THE AWAKENING OF PERK
Because Amos was feeling much more cheerful they sang some that
night. Perhaps the great woods up at Log Cabin Bend had never before
echoed with the rare melody of four boyish voices. The little
four-footed furry denizens of the forest must surely have listened
in sheer amazement to catch the unwonted sounds floating through the
leafy aisles, and believed that their solitude was indeed a thing of
the past.
It was mostly rollicking school songs, intermingled with some of the
popular military airs of the war time that they favored. Elmer saw
to it that in no case did they switch to anything that had a touch
of sadness about it. He wanted Amos to forget his troubles as much
as possible, not hug them to his heart.
Fortunately it proved to be a peaceful night, with no trace of
coming storm, which was a good thing for the photographic
experiment.
At peep of dawn, Elmer waked just in time to catch a glimpse of Amos
stealing out of the cabin, he having managed to get the door open
without making much noise. Although Elmer raised his head he did not
utter a sound to let the other know he had been observed; for he
knew very well that Amos had his camera in mind, and was heading for
the spot where it had been set ready for Mr. Mink.
On the return of the other bearing his apparatus Elmer was up and
outside getting the fire started. It needed no question on his part
to decide that some sort of success had come to the ardent
photographer.
“He visited the trap, Elmer, for a fact!” Amos was saying, his face
showing signs of considerable satisfaction. “The flashlight had
burned; and then too the fish-head bait was gone. I think he managed
to work it clear of the cord; but he deserved it, sure he did, the
cunning little varmint. Oh! I’m fairly wild to see what I got out of
it!”
“Hold your horses until we’ve had breakfast, Amos,” the other
advised him. “Then you can have the cabin to work in, when you start
developing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find you’d made a big
hit.”
“I used to think once I cared a heap to wander the fields with a
gun, and if I could only fetch home some game in my bag, a rabbit,
partridge, gray squirrel, or quail I felt might proud of my skill;
but I can plainly see I’ll never again find any happiness in
killing. This sort of hunting with a camera has got it all beat to a
frazzle.”
“The beauty of it is,” remarked Elmer, “that you can still be on
friendly terms with the little animals of woods and swamp, and at
the same time secure your greatest triumphs. If that picture turns
out good, I reckon you’ll take ten times as much pleasure showing
it, than if you’d trapped the mink, and had taken his poor little
pelt to sell for a few dollars.”
“Oh! I’m sure of that, Elmer. And I can see that there are really
unlimited possibilities about this wonderful game. Just think how
proud a man might be if he had an album crowded with such pictures,
which he had collected all over the world, showing animals and birds
in their native haunts, yes, telling how they lived, and reared
their young. I guess the disease has got a firm hold on me, and I’ll
never go back to hunting with a gun again.”
Other boys than Amos Codling have discovered the same thing; and
many an innocent little creature living in the haunts of the
wilderness owes its continued existence to the lure and fascination
to be found in hunting with a camera.
When Amos came out of the cabin, after being shut up there an hour
or more, he was looking decidedly pleased.
“It turned out gilt-edged, Elmer!” he exclaimed, holding up
something with an air of considerable pride. “And, believe me, this
negative is so strong it’s bound to make a splendid print. You can
see what looks like an expression of surprise on the mink’s phiz
when that dazzling flash came. Yes, and he’s tugging at the string
we tied the fish-head to, for all that’s out!”
Each of the others took a look, and decided that it was indeed a
prize negative. Considering the fact that it had been secured under
such strange conditions, the contrasts were remarkably clean cut.
Amos was much encouraged by his initial success. Already he was
doubtless laying ambitious plans looking to further triumphs along
the line of what he was pleased to style “auto-photography,” because
each sitter must of necessity snap off his own picture.
Still, as the morning advanced Elmer could not help noticing that
now and then Amos would allow his gaze to wander to this or that
point. Perhaps he may have been figuring out his next step in the
campaign; but Elmer, noting the anxious expression once more upon
the other’s face, decided that Amos was thinking of his father.
Perk had developed a sudden interest in woods lore. Up to then this
subject had never interested him to any extent; in fact, he had been
more apt to display concern over a rabbit in the pot, than one
bounding over its native heath.
He now learned that there was a world of deeply instructive things
to be picked up in connection with all these smaller creatures. Once
Elmer and Wee Willie, that afternoon, began to give up some of the
knowledge they had acquired, Perk started a flow of questions that
seemed capable, like the poet’s brook, of “running on forever.”
The boys were good-natured, and really felt disposed to encourage
Perk in his pursuit of knowledge. It might be a turning point in the
career of easy-going Perk. Curiosity, along these lines, once
aroused awakens interest, and begets a desire to know more and more,
until all animated nature takes on a new and lively character.
“Well, now,” for one thing Perk remarked, “I’ve seen a rabbit start
running when I crossed a field, and then act queer, as if suddenly
lame. Yes, I can remember chasing bunny, and nearly overtaking the
little bunch with the cottontail; when all at once it’d spin away
like lightning, leaving me out of breath, and feeling foolish. So
that was all a sharp trick, was it, Elmer?”
“A very common one, played by mother partridges as well as rabbits,”
he was assured. “It was done just to draw you away from that clump
of grass, out of which the bunny jumped in the start. If you’d gone
there you’d have found a nest of young rabbits too small to escape.
The mother was ready to risk her own life in order to save her
babies.”
Perk was deeply impressed.
“Why, I wouldn’t have hurt one of them for anything,” he insisted;
“but then the old lady couldn’t know that, could she? To think of
such devotion even in an humble bunny! Why, it would shame a good
many human parents, that’s right. And you say partridges do
something the same, eh?”
“A common trick,” Wee Willie hastened to remark. “Many a time in the
summer, or early in the fall before hunting time came, I’ve had a
bird suddenly flutter out on the woods trail before me, and act as
if she had a broken wing. I used to chase after her at first, until
I got wise to her sly trick. She’d let me almost grab her, and then
just flip on a little further, all the while luring me ahead; then
all of a sudden she’d recover the use of that broken wing and go off
with a buzz.”
“And did you find young partridges where she came from?” pursued
Perk, with round eyes, and partly open mouth, as though he had begun
to experience a forerunner of the strange fascination that a
knowledge of all these wonderful things has for the lover of the
Open.
“Lots of times,” Wee Willie promptly replied; “but I give you my
word for it, I was never guilty of trying to knock over a single one
of the frightened brood when they scattered like crazy little
things. Later on, I even refused to bother ’em in the least; though
when the season opened I would take my gun, and hunt as well as the
next one.”
“Gee! I wish I could sight something like that,” Perk was saying.
“Do you think there are partridges around this place, Wee Willie?”
“I’ve heard ’em drumming more’n a few times, Perk; and Elmer here
said he’d flushed several when roaming around.”
“But would any mother bird be apt to have her brood so late in the
summer, do you expect?” continued the other persistently; for when
an idea did find lodgment in Perk’s brain it stuck most stubbornly.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, for they say this was a late season, on
account of so much rain early in the summer, that drowned out lots
of nests. We might be lucky enough to run across one of these
self-sacrificing old mother birds while up here at Log Cabin Bend.”
“Huh! hope I’m along if it does happen,” grunted Perk. “I never
dreamed that you could learn such queer and interesting things just
by keeping your eyes and ears open when in the woods. After this I’m
going to investigate for myself. Seems like I’d just begun to scrape
the scales off my eyes; for, say, I must have been blind never to
have paid any attention to these things before.”
Elmer was delighted to hear Perk say this. He had himself tried more
than a few times to get the other interested in those very things,
but without success. Just what it was that had finally turned the
trick he could not say. Perhaps the hour had struck for Perk to wake
up; then again the sight of Amos beaming with joy over the success
of his night effort may have set the match to Perk’s slumbering
ambition. No matter what the cause, Elmer was vastly pleased at the
result.
The boys were not idle by any means as the day passed on. They found
numerous things to occupy their time and attention. Some of these
tended to improve the conditions; little conveniences were arranged
as conceived, which were calculated to lighten the burden of getting
meals; or else render their sleeping accommodations more
comfortable.
So the afternoon began to wane.
Wee Willie and Elmer had been observing a perceptible change that
was coming over the weather. In fact the day had been unusually hot,
even for late summertime, and after summing up various portentous
facts the weather sharps came to the conclusion that before another
dawn they were likely to have a chance to test the rainproof
qualities of their newly patched cabin roof.
“Something brooding, that’s certain,” Wee Willie asserted, as he
mopped his perspiring brow, having been chopping wood a short time
before, with the result that the perspiration was standing out in
beads.
“Did Perk go fishing again?” asked Elmer; “I’ve missed him for some
time now.”
“I don’t think so,” the other replied, “for there’s his jointed rod
standing over against the cabin right now. I remember seeing him
walk off; and come to think of it he went toward the east, and the
river lies to the west here.”
They looked at each other, with a growing uneasiness.
“Ten to one,” asserted Wee Willie, “Perk’s gone off on a little
tramp in hopes of starting a mother partridge whirring before him.
You know what he is when he gets any sort of notion in his head.”
“But we ought to have warned him against doing that,” Elmer
hurriedly said, “remembering how one of his besetting sins has
always been to get lost!”
With the prospect of a storm ahead they saw reason to feel concerned
over Perk’s continued absence.