Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains

The weather had grown exceedingly cold again and the logs were piled high on the fire. As the boys basked in the heat that was radiated into the room, some one said: "What a pity it is to waste all the heat that is going off up the chimney! It would run an engine."

"So it would," said the Doctor, "but that is what all the world is constantly doing. The wood that we have burned since supper would supply a French or Italian house with fire for a month at least."

"But how?" asked Jack. "Surely wood burns up as fast in France or Italy as it does here."

"Of course. But the French and Italians – especially the Italians – have very little wood, and they use it very sparingly. When they make an open fire it is made of sticks about eight or ten inches long, very small and usually consisting of round wood. They rarely have a split stick, because they never cut down a tree, or if they do they use every part of it that is bigger than your wrist for some kind of lumber useful in the arts."

"But if they don't cut down trees," asked Harry, "how do they get any wood at all?"

"They have very few trees," answered the Doctor, "and instead of cutting them down they trim off the branches from time to time and make fire wood of them, utilizing every particle, even down to the smallest twigs, which they cut into eight inch lengths and tie up in bundles for use in boiling their soup kettles. In some parts of Southern California," continued the Doctor, "they get their fire wood in the same way, though they do not have to bother with the little twigs, as tree growth is enormously rapid in that winter-less climate. At San Bernardino I have seen many houses standing in large grounds, with a row of cottonwood trees all around at the edge of the sidewalk. I have often seen these trees with every limb cut off close to the stem of the tree – not more than a few feet from it at farthest. In that way the owner gets his fire wood – he doesn't need much of it – for three years to come. The trees thus pollarded quickly put out a host of new branches and as these grow rapidly in a climate that has no winter, they are ready to be cut again three years later."

"But if trees grow so rapidly there," asked Tom, "how is it that there are no woodlands there?"

"Because it is a rainless region. It is a desert simply for a lack of water, and when men build reservoirs up in the mountains and bring water down in irrigating ditches that desert literally blossoms like a rose. The soil is as rich as any down in our valleys and creek low grounds here, and as there is no winter every living thing grows all the year round. At Riverside, for example, you find a luxuriance of growth unmatched anywhere in these mountains. Eucalyptus trees border all the roads, towering to great heights. Back of them are orange and lemon groves and still further back vast vineyards in which the stumps of the vines – for they are cut back to a stump every year, to make them bear – are from four to six inches in diameter, so that they need no stakes to support them as vines do here. Often also there are rows of luxuriant pepper trees flourishing in the middle of the road. In short, you can nowhere on earth except in swamps, find a more luxuriant riot of vegetation than at Riverside. Yet until men made reservoirs and ditches and brought water down there from the mountains the ground that now supports all this splendid growth was as bare as the palm of your hand, and when you drive out of Riverside in any direction, you come instantly to an absolute desert, without even a weed growing on it, the moment you pass beyond the line of irrigating ditches."

"Is there much land of that sort?" asked Jack, "land that is fertile I mean in itself, but is desert because of a lack of water?"

"Millions of acres of it, though much of it has already been redeemed by irrigation. General Sherman once said that when he first crossed the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys he could have bought the whole of them for twenty-five cents, and in fact would not have given a penny for both. Yet to-day those valleys are the most productive wheat fields in the world, not even excepting Minnesota and the Dakotas. In a single year they have been known to furnish fifty million bushels of wheat for export, after feeding the Pacific coast fat."

"But is there always water to be had for irrigating purposes?" asked Jack, who was becoming intensely interested.

"Practically, yes," the Doctor answered. "That is a country of vast mountain ranges, all the way from the Rockies to the sea, with great valleys and plains lying between. It is almost always raining or snowing in the mountains, and indeed the tops of the higher ranges are nearly always snow clad, even in summer. I remember once crossing the Utah desert, which lies between the Rocky mountains proper and the Wassach range. There is no sand or gravel there, but only a singularly rich soil, barren for lack of rain alone. During the entire trip across we were never for one minute out of sight of either a snow storm or a rain storm some where in the mountains that surround the desert. Obviously enough water falls in the mountains to make of that desert the very garden spot of America when ever men take measures to store the water and bring it down to the desert lands below. The Mormons, who have made a rich farming region in this way out of the desert west of the Wassach range, have already begun doing this on the eastern side in a limited way. At Pleasant Valley they have brought water down from the mountains and made gardens that are a delight to the eye and mind. They grow there the finest black Hamburg grapes in the world. But neither that nor any other of the great deserts can be redeemed entirely until either the government or some great company able to spend money by scores of millions shall undertake the work in a systematic way, selling water rights with every farm. Of course no farmer can provide a water supply for himself from mountains twenty miles away, but if a great company or the government would catch and store the water and sell the right to use it to each farmer, as is done in parts of Southern California, the major part of what used to be called 'the great American desert' would soon become the great American garden. Of course the alkali deserts of Nevada and worse still, the arid, sandy, gravelly, soilless plains of Arizona and New Mexico can never be reclaimed in that way. But the regions that are barren only because they get no rain, can be redeemed and very certainly will be when this country becomes so crowded with population that every acre of arable land will be needed."

"But isn't this country pretty badly crowded already?" asked Tom.

"Crowded? No," answered the Doctor. "It is very sparsely settled instead. This country has a population of only twenty people to the square mile, while Belgium has 529 and England 540 to the square mile. Long before we fill up to any such extent as that all our arid lands that are fit for cultivation will be watered from the mountains, and regions where now even a cactus cannot grow will produce wheat, corn, cattle and fruits in lavish abundance. But I say, boys, we've talked till after eleven o'clock. This will never do; let's get to bed."

CHAPTER XXVII

Some Features of the Situation

Every morning Tom "prowled," as he put it, all around the camp, "just to see how things are," he said.

Two mornings after the talk reported in the last chapter Tom found, out under the bluff, a big bag of rye meal or rather of rye coarsely ground for whiskey making purposes. He dragged it over the hard snow to camp and opened it. In its mouth he found a piece of paper and written upon it in rude letters was the following:

Tom called all the boys into conference before deciding what to do with this present. He said to them:

"Bill's ideas of morality are somewhat confused. In his eagerness to render me some return for my act in letting him go back to his 'little gal' on parole, he wanted to give me the meal I brought to camp the other morning. It never occurred to him that as the meal didn't belong to him, he had no right to give it to me, and all I could say to him was utterly futile as an effort to make him take a moral or rational view of the case. Now I am seriously afraid our friend Bill stole this rye meal. That would perfectly fit in with his ideas of morality, gratitude and all that sort of thing. Still we don't know that he did steal it. After all I did pay him a double price for the meal we got, and possibly he has applied part of the surplus payment to the purchase of this additional supply from his criminal friends the distillers. After all I have no means of knowing that he ever paid the original owners of that first meal any part of the money that I gave him for it. He couldn't see at the time why he shouldn't steal it for me, and so he may have stolen this."

"Well," said the Doctor, "you honestly paid him for the former supply of meal, insisting that you wouldn't take it at all unless you paid for it. He understands that perfectly. He has a sufficient sense of honesty now to bring you an additional bag on the ground that you paid an excessive price for the former supply and that he wants to make it 'skwar.' I don't see how we can go behind that, especially as we cannot possibly return the meal either to him or to its owners if he stole it. Our only option is to eat the stuff or take it back out there to the foot of the bluff and leave it there to rot."

After some further discussion it was decided to eat the rye meal as practically the only thing that could be done with it.

One week later another bag of meal – corn meal this time – was found out under the bluff, but with it came no explanation of any kind. Thus the bread supply in Camp Venture was made secure for a time at least, and for a meat supply the guns did all that was necessary – especially Tom's gun, for Tom spent many of his hours wandering over the mountains in search of game, and Tom rarely sought game in vain.

It was coming on to be March now, and the weather had greatly moderated. The snow was melting off the mountains and the spring rains were falling freely.

"Our meal will run out before long," said the Doctor one night, "but the time is near at hand when we can send a boy down the mountain to bring up a pack mule with some supplies."

"Indeed you can't," said Tom.

"But why not?" asked the Doctor.

"Simply because there are some mountain torrents in the way, that no human being could pass, even if he had one of your big steamships to help him in the crossing."

"But I saw no mountain torrents on our way up," said the Doctor.

"Certainly not," answered Tom, "for they weren't mountain torrents then, but the dry beds of streams. But now it is different. It would be as impossible now for us to 'git down out'n the mountings' as to fly to the moon – unless we went down over the cliffs there, following the chute. And of course we couldn't bring a pack mule up that way. No, we've got to stick it out and live on what we can get till our work is done, and then – as the spring is coming on and the way is blocked by the torrents of which I spoke, – we've got to make our way over the cliffs down there by the chute, for we simply cannot get down the mountain by the way we came."

"How do you know this, Tom?" asked Harry.

"Why, I've tried it. You see any road down the mountain that furnishes an easy way is sure to be crossed by creeks that are dry in the summer and fall, but raging whirlpools when spring melts the snow and sends millions of gallons of water every minute down the steep inclines. I count myself a strong swimmer. But I could no more swim across one of those sluiceways than I could climb up a sunbeam to the rainbow. I tell you we can get nothing from down below now, and I tell you that we can't ourselves go down the mountain by the way by which we came up, for two or three months to come."

"What are we to do, then, Tom?" asked the Doctor.

"Well, first, we're to feed ourselves as best we can till we've finished our work; and then we're to go down the mountain on its steep side along the chute. That will involve a great deal of toil and some danger. We shall have to let ourselves down over cliffs by hanging on to bushes, with the certainty that if the bushes give way we shall be dashed to pieces on the rocks below. But that's the only way we can get down the mountain unless we are willing to wait for summer."

"Well, the question is not an immediately pressing one," said Jack. "We've got a lot of work ahead of us yet, and we've got plenty of game and plenty of bread stuffs in camp."

"Plenty of game, yes," said the Doctor. "But as for bread stuffs, I don't think we have more than a peck or so left."

The next morning Tom, in his "prowlings" found two big bags of corn and rye meal lying there under the bluff. "It's a case of bread cast upon the waters returning to us after many days," said Tom.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The Capture of Camp Venture

Tom had miscalculated the weather, misled as every body is apt to be by the calendar. As he had not at all anticipated, the softness of early March presently gave way to a severe cold wave, which not only put an end to the spring rains, but stopped the melting of the snow upon the mountains and dried up those torrents that had alone blocked the way down the mountain since the great snowdrift barriers had disappeared.

"I take it all back, fellows," he said, one night. "I didn't look for such weather as this in March. But any how any fellow in the party can go down the mountain now. Whether he ever gets back again or not is a question not easily determined. A very little thaw would make that impossible."

"My view," said the Doctor, "is that we'd better not risk it. This cold weather simply cannot last long at this season of the year, and we can't spare any boy from our company. We have two bags of meal in camp – enough to last us three or four weeks – and of course Tom's gun will provide us with meat. It seems to me it would be exceedingly unwise to send any one of our number down the mountain and not only unwise but wholly unnecessary. What do you think, boys?"

Every boy in the party shared the Doctor's opinion, and so it was decided not to send one of the company down the mountain at this time, although the weather conditions were especially favorable for the moment at least. They proved also to be favorable to something else.

Just before daylight the next morning Jim, who was on guard, quitted his post and came hurriedly into the house. He waked his comrades, saying:

"Get up quickly, boys, and get your guns. The moonshiners have completely surrounded Camp Venture."

Ten seconds later all the boys were out on the platform, fully armed. It was still too dark to see men even at a short distance, but low voices could be heard in every direction round the camp. The boys themselves consulted only in whispers.

Jack took command, of course.

"Don't shoot, boys, even if they shoot at us," he said. "They can do little damage that way, as we have this wooden barrier to stop their bullets. What we've got to look out for is a rush, and we must reserve our fire to repel that with."

"Hadn't some of us better go to the rear of the house?" asked Harry. "They may rush us from that direction."

"No," answered Jack. "There's no opening to the house on that side; and we have no barrier there to fight behind. If they attack from that direction we must fight from inside the house. Suppose you go in Harry and knock out three or four pieces of chinking about breast high, so as to give us a port hole to fire through. Keep a keen look out through the crack, and if they advance from that direction call us at once. But don't any of you shoot, front or rear, till they make a rush."