Chums of the Camp Fire | Page 2

risking
much for.
"Oh! that's all right, Max; leave it to me. I wouldn't lose that buster,
even if I had to strip, and swim over, with the water as cold as anything,
because this is only Easter time."
With these words the late marksman started to make his way along the
edge of the pond where their hunt was taking place, and which lay not
more than a mile from the town of Carson, in which all of them had
their homes.
While Steve is doing this, and Bandy-legs is making the rifle ready for
further use by inserting a fresh cartridge in place of the empty shell, a
few words of explanation with regard to these four boys may seem
appropriate.

They were boon companions, and together had been having some great
times during the past two years, many of these happenings having been
described at length in the preceding books of this series.
One of their earlier achievements is worthy of mention, because it
supplied the sinews of war, in the shape of money, through the
possession of which they were enabled to carry out many of their plans,
which might otherwise never have materialized through sheer lack of
means to pay expenses.
Knowing that there were plenty of fresh-water clams called mussels in
some of the waters adjacent to Carson, these boys, together with Owen
Hastings, a cousin of Max, now visiting an old aunt abroad, who
wanted to adopt him, had made a secret investigation.
Max had been reading about the wonderful find of pearls in mussels
picked up in the streams in Missouri, Indiana and other places, and he
conceived the idea that possibly those in the smaller tributaries of the
Evergreen River, flowing past the home town, might yield something
worth while.
Accordingly he and his four chums, without saying a word to anybody,
had gone into camp on the Big Sunflower River, and commenced their
pearl hunting operations.
The result made a tremendous flurry around that whole vicinity, for the
wideawake lads found quite a lot of valuable, pearls in the heaps of
mussels which they gathered along the little stream.
Of course once the news leaked out everybody hastened to glean a
fortune in the pearl line; but the boys laughed in their sleeves, knowing
full well that they had "skimmed the cream off the pan." True, a few
gems were found, but nothing to compare with their rake-off. And as
the supply of mussels soon became exhausted the flurry had long since
died a natural death.
But the boys had a nice little nest-egg in the bank as the result of their
thrift, and knowledge of things. This had been added to in various ways,

such as combing the woods far and near in search of wild ginseng, and
golden seal, the roots of which, when properly dried, brought them
many good dollars, after being shipped to a responsible house that dealt
in furs, and such things that the woods produce.
On the preceding fall the boys had enjoyed their Thanksgiving holidays
up in the North Woods in company with an old friend who spent all his
time there, trapping wild animals in season for their pelts, and getting
close to Nature's heart; for Trapper Jim, although well-to-do after a
fashion, despised the artificial life of the town.
Here they had experienced a succession of adventures that would
forever keep the memory of that trip fresh in their minds. Toby Jucklin
had brought home a 'coon he had captured; while Bandy-legs was the
proud owner of a fast growing black bear cub, which was making life
miserable for the cook at his house, because of its mischievous ways,
and enormous appetite.
Toby had apparently gone head-over-heels into the "pet" business. That
lively and prankish 'coon seemed to have started him along the line of
owning pets, and his comrades many times declared that he would soon
have a regular menagerie in the back yard of his place; for already there
were half a dozen home-made cages there, and Toby spent much of his
spare time feeding his pets.
Besides that same 'coon, which was often at large, yet never seemed
desirous of heading back to his old haunts where dinners were hard to
secure, Toby had some weird-looking lop-eared rabbits; a bunch of
quail from which he hoped to raise a family later on; a red fox that had
a limp on account of the broken leg set by Toby after he had found the
little animal apparently dying from hunger in the bitter wintry storm;
and last but not least a small edition of a wildcat that never would make
up with the hand that fed it, but continued to snarl and spit and look
ferocious week after week, until even