CHAPTER XXVII

_Some Features of the Situation_

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

Two mornings after the talk reported in the last chapter Tom found, out under the bluff, a big bag of rye meal or rather of rye coarsely ground for whiskey making purposes. He dragged it over the hard snow to camp and opened it. In its mouth he found a piece of paper and written upon it 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 with this present. He said to them:

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

"Well," said the Doctor, "you honestly paid him for the former supply of meal, insisting that you wouldn't take it at all unless you paid for it. He understands that perfectly. He has a sufficient sense of honesty now to bring you an additional bag on the ground that you paid an excessive 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 cannot possibly 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 the foot of the bluff and leave it there to rot."

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

One week later another bag of meal--corn meal this time--was found out under the bluff, but with it came no explanation of any kind. Thus the bread supply in Camp Venture was made secure for a time at least, and for a meat supply the guns did all that was necessary--especially Tom's gun, for Tom spent many of his hours wandering over the mountains in search 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 falling freely.

"Our meal will run out before long," said the Doctor one night, "but the time is near at hand when we can send a boy down the mountain to bring 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 no human being could pass, even if he had one of your big steamships to help 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 as impossible now for us to 'git down out'n the mountings' as to fly to the moon--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 got to stick it out and live on what we can get till our work is done, and then--as the spring is coming on and the way is blocked by the torrents of which I spoke,--we've got to make our way over the cliffs down there by the chute, for we simply cannot get down the mountain by the way we came."

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

"Why, I've tried it. You see any road down the mountain that furnishes an easy way is sure to be crossed by creeks that are dry in the summer and fall, but raging whirlpools when spring melts the snow and sends millions of gallons of water every minute down the steep inclines. I count myself a strong swimmer. But I could no more swim across one of those sluiceways than I could climb up a sunbeam to the rainbow. I tell you we can get nothing from down below now, and I tell you that we can't ourselves go down the mountain by the way by which we came up, for two or 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 finished our work; and then we're to go down the mountain on its steep side along the chute. That will involve a great deal of toil and some danger. We shall 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 to pieces on the rocks below. But that's the only way we can get down the mountain 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 game and plenty of bread stuffs in camp."

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

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