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Read Ebook: Harper's Young People May 18 1880 An Illustrated Weekly by Various
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Ebook has 376 lines and 23020 words, and 8 pages
"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 shore.
"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 butter."
"Butter? There's one roll of it, but the bacon's the butter for us. Now for the butcher-knives. We must ditch our tent."
"What for?"
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."
"Guess not. I can do that as well as you can. Give me one of 'em."
It was easy work to strip the tender game and hang it in the tent, but the boys were thoroughly tired of mere "going into camp" by the time they started for the lake.
"Hullo, Sid! If there isn't the old dug-out floating yet!"
"That thing out there by the snag? We can't get at her."
"Can't we? Can't you swim as far as that? I can."
"Swim? Oh yes, of course we can. Shall you go now?"
"Why, no; not till we get in fish enough for dinner."
"That's it. We're Indians. Got to fish, hunt, or starve--or live on hard-tack and bacon."
Pot Lake was a great place for trout, and both of the boys knew how to handle a rod.
"No three-inchers; none of your speckled minnows," shouted Sid, as he landed a half-pound beauty.
"Here comes a bigger one. Oh, but isn't this fun?"
"Better fun than going into camp."
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