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            The Boy Scouts
                  of
            Woodcraft Camp

                  By
          Thornton W. Burgess

               Author of
     The Boy Scouts on Swift River
     The Boy Scouts on Lost Trail
  The Boy Scouts in a Trapper's Camp


            [Illustration]


      Illustrated by C. S. Corson


          The Penn Publishing
         Company Philadelphia
                 1922


               COPYRIGHT
                1912 BY
               THE PENN
              PUBLISHING
                COMPANY

            [Illustration]




  [Illustration: THE CHIEF GREETED HIM PLEASANTLY]




           _To my Wife_

  _whose faith and encouragement
    have placed me in her debt
      beyond my power to pay_




Introduction


The Boy Scout movement has appealed to me from the very first as a
long step in the right direction. It stands for an organized boyhood
on a world-wide plan. It has in it the essentials for a stronger and
better manhood, based on character building and physical development.
Clear and clean thinking and self-reliance are its fundamental
principles. Its weakness has been and is the difficulty in securing
leaders, men with an understanding of and sympathy with boys, who can
give the necessary time to active work in the field with the patrols,
and who are themselves sufficiently versed in the lore of the woods
and fields.

For years, before ever the Boy Scouts were organized, I had dreamed of
a woodcraft camp for boys, a camp which in its appointments and
surroundings should make constant appeal to the imagination of
red-blooded, adventure-loving boys, and which should at the same time
be a true "school of the woods" wherein woodcraft and the ways of
nature should be taught along much the same lines as those on which
the Boy Scout movement is founded.

In this and succeeding volumes, "The Boy Scouts on Swift River," "The
Boy Scouts on Lost Trail," "The Boy Scouts in a Trapper's Camp," I
have sought to portray the life of such a school camp under Boy Scout
rules. "The Boy Scouts of Woodcraft Camp" has been written with a
twofold purpose: To stimulate on the part of every one of my boy
readers a desire to master for himself the mysteries of nature's great
out-of-doors, the secrets of field and wood and stream, and to show by
example what the Boy Scout's oath means in the development of
character. Many of the incidents in the succeeding pages are drawn
from my own experiences. And if, because of reading this story, one
more boy is led to the Shrine of the Hemlock, there to inhale the
pungent incense from a camp-fire and to master the art of tossing a
flapjack, I shall feel that I have not written in vain.

                                                 THE AUTHOR.




Contents


        I. THE TENDERFOOT                         11

       II. WOODCRAFT CAMP                         26

      III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS                      39

       IV. THE INITIATION                         56

        V. THE RECALL                             71

       VI. THE SPECTER IN CAMP                    86

      VII. FIRST LESSONS                         100

     VIII. LONESOME POND                         116

       IX. A SHOT IN THE DUSK                    136

        X. A BATTLE FOR HONOR                    161

       XI. BUXBY'S BUNCOMBE                      184

      XII. LOST                                  199

     XIII. THE HONEY SEEKERS                     220

      XIV. THE SUPREME TEST                      237

       XV. CRAFTY MIKE                           254

      XVI. THE POACHER OF LONESOME POND          273

     XVII. THE HAUNTED CABIN                     288

    XVIII. ON GUARD                              304

      XIX. FOR THE HONOR OF THE TRIBE            319

       XX. THE HOME TRAIL                        337




Illustrations


    THE CHIEF GREETED HIM PLEASANTLY          _Frontispiece_

    DIAGRAM OF WOODCRAFT CAMP                             41

    "TELL HIM YOU ARE TO BE A DELAWARE"                   51

    HE HAD BUILT A FIRE                                  118

    BILLY'S APPARATUS FOR MAKING FIRE                    207

    "RUN!" HE YELLED                                     233

    THE BOYS WERE DRILLED IN WIG-WAG SIGNALING           308




The Boy Scouts of Woodcraft Camp




CHAPTER I

THE TENDERFOOT


In the semi-darkness of daybreak a boy of fourteen jumped from a
Pullman sleeper and slipped a quarter into the hand of the dusky
porter who handed down his luggage.

"You are sure this is Upper Chain?" he inquired.

"'Spects it is, boss, but I ain't no ways sho'. Ain't never been up
this way afore," replied the porter, yawning sleepily.

The boy vainly strove to pierce the night mist which shrouded
everything in ghostly gray, hoping to see the conductor or a brakeman,
but he could see barely half the length of the next Pullman. A warning
rumble at the head of the long train admonished him that he must act
at once; he must make up his mind to stay or he must climb aboard
again, and that quickly.

The long night ride had been a momentous event to him. He had slept
little, partly from the novelty of his first experience in a sleeping
car, and partly from the excitement of actually being on his way into
the big north woods, the Mecca of all his desires and daydreams.
Consequently he had kept a fairly close record of the train's running
time, dozing off between stations but waking instantly whenever the
train came to a stop. According to his reckoning he should now be at
Upper Chain. He had given the porter strict orders to call him twenty
minutes before reaching his destination, but to his supreme disgust he
had had to perform that service for the darkey. That worthy had then
been sent forward to find the conductor and make sure of their
whereabouts. Unsuccessful, he had returned just in time to hand down
the lad's duffle.

Now, as the preliminary jerk ran down the heavy train, the boy once
more looked at his watch, and made up his mind. If the train was on
time, and he felt sure that it was, this was Upper Chain, the
junction where he was to change for the final stage of his journey. He
would stay.

The dark, heavy sleepers slowly crept past as the train gathered way,
till suddenly he found himself staring for a moment at the red and
green tail lights. Then they grew dim and blinked out in the
enveloping fog. He shivered a bit, for the first time realizing how
cold it was at this altitude before daybreak. And, to be quite honest,
there was just a little feeling of loneliness as he made out the dim
black wall of evergreens on one side and the long string of empty
freight cars shutting him in on the other. The whistle of the laboring
locomotive shrieked out of the darkness ahead, reverberating with an
eery hollowness from mountain to mountain. Involuntarily he shivered
again. Then, with a boyish laugh at his momentary loss of nerve, he
shouldered his duffle bag and picked up his fishing-rod.

"Must be a depot here somewhere, and it's up to me to find it," he
said aloud. "Wonder what I tipped that stupid porter for, anyway! Dad
would say I'm easy. Guess I am, all right. Br-r-r-r, who says this is
July?"

Trudging along the ties he soon came to the end of the string of
empties and, a little way to his right, made out the dim outlines of a
building. This proved to be the depot. A moment later he was in the
bare, stuffy little waiting-room, in the middle of which a big stove
was radiating a welcome warmth.

On a bench at one side sat two roughly-dressed men, who glanced up as
the boy entered. One was in the prime of vigorous manhood. Broad of
shoulder, large of frame, he was spare with the leanness of the
professional woodsman, who lives up to the rule that takes nothing
useless on the trail and, therefore, cannot afford to carry
superfluous flesh. The gray flannel shirt, falling open at the neck,
exposed a throat which, like his face, was roughened and bronzed by
the weather.

The boy caught the quick glance of the keen blue eyes which, for all
their kindly twinkle, bored straight through him. Instinctively he
felt that here was one of the very men his imagination had so often
pictured, a man skilled in woodcraft, accustomed to meeting danger,
clear-headed, resourceful--in fact just such a man as was Deerslayer,
whose rifle had so often roused the echoes in these very woods.

The man beside him was short, thick-set, black-haired and mare-browed.
His skin was swarthy, with just a tinge of color to hint at Indian
ancestry among his French forebears. He wore the large check mackinaw
of the French Canadian lumberman. Against the bench beside him rested
a double-bladed axe. A pair of beady black eyes burned their way into
the boy's consciousness. They were not good eyes; they seemed to carry
a hint of hate and evil, an unspoken threat. The man, taking in the
new khaki suit of the boy and the unsoiled case of the fishing-rod,
grunted contemptuously and spat a mouthful of tobacco juice into the
box of sawdust beside the stove. The boy flushed and turned to meet
the kindly, luminous eyes of the other man.

"If you please, is this Upper Chain?" he inquired.

"Sure, son," was the prompt response. "Reckon we must hev come in on
th' same train, only I was up forward. Guess you're bound for
Woodcraft Camp. So'm I, so let's shake. My name's Jim Everly--'Big
Jim' they call me--and I'm goin' in t' guide fer Dr. Merriam th' rest
o' th' summer and try to teach you youngsters a few o' th' first
principles. What might yer name be an' whar be yer from?"

"Walter Upton, but the boys mostly call me 'Walt.' My home is in New
York," replied the boy.

"Never hit th' trail t' th' big woods afore, did yer?" inquired the
big guide, rising to stretch.

"No," said Walter, and then added eagerly: "But I've read lots and
lots of books about them, and I guess I could most find my way along a
trail even if I am a city tenderfoot. I've paddled a canoe some, and I
know all about the habits of wild animals and how to build a fire
and----"

"Son," interrupted Big Jim, "stop right thar! Forget it--all this rot
you've been a-readin'. Woodcraft never yet was larned out o' books,
and it never will be. I reckon you an' me are goin' t' hitch up
together fine, an' when yer go back t' yer daddy this fall yer'll be
able t' take him out in th' tall timbers an' show him a few stunts
what ain't down in th' program o' city schools, but what every
cottontail born in the north woods larns the second day he gets his
eyes open. Now yer jes' fergit all this stuff yer've been a-readin'
and stick t' me; we'll git along fine. I'll make a woodsman o' yer yer
dad will be proud o'. Let's have a look outside t' see how the weather
is."

As he followed the big fellow out onto the platform Walter felt his
cheeks burn at this wholesale condemnation of his treasured books, one
of which, "A Complete Guide to Woodcraft," was at that moment within
easy reach in the top of his duffle bag. Despite his natural
admiration for this big guide, to