Good-nights were interchanged; the girls then went into their cabin and not very long after shut and fastened their door.
We boys, in the doorless cabin, soon spread up our own bunks; we were all tired, and novel as the situation was to me, I think I had not been lying down over ten or fifteen minutes, when I fell soundly asleep.
As a rule, healthy young folks, from twelve to fifteen years of age, do not lie awake much in the night, under any circumstances. Once asleep, they are not apt to wake, till well rested. The normal condition of a boy of that age, is to be in the open air all day, actively employed, either in play, or work, which keenly interests him, and to have all the good food he wants, at suitable hours. To a boy thus engaged, the period from the time he falls asleep in the evening till next morning, is apt to be one of utter oblivion. That is the way to sleep. Older persons, troubled by insomnia and its usual cause, bad digestion, would do well to return to these simple and health-giving modes of life, best seen in an active boy, or girl.
Somebody shook me. I thought I had but that moment fallen asleep. It was Thomas. "Wake up," he whispered. "Let's you and I go catch some trout for breakfast. They say this brook is full of them. I brought along my hooks. Come on."
The word _trout_ is a good one to get a sleepy boy's eyes open with; I rose at once.
"Let's go out still," whispered Tom, "so as not to wake the girls. I don't want them to see us start off, for we may not have any luck, you know; and it's a thing I never could stand, to come back from fishing, with no fish, and have folks asking me where my fish are."
Addison was awake and lay regarding us, sleepily; but Willis had already got up and gone out with the gun. It was quite light and nearing sunrise; there was a slight frost on the crisp grass about the cabins.
The fire had gone out, hours before; not even a smoldering ember or a wreath of smoke, remained of it. The squirrels had already begun to "chicker" in the hazel copses; and a large pileated woodpecker was calling out loudly from the top of a tall pine stub, off in the opening.
We had nothing for bait, except a bit of white, fat pork. First we went down to the ford. "Look there," said Tom, pointing to our tracks of yesterday in the sand and some more recent impressions, nearly or quite as large. "See those bear tracks! Some bear has been smelling about here, during the night! Oh, this is quite a place for game. But don't talk _bear_ much before the girls, or we shall get them so skittish that we cannot stir. They'll feel quite courageous this morning, when they wake up and find nothing has carried them off, if they don't see these bear tracks." Thomas proceeded to scuff the tracks over with his boot.
We then cut two hazel fishing rods, tied a line and hook to each, baited the hooks with a scred of the pork, and then going down the stream, till we came to a pool at a bend, crept carefully up to the verge of the bank and gently dropped in our hooks.
"Shake 'em just a little easy," whispered Tom; for as yet my education in the art of trout fishing had been neglected. "Shake the bait easy, and kind o' bob it up and down; and if you get a bite don't yank very hard, just a little pull, and then swing him out on to the bank."
His words were hardly out, before I felt a vigorous tug at my hook, and quite forgetful of advice, gave a tremendous jerk and flung a half pound trout clean over our heads and into the hazel bushes!
"Gracious! you've scared every fish in this hole!" exclaimed Tom. "But that's a good trout. Pick him up and string him. I guess I'll go up stream now, and you fish on down stream. When we each get a dozen, we will go to the camp; but don't stay too long, anyway."
Tom was a little disgusted, I suppose, with the way I yanked out that trout, and thought that I had better fish by myself. He went off up the brook. I determined to catch a dozen as quickly as he did. So I strung my half-pound fish on a hazel twig, and scud along to the next bend of the brook. I had no more than looked to my bait and dropped in there, when I had a bite and (this time more carefully) swung out a thumping big trout that would have weighed near a pound! His sides were well specked with red; he was a beauty!
Taking him off the hook, after some trouble with him in a bunch of brush, I strung him, dropped in again, and had a third one out--smaller--in less than half a minute. The brook was plainly well stocked with trout. Baiting again, I tossed in and caught a fourth in less time than it had taken me to cut off the scred of pork. I got a fifth and a sixth, both good-sized, and had my seventh bite, when, jerking, I lost him, and the hook, catching on a dry pine branch which stuck out from a pile of drift, was broken. It was the only one I had, and I stamped the ground with vexation. Tom would beat me now; and as it would do no good to linger after the hook was gone, I took my string of half a dozen--weighing fully three pounds--and went back to camp as fast as I could, in order to show good time on the half dozen.
I was in a few minutes ahead of Thomas. But he brought a dozen nice ones, though some of his were smaller than mine. He had one larger than my largest, however. The eighteen, as we laid them out on the grass, were a pretty lot to look at, with the sunshine playing on their spotted sides.
Meantime, I had heard Willis's gun several times, and Tom said that he had heard it, too. "He's shooting partridges, or else gray squirrels, I guess," Tom remarked. "Gray squirrels, where they have fed on hazel nuts for a month or two, make a luscious good stew."
Addison had just come out and kindled a fire; and before we had our trout dressed, ready to fry, Willis came in with a string of four partridges, but no squirrels.
"Are the partridges plenty?" Ad asked.
"Well, there's some. They seem a little shy, though," replied Willis, taking the cap off the tube of the gun, which had a percussion lock. "I shouldn't wonder if some hunter had been firing among them, by the way they fly," he added. "But we can get all we shall want."
"Aren't the girls up yet?" said Thomas. "Wonder what they would say if they knew the fire all went out by eleven o'clock! There's lots of bears round here, too."
"That's so," said Willis. "I've seen bear sign out here in the opening this morning in more'n a dozen places."
"Well, keep quiet about it," said Thomas. "We'll call it _deer_. When any of us speak of _deer_, we boys will know that it's bear. It's of no use to scare the girls; and the bears won't touch us this time of year anyway."
We began getting breakfast. Potatoes were put to roast in the embers; but the chief dish was to be trout. Thomas began frying them in butter and meal and set a big tin platter down by the fire to keep them hot, after he had taken them from the pan. Willis tended the fire and kept the embers banked over the potatoes; and Addison got on water for coffee. About this time the door of the girls' cabin was heard to creak; and we saw Catherine and Theodora peeping out.
"What lazy things girls are!" Addison exclaimed, derisively. "Here it is nigh seven o'clock and you sluggards are not out yet."
"Oh, we've been awake and up a long time," said Kate. "It was fun to lie and hear you boys pottering about, trying to get breakfast, and to hear you talk, too. I suppose we shall all be obliged to go down to the brook to wash our faces," she added. "I don't believe any of you boys have thought of washing your faces yet! Tom looks frowzy; I won't say anything about the others."
"No," said Addison. "We don't think of such a thing as washing our faces up here!"
"Well, then, you had better, if you are going to take breakfast with us; hadn't they, Theodora?"
"Indeed, they had!" cried Theodora. "I decline to sit down to breakfast with any fellow who hasn't washed his face."
Thereupon the three girls set off for the ford, with combs, soap and towels.
"You will see a lot of _deer_ tracks down there in the sand," Thomas called after them, with a wink to the rest of us.
Our breakfast was nearly ready, and with everything keeping warm by the fire, we now ran down to the ford, to perform our own rather tardy ablutions. The girls, looking fresh as pinks, had finished theirs and were gathering more hazel nuts, and Theodora and Kate had crossed the ford to gather a few bunches of high-bush cranberry fruit, which they espied hanging temptingly out over the stream, on that side. These cranberries make a nice relish for meat, or fish.
"Come on, girls!" Tom called out, as soon as we had doused our faces and ran a comb through our locks. "Come on now, lively! Breakfast is all ready and I've got something nice, I assure ye."
We went back to the cabins together.
"I didn't know that deer made such big tracks as those down there in the sand," said Theodora. "I thought deer made little tracks more like sheep tracks."
"Oh, caribou deer make tremendous tracks, as big as a man's almost, because they step down upon their fetlocks and their feet are hairy,"
said Thomas, with a wondrous wise look to the rest of us.
"But are there caribou deer in Maine?" Theodora asked.
"Oh, a good many," replied Addison.
"Don't ask them any more questions, Doad," said Kate. "They are deceiving us about something, I don't know what, exactly. But let them enjoy it, if they find so much sport in it."
We sat down to breakfast at once, and the trout were delicious, at least we all thought so; and so were the baked potatoes, eggs and toast.
"Now," said Addison after we had finished, "my program for to-day is to climb the mountain over on the other side of the stream, and search for some mineral ledges which I have heard of there. I don't want the others to go with me, unless they want to, and would rather do that than anything else. There are plenty of nice trips to make. Those who wish can go to dig spruce gum upon the side of that dark-looking mountain on the far side of the opening here; or they can go fishing, or hunting, or go out here and collect hazel nuts for winter. For we can carry home a bushel of nuts with us if we choose."
"We might get ten bushels," said Thomas, "if we could only dig out the hoards of these squirrels that have been at work all the fall."
"Then there is another trip that I want to make," said Addison. "They say there is a mountain side, about five miles up here to the northeast of us, that is covered with balm o' Gilead trees, thousands of them. I want to find out if that is really so, and if the trees are easy to reach. For I have heard that druggists, in Boston and New York, pay four dollars a pound for the buds of this tree, when gathered at the proper season, in the early spring, to use for liniments and other medicines.
If that is so, and there are great numbers of the trees, I want to make a trip up here about the first of May, next spring, and gather two bushel baskets full. I don't see why a small party might not earn a couple of hundred dollars in a few days."
"Good idea!" exclaimed Catherine. "And will you include us girls in your money-making party?"
"Of course," said Addison, "If you will go and help gather the buds, it shall be share and share alike."
"Then Addison," said Kate, laughing, "I guess I will join your expedition to-day. For you seem to be a pretty good business man, and I like folks that look out for making money."
"My sister Kate is a great girl for money," said Thomas.
"That is so," replied Kate. "I think that money is a great institution.
I would like to get lots of it."
"I know that we all want to go on each and all of these trips," said Theodora. "I do, at any rate. So why not all go with Addison to-day, then go to look for the balm o' Gileads to-morrow; and then all go after spruce gum the next day."