“You’re too hot to go in that ice water,” the doctor said, grabbing Bennie. “Wash your feet all you want to, and splash yourselves.”
After the wash, they put on their dry underclothes, and spread the other set in the sun (which was fast dropping down the west), and then set about making camp.
“I say we find a straight-faced rock to build the fire against,” Bennie suggested, “so it will throw the heat all one way, and we can sleep around it in a half circle, out of the wind.”
“I move we find a place where the ground is dry and a snow-drift hasn’t just melted off it,” added Spider.
“And where it’s nice and soft,” added Dumplin’.
“And where it’s near wood,” added Mr. Stone.
“Maybe you’d like a room with a bath, and have your breakfast brought up to you,” Uncle Billy laughed. “Well, go to it. Find your rock, Bennie. Whoever’s got the axes, cut wood, and lots of it.”
A smooth place was finally found in the lee of a block of lava, some little way from the stream, but near a patch of firs and hemlocks, where there was plenty of dead wood. Dumplin’ started stoning up a big fireplace, while the two scouts chopped wood and Mr. Stone brought water in the big kettle and two little kettles of the camp kits and in the canteens, and the doctor mixed a pancake batter, and made the bacon and egg powder ready to cook, and peeled one of the two potatoes in each pack.
As the sun dropped down behind the high ridge to the west, a chill almost immediately came into the air. In less than an hour everybody, who had been so hot all day, was thinking about putting on his sweater. But the fire burned brightly, the potatoes smelled delicious in the frying-pan, and as soon as they were done, the smell of bacon and eggs rose from the same pan. Water for bouillon tablets and tea boiled in the kettles. The food disappeared down hungry mouths, and every plate was scraped clean, ready for the pancakes to follow. They had no syrup to eat on the cakes, but nobody seemed to mind that. After the cakes, they drew lots to see whose can of fruit should be opened, because the lucky one would have so much less to carry in his pack. Dumplin’ won, to his delight. His can was peaches, and how good they tasted—after the can was finally pried open, with the aid of a scout ax, a stone and a broken jack-knife blade!
Then the dishes were washed, more wood heaped on the fire, sweaters donned, and in the gathering darkness, and the utter silence of the wilderness, the five hikers sat in a close ring before the fire, and relaxed their weary muscles.
“Well, I’m glad I lugged that grub,” said Bennie. “’Bout three o’clock, though, I would have dumped the whole pack over the rim for two cents.”
“Me, too,” said Dumplin’. “Gosh, this hiking is hard work! Don’t see much adventure in it. Here we’ve come about eight or nine miles, and took us all day, and nothin’ happened.”
“What did you expect to happen?” his father asked. “Expect to meet an elephant, or have the mountain erupt?”
“Gee, I think it’s a wonderful adventure!” Spider exclaimed. “It’s been a kind of battle. I—I can’t say what I mean, but it was just the same when Bennie and I were getting up Llao Rock. We were sort of fighting up. Only instead of fighting another man, who tries to hit you back, you are fighting just—just—well, just the wilderness.”
“And it’s against you all the time,” said Mr. Stone.
Bennie had grown very thoughtful. “No, it’s not against you all the time,” he said. “Excuse me for contradicting, Mr. Stone. I don’t mean to be fresh. But the way I feel is that it’s against you if you don’t know how to meet it, but if you do know, it is always kind of putting out things to help you.”
“Such as——?” asked his uncle.
“Well, such as dead wood for a fire, and a chimney to crawl up in, if you know how, when you strike a precipice, and maybe food to eat. I bet we could find food in the roots of some of these wild flowers, if we had to.”
“Give me bacon,” said Dumplin’.
“Gee, Dump, you go to church behind your belt buckle,” said Bennie scornfully. “But I’m with Spider, though, that a hike like this is a regular adventure, ’cause it’s a sort of fight all the way, and it’s all up to you whether you get through or not. Gee, I wish I was an explorer!”
Uncle Billy smiled. “We may get a little exploring yet, before we get back to Portland. You never can tell. Well, who’s going to sleep tonight?”
“I guess we all are.”
“Till the cold wakes us up,” said Mr. Stone.
“And a rock grows up through our shoulder blades,” said Spider.
“Whenever that happens, put some more wood on the fire,” said Uncle Billy.
Then everybody rolled up in his blanket, feet to the fire, with his pack for a pillow, and in spite of the bare ground, in place of a nice air mattress, was soon asleep.
But the night wasn’t very old before everybody had discovered that there is a big difference between sleeping on an air mattress, inside four or five blankets in a sleeping bag, under a tent, and sleeping on the bare ground, in one blanket. Bennie and Spider had slept on the bare ground, to be sure, many a time on their scout hikes at home, but that was always in summer, when it was warm. To be sure, it was summer now, but they were more than 6,000 feet up, on the crest of the Cascades, with snow all around them.
It seemed to Bennie as if he had been asleep only fifteen minutes, when he was waked up by cold. He didn’t fully wake up at first, but only just enough to feel the wind getting down around his neck, and to feel his whole body stiff and uncomfortable. He yanked the blanket tighter around him, and tried to go to sleep again. But, instead, he woke up still more.
At last he was awake enough to prop himself up on one elbow, and look at the fire. It had burned down to a few glowing embers in the stone pit against the lava block. Overhead the stars were extremely bright, but the night itself seemed dark. There wasn’t a sound in the world. Yes! Hark! Bennie’s ears grew alert in the darkness. Far off he heard a roar, starting low, then growing louder, then dying away. At first he couldn’t understand it; then he realized it was a landslide somewhere on a steep slope, perhaps over on the rim of the lake a mile and a half away. He listened again, but there was no further sound—only a whisper of wind in the fir trees close by, and the gentle run of the water in the creek. Suddenly Bennie realized that he was in the very heart of the wilderness, that except for his four companions asleep beside him, there wasn’t a human being within a day’s hike. He also realized that if he didn’t put some wood on the fire pretty quick, it would be out entirely.
So he crawled out of his blanket as gently as he could, and tried to make no noise as he put on more fuel. He blew on the coals till the new wood caught, and then turned his cold back to the flames. As he did so, he saw Spider’s eyes open in the sudden light. Spider blinked a second, and then sat up.
“Hello,” he whispered. “You cold?”
“Gosh, I was most frozen,” Bennie whispered back.
“Me, too. Been sleeping on a rock, right in the middle of my hip. Ow, it’s sore!”
Spider now got up also, and came close to the fire.
When they were warmed up again, they lay down once more, and managed to doze off. But long before morning, Bennie woke to see first Mr. Stone and then his uncle putting more wood on the fire. It wasn’t yet dawn—just the first hint of lightness in the sky—when Bennie finally woke up so cold and so stiff and uncomfortable from the hard ground, that further sleep seemed impossible. He was just rousing himself to put on more wood when he heard Spider stir, and then sit up.
“I’m going to stay up,” he whispered. “Let’s take a trot around to get warm.”
Spider rose, and after building up the fire and huddling over it a few minutes, they walked away from camp.
“Let’s go up the valley to the rim,” Spider said. “We can go on the rim road, and have easy walking. Gee, I’d like to run all the way, and get up some circulation.”
They set out rapidly, and reached the rim in fifteen minutes. It was lighter now, and they could see plainly. The lake at this point was only 500 feet below them, for they had come out on the lowest point on the entire rim. But, even so, they seemed to be looking down into the clouds. They looked up into clouds, too, whole masses of clouds around the peak of Scott, of Dutton Cliff, of Garfield. Then the daylight increased rapidly, the clouds began mysteriously to disappear, holes came in them showing the blue water—and suddenly Spider grabbed Bennie’s arm and pointed half-way down the side.
Bennie looked, and saw a small deer—a mule deer, as it is called—coming rapidly up the steep incline, directly toward them! He could not get their scent from so far below, and he quite evidently hadn’t seen them. On he came, bounding easily up the incline, where a man would have toiled breathlessly.
“Wow! I’d like to be able to go up a mountain like that!” Bennie exclaimed.
Almost at his first word, they saw the deer’s big ears prick up. He landed stock still and rigid, and raised his eyes. Then he saw the two boys above him, and with a single bound, so quick the scouts couldn’t detect how he made the turn, he was off at right angles, along the slope. Working upward as he leapt along, he reached the rim three hundred yards away from them, and disappeared like smoke into a stand of fir.
“What a shot!” breathed Bennie.
“Aw, you couldn’t have hit him in a year,” Spider laughed.
“Why couldn’t I?”
“First place, you can’t shoot well enough, and second place I’d have knocked up your gun,” said Spider. “I wouldn’t shoot a deer as long as I had anything else to eat.”
“He was kind o’ pretty,” Bennie agreed.
“’Tisn’t that so much. But he’s wild. He’s part of the wilderness. He belongs to it. Killing a deer is just as bad as knocking off the top of a mountain, or spoiling all the forest trees.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Bennie admitted. “But how about going back and getting grub?”
The sun was up when they reached camp again, and so were the other three campers.
“’Smatter, boys?” asked Mr. Stone. “Getting an appetite before breakfast?”
“So cold we couldn’t sleep,” they answered.
“I was none too warm myself.”
“And I was none too comfortable,” the doctor added.
“Ho!” cried Dumplin’, who was starting the breakfast over the fire, “I never woke up once. Just as warm as anything, and never felt a stone in me all night.”
“Well, who wouldn’t be warm if he was covered with a blubber bed-spread!” Bennie retorted.
“And who wouldn’t sleep soft if he carried his own upholstery?” said Spider.
“All right, kid,” Dumplin’ grinned. “But there are times when it pays.”
The sun was not far up when they finished breakfast, cached the grub and blankets and the packs, and armed only with the alpenstocks, a pocketful of raisins and chocolate, the canteens and cameras, set out for the summit of Scott’s Peak, which rose directly above them, and seemed to be reached, after the first pull up the steep side of the ravine, by a fairly easy incline. The map showed, too, that the distance was less than three miles.
“Three miles—three hours,” said Bennie. “A mile an hour is what the Appalachian Club allows. We’ll be there at half-past nine.”
“Getting sure again, are you?” said his uncle. “This isn’t Mount Washington, where the Appalachian Club climbs. This is Scott’s Peak. It isn’t made of granite, but it’s a spur volcano spit up out of the side of old Mazama, and it’s about 2,500 feet of nice, soft pumice dust from here on.”
It was.
Once over the first scramble up the side of the ravine, they settled down to a steady plod in the soft, volcanic stuff. Their feet sank deep into it. The pitch was greater than it looked, too, and every time they threw their weight on to the forward foot, it sank back a way. Sometimes there were patches of snow they could get on, for partial relief. But mostly this side of the mountain had melted off, and it was just a long, weary, back-breaking grind up the pumice. Did you ever climb a steep pile of sand? Anyhow, you have walked in the deep, dry, soft sand above the tide mark on a beach. You know what hard work it is. The climb up Scott was just like that, only more so. One hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, and part of five, with many a rest, and the sun getting hotter and hotter, before they reached the summit.
“Well, boys, this is the highest you’ve been yet,” said Mr. Stone. “Eight thousand nine hundred and thirty-two feet.”
“Wish there was a tree we could shin to make it an even 9,000,” said Bennie.
Dumplin’ wiped the sweat from his face, and collapsed on the ground, panting. “I wouldn’t climb a barber’s pole,” he announced.
“Well, you can see most of eastern Oregon without sitting up,” his father laughed.
This was certainly true. From the top of Scott, they could look eastward for a hundred miles, over a great plain almost as flat and bare as the sea, a sage brush desert. North and south they could look mile after mile in either direction along the tumbled, snowy world of the Cascade range. And just below them, to the west, they looked down 3,000 feet into the blue hole of Crater Lake.
“There’s most room enough for a feller to breathe, out here,” Bennie remarked. Then he started to drink from his canteen, and discovered it was empty.
“Fill it with snow,” said his uncle.
Dumplin’ had drunk up all his supply, too, so both of them hunted out a snow-bank, dug down to clean snow, and began to stuff it into their canteens. “Gosh! where does it all go to!” Dumplin’ remarked, after three or four minutes.
“Takes a lot of snow to make a little water,” Bennie answered. “Mine’s full—full o’ snow. Now let her melt!”
Presently, after he had eaten his raisins, he took a pull at the canteen, and got about one good swig of water.
“Let’s be going down,” said he.
“Just so you can get a drink?” asked Spider.
“Marvelous, Watson, marvelous,” Bennie laughed. “Why haven’t they given you a job on the detective force?”
But the rest, by now, had emptied their canteens, too, and everybody was thirsty, so down they started. It was easy going down. When the slope was smooth, they set in their stocks as far ahead as they could reach, and then took a long vault, down past them, pulled them out, and repeated. In one hour they had covered the ground it took them five on the ascent.
It was only a shade after two o’clock when they reached their cache, so they shouldered their luggage and hiked on down the valley, away from the lake, for nearly five miles, till they reached a region of grass and flowers and heavy timber, where the Sand Creek had cut down a deep cañon in the volcanic soil and lava, but the strangest cañon you ever saw, because some of the lava was harder than the rest, and the water hadn’t cut this, but left it sticking up all through the gorge, in great, round, water-worn pinnacles. Imagine hundreds of Bunker Hill monuments, round instead of square-cornered, erected helter-skelter at the bottom of a wild cañon, and you have a picture of the pinnacles. Here, near the brink, in sheltered woods, they made their second night’s bivouac.
And this time Bennie woke up only once in the night, and had to be shaken awake in the morning.
“I must be getting fat, like Dump,” he said. “I wasn’t very cold, and I’m not very sore.”
“You’re getting harder,” said his uncle. “If we did this a couple of weeks, we could all sleep out like tops.”
The third day they hiked back to their camp on the rim, using the rim road to get around the cliffs and ridges—a long grind with the heavy packs, but quite uneventful.
And when they got to camp, the doctor announced, “We leave to-morrow, at six o’clock. Everybody out at four-thirty. Won’t need any grub except for tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch, so we can clean up the larder for dinner. Bennie, go over and smile sweetly at the hotel cook, and see if you can coax him to sell you a big beefsteak, and a loaf of bread, and a head of lettuce.”
“Get a lemon meringue pie if he’s got one,” Dumplin’ added.
“The cook’s an awful grouch,” the doctor laughed, when Bennie had gone. “He’ll throw him out of the kitchen.”
Everybody was busy about camp, getting dinner ready, when Bennie returned with a large package. He opened it with a grin. It contained two steaks, a head of lettuce, a loaf of bread—and a lemon pie!
“The cook’s an awful old grouch,” Mr. Stone remarked to Uncle Billy, winking at the boys.
“How did you do it?” demanded the astonished doctor.
“It’s my fatal beauty,” said Bennie airily. And that’s all he would tell.
But to Spider, later, he said, “Remember that fat old guy that used to cook at the White Doe Inn, back home? The one that used to come to all our ball games? Well, he’s the cook at the hotel here now. I knew Uncle Bill was trying to put one over on me, and I didn’t have a notion how I was going to beat him, till I saw who the cook was. He came at me mad as anything, ’cause campers are always trying to buy stuff off him. Looked as if he was going to throw me out. And then I said, ‘Hello, Mr. Leary, coming down to the field to see us play Lenox tomorrow?’—and he recognized me—and, say! I was so glad I gave him all the change from Uncle Billy’s bill.”
“Some luck!” Spider laughed.
“Don’t you tell, now.”
“Not a word. But, boy, I’m going to eat my share of that steak!”
It was a glorious meal, and Dumplin’ kissed the pie plate when it was all over.
After Bennie had carried the pie plate back to the cook, while the rest washed up the dishes, Uncle Billy asked for the Scout Manual, and read what a scout has to do to get a merit badge for hiking.
“To obtain a merit badge for hiking, a scout must:
1. Show a thorough knowledge of the care of the feet on a hike.
2. Walk five miles per day, six days in the week, for a period of three months. This may include walking to and from school or work. He shall keep a record of his hikes daily, preferably in his diary, a transcript to be made an exhibit before the court of honor.
3. Walk ten miles on each of two days in each month for a period of three months; in other words, six walks of ten miles each during the three months.
4. Walk twenty miles in one day.
5. Locate and describe interesting trails, and walk to some place marked by some patriotic or historical event.
6. Write his experiences in these several walking trips with reference to fatigue or distress experienced, and indicate what he had learned in the way of caring for himself as regards equipment such as camping and cooking outfit, food, footwear, clothing and hygiene.
7. Review his ability to read a road map (preferably a Government topographical map), to use a compass, and shall be required to make a written plan for a hike from the map.”
“Number one,” Uncle Billy said. “What have you learned about the care of the feet, Bennie?”
“Wash ’em in cold water when you can, and dry ’em thoroughly. Wear wool socks, and carry two extra pairs. At home we carry adhesive tape, to put over a place that may start chafing, so’s to stop a blister.”
“That’s all right. The best care of the feet, though, is to have stout, easy boots, that fit. Well, number two—we haven’t walked five miles a day for six weeks, have we? You’ll have to do that at home. Number three—‘Walk ten miles on each of two days, in each month for a period of three months.’ You can count this hike as ten miles, or its equivalent, on each of three days, for July, all right. We hardly made ten miles the first day, but it was equal to fifteen or twenty of ordinary walking. You did two miles and a half before breakfast the second day, then six up and down the mountain, and six more before camp at night. That’s fourteen and a half, with three of ’em up Scott’s Peak in the pumice.”
“That ought to count for twenty, I’ll say,” Bennie declared. “And how much the last day?”
“Well, with our getting wood for breakfast, and taking a last look at the pinnacles, and your two trips to the hotel, I guess we can call today twenty miles.”
“I’ll take a trot around now, if I need to,” Bennie laughed.
“No, you can sit still. Well, that qualifies you on number four, anyhow, and gives you a good start on number three. Number five you’ll have to do at home. Number six you can attend to some day in camp, and let me see what you’ve written about these three days. Number seven—h’m—you’ve got a lot to learn yet about using maps, I suspect. Go get your map of Crater Lake, and let me see you lay out, with a pencil, what looks like the best way to hike from here to Crater Peak, five miles south of us.”
Bennie worked over this for some time, and then showed the line he had drawn.
“Good!” said his uncle. “I’m glad to see you haven’t drawn an air-line path that plunges you down any 500-foot precipices, or takes you up any 600-foot walls.”
“I learned something on this trip,” said Bennie. “I learned that when they put contour lines close together on a map, it means steep, and if there are a lot of ’em, and they are very close, it means, ‘Detour to the right.’”
“That’s the idea. Well, boy, are you going to stick? Will you write out for me an account of this trip, and the next one we take, too, and try to work for this merit badge?”
“You bet I will!”
“May I, too?” asked Spider.
“Gee, he’s got so many badges now he looks like Marshal Foch,” said Bennie.
“The more the better,” laughed the doctor. “Now, boys, bed! Big Ben is set for 4:30.”
“It’ll take a Big Bertha to wake me at 4:30,” said Dumplin’.
“Oh, you air mattress!” sighed Bennie, as he crawled into his sleeping bag.
Spider answered never a word. He was fast asleep.
Uncle Billy was as good as his word the next morning. At half-past four he shook Bennie and Spider, and he had to shake them hard, too. Then all three of them went into the other tent, and rolled Mr. Stone and Dumplin’ upside down in their sleeping bags. It was still cold, and the sun was not yet up over the snowy crags of Garfield. In the still, crystal-clear air, the water of the lake was without a ripple, and every rock and tree on the rim was perfectly reflected in the blue mirror.
“Take a good long look, boys,” said the doctor. “It’s good-bye to Crater Lake as soon as we can load the cars.”
“I hate to leave it,” Spider said. “I don’t believe I’ll ever see anything so grand again, or have such a good time.”
“I hate to leave it, too,” said Bennie. “But I bet we’ll have a lot more good times. I guess old Oregon is full of ’em.”
“I am satisfied with Oregon,” Dumplin’ began to sing, in a high falsetto voice to the tune of “Glory, glory, hallelujah.”
“Shut up, do you want to wake everybody else on the rim, just because you’re up?” his father cautioned.
“Time they got up,” Dumplin’ laughed. “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man dopy with sleep in his eyes.”
“Gosh, if he can’t sing, he makes up poetry,” Bennie groaned. “Give him a flapjack, quick.”
As soon as breakfast was over, Mr. Stone and the doctor tinkered the cars for the trip, while the boys struck the tents, deflated and rolled up the sleeping bags, packed their dunnage sacks, and then began to stow the luggage in the cars. It was after seven when everything was at last packed aboard, and Uncle Billy gave the order to start. The engines turned over, reluctant to start after their long idleness, but at last the explosions came, the exhausts spit smoke, and the cars moved out over dry ground, where a week ago had been a snow-drift, headed toward the road.
“Good-bye, old lake!” cried Bennie.
“Au revoir, for me. I’m coming back some day,” said Spider.
“And now where, Uncle Billy?” Bennie added.
“Bend,” said his uncle. “I wish we could go back home on the Sky Line Trail that some day Oregon is going to build into a highway right up along the spine of the Cascades. But at present it is only a ranger’s trail, and it takes weeks to travel it, with an expensive pack train. So we are going by motor up the east side of the range to the town of Bend, and we’ll get a pack train there and go in and sample a bit of the Sky Line Trail, to say we’ve ridden it, and maybe climb a snow mountain.”
“Are we going in on horseback?” Bennie demanded.
“We are, if we go at all,” said his uncle.
“Hooray! I never rode horseback!”
“You’ll have plenty of chance to learn, then,” Uncle Billy smiled. “About the first night, you’ll wish you hadn’t tried to learn, too.”
“Bet I won’t!” Bennie retorted. “How far is it to Bend?”
“Oh, a hundred miles, I guess. Maybe more.”
“Seven-thirty now—twenty-five miles an hour, that means we get there at noon.”
“You are my idea of an optimist, Bennie,” said the doctor. “This is an eastern Oregon road we are going to travel on. If we should travel twenty-five miles an hour, we wouldn’t get there at all.”
For many miles, the road out of the park took them in a southerly direction, down the Anna Creek valley, through a noble forest of yellow pines, a tree the boys had never seen before, which has great flat scales of bark which looks almost like copper, and past the deep cañon the creek has cut in the lava, with sides fantastically carved into giant columns. Finally, they reached the gate of the park, were checked up by the gateman, and went on, swinging eastward now.
Bennie, as soon as they were off the government road, very soon realized why they wouldn’t make Bend at noon. In eastern Oregon, a country “dirt” road, which in the East is usually quite decent in summer isn’t a dirt road at all, really, because there isn’t any dirt. All the soil is powdered volcanic ash and pumice, no doubt deposited there by Mount Mazama ages ago. This volcanic soil looks almost gray-white in color, and a road made on it, without any macadam, is very quickly pounded, in dry weather, into a layer of dust inches thick, which rises like a smoke screen behind the car, and gets kicked out of holes in the road by the passing tires till the holes deepen more and more, making the road one endless series of bumps.
Instead of traveling at twenty-five miles an hour, the doctor held the car down to fifteen, and very often had to go slower than that.
And it was hot down here below the range, hot and close. The yellow pines, and then endless acres of ugly lodge-pole pines, lined the road on both sides, shutting out wind and view. Only now and then did they catch a glimpse of Scott’s Peak, and later of Thielsen. They were in the dry country, too, for almost no rain ever falls on the east side of the Cascades. So they passed no brooks, after leaving Anna Creek. Choked with dust, the boys sampled the canteens frequently, and rejoiced that they weren’t in the second car, which was following far behind, to keep out of the dust as much as possible.
It was almost noon when they reached a stream at last, coming down from the snow-fields—and they were only half-way on their journey! Here they stopped for lunch. The doctor had insisted on saving out two cans of peaches for this occasion, and now they understood why. It was a job to worry the dry bread and the bacon down their parched throats, but how those cool peaches, and the juice they were canned in, did go to the spot!
The trip was resumed, and they went on and on northward, through endless forests of yellow pines, one of the few trees that will flourish in this dry region, till at last they came into the tiny little town of Crescent.
It was Bennie who spied a sign, “Soda” over the one store. He gave a yell, and hoisted his feet over the car door, ready to jump.
The soda turned out to be the bottled variety, and it hadn’t been kept on ice. In fact, there was no ice in the place. But even that didn’t prevent the five tourists from leaving behind ten empty bottles when they departed again.
The road through the endless yellow pine forest began to get better now. It had been straightened out and rock ballasted in places, and Uncle Billy stepped on the gas. He was traveling along at twenty-five miles or more, leaving a cloud of dust behind, when Bennie suddenly cried, “Say, I believe we just went through a town. Golly, I wonder if there was a soda there. Let’s go back.”
“This car doesn’t know how to turn around,” said Uncle Billy. “That was the town of La Pine. I know the man who used to own most of it.”
“What happened? Did he lose it out of his pocket?” said Bennie.
“I guess it crawled under a pine needle and hid from him,” said Spider.
It wasn’t long now before the car rolled out of the yellow pine forests into a great clearing, where every tree had been cut down as far as the eye could see, and a fire had followed, burning up all young stuff and making the ground dry, naked ashes.
“That’s what the lumbermen do to us!” Uncle Billy cried. “It’s worse than what they do to you in the East, because the fire does so much more damage in this dry country. I wonder how long it will be before we wake up and make them lumber properly? I hope you Boy Scouts will always work for conservation and proper forest laws.”
“If they’d left one old tree to the acre for cone bearers, and kept the fire out, I should think the forest would almost start itself again,” said Spider. “But they haven’t left a single tree.”
“They are hogs,” Uncle Billy exclaimed, angrily. “It makes my blood boil every time I go through country like this, and think that the voters of the State let ’em do it.”
The road was hard now, the car went faster, and in a short time they began to see the houses of a town. They swung under a railroad, rolled on to asphalt pavement, and found themselves in the middle of Bend, a brisk, clean little city of 5,000 people.
“Well, what do you know about this!” Bennie laughed. “It just pops right up here in the desert, like a toadstool. And, oh, boy, there’s a soda fountain—and a movie theatre!”
Spider and Uncle Billy laughed. “He’s a great wilderness scout, he is,” said the doctor. “He’s gladder to see a movie theatre than he was to see Crater Lake.”
Bennie grinned a little sheepishly. “No, it isn’t that,” he said, “but as long as we got to be in a town, might as well have something to do.”
“The first thing I’ll do is to get a bath,” the doctor laughed, as he drove right past the drug store, and stopped in front of the hotel.
The other car rolled up behind them, Mr. Stone’s and Dumplin’s clothes and faces covered thick with dust, and the car looking gray-white all over. The boys got out the dunnage bags and carried them into the lobby, while the cars were taken to a garage. As soon as the doctor and Mr. Stone came back, they got three rooms, one for Bennie and Spider, one for Dumplin’ and his father, and one for the doctor. Off came their clothes, and from three bathtubs came the sounds of splashing.
They were a much cleaner and more civilized looking outfit when they came down to dinner.
They were just coming out of the dining-room when a tall, very thin man came hurrying in from the street, saw them, and with a loud, “Hello, Doc!” rushed over to shake Uncle Billy’s hand.
“Just heard you were in,” he cried.
The doctor introduced him as the “biggest booster in Bend.” His name, the boys gathered, was Peters, though the doctor called him “Pep,” which was evidently his popular title.
“Well, boys, what do you think of Oregon?” he demanded as soon as he knew they were from the East. “Some State, eh? I’ll say it is. Wait till you see the Jefferson country. Say, want to go on a bear hunt?”
Of course, he had started by asking them what they thought of Oregon, and the boys were all set to make a polite answer, but he never gave them a chance to reply, and ended up instead by asking if they wanted to go on a bear hunt!
“Sure we do!” the boys chorused.
(“He’s a queer one,” Bennie whispered to Spider. “Answers his own questions half the time.”)
“Pep” was now talking again. “I can fix it up, Doc. Maybe your friend would like to get a movie of a bear. There’s a crowd in camp over at Elk Lake now who want a bear hunt. Some of ’em do, anyhow. We can go over there and pick ’em up, and run over to Newberry Crater and pick up a bear all right. You know old Vreeland, who lives on the big ranch south of La Pine? He’s got a pack of hounds, and plenty of horses, and he’d rather go on a bear hunt than go to Heaven. What do you say?”
“Well, boys, what do you say?” the doctor asked, turning to the scouts and Dumplin’.
Bennie sighed with comical exaggeration. “Oh, of course, I’ll go if you want to,” he answered. “I strive to please.”
Everybody laughed except Spider. “Are you going to kill the bear?” he questioned.
“No, indeed,” said Pep. “We catch ’em by the tail out here in Oregon, and then tie a blue ribbon round their necks, so they’ll look prettier as they gambol through the woods.”
Spider bit his lip as if he was angry, and was trying not to make a rude reply.
“That’s all right, too,” he finally said, “but some folks like to kill wild animals and some folks don’t. I’m one of the ones who doesn’t. Bears don’t do any harm. I’d like to see one, and see Mr. Stone get a picture of it. Hunting with a camera is harder, and better sport, I think.”
“I’ll say it’ll be hard, all right,” said Pep. “Wait till you see the stuff you’ll have to carry your camera through! As for the shooting, Newberry Crater is a State bird and game refuge, and you have to get permission to hunt bears on it; but I’ve got that O. K., because they want the bears killed off. All they ask is that you report the stomach contents.”
“I’ve just got something new I’ve not shown any of you yet,” Mr. Stone now put in. “It was waiting for me here, in my mail. It’s a movie camera no bigger than a kodak, which works with a spring instead of a crank, and takes twenty-five feet at a time. I can carry it in the pocket of a hunting coat. It’s for just such a time as this, when the big camera couldn’t be taken along. I’d like to try it—that is, if you can guarantee the bear.”
“What’ll happen to me if I don’t produce the bear?” Pep demanded.
“We’ll take your horse, and make you walk home,” the doctor said.
“Easy! It’s only thirty miles! Shall we start tomorrow morning?”
“Sure. I guess we can stow you into our cars somewhere.”
“Stow me nothing! I got a car of my own. It’s a dandy, too—a genuine antique, built in 1909. They made regular cars in those days. Well, you be ready at eight o’clock. I’ll be around for you, and lead the way.”
“But we haven’t any guns,” said Bennie, suddenly.
“Don’t matter. Vreeland has plenty. Don’t need more’n one, anyhow, to kill a bear. So long.”
Pep departed, striding with his long legs out of the lobby.
“He’s a queer one,” said Mr. Stone. “What does he do for a living?”
“Real estate, I guess,” the doctor answered. “He’s a great booster for Bend, and spends half his time fixing up parties for visitors who come here. He’s a great card. Well, boys, I suppose you’re going to the movies now?”
“I can see the movies without coming 4,000 miles,” Bennie answered. “Me for a look around this burg.”
“Me, too,” said Spider. “Doug Fairbanks won’t seem such a wonder after we’ve climbed old Llao Rock.”
“Boys,” cried Uncle Billy, “you have not come to Oregon in vain!”
Right after breakfast the next morning they got the cars out and left behind at the hotel all the luggage they wouldn’t need on the bear-hunting trip. Mr. Stone was exhibiting his new camera, an astonishing invention which he held in his hand like a kodak, while it took twenty-five feet of film (he could carry as much as two hundred feet of extra reels in one side pocket, too), when Pep appeared in his “antique.” They heard him before they saw him, in fact. The car was a runabout. The paint apparently had vanished about 1918. The muffler was broken so that she roared and spit like a motorcycle. One mud-guard was so cracked that it half hung from the car and flapped and rattled. The other three were bent and dented. The wind-shield was cracked, and the radiator was covered with iron rust where the water had boiled over and run down the sides. When Pep put his foot on the brake to stop, she shrieked and wailed like a sick cat.
Bennie walked over to this car and stared intently.
“Some boat!” he said. “Some boat! Say, Spider, a scout is always respectful and kind to the aged and infirm. Remember that. What’s its name, Mr. Peters?”
“Its mother never named it,” said Pep. “I’ve called it a lot of things, but they aren’t very polite.”
Dumplin’ laughed. “I know what its name is, all right.”
“Yes?”
“Its name is Methuselah.”
“I thought Methuselah died when he was only nine hundred,” said Bennie.
“Say, if you boys make fun of my car, I won’t let you ride in it,” Pep threatened.
“Would it hold up two passengers?” asked Bennie.
“All aboard!” called the doctor. “Stop insulting Pep’s chariot, and climb into your own. Lead the way, Pep.”
Pep spun his crank around, Methuselah grunted, spit, coughed, and then roared, the doctor and Mr. Stone stepped on their starters, and the procession moved down the main street of Bend, Methuselah leading, and swung south on the same road they had come up the day before. Once out in the open, Pep began to travel. Through the cloud of dust he kicked up, those behind could see the rear wheels of the old runabout go bobbing up and down, and from side to side. The doctor’s speedometer crept up to thirty, to thirty-five, to forty miles, as he followed.
“Gosh, he doesn’t care what happens to him!” Bennie said. “Think of hitting forty on this road in Methuselah!”
“Think of hitting forty on any road in Methuselah,” Uncle Billy laughed. “He’ll stop pretty soon, to cool her off—and tell us it was for something else.”