Camp Venture Part 6

asked Jack. "I never heard of it before."

"I got it by reading history," answered the Doctor. "In old English times n.o.body but princes could afford to use gla.s.s. Its cost was too great. And then later, when gla.s.s became cheaper, a stupid government put a tax on windows, and so men went on using greased cloth instead of gla.s.s in order to get the light of heaven into their habitations without having their substance eaten up by a window tax."

"But why was it 'stupid' as you say for the government to raise revenue by so simple a means as that of taxing windows?" asked Jack.

"Because governments exist for the good of the people governed, and not the reverse of that. Otherwise no government would have any right to exist at all. A window tax discourages the use of windows. As a result the people live in darkness and foul air, which is not good for them.

But governments in the old days a.s.sumed not that the government existed for the good of the people, but that the people existed for the good of the government. Never until our American Republic was established was that notion driven out of the minds of Kings, Princes and great ministers of state. It is one of our country's best services to human kind that it has taught this lesson until now in every part of the civilized world it is perfectly understood that the government is the servant of the people, not the people the servant of the government."

"Yes, I remember," said Jack, "that when the colonies were resisting British oppression, Thomas Jefferson put into an address to George III a pointed and not very polite reminder that the King was after all only a chosen chief magistrate of the people, appointed by them to do their service and promote their happiness. There wasn't much idea of 'the divine right of kings' in Jefferson's noddle."

"No," responded the Doctor, "nor in Franklin's, or Patrick Henry's or John Adams's or James Otis's. Jefferson simply formulated the thought of all of them when he contended that the British parliament had no more right to pa.s.s laws for the government and taxation of Virginia than the Virginia legislature had to pa.s.s laws for the government and taxation of Great Britain. But the beauty of the whole thing lies in the fact that these great truths, a.s.serted by the Americans in justification of their rebellion, have been fastened upon the minds of men everywhere, and all civilized governments have been compelled to accept and submit to them.

There are kings and emperors still, but they have completely changed their conception of their functions. They have been taught, mainly by American statesmen, that they are nothing more than the servants of the people, and that so far from owning the people, the people are their masters. But come boys, it's time to get to bed. So turn in at once. I'm on guard for the next hour and a half."

CHAPTER VII

_A "Painter"_

There was still much to do on the house and the boys set themselves at work on it very early the next morning. First of all there was a chimney to be built. Jack directed two of the boys to saw out a s.p.a.ce nine feet wide for the fireplace, first securing the logs in position by nailing pieces of timber to them, just as he had done with the Doctor's windows.

He decided that the fireplace when finished should be five feet wide.

"You see," he said, "we've a hard house to keep warm and we must have a lot of fire. Now the width of a fire means as much as its other dimensions, and so I'm going to have a wide fire. We'll burn full length cordwood in our fireplace, and we'll make room for plenty of it in front of a big back log. In earlier times an open wood fire place was the only heating apparatus people had, and they managed very well with it.

Nowadays people insist that an open fire will not heat a room. I'm disposed to think that that's because they make their fireplaces too small. We'll make ours big, like those of our grandfathers."

Then Jack turned to the Doctor and asked:

"Is it freezing?"

"No," answered the Doctor. "The thermometer stands at forty-six, and before noon this little skim of snow will be gone I think. But why do you ask?"

"Because we want to c.h.i.n.k and daub our house as soon as possible, and of course we can't do it in freezing weather."

"Why not?" asked the Doctor. "We can warm our hands from time to time and make out to stand it."

"Yes," answered Jack, "but that isn't the point. If we daub in freezing weather the mud will all drop out. You see it freezes and then when a thaw comes the whole thing goes to pieces. So I'm glad it isn't freezing to-day. Now come you fellows, and let me show you how to c.h.i.n.k and daub."

He dug away the soil at several spots, exposing the clay that lay beneath. Then pouring great pailfuls of water into the holes thus made, he set the boys at work mixing the clay into a soft plastic mud. By the time that this was well started the two who were to saw out a fireplace opening had finished that task, and Jack set all at work fitting c.h.i.n.kings into the cracks between the logs, and so daubing them with the soft mud as to close up all cracks, big and little, against the ingress of the winter's air.

"Now, Doctor," he said, when the boys began showing something like skill in this work, "if you'll come with me, we'll start a chimney."

They went into the woods and set to work splitting some chestnut logs into thick slabs, six or seven feet long. With these they made a sort of crib work outside the house at the point where the fireplace was to be.

This, as Jack explained, was to hold the fire place.

Inside of this crib, or box--about two feet inside--Jack drove some sharpened sticks into the ground and behind them he placed some clapboards set on edge. Then he called for mud and with it filled in the s.p.a.ce between the clapboards and the crib walls behind. Then he set another tier of clapboards and added more mud, and so on till he had the whole inside of the slab crib lined with two feet of mud held in place by clapboards set on edge and braced with stakes.

"Now, then," said Jack, "when we build a fire the clapboards will slowly burn away, but very slowly because no air can get behind them, and in the meantime the mud will bake into one great solid brick. Now for the top of the chimney."

Then he went outside and built upon this fireplace a smoke stack, consisting of cribwork of sticks split out for the purpose, embedding each stick in a thick daubing of mud as he went.

By the time he finished it was night--for so eager had the boys been with their work that they had not stopped on this third day for dinner, but had contented themselves with cold bites left over from breakfast.

In the meantime also the other boys had finished c.h.i.n.king and daubing the house.

"Now we're ready to move in," said Jim Chenowith as they sat down round the fire to eat their supper.

"Indeed we're not," answered little Tom. "We haven't built our bed yet or a table to eat on, or any chairs to sit on, and besides that the fireplace must have at least twenty-four hours in which to dry before we can build a fire in it. You're always in a hurry Jim. If we get comfortably moved into our winter quarters by this time day after to-morrow we'll do very well indeed."

"Yes," interposed Jack, "but we'll move in to-morrow night nevertheless.

By that time we'll have the bed constructed and a table and some sort of chairs made, and we shall be much more comfortable in the house than out here under the cliff where it is very uncomfortably wet and muddy since the snow began to melt. Of course we can't have a fire in the house for two or three days yet, but we can have one outside, in front of the door."

"So the programme for to-morrow is to make beds, chairs and a table?"

asked the Doctor.

"That's the programme for the other boys, Doctor. You and I will in the meantime set up the chute through which we are to send the results of our chopping into the valley below. Fortunately there is a straight slide down the mountain, free from trees and landing at the right place.

It was used some years ago to send big stones down. All we've got to do is to build a short chute at this end of it. Gravity will do the rest."

"But, I say Jack," broke in little Tom, "If we begin to chute sticks down there and anybody should be in the way--"

"But there'll be n.o.body in the way," answered Jack. "You don't imagine that I left so serious a matter as that to chance, do you? I've arranged the whole thing. Our slide ends in a spreading sort of flat down there in the valley that embraces an acre or so of level ground. Our timbers will go down there with the speed of cannon b.a.l.l.s, but when they get there they'll slow up as the descent grows gentler, and stop on the level ground. Now I've arranged with the railroad people that we're not to send anything down the chute till to-morrow afternoon at the earliest, and that after that we are to send nothing down till three o'clock each day. That's to give them a chance to collect the stuff, haul it away and measure it."

"By the way," asked the Doctor, "how are we going to keep tab on their counts and measurements? Must we simply trust the contractor's men for all that?"

"Not by any means," answered Jack, who carried a very good business head on his shoulders. "Not by any means. We'll keep our own count up here.

On every hundredth tie that we send down I am to mark 100, 200, 300 and so forth, according to the count, using a piece of red keel for the purpose. On every big bridge timber that we send down I am to mark the length and smallest diameter, keeping an account of it all up here. As for cordwood, every time we have sent down ten cords I am to send down a slab indicating the amount. All these markings of mine will be verified below, of course, and when we go down in the spring the contractor or, rather, his agent with whom I made our bargain--for I didn't meet the contractor himself--will settle with us. He knows us only as a single source of supply, and will credit everything we send down to the whole party of us. So as between ourselves we must keep our own accounts so as to make a proper and equitable division of the proceeds of our work when the springtime comes. To that function I appoint Ed Parmly. He is to keep our books. He has had experience in that sort of work in his father's store, and we'll look to him to keep a record of every fellow's contribution to the supply of timber sent down."

"But Jack," broke in little Tom, "how are we to estimate the amount of cordwood we send down the chute?"

"We won't estimate it at all. We'll cord it up and measure it before we send it down, just as we'll count our ties and measure up our bridge timbers. What's that?"

All the boys had started to their feet at the sound of something that seemed to be a human being in excruciating agony.

After a long pause there was a repet.i.tion of the strange, pitiful cry.

"May I use your rifle, Doctor?" asked little Tom. "That's a fellow that I don't care to tackle with a shot gun, and I've located him pretty well."

"What is it, anyhow?" asked Ed Parmly and Jim Chenowith, in a breath.

"It's a panther," answered Tom as he took the gun from the Doctor's hands, slipped off his boots and crept stealthily and noiselessly into the woods.

"Stay here, all of you," he commanded, "and don't make the least noise."

Tom was a chronic huntsman. From his tenth year onward, as has been already told, he had spent a large part of his vacation alone in the woods in pursuit of game. Sometimes he had been absent from home for a week at a time, having taken no supplies with him, but depending exclusively upon his gun for the means of subsistence. Then he had come home heavily burdened with wild turkeys, squirrels, opossums, racc.o.o.ns and game of every other species that the mountains afforded. In every matter pertaining to the chase his present comrades were willingly ready to pay deference to little Tom's superior skill, knowledge and sagacity.

So they all obeyed him when he bade them remain where they were, and keep perfectly still.

There was a long time of waiting. Then came another of the demoniacal screams, but still no response from little Tom. Several minutes later came three rapidly succeeding reports from the repeating rifle, and after half a minute more little Tom called out--

"Come here all of you, and bring your guns."