_In Perilous Plight_
After breakfast the boys began again the snow digging for their wood
pile. They had somewhat miscalculated its locality, and so when they
reached the ground with their descending path, the wood pile was not
there. Nor could they easily correct their reckoning until little Tom
came to the rescue with his keen eyes and his alert intelligence.
Climbing to the top of the snowdrift and standing, hips deep in the soft
snow, he studied the trees round about, or so much of them as protruded
above the snow. It was Tom's excellent habit to observe things closely,
even when there was no apparent occasion to observe them at all, and he
had observed that one of the trees between which the wood had been
ranked up had a peculiar knot on it about thirty feet from the ground,
caused by some injury received while yet it was young. So he looked for
that tree. The snow had so changed the aspect of the landscape that all
its recognizable features had disappeared, but Tom remembered that
peculiar knot and eagerly looked out for it. Presently he discovered it,
in spite of the fact that a mass of snow that had collected on top of it
seriously impaired its proportions. Instantly he called out directions
to the boys to carry their pathway south toward the tree in question.
"But we're already south of the wood pile," said Harry. "Your plan will
take us directly away from it. It is north of here, I tell you."
"All right," answered Tom. "I know where the wood pile is, and if I am
wrong I'll do all the rest of the digging myself. Only if you'll dig in
the direction I tell you, you'll come to it in about forty feet."
So confused were the geographical perceptions of all the boys, and so
confident were they that Tom was wrong, that they made earnest protest
against digging in the direction indicated by him. But his insistence
was so resolute, and their faith in his sagacity was so strong, that
after making their protest they yielded and pushed the snow excavation
in the direction he had indicated. An hour's digging brought as its
reward the discovery of the wood pile, and instantly every fellow set to
work to carry wood into the house over the very imperfect pathway, which
was being every hour rendered less and less passable by the continuing
snow fall. By working hard, however, they managed to fill all the spare
space in the house with wood and to pile five or six cords more around
the doorway.
As they used about half a cord a day in ordinary winter weather, and
from a cord and a half to two cords a day when the thermometer sank low,
this was not a large supply. But at least it would ward off the present
danger of freezing, and now that the way was open to the wood pile, and
could be kept open by a little shovelling now and then, they could get
more from time to time, as they might need it.
It was past nightfall when this work was completed. The boys had not
stopped for a midday dinner, but Ed, with the foresight of an
accomplished cook, had put a kettle of beans on to boil about midday,
with just enough pork in it to give the beans a relish, and when night
came he dished up the meal.
"There's no bread, boys," he said, "because we can't afford two dishes
at one meal now. But you remember the Doctor told us that beans are
bread as well as meat, and so that's all I have provided."
After supper the boys were very tired from their hard day's work, and
yet they were disposed to talk, and at any rate it would not do to go
to bed until their supper of boiled pork and beans should have had time
to digest.
"If this snow continues," said Ed, "we fellows will pretty soon have to
take our beans without the pork. I have a little of that bacon dripping
left and I'll use that while it lasts. But unless we get some sort of
supplies within three days we shall be out of meal."
"Are we so near the end as that?" asked Jack.
"Yes. We have nothing left now except two small pieces of salt pork,
about twenty pounds of corn meal, and the beans. The pork and the meal
won't last us more than two or three days, and as for the beans, well,
we have less than half a peck of them left."
This announcement was received with something like consternation.
"We're nearing the starving point," said Jack. "We must recognize the
fact and put ourselves at once upon starvation diet. I move that the
Doctor take charge of such provisions as are left to us, with full
power, to dole them out in the best way to keep life in us till the
conditions change."
"Good!" cried all the boys in chorus, and so the motion was carried.
"If worse comes to worst," said Tom, "I'll take my gun, break my way out
of here, and kill something fit to eat, at whatever risk. The game of
every sort is starving now as well as we are. The turkeys, deer, rabbits
and all the rest of them will be out on the mountains hunting for
something to eat on those spots that the wind has blown clear of snow.
It will be curious if I don't get some of them."
"We'll permit nothing of the kind," said Jack, "till the snow stops and
freezing weather makes a crust upon it. To go out now would simply mean
suicide. You wouldn't live to get out of this snowdrift, and if you did,
you'd perish in the next one, Tom."
"Probably," answered Tom, in a meditative voice. "But I'd rather die
that way, in an effort to save the whole company than stay here and
starve like a rat in a hole."
"But," broke in the Doctor, "we are not yet starving. We are hungry, of
course, having had an insufficient supply of food to-day. And we'll be
hungrier to-morrow, and still hungrier next day. But as I reckon it we
have food enough, at least to keep life in our bodies for three or four
days to come if we hoard it carefully and eat only so much as is
necessary to sustain life. By that time the weather will have changed in
some way, and we shall have found some means of supplying ourselves."
So it was decided that Tom should not court death by attempting to go
out upon the mountain under existing conditions.
"By the way, Doctor," asked Ed, "what are your weather predictions?"
"I can't make any," answered the Doctor. "It is still snowing hard; the
barometer is low; the wind, which amounts to nothing, has shifted to the
south-west--a bad quarter, suggesting more snow--and so far as I can see
there is no promise of severe cold weather, which is what we most want
now."
In this melancholy plight the boys went to bed, and, thanks to their
high health and extreme weariness, they slept soundly.