We needed a good rest, so we took one. I couldn’t get to sleep, but Mark
found no trouble about it at all. He can always eat and sleep. We had
been up a long time. It seemed days ago we escaped through the tunnel
and began the trip down the Père Marquette, but it was that same
morning, and now it was just past noon. While Mark slept I sat around
until I was tired of doing nothing, and then I got that _Kidnapped_ book
out of the canoe and read it. That made the time pass pretty quickly.
Mark didn’t wake up till nearly three o’clock. As soon as he’d stretched
and rubbed his little eyes open we launched our canoe and started again.
I’ve told you how the Père Marquette River turned and wriggled and
twisted. It wasted an awful lot of time getting to Lake Michigan, and
went about five times as far as there was any need of. Some of the water
was more enterprising, though. It wasn’t all satisfied to wander around
aimless-like. This ambitious part of the water was always taking short
cuts. How can a river shortcut? Easy—just as easy as falling off a log.
When the main part of the river would go sweeping off in a big loop the
part that was in a hurry would find a low spot and cut right across the
base of the loop. It would be just as if you were making a letter “U”
with your pencil and, when it was done, drew a line across the opening
at the top of it, connecting the two ends. The folks in that country
call these short cuts cut-offs.
A cut-off usually is narrow, sometimes not more than six feet wide, and
hardly ever more than ten. And how the current in one of them does pelt
along! It goes about twice as fast as in the river, and it isn’t going
slow in the river, you’d better know. We came to one of them about five
o’clock that afternoon. Quite a while before we got to it you could hear
the water in it rushing and gurgling.
“Somethin’ ahead,” I says. “Wonder if it’s a rapids.”
“S-sounds more like pourin’ water down a spout,” says Mark.
We went slow so as to be on the safe side. We couldn’t see anything that
looked dangerous or exciting; in fact, we couldn’t see anything at all
to make the sound. But in a couple of minnits we came opposite a cut in
the bank and could see an eddy turning toward it. We edged over. The
water was sweeping through just like it was being poured out of a
pitcher. It wasn’t a fall, but it was a slant. The water was running
down-hill, all right.
“Wonder where it goes?” I asked.
“D-dun’no’,” says Mark. “Looks like it might be f-f-fun. Let’s slide
down it.”
That was our first acquaintance with cut-offs.
We turned in the canoe, and all of a sudden the water grabbed it and
shot it ahead. We weren’t expecting it, and before we knew it we were
twisted almost around and nearly banged against the bank. We dug our
paddles in, though, and straightened her up. After that all we had to do
was hold her straight—the current did the rest. It was like coasting.
Don’t think we weren’t kept busy, though. There were twists and turns
and points and stones and brush-piles. All of these kept getting in the
way, and it wasn’t so easy as you may think to keep away from them.
After we’d been shooting along for half an hour we whirled around a
bend, and there the stream split in two. I looked one way, and there,
across the water, lay a big tree that had fallen. As quick as I could I
swung the other way, and, _kersmash_! we crashed against a sharp snag.
You could hear it rip the side of the canoe. We hung there a minnit and
then swung toward shore, where the current got a good push at the canoe
and came pretty near to upsetting it. I jumped out in the water, which
was only above my knees, and hung on. Mark jumped, too, but he hit a
deeper spot and got in pretty nearly to his shoulders. It was a tussle
for a little while, but at last we got the canoe swung around so she was
all right, except for the hole in her side. Then we waded ashore.
The place where we landed was on a sharp point where the cut-off
divided. The stream pelted down on either side of us, and disappeared in
the woods. The ground we stood on was black, oozy marsh. As soon as you
picked up a foot your track filled with water.
“N-nice pickle,” says Mark.
“Fine,” says I.
“Haul her ashore,” says he; and we got a grip on the canoe and dragged
it up beside us.
“L-lucky I brought that p-paint and canvas,” says he, all puffed up
about himself. Mark liked to have folks appreciate what he did, I can
tell you.
“Been luckier,” I says, “if we hadn’t come foolin’ down this offshoot.
We’d ’a’ done better to stick to the river.”
“No use f-fussin’ about it now. We’re here!”
That was just like Mark, too. He never worried about what _might_ have
happened, but always got to work fixing up what _had_ happened.
We took everything out of the canoe and turned the canoe bottom side up.
From there on I wasn’t much good. Mark was the fellow that fixed it. He
pounded and whittled and fussed around till it began to get dark.
“Wish we’d b-brought a lantern,” says he.
“So do I,” says I. “I hain’t in love with campin’ out here with no
light.”
“I mean to f-f-fix the canoe.”
“Can’t finish it to-night now,” I says. “Better leave it and come look
for a place to camp. It don’t look to me as if there was anything but
swamp for miles.”
“We’ll have to m-m-make a place to camp,” says he.
“How?” I asked him. “Up in a tree?”
“We might do that,” says he, “if it was n-necessary, but it ain’t.”
“What, then?”
“I dun’no’ yet. Lemme think.”
He leaned up against a big tree and began tugging at his puffy cheek. He
always does that when he’s studying. If he runs onto something harder
than usual he whittles. You can make up your mind, when you see him
whittling, that pretty soon you’ll hear an idea that’s an idea. This
time he didn’t seem to think it was necessary to whittle.
I thought of a bed Mark made once before by cutting four forked stakes
and laying poles across them, and then cross-pieces, but here the ground
was so soggy and oozy we would have had to drive telegraph-poles to get
deep enough to hold. If we made stake-beds they’d be sunk down so we
laid in the mud in half an hour.
All the time we were smacking mosquitoes. As soon as we came ashore it
looked as if they came swarming down to chase us away. If there had been
any way for us to go they would have done it, too. We didn’t want to
stay. I can’t think of any place we wouldn’t rather have been.
“I g-g-got it,” says Mark at last. “Come on b-b-back where the trees are
thicker.”
We wallowed back into the woods, feet wet, sweat running off from us in
streams, and mosquito-bites from head to foot. I never imagined anybody
could be so uncomfortable.
Mark had the ax. After a while he stopped and began measuring between
trees. I looked to see if I could study out his scheme, but I couldn’t.
There were four trees standing in a sort of square about ten feet apart.
I could see how we could use them for the posts of a bed if they were
cut down, but we didn’t have any nails to fasten poles to them, or any
other way of doing it that I could see.
Mark measured carefully between two of the trees and then went to cut
down a small tree about six inches thick. I helped at that. We carried
it back to the four big trees and put it down. Then Mark picked up the
ax and began chopping into one of the big trees about three feet from
the ground.
“It’ll take all night to chop that tree down,” I says.
He didn’t answer anything, but kept right on chopping. Pretty soon he
had a notch cut out about three inches deep. The bottom edge of the
notch was parallel with the ground. When he had that finished he chopped
another notch in the opposite tree.
“There,” says he, “that’s a b-b-beginning.”
I didn’t say anything, because I couldn’t guess what he was up to, and
it isn’t safe to make fun of one of his schemes till you’re pretty sure
it isn’t going to work.
The next thing he did was to cut a chunk off the little tree just long
enough to reach from the inside edge of the notch in one tree to the
inside edge of the notch in the other. It was a tight fit, and he had to
pound to make it go in. But it did go. There, about three feet above the
ground, was a six-inch-thick log running from one tree to the other, and
up good and solid.
“S-see now?” Mark asked.
I did see. He gave me the ax, and I cut notches in the other two trees,
and in them we fitted another small log. The rest was easy. Between the
two we laid a lot of poles, and on top of the poles we piled boughs and
leaves until we had a good, soft bed. When that was done we had a place
to sleep, but we didn’t have anything to keep away the mosquitoes.
Neither had we had anything to eat.
We built two fires, one to cook by and the other for a smudge. I suppose
we could have eaten raw potatoes if we had to, but we didn’t have to.
Mark fussed around under some bundles and pulled out some bacon he’d
sliced at the house, and some potatoes. Then out of a box of sand he dug
four eggs. I knew I might have trusted him to see we wouldn’t starve.
By the time we had supper cooked and eaten and the things washed up we
were plenty tired. We’d have gone off to bed, only we didn’t think the
mosquitoes would let us sleep.
We sat up awhile in the smudge, but finally I couldn’t stand it any
longer. It was too nasty on the ground. We both climbed up on the bed
and rolled up in our blankets.
“H-hope we find your uncle Hieronymous before another n-night,” says
Mark.
There’s only one good thing I can say about that night—we weren’t cold.
Everything else in the world was the matter with it. If there hadn’t
been anything but just the idea of sleeping off there alone in the heart
of the woods it would have been very comfortable. How did we know what
sort of animal might come along? And there might be snakes! It’s easy
for Tallow and Plunk to say they wouldn’t been nervous, but they were
back in uncle’s house, where they could lock the door and get in bed.
You don’t want to say you would be so mighty brave in a place until
you’ve been in it.
We did sleep some. Most likely we slept more than we thought we did. At
any rate, it wasn’t enough. I was waked up just about the crack of day,
and I was mean enough to wake Mark up for company. We laid and talked a
spell, and then got up to finish fixing the canoe and have our
breakfast.
It didn’t take so very long to patch up the canoe so it would float and
didn’t leak. Breakfast was pretty thin, too. We didn’t feel like
cooking, somehow.
The next thing on the program was to haul the canoe around the fallen
tree and get into it. This wasn’t so easy as it sounds, especially the
getting-into-it part. We tugged and pulled her over to the water, but
the bank dropped off sharp, and the current just more than rushed by.
Mark tied a rope to the canoe and got in. She was half in the water
then. I pushed her along till she was all afloat, but I didn’t dare let
go my hold on the rope to jump in myself. I stood three or four feet
from the shore, pulling for dear life to keep the canoe from getting
away from me.
“P-p-put the rope around that tree,” says Mark, pointing. “Then th-throw
the end to me. I can hold her that way, and let her g-go when I want
to.”
I did what he said and got the end of the rope to him, all right. It was
as simple as could be. I could have thought of it myself, only somehow I
didn’t happen to. Mark was one of the kind of fellows that usually
happen to think of what they need to think of.
I scrambled aboard, and Mark let go the rope. We spun around twice
before we could get control of the canoe again, but no harm came of it.
The stream carried us along at a ripping speed. We began to breathe in
the good air, and after a while the tiredness was breathed out of us and
we began to enjoy ourselves. It was pretty in those woods. All along the
edge of the stream were flowers, and birds were flying overhead, and
turtles and frogs were splashing in as we went by. Somehow it didn’t
seem as if a human being ever saw it all before. There wasn’t a thing to
make you think a man ever was near. It was just woods, woods, woods, and
stream, stream, stream. I’ll bet it didn’t look a bit different when
Columbus discovered America.
As I say, we were enjoying ourselves and forgetting all about how bad a
night we passed. We were looking forward to meeting Uncle Hieronymous
pretty soon and warning him so he wouldn’t lose his mine, and then, we
said, we could drive back to the house and take things easy the rest of
the summer.
We planned all sorts of things we would do. Mark just got through
plannin’ how we would go over to the lake and explore all around it when
we spun around the last bend of the cut-off and shot out into the main
river. That was sort of a relief, but it wasn’t any relief when somebody
not a hundred feet up-stream from us yelled, “_There they are!_”
We looked quick, and who should we see but Collins and Jiggins, in their
boat, coming for us as hard as they could come.