Oakdale Boys in Camp. Scott Morgan

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СКАЧАТЬ to himself; and Springer’s body shook convulsively.

      Following this, the boy in the bag began jumping and twisting about, and several smothered slaps were heard.

      “Hey, what’s the matter with yeou, Sleuthy?” mumbled Crane in a pretended tone of sleepiness. “Why don’t yeou keep still? Haow do yeou s’pose anybody is goin’ to sleep with yeou kickin’ up all that rumpus? Ain’t yeour old sleepin’ bag comfortable?”

      “Sure, it is,” answered Piper; “only there was a hubble under me like a stone. Gee whiz! I didn’t know it was so hot tonight.”

      “Dud-dud-dry up!” growled Springer. “If you keep talking you’ll gug-get me wide awake, and I’ll never go to sleep. Lie still, Sleuth.”

      “I’m comfortable now,” assured Piper. “It’s all right.”

      But barely had he uttered these words when he gave a tremendous jerk and resumed his scratching more vigorously than ever.

      “Guess you were right, Sile,” he finally admitted; “these sleeping bags are hot things. Don’t know what makes me itch so. Oh, gee! feels like something was nipping me.”

      “Will you never keep still, Sleuth?” exclaimed Grant.

      “I’m sorry,” said Piper, struggling to sit up; “but something is stinging me like a lot of nettles. Oh, great smoke! it’s fierce. Say, Sile, won’t you unfasten this old bag? I can’t seem to get out of the thing.”

      “No, I won’t unfasten it,” returned Crane in pretended exasperation; “but if yeou don’t lay daown and keep still I’ll hit yeou with a boot or something.”

      “I can’t lie down,” protested Sleuth, rapidly becoming frantic. “I tell you something is chewing me up to beat the band. I can feel things crawling on me.”

      “It must be all imagination,” put in Stone, who, although he enjoyed the joke, really pitied the victim. “Still, imagination is very painful sometimes. Why don’t you let him out of the bag, Sile?”

      “Let him aout of the bag!” snapped Crane, rising on his elbow. “Well, I guess not! Didn’t he tell us haow comfortable them things was? He wouldn’t lift a hand to cut boughs for a bed.”

      Piper groaned. “But I washed the dishes,” he almost wailed. “Say, unhook me, Sile, and let me out, or I’ll have a fit. I tell you there’s things crawling all over me, and they’re just chewing me up alive.”

      “You don’t suppose they’re ‘gougers,’ do you?” snickered Springer.

      “Oh, laugh – confound you, laugh!” snarled Sleuth furiously. “You think it’s a joke, don’t you?”

      “Sort of sus-seems that way to me,” admitted Phil.

      “Oh, say!” wailed the miserable fellow in the sleeping bag. “If I don’t get out of this thing I’ll go crazy. I tell you I’m being eaten up alive by something.”

      “Did you ever read a certain essay on the ‘Power of Imagination,’ Piper?” asked Stone. “If you ever have, you should realize that a person may make himself very miserable by conceiving all sorts of foolish things.”

      “No, I’ve never read your old essay,” howled Sleuth, thrashing around in the bag. “But I tell you this is no imagination; this is the real thing. Light the lantern, somebody, for the love of Mike! I’m burning up. I’m all afire.”

      “But there ain’t no fire in the bag – there can’t be,” asserted Crane relentlessly. “Just the same, somebody ought to git a bucket of water and souse him. P’r’aps that would keep him still.”

      Springer could hold himself in check no longer, and he burst into shrieks of laughter, during which Piper, kicking and floundering, rolled over and over until he was outside the tent.

      At this point Stone sprang up and hastened out to bend over the writhing victim, and the others, eager to see all there was to be seen, also rose and peered forth.

      It was with no small difficulty that Ben prevailed on Sleuth to keep quiet long enough for the mouth of the bag to be unfastened. When this was done, the boy inside scrambled forth, fiercely kicking the thing from him, and by the light of the fire he discovered a number of black ants running wildly about upon his person.

      “There they are!” he cried. “There’s what bit me! I told you something was doing it. Oh, murder! let me get out of my underclothes.”

      Frantically he stripped off every rag and stood stark naked in the firelight, still brushing and slapping and scratching.

      “Well, I swan to man!” said Crane, who had also come out of the tent. “If them ain’t ants, I’m a woodchuck. Haow do you s’pose they got into the bag?”

      “Must have been there a long tut-time,” said Springer. “Seems to me I’ve heard that one of the troubles with sleeping bags was that they made fuf-fine nests for ants and all sorts of insects. You’ll never gug-get me to sleep in one.”

      “You never will me – again,” vowed Piper. “Being eaten alive by ants is worse than being burned to the stake by redskins.”

      He was savagely shaking his underclothes as he spoke, having turned the garments inside out.

      Stone carried the sleeping bag some distance from the camp and flung it over the low limb of a tree, and the boys urged Piper to make sure there were no ants remaining upon his person or his underclothes before he re-entered the tent.

      “There are two extra blankets,” said Grant. “You can have them, Sleuth, and make yourself comfortable as possible. We’ll light the lantern and look around to make sure there are no ants left in here.”

      Apparently none had escaped from the bag, and after a time Sleuth was permitted to return and settle down with the blankets beside the bed of boughs occupied by his companions. The lantern was again extinguished, and finally, one by one, the boys dropped off to sleep, although the occasional chuckling of Springer was heard even after some of the others were breathing regularly and heavily.

      Gradually Piper’s wounds ceased to smart, and, with no suspicion of the fact that he had been the victim of a rather painful joke, he sought to compose himself for slumber. Nevertheless, the experience through which he had passed made it no easy matter for him to get to sleep, and he lay there, turning now and then as the minutes slipped away into hours and the hours lengthened. At times the odor of the balsam boughs mingled with the faint smell of smoke which a fitful breath of rising wind brought into the tent from the smoldering coals of the fire. The tree-toad continued its mournful peeping, and away in the woods a bird awoke and chirped. Once something fell from a tree, making a swishing sound as it cut through the leaves and struck the ground with a soft thud.

      Although he no longer suffered much from the attack of the ants, Piper found his every sense painfully alert. Through the opening at the front of the tent he could see the faint, dull glow of the coals, which grew dimmer until it finally faded completely. At irregular intervals the night seemed to breathe with puffs of air which set the leaves rustling as if they were whispering to one another. Off in the woods something stirred, and there was the barely perceptible cracking of a twig, as if it had been broken beneath a soft and stealthy foot.

      Imagination was vigorously at work with Piper, and he fancied all sorts of creatures to be prowling about in the vicinity. СКАЧАТЬ