CHAPTER V COMFORTING TUBBY
“Hey! What does this mean, knocking our house to flinders that way? Holdup, you, and tell us what you’re aiming at. A nice old farm bull youare, to be treating strangers so rough! Say, look at the dead leavescatching on fire, will you, boys!”
“Get busy, everybody!” called out Rob, already commencing to pull hisshoes on as fast as he could, so that he might creep out from thewreckage of the brush shanty and prevent a forest fire from starting.
Andy followed suit. Tubby, not having been wise enough to keep hisfootwear close to his hand, had some difficulty in finding his shoes.Consequently when he did finally emerge, looking like a small edition ofan elephant down on its knees, he found that the others had succeeded ingathering the scattered firebrands together again, and that some freshpine was already flaming up, so dispelling the darkness.
Indeed, the growing warmth of the resurrected fire did not feeldisagreeable in the least, for the night air was exceedingly chilly.
“Great Jupiter! Was that really a Jabberwock?” demanded Tubby, when hejoined the other pair by the fire, holding out his chubby hands to thewarmth as if the sensation felt very good.
“It was a bull moose,” replied Rob, without a moment’s hesitation.
“But what ailed the critter,” demanded Andy, “to make such a savageattack on our brush shanty, and dash through the half-dead fire like hedid? That’s what I’d like to know. Rob, does a bull moose do such thingsalways?”
“I’m sure I can’t say,” replied the other. “They are stupid creatures,I’ve always heard, and apt to do all sorts of queer stunts. It may beone of the animals could be taken with a mad streak, just as I’ve read arhinoceros will do, charging down on a hunter’s camp, and smashingstraight through the white tent as if he felt he had a special grievanceagainst it. All I know is, that was an old bull moose, for I saw his bigclumsy horns.”
Tubby shook his head, not yet convinced, and mumbled:
“I never saw a Jabberwock. I’m not sure there is any such strange beastin the world, but that didn’t resemble what I thought a moose was like.”
“You’ll have to prove it to him, Rob,” ventured Andy, “for when Tubbydoubts he is like a wagon stuck in the mud: it takes a mighty heave topry him loose.”
Thereupon Rob leaned forward and taking up a blazing brand that wouldserve admirably as a torch, he walked around until he found what he waslooking for.
“Come here, both of you, and take a look at this track,” he told them.
“Huh! Looks like the spoor of a farmyard cow, only bigger. The cleft inthe hoof is there, all right; so if a moose really did make that track,as you say, Rob, then they must belong to the same family of the clovenhoofs.”
“Here’s another bit of evidence, you see,” continued Rob, bent onrubbing it in while about the matter. “In passing under this tree theanimal must have scraped his back pretty hard. Here’s a wad ofdun-colored hair clinging to this branch. That proves it to be a moose,Tubby.”
“What if the old rascal should take a sudden notion to make anothersavage attack on our camp?” suggested Andy. “Hadn’t we better get readyto give him a warm reception, Rob? The law is up on moose and deer now,I believe. I’d like to drop that old sinner in his tracks. I’m going toget my gun.”
“No harm in being ready, Andy, though there’s small chance of hisreturning,” Rob replied. He, too, crept over to where his rifle lay, andsecured the weapon. “His fury expended itself in that mad rush, Ireckon. He would never dare attack us while the fire is jumping up.”
Nevertheless, the trio sat there for some time on guard. Andy, with theplea for neutrality still before his mind, and recent events down alongthe Mexican border, as read in the daily papers, occurring to him,called it “watchful waiting.”
“But what are we going to do for a shelter?” bleated Tubby finally, asif once more finding the temptation to sleep overpowering him.
“Oh, we’ll have to do without, and make the fire take the place of abrush covering,” remarked Andy superciliously, as became an old andhardened hunter. “Why, many times I’ve wrapped myself in a blanket, andwith my feet to the blaze slept like a rock! I wonder what time it isnow?”
While Andy was feeling around for his nickel watch, Rob shot a quicklook overhead, to note the position of certain of the planets, whichwould give him the points he wanted to know.
“Close to three, I should say,” he hazarded, and presently Andy, onconsulting his dollar timepiece, uttered an exclamation of wonder.
“Why, Rob, you’re a regular wizard!” he broke out with. “It’s that hourexactly. If you had eyes that could see into my pocket like thewonderful Roentgen rays, you couldn’t have hit it closer. I guess youknow every star up there, and just where they ought to be at certaintimes.”
“It’s easy enough to get the time whenever you can see certain stars,”explained the scout leader modestly, “though you wouldn’t hit it soexactly very often as I did then. But as there are some three and a halfhours before dawn comes we might as well soak in a little more of thatgood sleep.”
He showed Tubby how to arrange his blanket, and even tucked him incarefully, with his head away from the fire.
“You’re a mighty good fellow, Rob,” muttered Tubby sleepily, and theyheard no more from him until hours had expired and morning was at hand.
There was no further alarm. The singular old bull moose must havewandered into other pastures after that mad break. They neither saw norheard him again. It was just as well for the same Mr. Moose that hedecided not to repeat his escapade, since he might not have gotten offso cleverly the next time, with those scouts on the alert, and theirweapons handy for immediate service.
With the coming of morning the three boys awoke, and quickly preparedbreakfast. Rob did not mean to go very far on that day. He believed thataccording to his chart and the verbal information he had received, theywere in the immediate vicinity of the deserted logging camp near theborder. He intended to circle around a bit, looking for signs that wouldlead them to it. All the while they could also keep on the alert for anyrifle-shot that would indicate the presence of hunters in theneighborhood.
“There’s that railway whistle again,” remarked Andy, pausing while inthe act of turning a flapjack, in the making of which he professed to besingularly adroit, so that he seldom lost a chance to mix up a mess forbreakfast when the others would allow him.
“Guess the trains must have been passing all through the night, even ifI didn’t hear any,” confessed Tubby frankly.
“Do you know, fellows,” asked Andy, since confession seemed to rule thehour, “the first thought that flashed through my head when we were sosuddenly aroused in the night by all that row, was that the bridge hadbeen dynamited by the German sympathizers, and the guards shot upsky-high with it. Of course, I quickly realized my mistake as soon as Iglimpsed that pesky old moose lighting out, with the red embers of ourfire scattered among all the dead leaves, and a dozen little blazesstarting up like fun.”
“I wonder has any forest fire ever started in that same way?” venturedTubby.
“If you mean through a crazy bull moose ramming through a bed of hotashes,” Andy told him, “I don’t believe it ever did. For all we know nomoose ever carried out such a queer prank before last night; even ifsuch a thing happened, why the hunters would put the fire out, just aswe did.”
“I guess Uncle George would have been tickled to see a big moose atclose quarters like that,” said Tubby. “He’s shot one a year for a longwhile past. He stops at that, because he says they’re getting thinnedout up here in Maine, and even over in Canada, too.”
Breakfast over, the boys loitered around for a while. None of themseemed particularly anxious to be on the move, Andy feeling indifferent,Rob because he knew they were not going far that day, and Tubby throughan aversion to once more shouldering that heavy pack. In truth, the onlygleam of light that came to Tubby he foun
d in the fact that each daythey were bound to diminish their supply of food, and thus the burdenwould grow constantly lighter.
Finally Rob said they had better be making a start.
“Understand, boys,” he told them, with a smile, “we needn’t try for arecord to-day. The fact is, I have reason to believe that old desertedlogging camp must be somewhere around this very spot. So, instead ofstriking away toward the west, we’ll put in our time searching for signsto lead us to it. At any minute we may run across something like atrail, or a grown-up tote-road, along which we can make our way until westrike the log buildings where Uncle George said he meant to make hisfirst stop.”
“Oh! thank you for saying that, Rob,” Tubby burst out with, as his faceradiated his happy state of mind. “For myself I wouldn’t mind if we juststuck it out here for a whole week, and let Uncle George find us. Butthen that wouldn’t be doing the right by my father, so we’ll have tokeep on hunting.”
“I don’t mean to get much further away from the boundary,” continuedRob, “for what we saw yesterday bothers me. There’s certainly somedesperate scheme brooding; that’s as plain as anything to me.”
“Just to think,” said Tubby, looking around him with a trace of timidityon his ruddy face and in his round eyes, “we may be close to a nest ofterrible schemers who mean to do something frightfully wicked, and getpoor old Uncle Sam in a hole with the Canadian authorities. Rob,supposing this job is pulled off, and those Canadians feel mighty bitterover the breach of neutrality, do you think they’d march right down toWashington and demand satisfaction? I heard you say they had raised aforce of three hundred thousand and more drilled men, and that beats ourregular army.”
“I guess there’s small chance of such a thing happening, Tubby,” laughedAndy. “You can let your poor timid soul rest easy. In the first placenearly all the three hundred thousand men have already been sent acrossthe ocean to fight the Germans in the French war trenches, or else theyare drilling in England. Then again our cousins across the border arefar too sensible.”
“Don’t worry about that a minute,” he was told. “What we must keep inmind is that our patriotism may be called on to prevent these men frombreaking our friendly relations with our neighbor, that have stood thetest of time so well. If only we could find your Uncle George, Tubby,we’d put it up to him what ought to be done.”
“But even if we don’t run across him,” ventured Tubby bravely, “I guesswe’re capable as scouts of taking such a job in hand of our own accord;yes, and carrying it through to a successful culmination.”
“Hear! hear!” said Andy, who liked to listen to Tubby when the lattershowed signs of going into one of his periodical spasms of“spread-eagleism” as the thin scout was wont to call these flights oforatory.
So the morning passed away, and while they had not covered a greatextent of territory by noon, at least the boys had kept up a persistentsearch for signs that would tell of the presence near by of theabandoned logging camp.