Chapter 1

THE CHUMS

"Come in!"

The doctor's voice had a note of sternness which was not lost on the two boys waiting outside his study door. The taller of the two, Ned Barstow, turned the handle and stepped into the study, followed immediately by Dick Williams. The doctor, sitting behind his desk, looked decidedly uncompromising as he said:

"Now, Barstow and Williams, you were absent from your room last night. Where were you?"

"Camping in Farmer Field's woods, sir," replied Ned Barstow.

"How often has this happened before?"

"Twice, sir."

"Was any one else with you?"

"Only last night, sir. Another boy was with us then," said Ned.

"Who was he?"

"I can't tell you, sir."

"Williams, you may go now. I will see you later."

After the door had closed on Williams, the doctor turned again to Barstow, and said:

"Barstow, I have always felt that I could rely upon your influence with the younger boys being for good. Now, I find you aiding to upset the whole discipline of the school by this camping affair. I hope there has been nothing worse. You know I never insist on tale-bearing regarding mere boyish escapades, but I would like to know if there was any other reason for your refusing to give up your companion's name."

"Yes, sir, there was. We had a chicken for supper, that was taken from Farmer Field's poultry-house."

"Did you or Williams steal that chicken, Barstow?"

"No, sir, but we knew about it and helped eat it, and are just as much to blame as the boy who took it."

"And, now, you mean to protect the thief?"

"Well, you see, Doctor, a good many fellows don't look at hooking apples, or nuts, or chickens as real stealing."

"What do you think about it?" asked the doctor.

"I think it was wrong and I am very sorry it happened. It won't occur again."

"I have no fear that it will. But it is too serious an offence to be lightly passed over. In the first place you and Williams must see Farmer Field, tell him what you have done and pay for the chicken that was--taken. After that I will talk with you. Now send Williams to me."

When Dick Williams came in the doctor began:

"Williams, how much do you love your mother?"

"Why, more than anyone else in the world, sir."

"She is keeping you here at considerable expense. Don't you think you owe it to her to pay more attention to your studies?"

"Yes, Doctor, and I am going to do better hereafter."

"How will your mother feel when she hears of this chicken-stealing episode?"

"Oh! Doctor; she mustn't hear of it that way. We didn't think of it as stealing last night, but this morning Ned and I talked about it and we are going to see Farmer Field and tell him what we did and pay for the chicken."

"Do you mean, Dick," and the good doctor's voice shook a little as he asked the question, "that you and Ned decided to tell Farmer Field about the taking of his chicken, before you knew that I had heard of your camping out?"

"Why, yes, sir. I supposed Ned had told you."

"Your friend Ned is rather a curious boy, but when you are in doubt about the right and wrong of anything, you might do worse than ask his advice."

"Oh! I get enough of that without asking for it," said Dick.

And the doctor laughed, but he soon looked pretty serious again, and said:

"Dick, I think no one will tell your mother and she need never know, but I hope you will tell her all about it of your own accord."

"Sure!" said Dick, "I couldn't keep that or anythink else away from Mumsey for five minutes after I saw her."

There was a significant pause, during which the doctor stroked his chin meditatively before asking:

"Now, what in the world made you two boys go on that camping escapade? I want you to tell me that, Dick."

The boy hesitated a moment and then said:

"Why, I really don't know, Doctor--we just wanted to. You see, there are so many things to see and listen to at night that way. Birds and animals, I mean. Ned and I are going to be explorers some day, you know."

"Hum!" said the doctor.

"Well, that will do for the present, Williams. I hope you understand that you are escaping serious trouble very easily and that you mean to be as good as you can for the rest of the time you are at the school."

Fanner Field received Ned and Dick with an air of gruffness that was belied by twinkling blue eyes and, when Ned had finished telling his story and offered to pay for the chicken, said:

"Did you take that chicken out of my poultry-house?"

"Not exactly, but it's the same thing. We knew about it and helped eat it."

"Was it tender?" asked the farmer.

"No, sir, it was the toughest thing I ever put in my mouth."

"I thought so. Why, that rooster was a regular antique. He must have been a hundred years old. Next time you want a chicken for a late supper, better let me choose it for you. Who helped you eat that rooster?"

"Please don't ask us that. We'll tell you anything about ourselves, but we can't give him away."

"Wouldn't think much of you if you did. No need of it anyhow. I know who it was."

"He must have told you then, for we haven't told anybody."

"Do you remember that while you were cooking that rooster out in my woods, Steve Daly, your companion, said he heard somebody in the bushes and you said it was only a dog?"

"Yes, I remember it. I did say that."

"Well, I was that dog!"

"And you never told on us?" asked Dick. "Then you've been mighty kind and I'm ashamed to look you in the face."

"Never be ashamed to look anyone in the face, my boy. It isn't good to take even a little thing that doesn't belong to you, but that won't happen again to you. But weren't you playing truant when you had that tough supper in my woods? Doesn't your conscience trouble you at all about that?"

"Not a bit," said Dick; "that wasn't mean."

It was fortunate for Dick's peace of mind that his conscience wasn't troubled by mischief, for he was never out of it and was at the root of about all the purely mischievous happenings at the school.

Even the lesson of the camping incident and the doctor's kindly talk wore off in a fortnight. Yet he was popular with teachers as well as pupils. His head was crowned with a mass of sandy hair and his impertinent face plastered with freckles. The boy was quick and full of grace as a wildcat and so well built and lithe that he was a terror on the football team.

Dick was often too busy to attend to his studies and fell behind in his lessons, until the good doctor sent for him and gave him an earnest but understanding talk which sent the boy back to his books, filled with remorse and determined to get to the head of his class in a hurry. One of these resolves was usually effective for about a week. After which Dick generally suffered a severe relapse.

During his last winter at school, he frequently took long tramps in the woods in the hours when he should have been at his books, and was finally taken to task by his chum for the bad example he was setting the younger boys by playing truant.

"But, Ned," said Dick, "I just can't keep away from the woods, and they do me good, I know they do. I am a whole lot better every way after a good long tramp by myself through the thickest woods I can find. I'd like to camp out in them to-night and I believe I will."

"That's all right, Dick. I'll camp with you; only we've got to have Doc's permission. He trusts us a lot, and we can't go back on him."

"Nice chance we've got of getting that. Maybe he'd camp with us!" said Dick satirically.

"Shouldn't wonder if he would. You don't understand Doc. Did you ever know him to refuse a fellow anything he squarely asked for, unless he simply had to do it? Come along."

And the boys walked together to the study.

"Doctor," said Ned, "Dick and I want to camp out to-night in Farmer Field's woods, if you have no objection."

"Want to camp out? Well, so do I, only I am afraid I might be needed here. Do you know how to camp? What do you expect to take with you and how will you keep warm?"

"We thought of taking a hatchet, a blanket for each of us and some potatoes to roast. Then we will make a bed of hemlock boughs, build a fire near it and roll up in our blankets."

"Well, you may go, and I will help out your commissariat with a loaf of bread and a chicken. But be sure you have plenty of fuel ready before dark. It will be a cold night and you will have to replenish your fire three or four times before morning."

"Thank you, Doctor. You don't know how much obliged we are to you for your kindness."

"And you don't know how much trouble I am in for, when the rest of the boys hear of this escapade of yours."

But after the study door closed the doctor smiled quietly to himself and said under his breath:

"Just like myself at their age--have the woods instinct."

Ned and Dick slept little that night. There was about a foot of snow on the ground and they scraped bare a place for their camp-fire beside a big stump and gathered enough fuel from windfalls for the night. Then they rolled a log beside the fire for a seat and built a soft bed with fragrant branches of hemlock and spruce. They roasted the chicken over a thick bed of glowing coals and baked potatoes in the ashes of the fire. The chicken was carved with their pocket knives and they got along without forks or plates. By using bark gathered from a birch and softening it over their fire they made cups with which they brought water from a nearby brook. When supper was finished the boys rolled up in their blankets and lying on the bed they had built on the snow, inhaled its fragrance as they watched the eddying smoke of their camp-fire and the stars that shone through the spreading branches above them and listened to the voices of the night, from the distant cry of an owl to the whish of falling snow, shaken from evergreen boughs by the breeze. They had visions of camps, scattered from the equator to the poles, some of which were destined to be realized. Ned formed a plan that night, of which he wrote to his father, but of which he said nothing at the time to his chum.

But as Dick stood beside Ned in their last hour at Belleville, and the sadness of parting was in the face and eyes from which fun usually bubbled, Ned said:

"My father owns a tract of land in the Big Cypress Swamp of Florida. There is a lot of fine timber on it and he intends to set up a lumber mill in the swamp and perhaps build a railroad from Fort Myers to some part of it. A surveyor with a guide is going into the swamp this fall to locate the best timber and I'm going with them. You know how we have planned to do real camping and exploring together. Well, here's our chance. I've written to Dad and he invites you to go with me. We can start any time. When can you be ready, Dick?"

"Ned, I'd give all I have in the world to go with you, but I can't--I can't. Mother has spent more than she could afford to keep me at this school and sometimes I'm ashamed when I think how I've wasted my time. Now I don't mean to be an expense to her or anyone else hereafter. I won't take a penny that I don't earn, from anybody, and I won't go on any trip, even with you, until I can pay my own way, every cent of it."

"But, Dick, your companionship and the work you can do will be worth all it costs, twice over, to me and to Dad and he will feel just that way about it."

"It's like you, Ned, to say all that, but it's no use and you know it. You've been mighty good to me ever since I came to this school and I'm going to keep your good opinion by not accepting your offer to go with you now. Some time, when I can keep up my end, I'll be with you bigger than an Injun. If you ever find strange footprints down in those Everglades, better foller 'em up. They'll likely be mine. Good-bye, Ned."

The boys clasped hands and as Dick walked away tears rolled down his freckled cheeks.

Four months after the parting of the two friends, at Belleville, Dick received a letter postmarked "Immokalee, Florida," which was headed:

/# Big Cypress Swamp, 20 miles from anywhere,

October 10th.

DEAR CHUM:

Here I am! on a prairie inside the Big Cypress Swamp, about which we used to talk and where we planned to camp some day. Well, it's bigger than anything we ever dreamed of and every foot of it is alive. Sometimes I sleep in a tent, but more often under the stars. Last night I heard the scream of a panther, so near that it made me shiver, and the next minute a frog dropped from the branch of a tree over my head and fell on my face. I must have screamed louder than the panther, for I scared Chris Meyer, the surveyor, who is camping with me, pretty badly. The guide we expected didn't come, so we are guiding for ourselves. I hope Chris knows where we are, for I am sure I don't. We measure the big cypress trees with a tape line and Chris calculates the number of feet of lumber in each tree. Then we estimate the trees in an acre and guess at the number of acres. At least that's the way the business looks to me. Sometimes the walking is easy, but to-day we had to wade through mud waist-deep and the moccasins were pretty thick. I watched out for the ugly things and it kept me on the jump, but Chris marched straight ahead and paid no attention to them, excepting once when a big cotton-mouth that was coiled on top of a stump struck at him. Then he fell over backward into the mud, and I had a good laugh at him--afterwards. Chris killed that snake. It was a short, thick snake and about as pretty as a Bologna sausage, but its mouth opened five inches and its long, needle-like fangs were dripping with venom. I am hungry all the time and enjoy our bill of fare very much, although it is only bacon, grits and coffee, morning, noon and night. We are traveling light, for we carry all our baggage on our backs. We see deer and wild turkey every day and it's pretty hard to keep my hands off my rifle, but I promised Dad not to shoot anything out of season. In three weeks the law will be off and then it will be bad for the first buck I meet. Chris says it's good for me to see a lot of deer before I shoot at any. He says I won't be so likely to miss or only wound them when I really hunt them. I guess he's about right, for when I first saw a deer--it was a big buck and only twenty yards away--I had a regular attack of buck ague and I couldn't have hit the side of a house even if I'd been inside it. Now I can look at one, point a stick at him and say _bang_, with my nerves just as quiet as if it were a cow. I have seen a few bears, but they are very shy. We'll turn loose on them, too, when we get round to hunting, but in the mean time we are sticking to our timber job for all there is in it.

An old alligator hunter is camping beside us to-night. He is bound for Boat Landing, with a lot of alligator hides and otter skins, and I am finishing up this letter to send by him. Just as soon as this surveying business is over I am going to have a glorious hunt. If only you were here we would start out by our lonesomes and have all the adventures we ever talked about. Probably Chris will go with me. I haven't quite the pluck to try it alone, as I know you would do in my place. I may brace up to it, though. Dad has given me permission to do just as I please. He says he trusts me not to be foolish or foolhardy and to keep him informed of my plans. Isn't he a good Dad? Come if you can. Come when you can.

Always and forever your chum,

NED. #/

Dick's mother read Ned's letter and was quiet and sad all the rest of the day. After Dick had gone to bed she went into his room, sat down on the bed beside him, kissed him and said:

"Dicky boy, mother wants you to take a good, long vacation. You've worked hard and been a great comfort to her since you left school and now she's going to send you to your chum Ned, down in Florida where she knows your heart is. Now--don't speak yet--mother knows what you want to say. dear, but she can perfectly well afford to send you and you will hurt her feelings if you don't let her."

Dick put his arms around his mothers' neck and as soon as he could speak, half sobbed out:

"Oh, Mumsey, I can't take your money. You've got so little."

"But mother wants you to, so much."

Dick held his mother's face close to his own for a minute and then said, very slowly:

"Mumsey, I'll go--and it's really and truly because you want me to--but I won't take any of your money. Hush, now! Don't you say a word, or I'll--disown you. I've got a ten-dollar bill of my own and I'll keep that in my pocket just so you won't worry for fear I'm hungry; and I will bet you ten dollars I'll bring that same bill back to you and I won't go hungry one day either."

"But, Dick--"

"Not one word, Mumsey, except to say you'll take that bet. I can get a ride to New York on a boat, any day. Then I'll go to the Mallory Line and work my way to Key West on one of their boats; and from Key West I can find a fishing boat that will land me on the west coast of Florida somewhere within a hundred miles of Ned, and I'd walk that far just for the fun of surprising him."