Guns and Snowshoes Or, the Winter Outing of the Young Hunters

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCING FOUR BOYS

"Hurrah, boys, it's snowing at last! Aren't you glad?"

"Glad? You bet I'm glad, Snap! Why I've been watching for this storm for about six months!"

"There you go, Whopper!" answered Charley Dodge, with a grin. "Six months indeed! Why, we haven't been home six months."

"Well, it seems that long anyway," said Frank Dawson, who was usually called Whopper by his chums, because of his exaggerations when speaking. "I've just been aching to see it snow."

"So that we can take that trip we proposed," put in Sheppard Reed, quickly. "I guess we are all waiting for that."

"I am anyway," came from Will Caslette, the smallest lad of the four, who had gathered at their usual meeting place in the town where they resided. "Our camping out last summer was immense. If only we have half as much fun this winter!"

"We will have, Giant," broke in the boy called Whopper. "Didn't I tell you I was going to bring down sixteen deer, twenty bears, two hundred wild turkeys, a boatload of wolves, and—"

"Phew, Whopper! Every time you name 'em over the list gets longer!" cried Charley Dodge. "If you bring down so much game there won't be anything left for other hunters."

"Well, I'll leave you a bear or two," said Whopper cheerfully.

"Thanks awfully."

"Leave me one lone wild turkey, Whopper dear," came mournfully from
Shep Reed.

"Say, if you're going to talk like that I won't leave anything," burst out Frank.

"Whopper may bring down all the game, but I'll wager he can't throw a snowball as straight as I can," said Charley, taking up some snow. "See that spot on the fence yonder? Here goes for it!"

The snowball was launched forth with swiftness and with a thud struck the spot directly in the center.

"Hurrah! A bull's-eye for Snap!"

"Humph! I can do that too!" cried Whopper, and forthwith proceeded to make a good hard snowball. Then he took aim, let drive, and the ball landed directly on the top of the one Charley had thrown.

"Good for you, Whopper!" said Charley enthusiastically.

"Ah, I could do that a thousand times in succession," answered the youth given to exaggeration, coolly. "Why, don't you know that one day there were six Tom cats on a fence and I took a snowball and hit 'em all?"

"What, with one snowball?" queried the little lad called Giant.

"Sure thing, Giant."

"But how?"

"Why, I made the snowball bounce from the head of one Tom cat to the head of the next," answered Whopper, unabashed.

"Well, if that isn't the worst yet!" roared Shep. "Say, we ought to roll Whopper in the snow for that!"

"Right you are!" cried Snap. "Come on!"

"Hi! hold on!" yelled Whopper in alarm, but before he could resist he was landed on his back in the snow, and the others proceeded to roll him over "good," as Shep expressed it. The rolling process at an end, a general snowball fight ensued between all of the boys, and also several others who chanced to be passing.

The scene was the town of Fairview, a place containing a main street and also another thoroughfare running to the tidy little railroad depot, where eight trains stopped daily....