788 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Dec. 20, 1913. 
Back to the Tall Uncut 
By HOWARD C. KEGLEY 
I T was just one of those nonsensical impulses 
that have a way of taking possession of im¬ 
pressionable young men, and it came to us 
almost simultaneously, on a cold winter night. 
Clem, my chum, had been playing checkers with 
me that evening, at my father's house. We had 
been having a pleasant 'time, eating molasses 
candy and smoking our pipes, as we shoved the 
checker men around the board, and why we were 
not satisfied with our surroundings I don’t know, 
but it seems that we were not. 
Outside, the northwest wind of the January 
night was shrilling around the corner of the 
house, and piling the smothering particles of 
snow in huge drifts around the doorstep. The 
mercury was away below zero, and we were 
seated near a comfortable fireplace. 
When we tired of the checkers Clem said 
something about the weather, and made a men¬ 
tal estimate of what the thermometer would say 
in the morning, while I idly turned the pages 
of an outing magazine and wondered what we 
could do to while away the remainder of the 
evening. Presently my eye paused upon a page 
advertisement of a tent company. I remarked 
that I would like to own a good, waterproof 
tent, and at that Clem went nutty without giving 
me a moment’s notice. 
“I’ll tell you what I’d like to do,” he ex¬ 
claimed, breaking the long silence that had pre¬ 
vailed, “I’d like to take a bunch of grub and a 
good tent and a lot of ammunition, and go up 
along the river somewhere and camp out for 
about two weeks, and hunt, and chop wood for 
the camp fire, and sleep in the open air. If we’d 
null off a stunt like that we would soon get some 
color in our cheeks. I read an article the other 
day about two fellows who went camping in the 
dead of winter, and they had a picnic. I guess 
h was in that very magazine you have in your 
hand.” 
I looked, and it was even so. At that I read 
the article aloud, and it most certainly did listen 
fine. I know now that it must have been written 
by a lunatic, but it didn’t sound that way then, 
ft carried the reader along and jollied him into 
believing a lot of absolute impossibilities, with 
the result that Clem and I soon felt ourselves 
under its spell. 
“I .et’s borrow a tent and go up in the woods 
to-morrow,” said Clem, banteringly. 
I had no more at stake than he had, and I 
was just as feeble mentally, and so I informed 
him that I was game to try it. 
Clem’s father owned and operated a grocery 
store and bakery. Said Clem: “You go get a 
tent somewhere, and buy a lot of shells that will 
fit our guns, and I will dig up enough provisions 
at the store to last us a couple of weeks.” That 
suited me. 
He got a big hox, and in it he packed a slab 
of bacon, some ham. ten loaves of bread, two 
pounds of coffee, a dozen cans of sardines, a 
bushel of potatoes, a pail of lard, several pounds 
of butter, four pounds of tobacco, and other sup¬ 
plies too numerous and too ridiculous to men¬ 
tion. 
For my part I rented a small tent, ground 
two axes, cleaned our guns, bought a generous 
supply of shells, secured a camp stove, hunted 
up enough pans and kettles for a kitchen equip¬ 
ment, got two pairs of horse blankets for our 
downy cou< hes, dug up a lot of other things I 
thought we would need, and then gave Clem the 
signal to lead the way. 
We hired a d/ayman with a bobsled to trans¬ 
port our outfit to the hills that skirted the river 
about four mdes from town. There, with a 
puzzled smile, he bade us good bye, late in the 
afternoon of a cold day, and left us to our fate. 
With a spade we scraped away the snow and 
made a bare spot upon which to erect our tent. 
I dug a trench all around the tent, drew the 
edges of the canvas down into it, and banked the 
cold earth against it, to keep out the wind. 
We knew how to go at it, all right. 
By dusk we had the tent up, and there was 
enough firewood inside to last us a full day. 
By dark we were unaccountably hungry, and I 
shall never forget how good the supper tasted. 
I cooked some bacon, potatoes with the jackets 
on, a few flapjacks, and made some black coffee, 
and the way we ate was something surprising. 
After supper we filled our pipes. Yes, we 
smoked pipes We were mere seventeen-year-old 
boys, but we smoked pipes, and we had four one- 
pound packages of smoking tobacco in camp, too. 
With our pipes lighted we drew our soap boxes 
up in front of the stove and began telling stories. 
You know it is always the thing to tell stories 
around the camp fire at night. After telling a 
few stories we got out a deck of cards and began 
playing seven-up on a big box that served us as 
a kitchen table. It was full of splinters, and 
we couldn’t pick up the cards dextrously, and 
therefore we soon tired of that pastime. 
Clem was tired and sleepy, and for that 
reason we turned in early. Now because we 
were not in that kind of a forest we could not 
avail ourselves of the privilege of sleeping upon 
a fragrant bed of balsam boughs. Small boughs 
from other trees we substituted, however. In the 
matter of covering we also followed the woods¬ 
man idea faithfully. We each had a pair of 
horse blankets. Each laid one blanket on a bed 
of boughs, flopped down upon it, and drew the 
other blanket over himself. Oh, but it was a 
bitter cold night! Inside of an hour I had turned 
over twenty times or more, searching for the 
warm spot on my blanket, but there was no such 
thing, I found. By midnight we were both frozen 
to the marrow, but neither of us would admit it. 
We had come to the woods to rough it, and, By 
James, we intended to rough it in regular Robin¬ 
son Crusoe fashion. When we got so cold that 
we could endure it no longer we arose, kindled 
the fire anew, and cooked our chilly carcasses 
before it. 
The breakfast fire burned languidly, and the 
smoke filled the tent to overflowing. Ever 
breathe camp fire smoke in dense quantities for 
an hour or so? It enthuses one, doesn’t it? 
Fills him with enthusiasm for the great big out 
of doors! Yea! While I was preparing break¬ 
fast Clem looked at the thermometer. It stood 
at 17 below zero. The air was crisp and sharp. 
Early that forenoon we set forth in quest 
of something to slay. I hoped to meet a big 
gray timber wolf, intending, if I did so, to seize 
him by the nap of the neck and shake him so 
violently as to break his neck. But, alas! there 
was nothing more dangerous than a snow-bird, 
in that timber. I went down to the river to 
chop a hole in the ice and catch a mess of fish, 
but the stream was frozen solid to the bottom, 
and there was nothing finny in evidence. At 
that I went up into a hickory grove to kill a 
squirrel, but shot nothing except a sparrow and 
a bluejay. Clem drifted in late that afternoon 
with the front running-gears of a rabbit that 
he had massacred. In his anxiety to replenish 
our larder he had taken a pot shot at the cot¬ 
tontail at close range, and had shot the hind¬ 
quarters of it beyond hope of recovery. 
That night we had a brisk fire at supper 
time, and once again we leaned up against sev¬ 
eral generous slabs of bacon, and some tin cups 
of strong black coffee. Our supply of bread was 
frozen, but we» managed to wash it down with 
hot Java. After “dinner” that night we played 
cards a while, and smoked a bit, and then we 
tried to tell stories that were funny, but the 
yarns Clem spun were the most sepulchral I ever 
heard. They fell upon my ears like the dull roar 
