CHAPTER V

All Aboard for Crater Lake!—and Dumpling in the Other Car

When the boys came downstairs, Uncle Billy, who was a bachelor, led the way at once into the dining-room, and they began to eat.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said, as he carved the meat. “How’d you boys like to be movie actors?”

“Oh, you Charlie Chaplin!” Bennie grinned. “Sure, I’d like it. Spider, though, ain’t beautiful enough.”

“Of course, he hasn’t your classic Greek features,” said Uncle Billy, looking hard at Bennie’s snub nose. “But maybe he can ride a horse. Can you ride a horse, Bennie?”

“Sure—I guess so. I never tried.”

“Can you, Spider?”

“Not very well, sir. I have ridden our old delivery horse a good bit, though, but mostly bareback.”

“You see, Bennie,” the doctor laughed, “he’s going to be a better actor than you are, after all, in spite of your fatal beauty.”

“What do you mean, actors, anyhow?” Bennie demanded. “What’s the big idea?”

“Well,” the doctor explained, “we’re not going alone on this trip. I have a friend, a business man here in Portland, who is a fine amateur photographer. He’s got a new movie camera now, that he wants to experiment with. He wants to take a sort of scenic picture of the Oregon mountains, so he’s coming along, in his car, with his son, Lester. You and Spider and Lester and I have got to be the troupe. Whenever he sees a nice precipice he wants to shoot, we’ll have to do a Douglas Fairbanks up the side of it, or make a Pearl White jump down a thousand-foot waterfall. How does that strike you?”

“Uncle Billy,” Bennie said, very solemnly, “you have come to exactly the right people. Spider and me—I—are the original human flies. We walk up precipices before breakfast every day at home.”

“With a boiled rope?” his uncle laughed. “Well, I’m glad you’re trained for the job. Wait till you see Lester Stone, though. He’s the real athlete! Slender, wiry, hard as nails!”

“How old is he?” the scouts asked, instantly alert and a little bit jealous. They’d show him eastern boys could be hard and athletic, too!

“Just about your age,” the doctor answered carelessly. “He and his father will be over to meet you after dinner.”

It wasn’t long after dinner before the door-bell rang, and the scouts heard Uncle Billy greeting somebody in the hall. A moment later he ushered in a big six-footer of a man, and a boy who was just about as wide as he was high.

“My nephew, Bennie Capen, and his old college chum, Spider Chandler,” said Uncle Billy. “Boys, this is _my_ college chum, Dick Stone. And this is Dick’s willowy and athletic little son, Lester. I’m trying to get some flesh on his bones, because the poor little thing has been puny since childhood.”

Mr. Stone shook hands so hard that Bennie winced, and then they shook hands with Lester, who had a round, pink face like a cherub and eyes that danced merrily.

Bennie and Spider couldn’t help bursting out laughing.

“What’s the matter?” Uncle Billy asked solemnly. “Did somebody make a joke? I never can see a joke!”

“You can make one, all right,” Bennie laughed. “Gee, you said Lester was wiry and hard.”

“What’s the joke in that?” the doctor demanded, looking very stern. “He is! Only the wires are insulated. You poke his arm and see if he isn’t hard.”

Lester doubled his fist, and tightened the muscles of his arm, and Bennie and Spider hit him above the elbow. To their amazement, he _was_ hard—at that point, anyway. They looked at him with new respect.

“Just the same,” Bennie said, “I hope you fried that rope good and plenty.”

(“He looks just like an apple dumpling,” Spider whispered to Bennie, a minute later.)

(“Sure, let’s call him Dumpling,” Bennie whispered back.)

(“Guess we’d better not begin right now,” Spider suggested. “That guy’d make a great guard on our football team.”)

(“If he fell on the ball, it would explode,” laughed Spider.)

The rest of the evening was spent in going over the maps of Oregon, to lay out their trip, and in planning equipment. They were to be gone six weeks or more, and expected to camp all the time. As they were going to get from place to place in only two motor cars, which between them had to carry five passengers and all the equipment, it took close figuring. The scouts, of course, didn’t have much to say about all this. They just sat and listened, because they were guests, and, besides, they had never been off on such an expedition.

But what fun it was only to listen! Have you ever been off on a camping trip? Of course you have. So you know the joy of getting together a day or two before the start, each person with a list of things he thinks ought to be taken, and then going over the lists, checking them off to see that nothing is being taken that is not needed, and nothing is forgotten that _is_ needed. It’s almost as much fun as the trip itself.

The scouts soon discovered that Mr. Stone was as jolly as Uncle Billy, and that “Dumpling” was even fuller of fun than his father. Before an hour had passed, the scouts were calling him Dumpling to his face, and then his father and the doctor took it up; but Dumpling himself only grinned the broader and said, “Ho, I don’t care what you call me, so long’s you call me to dinner.”

The next morning the boys were up early, and out of the house, to get a glimpse across the city of the white pyramid of Mount Hood against the eastern sky. They spent that day hard at work with the doctor getting the equipment out and sorted and packed into the car.

They had never seen an automobile rigged like Uncle Billy’s. It was a powerful five-passenger car, with extra braces on the running-boards. First the doctor screwed a kind of iron fence on one running-board which came up as high as the tops of the doors. Then, on the other, he set two boxes, also as high as the doors, and as deep as the running-board. These boxes opened not at the top, but at the front, with hinged doors. Inside of them were shelves. On the shelves of one he stood the provisions—the canned fruits, the condensed milk, and all the other things they were going to take at the start. The other was filled with camp dishes. When the boxes were full, the doors were shut and locked, and the boxes strapped firmly to the car.

Then, on the other side, in the space between the fence and the side of the car, went the heavy canvas bags containing the tent and the three sleeping bags. These bags were wonderful things. They rolled up and went into canvas sacks. But when you unrolled them, you found inside a tire pump, and you pumped them up with air, making a nice pneumatic mattress to sleep on. Inside the canvas flap which strapped over this mattress were several warm blankets.

“Say, boy!” cried Bennie. “This beats sleeping on old hemlock boughs, the way we have to at home, eh, Spider? Remember the way the boughs used to get all full of sticks about one A. M. last summer?”

“I’ll say so. We’re going to sleep so well on these we’ll forget to wake up.”

“Oh, no you won’t! Not with me in camp,” the doctor smiled.

After the running-boards were loaded, Uncle Billy got out a wonderful camp stove, which collapsed into three pieces, with the funnel also shutting up, and put the whole thing into a canvas sack, which lay on the floor of the car. Then he put in three folding camp stools and a folding table. Finally he handed each boy a stout khaki dunnage bag.

“Now,” said he, “get all your stuff into those two bags! No suitcases allowed on this trip! Your two bags and mine, and the canteens and our cameras and the alpenstocks and the fried rope, and overcoats and one of you boys and anything else we’ve forgotten have all got to go on the rear seat.”

“Think I’ll sit in front with you,” said Bennie.

“Think I’ll ride with the Stones,” said Spider.

“Not with Dumpling in the car, you won’t!” Bennie laughed—“unless he travels in a trailer on behind.”

The doctor prescribed early bed that evening, because they were to get an early start.

“What do you call early, seven o’clock?” asked Bennie.

Uncle Billy looked pained. “Seven o’clock!” he sniffed. “My esteemed nephew, at seven o’clock on this trip we will usually have traveled at least fifty miles, and you’ll be asking about lunch. I’ll wake you up at five.”

“And I thought I was going to have a nice summer!” said Bennie, pretending to be very gloomy.

At five o’clock the next morning, he and Spider were sleeping soundly when a voice boomed into their dreams, “All aboard for Crater Lake! Last call!”

They were out of bed and rushing to get first into the tub before they half knew what had happened.

But it was really long after seven before they got started. The dunnage bags had to be packed with the clothes they were going to need, breakfast eaten, everything gone over again to make sure nothing was forgotten, and then followed a wait of an hour before the Stones’ car arrived, loaded down like theirs, with the tripod of the movie camera in a case on top of the luggage in the rear, and Dumpling and his father sitting in front.

“All aboard!” shouted the doctor.

“Well, how do you get aboard?” said Bennie. “You can’t open a single door.”

“If you can’t get into a car over the top of the door you’ll never get up Mount Jefferson,” said his uncle.

Bennie was in the front seat with exactly two motions. Spider dove into the rear, and found a hole to sit in amid the luggage. The doctor and Mr. Stone tooted their horns, the housekeeper waved from the door—and they were off!