Camp Venture

cket

ergrown brothers, as because his father had been also Thomas Ridsdale and for the sake of distinguishing between them the family and the neighbors had from his infancy called the boy "Little Tom." He was next to Jack in age being now nearly eighteen years old, and as a voracious reader and a singularly keen observer he was perhaps better inf

had helped from the earliest years in which they were capable of helping. They had chopped and sawed and split wood, worked in the hay fields, dropped and covered corn, pulled fodder and done what ever else there was to do that might br

exceedingly steep descent on that side of the mountain, on which their timber lands lay, so that by building a short chute to give a headway they could send their railroad ties and the other products of their chopping by a steep slide to the valley below by force of gravity and without any hauling whatever. Two of their schoolmates-Jim Chenowith and Ed Parmly had asked to join in the expedition. An arrangement had been made with the railroad people to pay a stipulated price for every railroad tie shot down the hill, a much higher pric

trength. He was a tireless student of science, and in the course of his duty in one of the charity hospitals of Baltimore he had contracted a fever. His recovery from it was so slow and unsatisfactory that he had abandoned his work and

cordwood that I may cut will be counted as your own. All I want is the life in the o

t be very uncertain. They therefore, took with them on their own backs and on the backs of their pack mules those necessaries which would most certainly render them independent

will be bea

beans?" a

nd they have starch and gluten in them too, so that they are in fact both meat and bread. Pound for pound, dried beans are about the most perfect food possible. To make them palata

d beef, a few hams, some b

It is food so concentrated that it ought never t

h me in the matter of candy when I

t was quite well understood that the party must rely

quantity of "hard tack" and

cloth bag. One big cheese was taken by special request of Ed's mother, who

s pure food and we couldn't put in fifty pounds of any thing else that would go so far to ward off s

ack on his shoulders, besides his gun and axe, so that altogether the expedition was reasonably well p

upon during the journey of two days and at the end of that time they were to be turne

luded several scores that carried full sized buck shot. The ammunition, added to the rest, very seriously over-loaded the mules. On a long journey those animals, large and brawny as they were,

night on which our story opens. They had less than a mile to go on the next day in order to reach their permanent campi

o fall asleep after they had wrapped themselves in their bla

time to time, but at Jack's wise suggestion the sentry was himself to remai

sily pick off our sentry, sitting or standing in the firelight, and the

nce in the camp. One after another sentry arou

n the grass and leaves and the atmosphere was chill. Tom looked longingly at the great blazing

on post," he said to himself, "and they punish that

e woods. He cocked both barrels of his shot gun, each of which carried nine buck shot, and breathlessly waited, listening and looking. Prese

t is

re i

h question after question

calmly walking to the foot of a tre

e they saw the humor of the situation and realized

Tom, "and when I wake you next

ked sticks, sharpened their lower ends and drove them firmly into the earth. Across these he laid another stick and from it he hung the opossum by a bit of twine which he twisted

ith a demand that some of them should make some bread, brew some

of the pig-like little animal were picked c