Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/92

 medals for bravery ought not to go to Richard Cœur de Lion and his convincing curtal-axe. For, although we were handicapped by a lack of palms and a Moslem host, we more than made up in scenic effects by doing a vaudeville turn on skates in a realm where the average Saracen would quit his religion for an opportunity to steal coal. "Dear, dear! ain't I the rambler, though! To hark back to the main trail, it was at the tail end of our visit at the Swamp House that Tib tried to figure out how a Hudson Bay stage-setting could be reproduced in a United States exposition without melting. He had just proclaimed that artificial snow-storms and cold-storage atmosphere were easy, and he was wrestling with the tough problem of how to produce an ice-covered lake, when the talk took a flying switch to skating, and MacGully, the factor, suggested:

"‘If you want to combine pleasure and business, why not walk a mile over to Fried Fish River and skate up to Spoon Lake? The river is one smooth glare, and, besides the sport, you could visit the Spoon Lake House, long since abandoned as a living-post, but sometimes used for storage purposes. It belongs to the company and has the happy reputation of being haunted. Happy, because it keeps the half-breeds and Indians at a distance and we don't have to police it. The last