Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains

CHAPTER IX
A Sunday Discussion

"I say, Tom," said the Doctor, on Sunday morning, after the breakfast things had been cleared away, and the first fire had been lighted in the new fireplace, "I want to ask you something about your experience on your hunting trips."

"Go on, Doctor. No boy of sixteen – and we've voted you to be of that age – can ask me anything that I'll hesitate to answer."

"Thank you," said the Doctor, with a laugh. "Now, think of me as exactly sixteen and tell me all about it. As I understand, you have frequently spent from a week to ten days in the mountains, living exclusively upon what you could kill."

"So far, Doctor, you are absolutely right," answered the boy, who, having laid aside his headache, was disposed to be facetious.

"Well, that must have been animal food exclusively," said the Doctor.

"Absolutely," answered Tom. "I had always a little of the mineral food salt to season it with, but as for bread or potatoes, or anything else of a vegetable character, why I simply couldn't get them."

"All right. Now, the theory is that a man must have starchy foods in order to keep in good health. You had no starchy food for from a week to two weeks at a time on each of these occasions, but lived exclusively on meat. Now, what effects of this diet did you observe?"

"None whatever, except that little Tom Ridsdale had a mighty keen relish for bread when he got home again."

The Doctor then asked detailed questions as to particular symptoms, to all of which the substance of Tom's replies was that in his case no symptoms whatever had manifested themselves. "I think, Doctor," he added, "as the result of my own experience that a healthy young human animal like me, when living night and day in the open air and taking a great deal of exercise, can eat pretty much anything he pleases that we commonly recognize as food, or rather anything of that kind that he can get – without much danger of injuring himself. No, I don't know so well about that. Once, I got hurt in the mountains, and lived for a week in a barn, eating nothing but corn. I was all right in a general way, but I suffered a good deal with cold. When I got out and killed a 'coon and roasted and ate it, the weather seemed suddenly to warm up."

"Precisely," answered the Doctor. "The fat of the coon furnished you with fuel, and you needed it. The more I study the subject, the more firmly convinced I become of two things – first, that man is essentially a carnivorous, or meat-eating animal, and second, that while starchy foods are desirable as a part of his diet, they are not absolutely necessary to him, except at comparatively long intervals. You know a baby simply cannot digest starchy foods at all. It would starve to death with a stomach full of them. Every baby lives exclusively upon the animal food milk."

"Yes," answered Jack, "but so does every colt and every calf. Yet, neither horses nor cows eat any animal food whatever after they cease to be colts and calves."

"That is true," said the Doctor, meditatively. "I hadn't thought of that." Then, after a minute's thought, he added – "but neither cows nor horses have any carnivorous teeth whatever, any teeth fit for the chewing of meat, while man has. Besides that, physicians have observed that behind almost every case of obstinate, low fevers and that sort of debilitated disease, there is a history of underfeeding, and particularly of an insufficient use of meat, whether as a matter of necessity, or merely as a matter of choice. Persons who eat no meat, or very little meat, may seem very robust so long as positive disease does not attack them, but when they contract maladies of a serious sort, they are very likely to show a lack of stamina, a deficiency of recuperative power."

"Then you don't believe at all, any more than we meat-eating Virginians do – in the doctrines of the vegetarians?" asked Jack, as he finished the hind legs of a broiled squirrel.

"It will be time enough," answered the Doctor, "to consider the doctrines of the vegetarians when they agree among themselves as to what those doctrines are."

"Why, how do you mean?" asked Tom.

"Well, some vegetarians held a congress, or a convention, or something of that sort in New York a little while ago. There were only fifty-seven of them present, I believe, and yet they managed to split their congress up into four groups, each antagonizing the views of all the others with something approaching violence of temper."

"What were their differences?" asked Tom.

"Well first of all there was a group who advocated the eating of vegetable matters only, except that they saw no harm in the use of milk, eggs, cheese and butter. Next there was a group who bitterly condemned milk, eggs, cheese and butter as animal foods, tending to inflame evil passions and utterly to be rejected, though they ate milk biscuit and butter crackers. This second group looked with favor upon all fruits and vegetables, but here a third group took issue with them, contending that only those vegetables should be eaten which grow above ground, and utterly rejecting the thought of eating potatoes, parsnips, beets, turnips, onions, carrots, radishes and other things that develop beneath the surface of the earth. Finally there was a fourth group that agreed with the third except that they made a plea in behalf of celery, on the ground that it is naturally a plant growing above ground and is artificially imbedded in earth only by way of making it tender and palatable."

"But how about circuses then?" asked Tom.

"I don't understand," the Doctor answered.

"Why how can anybody go to a circus without eating peanuts? And about three-fourths of all the peanuts are developed under ground by burying the blossoms."

"It's all very funny," said Jack. "But the funniest thing about it is the fetish worship of that word 'vegetable.' Patent medicines are often advertised as 'purely vegetable,' as if that settled the question of their harmlessness. Yet I know at least a dozen 'purely vegetable' plants that grow in these woods which are poisonous."

"Of course," answered the Doctor, "and for that matter the most virulent poisons known to man are 'purely vegetable.' There's strychnia for example, as purely vegetable in its origin as apple-butter itself is. And there are others, such as morphine, stramonium, and nux vomica and worst of all hydrocyanic acid, commonly called prussic acid. That is so deadly that it is almost never made or kept in its pure state, because a single whiff of its fumes in the nostrils would kill almost instantly. Yet it is an extract of peach pits or bitter almonds."

"Well now I say," broke in Tom, "let's return to the subject of foods, for I am hungry, and I'm going to declare war on the Doctor if he doesn't let me have some light thing to eat like a chop from that wild boar or something of an equally digestible sort."

"Well, we'll see about that," said the Doctor, going to Tom's bed and examining and redressing his wounds. After the inspection he said:

"You were entirely right, Tom, when you called yourself a perfectly healthy human animal a little while ago. I never yet saw wounds heal in the way they are doing on you. So you may sit up for dinner to-day, and you may have whatever you want to eat."

"All right!" cried Tom, hastily scrambling out of bed. "My clamor is for pork. How are you going to cook the pig boys?"

After a little consultation, it was decided to hang the shoat before the great fire in the new fire place, and roast it whole.

"After all, it doesn't weigh more than forty pounds, and that isn't much to divide between six of us," said Harry, laughingly.

"And besides," added Ed, "roast wild shoat is as good cold as hot, or rather better. So we'll roast the gentleman whole, and I for one volunteer to sit down before him and baste him so that all the juices that belong to him shall be found succulently pervading his muscular structure."

"I'll help in that," called Jim Chenowith from outside the cabin, where he was just finishing a turn of guard duty.

Thus the little company rested and grew strong during the Sunday, and by bed time they were eager for the morning and the hard, outdoor work of tree felling that it would bring with it. With a great glowing blaze in the fireplace, which each sentinel replenished with wood before summoning his successor to take his place, the log hut seemed a delightful place to sleep in.

CHAPTER X
Beginning Work

The Doctor was the first "boy" to crawl out of bed in the morning. He carefully inspected his weather instruments and reported:

"It's a stinging morning. Thermometer only ten degrees above zero outside; wind North-northwest, and blowing at twenty miles an hour; barometric pressure very high, indicating prolonged clear and cold weather; hygrometer indicating a minimum of moisture in the atmosphere, promises a clear sky and a bright sun to-day."

"Good!" shouted the other boys. "Now for a hearty breakfast to begin with."

"Well I for one am going to begin with an invigorating cold bath," said the Doctor seizing a sponge and two towels and running nearly naked through the biting air, to the spring under the cliff. After a shudder of hesitation all the other boys gave chase to him.

The bathing trough was not yet in place, but by dipping sponges into the sluiceway that flowed out of the spring, and rapidly drenching their bodies with the intensely cold water, gasping for breath as they did so, they all set their blood aflow and their skins a-tingling. Then, vigorously rubbing themselves with towels as they went, they ran to the cabin and there dressed before a mighty fire of freshly replenished logs.

"Why does a bath like that feel so good after it's over?" asked Jack. For answer the Doctor gave a little physiological explanation which need not be repeated here. He ended it with this dictum: "For a man or woman or boy in full health, whose heart and lungs are sound, there is no such tonic in the world as a very cold bath on a very cold morning." Then suddenly he called out:

"Why hello, Tom! you didn't bathe, did you?" observing the boy vigorously polishing his back with a sharp Turkish towel.

"Oh, didn't I though. I've done that sort of thing every morning since I was a very little fellow, except when I hadn't the chance to do it."

"But Tom," said the Doctor in much concern, "I'm afraid this was very imprudent. Some of your wounds are still unhealed, and you might take cold in them."

"Why, Doctor, you have just been telling us how a cold morning bath renders it nearly impossible for one to take cold, by reason of the stimulated skin and full circulation."

"Still," answered the Doctor doubtfully, "I didn't mean all that to apply to a fellow who was cut into ribbons by a catamount's claws only a few nights ago. At any rate you mustn't wear those wet bandages, so the other boys will have to get breakfast while I take them all off and replace them with dry ones."

With that he hastily slipped on a scanty covering of clothes and set to work to re-dress Tom's wounds.

"Well bless my soul!" he exclaimed presently.

"What's the matter Doctor? Anything gone wrong with that shoulder?" asked Tom.

"Gone wrong! Well I should say not. I never in my life saw the process of healing advance so rapidly. Why I gave that big scratch two weeks at least to get well in, and if I'm not absolutely blind it is practically healed up already. Bring a light one of you! There, hold it so," and with a strong magnifying glass, the Doctor minutely examined the wounded part. Then he sat back and said:

"Tom Ridsdale you are certainly the healthiest human animal I ever saw or heard of. Why a surgeon in private practice wouldn't make his salt if all his patients recovered after your fashion. You are practically so nearly well that I am going to leave off all your bandages, only holding this newly healed cut together with a strip or two of rubber plaster for extra safety. But I certainly never saw anything like it!"

"Perhaps that's because you never before had a perfectly healthy, out-of-door boy like me as a surgical patient."

"Of course that's it. But now that I've taken off all your bandages and given you leave to eat whatever you want, you must be good enough to obey my orders in other respects. Otherwise, you might spoil this splendid result."

"I will, Doctor. Honestly, I'll do whatever you tell me."

"Well, we're going to begin chopping now, and I peremptorily forbid you to do any work for a day or two – at least, until the healing of those lacerated muscles is complete and their union firm. It would be very easy now to tear the wounds open again, and if you did that they would not heal again in a hurry. So, you must do no chopping, no lifting, no work of any kind for the present. Promise me that and in return I'll faithfully promise to release you from the restraint at the first moment when I think it safe to do so."

"All right, Doctor," answered Tom, "I'll potter about and 'keep camp' till you say I may go to work. And in the meantime I'm going to make some soup out of our scraps and bones. It will warm you fellows up when you come in cold and hungry from your chopping in this excessively cold air."

With that Tom got out their biggest camp kettle, threw all the meat fragments into it, broke up all the bones with a hatchet, and threw them in, and then filling the kettle nearly full of cold water, set it on the fire to boil.

The other boys, after breakfast, had taken their axes and gone out to begin the work of chopping. First of all, they built a fire near the timber they were about to cut, so that benumbed hands and half frozen feet might be warmed as occasion required. They all had good axes, and they all knew how to use them expertly, for these boys had been brought up in a heavily timbered country and had been used all their lives to chopping.

"Now, let's begin right," said Jack Ridsdale, "and then we'll go on right. There are two ways to fell trees in a forest, a right way and a wrong way. The wrong way is to fell them in any way that comes handy, regardless of any incidental damage that may be done as they fall. The right way is so to fell your big tree that in falling it won't smash any of the smaller trees standing around. You see, we aren't going to cut down any tree that isn't big enough to make railroad ties – that is to say any tree that isn't full seven inches in diameter. In doing that, if we take a little care, we can save all the smaller trees, and in the course of a year or two they will grow up, and we fellows can come out here and spend another winter in chopping. It all depends upon the way in which we do our work this time, whether these lands remain a splendid forest or become a desolate waste with all the soil washed off for lack of roots to hold it, and with no hope of anything ever growing upon them again."

Then Jack, who was an expert woodchopper, explained to all the others how to chop down a tree so as to make it fall wherever the chopper wishes it to fall.

"Now, another thing," added Jack. "You, Doctor, have had less experience than the rest of us, in this business, and perhaps you'd best practice on the easier part of it first. I propose that instead of cutting down trees you devote yourself to-day to making cordwood out of the unused parts of the trees we cut to build our house with. There are several cords of good wood in them. You can cut the branches into round wood and split the rest with the mauls and wedges and gluts." A glut is a big wooden wedge used to supplement the work of the axe and the iron wedge. The Doctor assented readily – the more because he had learned, during his sojourn in Virginia how to cut and split wood with very tolerable skill, but had never yet practiced the art of felling trees.

With brisk axes expertly wielded by strong arms, the party had goodly piles of ties and timbers and cordwood ready for the chute before noon, and as they were not to begin sending it down the hill until three o'clock the next day, they had every prospect of making a good showing with their two days' work.

CHAPTER XI
An Armed Negotiation

Just before noon, Tom carefully removed all the bones and meat fragments from his soup kettle. Then he mixed up some corn meal dumplings and dropped them into the kettle, after the southern culinary fashion. These would answer as a sufficient substitute for bread, and as for meat, the company was to dine that day on the cold roast wild boar.

Just as Tom dropped the last of the dumplings into the kettle, he looked out through the half-open door and saw an ugly looking mountaineer creeping stealthily, and with his rifle in hand, up over the little cliff to the east of Camp Venture. His attention was evidently riveted upon the chopping boys, the scene of whose labors lay to the northwest of the house. Apparently, the man supposed the hut to be empty and intended to pass to the south of it, using it as a secure cover for his approach to the boys chopping.

Tom was a person distinctly quick of apprehension. In an instant, he saw what the man's plans were, and in another instant he had seized and cocked the Doctor's repeating rifle, which had fortunately been left in the hut.

As the mountaineer stealthily crept by the cabin, Tom "drew a bead" on him at not more than six paces distant, and called out:

"Lay down your gun instantly, or I'll shoot."

There was nothing to do but obey without a moment's loss of time. The mountaineer dropped his gun.

"Now, step inside," commanded Tom, still keeping the magazine rifle in position for instant and deadly use. "Step inside. I want to talk with you."

The man obeyed.

"Now, sit down on that stool," said Tom, "and tell me what you're up to. Come, now! No lying! Tell me what you were sneaking into this camp for!"

The man, who seemed much surlier and was certainly much brawnier than the former visitor to the camp, hesitated. Tom stimulated his utterance, by saying:

"Come, speak up! My patience is about exhausted, and I'm not going to wait for you to think of something false to say. Answer, or I'll shoot."

"Don't shoot, pard!" pleaded the man. "I didn't mean no harm. I only come to negotiate like."

"Then why were you sneaking and creeping upon my comrades with your rifle at full cock?"

"Well, you see, we fellers what lives up here in the mountings has to be keerful like. I wanted to make a bargain with you fellers, but if I'd 'a' walked into your camp regular like, why mebbe some on you'd 'a' shot me unbeknownst like. So I thought I'd just creep up like a catamount and git the drap on some on you, an' then tell you, simple like, as how I didn't want to do you no harm if you'd do us fellers no harm. I wanted to negotiate, that's all."

"Well, I don't like your way of negotiating," answered Little Tom, still keeping his rifle in poise against his hip ready for instant use. "I don't like to negotiate with a man that's 'got the drap on me' as you say. But now that I've 'got the drap' on you instead, I don't mind opening diplomatic relations – I don't suppose you know what that means, but never mind. Go on and tell me what it is you want."

"Well, you see," said the mountaineer, "first off we wanted you fellers to clear out'n here and git down out'n the mountings. We sent a man to you to negotiate that, an' you used him up so bad that he ain't no 'count no more in such business. Well, you won't go. We all seed that clear enough an' at first we was a plannin' to come over here with our guns and jes' exterminate you all. But then we knew what a hullabaloo that would raise. You see, it would 'a' give us away, like, an' next thing we know'd the revenue agents would 'a' come up here with a pack o' soldiers at their back, an' us fellers would 'a' been shot down like rabbits. So we held a little confab, like, an' we decided to let you fellers stay up here in the mountings ef you'd agree to behave decent, like."

"How exceedingly kind of you!" ejaculated Tom, derisively. "And how considerate! But go on; I didn't mean to interrupt. In what particular way do you exact that we shall behave ourselves in order to win your gracious permission to remain here on land that belongs to us?"

"Now, you're a gittin' at the pint," answered the man. "We're willin' to let you alone ef you'll let us alone. We're willin' to let you stay in the mountings an' cut all the timber you like, ef you won't bother us in any way."

"In what way have we bothered you?" asked Tom, who was growing steadily angrier with the man's extraordinary insolence.

"Well, you see, you fellers has planted your wood chute jist edzackly wrong."

"How so?"

"Well, ef you should send anything down that chute it would run right through a little shanty we've got down there under the cliff."

"An illicit still, you mean?" asked Tom.

"Well, as to that – "

"Never mind. You needn't lie about it. I understand. Now, as I catch your meaning, you want us to change the direction of our wood chute, so as to spare an illicit still that you have set up down there under the cliff, to hide it from the revenue officers. You've located that still on my mother's property, without leave or license, for she owns the whole of this side of the mountain down to its very foot; you are using her timber to fire up with under your still, without paying her a cent for it. In brief, you are thieves and robbers, and you have the insolence now to come here and demand that we shall change our chute in order to leave you undisturbed in your robbery of the government on the one hand and of my mother on the other. Very well, we will do nothing of the kind. At five minutes after three o'clock to-morrow afternoon we shall begin sending timber down through the chute. If you can remove your criminal apparatus by that time we'll not interfere with you. If you can't get it away by then, you'll simply have to take the consequences. But, at any rate, you can yourselves get out of the way, so that our timbers will not hurt you personally.

"Now go! Get away from here – no, don't pick up your rifle; I'll take care of that. You people have declared war on us, and in war it is not the custom to return arms to men captured and turned loose, I believe. I don't want your property, but I'm going to keep it for the present. If you'll come peaceably to my mother's house down in the town there, after we fellows go home, I'll give your rifle back to you. But not now, when you want it to shoot some of us with. Go now! and whether you get your still out by three o'clock to-morrow or not, be very careful that neither you nor any of your comrades remain there after that hour, for then the chute will begin to carry its load."

The evil-visaged man slunk away over the cliff by which he had ascended, and down the mountain. There was revenge written in every line of his countenance, and Tom quite well understood that he and his comrades must take care of themselves. Just as the fellow was marching away, with Tom's rifle leveled at him and with his own rifle lying upon the ground as a spoil of war, the rest of the company came up, but they did not interfere. They trusted Tom as a strategist, and they instantly saw that this was an "incident closed" as the diplomatists say. When the fellow was completely gone, Tom lowered the hammer of his rifle, restored it to its place, picked up the captured gun of the mountaineer, lowered its hammer to half cock, and carefully bestowed it in a convenient corner.

"What is it, Tom?" eagerly asked the others.

"Wait a minute!" said the boy, "till I dish up the soup. I hope it isn't spoiled, and as for the rest, I'll tell you all about it after dinner."