Chums of the Camp Fire | Page 4

anything you want right b-b-bad it's yours. That c-c-cook of yours is set against p-p-poor Nicodemus, who c-c-came in the night, and was g-given that name. Think it over, Bandy-legs."
The other looked at the eager speaker, and grinned.
"Perhaps I may, Toby," he remarked, slowly; "anyhow, I'll promise to keep you in mind, and if I do want to get shut of Nicodemus you'll have first chance. It's goin' to be money in my pocket if I do let him go, because he costs me like anything. Oh! listen to Steve, would you; he's sure enough gone and fallen in, after all your warnin' him to go slow!"
It seemed to be just as Bandy-legs said, if one could judge from the tremendous amount of splashing that came to their ears, Steve being shut out from their view temporarily by a thick clump of alders that grew on the brink of a little trickling stream emptying into the pond just there.
"Let's hurry around and see if he needs any help!" suggested Max.
"He'll be shivering in the cold, even after he crawls out," said Bandy-legs; "and we'll have to see that he gets dried off. We're following at your heels, Max!"
"S-s-sure we are!" added Toby, who just then happened to be carrying the basket in which reposed the hind-quarters of all their previous greenback victims.
CHAPTER II
STEVE PLAYS HERO
"We're coming to the rescue, Steve! Keep a stiff upper-lip, old chum! Hold up, and we'll help you climb out, Steve!"
Bandy-legs was shouting cheerfully in this strain as he hurried after Max, with slower Toby bringing up the rear. The splashing had entirely ceased by this time, which would indicate that there must have been a change in conditions.
"Say, you ain't drowned, are you, Steve?" Bandy-legs continued, as though gripped by a sudden dreadful fear.
Max turned and called back over his shoulder.
"I can hear water dripping like everything, and I guess he's gone and crawled out on the bank all right!"
"Sure I have," said Steve just then from behind the bushes; "and I've got that frog, too. He's worth taking a ducking for, let me tell you. There never was such a buster of a greenback croaker. If you could hear him sing out 'more r-rum! more r-rum!' you'd think it was a bass drum arollin'. Here I am, fellows, dripping wet in the bargain. I must have slipped, I reckon."
When Max came upon the speaker, and surveyed his soaked figure, he burst into a shout of laughter.
"Well, I should think you did slip!" he exclaimed; "you're always slipping, seems like, Steve, and it's because you're in such an awful hurry to do things that you get into a muss. You certainly are a sight now, with all that mud on you. If pretty Bessie French could only see you I can fancy her nose would go up in the air, because that mud isn't as sweet as violets or roses, Steve."
"Well, what's done can't be undone, they say!" declared the other, with a reckless laugh, which was Steve all over; "better luck next time, I say. Here, Toby, what d'ye think of that for a saddle? Do the needful to him, won't you please, for I've got to scrape some of this nasty black muck off my trousers legs?"
"Here, this won't do, Steve," observed Max, severely; "you're beginning to shiver right now, and it'll get worse before long. You're soaked to the skin, chances are. It might be all well enough in the good old summer-time to let your duds dry on you, but not in this raw April weather. We've got to postpone the balance of our frog hunt, and make a fire."
"What for?" asked Steve, petulantly, because he did not much fancy allowing the others to make him out to be a weakling.
"To dry your clothes, if you must know it; and we won't take no for an answer either, eh, boys?" and Max winked toward the other two, who immediately chimed in vociferously to echo his sentiments.
"Oh! well, have it your way," grumbled Steve, though there was a gleam in his eyes that showed how he secretly appreciated this solicitude over his-health displayed by his chums. "P'raps I will feel some better if I get dried out. I had a cough last winter that worried my folks, and mebbe I shouldn't take chances."
"Come along this way and we'll soon have a jolly blaze started," said Max, who was accustomed to acting as leader, though never at any time becoming officious to an extent that might be displeasing.
There was plenty of good wood handy, and certainly those lads knew every little trick connected with building fires; so that in a very short time the cheery flames were jumping merrily upward, and a genial warmth was disseminated that felt unusually pleasant to the boy