Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp/Chapter XXVI

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

CHAPTER XXVI

TELLS ABOUT GEOGRAPHY AND ALL THAT KIND OF STUFF

First we tried to find Skinny to take him with us, but he wasn't anywhere around. Somebody told us they thought he was off somewhere with Uncle Jeb. I guess maybe Uncle Jeb didn't know anything about all the talk, because that was often the way it was with him. And even if he did know, maybe he took Skinny anyway. One thing sure, I hoped it was true, because whenever a fellow goes off with Uncle Jeb, he tells him all about the trees and things like that. Trees can be friends to you and they never go back on you, that's one thing.

I said, "He'll be all right as long as he's with Uncle Jeb."

Bert said, "Yes, but we'll have to get back before camp-fire. He'll be wandering around alone. I'll take him up to our cabin. Guess he'll be all right till we get back. Temple Camp can be a mighty lonely place sometimes, Blakeley."

Just the same, all the way over to the Hudson I kept thinking about Skinny and hoping he wasn't hiding away from the fellows or off all alone somewhere. I knew they wouldn't bother with him, especially now, and I kept thinking that maybe he'd go away by himself and get into some harm. I kept thinking about how he said, "I want to be alone by myself," and he'd feel that way even more now, on account of the disgrace.

I said, "Poor little Skinny, I wish we had him along."

"He's with Uncle Jeb most likely," Bert said. "Wonder what the old man thinks about it? Ever look into those gray eyes of his?"

"You never catch Uncle Jeb saying anything till he's sure," I said, "and even then, it takes him a couple of minutes to get his pipe out of his mouth. He says when you aim always aim as if you had only one bullet and it was the last one in the world."

"That's him all right," Bert said.

"Well, there's no good worrying," I told him; "we'll just get back as soon as we can."

"What do you say we row across and cut through Nick's Valley?" Bert asked, "it's shorter."

"I'm game," I said, "the quicker the sooner."

"We can follow the old creek bed," he said, "Know where that is, don't you?"

I said, "Believe me, the only bed I know anything about is the one I sleep in. I don't see how you find out so many things, especially as you were never here before."

"Oh, I like to just prowl around," he said, "that's the way with tigers."

"I notice you always have a stick, too," I said.

He said, "Sure a stick's good company. I just root around with it."

"This is my third season here," I said, "and I never even heard about any old creek bed. I never heard about Nick's Valley either."

"Guess you never talked much with the old farmers, hey?" he asked.

We rowed across the lake to Nick's Cove (I knew all about that, because it was where the campers were and besides I knew about it anyway). If you will look on the map you'll see it and you'll notice how there are mountains there—kind of two sets of mountains with a space between. I made that map so you could see just how everything happened, because, believe me, we were going to have some adventure. Only we didn't know it.

We rowed way up into the end of Nick's Cove and pulled the skiff part way up on shore. One thing I noticed and that was that some of the trees around there stood in the water. I knew that was on account of the lake being swollen, because there had been so much rain lately. Even over at Temple Camp the water was up to the spring-board, so that when we jumped on it, it splashed right into the lake.

"Cove is pretty big after all the rain," Bert said. And then, sure enough, he looked around and broke a branch off a tree and pulled the twigs off it. "That'll do to poke around with," he said, "now come ahead."

"You and your stick are like Uncle Jeb and his pipe," I told him.

He said, "Now we'll wend our way through old Nick's Valley. It'll bring us right out near the old creek bed. Then we can follow that right down to the river. That's the way Skinny did, but I guess he just stumbled through that way. Ever hear of old Nick?"

"Only on account of the name, Nick's Cove," I said; "is he dead?"

"Oh, very much dead," he said; "he died about a hundred years ago. Didn't you know he was dead?"

"Believe me, I never even knew he was sick," I told him.

Then he said, "Well, from all I can learn, old Nick owned all the land for miles around here, and he lived at the bottom of Black Lake."

"Good night," I said, "if I owned as much land as that, I wouldn't live at the bottom of a lake."

"Kind of damp, huh?" he asked; "'but you see Black Lake wasn't here then."

"Where was it?" I asked him.

"Well it just wasn't," he said; "it was dry land. The way I make it out, it was Bowl Valley, and old Nick lived right down in the bottom of Bowl Valley, There's an old woman on the Berry Creek road who smokes a clay pipe. She's about a hundred years old. She told me all about it. People around here can't even tell you where Bowl Valley was. They don't know what you're talking about when you mention such a place. I dug up a whole lot of stuff about it. Old Nick's got descendants living around here now, and they don't even know about it."

"But you found out," I said.

"That's because I'm an old tramp," he said, laughing sort of; "I like to sit up on barnyard fences and chin with old wives—whenever I can manage to get away from my patrol."

"Gee, I don't blame them for not letting you get away from them," I said.

All the while we were hiking it along between the mountains and it was pretty wet in some places, because it was a low valley we were in.

"Now this is Nick's Valley," Bert said; "it's all full of puddles, hey? Look out for your feet. This will bring us out at the old creek bed and we can follow that down to the Hudson. Look at that fish, will you? A killie, huh? Washed away in here. Some rains!" He poked a little killie out from under some grass with his stick—honest, that fellow never missed anything. "Sometimes I root out the funniest kinds of insects you ever saw with a stick," he said; "it's a kind of a magic wand. Ever talk with a civil engineer?"

"Believe me," I said, "the only civil engineer I ever talked with, did most of the talking. He wouldn't let us play ball in his lot. He was an uncivil engineer, that's what he was."

Bert said, "Well, there was a civil engineer here with a troop from out west somewhere. He was a scoutmaster. He took me on a couple of good hikes. We found some turtle shells over through there, a little farther along, and when he took a squint at the land he saw how a little valley, all grown up with weeds and brush, ran along east and west. He said that was where the creek once flowed and it didn't come within a mile of the lake. Savvy? The place where the lake is now used to be Bowl Valley. When the creek changed it's bed and cut through a couple of miles south, it just filled up Bowl Valley and there you are—Black Lake. Presto chango! Funny how old Dame Nature changes her mind now and then."

"That's just the way it is with girls," I said.

Bert said, "Well; and that scoutmaster said she'd be changing her mind again some day, too. He said the topography around here is pretty shaky—whatever that means."

"Oh, boy," I said, "break it to me gently. Do you mean that some fine day we'll wake up and find Black Lake has sneaked off?"

"That's just about it," he said.

"Do you call that fair and square?" I asked; "after Mr. Temple bought the lake and gave it to Temple Camp. Believe me, it ought to be called Black Lake; it isn't very white, that's one sure thing."

"That may not happen for a thousand years," Bert said.