If any of the boys had come to camp that summer with the idea that times
would be dull there they were beginning to find out how badly they had
been mistaken. As Bill Price said, “there was something doing every
minute and no time to sleep in between.” They had scarcely recovered
from the trip to White Earth when there was more excitement and it
started from an old familiar cause. When they were working in the
nursery one morning about ten o’clock they heard a wild yell down toward
the turn in the Park Rapids road.
It was impossible to determine who it was at that distance, but someone
was swinging jauntily along and commanding them in stentorian tones and
no uncertain terms to get to work. It was impossible long to mistake
that manner and Greenleaf shouted, “It’s Johnson.” They all trooped down
to welcome him, for his sunny disposition and free comradeship had made
him a favorite with everyone.
“Good,” he called as he saw them approaching. “Coming out to welcome the
president, are you? Where are the keys of the city?”
“Glad to see you, freshie,” Merton said grasping his hand warmly. “Where
did you blow in from? We thought you had given up the idea of coming
up.”
“From the city of Arago. Hello, Greenleaf. Morris, you’re black as a
nigger. Look at the mustache on Steve. All of you look sort of black and
hairy. You are sure a hard-looking bunch. You see I walked out to the
hotel at Arago last night and completed the trip this morning.”
“What are you going to do here?” Merton asked.
“Me? Oh, I’m going to work for the State Forest Service as special
patrolman. Have to report to the ranger at Park Rapids tomorrow. Thought
I’d pay you a visit.”
They had been walking up the road and now walked onto the campus by the
library. All of them were interested in the news from the outside.
“Look at that old lake,” Johnson exclaimed eagerly. “Looks good to me.
Good swimming?”
“Fine,” Bill said, “you’ll have plenty of chances to try it. Come on
down and see the boathouse. Scotty has a fine canoe, and there’s a bunch
of good boats.”
They moved down the steps and out onto the long dock. Then it happened.
Without a word being spoken Johnson suddenly found himself hanging back
down with four grinning huskies holding his hands and feet while another
trained a camera on him.
“One,” the crowd shouted as he swung out over the water.
“Two,” the swing was more rapid and he felt that he was gathering
momentum.
“Go as far as you like, fellows,” he shouted irrepressibly.
“Three,” and with arms and legs spread wide he circled gracefully far
out over the water like a huge heron. He landed with a tremendous
splash, disappeared for an instant, and swam laughing back to the dock
amidst shouts of side-splitting laughter. Professor Mertz was standing
on the bank fairly choking.
“What’s the next stunt?” Johnson asked, laughingly shaking hands all
around again. “You put one over on me that time. I suppose you fellows
have been lying awake nights preparing a warm reception for me. But come
to think of it, you did not know that I was coming.”
It was hard for anyone who did not know the complete harmony existing in
the camp to realize that the whole scheme was conceived on the spur of
the moment and carried out perfectly without a word. But such was the
case. It had occurred to the whole crowd as to one man and they had
carried it out spontaneously.
“Well,” Merton said, “you took it like a man, so that is all for the
present. The rest depends on you.”
As they came up the slope Scott came tearing down across the campus.
When he came out of the cookshack the whole crew had disappeared from
the nursery. While he was wondering what had become of them he heard the
shouting at the dock but had arrived just too late to see the fun. At
the sight of Johnson dripping from every angle and squirting water from
his boots at every step he stopped short. “What under the—” he started.
“Oh, yes,” Johnson cried in mock sarcasm, “I suppose this is a great
surprise to you. You probably will be asking me next how I got wet.”
They shook hands heartily. They had not been on intimate terms since
Johnson moved out of his room, but here in the woods everything seemed
different. Everyone was intimate with everyone else there.
“Well, how _did_ you get wet?” Scott asked.
“You see in me, my friend,” Johnson orated, striking an imposing
attitude, “the victim of mob violence. A peaceful citizen martyred to
the ancient and dishonorable custom of compulsory immersion. I was duly
baptized in my infancy, but your honorable associates here thought that
it did not take and repeated the dose. In plain language, they threw me
in the lake.”
Johnson had the happy faculty of making capital out of everything that
happened to him and he now moved gayly away with the crowd as solidly a
member of the “gang” as though he had been there all the summer. He
inspected the premises with the air of a proprietor and by evening was
familiar with every detail of the camp. He jollied the cook, made
friends with all the children on the place and arranged a four-day
fishing trip with the postmaster a mile up the lake, because, as he
explained to the other fellows, that gentleman had the only supply of
angle worms in that section of the country.
That evening around the campfire he threw the crew into convulsions with
a dramatic account of the conversation he had heard in Park Rapids
between the express agent and an irate fisherman.
“I tell you there isn’t anything for you,” said the agent.
“But I tell you there must be,” the fisherman retorted. “They were
shipped from Wadena two days ago.”
“Was it a box?” the agent asked, looking over the waybills once more.
“Yes,” snapped the fisherman, “and if it has been lost I’ll sue the
company. I’m not going to have a week’s pleasure spoiled for nothing.”
“Well, there’s nothing here,” the agent answered doggedly.
“I would not have lost them for fifty dollars,” the fisherman raged
angrily. “Nothing is safe with this company any more.”
“What was in it?” asked the agent.
The fisherman almost exploded with excitement. “Seven dozen angle
worms,” he screamed.
“That’s the reason I got next to the postmaster up here,” Johnson
explained, when the laughter had subsided, “the agent said he had some
planted.
“I expected to come up here the first of June,” he continued, “but some
bloated millionaire out at Minnetonka wanted his forest park trimmed up
and I could not resist the temptation to help him out at five dollars
per.”
And so he ran on detailing the news of the cities and bringing the camp
up-to-date on the doings of the rest of the University. He was perfectly
at home. Everyone recognized in Johnson the quick-witted, steady nerved,
natural born leader of men. Scott’s old admiration for Johnson grew as
he listened to him and his conscience hurt him when he thought that he
had never apologized for the boorish manner in which he had received his
friendly advice. He longed to grasp his hand now and apologize—he knew
Johnson would forgive him with undeserved readiness—but he could not do
it before all the fellows and an appointment with Greenleaf to try the
trout stream kept him from doing it that night.
But he made a solemn resolution that he would make full reparation to
Johnson, and to make sure that it would not be overlooked he stored it
away in his memory with the determination to win the ten thousand acres.
He felt that the accomplishment of those two things was essential to his
happiness.
Scott and Greenleaf hated to miss the news but had to leave the campfire
early in order to make the camp near the trout stream, where the
firebreak crew was located, before dark. They had planned to sleep at
the camp and fish early in the morning.
The other boys all made fun of them because the trout stream had the
reputation of being the worst mosquito hole in the park. It was a walk
of only two miles and a half, and they soon located the camp on a little
knoll near the beautiful spring which formed the source of the trout
stream.
The men were smoking around the campfire preparatory to going to bed,
for they kept early hours, especially on Friday night, that they might
start an hour earlier Saturday morning to get off an hour earlier that
night. They were delighted to see the boys, for they had little company,
and doubly delighted at the prospect of trout for lunch.
“You boys did not bring a bear trap along with you, did you?” Dan asked.
“Have you seen a bear?” Greenleaf asked eagerly.
“No,” Dan said, “we didn’t see him, but he stole a dozen eggs and two
pounds of bacon out of the cook tent last night.”
“Why don’t you lay for him?” Scott asked.
“Can’t touch him here in this park,” Dan answered.
“He’s probably ten miles away by this time,” Greenleaf said carelessly.
He thought it was a scheme cooked up to try to scare them.
“No,” Pat said confidently, “he has stolen something from us nearly
every night for a week.”
It never occurred to Scott to doubt the story and he wondered at
Greenleaf’s indifference, but Greenleaf was very cautious and dreaded
being taken in. Dan saw that he did not believe it.
“Do you know a bear track when you see it?” he asked.
“You bet,” Greenleaf answered confidently.
“He left plenty of those visiting cards around here,” Dan said.
Rising he led the way to the cookshack and showed them the claw marks in
the butter tub, and then to the garbage heap where the soft ground was
covered with tracks like those made by a barefoot man.
“No mistaking those,” Greenleaf exclaimed excitedly. “By George, let’s
catch him tonight.”
“What are you going to do with him when you catch him?” Dan asked. “You
can’t kill him, you know.”
“We’ll cage him and take him down to camp. Where are the shovels, Dan?”
Dan produced the shovels and sat down to watch the performance.
Greenleaf was all enthusiasm.
“Come on, Scotty,” he cried. “We’ll dig a hole right here beside the
garbage heap. This seems to be where he comes most.”
The boys worked so energetically that the hole grew apace. They worked
in ten-minute shifts and made the dirt fly. It was almost pure sand with
just enough clay to make the sides stand up, the easiest kind of
digging. The men soon caught the spirit of the thing and volunteered to
take their turns at the shovels. In an hour the pit was completed, five
by five and six feet deep, with perpendicular sides.
“There,” Greenleaf said, clambering out on the end of a shovel Dan
extended to him, “if Mr. Bruin tumbles into that he’s our meat.”
“Yes,” Dan laughed, “he’ll be our meat, but the next thing will be to
cure the meat.”
“We’ll shovel this garbage into the pit to lead him on,” Greenleaf said.
“Now where is the brush you cut when you built this camp? He won’t be as
apt to suspect that as he would fresh cutting.”
“There’s a pile of it up there by the bull pen,” said Pat.
They brought down two or three loads of it and built a weak cover over
the pit, strong around the edges but exceedingly weak in the center.
This was accomplished by placing many small limbs with the heavy ends
resting on one side and the tips on the other, using enough of them for
the butts to make a fairly strong thatch all around the edge.
“Now,” Greenleaf said, “where is something we can use for bait?”
“I thought you put the garbage in there for bait,” Scott suggested.
“No, that was just to prevent him from making a meal off of it without
getting near the pit at all. Besides, he’s been smelling that every
night for a week. We want something real tempting.”
They canvassed the resources of the cook tent and finally decided on the
lid of a pork barrel with a piece of bacon on it. This Greenleaf placed
carefully in the center of the brush covering.
“There,” he exclaimed, “that ought to get him if anything will. Now
let’s make all those things in the cook tent safe so that he cannot get
a meal in there.”
Everything was made shipshape for the night and they went to bed—for it
was already much later than the men had intended to sit up.
“Gee,” Greenleaf whispered to Scott as he wriggled into his blanket,
“isn’t this great? It beats fighting fire, and I’ll bet you tomorrow’s
breakfast we have that bear before morning.”
It was not easy to go to sleep with the prospect of catching a bear any
minute, but they finally made it and dreamed of whole droves of bears
eating at the breakfast table with them. The hard day’s work, the
sighing of the breeze in the jack pines and the great stillness of the
woods made them sleep soundly. No unusual noises disturbed them; the
hours slipped by uncounted. It was half past four when an excited shout
from Dan aroused the whole camp.
“By George, fellows, we’ve got him. He’s in there.”
He did not have to call twice. Greenleaf almost tore a hole in the side
of the tent getting out and the others were close behind him. Sure
enough there in the bottom of the pit was a yearling black bear,
bouncing wildly around and digging furiously at the walls. He made
frequent springs at the edge of the pit and several times succeeded in
clawing the top. He had evidently been very little concerned by his fall
until disturbed by the awakening of the camp—for he had eaten the bacon
and picked the garbage over very thoroughly.
“Ha, ha, my boy,” Greenleaf called to him, “you will steal our eggs,
will you? You’ll make exhibit ‘A’ in our menagerie now for a little
while till we finish with this camp.”
The bear resented the taunts with renewed efforts to escape and he was
clawing down so much dirt from the sides that it was evident he would
soon have enough pulled into the bottom to enable him to jump out. Every
jump he made brought him a little nearer to the surface.
“You fellows put some poles across the top of this pit,” Greenleaf
directed, “good heavy logs, to keep him from getting out and I’ll go
down to camp to get Sturgis to build a cage for him. Don’t let him get
away, whatever you do. Knock him in the head first if you have to.”
With that he was gone. It was only half past five when Sturgis went out
to milk, and saw Greenleaf puffing up the road. He thought the
mosquitoes had probably chased him out as they had several former
fishermen, and he rather wondered at it—for he thought him a better
sticker than that.
“Where are the fish?” he called as soon as Greenleaf was within hailing
distance.
“The mischief with the fish,” Greenleaf panted. “We’ve caught a bear.”
“Caught him,” Sturgis laughed. “Where is he, following you home?”
“Not this trip. I haven’t got him trained yet.”
Greenleaf explained the capture, and suggested that they build a cage to
keep him in till the work on the east line was finished. It seemed the
only thing to do, and they set to work immediately to build a
substantial cage of two by fours and a piece of woven wire hog fence.
They loaded the crude cage on a one-horse wagon and started out for the
camp.
“Won’t those fellows be surprised,” Greenleaf chuckled, “when we bring
them in a bear for breakfast instead of a trout?”
They were soon back at the bear pit, where they found things pretty much
as Greenleaf had left them. The bear had dug down considerably more dirt
but had tired himself out and was lying quietly in the bottom of the
pit. They carried the cage over to the edge of the pit with the open end
close to the edge.
“Little fellow, isn’t he?” Sturgis said, peeping down between the poles.
“We oughtn’t to have much trouble with him.”
“If you had seen him bouncing around in there a while ago,” Dan said,
“you wouldn’t be so sure of it.”
“Well,” Sturgis answered, “we’ll try him, anyway. Pat, you get that
light logging chain while we take these poles away.”
The removal of the logs seemed to give the bear renewed hope, and they
soon found that he was only resting, and not nearly so exhausted as he
looked. He sized them up sullenly for an instant, and then made a
vicious lunge at Dan which brought him head and shoulders above the edge
of the pit. He clung desperately to the rim and only the crumbling of
the sides kept him from getting out. He fell heavily on his back but
recovered himself instantly, sprang again with a vicious snarl, and a
furious blow of his paw laid the leg of Greenleaf’s trousers open for a
foot. Once more the crumbling dirt threw him back.
As Pat came running up with the chain, tying a slip noose in it as he
ran, the bear made another desperate spring and obtained a firm hold
with his front feet, balanced a second and drew up one hind foot to the
solid ground. In another instant he would be free from the pit, an ugly
customer to handle in his infuriated condition. Greenleaf sprang forward
with the intention of pushing him back into the pit with his hands at
the infinite risk of falling in with him, but Dan was ahead of him and
struck the bear a heavy blow on the head with the flat of an ax. The
blow knocked the crazed animal back into the pit just as he had all four
feet on the surface.
“I hate to do it, old man,” Dan said, “but I ain’t crazy to hug you.”
The bear was dazed by the blow and wandered aimlessly around the pit,
snarling horribly. He was not ready to give up yet.
“He pretty near had us that time,” Sturgis said, “but don’t hit him too
hard. Run that noose end of the chain through this far end of the cage,
Pat, out of the open end there and down into the pit. Then if we can get
the noose around his neck we can pull him right into the cage and hold
him there while we nail him up.”
Scott took charge of the noose and attempted to lasso the bear. It was a
difficult trick. Every time he had the noose nearly on the bear would
grab it and bite it savagely. At last he saw his chance. The bear sat up
on his haunches for a better view of his tormentor and Scott dropped the
noose neatly over his head. The noose refused to tighten and Dan reached
down with a shovel to slip it along. The bear slapped it a blow that
tore it out of Dan’s hands and sent it rattling up against the side of
the pit, but his temper proved his undoing. He pounced savagely on the
fallen shovel, the only thing he could reach, and the lunge tightened
the noose.
“Now will you be good?” Scott shouted triumphantly.
“Get on the end of that chain, boys,” Sturgis directed, “and keep it
tight while I dig down this side of the pit so that we can drag him
out.”
The edge of the sandy pit was soon broken down to an easy slope and the
protesting bear was dragged relentlessly into his new home. The hog wire
was quickly fastened across the end of the cage and the chain loosened.
For a few minutes the bear resented its captivity desperately, tore
furiously at the wire, threw itself violently against the side of the
cage, and growled savagely. But it did not last long. The tremendous
exertions in the pit, the heavy blow on the head and the utter futility
of the attacks on the cage had broken his spirit, and abandoning all
hope he lay quietly down in the cage, wholly indifferent to everything.
“That’s the way, old boy,” Greenleaf said soothingly, “take it easy. We
are going to take you to a nice place where you will get more to eat
than you have ever had before in your life.”
They brought the wagon over to load the cage, but found a new
difficulty. The horse had no idea of hauling a bear. The instant he
scented the brute he became almost unmanageable and it required the
combined efforts of the whole crew to keep him from getting away. He
trembled violently and snorted with fear.
“Take him out,” Dan said, “and I’ll get the oxen. They haven’t sense
enough to be afraid of anything.”
Dan did not like the oxen, but he knew their possibilities. When the
change had been made they set out for the school, Greenleaf leading the
procession on the rebellious horse.
The news of the capture had spread rapidly around the campus. Two or
three of the boys met them a mile down the road, the others were all
assembled near the library, students, professors’ families, visitors,
workmen and all, awaiting the arrival of the mighty hunters. Some were
awaiting the further development of what they considered a joke; others
were prompted by genuine curiosity to see a real, live, wild bear.
Greenleaf looked a little anxious at the waiting crowd and then at the
cage. “I wish he’d perk up a little,” he said, riding as near the cage
as the horse would consent to go. “Can’t you twist his tail a little,
Scotty? Bill Price will be saying he was dying when we found him.”
“He hasn’t a great deal of tail to twist, so far as I can make out,”
Scott answered doubtfully, “and nothing seems to arouse him at all. I
wonder if he is going to die after all?”
The crowd cheered loudly as the wagon pulled slowly into the yard and
pushed close around the wagon to inspect the prize.
“You need not be afraid,” Greenleaf assured the ladies, “Dan had to
knock him on the head with the flat of an ax and it has dazed him a
little. He’ll be all right in a little while.”
“What did he hit him for? To loosen him from the ground?” Bill Price
drawled. “You must have had a hard time _dragging_ him into the cage,
Greeny.”
“Never you mind,” Scott retorted, “if you had seen him trying to get out
of that pit and ripping Greenleaf’s trousers nearly off, you’d have
thought he was a pretty lively corpse.”
“In a pit, was he?” Bill asked quietly. “I supposed he was dead but why
do you suppose they tried to bury him?”
“Never mind, Greeny,” Scott consoled him, “Bill would not have had the
nerve to catch a dead one.”
“Cheer up, fellows,” Greenleaf grinned as he helped carry the cage over
to a shady spot, “we’ve got the first bear ever caught in the park, if
he is a dead one, but if you all live to grow up you may catch one
yourselves some day. Who can tell? Bears are dumb brutes.”
Scott looked eagerly around for Johnson but he had already left for Park
Rapids, and Scott had to harbor his troubled conscience for many another
month. It was beginning to hurt. He little dreamed then how splendidly
he would some day square the account.