"Well, what of that?" asked Tom, "I've often slept on much harder beds than clapboards make."
"For example?" asked Jim.
"Well, I've slept on big rocks for one thing."
"Why did you do that? Why didn't you sleep on the softer ground?"
"Because the softer ground was much too soft, being mud. I've slept on two rails placed about eight inches apart, with one end stuck into a fence so as to keep me out of the mud, and a pretty good bed rails make. Finally, I have slept on the worst bed there is in the world."
"What is that?"
"Why, a pile of pebbles. That's the very worst there is, but you can sleep on it, if you've got to. Now, let's have some breakfast, Ed, and after devouring a proper quantity of bear steak, I'll show you fellows how a healthy fellow who has worked all night can sleep on clapboards in spite of the daylight that the Doctor's rag windows are letting in, now that we've shoveled the snow away from them."
Ed had breakfast already well under way. It was to consist solely of bear steak and coffee, for coffee was their one supply which was not exhausted, and during the starving time they would hardly have endured their hunger but for that resource.
"But," said Jack, as they ate their breakfast, "what are we going to do with that bear meat? It won't keep long in this soft weather. By the way, Jim, throw another stick on the fire. It's cold."
"So it is," said the Doctor, who had just come in after a consultation with his scientific instruments. "The thermometer has sunk twenty degrees within the last hour, and stands now at two degrees below freezing. It will go much lower, for the barometer is rising and the wind has shifted to the northwest. We're in for a trip to the Arctic regions without doing any traveling to get there."
"Let's hang the bear out of doors, then," said Jack. "It will freeze there."
"Yes, and every carnivorous animal in these woods will come and eat for us," said Tom, whose authority on the habits of wild creatures was accepted by all the boys as final.
"Besides," said the Doctor, "it isn't necessary. Our bear will freeze hanging just where he is, by the door there."
With that he arose, went outside, and brought in a thermometer, which he pinned to the bear's carcass.
"We're down to twenty-six degrees outside now," he said, "and it is growing steadily colder." Then, after waiting for five minutes, he consulted the thermometer that he had hung upon the bear, and announced:
"It stands at thirty-three degrees—fruit-house temperature."
"What do you mean by 'fruit-house temperature?'" asked Tom.
"Why, don't you know? The houses in which fresh fruits of the summer are preserved for winter use are kept always at a temperature of thirty-three degrees. If the temperature were higher than that, the fruits would ferment and decay. If it were a single degree lower they would freeze—for thirty-two degrees is the freezing point. But at a temperature of thirty-three degrees nothing decays and nothing freezes. So they keep the fruit houses always at that temperature, and they keep fresh strawberries and peaches and all the rest of the fruits all winter in nearly as good condition as when they were picked."
"Well, what do they do with a boy," asked Tom, "who has worked all night and is mightily sleepy, except let him go to bed, even if it is the usual time for going to work, instead? Good morning, and pleasant dreams to all of you."
With that Tom rolled himself up in his blanket and lay down upon the clapboard flooring of his bed, taking a stick of wood with him for a pillow. The rest immediately followed his example and in spite of adverse conditions, they were all presently sound asleep.
"Zero weather, boys, and below," called the Doctor, who was first to wake, about four o'clock that afternoon, and who, before waking the others, had gone out to inspect his weather recording instruments. "The bear hanging here by the door is frozen hard, and so is all the water in the house. So all that want a bath will have to join me in a roll in the snow out there."
With that he shed the scant clothing that he had on him and, rushing out, plunged into a snow bank. The rest, determined not to be out-done in robustness, quickly followed him, and after a vigorous rubbing with their coarse towels, they felt like entirely new persons.
"How glad our friends will be," said Tom, "when they hear that each of us is 'another fellow.'"
"That's an old joke, Tom," responded Ed.
"Yes, to other people, perhaps, but not to this crew of new people, every one of whom has proclaimed himself 'a new man' after that snow bath."
"Now, we can accomplish something," said Jack. "The rain and natural settling have reduced the depth of snow out there where we're chopping to two or three feet, and in this weather the surface of it will be as hard as ice itself. So we'll all drive nails in our heels to-night, as Tom has done with his, and early to-morrow we'll set to work again with the axes."
Ed was already broiling some slices of juicy bear beef, and had a big pot of coffee ready for use. As they ate supper, Harry said:
"This bear beef is delicious, of course, but I would give something pretty if I had an ash cake or a pone of bread to go with it. It may be true that a healthy person can live on meat alone for a good while, but it is a good deal more comfortable to have some bread with it."
"And it is more wholesome, too," said the Doctor. "Man was made to eat a mixed diet, and it isn't well for him to live too long on meat without starchy food, or starchy food without meat. I'm going to observe the effects of this exclusively meat diet on all of us very closely."
"Any how," said Jack, "the Indians, when they go on their big hunting trips or on the war-path, used to live on meat alone for weeks and months at a time. So I don't think we'll starve while our bear lasts, and before it is gone we can depend on Tom to provide something else. Now that the snow is hard, Tom will go prowling about the mountains before many days pass."
"Oh, we shan't starve," said the Doctor. "But it has been a good many days now since we had any bread, and we are all beginning to feel the need of it. The beans we had with our bear giblet stew were a very imperfect substitute for bread, and the quart or so of beans that we have left are not to be used at all so long as we keep fairly well. I'm saving them for hospital diet. How the Doctors in the hospitals would laugh at the suggestion of a bean diet in illness! And yet we may have to come to that for lack of any other starchy food."
"What is it you fear, Doctor?" asked Jack.
"Why, I fear that an exclusive diet of meat may result in some sort of inflammation or other disturbance of the digestive organs. If that happens, even a few beans, boiled without meat, may save a life. At any rate, I am going to keep the beans for such an emergency."
All this while Tom was taking no part in the conversation. Tom was thinking—"looking straight at things and using common sense." Presently, he took his gun and went out to "take a look at the situation," he said. On his return, he reported that "everything is frozen as hard as a brick, and if the moonshiners ever intend to attack us, now is their time. We must put out a sentinel at once. As I want to think a little I'll take the first turn, and the rest of you fellows can arrange as you like for the other turns."
"One thing I want to suggest," broke in the Doctor. "The cold is intense. The thermometer is considerably below zero. It will be cruel to keep any boy on guard outside for any prolonged time. So I propose that while this weather lasts we run the guard duty in half hour shifts. That will give each boy half an hour out there in the cold, and two hours and a half in which to sleep and get warm before he has to go on duty again."
"It's an excellent idea," said Jack, "and we'll arrange it so."
"All right," said Tom, "only as I am taking the first and best turn, I'll stay out for an hour."
The fact was, though Tom did not mention it, that the boy wanted a full hour in which to think out some plans that he had vaguely conceived. It was always Tom's habit to try to better the conditions in which he was placed, instead of accepting them as inevitable. Whenever anything was wrong and uncomfortable, Tom began asking himself if there might not be some way in which he could make it right and comfortable. He could endure hardship with a plucky resolution that often astonished others; but he never endured hardship without giving all his energies to the task of ridding himself of it if that were possible. It was a familiar saying among those who knew him that "Little Tom Ridsdale never will admit that he is beaten, and so at last he never is beaten."
As Tom paced up and down the platform, stamping his feet and clapping his hands against his sides to keep them from freezing, the Doctor came out with a burning brand to consult his weather instruments. When he had done, Tom called to him, saying:
"Would you mind coming up here for a minute or two, Doctor?"
"No, certainly not," answered the Doctor. "Do you want to go in and warm yourself?"
"No; oh, no," answered Tom, quickly. "I only want to consult you a little."
The Doctor mounted the platform, and after some hesitation, Tom asked:
"Do you happen to have any more money in your pockets, Doctor?"
"Yes, of course. I always keep a little money with me."
"Would you mind lending me two dollars in the common interest of the company, I giving you an order on our paymaster down below for that amount, to be paid to you out of my share when we collect?"
"Yes," answered the Doctor. "I would mind that very much. In fact, I positively decline to lend you any money on any such terms, Tom. But if you want some money, be it two dollars, or ten, simply as from one friend to another, and without any 'orders' on paymasters, you can have it."
Tom understood, and he did not contest the point. He pressed the Doctor's hand and said:
"Well, then, let me have two dollars, please?"
"Make it five," said the Doctor.
"No," answered Tom. "Two dollars will be quite enough. Somebody in the mountains might murder me for five dollars. And, besides, nobody up there could change the bill. So, if you will let me have two one dollar bills I shall be grateful."
"What are you going to do, Tom? Nothing rash, I hope."
"I don't know yet what I'm going to do," answered Tom. "And please don't say anything to the other boys about it. I'll be gone from here when they get up in the morning. Maybe I'll bring back some game. You see that bear won't last very long with six hearty men eating three meals a day off it, with no other food to help fill up."
The Doctor saw that Tom did not want to talk of his plans—it was always Tom's way to keep such things to himself—and so he asked no more questions, but went to the doorway for light, selected two one dollar bills, and returning, placed them in Tom's hand. Then Tom said:
"Now, Doctor, you fellows are not to worry about me if I don't turn up when you expect me. I shall probably be away from camp for several days—may be a week, or possibly even more than that. Don't worry, in any case. Remember that I know how to take care of myself."
The Doctor promised, but it was with much of apprehension in his mind. He saw that Tom was looking forward to his projected expedition with a good deal less of confident hope than he usually manifested on such occasions, and he gravely feared that the boy was planning to take some serious, if not even desperate, risk. He knew that Tom was daring to a fault, and that when he had formed a purpose he pursued it to its ultimate accomplishment or failure, with no regard whatever to the risks run, except that prudent forethought and circumspection which might enable him to avoid threatened evils.