The Ice Queen Part 18

"If you think you can wait fifteen minutes, Mr. Montgomery, you'll have a bee-yutiful supper. Can you do it?"

"I 'low I can. I ain't a epi--epi--What d'ye call it?"

"Epicure?"

"That's the chap. I read the other day that the Tartars say he digs his grave with his teeth. I don't want a grave as bad as that yet."

"I suppose that means that a man who lives on too rich food will die by it."

"Yes, I reckon so. But I 'low there's no danger in our case; eh, Aleck? Do you think dried beef and snow-birds too rich for your delicate stomach, my boy?"

That night all bunked down on the floor, for they were too weary to care much for anything but a chance to sleep, and the sun was high before any of them found out, in their shady house, that it was morning. When breakfast was ready, and they had all sat down at the rough shelf-table which the fishermen had fastened at one side of the cabin, Aleck called "Attention!" and said that it was time they were looking the situation squarely in the face.

"It's all very funny," he said, "to think ourselves Crusoes, and feel that we are all right because we have a roof over us and a stove to keep warm by. But Crusoe didn't need a roof nor a stove, for he was in a warm climate; and he had goats and birds, and sh.e.l.l-fish along the rocks, and cocoanuts, and lots of other things. Crusoe was a king in his palace beside us."

The circle of faces grew rather grave.

"Here we are, in midwinter, on an island in a fresh-water lake--and not even water, but solid ice--where there are no oysters nor clams, no fruit-trees, and no animals--"

"Except those dogs," Jim interrupted.

"Even _they_ seem to have disappeared," Aleck went on; "and they are starved almost to skin and bone. If a pack of dogs can't get anything to eat, what are we four going to do? I tell you, it's a serious case."

"Well," Tug rejoined, stoutly, "I, for one, don't give in yet. Look what we did out on the ice! We can fish, and trap snow-birds--I saw a flock last evening; and maybe we can find some mussels near the beach, and so stick it out till the ice breaks up and the birds begin to come in the spring."

"Tug, you're a brick, and I was wrong to feel so lowspirited," said Aleck, heartily. "I think you're a better fellow to be captain here than I am. I resign."

"Not by a long chalk!" exclaimed Tug. "Here, I'll put it to vote.

Whoever wants Aleck to go out, and me to take my innings as captain, hold up his hand."

Chapter XXIV.

THE WILD DOGS AGAIN.

Aleck's hand alone was shown; and though he held both of his arms as high as he could, the other side had the majority, and would not accept his resignation.

"Suppose we see just exactly what we have in the way of provisions,"

Katy suggested. "It won't take long to make out the list," she added, with a grim little smile.

They began at once, and the small housewife wrote down the list as fast as the stores were examined, guessing at the weights. There were found about eleven pounds of dried beef; bacon, one "side;" flour, about six pounds; corn-meal, ten pounds; beans, three pounds; coffee, two pounds; tea, a quarter of a pound; chocolate, half a cake; sugar, three pounds; small quant.i.ties of salt, pepper, soda, and so on; some crumbs of crackers and cookies in the bottom of a bag; a small piece of dried yeast; and a few swallows of the brandy that had been so useful at the time of Aleck's accident on the drifting ice.

They had nearly all the bedding, cooking utensils, and tools with which they had started three weeks before; but the oil for their lantern and their matches were nearly used up or lost; their powder was low, for part of it had been spoiled by water; their clothes were badly worn; and their only canvas, since the loss of their tent, was the small "spare piece."

"It's plain," said Aleck, as this overhauling was finished, "that we must put ourselves upon a regular allowance. The provisions won't last us a week unless we save them carefully."

"And it's plain that we must raise some more, so I reckon I'd better get to work at bird-traps."

"Yes, the sooner the better. As for me, I want to learn all I can about the island. There may be something of use to us at the other end, so I shall take a long walk, and see what I can find."

"Mayn't I go with you?" Jim asked, eagerly.

"Yes, Youngster, if you think you can stand it."

"No trouble about that," replied the little fellow, courageously. He had grown very manly during the past month.

The brothers started off, taking the gun with them, and saying that they would be back about three o'clock.

As soon as they had gone Tug set about his traps in one corner of the house, behind the stove, while Katy went to work to make the hut a little more homelike.

The cabin was about twelve feet square, and one side was the smooth face of a great rock, against which was heaped the rude chimney of mud and stones. In front of this the stove was placed, and behind it, on the side of the room farthest from the door, the fishermen had built a bunk.

"You must call that your bedroom," Tug said, and he helped Katy to set up in front of it poles sustaining a curtain made of a shawl.

"Now," said the lad, when this had been arranged, "you must have a mattress."

So, taking the axe, he went out, and soon came back with a great armful of hemlock boughs, and then a second one, with which he heaped the bunk, laying them all very smoothly, and making a delightful bed.

"I'm thinkin' we'll have to fix some more bunks for ourselves," said the boy, as he tried this springy couch. "That's a heap better 'n the soft side of a plank."

Then with a hemlock broom Katy swept the floor, and spread down the canvas as a carpet. Finding in her little trunk some clothing wrapped in an old _Harper's Weekly_, she cut out the pictures and tacked them up, and finally she washed the grimy window to let more light in, so that the rough little house soon came to look quite warm and cosey.

Meanwhile Tug, getting out his few tools, had made the triggers of half a dozen such box-traps as they had caught snow-birds with when living on the ice, and one other queer little arrangement, of sticks delicately balanced, an upright one in the middle bearing at its top a bit of red rag:

"What in the world is _that_?" Katy inquired with much curiosity.

"Oh, it's a bit of a contrivance to stand over a hole in the ice where I propose to place a 'set' line for fish--that is, you know, a line that I bait and leave set for a while, trusting to luck to catch something. The minute a fish gets the hook through his lips and begins to flop around, he will set this flag a-fluttering and so let me know it. I might make him ring a little bell if I had one."

"I should say," Katy remarked laughingly, "that to make a captured and dying fish ring his own funeral knell was adding insult to injury."

At length Tug pulled on his overcoat and announced that he was going to look for a good fis.h.i.+ng-place.

He was gone nearly an hour, during which Katy busied herself in mending her sadly torn dress, and in thinking. But the latter was by no means a pleasant occupation, and she was glad to see Tug come back, rubbing his ears, for the day was a cold one.

"I think I have found a real likely place for fis.h.i.+ng," he told her.

"There is a little cove the other side of this thicket, with a marsh around it, and a pretty narrow entrance. I reckon the water's deep enough in there for fish to be skulking, and I dropped my line right in the middle. I set the traps near here, but didn't see any birds."

"Do you think--" Katy stopped suddenly, laying one hand on Tug's arm, and holding up the other warningly, while her face grew pale. Rex, who had been lying by the stove quietly licking his injured paw, rose up and growled deeply.

"There! Did you not hear it?"

"I did. It's them pesky dogs," cried Tug, and hurried to the window, while Rex began to bark furiously. "There are the boys on the hill backing down, and two--no, three--dogs following them. Where's that axe? I'll fix 'em!"

And before Katy could quite understand what was the matter, the boy had burst out, and was tearing up the hill to the support of his friends. Rex wanted to go too, but Katy held him fast, as she stood watching the boys flouris.h.i.+ng their weapons, and frightening the dogs back, while they slowly retreated. As they came nearer to the house the animals ceased pursuing, and relieved their disappointment by savage barks and prolonged howls.