Unexplored! Part 3

There were also pine-cone battles and bait-casting contests, Pedro excelling in the throw by reason of his big arm muscles. Thus day succeeded cool and perfect day, and night followed star-strewn night, for nearly a week. The tooth-brush brigade sallied forth as soon as the sun began slanting its long morning rays through the forest aisles, and the boys often began nodding at a ridiculously early hour around the bon-fire, tired from their strenuous day in the open. But each day found their spirits higher, their muscles harder, their eyes brighter,--and their appet.i.tes more insatiable. Ted was plumping up and Pedro tr.i.m.m.i.n.g down on the self-same medicine.

The chipmunks soon became so tame that they ran all over the place, over the boys' feet, on up to their shoulders, and into their pockets for the goodies they sometimes found. But they never ran under any one's palm.

Pedro got one cornered and caught him with his bare hands, and put him on a leash, but the furry mite spent the next half hour straining to get away, too unhappy to eat,--cowering, trembling, when the boys stroked his orange striped back with a gentle finger,--and Pedro finally gave him back his freedom, (and a pyramid of peanuts).

"Camp Chipmunk" it was finally voted to call the place, and the name was inscribed on the side of a huge fallen log with bits of yellow-green live moss.

Though the chipmunks could easily have gone to the creek, as they must have before the boys came, they displayed a preference for drinking out of the same water pail the boys did, and they sometimes took an unexpected and unappreciated plunge bath.

Besides the very tiny chipmunks, there were some of the ground-squirrel size with the same orange and black. They were duller of wit, and more timid, but they used to chase the little fellows to within an inch of their lives. One day a big Sayes chipmunk attempted to fish a cheese rind out of the fireplace. The ashes were still hot, and he plunged into the soft stuff over his head, he was out and away, with a piercing squeal, almost instantly, trailing white ash behind him.

The boys used to bury nuts just to see how fast the littlest chipmunks would smell them out. After repeatedly finding the Dutch oven bread nibbled around the edges, Pedro hung the bread-bag from the clothes-line one night. He was awakened next morning by the shout Ted sent up when he found two chipmunks running down the string and squeezing their way delightedly into the bag.

Some one always had to watch while the meal was being laid, for the mouselike villains would be right up on the table sampling the b.u.t.ter, if some one did not keep an eye out. Or they would climb up the leg of the table and peek over the edge with their beady eyes, wondering how far they dared approach without danger to their agile persons. But the funniest thing was when two chipmunks would quarrel,--as generally happened when one unearthed a nut that another had buried. Nickering in the angriest way imaginable, the two tiny things would come at each other with ears laid back, in what appeared for all the world like a head-b.u.t.ting contest. Around and around they would whirl in a spiral nebula, till one got a head start on a race for home and mother.

Each morning they awoke to the hack-hack-hack of the sawyers and the steady grating of the log saw, the twitter of the donkey engine and the volcanic remarks with which the bull-puncher was urging his team forward.

The yellow suns.h.i.+ne sifted aslant through the giant trees, birds sang, and chipmunks chattered. A water-packer pa.s.sed them one day with his mule plodding along under 40 gallons disposed in canvas bags on a wooden frame, and beyond, across the singing creek, they could see the swampers burning the brush they had cut from the pathway of the tree next to fall.

Breakfast dispatched, the boys hurried over to watch the two-bitted axe biting its huge kerf in the side of a ten-foot trunk. When it had eaten a third of the way through the giant trunk, the sawyers began on the opposite side, nearly as high as the top of the kerf, resting the long instrument on pegs driven into two holes that had been bored for the purpose. Iron wedges were driven after the saw. The instant the tree began to lean, the head chopper had driven a stake about 150 feet from the base on the side of the kerf, declaring that the falling tree would drive that stake into the ground, so accurately could they gauge the direction of its fall. The swampers had cleared the way between. Then came the cracking of neighboring branches, as the mammoth trunk swayed and toppled to the forest floor. There was a crash that shook the ground, which rebounded with a shower of chips and bark dust, and the stump gaped raw and red where for perhaps 2,000 years it had upborne the plumed Sequoia Gigantea.

The boys, far above whose heads the fallen trunk towered, scrambled up the rough bark and raced each other up and down the novel roadway that it made. Then, the excitement over, they suddenly realized that they were hungry and ran another race back to camp.

Later they watched as the donkey engine, stronger than ten oxen, was made fast to a stump and stoked till it could move itself into position to haul the log lengths to the waiting ox team. Peelers with axes and long steel bars had been peeling off the thick red bark, which the boys found could be whittled into odd shapes and rubbed velvety at the cut ends. The sawyers were sawing the trunk into lengths short enough to ride on box cars, and the chain tenders were driving the "dogs" or steel hooks into the forward segment preparatory to attaching the chain that was to draw the log after the panting donkey engine. The block s.h.i.+fter was ready with his pulley, and the gypsy tender was gathering down wood.

Suddenly, just as the chain had stretched till the log began to move, some weak link snapped and with a rebound like that of a cannon it flashed over the hillside, catching one man and toppling him over with a broken leg. The camp cook, whose accomplishments varied from the ability to deliver an impromptu and usually unsolicited sermon to that of calling off the numbers at a stag dance, was summoned in haste and from a long black bag that went with the framed diploma that hung at the head of his bunk, this unusual individual administered surgical treatment. The injured man took it philosophically,--his out of door const.i.tution would repair the damage with more than average speed,--and the work of getting out the big log proceeded as before.

They also watched, fascinated, as the logs at a camp further back were sent down a crude slide that slanted sheer to a sizeable lake. Ace threatened to try riding a log some time, but Norris rendered one of his rare ultimatums on that score.

"Let's take plenty to eat!" bargained Pedro, who was beginning to suspect it was no afternoon stroll he had embarked upon. "Hadn't we better 'phone old Lester to lay in some extra supplies?"

"There is always fish," Norris reminded him.

"One gets tired of fish. I say let's take plenty of grub, if we're going away off where for weeks we may not see a living soul to buy a pound of bacon of. Eating's half the fun of camping. And if we get up there on the John Muir Trail, we can't even catch fish, can we--always?"

"That's the stuff!" seconded Ace. "If we aren't tied too tightly to the problem of rustling grub, we will be freer to roam where we please. But gos.h.!.+ Won't it take a whole train-load of burros to pack enough stuff?

Five men, three times a day, that's fifteen meals. And thirty days would make it 450 meals. Besides we'll eat just about double the normal number of calories,--the way I feel already. And twice 450 meals is 900."

"Whoa, there!" begged Norris. "How much can a burro carry, anyway? We can't take all our food, or we'll have such a pack-train we won't have time for anything but donkey driving, and if we carry feed to keep them going on the trail, we'll have to take more burros to pack the feed, and they will have to have feed too, and--there's no end to it."

"Well, of course we'll fish, when we can," amended Pedro. "And we can take compact rations, dried stuff, instead of watery canned goods.

They're just as good, aren't they? Only the water's been taken out of them, and we can put it back in each night before we eat it. What's the use of packing tin cans that are mostly full of water?"

"I wouldn't call canned peaches mostly water," retorted Ace, who though less dependent than the plumper Pedro on his three square meals per day, was even more particular what those three meals tasted like.

"It isn't only the juice," said Pedro. "The peaches themselves are half water. Dried peaches are the same thing except for that, and two pounds of dried peaches will go a whole heap farther than a two-pound can, let me tell you!"

"All right," said Ace. "Dried peaches! What else? Mr. Norris, you've had a lot of experience on these back-country trips."

"H'm!" said the young Survey man, his eyes lighting reminiscently. "Did you ever eat black bean soup with salt pork and garlic to flavor it?"

"I have," said Pedro. "It's a meal in itself, with black rye bread and dill pickle. And what about fried frogs' legs and watercress? Broiled mushrooms, stewed mushrooms and onions, and crayfish soup?"

"Sounds good to me," Ace admitted. "But have we a mushroom expert in our midst? I'm not ready to commit suicide just yet."

"Nor I," laughed Norris.

"n.o.body asked you to," Pedro looked aggrieved. "Goodness knows I'm no expert, but I do know a few kinds, and I know those few kinds for sure."

"Hot dog!" commented the Senator's son. "Go to it, ol' boy!"

"Then," Norris continued, "there've been times in my life when I didn't turn up my nose at corned beef hash browned."

"And spuds!" Ace completed the recipe. "And onions."

"Dehydrated," Norris admitted. "Can't carry potatoes for more than the first few days, and dried onion is just as flavorful as fresh."

"An onion a day--" began Ace.

"Keeps everybody away," finished the young Survey man laughingly. "And that reminds me of apples,--dried apple pie, apple pudding, apple dumplings, (baked or boiled), apple fritter, (made with pancake flour), and apple pan-dowdy with cinnamon."

"Pan-dowdy!" queried both boys.

"Yes, when the cook has to roll it out with a bottle, or an oar handle, or a smooth stone instead of a rolling pin, and perhaps bake it in the frying pan, and he hesitates to label the result, he terms it pan-dowdy, and then n.o.body has any kick coming if it isn't exactly flesh, fish or fowl, if you get me."

"We get you!" grinned Ted, who had thus far been a silent partner to the plans. But as usually happened at such times, he had been doing a lot of thinking. He now added his contribution: "How about rainbow trout broiled with pork sc.r.a.ps, and served with horseradish? Let's take a bottle of horseradish."

"Dried horseradish and a grater," amended Pedro.

"All right. Then there's trout baked with tomato and onion sauce, trout baked in clay, trout boiled for a change, with lemon, (we could start the trip with a few), trout skewered, griddled, baked in ashes, baked on a stone, fried--of course, and roasted and stuffed with sage. Let's take sage. Then how about cold boiled trout salad with mustard dressing, and fish chowder a la canned milk, with dry-dated--what do you call it?

Dehydrated potatoes and evaporated onions? Eh? And garlic isn't such a bad idea. It's the handiest little bit of flavoring I know of,--if we all go in for it alike."

"We'll all go in for it good and strong," winked Ace.

"Strong is the word," chuckled Norris.

"Anyway," Ted defended his suggestion. "I've camped through the back-country a heap in my time, and I've generally found it isn't the sameness of the fish-three-times-a-day that lays you out, but the lack of flavorings. Now I even take caraway seed to give a different flavor to a batch of biscuit, and raisins, or some anise seed, or a little strong cheese, that you can grate into it or on it and then toast it till it melts. Then there's cinnamon and cheese toast for dessert, and plain cinnamon and sugar melted on white bread makes it just bully! And why do we have to eat white bread all the time anyway?"

"Of course we'll have cornmeal and buckwheat in our pancake mixture,"

said Norris.

"Bully! But why not take part rye flour too, and part oatmeal to mix in?

It bakes fine and flaky. And there's oatmeal cookies mixed with peanut b.u.t.ter and sweetened!"

"Good!" Norris p.r.o.nounced.

"Y'r _all right_, kid!" Ace thumped affectionately on his thin shoulder blade, "y'r all right," but at the threatened repet.i.tion of the bearlike caress, Ted dodged.

"Another idea," Pedro broke in. "Why eat bread all the time anyway? Why not macaroni and cheese, and spaghetti and tomato paste?"