THE NIGHT CAMP
Mr. Bobbsey knew it was going to be hard work to get the spare tire on
the car and start off again in the darkness to find Midvale. He walked
down the road a short distance to where his wife and the children
stood. Bert went with him.
“The best thing for us to do,” said Mr. Bobbsey, when he reached his
wife’s side, “will be to stay here all night. It’s too risky going on
now--the road is too bad, and I can’t see very well to change the tire.
We’ll stay here!”
“Stay here?” repeated Mrs. Bobbsey.
“Bert and I can sleep in the auto,” went on her husband. “We have often
done it.”
“But there isn’t room for all of us!”
“You and Flossie and Freddie can sleep in that cabin,” went on Mr.
Bobbsey. “It will be a good shelter and it isn’t going to rain, so it
won’t matter if the roof leaks, and it looks as if it might, the place
is so old. We have some auto robes with us, and the night is going to
be very warm.”
“Do you really mean I should stay in that lonely cabin with Flossie and
Freddie and Nan?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.
“Why not?” asked her husband. “We have camped out in worse places than
that, and so have the children.”
“I like it!” declared Flossie. “Maybe there’s a kitten in the cabin.”
“I like it, too,” said Freddie, always quick to side with his twin
sister. “We’ll pretend we’re Indians!”
“Let’s take a look at the place and see if it’s as bad as it appears,”
suggested Mr. Bobbsey. “Of course if it is too terrible, we’ll try to
get the spare tire on and move along.”
“Oh, I don’t want to give you too much trouble,” Mrs. Bobbsey was quick
to say. “But at first glance that place looked sort of--well, lonesome.
Perhaps it will be all right. Let’s go and look,” she concluded.
Once they were inside the cabin, it was not as bad as it appeared from
the outside. True, it was lonesome. The cabin, made of logs, stood by
itself in a weed-covered field and there were no other houses within
sight.
There was nothing in the place save some broken boxes and some bunks,
like low, broad shelves, built against the sides of the smaller of two
rooms. There were only two rooms in the place, and no upstairs. In one
of the rooms there was a fireplace.
“Would you be afraid to sleep here?” Mr. Bobbsey inquired of his wife.
“We could cut some branches from the evergreen trees outside and
spread them on the bunks. They would be a sort of spring and mattress
together. Then with the auto robes you would have a pretty good bed.”
“Yes, I guess it would be all right,” assented his wife. “We’ll stay.
It’s the only thing we can do,” she added, with a look at the gathering
darkness outside. Indeed, night had now come and only that Mr. Bobbsey
had brought a big electric flashlight in with him from the car they
could have seen little in the lonely cabin.
“Well, then, come on, boys!” called their father to Bert and Freddie.
“We’ll gather evergreen boughs and make the beds.”
“I’ll help,” offered Nan.
“So will I!” chimed in Flossie.
“No, you stay with Mother, dear,” suggested Mrs. Bobbsey. “You can help
me make a fire. I’ll just build a little blaze on the hearth,” she told
her husband. “It will give us light to see and make it more cheerful.”
“There’s another flashlight in the car,” he said.
“Better save that,” advised his wife. “A little blaze of pieces of the
old boxes will do very nicely.”
When the blaze was crackling up the chimney, built of field stones, the
inside of the lonely cabin was very cheerful. Mr. Bobbsey and Nan and
the boys brought in armfuls of the sweet hemlock branches and piled
them on the wooden bunks which contained not even a shred of a blanket.
“When are we going to eat?” asked Freddie, when this work had been done.
“Yes, I’m hungry,” added Flossie.
“We shall have supper--such as it is--right away,” answered Mrs.
Bobbsey. “Luckily Dinah put us up a big basket of food.”
When a sort of bed had been arranged for Bert and his father in the
auto, where they would have to lie curled up “like puppies,” as Freddie
said, and when the robes had been brought in to spread under Mrs.
Bobbsey and the children, who would sleep in the cabin bunks, then the
basket of food was opened.
Not much had been taken out for the noon lunch, and plenty of
sandwiches and other good things remained for the evening meal.
They sat on broken boxes about the blaze on the hearth and ate,
becoming quite cheerful and gay in spite of having to camp out so
unexpectedly.
“Do you think Mr. Watson will worry because we don’t get there
to-night?” asked Nan of her mother, when the meal was over.
“No; for I didn’t say exactly when we would get to Cloverbank,”
answered Mr. Bobbsey. “I told him when we would start and said we
hoped to reach Cloverbank the same evening. But I did not say we would
certainly do so.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t,” remarked Mrs. Bobbsey. “We never
expected to have to do this. But I rather like it,” she went on, with
a laugh.
“It’s lots of fun,” said Freddie.
Flossie said nothing, but from her manner it was easy to see that the
little girl was tired and sleepy. Freddie, too, was “fighting the
sandman,” as his father called it, and so, after making sure that his
wife and the three twins would be as comfortable as possible, Mr.
Bobbsey and Bert went out to the auto to pass the night.
Mrs. Bobbsey had one bunk to herself, Nan took Flossie in with her, and
Freddie had the third bunk, thus using all there were in the cabin. At
first the little boy wanted to stay with his father and Bert in the
car, but his mother had said:
“But what shall we do without a man to look after us in the cabin?”
“Oh, I’ll stay with you!” Freddie had quickly replied. “You needn’t be
afraid of anything when I’m here. I’ll get a big stick and keep it by
my bunk, and if I hear a noise in the night I’ll get up and hit it!”
“Do you mean you’ll hit the noise?” asked Bert, with a laugh.
“I’ll hit the thing that makes the noise!” declared Freddie.
So the Bobbsey twins had made a night camp, and, once the first notion
of loneliness was gone, it was not bad at all, Mrs. Bobbsey declared.
The small children were soon asleep, and Nan was not long in following
them to Dreamland. Mrs. Bobbsey, however, could not so easily drop off
to slumber, and Mr. Bobbsey did not find the auto as comfortable as he
had hoped.
Bert, however, was a healthy boy. He had often camped out, and
could curl up almost anywhere and go to sleep. So he, too, was soon
slumbering peacefully.
Just what it was awakened Freddie the little fellow afterward said he
did not know. But several hours after having gone to bed on the hemlock
boughs something caused him to open his eyes with a start. At first he
could not remember where he was, it was so different from awakening in
his comfortable bed at home. But when he saw a faint glow of the fire
on the cabin hearth, then he remembered.
“Oh, we’re camping out on the way to Cloverbank,” whispered Freddie
to himself. In the other bunks he could hear the gentle breathing of
his mother and sisters. Then came again the noise that had startled the
little boy into wakefulness.
It was a noise as if some one were moving something in the
darkness--moving something there in the cabin. It was not Freddie’s
mother nor Nan nor Flossie, for they were lying in their bunks. The
little boy could see them by the faint glow of the embers.
Then came the rattle of wood, as if one of the broken boxes was being
dragged over the floor.
“Oh, I guess it’s Daddy come in to put more wood on the fire,” thought
Freddie, with a sigh of relief. “Is that you, Daddy?” he asked in a
loud whisper.
There was no answer, but the noise ceased. And Freddie knew that if it
had been his father preparing to put more wood on the fire, he would
not have stopped because Freddie spoke.
“No, it can’t be Daddy!” thought the little fellow.
Then he heard the noise again, louder than before. A piece of box was
being dragged across the floor, and Freddie could hear the scraping of
feet--feet like those of an animal.
Freddie was a small boy, but he knew enough to be sure it could be no
large or dangerous animal like a bear or a wolf. No such animals were
left in the woods so near towns and villages. But it was _something_,
and what it was Freddie felt he must find out.
“I’ll throw my club on the fire,” he told himself. “That will blaze up
and I can see what it is.”
True to his promise, the little boy had placed a piece of dry
wood--part of a box--near his bunk when he went to bed. This stick was
to “hit a noise,” as Bert laughingly said. Freddie now reached down,
felt on the floor until he found this wood, and then he slipped off the
bunk and started toward the glowing fireplace.
But he had not taken more than three steps when he stumbled over
something and fell down with a crash which awakened his mother who
cried:
“What is it? Who is there? What has happened?”