Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains

  CHAPTER XXVII

  _Some Features of the Situation_

  Every morning Tom "prowled," as he put it, all around the camp, "just tosee how things are," he said.

  Two mornings after the talk reported in the last chapter Tom found, outunder the bluff, a big bag of rye meal or rather of rye coarsely groundfor whiskey making purposes. He dragged it over the hard snow to campand opened it. In its mouth he found a piece of paper and written uponit in rude letters was the following:

  U Pade 2 Mutch Fer the Mele. Heares A nother bag to Mak it SKWAR. Dont gim me Awa.

  BILL JONES.

  Tom called all the boys into conference before deciding what to do withthis present. He said to them:

  "Bill's ideas of morality are somewhat confused. In his eagerness torender me some return for my act in letting him go back to his 'littlegal' on parole, he wanted to give me the meal I brought to camp theother morning. It never occurred to him that as the meal didn't belongto him, he had no right to give it to me, and all I could say to him wasutterly futile as an effort to make him take a moral or rational view ofthe case. Now I am seriously afraid our friend Bill stole this rye meal.That would perfectly fit in with his ideas of morality, gratitude andall that sort of thing. Still we don't know that he did steal it. Afterall I did pay him a double price for the meal we got, and possibly hehas applied part of the surplus payment to the purchase of thisadditional supply from his criminal friends the distillers. After all Ihave no means of knowing that he ever paid the original owners of thatfirst meal any part of the money that I gave him for it. He couldn't seeat the time why he shouldn't steal it for me, and so he may have stolenthis."

  "Well," said the Doctor, "you honestly paid him for the former supply ofmeal, insisting that you wouldn't take it at all unless you paid forit. He understands that perfectly. He has a sufficient sense of honestynow to bring you an additional bag on the ground that you paid anexcessive price for the former supply and that he wants to make it'skwar.' I don't see how we can go behind that, especially as we cannotpossibly return the meal either to him or to its owners if he stole it.Our only option is to eat the stuff or take it back out there to thefoot of the bluff and leave it there to rot."

  After some further discussion it was decided to eat the rye meal aspractically the only thing that could be done with it.

  One week later another bag of meal--corn meal this time--was found outunder the bluff, but with it came no explanation of any kind. Thus thebread supply in Camp Venture was made secure for a time at least, andfor a meat supply the guns did all that was necessary--especially Tom'sgun, for Tom spent many of his hours wandering over the mountains insearch of game, and Tom rarely sought game in vain.

  It was coming on to be March now, and the weather had greatly moderated.The snow was melting off the mountains and the spring rains were fallingfreely.

  "Our meal will run out before long," said the Doctor one night, "butthe time is near at hand when we can send a boy down the mountain tobring up a pack mule with some supplies."

  "Indeed you can't," said Tom.

  "But why not?" asked the Doctor.

  "Simply because there are some mountain torrents in the way, that nohuman being could pass, even if he had one of your big steamships tohelp him in the crossing."

  "But I saw no mountain torrents on our way up," said the Doctor.

  "Certainly not," answered Tom, "for they weren't mountain torrents then,but the dry beds of streams. But now it is different. It would be asimpossible now for us to 'git down out'n the mountings' as to fly to themoon--unless we went down over the cliffs there, following the chute.And of course we couldn't bring a pack mule up that way. No, we've gotto stick it out and live on what we can get till our work is done, andthen--as the spring is coming on and the way is blocked by the torrentsof which I spoke,--we've got to make our way over the cliffs down thereby the chute, for we simply cannot get down the mountain by the way wecame."

  "How do you know this, Tom?" asked Harry.

  "Why, I've tried it. You see any road down the mountain that furnishesan easy way is sure to be crossed by creeks that are dry in the summerand fall, but raging whirlpools when spring melts the snow and sendsmillions of gallons of water every minute down the steep inclines. Icount myself a strong swimmer. But I could no more swim across one ofthose sluiceways than I could climb up a sunbeam to the rainbow. I tellyou we can get nothing from down below now, and I tell you that we can'tourselves go down the mountain by the way by which we came up, for twoor three months to come."

  "What are we to do, then, Tom?" asked the Doctor.

  "Well, first, we're to feed ourselves as best we can till we've finishedour work; and then we're to go down the mountain on its steep side alongthe chute. That will involve a great deal of toil and some danger. Weshall have to let ourselves down over cliffs by hanging on to bushes,with the certainty that if the bushes give way we shall be dashed topieces on the rocks below. But that's the only way we can get down themountain unless we are willing to wait for summer."

  "Well, the question is not an immediately pressing one," said Jack."We've got a lot of work ahead of us yet, and we've got plenty of gameand plenty of bread stuffs in camp."

  "Plenty of game, yes," said the Doctor. "But as for bread stuffs, Idon't think we have more than a peck or so left."

  The next morning Tom, in his "prowlings" found two big bags of corn andrye meal lying there under the bluff. "It's a case of bread cast uponthe waters returning to us after many days," said Tom.