Young Hunters of the Lake

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

FOUR LIVELY BOYS

"Boys, I'm going swimming. Who is going along?"

"Count me in, Snap," answered Shep Reed.

"Swimming?" came from a third youth of the crowd of four. "Why, you couldn't keep me away if you tried. I've been waiting for a swim for about eleven years——-"

"And a day," broke in a small, stout youth. "Don't forget the day,
Whopper, if you want to be really truthful.

"All right, put in the day," cheerfully assented the lad called Whopper, because of his propensity to exaggerate when speaking. "Of course you'll go, too, Giant?" he added, questioningly.

"Will I?" answered the small youth. "Will a duck swim and a cow eat clover? To be sure I'll go. But I'll have to run home first and tell mother."

"I'll have to go home, too," said the lad called Snap. "But I can be back here in a quarter of an hour."

"Where shall we go?" asked Shep Reed.

"I was thinking of going up to Lane's Cove," answered Snap Dodge.

"Lane's Cove!" cried the smallest youth of the crowd.

"Yes. Isn't that a nice place?"

"Sure it is, but don't you know that Ham Spink's father has bought all the land around there?"

"What of that, Giant?"

"Maybe he won't let us go swimming on his property—-because of the trouble we had with Ham."

"Oh, I don't believe he'll see us," came from the boy called Whopper. "Why, I've been swimming at the cove a thousand times, and nobody ever tried to stop me."

"If he orders us away we can go," said Shep Reed. "I know he is just mean enough to do it."

"Is Ham home yet?" asked one of the boys.

"No, but I heard he was going to come home as soon as that boarding school shut up for the summer."

"Wonder if he'll try to make more trouble?"

"If he does he'd better watch out, or he'll get into hot water," said Shep Reed; and then the boys separated, to get their swimming outfits and tell their folks what they proposed to do.

The boys lived in the town of Fairview, a country place, located on the Rocky River, about ten miles above a fine sheet of water called Lake Cameron. The town boasted of a score of stores, several churches, a hotel, and a neat railroad station at which, during the summer months, as high as ten trains stopped daily. On the outskirts of the town were a saw mill, a barrel factory, and several other industries.

To those who have read the two former books in this series, entitled, "Four Boy Hunters" and "Guns and Snowshoes," the lads getting ready for a swim will need no special introduction. The lad called Snap was Charley Dodge, the son of one of the most influential men of that neighborhood, who was a school trustee and also part owner of the saw mill and a large summer hotel. Charley was a brave and wide-awake youth and was often looked up to as a leader by the others. Where his nickname of Snap had originated it would be hard to say, although he was as full of snap and ginger as a shad is full of bones.

Sheppard Reed, always called Shep for short, was the son of a well-known physician, a boy who loved outdoor life, and one who was as strong as he was handsome....