I’d land on the hard ground.”
“You wouldn’t mind if you were a squirrel,” said Jimmy.
“But I’m not a squirrel,” protested Randy.
Jimmy quickly explained. “What I meant to say is that a gray squirrel doesn’t mind landing on the hard ground. Sometimes he falls fifty feet from a tree without getting hurt. You know why? His bushy tail acts like a parachute and breaks his fall.”
Mr. Moore was listening. “That’s true, son. Where did you learn that?”
“Miss Wilson at the library told me. She knows a lot about nature, and she picks out good books for me to read. I also read about a gray squirrel in one of Grandpa’s books. When he died, he left all his nature books to me, Randy.”
“I’d like to see them,” said Randy.
“I’ll show them to you, maybe tonight,” answered Jimmy. “Are we going to start now to build the floor for Hidden Lookout, Dad?”
Before Mr. Moore had a chance to answer the lunch bell rang, and they all climbed down the ladder in a hurry. The boys raced each other to the house.
“We’re starved, Mom,” said Jimmy as he rushed into the kitchen with Randy.
Mrs. Moore laughed. “That’s nothing new. Now go and wash your hands, fellows, before you sit down to the table.”
No time was lost doing this, and soon the boys were eating what they thought was the most delicious lunch they had ever tasted—milk and ham-burgers with tomatoes and relish on them. After that they hurried back to the oak tree where they proudly examined their morning’s work and waited for Mr. Moore to show them the second step in building their tree house.
At last they saw him coming. He stopped a few moments outside his workshop and then, taking long strides, continued to the oak tree.
The boys were so glad to see him that they grinned from ear to ear.
“I’m sure happy you’re on vacation, Dad,” said Jimmy, “because we don’t know what to do next.”
“No, we don’t,” chimed in Randy, wondering how the floor boards were going to be laid. He soon found out that some boards were long enough to go across the whole foundation. Others needed to be sawed off to short lengths so that they could be nailed to the stringers.
Randy had never used a saw before. As a result he had a big blister on one finger at the end of the day. He did not complain, though. A tree house was worth it, he told himself. Besides, he was learning to be a carpenter.
The next morning the boys with Mr. Moore’s help nailed the floor boards to the foundation.
By afternoon they started work on the railing and the roof for their house. This took several days to finish. First the boys sawed ten pieces of two-by-four’s (posts that are two inches thick and four inches wide). After nailing them to the floor, they sawed more wood until they had enough pieces for the railing. Once these were nailed in place, they built a flat roof over one end of the house. Two stringers were nailed to the posts for the roof, and boards were laid lengthwise and nailed down to the stringers. Then the boys camouflaged the railing with branches and leaves. The branches were nailed in such a way that between their leaves there were peepholes for the boys to look through.
Now Jimmy and Randy stood at the foot of the giant oak tree and looked up at their house. Mr. Moore was with them.
“It’s a fine tree house,” he said. “Before we call it finished, we had better add two supports from the foundation to the tree so that your house will be solid. You’ve done a good job building Hidden Lookout.”
“Thanks, Dad. We couldn’t have built it without your help.” Jimmy rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “I can hardly wait for tonight to come. The red fox and other animals will never see us in Hidden Lookout because it does look like a squirrel’s summer nest, except that it’s much bigger.”
Randy agreed. He felt as proud as Jimmy did of their camouflaged tree house. There was one thing that bothered him, though. He dreaded sleeping there.
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