Part 35 (1/2)
Campercraft
”How'd you sleep, Sam?”
”Didn't sleep a durn bit.”
”Neither did I. I was s.h.i.+vering all night. I got up an' put the spare blanket on, but it didn't do any good.”
”Wonder if there was a chills-and-fever fog or something?”
”How'd you find it, Sappy?”
”All right.”
”Didn't smell any fog?”
”Nope.”
The next night it was even worse. Guy slept placidly, if noisily, but Sam and Yan tumbled about and s.h.i.+vered for hours. In the morning at dawn Sam sat up.
”Well, I tell you this is no joke. Fun's fun, but if I am going to have the s.h.i.+vers every night I'm going home while I'm able.”
Yan said nothing. He was very glum. He felt much as Sam did, but was less ready to give up the outing.
Their blues were nearly dispelled when the warm sun came up, but still they dreaded the coming night.
”Wonder what it is,” said Little Beaver.
”'Pears to me powerful like chills and fever and then again it don't.
Maybe we drink too much swamp water. I believe we're p'isoned with Guy's cooking.”
”More like getting scurvy from too much meat. Let's ask Caleb.”
Caleb came around that afternoon or they would have gone after him.
He heard Yan's story in silence, then, ”Have ye sunned your blankets sense ye came?”
”No.”
Caleb went into the teepee, felt the blankets, then grunted: ”H-m!
Jest so. They're nigh soppin'. You turn in night after night an' sweat an' sweat in them blankets an' wonder why they're damp. Hain't you seen your ma air the blankets every day at home? Every Injun squaw knows that much, an' every other day at least she gives the blankets a sun roast for three hours in the middle of the day, or, failing that, dries them at the fire. Dry out your blankets and you won't have no more chills.”
The boys set about it at once, and that night they experienced again the sweet, warm sleep of healthy youth.
There was another lesson they had to learn in campercraft. The Mosquitoes were always more or less of a plague. At night they forced the boys into the teepee, but they soon learned to smudge the insects with a wad of green gra.s.s on the hot fire. This they would throw on at sundown, then go outside, closing the teepee tight and eat supper around the cooking fire. After that was over they would cautiously open the teepee to find the gra.s.s all gone and the fire low, a dense cloud of smoke still in the upper part, but below it clear air.
They would then brush off the Mosquitoes that had alighted on their clothes, crawl into the lodge and close the door tight. Not a Mosquito was left alive in it, and the smoke hanging about the smoke-vent was enough to keep them from coming in, and so they slept in peace. Thus they could baffle the worst pest of the woods. But there was yet another destroyer of comfort by day, and this was the Blue-bottle flies. There seemed more of them as time went on, and they laid ma.s.ses of yellowish eggs on anything that smelled like meat or corruption.
They buzzed about the table and got into the dishes; their dead, drowned and mangled bodies were polluting all the food, till Caleb remarked during one of his ever-increasing visits: ”It's your own fault. Look at all the filth ye leave scattered about.”