CHAPTER XIII

THE AWAKENING OF PERK

Because Amos was feeling much more cheerful they sang some that night. Perhaps the great woods up at Log Cabin Bend had never before echoed with the rare melody of four boyish voices. The little four-footed furry denizens of the forest must surely have listened in sheer amazement to catch the unwonted sounds floating through the leafy aisles, and believed that their solitude was indeed a thing of the past.

It was mostly rollicking school songs, intermingled with some of the popular military airs of the war time that they favored. Elmer saw to it that in no case did they switch to anything that had a touch of sadness about it. He wanted Amos to forget his troubles as much as possible, not hug them to his heart.

Fortunately it proved to be a peaceful night, with no trace of coming storm, which was a good thing for the photographic experiment.

At peep of dawn, Elmer waked just in time to catch a glimpse of Amos stealing out of the cabin, he having managed to get the door open without making much noise. Although Elmer raised his head he did not utter a sound to let the other know he had been observed; for he knew very well that Amos had his camera in mind, and was heading for the spot where it had been set ready for Mr. Mink.

On the return of the other bearing his apparatus Elmer was up and outside getting the fire started. It needed no question on his part to decide that some sort of success had come to the ardent photographer.

“He visited the trap, Elmer, for a fact!” Amos was saying, his face showing signs of considerable satisfaction. “The flashlight had burned; and then too the fish-head bait was gone. I think he managed to work it clear of the cord; but he deserved it, sure he did, the cunning little varmint. Oh! I’m fairly wild to see what I got out of it!”

“Hold your horses until we’ve had breakfast, Amos,” the other advised him. “Then you can have the cabin to work in, when you start developing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find you’d made a big hit.”

“I used to think once I cared a heap to wander the fields with a gun, and if I could only fetch home some game in my bag, a rabbit, partridge, gray squirrel, or quail I felt might proud of my skill; but I can plainly see I’ll never again find any happiness in killing. This sort of hunting with a camera has got it all beat to a frazzle.”

“The beauty of it is,” remarked Elmer, “that you can still be on friendly terms with the little animals of woods and swamp, and at the same time secure your greatest triumphs. If that picture turns out good, I reckon you’ll take ten times as much pleasure showing it, than if you’d trapped the mink, and had taken his poor little pelt to sell for a few dollars.”

“Oh! I’m sure of that, Elmer. And I can see that there are really unlimited possibilities about this wonderful game. Just think how proud a man might be if he had an album crowded with such pictures, which he had collected all over the world, showing animals and birds in their native haunts, yes, telling how they lived, and reared their young. I guess the disease has got a firm hold on me, and I’ll never go back to hunting with a gun again.”

Other boys than Amos Codling have discovered the same thing; and many an innocent little creature living in the haunts of the wilderness owes its continued existence to the lure and fascination to be found in hunting with a camera.

When Amos came out of the cabin, after being shut up there an hour or more, he was looking decidedly pleased.

“It turned out gilt-edged, Elmer!” he exclaimed, holding up something with an air of considerable pride. “And, believe me, this negative is so strong it’s bound to make a splendid print. You can see what looks like an expression of surprise on the mink’s phiz when that dazzling flash came. Yes, and he’s tugging at the string we tied the fish-head to, for all that’s out!”

Each of the others took a look, and decided that it was indeed a prize negative. Considering the fact that it had been secured under such strange conditions, the contrasts were remarkably clean cut.

Amos was much encouraged by his initial success. Already he was doubtless laying ambitious plans looking to further triumphs along the line of what he was pleased to style “auto-photography,” because each sitter must of necessity snap off his own picture.

Still, as the morning advanced Elmer could not help noticing that now and then Amos would allow his gaze to wander to this or that point. Perhaps he may have been figuring out his next step in the campaign; but Elmer, noting the anxious expression once more upon the other’s face, decided that Amos was thinking of his father.

Perk had developed a sudden interest in woods lore. Up to then this subject had never interested him to any extent; in fact, he had been more apt to display concern over a rabbit in the pot, than one bounding over its native heath.

He now learned that there was a world of deeply instructive things to be picked up in connection with all these smaller creatures. Once Elmer and Wee Willie, that afternoon, began to give up some of the knowledge they had acquired, Perk started a flow of questions that seemed capable, like the poet’s brook, of “running on forever.”

The boys were good-natured, and really felt disposed to encourage Perk in his pursuit of knowledge. It might be a turning point in the career of easy-going Perk. Curiosity, along these lines, once aroused awakens interest, and begets a desire to know more and more, until all animated nature takes on a new and lively character.

“Well, now,” for one thing Perk remarked, “I’ve seen a rabbit start running when I crossed a field, and then act queer, as if suddenly lame. Yes, I can remember chasing bunny, and nearly overtaking the little bunch with the cottontail; when all at once it’d spin away like lightning, leaving me out of breath, and feeling foolish. So that was all a sharp trick, was it, Elmer?”

“A very common one, played by mother partridges as well as rabbits,” he was assured. “It was done just to draw you away from that clump of grass, out of which the bunny jumped in the start. If you’d gone there you’d have found a nest of young rabbits too small to escape. The mother was ready to risk her own life in order to save her babies.”

Perk was deeply impressed.

“Why, I wouldn’t have hurt one of them for anything,” he insisted; “but then the old lady couldn’t know that, could she? To think of such devotion even in an humble bunny! Why, it would shame a good many human parents, that’s right. And you say partridges do something the same, eh?”

“A common trick,” Wee Willie hastened to remark. “Many a time in the summer, or early in the fall before hunting time came, I’ve had a bird suddenly flutter out on the woods trail before me, and act as if she had a broken wing. I used to chase after her at first, until I got wise to her sly trick. She’d let me almost grab her, and then just flip on a little further, all the while luring me ahead; then all of a sudden she’d recover the use of that broken wing and go off with a buzz.”

“And did you find young partridges where she came from?” pursued Perk, with round eyes, and partly open mouth, as though he had begun to experience a forerunner of the strange fascination that a knowledge of all these wonderful things has for the lover of the Open.

“Lots of times,” Wee Willie promptly replied; “but I give you my word for it, I was never guilty of trying to knock over a single one of the frightened brood when they scattered like crazy little things. Later on, I even refused to bother ’em in the least; though when the season opened I would take my gun, and hunt as well as the next one.”

“Gee! I wish I could sight something like that,” Perk was saying. “Do you think there are partridges around this place, Wee Willie?”

“I’ve heard ’em drumming more’n a few times, Perk; and Elmer here said he’d flushed several when roaming around.”

“But would any mother bird be apt to have her brood so late in the summer, do you expect?” continued the other persistently; for when an idea did find lodgment in Perk’s brain it stuck most stubbornly.

“I wouldn’t be surprised, for they say this was a late season, on account of so much rain early in the summer, that drowned out lots of nests. We might be lucky enough to run across one of these self-sacrificing old mother birds while up here at Log Cabin Bend.”

“Huh! hope I’m along if it does happen,” grunted Perk. “I never dreamed that you could learn such queer and interesting things just by keeping your eyes and ears open when in the woods. After this I’m going to investigate for myself. Seems like I’d just begun to scrape the scales off my eyes; for, say, I must have been blind never to have paid any attention to these things before.”

Elmer was delighted to hear Perk say this. He had himself tried more than a few times to get the other interested in those very things, but without success. Just what it was that had finally turned the trick he could not say. Perhaps the hour had struck for Perk to wake up; then again the sight of Amos beaming with joy over the success of his night effort may have set the match to Perk’s slumbering ambition. No matter what the cause, Elmer was vastly pleased at the result.

The boys were not idle by any means as the day passed on. They found numerous things to occupy their time and attention. Some of these tended to improve the conditions; little conveniences were arranged as conceived, which were calculated to lighten the burden of getting meals; or else render their sleeping accommodations more comfortable.

So the afternoon began to wane.

Wee Willie and Elmer had been observing a perceptible change that was coming over the weather. In fact the day had been unusually hot, even for late summertime, and after summing up various portentous facts the weather sharps came to the conclusion that before another dawn they were likely to have a chance to test the rainproof qualities of their newly patched cabin roof.

“Something brooding, that’s certain,” Wee Willie asserted, as he mopped his perspiring brow, having been chopping wood a short time before, with the result that the perspiration was standing out in beads.

“Did Perk go fishing again?” asked Elmer; “I’ve missed him for some time now.”

“I don’t think so,” the other replied, “for there’s his jointed rod standing over against the cabin right now. I remember seeing him walk off; and come to think of it he went toward the east, and the river lies to the west here.”

They looked at each other, with a growing uneasiness.

“Ten to one,” asserted Wee Willie, “Perk’s gone off on a little tramp in hopes of starting a mother partridge whirring before him. You know what he is when he gets any sort of notion in his head.”

“But we ought to have warned him against doing that,” Elmer hurriedly said, “remembering how one of his besetting sins has always been to get lost!”

With the prospect of a storm ahead they saw reason to feel concerned over Perk’s continued absence.