Part 7 (1/2)

”Yes, sir,” said Tom.

”Can you make a bed?”

”Yes, sir.”

”Can you count change?”

”When I've got any.”

The man laughed, his large shoulders shaking up and down.

”Well, I'll try you a week--I've got n.o.body else. What's your friend going to do?”

”I brought a tent of my own,” Tom explained, ”and I thought I could pitch it just into the woods somewhere, out of sight, and we'd live in that, and Joe's going to get our meals, so's I can give all my time to looking after the tepees--couldn't we do that?”

The man turned to Joe. ”Are you a good cook?” he asked.

”I can cook camp stuff all right, and make bread, and things like that,”

said Joe.

”Can you throw a diamond hitch?”

”I don't know--I never tried,” Joe replied.

The man tipped back his head and squeaked with mirth again. ”That's like the man who said he didn't know whether he could play the violin or not--he'd never tried,” said he. ”My boy, it takes years and years of patient practice to learn to throw a diamond hitch. But if you only could throw one, you could probably help us out this summer as a camp cook on lots of expeditions. We are going to be hard up for cooks this year.”

”I bet I can learn!” cried Joe. ”I can tie all kinds of knots,--the Becket hitch, and the bowline, and the false reef and the fisherman's bend, and the sheep-shank and the timber hitch----”

”Whoa!” the man laughed. ”Well, we'll see. Come on now, and get your tent and stuff, and we'll go over and look at the camp. I suppose, though, you'd like some grub first, wouldn't you?”

”I could eat a couple of prunes,” said Tom.

”I got s.p.a.ce for an olive and an oyster cracker, myself,” said Joe.

”Well, pile in there and get a bite,” the man said, pointing to a small room where the few helpers he needed in the chalets were eating. The scouts needed no second invitation, after their fifty mile motor ride, and they fell on the food hungrily.

”Say, Big Bertha's all to the good,” Joe whispered to Tom, ”if he does talk like a lady.”

”Sure he is--he can't help havin' a squeaky voice,” Tom answered. ”He's treating us white, all right.”

As soon as they were partially filled up--(they ate until they dared not ask for more)--the scouts went back to the hotel, with two borrowed wheelbarrows, and got their trunks and luggage. Then Big Bertha joined them, and they all three continued to the tepee camp, which was pitched between the trail and the sh.o.r.e of the lake. There were six or eight tepees, of stout white canvas stretched on a frame of lodge pole pines.

Each tepee had a wooden floor and one of them contained a few cooking implements and a small cook-stove. The rest were for sleeping, and contained a couple of cots apiece.

”Now, this camp is used mostly by tourists who are going through the Park on foot,” Big Bertha explained. ”You are to charge them fifty cents a night per bed. They get the use of the range and cooking utensils free, and they're supposed to wash 'em, but they probably won't. Your job is to keep the camp clean, have wood always cut up for fires, make the beds, change the linen (you get that from me), collect the fees, attend to the latrine carefully, and--oh, just run the place as if it was the Waldorf-Astoria! The store where they buy grub, and you get yours, is up at the chalets.”

”I get you,” said Tom. ”Doesn't look as if it had been used much this year.”

”It hasn't. There's still so much snow on the pa.s.ses that not many hikers have been over. But they'll be along in a week or so, though. You go ahead and pitch your own tent now, for Joe--somewhere out there in the woods. I guess if you boys are scouts you know how to do it right.”

”Is the lake good to swim in?” Joe asked.