Chums of the Camp Fire Part 9

"Wait a little, Steve," said Max, solemnly; "take another look, will you? Perhaps you'll notice that this is only half a ham."

"Why, so it is, Max."

"Look closer, and tell me if you've ever seen it before," Max continued, holding the smoked meat up so that Steve could see better.

"Ginger!"

"Oh! then you recognize it, do you, Steve?"

"Why, yes, I seem to, Max," admitted the other, staring first at the section of ham and then upwards toward the tree from which it had apparently descended, aimed so as to strike him; "but what's _our_ ham doing away off here, tell me that, will you? We didn't fasten it to this tree, but the one close to our tent; so we'd know if anything came nosing, around."

"All right, Steve; it looks as if something did come nosing around, without any one of us being the wiser. And that creature, whatever it may have been, was carrying the ham away when it thought you must be following below; so what does it do but let out a screech of fury, and whang, the ham straight down at you."

"Gee! ain't I glad though he didn't happen to be the pitcher of his nine, because he might have made a better shot; and if that seven pound piece of smoked pork had taken me on the coco I'd have seen more stars than there are up above us now."

"Yes, Steve, it's sometimes better to be born lucky than rich," Max told him; "but there the other boys are calling to us, and wanting to know what it's all about. As you're beginning to shiver you'd better turn around and trot back to where you left your blanket, don't you think?"

Steve had a terribly stubborn streak in his composition. He proved it right then and there.

"I'm shivering, all right," he remarked, with chattering teeth, "but I reckon it's more because of the excitement than that I'm cold. Anyway, if I had the good sense to make my way out here in my sleep just because I was thirsty, why, seems like it'd be too bad to get disappointed; so I'm going to have a drink, no matter what happens."

With which he deliberately pa.s.sed on a dozen paces, reached the spring, and taking the tin cup they kept there proceeded to slake his thirst.

Max could not help admiring his grit, even though believing that Steve would be wiser if he forgot his thirst and hurried to the shelter of his blanket.

"Course you mean to carry the ham back with you, Max?" he inquired, as he once more joined the other.

"I should say so," Max told him; "and after this we'll have to be more careful about our smoked meat, unless we want to feed every animal up here. They're smart enough to get on to that racket of hanging it from a limb. We'll keep it inside the tent, and they can only get it by creeping over us as we sleep, which would be a risky thing to do, I'm thinking."

"Any idea what sort of a thing that animal in the tree was?" asked Steve, as he cast an uneasy look aloft, doubtless wondering whether the fierce beast held a grudge against him for having caused it to relinquish its dinner; so that after that he would be a marked boy.

"I couldn't say," Max replied, slowly. "I only had a glimpse of something moving up there, and then it was gone. The moon happened to be behind a cloud at the time, and that helped to fool me. All I can say is that it was a big animal, and not a 'c.o.o.n or 'possum."

"Whew! some people keep on saying they never did get that tiger back after the storm set the animals free from the cages," Steve said, uneasily.

"h.e.l.lo! there, what's all this row about?" Bandy-legs called out just then, for the returning pair had drawn near the khaki colored tent, where they discovered their chums standing with guns in their hands, and blankets swathed around their lightly clad figures, looking for all the world like a couple of mummies, or as Max afterwards told them, like Mexican peons with their ponchos.

"Yes, that's what we want to k-k-know!" added Toby.

"Oh! Steve here got thirsty while he was sleeping, and stepped out to go to the spring for a drink," Max informed them. "I happened to see him, and took a notion I'd follow and see that he didn't come to any harm.

Then some animal up in a tree, thinking Steve was going to get after him, threw this down to him, and let out a screech that beat anything I've heard this long while."

"Why, that's a half a ham!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the astonished Bandy-legs.

"_Our_ h-h-ham, in the b-b-bargain!" shrilled Toby.

"Just what it is," Max continued; "you see, the rascal had actually stolen it, and was making off when he saw Steve below, and got angry. It came mighty near hitting our chum on the head, which would have floored him good and hard. So he was lucky to escape as he did."

"And we're lucky to get our ham back!" Bandy-legs argued, as though after all that were the main point--which from a boy's standpoint it certainly was.

Meanwhile Steve had dodged under the canvas, and presently reappeared, also swathed in his blanket. He was still too much excited to think of sleeping, and consequently meant to stand it out with the rest. Perhaps curiosity had also something to do with the matter, for he would wish to know what Bandy-legs and Toby thought about the species of animal that had carried their smoked meat off.

Their tongues did certainly wag at a great rate for a spell. All sorts of suggestions were made, some of them fairly good, and others bordering on the ridiculous. Toby was for believing that it must have been a tiger, or at the very least one of those terrible spotted leopards they remembered seeing walking up and down in its cage, as though always hoping to get out to its missing mate.

"And they s-s-say leopards have got the w-w-worst k-k-kind of tempers,"

he insisted, when some of the others threw doubt on this idea.

"Well, whatever it is," Max concluded, "it acted like it was mad at Steve here for walking in his sleep."

"Don't blame the critter much, either," muttered Bandy-legs; "because any feller that would be guilty of doing such monkey-shines ought to have a whole ham flung at his head every time."

"Hold on there," said Steve, sharply; "that's always the way with you fellows. Why, you ought to be voting me a bunch of thanks right now, instead of hauling me over the coals like you're doing."

"Oh! is that so, Steve?" cried Bandy-legs, with considerable of satire in his voice.

"Sure it is," the other went on to say, unblushingly. "Supposin' now I'd just continued to hit the hay, and snored on like you two seemed to have done, what's the answer?"

Bandy-legs and Toby exchanged puzzled looks.

"W-w-whatever do you m-m-mean, Steve?" asked the latter.

"How about that fine ham? When, you looked around everywhere for it to-morrow morning and couldn't find the same high or low, you'd wish Steve Dowdy might have had a little walking fit on, and saved your bacon for you, eh?"

Max laughed at hearing that.

"I guess Steve's got it on you, boys, this time," he remarked. "It seems that in some cases walking in your sleep may turn out to be the right thing. We do owe him something, because it saved our ham this time. But all the same he's got to stop the habit before it gets him into a peck of trouble."

"I s-s-say we p-p-put a rope on him nights," Toby ventured, with emphasis. "Then if he tries to s-s-slope he'll find himself p-p-pulled up with a round turn."

"Hey, you just try it, that's all!" Steve told him. "What d'ye take me for, a horse, to be staked out nights, or hobbled and all that? I give you fair warning right now that whenever we're in danger of losing some of our belongings, if I take a notion to step out and walk in my sleep in order to save the same, I'm going to do it. Get that, don't you, Bandy-legs?"

In spite of all their exchange of views it seemed that after all they were no nearer a reasonable solution of the puzzle than in the start.

"We'll look around in the morning and see if it left any tracks," Max suggested, after it seemed as though they had reached the finish of the matter so far as deciding on the species of animal went.

"That's the best thing said yet," ventured Steve; "and as usual it was left for Max to hit in with it. So, let's see if we can go to sleep again."

They crawled inside the tent and adjusted their blankets again. Max noticed that Bandy-legs changed his position somewhat. As he now lay no one could crawl out of the tent by way of the regular exit without brushing across his rec.u.mbent figure more or less. The other did not say anything as to why he did this, but Max could give a pretty good guess.

Steve was too sleepy to pay any attention to what was going on, or he might have taken Bandy-legs to task for trying to play sentry over him, knowing that he must be in the other's mind when he laid this trap.

"We want you to notice, Steve," Bandy-legs told him the last thing, "that Max fetched a bucket of fresh water in from the spring just now; and so if you happen to get thirsty again before morning, just help yourself. It'll save you a lot of trouble."

"Well, seeing that we've got all our grub inside here now, and there's nothing more to be hooked, I guess I'll keep quiet. But you want to be careful how you steal my thunder when the credit's pa.s.sing around."

Saying which, Steve hid his head under the folds of his blanket, and they knew he had spoken his last word.

The others relapsed into silence, and before long all of them had gone soundly asleep. Nor was there any further alarm during the balance of that first night in camp.