592 
FOREST AND STREAM 
May II, 1912 
Looking in vain for the inevitable yellow dogs, 
we rode up to the closed door and shouted: 
‘‘Halloo, the house!” 
John then rapped on the one window with his 
quirt, but to none of our overtures was there 
vouchsafed a response, and we naturally con¬ 
cluded the place was uninhabited. 
We dismounted, tethered our horses and tried 
the door, whose wooden latch yielded and we 
pushed back the barrier which gave out a remon¬ 
strating squawk and groan. John stepped in and 
I followed, peering cautiously around in the 
half light fearful of some blood-curdling dis¬ 
covery, yet anxious to investigate. I was about 
to comment upon the absence of all signs of 
recent occupancy, when there was a sudden rush 
of air, and something slapped me in the face 
as a whirring cloud of something swept past us 
into the outer air. For an instant the cold 
shivers ran down my spine, and I failed to quite 
suppress a cry of fear when we discovered the 
cause of our unceremonious greeting to be a 
flock of bats that had made the shack their day¬ 
light lodging place. 
Recovering from our momentary alarm, we 
made a careful inspection of the place. The 
house contained but one room on the floor, 
though some split logs laid with the flat sides 
up stretched overhead from side to side of the 
room, covering about one-half of the space and 
forming a little three-cornered room, reached 
by a peg ladder, under the slab roof. A heap 
of tamarack or cedar boughs in the further end 
of this up-stairs room showed it to have been 
once used as a sleeping apartment. The floor 
of the main room was earth, cleared of obstruc¬ 
tions and packed hard. In one end was a chim¬ 
ney of limestone which extended a foot above 
the ridge on the outside, at the base of which a 
rude fireplace had been constructed with what 
especially arrested my attention, an arrangement 
for burning coal. Two slabs of stone were set 
on edge, while across the top were laid strips 
of railroad iron an inch apart, their ends made 
fast in the sides of the fireplace. John was at 
first inclined to doubt my version of this con¬ 
trivance, but when I pointed out a little heap 
of coal lying near by, he was convinced. At 
one side of the room, to the right of the fire¬ 
place, and almost opposite the window, was a 
couch made of poles and covered with boughs 
similar to those we found in the up-stairs room. 
The condition of these evergreen boughs, and 
in fact all the surroundings, gave evidence that 
the place had been deserted for a long time. 
In front of the fireplace were two logs, one 
on top of the other, held in place by four stakes 
driven into the earth, the tops of which were 
secured by twisted withes of willow. The upper 
side of the uppermost log was hewn smoothly, 
thus forming a most comfortable and convenient 
settee. A broad slab with three long pegs 
driven into the rounded side and a fourth lying 
nearby indicated its use to have been that of 
a table, and which, on our replacing the missing 
leg, once more served that purpose. 
“This is what I call prime luck,” was John’s 
observation after he had finished a superficial 
survey of the premises. “If we had designed 
it ourselves, it would hardly be better suited to 
our purpose. Why, we could live here comfort¬ 
ably all winter.” 
I agreed with John, but my bump of caution 
or doubt or whatever it is asserted itself and 
suggested the thought which I framed into 
words: 
‘‘But it is evident that someone owns this 
layout, and first thing we know he, she or it 
will be coming along and fire us out bag and 
baggage.” 
"Even so, we can enjoy it till the owner does 
come; he can’t any more than bounce us, pro¬ 
vided we don’t steal anything, and for the life 
of me I don’t see what we could steal.” 
So it was agreed that we appropriate the con¬ 
veniences during our sojourn, or until we were 
evicted. Our first thought was to find good 
grazing grounds for the ponies. On going about 
a quarter of a mile up the gulch we came to 
a good, gently-sloping pathway leading up to the 
plain. And such a grazing ground! It was as 
luxuriant with buffalo grass and wild clover as 
though it had been especially cultivated for that 
purpose. The strip of fifty or seventy-five acres 
lay in the fork of the larger ravine, and the one 
in which our house was located, with timber on 
two sides and the broad plain beyond. John ex¬ 
pressed himself as delighted beyond measure at 
the fortuitous trend of circumstances, while I, 
as usual, tried to make my satisfaction over¬ 
balance my apprehensions. We staked the ponies 
and returned to tidy up our quarters and pre¬ 
pare for the night. 
“This is just the proper kind of a place for 
rattlers to make their home in,” said John, and 
our first move was to give the premises a thor¬ 
ough ransacking for varmints that might be se¬ 
creted in obscure corners. There was little in 
the room to afford a good hiding place for 
snakes, save only the rough couch next to the 
fireplace, and to this we directed attention. The 
tamarack covering was first removed, the spines 
of which had sifted down between the slats of 
the couch, making a thick heap on the floor. We 
dug out this debris with great care, momentarily 
expecting to hear the warning whir of a rattler. 
We were happily disappointed, however, though 
we made another discovery which not only sur¬ 
prised, but interested us. We had raked out the 
rubbish, dumping the same outside the shack, 
when John, who had been scrutinizing the floor 
closely for a possible snake hole, exclaimed: 
“Why, the ground is hollow here!” 
Sure enough, on striking the surface a reso¬ 
nant sound was given out. On brushing off the 
dirt we discovered the floor was of wood at this 
particular point. Closer inspection revealed a 
door fitted carefully into the hard dirt floor, its 
size exactly corresponding to that of the cot 
which had covered it. It was biff the work of 
a moment for John to insert the point of his 
stout hunting knife under one endge of the door 
and pry it up. It yielded readily and we lifted 
it out, there being no hinges, and stood it against 
the side of the room. When the fog of dust, 
liberated by moving the door, had subsided, we 
saw a ladder leading down to unknown depths. 
A whiff of hot, fetid air came from the chasm, 
like that of an apartment long closed. We hesi¬ 
tated to descend and explore, though our curi¬ 
osity urged us to do so. What ghastly evidences 
of crime might be disclosed? This and other 
suggestions presented themselves to our imagina¬ 
tions. Finally I lay flat on the floor and peered 
downward. As my eyes became accustomed to 
the gloom I could see the outlines of a large 
apartment, seemingly more commodious than the 
one in which we were. 
Conveying the result of my inspection to John, 
he took some matches and descended the ladder, 
lighting a match on reaching the bottom. The 
flare disclosed what was evidently a natural cave 
in the limestone rock. Then I ventured down 
the ladder and we lighted another match. On 
one side of the cave a number of rude slab 
shelves were visible, and on these several boxes. 
Removing the cover from the first we found it 
half filled with nails, eight and tenpenny, together 
with a hammer and a small hatchet. John gave 
an ejaculation of delight as he seized the latter 
implement. 
“We couldn’t have made a more useful find,” 
said he as he scratched another match prepara¬ 
tory to further investigation. The second box 
was about one-third full of something cold and 
suggestively slippery, which caused me to draw 
back my hand with much haste. Another match 
and John investigated, holding the light so that 
he could see the inside of the box. With an 
exclamation of delight he thrust in his hand and 
drew out several paraffin candles, the sort that 
plumbers use. 
“Better and better,” was his exclamation. 
“These are even ahead of the hatchet; we can 
see what we are about now after dark.” To my 
mind the candles eclipsed almost anything that 
I could think of as concomitants to our camp 
life, positive luxuries in fact, as we had been 
forced to resort to very inconvenient and primi¬ 
tive measures when light was needed. 
Lighting one of our new-found treasures, we 
were enabled to explore with greater facility, 
and these comprise some of the things that re¬ 
warded our quest: Two tin buckets, one empty 
and one with a lid which contained some hard- 
caked and sour corn meal; an iron pot, a skillet 
and a fryiiig-pan, the head of a pickaxe and a 
short crowbar, a half dozen steel table knives 
and forks, very rusty, and several pewter plates, 
a half dozen britannia teaspoons and three long- 
handled ones, several pounds of salt, somewhat 
“rusted,” but otherwise wholesome; a square, 
two-gallon can such as varnish comes in which 
on uncorking we found to contain what John 
pronounced to be soft soap, but which I knew to 
be quite a different compound, there being a 
factory for its manufacture a short distance 
from my Eastern home. It was nothing more nor 
less than nitro-glycerine. We fell to wonder¬ 
ing to what use it could have been applied in 
that sequestered locality. I handled the can very 
gingerly, knowing full well that a sharp con¬ 
cussion would explode its contents, sending shack 
and everything in it into space. Back of the 
shelves, which we were forced to remove to get 
at, was a large box so heavy that it required 
our united strength to get it out. 
This box, which was made of some dark wood, 
was ' in the shape of a carpenter’s tool chest, 
save that it was fully a third larger. The lid 
was secured with heavi' hinges and hasps and 
a padlock. That it was well filled, its weight 
gave no occasion for one to doubt. We hesi¬ 
tated about breaking it open, as we would thus 
make ourselves amenable to the law. Then John 
recollected that he had a bunch of keys in his 
saddle bags, and tvjo minutes later we were try¬ 
ing keys to the lock. After several ineffectual 
attempts, one of the keys turned, clicked reas¬ 
suringly among the wards and then the lock 
yielded. 
[to be continued.] 
