Part 14 (1/2)

It did.

”That's the most eloquent speech I ever heard!” exclaimed Mr. Jones.

In about one minute, they were all gathered around the fire. Val pa.s.sed the food and Joe poured the coffee.

”Say, what do you take these sardines out with?” demanded Mrs. Jones.

”Fingers were made before forks, mother darling,” said Bob. ”See--watch your little son.”

He picked up a sardine by the tail, and dropped the whole of it into his mouth.

”Well, I must say, I'd like a fork----” she began, and Joe turned red, for he had forgotten the forks for the sardines.

But Miss Elkins spoke up before Mrs. Jones could finish.

”Cook hasn't time to wash dishes this noon,” she said. ”We've got to make camp before dark. Besides, we're roughing it. I think it's great!”

and she, too, picked a sardine out of her tin by the tail, and dropped it upon a cracker.

Joe cast her a grateful glance, and she smiled at him sweetly. He decided then and there, as he put it to himself, that she was ”all to the good.”

Meantime Mrs. Elkins, her mother, was watching Val, with fascinated eyes.

”What _are_ you looking at, mother?” her daughter demanded. Bob's eyes followed hers, and he gave a hoot of glee.

”A Charlie Chaplin sandwich!” he cried.

Then everybody looked at Val, who was grinning amiably, as he sat on a fallen log, making himself a sandwich, between two crackers, of the entire bill of fare--sardines, jam, and baked beans. This he consumed in exactly three bites, and proceeded to concoct another one.

”Well,” he said, as he made this second, ”you mix 'em all inside, don't you? Why not first? Saves time.”

”Ugh!” said Mrs. Jones. ”I'm afraid I wasn't born to rough it.”

”Efficiency, I call it,” said her husband. ”Why not, as he says. Think I'll try it.”

”Me, too,” said Bob.

”Me, too.”

”Me, too,” from each of the girls. They all did try it--once--much to Mrs. Jones' disgust.

It did not take long to clean out the sardine tins and the jam jars.

Then Joe produced a piece of sweet chocolate apiece, while the girls called him ”a darling thing,” and the congressmen lit their cigars and lay back on the gra.s.s, while Joe and Val packed up again.

”You go along right away, with the pack-train,” said Mills to them, ”and when you reach the lake, turn toward Sun Camp, till you come to the point of land. Start making camp by that. We'll come slower.”

So Joe had to climb back on Popgun--reluctantly, for he hated to leave this beautiful upland meadow, and led the way down the trail, with the eight packhorses behind him, and Val bringing up the rear. Of course, he and Val were thus so far apart they could not talk, and with nothing in front of him, it seemed almost as if he were alone, plunging into the unknown wilderness.

The trail immediately fell over the edge of the meadow, into timber, and began to descend steeply, the woods growing more dense and the trees much larger as the trail dropped down, till, after a mile or two, they were in a heavy forest of big fir trees. As they neared the bottom land, the footing got heavy, too, and finally the trail was mostly black mud.

They plodded through this for a mile or more, and then, through the great tree trunks, Joe began to see light, and, high up, the red and white and gray tops of mountains, and finally, after they had turned to the left by a rus.h.i.+ng stream, and followed down it a ways, he saw the dancing waters of a green lake. A short distance now, and they were beside this lake. It was, Joe knew, St. Mary Lake, the upper end of the same lake he had seen on the trip in from the railroad on the motor bus.