APRIL 7, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
539 

gods to be good to her, and give her and her 
man long life. Peace between the two tribes 
was then declared, and there was much rejoicing. 
“There, my son, I have finished.” 
* * * * * * X 
“Well, what was all that about?’ asked 
Ashton, rousing up and reaching out for his 
pipe and tobacco. 
“Oh!” I replied, “’twas'the story of a girl 
and a man. And I proceeded to give him a 
translation of it. After I had finished, he sat 
quietly thinking for some time, and then re- 
marked: 
“This gives me a new and unexpected view 
of these people. I had not thought that love, 
that self-sacrifice, such as the story depicts was 
at all in their nature. Really, it’s quite refresh- 
ing to learn that there are occasionally women 
who are true and steadfast in their love.” 
He said this bitterly. I could have told him 
things, but contented myself by saying, “Keep 
your eyes open, friend. You may find much in 
these people to be commended.” 
WALTER B. ANDERSON. 
[TO BE CONTINUED, ] 

Uncle Jim’s Winter Camp. 
Ir fall can ever be said to linger in the lap of 
winter, then the fall of 187— behaved in that 
wanton way. The yellow blossoms were still 
clinging to the witch-hazel in November, and on 
sunny banks the dandelion still showed its 
golden head among the brown grass in the mid- 
dle of December. When the cock pheasant 
should have retired to the sheltered hollows or 
the cozy laurel thickets and contented himself 
with the buds of the birch tree, he still continued 
to drum on his log on the warm mountain side 
and to fill his crop each morning and evening 
with the plump fruit of the frost grape vine; and 
when the black and gray squirrels should have 
been snuggled deep in an old hollow tree, they 
were still frisking all day long among the dry 
leaves on the ground or chasing each other 
helter-skelter through the bare branches of the 
trees. When snowflakes should have been flying 
the sun continued to rise day after day in a 
cloudless sky and to give at noon enough heat 
to awaken a drowsy bee from his winter nap, to 
bring out a garter snake to warm himself, and 
to start a belated butterfly to flitting among the 
bushes. Instead of ice-bound creeks and rivers, 
the streams ran limpid as in May, and in place 
of a white Christmas week such as the dwellers 
among the Alleghany Mountains of Central 
Pennsylvania wish for, it looked as though they 
would be compelled to accept October weather 
with its sunny skies, its listless winds and its 
blue and smoky ridges. 
Uncle Jim, whose occupation was a sedentary 
one, could not resist this lure of the woods. 
Ever since he was big enough to be his own 
master he had been compelled from time to time 
to break away from his. work and his family and 
seek the mountains and the streams, where he 
might live for a few days like the primitive man 
that he really was. 
His plans were soon made. He would take 
Charley, the inexperienced, who would furnish 
the team and the big wagon with spring seats; 
Tolbert, who would probably furnish nothing, 
and who would be taken for fun; and his two 
old cronies, Jake and John. Jake, who was an 
old deer hunter, and who knew the mountains 
as a boy knows his own dooryard, would go to 
get rid for a brief spell of his wife, who could 
sometimes talk until the nails began to crawl 
out of the roof, and John, whose avocation was 
carpentering, and whose vocation was hunting 
and fishing, would go because he never refused 
to go anywhere Uncle Jim asked him to go. 
Jake and John would hunt deer every minute of 
daylight, and would enjoy the trip keenly; 
Charley would be scared all of the time because 
the woods held unknown and dreadful terrors 
for him, and Tolbert would be sulky most of the 
time because he could not stand the guying that 
he would be sure to get. But the master mind 
of the expedition, and the real appreciator of 
the trip would be Uncle Jim. He did not care 
to hunt deer. He wanted to be among the moun- 
tains and under the trees and along the streams; 
he wanted to lie at night on hemlock browse 
and watch the camp-fire and look out at the 
stars; and he wanted to hear the owls hoot and 
the wind move in the tops of the pines. At 
heart he was a poet, but he was so shrewd and 
practical that the others would do just as he 
said, and his opinion on any outdoor matter 
would be the final word, from which none would 
dissent. 
The trip into the mountains was a pleasant 
one. It began long before daylight, and lasted 
until the middle of the afternoon, with one stop 
for lunch and to feed and rest the horses. The 
way lay along Middle Creek for a dozen miles, 
then led up a tributary that grew smaller and 
smaller as they proceeded, and at last brought 
them out on a high tableland that marked the 
near approach to the end of their journey. 
Uncle Jim and his two cronies knew the families 
in many of the lonely houses that they passed, 
and they never failed to stop and make some 
bantering remarks or invite the man of the 
house to go with them. But Tolbert furnished 
most of the amusement. John told how Tolbert 
‘had once set a fish net in a hollow in a field 
that a flood in the river had filled with water, 
and how when he came home in the evening he 
had missed his watch, and that when John and 
some friends had gone with him the next morn- 
ing to find the watch, and incidentally to raise 
the net, they found the net high and dry above 
the water, that had fallen several feet during the 
night, and in its interior the missing watch. 
Tolbert in throwing the net into the water had 
in some way caught it fast in the watch chain 
and had thrown both net and watch in without 
ever missing the latter. John said that after this 
story leaked out in the village all of the boys 
wanted Tolbert to set a net for them on dry 
land and catch a watch. Then Uncle Jim told 
how Tolbert had once gone up to the mill dam 
late in the fall to fish for pike, and how he had 
trolled his bait for a whole forenoon on top of 
a layer of very thin clear ice that had frozen 
over the water during the night, and that Tol- 
bert had not noticed it until Uncle Jim came 
along and showed him what he was doing. 
Tolbert’s only response to each new story was 
a sulkier “Its amdanged. lie,’ and a fiercer 
chewing and a more vigorous spitting. 
About 2 o’clock in the afternoon when the 
December sun in the southern sky was begin- 
ning to slide down the western curve of its 
small arc, they left the mountain road that they 
had been traveling since the middle of. the 
morning and took a wagon track that led for 
two miles through the woods across the flat top 
of the mountain, and which finally brought them 
to a sugar camp with a good tight shanty open 
toward a big stone fireplace, in which the sap 
kettle was swung during the sugar making sea- 
son. Here in a slight depression of the moun- 
tain top was a forest of maple and beech, with 
an occasional tall pine, while to the north lay 
ridge after ridge of the Alleghanies, covered 
with virgin forests of hemlock and hardwood, 
and to the east the ground sloped into a deep 
wooded valley, through which ran a little moun- 
tain trout stream. 
Uncle Jim quickly marshaled his forces, and 
before dark the camp was fit for a prince. A 
bed of which the bottom layer was made of the 
clean straw that had filled the wagon box and 
the top layer was made of fragrant hemlock 
browse, filled completely the rear of the shanty, 
and was thickly covered with comforts and 
blankets. The cast-iron stove top that they had 
brought along was placed on stone sides that 
were banked up with earth, and thus made into 
an excellent cook stove, and the provisions and 
cooking utensils were ranged under cover and 
convenient to the cooking place. Jake, with 
his keen double-bitted ax, had cut a great pile 
of logs for the fireplace and a smaller pile of 
dry limbs and bark for the cook stove, and had 
then cleaned out and walled up the little spring 
at the rear of the camp. Charley and Tolbert 
had taken the team back to a clearing along the 
main road, and had returned and were now 
standing around hungrily watching Uncle Jim, 
who was preparing an ample supper of fried 
ham and eggs, roasted potatoes and coffee. 
The week passed quickly, but with few ad- 
ventures, and the killing of little game. One 
evening Jake dragged a small doe into camp 
that he had killed some two miles back in the 
mountains. It had been shot very high—the 
backbone just nicked—and Jake explained, with 
much pride, that this was the deadliest shot that 
could be made, and with such a wound the deer 
just wilted down in its tracks. Uncle Jim looked 
the deer over carefully, and after examining the 
bullet hole, quietly gave it as his opinion “that 
Jake came almighty near missing the deer,” 
which was probably the truth. 
When lying in their beds that evening the 
conversation turned naturally to the hunting of 
deer and to buck fever. Jake told about taking 
a city sportsman over on to the river mountain 
one day in the fall. He had with him a friend 
whom he called Obey, and the two set out to 
have some fun with the city man. Whenever 
they would come to a particularly large tree, 
one would say to the other, “Do you remember 
what a fine buck I shot off that tree that wet 
day two years ago?” or “There is that big limb 
from which I knocked that fine doe that I gave 
you a piece of.” Finally the city man said, with 
some heat, “Do you fellows take me for a fool? 
Why, I have killed more deer than both of you 
ever saw.” And they found out afterward that 
this was true. John said that the first time they 
took Tolbert deer hunting in a tracking snow 
he blatted each time he saw a deer track and 
then stopped and loaded his old muzzle-loading 
rifle, and when night came they found that he 
had seventeen loads in his gun. Tolbert roused 
himself enough to respond with his usual, “It’s 
a danged lie.” Uncle Jim then told of once 
standing Tom Wright at the head of a little 
mountain field across which a deer could some- 
times be chased. They finally started a small 
deer that went in Tom’s direction, and when 
they heard him shoot, they hurried to him and 
asked him whether he had shot it. ‘‘No,” said 
Tom, “I didn’t kill one of ’em.” “How many 
were there?” one of the party asked. “Why,” 
answered Tom, with a wave of his arm that 
took in the while clearing, “the whole darned 
field was full of ’em,” 
One day late in the afternoon a fog came 
drifting over the mountains, and it grew dark 
and gloomy. Tolbert was lying on the bed 
asleep, and Uncle Jim was preparing to get 
supper. Jake had come in but John was still off on 
the mountains, and Charley grew very nervous, 
and believed that John was lost or dead. The 
fog must have awakened the owls, for they 
began to hoot in all directions, and for poor 
Charley this added to the horror of the occa- 
sion. He slipped up to Uncle Jim, and asked 
in a whisper what animals were making that 
noise, and when Uncle Jim, after straightening 
his back and listening for a minute, said that 
it sounded to him like wolves, Charley was 
ready to faint. He edged nearer and nearer to 
the shanty; and when from a thick hemlock, 
almost over them, a big owl hooted, Charley 
fled precipitately, and not until broad daylight 
next morning, when John had returned, could he 
be induced to come out. John had been lost in 
the fog, but had spent the night very comfort- 
ably sleeping among the hogs in a pen made of 
bark and open at both ends. These pens were 
made by the settlers, who fattened their hogs 
on the beechnuts when the crop was plentiful. 
John had gathered enough beechnuts during the 
day to keep him nibbling during the time he lay 
awake, and he had suffered from neither cold 
nor hunger; in fact, he had rather enjoyed the 
night. His only game was a very large and fat 
’coon that he had found lying sunning itself on 
a short limb of a large hollow stub. 
That night in camp Jake stirred the blood of 
the party by telling of an adventure that had be- 
fallen him while ’coon hunting many years be- 
fore. His dog had treed a ’coon one dark night 
