The High School Boys' Training Hike Part 5

"I believe we're going to halt every hour for a brief rest"

"Yes."

"While the five of us are resting under the trees, Darry, you might climb the trees, swinging from limb to limb and leaping from tree to tree. Of course you'll select trees that are not directly over our heads."

"Humph!" retorted Dave.

"Try it, anyway," urged Tom, "it's fine exercise, even if you give it up after a while."

"I'll try it as often as you do," Darrin agreed with a grin.

Their second halt found the high school boys more than six miles from their starting point.

On this trip they were not heading in the direction they had followed on their fis.h.i.+ng trip. Instead, they were traveling in the opposite direction from Gridley, through a fairly populous farming region.

At a quarter-past ten o'clock d.i.c.k called for another halt. The road map that the boys had brought along showed them that they were now eleven miles from Gridley.

"Pretty fair work," muttered Tom, "considering that these roads were built by men who had never seen any better kind."

"We can more than double the distance," suggested Dave, "before we go into camp for the night."

"If we hike a couple more miles this morning, then halt, get the noon meal and rest until two o'clock," replied young Prescott, "I think we shall do better."

"If we've gone only eleven miles," protested Darrin, "then I'm certainly good for twenty-five miles in all to-day, and I believe the rest of you are, too."

"Wait until we've done eighteen or twenty miles," Prescott proposed.

"Then we can take a vote about making it twenty-five."

"For one thing," Darry objected, "none of us actually walks twenty-five miles when we cover that distance. We take turns riding on the wagon, and, as there are six of us, that means that each fellow rides something like four miles of the distance covered."

"What Darry is driving at," proposed Danny Grin, "is that he wants to devote himself wholly to walking hereafter. He doesn't care about driving the horse."

"I'm big enough and cranky enough to do my own talking, when there is any reason for my entering into the conversation," smiled Dave.

At a little after eleven that morning, when thirteen and a half miles had been covered, all hands were willing enough to halt and rest, prepare luncheon and rest again.

"But I still hope we shall cover the twenty-five miles to-day,"

Darry insisted.

"No difficulty about that, either," declared Harry Hazelton.

"Darry, while we are swapping stories over the campfire this evening you can take a lantern and do an extra five miles by way of an evening walk. Then you'll be tired enough to sleep."

"I'll see about it," Darrin laughed.

"And that's the last we'll hear about it," Tom predicted dryly.

"It is the experience of every military commander, so I've read,"

d.i.c.k went on, "that a long march the first day of a big hike is no especially good sign of how the soldiers will hold out to the end. On the contrary, military men have found that it's better to march a shorter distance on the first day and to work up gradually to a good standard of performance."

"All right," agreed Hazelton. "For one, I'm willing to take a rest after eating, and then take the afternoon for getting acquainted with this pretty grove."

"We won't quite do that, either, if I have my way," Prescott laughed.

"We ought to do a few miles this afternoon, but not set out to do any record-breaking or back-breaking stunt."

"There goes hazy's dream up in the air," laughed Greg. "I just knew that Hazy was planning how to spend the afternoon napping."

"I'll volunteer to drive all the way, this afternoon," Harry offered.

"That will give all of you fellows a chance to harden yourselves more on the first day."

"If you want to know a good definition of 'generosity,' then ask Hazy," snorted Dalzell.

"Come on!" cried d.i.c.k good-humoredly. "Scatter. Some for wood, some for water. Tom and I will get the kitchen kit ready for a meal. But we must have the wood and water before we can prepare luncheon."

At that suggestion of something to eat there was a general rush to get things in readiness. As soon as a fire was going in the stove in the wagon, d.i.c.k put on a frying pan. Into this he dropped several slices of bacon. Tom, over a fire built on the ground, set the coffee-pot going. In a pot on the stove d.i.c.k put potatoes to cook.

Now Dave rattled out the dishes, as soon as Greg and Hazy had set up the folding table. Dan placed the chairs.

"Get ready!" called d.i.c.k, as soon as he had fried two platters full of bacon and eggs. Tom, will you try the potatoes?"

"Done," responded Reade, after prodding the potatoes with a fork.

"What shall we do with the food that's left over?" asked Danny Grin, as he began to eat.

"There isn't going to be any food left over," d.i.c.k laughed. "You fellows will be lucky, indeed, if you get as much as you want."

Everyone was satisfied, however, by the time that the meal was finished.

"Greg and Harry may have the pleasure of was.h.i.+ng the dishes,"

d.i.c.k suggested.

"Oh, dear!" grunted Hazy, but he went at his task without further remarks.

Before one o'clock everything was in readiness for going forward again, save for putting the horse between the shafts of the wagon.

Prescott, however, put a proposition to rest until two o'clock before his chums. It was unanimously carried.

Despite his desire for a walking record that day, Darry proved quite willing to lie off at full length in the shade of the trees and doze as much as the flies would permit.

d.i.c.k and Tom strolled slowly down toward the road, halting by a couple of trees.

"There's something you don't often see, nowadays," spoke up Tom after a while.

He nodded back up the road. Coming in the same direction that the boys themselves had traveled was a faded, queer-looking old red wagon, much decorated on the outside by a lot of hanging, swinging tin and agate ware.

"That's the old-fas.h.i.+oned tin-peddler that I've heard a good deal about as being a common enough character some forty years ago,"

said Prescott. "Our grandmothers used to save up meat-bones, rags and bottles and trade them off to the peddler, receiving tinware in return."

"The man on that wagon was doing business forty years ago," remarked Tom. "In fact, judging by his appearance, he must have been quite a veteran at the business even forty years ago."