CHAPTER XXVI

LOOKING FORWARD—CONCLUSION

No one said a word for a full minute, though Wee Willie and Elmer and big-hearted Perk exchanged glowing looks, and happy nods, as if the great news pleased them beyond measure.

Amos, with swimming eyes, bent over, and laid a hand on his father’s shoulder. There was simple affection in the act, and nothing more.

“I’m sure glad to hear that, father,” he said as well as he could; “for it’ll make you a whole lot better satisfied; but you’d be just as welcome home if you didn’t have a nickel.”

“That’s the best part of it,” observed Mr. Codling, “and what makes me so satisfied with the wonderful way things have turned out. But I worked, and prayed, and in the end hit it rich, so that when I sold out my claim in the new diggings I had a sum that was more than I ever expected to realize, even in my wildest dreams.”

Taken in all, that was a most happy evening for them. How the sound of those fresh young voices as they sang their favorite songs made Mr. Codling shut his eyes and dream of past days, when he took Amanda Green to singing-school evenings. Again he could in imagination hear her sweet voice in carols of the times, as the scroll of the past was unrolled before his mental vision.

“By all odds this has been the happiest evening I ever spent, barring none,” he assured Elmer when, later on, they gave up singing and began to make arrangements for sleeping. “In other days I never realized my blessings half enough; but now that I’ve passed through the valley of humiliation things look vastly different to me. Thank you again for the pleasure it has given me to hear you sing. And I’m very glad my boy has such a promising voice, because music used to be my one passion—in those other days, you know.”

They were shy one blanket, now that they had a guest. Mr. Codling understood how he had been given Elmer’s spread, and started to protest; but he was speedily “sat down upon,” as Wee Willie expressed it in his boyish vernacular.

“Elmer’s going to share my blanket, don’t you see, sir?” the attenuated chum blustered, before his mate could say a word. “I’m so thin I don’t take up half the room Perk here does. Besides, it’s summer weather, and shucks! any fellows as used to camping out as we are don’t need to bother much about coverings; this hemlock stuff is good enough for me.”

So it was arranged, and during the balance of their stay at Long Cabin Bend Elmer and Wee Willie expected to share the latter’s blanket, which fortunately enough was of unusually generous proportions.

During the night, after the late moon arose, and it was partly light inside the cabin, Elmer, waking, saw Amos sitting up and looking steadily toward the spot where his father lay. He could easily understand the deep emotion that must possess the boy, as after a vivid dream he was hardly able to bring himself to believe the wonderful thing could be true.

So the night passed, and another day dawned.

All were stirring early, for they had laid out many things to be accomplished between sunrise and the coming of night.

While Perk “wrestled” with breakfast, beaming with delight because he actually loved to cook, Elmer took another look at Mr. Codling’s ankle, Amos hovering near, eager to be of any service.

“It’s doing as well as can be expected,” was the comment of Elmer. “These things are never over with in a hurry; it takes time, and a lot of patience to recover from a sprain. If I was down home I could help things along some by rubbing a certain liniment on, that’s the boss thing for sprains. But you’ll have to make up your mind to keep quiet up here, sir.”

“I suppose so, Elmer,” said the patient, with a sigh, “and I oughtn’t to have a word of complaint. In fact, I’m too happy after having heard the good news from Amos that my little family is well, to think of grumbling. The whole thing seems almost like a page taken from a book—my making up my mind to play the part of a tramp as I drew closer to my old home, partly because I was afraid of discovering that something dreadful had happened to my dear ones; and also because I did not know but that there might be a warrant out for my apprehension, which troubled me more or less.

“Then came the storm, and my misfortune, which I thought terrible; yet it brought me in touch with Perk here, and finally the rest of you. Oh! if only I had dreamed that Amos was one of your number, while I hung around the cabin, waiting for a chance to recover my lost knife, how gladly would I have made my identity known. But, after all, it’s come out ten times better than I ever hoped for; and I’d be an ingrate to complain.”

However eager he may have felt to be heading toward Chester, where those dear ones lived from whom he had been separated so long, Mr. Codling grimly resolved not to let Elmer and his chums see his distress of mind. He felt that it would be a shame to cause these fine lads to cut their camping trip in the tall timber short on his account.

But Elmer was revolving a scheme over in his mind, which he confided to Wee Willie on the sly; and the latter as usual declared that it “filled the bill to a dot.”

Without letting the others know what he was doing the tall chum busied himself that very afternoon, away from the camp, making his stretcher, on which the injured man could be carried out of the woods. Elmer proposed that they leave their things in the cabin, manage on the following day to get to some farm-house on the Crawford Notch road, and either make an arrangement with the owner to take Mr. Codling to town in a rig, or else ’phone for a car to come up and get him.

Of course, the devoted Amos could not dream of being absent when the wanderer arrived, and so he would accompany his father, to enjoy the wild delight that was sure to overwhelm the Codling home.

He could return in a day or two, if his yearning for taking flashlight pictures still gripped him, which Elmer believed would be the case; and so spend the balance of their vacation with his chums.

“It’s ten whole days till school takes up, you know,” Wee Willie had remarked, when he and Elmer talked this over. “Plenty of time for us to have all sorts of bully adventures. And if we think it a good plan, while we’re down at that farmer’s place to-morrow, what’s to hinder our laying in a fresh stock of grub?”

“Not a thing, that I can see,” agreed his comrade, nodding his head.

“Some of these farmers have heaps of good things laid away for winter,” proceeded Wee Willie, who was hungry, it may be assumed, at that very minute; “so, as long as we’ve got the hard cash still in our treasury, after selling our stock of ginseng roots to that firm in St. Louis we might as well do things up brown. We can fetch back a lot of fresh eggs, mebbe a home-cured ham, several live chickens for feast days, and if he’s got any _honey_ Perk’d be almost tickled to death to have it to go with his flapjacks; because, mebbe we’ll never have any luck locating a bee-tree while up here.”

All of which goes to prove what every one knows to be a fact, that with the vast majority of boys the best part of camping consists of the “eats.” But in that respect boys do not differ greatly from those much more mature in years, since the natural man comes to the surface as soon as the primeval wilderness takes the place of civilized comforts.

When that night the subject was broached, Amos showed his sincere appreciation for his chums’ consideration.

“This is mighty fine of you, boys,” he mumbled, thickly, at the same time looking so very happy; “and you can bank on it I’ll hurry back here to stay the balance of our vacation—after I’ve seen father safe home, and just hung around a day or so to enjoy the situation.”

Mr. Codling tried weakly to protest, saying that he was already giving them too much trouble; and that another day lost would cut into the glorious time they had been anticipating; but they would not let him proceed.

“It’s all fixed up, sir, so our plans can’t be changed now,” Wee Willie assured him. “I’ve been making my stretcher on the sly, and I’ll show it to you after a bit. Besides, the sooner we get you down home the better for everybody. We can understand how wild Amos here is to have his mother know the good news, and if we can manage it, you’ll both be there by this time to-morrow night.”

The many things the boys had planned to do while in camp could wait until their duty to Mr. Codling and their chum had been fulfilled. Amos, of course, would insist on leaving his camera and flashlight apparatus behind when he took his father home. In this way he would be drawn to rejoin them later, so as to pursue those novel and interesting studies of shy wild animal life which seemed to be taking such a firm hold upon him latterly.

This program was carried out to the letter, for as luck would have it the weather proved favorable on the following morning. They closed the cabin again, and all started forth. Mr. Codling found the litter much more comfortable than the rough-and-ready one upon which he had made the trip from the big hollow tree at Perk’s woodland camp, to the cabin.

By taking things easy, and changing stretcher-bearers frequently, as one or the other showed signs of tiring out, they managed to reach the road, and later on a farm-house where the owner agreed to use his own old car to take Amos and his injured parent to Chester.

The last Elmer, Wee Willie and Perk saw of them they were waving their hands wildly from the “tin Lizzie” as the car started noisily down the road leading to Chester, some twenty-three miles distant, by way of Crawford Notch.

“Well,” said Perk, after they started back to the cabin, carrying the supplies purchased from the farmer on the stretcher, “that winds up one of the most thrilling happenings that ever came our way. As long as I live I’ll never forget how I fetched him to my fire, and then discovered that it was Amos’s long-missing dad. But it’s all right now, boys.”

“Yes,” chimed in Wee Willie, merrily, “everything is lovely and the goose hangs high. Just to think of it, how bully things turned out, with him fetching back a regular fortune with him, or papers to show he’s got it in bank up there in Alaska, which means the same thing.”

“Beats any movie picture I ever stared at with goggle-eyes,” Perk went on to confess, with his customary frankness; and then gave a sigh, adding: “but it’s all over now, and I reckon the rest of our stay up here will be just along the usual humdrum lines of camping. Still, we have to eat, so I’ll have my chance for getting up new and novel dishes to try on the dog.”

The others only laughed to hear him talk; for they knew Perk too well to feel offended at anything he said. But, indeed, Perk need not have feared a humdrum existence, if only he could have lifted the curtain of the immediate future.

And if the reader feels any curiosity to learn about how Wee Willie startled his camp-mates with a _mutiny_; as well as the strange series of thrilling events that made their further stay in the wilderness something never to be forgotten, all this and much more will be found detailed at length in the volume that follows this, under the suggestive title of “_The Camp Fire Boys in Muskrat Swamp; or, A Hunt for the Missing ’Plane Pilot._”