CHAPTER II WOODCRAFT CAMP

The light breeze which had lifted the mist at Upper Chain had dropped to a dead calm, and when Walter followed the guide from the train down to the landing on Upper Lake not a ripple broke its placid surface. As far as he could see it lay like a great magic mirror, the heavily-wooded shores reflected so clearly that the inverted forest appeared no less real than the original, so marvelously counterfeited. In every direction mountain succeeded mountain, for the most part clothed to their summits with the variegated green of the mighty woodland growth, the somber spruce of the higher slopes, black against the lighter green of yellow and white birch, maple and ash, which had reclaimed to the wilderness the vast tracts ruthlessly laid bare by reckless lumbering twenty years before. One of the nearer mountains was crowned with bare, exposed ledges to which clung a few [27] unsightly blasted trunks, mute witnesses to the devastation wrought by fire.

By a peculiar optical effect produced by the angle of light in a dead calm at that time of the day, floating objects appeared magnified to many times their actual size, so that a launch some two miles distant, whose rapid put-put had drawn their attention when they first stepped from the train, appeared to be less than half that distance away.

Big Jim looked at it long and steadily, shading his eyes with a big hand.

“Thet’s ‘Woodcraft Girl’ all right,” he said, “and I reckon they’re comin’ down fer us. Yer make yerself t’ home, son, while I run back up yonder t’ th’ hotel and rastle up some grub. We’ll be some hungry before we reach camp if I don’t.”

Walter seated himself on the end of the pier and drank in the beauty of the exquisite scene. Alongside a little mail boat was getting up steam, her crew busily stowing away express packages and supplies of all kinds for the various camps and hotels scattered along the lake. Half a dozen passengers were already aboard. Two Adirondack skiffs, each pulled [28] by a brawny guide, a fisherman lolling at ease in the stern, were just setting out for the fishing grounds. All was hustle and activity, in strange contrast with the quiet lake and the majestic calm of the mountains.

In a few minutes Big Jim returned with some sandwiches, which they promptly disposed of while they waited for the approaching launch. It was now near enough for Walter to make out the blue pennant with the magic words “Woodcraft Camp” fluttering at the bow, and a moment later there came a joyous hail of “Oh, you Jim!” from the figure in the bow, followed by a wild waving of a small megaphone.

“Oh, you Bob!” bellowed the big guide, swinging his hat.

The launch drew in rapidly and was deftly laid alongside. From it sprang two young fellows of seventeen or eighteen, in olive khaki trousers, flannel shirts and soft-brimmed hats, who straightway fell upon Walter’s companion and pounded and thumped him and shook both hands at once, and were pounded and thumped in return.

When their somewhat noisy demonstration [29] was over the one whom Jim had called Bob turned to Walter and held out his hand. “Guess your name is Upton, isn’t it?” he inquired with a pleasant smile. “My name is Seaforth, and this is Louis Woodhull, the best fellow in Woodcraft Camp. Dr. Merriam sent us down to look for you, but I see you were already in good company. The doctor was some worried for fear you might have missed connections at Upper Chain, but if he’d known that you were trailing in company with this old son of the backwoods his mind would have been easy. Jim, you great big stick of seasoned timber, it sure does a fellow good to look at you. Stow this young fellow and the duffle in the launch while I get the mail and do some errands, and we’ll be off. The whole camp’s a-looking for you, though they don’t expect you till to-morrow. You’re sure needed. Ed Mulligan is guiding over on Big Moose and won’t be with us this year, but his younger brother, Tom, is taking his place, and I guess he’ll make good.”

Bob’s errands were soon done, the supplies, duffle and mail pouch stowed away in the [30] launch, and her nose pointed down the lake. Bob took the wheel, while Louis ran the engine. Walter was up forward, “to be properly impressed,” as Bob put it. And if that was really the object in giving him the best post of observation, its success left nothing to be desired.

With eager eyes he drank in the wonderful panorama constantly unfolding—as the launch sped swiftly over the lake. Here the lake was less than half a mile wide, then abruptly it opened up great bays which made it more than twice that width from shore to shore. How he longed to explore those bays and coves! Two big summer hotels on commanding bluffs were passed, showing but little life as yet, for the season had not fairly opened. On rocky points, or half hidden in sheltering coves, he caught glimpses of summer “camps,” most of them built of logs, but in many cases little short of palatial, and the boy’s lips curled with scorn at this travesty of wealth upon the simple life. Gradually the camps became fewer and farther apart until only an occasional lean-to or a tent now and then, clinging on the very edge of the forest, was evidence of man’s [31] invasion, and Walter felt that now in truth he was entering the wilds.

From the good-natured chaff and talk of his companions he gathered that Big Jim had been chief guide at Woodcraft Camp ever since this famous school in the woods had been started, and that the two young men had been among his earliest pupils. With eager ears he drank in their talk of fish and lures, of deer, rifles and hunting lore. Occasionally, as they skirted an island or ran around a sunken reef, one or another would recall a famous catch of bass or a big laker taken there.

Of the two young men, Seaforth was the more talkative. He was dark, with sparkling black eyes and a merry, likable face, which, for all its irrepressible good-humor, had in it a strength and purpose which denoted a solid foundation of character. He was broad-shouldered, deep-chested, finely-developed, a splendid type of young American manhood.

His chum was rather slight in build, but wiry, with light hair and a rather thin, clean, serious face which gave the impression of tremendous nervous energy habitually under control. He took but little part in the [32] conversation, but his quiet smile at the sallies between Bob and the guide was of a peculiarly winsome sweetness. His slight reserve drew rather than repelled Walter, who instinctively felt that the friendship of Louis Woodhull was something well worth the winning.

They had now come some twelve miles down the lake, and presently Bob pointed out a long pier jutting out from the eastern shore, and beyond it, just to the left of a giant pine, a flagstaff from which Old Glory was fluttering limply in the light breeze just beginning to ripple the surface of the lake.

“There you are, Upton, your first glimpse of Woodcraft,” he said. “I hope you’ll——”

But what he hoped Walter never knew. A shrill “Hy-i-i-i-i! We want that tenderfoot!” cut him short, as a canoe manned by two youngsters of about Walter’s own age shot out from an island the launch was just passing. Both boys were in trunks and jerseys and paddling like mad to intercept the launch. Suddenly the one in the stern caught sight of the guide. For an instant he stopped paddling, while a look of pleased surprise passed over his face, and then with a wild yell of [33] “Jim, oh, you Jim!” he redoubled his efforts.

Seaforth put the wheel over to port a couple of spokes. “No you don’t, Billy!” he called with a grin. “This boat carries Uncle Sam’s mail, and it can’t stop to pick up tows.”

“Aw, Louis, slow her down, won’t you?” begged Billy.

Louis smiled good-naturedly; but the engine slowed down not a bit.

“Ta-ta,” called Bob. “The Indian attack is foiled, Billy. I’m ashamed of you! Your paddling is abominable. Where’s that new stroke that’s going to win the championship? See you later.”

And then it happened. One moment two boys were frantically digging up the water with their paddles and the next a canoe was floating bottom up, one boy white-faced and frightened, clinging to the bow, and the other, with a malicious grin on his freckled face, swimming at the stern.

The instant it happened Seaforth put the wheel hard over and, describing a short circle, headed for the canoe. Walter’s heart had been in his mouth, but the others seemed not [34] a bit disturbed. Louis stopped the launch, and while the guide righted and emptied the canoe, he and Seaforth hauled the victims aboard.

“You little beggar!” growled Bob as he grabbed Billy by the slack of his jersey, “I’ve a mind to duck you until you howl for mercy. You did that purposely.”

Billy grinned. “You didn’t suppose I was going to let you land Big Jim and I not be there, did you?” he asked.

“That’s all right, Billy, but this is going to be reported,” broke in Louis.

“Don’t, please don’t, Louis,” begged the culprit.

“Sorry, son, but it’s got to be. We love you, Billy, and because we love you we’re going to report. You addle-pated little scamp, when will you ever learn that whatever risks a man may run himself he has no right to involve others in danger? How did you know that Allen there would be able to take care of himself, plunged unexpectedly into the water? He’s been in camp only three days, so what did you know of his powers of resource? No, my son, we hate to tell tales, but we’ve a duty to you to perform, so prepare to pay the penalty.”

[35] The launch was now once more under way with the canoe in tow. Walter was duly introduced to the penitent Billy and his victim, Harry Allen, like himself a new recruit and therefore a tenderfoot.

Several boys had gathered on the pier to size up any newcomers the launch might bring, and Walter felt himself the target for a battery of eyes. The ordeal was light, however, compared with what it would have been at nightfall or earlier in the day, for it was now nine o’clock and the boys were largely scattered in the duties and pursuits of camp life.

As the launch was made fast Billy whispered, “Here comes Dr. Merriam; isn’t he a peach?”

Walter looked up with just a little feeling of awe to see the man of whom he had heard so much—a scientist, explorer, author and lecturer, honored by many scientific societies and institutions of learning both at home and abroad, and now content to bury himself in the north woods as the founder and head of the most unique school in the world—a school with a purpose which was, as he himself whimsically expressed it, “to make big men of little boys.”

[36] Woodcraft Camp was the outgrowth of years of study and observation of boy life and the needs of the tremendous army of youth annually turned loose upon the country for three months of idleness and mischief. It was, in effect, a vacation school, so cleverly masked in the guise of a camp that probably not one among the pupils, save a few of the older boys, recognized it as such. Its courses were manliness, self-reliance, physical and mental health, strength of character, simplicity of desire and love of nature. The curriculum embraced all forms of athletic sports, swimming, canoeing, fishing, shooting, forestry, the rudiments of civil engineering, woodcraft in all its branches from the pitching of a tent or building of a lean-to to the cooking of a good meal, the shooting of a rapid and the way to live off of the country in an unknown wilderness.

Botany, ornithology, the rudiments of physiology, as taught by a knowledge of first aid to the injured—all these things and more were taught, while the boys, all unconscious that they were being systematically trained and developed, thought only of the jolly good times they were having. Timid, nervous, [37] under-developed youngsters entering the camp at the beginning of the summer vacation went forth to their studies in the fall brown, hearty, well muscled and with a quiet confidence in themselves and their own abilities to do things which won immediate recognition among their fellows. And not one among them but held in the secret places of his heart as his ideal in life the man whom Walter now saw approaching with a quick, elastic step.

He was about fifty years of age, medium height, thin, but sinewy, a human dynamo of nervous energy. He was clean shaven, slightly gray at the temples, with firm, square jaw, rather large mouth, prominent nose and eyes which seemed to see all things at once yet from which a smile seemed ever ready to leap forth. It was far from a handsome face, save in the beauty of strength, but was a face to love, a face once seen never to forget.

It was now all alight with pleasure at the sight of Big Jim. The guide leaped forward to meet the doctor, and in the greeting there was plainly evident a mutual respect and liking between these men, so far apart in the social scale, yet beneath the veneer produced by [38] circumstance, so closely bound in a common brotherhood.

Turning from the guide the doctor held out his hand to Walter. “Upton,” he said with a kindly smile, “let me welcome you as a member of Woodcraft Camp. Buxby,” turning to Billy, “you show Upton the way to Wigwam No. 1 and where to stow his duffle and wash up. By the way, Buxby, you and your canoe look pretty wet. Have an accident?” Then without waiting for Billy’s reply he added, “You may police camp for the remainder of the day, Buxby. Carelessness and recklessness are equally reprehensible, and neither should ever go unpunished. Upton, please report at my office in an hour. Buxby will show you where it is.”

“And I never said a word; you can’t fool the doctor,” whispered Woodhull to the discomfited Billy, as the latter stooped to lift a package from the launch.

Billy made a wry face and then, good-naturedly shouldering Walter’s duffle bag, started up the trail toward a long log cabin.