Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains

CHAPTER XIX
A Stress of Circumstances

The next few weeks brought nothing of adventure to the boys. Their work went on wonderfully well. They sent down the mountain innumerable ties and all the cordwood that the trees yielded after the ties were cut. They sent down also a large number of great timbers for use in bridge building and the like, but nothing occurred to justify the name of their camp – Camp Venture.

Their firelight conversations were briefer and less spirited than before, because they were working so strenuously now that they were over-weary when supper was done, and they went to bed at least an hour earlier than they had done before. The earlier novelty of camping had at last worn out and with it the excitement that tends to keep people awake.

Nevertheless they constituted a happy company, all the more so because their work was producing larger results even than they had anticipated. They were sending down the mountain more ties, more cordwood and many more of the high-priced bridge timbers than they had expected to send.

Looking over the accounts one evening in February, when the snow was beginning to melt, Jack said:

"Boys, we've already accomplished more than we expected to do during the whole winter and spring. If we keep it up at the same rate we shall earn quite twice the money we expected to make. So Camp Venture is clearly a success. It is getting so well along in the year now that we need not fear deep snows or avalanches, or anything of that sort to bother us or interfere with our work."

"Nevertheless," said the Doctor, returning from an examination of his scientific instruments, "we're in for a snow storm to-night. It is already beginning and so far as my instruments are to be trusted, it is likely to be very heavy, with high winds."

The boys all went out and took a look at the sky. There was as yet no wind of any consequence, but the snow, in fine, dry, meal-like flakes, was coming down in a way that promised a heavy fall.

About nine o'clock the boys went to bed – all but Harry Ridsdale, who stayed outside as the sentry. About ten o'clock the wind rose to a gale and the roaring of it awakened the Doctor, who instantly arose and with a brand from the fireplace to serve as a torch, went out to consult his instruments. When he returned his stamping and brushing off of snow aroused the others, and the howling of the tempest brought them all into a very wide-awake condition.

"I say, boys," said the Doctor, throwing the brand he had carried into the fire again, "this is an awful night. The snow is coming down in blankets, the wind is blowing at a rate which is between a whole gale and a hurricane, and of course the snow is drifting terribly."

"All right," said Jack. Then he went to the door and called, – "Come in here, Harry! We shall have no use for pickets to-night."

In answer to some questions he said:

"No mountaineer is going to prowl about the hills in such a storm as this. If he did he would be smothered in a snowdrift before he got a hundred yards from his cabin door. We're perfectly safe for this night without a sentry, so we'll all crawl into our bunks and go to sleep."

The soundness of Jack's opinion was obvious enough, and so no more sentries were posted that night. The fire was reinforced with some big logs and all Camp Venture ventured for once to go to sleep.

The hours passed on. The wind howled more and more fiercely, and but for the solidity of its thick log walls the house would have shaken in a way to wake the heaviest sleeper. As it was the boys slept on undisturbed. Finally the fire burned low, so that it gave very little light in the cabin. Little Tom waked and feeling no need for further sleep he got up and piled on some additional logs. Then he went back to bed, but somehow his eyes would not close again. The other boys also waked up, and, turn over as they might, could not go to sleep again. Finally Harry, seeing that all were awake, called out:

"I say, fellows, let's get up and have some breakfast. I for one am hungry."

"So am I," answered Jack, springing out of bed.

"So say we all of us," responded Tom. "By the way, what time is it?"

Harry fumbled among the Doctor's belongings and looked at that gentleman's watch.

"Doctor, you forgot to wind your watch last night. It has run down at a quarter past nine."

"No, I didn't," answered the Doctor, leaping out of bed, where he had lazily lingered for a time. "I certainly wound it before I went to bed."

With that he went across the cabin, took the watch, looked at it, and then put it to his ear.

"It's running all right," he presently said, whereupon the other two members of the company who had watches brought them out.

All pointed to a quarter past nine.

Just then Jack opened the door and something like half a ton of snow fell into the house, but no light came with it.

"Boys!" he cried, "we're utterly snowed in. It is a quarter past nine in the morning, but the house is completely buried in snow! You see there is no light coming in even through the loosely laid roof, while the Doctor's windows are as black as midnight. Yet by looking up the chimney you can see daylight plainly. The fire has kept that open."

"Can there have been twenty odd feet of snowfall in a single night?" asked Harry in astonishment.

"No, certainly not," answered the Doctor. "We're caught in a snowdrift, that's all. You see with the fearful gale that has been blowing all night the snow has drifted greatly and now that I think of it, our house is peculiarly well situated to be caught in a drift."

"How so, Doctor?"

"Why, the wind has been from the north, northwest, or very nearly north. Our house stands on a plateau on the northerly side of the mountain. Less than a hundred feet south of it, rises a high cliff. That, of course, catches all the snow that comes on a north, northwest wind. Then again the house itself is an obstruction, catching and holding all the snow that strikes it. The snow storm has been a tremendous one, probably a three-foot fall, and we are caught under all of it that ought to have been scattered over several miles of mountainside."

"Let's postpone the explanations, fellows," broke in Tom, who always devoted himself to the practical, "and give our attention for the present to the problem of What to Do Now. That is after all the thing to think about in every case of emergency, and this is a case of emergency if ever there was one."

"How do you mean, Tom?" asked Jim Chenowith.

"Why, in the first place, we have less than a quarter of a cord of wood in the cabin, and, after such a storm, it is likely to turn very cold. So we must first of all dig a passageway to one of our wood piles, or else we must freeze to death. We can't get to the spring, of course, and if we did, it would be frozen up. But we can get all the water we need by melting snow. The worst of our problems is that of a food supply."

"That's so," said Jack, in something like consternation. "We haven't a pound of fresh meat on hand and I remember that you, Tom, intended to go out with your gun to-day to get some. We have eaten up all our hams and bacon, and we haven't anything left except the coffee, two small pieces of salt pork, some corn meal and the beans."

"That means," said Tom, "that we've got to dig our way out of here in a hurry, and we haven't a shovel in the camp."

"No," said Jack, "but we've got a pile of leftover clapboards over there in the corner, and we can soon make some snow shovels. Let's get to work at that."

After a breakfast on corn pones – for the pork must be saved for use with the beans – the boys set to work to manufacture rude shovels that would do as implements with which to handle snow. For handles they used such round sticks as they found in their meagre supply of fire wood.

In half an hour the whole company of boys were armed for an attack upon the snowdrift. In the meantime Tom had thought out methods.

"First of all," he explained, "we must attack the snow directly in front of the door, and work our way to the top of the drift. We must shovel that snow into the house, because we haven't any where else to put it. We'll put on all the kettles we have and reduce as much as we can of the housed snow to water for use in drinking, cooking, washing and so forth. When we break through to the top, we can shovel the snow to the right and left till we open a passageway to the wood pile."

"It's going to be mighty hard work," said Ed, "for the snow is so soft that we'll sink up to our waists in it."

"Yes," answered Harry, "but light snow like that will be easier to handle than if it had settled and frozen."

With that the boys set to work to break a passage from the door to the top of the snowdrift. When they had accomplished that they found, to their sorrow, that it was still snowing heavily, a fact which threatened to undo much of their work after it was done. Still the snow was dry and light, and standing up to their waists in it, they shovelled it to right and left, making a passageway through it that led towards their nearest wood supply. They did not pause for a midday meal, and yet when night came they had not reached the wood pile, while the snow continued to fall as heavily as ever. Fortunately the high wind had gone down, so that no more great drifts were blown into their trench.

They had not tried to dig to the ground in making their passageway. They had simply created an upward incline from the door of their house to the top of the drift, and then dug a sort of inclined trench towards the wood pile.

"Now I say, fellows," said Jack, as they left off work to get such supper as they could, "we've got to keep this thing up all night. We have barely wood enough left to get supper and breakfast with, and we simply must get to that wood pile by morning. Of course we can't all work all night; we must have some sleep; so I propose that we divide the company into three shifts of two boys each, one shift to keep up the work of shovelling while the others sleep. We'll let each shift work for an hour and then wake up the next shift to take its place. That will let every fellow have two hours' sleep between his one hour spells of work."

The plan seemed in all respects the best that could be devised. Three sticks of wood were all that now remained in the cabin and it was decided not to burn any of these during the night, but to save them for use in cooking breakfast in the morning. Breakfast, it was agreed, should consist of a kettle of corn meal mush, with two slices of salt pork and a pint of coffee to each member of the party. The boys would have foregone the pork, saving it for a worse emergency, but the Doctor advised against that course.

"With so much work to do," he said, "we shall need the strength that comes from meat."

"And besides," said Tom, "this snow will pack down pretty soon and freeze over with a crust hard enough to bear a man. As soon as that happens I am going out to get some game."

The night's work was awkwardly pursued, owing to the darkness, which was rendered intense by the continued and very heavy snow fall. But while they had not reached the wood pile by daylight, they were nearing it and in fact believed themselves to be almost over it – for they had made their trench a shallow one, in order to hasten their advance. So, when the working shift was called to breakfast, Harry reported:

"We're almost over the wood pile. After breakfast, when we all get to work, we'll soon make a sloping path down to it. As it is still snowing, without a sign of quitting, I move that when we reach the wood, we all set to work to bring a houseful of it in here, against emergencies."

"That's our best plan," said the Doctor. "If we are destined to live on starvation rations and it should turn very cold, as is likely, we must have artificial heat to replace that which a full supply of food would make. A starving man practically freezes to death. So the first thing is to bring into our cabin as large a supply of wood as it will hold. Luckily we have plenty of it. There are twenty cords at least in that first pile."

With that the boys set to work on their scant breakfast of coffee, mush and salt pork.

CHAPTER XX
In Perilous Plight

After breakfast the boys began again the snow digging for their wood pile. They had somewhat miscalculated its locality, and so when they reached the ground with their descending path, the wood pile was not there. Nor could they easily correct their reckoning until little Tom came to the rescue with his keen eyes and his alert intelligence. Climbing to the top of the snowdrift and standing, hips deep in the soft snow, he studied the trees round about, or so much of them as protruded above the snow. It was Tom's excellent habit to observe things closely, even when there was no apparent occasion to observe them at all, and he had observed that one of the trees between which the wood had been ranked up had a peculiar knot on it about thirty feet from the ground, caused by some injury received while yet it was young. So he looked for that tree. The snow had so changed the aspect of the landscape that all its recognizable features had disappeared, but Tom remembered that peculiar knot and eagerly looked out for it. Presently he discovered it, in spite of the fact that a mass of snow that had collected on top of it seriously impaired its proportions. Instantly he called out directions to the boys to carry their pathway south toward the tree in question.

"But we're already south of the wood pile," said Harry. "Your plan will take us directly away from it. It is north of here, I tell you."

"All right," answered Tom. "I know where the wood pile is, and if I am wrong I'll do all the rest of the digging myself. Only if you'll dig in the direction I tell you, you'll come to it in about forty feet."

So confused were the geographical perceptions of all the boys, and so confident were they that Tom was wrong, that they made earnest protest against digging in the direction indicated by him. But his insistence was so resolute, and their faith in his sagacity was so strong, that after making their protest they yielded and pushed the snow excavation in the direction he had indicated. An hour's digging brought as its reward the discovery of the wood pile, and instantly every fellow set to work to carry wood into the house over the very imperfect pathway, which was being every hour rendered less and less passable by the continuing snow fall. By working hard, however, they managed to fill all the spare space in the house with wood and to pile five or six cords more around the doorway.

As they used about half a cord a day in ordinary winter weather, and from a cord and a half to two cords a day when the thermometer sank low, this was not a large supply. But at least it would ward off the present danger of freezing, and now that the way was open to the wood pile, and could be kept open by a little shovelling now and then, they could get more from time to time, as they might need it.

It was past nightfall when this work was completed. The boys had not stopped for a midday dinner, but Ed, with the foresight of an accomplished cook, had put a kettle of beans on to boil about midday, with just enough pork in it to give the beans a relish, and when night came he dished up the meal.

"There's no bread, boys," he said, "because we can't afford two dishes at one meal now. But you remember the Doctor told us that beans are bread as well as meat, and so that's all I have provided."

After supper the boys were very tired from their hard day's work, and yet they were disposed to talk, and at any rate it would not do to go to bed until their supper of boiled pork and beans should have had time to digest.

"If this snow continues," said Ed, "we fellows will pretty soon have to take our beans without the pork. I have a little of that bacon dripping left and I'll use that while it lasts. But unless we get some sort of supplies within three days we shall be out of meal."

"Are we so near the end as that?" asked Jack.

"Yes. We have nothing left now except two small pieces of salt pork, about twenty pounds of corn meal, and the beans. The pork and the meal won't last us more than two or three days, and as for the beans, well, we have less than half a peck of them left."

This announcement was received with something like consternation.

"We're nearing the starving point," said Jack. "We must recognize the fact and put ourselves at once upon starvation diet. I move that the Doctor take charge of such provisions as are left to us, with full power, to dole them out in the best way to keep life in us till the conditions change."

"Good!" cried all the boys in chorus, and so the motion was carried.

"If worse comes to worst," said Tom, "I'll take my gun, break my way out of here, and kill something fit to eat, at whatever risk. The game of every sort is starving now as well as we are. The turkeys, deer, rabbits and all the rest of them will be out on the mountains hunting for something to eat on those spots that the wind has blown clear of snow. It will be curious if I don't get some of them."

"We'll permit nothing of the kind," said Jack, "till the snow stops and freezing weather makes a crust upon it. To go out now would simply mean suicide. You wouldn't live to get out of this snowdrift, and if you did, you'd perish in the next one, Tom."

"Probably," answered Tom, in a meditative voice. "But I'd rather die that way, in an effort to save the whole company than stay here and starve like a rat in a hole."

"But," broke in the Doctor, "we are not yet starving. We are hungry, of course, having had an insufficient supply of food to-day. And we'll be hungrier to-morrow, and still hungrier next day. But as I reckon it we have food enough, at least to keep life in our bodies for three or four days to come if we hoard it carefully and eat only so much as is necessary to sustain life. By that time the weather will have changed in some way, and we shall have found some means of supplying ourselves."

So it was decided that Tom should not court death by attempting to go out upon the mountain under existing conditions.

"By the way, Doctor," asked Ed, "what are your weather predictions?"

"I can't make any," answered the Doctor. "It is still snowing hard; the barometer is low; the wind, which amounts to nothing, has shifted to the south-west – a bad quarter, suggesting more snow – and so far as I can see there is no promise of severe cold weather, which is what we most want now."

In this melancholy plight the boys went to bed, and, thanks to their high health and extreme weariness, they slept soundly.

CHAPTER XXI
An Enemy to the Rescue

The plan had been to set to work next morning to dig the house out of the snow; that is to say, to dig away a space around the cabin. But the Doctor forbade it.

"The more force we expend in work," he said, "the more food we must have, and as we have pretty nearly no food now, we absolutely mustn't expend any force unnecessarily. We must simply rest to-day, doing no more shoveling than is necessary to open a little larger area around the door, and to keep our path to the wood pile open."

That day, the next and the next were passed in idleness and with growing hunger. The snow ceased for a time on the second day, but the severe cold weather which alone could release the boys from their terrible plight, did not come. On the third day, the snow began to fall again in a pitiless and discouraging way, and by that time the food supply had run so low that the Doctor's dole of it was too small even to ward off the severe pangs of hunger.

Tom said that night: "Boys, I don't care what the consequences are, I'm going to break out of this to-morrow morning or perish in the attempt. I'd rather die in a snow bank, fighting for a chance, than sit here and slowly starve to death. My strength is already waning, and before it goes altogether I'm going to make an effort to get some food. If I wait longer I sha'n't have either the strength or the courage to go at all."

This time nobody interposed an objection, but foreseeing Tom's need, and knowing that he would accept nothing not shared equally by the others, the Doctor deliberately dealt out a larger supply of beans than usual that night. The meal was all gone. The pork had been eaten up, and after the Doctor gave out this supper, which it would take till eleven or twelve o'clock at night to cook, there was left only about two quarts of beans in the camp, and absolutely not an ounce of food of any other kind.

In ordinary circumstances, if the boys had been thus shut up in their cabin and deprived of physical activity, they would have held long talks and learned much. Especially they would have beset the Doctor with questions, the answers to which would have interested them. But now they were too hungry for material food, too starved of body and far too depressed in mind to care for conversation of any kind. They simply sat still and starved, in gloomy silence, and under the terrible oppression of hopelessness and helplessness. All but Little Tom. His courage survived, and as he sat before the fire waiting for the beans to cook, he was resolutely planning ways and means by which, if possible, to make the morrow's expedition successful. The chances, he knew, were a hundred to one against him, and he was trying, by the exercise of a careful foresight, to bring that one chance in a hundred within his grasp.

Presently he took off his boots and drove the heaviest nails there were in the camp into their heels, letting the heads protrude more than a quarter of an inch below the surface.

"What's that for, Tom?" asked Jack, in listless fashion.

"To keep me from slipping," Tom answered, "in climbing over rocks with snow or ice on them."

"But you're not really going to try this thing to-morrow, are you? It will be madness to attempt it."

"Probably," answered Tom. "But madness or sanity I'm going to make the attempt. I don't see anything particularly sane in staying here in camp and trusting to a quart or two of beans to keep life in six already starved boys. I'd rather die trying than sitting still. So I'm going to start at daylight."

There was no use in arguing, particularly as the argument was manifestly all on Tom's side. So all the boys remained silent.

"I'm going to take two guns," said Tom, presently, "the rifle and a shot gun, so as to lose no chance of any game, big or little. I'll pretty certainly lose one of the guns before I get back if I ever get back at all."

Nobody said anything in reply. Tom's remark had been addressed to nobody in particular. Indeed it was rather a reflection out loud than a remark.

Then Tom proceeded to get his ammunition belt ready. The rifle was already loaded in its magazine, with fourteen cartridges. For the shot gun, Tom put into his belt, twenty cartridges loaded with nine buckshot each, and twenty that carried turkey shot – these last for game smaller than deer.

"I'll kill anything I see," he said, presently, "from a skunk to a big buck deer. We are hungry enough now to eat any sort of meat that may come to our hand."

Just then a noise was heard on the snow-covered roof – a noise as of scratching and slipping. Nobody heard it but Tom, but his senses were already in that condition of alertness which the morrow's work would require for its success. So, without saying anything to his comrades, Tom took the rifle, opened the door, and went out to see what the matter might be. He reflected as he did so, that it was probably only some slipping of the snow and ice upon the clapboards, but at any rate he wanted to see for himself the cause of it.

A few minutes later the boys inside the hut were startled by two cracks of a rifle and a heavy fall, just in front of the door. They seized their guns and rushed out, stumbling over something at the door as they did so.

"Look out there!" called Tom, eagerly; "don't risk a blow from his claws yet. He may have life in him still. Let me give him one more bullet to make sure."

With that Tom advanced and fired once more into the carcass of the large black bear that he had already killed.

"It's pretty hard, isn't it?" said Tom.

"What is?" asked the Doctor.

"Why, to shoot a friend that had come to our rescue as that fellow did."

"I don't understand."

"Oh, yes you do, or at least you ought to," answered Tom, in whom the long continued, but now released, nervous strain, had wrought an irritable mood. "Don't you see that fellow came here just in time to rescue us from starvation – for I had hardly a hope of getting back with any game from to-morrow's expedition – and he brought a huge supply of bear's meat with him, under his skin. By the way, boys, skin him carefully, as his hide will be a valuable addition to my collection of pelts. I have the painter's coat, a deer's hide, the skins of several raccoons and opossums, thirty or forty squirrel and hare skins, and now this bear's thick overcoat will greatly increase the value of my collection. Skin him carefully, but quickly, for we're going to have a dinner of bear beef before we go to bed, and we'll eat bear beef to our hearts' content till the weather releases us from our prison. I'm not going out for game to-morrow."