Buch lesen: «The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows»

CHAPTER I
The Winter Manitou

The snow was falling in heavy slashing sheets, and a December snowstorm in the New Hampshire hills means something more serious than a storm in city streets or even an equal downfall upon more level meadows and plains.

Yet on this winter afternoon, about an hour before twilight and along the base of a hill where a rough road wandered between tall cedar and pine trees and low bushes and shrubs, there sounded continually above the snow’s silencing two voices, sometimes laughing, occasionally singing a brief line or so, but more often talking. Accompanying them always was a steady jingling of bells.

“We simply can’t get there to-night, Princess,” one of the voices protested, still with a questioning note as though hardly believing in its own assertion.

“We simply can’t do anything else, my child” the other answered teasingly. “Have you ever thought how much harder it is to travel backward in this world than forward, otherwise I suppose we should have had eyes placed in the back of our heads and our feet would have turned around the other way? Don’t be frightened, there really isn’t the least danger.”

Then there was a sudden swish of a whip cutting the cold air and with a fresh tinkling of bells the shaggy pony plunged ahead. Five minutes afterwards with an instinctive stiffening of his forelegs he started sliding slowly down a steep embankment, where the road apparently ended, dragging his load behind him and only stopping on finally reaching the low ground and finding his sleigh had overturned.

For a while the unusual stillness was oppressive. But a little later there followed a movement and then an unsteady voice calling, “Steady, Fire Star,” as a tall girl in a gray hood and coat covered all over with snow came crawling forth from the uppermost side of the sleigh and immediately began pulling at it with trembling hands.

“Princess, Princess, please speak or move! Oh, it is all my fault. I should never have let you attempt it; I am the older and even – ”

A little smothered sound and a slight disturbance under an immense fur rug interrupted her: “I can’t speak, Esther, until I get some of this snow out of my mouth and I can’t move until this grocery store is lifted off me. I’m – I’m the under side of things; there are ten pounds of sugar and a sack of flour and all the week’s camping supplies between me and the gay world.” A break in the cheerful tones ended these words and there was no further stirring, but Esther Clark failed to notice this, as she first lifted the rug which had almost covered up Betty Ashton and then helped her to sit upright, looking more of a Snow Princess than even the weather justified. For all about her there were small mounds of sugar and flour white as the snow itself and dissolving like dew. While Betty’s seal cap and coat were encrusted in ice and the snow hung from her brows and lashes, indeed her face, usually so brilliantly colored, was now almost as pale.

Esther was again tugging at the overturned sleigh trying to set it upright, the pony waiting motionless except for turning his head as if with the suggestion that matters be hurried along.

“I could manage a great deal better, Betty, if you would help me,” Esther protested a little indignantly. “I know the girls at Sunrise cabin are getting dreadfully worried over our being so late in arriving at home.”

Betty shivered. “I am getting a bit worried myself,” she agreed, “and I might as well confess to you, Esther, that I haven’t the faintest idea where we are, nor how far from the village or our camp. This snow has completely mixed me up; and I haven’t sprained my ankle, of course, or broken it or done anything quite so silly, but my foot does hurt most awfully and I know I never can stand up on it again and – and – if I wasn’t a Camp Fire girl about to be made a Torch Bearer I’d like to weep and weep until I melted away into a beautiful iceberg.” And then in spite of her brave fooling Betty did blink and choke, but only for an instant, for the sight of her companion’s face made her smile again.

“The runner of our sleigh has snapped in two,” Esther next announced in accents of despair after having partially dragged the sleigh upright, although one runner still remained imbedded several inches deeper than the other in the drift of snow which had caused their disaster.

Betty held up both hands. “I believe it never rains but it pours,” she said a little mockingly; “but what about the snow? I am sorry I was so obstinate, dear. It is nice to be sorry when the deed is done, isn’t it? I suppose I should never have attempted driving back to Sunrise Hill on such an evening, but then we did need our groceries so terribly in camp and I was afraid nobody would bring them to-morrow. And, well, as I have gotten you into this scrape I must get you out of it.”

So by clinging with both hands to Esther, Betty Ashton, by sheer force of will, did manage to rise on the one sound foot and then putting the injured one on the ground she stood wavering for a second. “I’m thinking, Esther, so please don’t interrupt me for a moment,” she gasped as soon as she found breath. “I can’t but feel that this is our first real emergency since we started our camp fire in the woods this winter. If we only are able to get out of it successfully, why – why, won’t Polly be envious?”

Betty Ashton was so plainly talking at the present instant to gain time that the older girl did not pay the slightest attention to her; instead, she was thinking herself. Of course she or Betty could mount their pony and ride off somewhere to look for help, but then Esther had no fancy for being left alone in a snow-storm in a part of the country which she did not know in its present aspect and certainly under the circumstances she had no intention of leaving Betty to the same fate.

Imagination, however, was never one of Esther Clark’s strong points, although fortunately for them both now and in later years it was always a gift of the other girl’s.

“Better let me sit down again,” Betty suggested, letting go of her clasp on her friend; “and will you unhitch Fire Star and lead her here to me. Somehow I think it best for us to manage to get back on the road and find some sort of shelter up there under the trees until the worst of this storm is past.”

With Betty to think and Esther to accomplish, things usually moved swiftly. So five minutes later, half leading and half being led by the pony, Esther climbed the embankment on foot with Betty riding and clinging with both arms about Fire Star’s neck. Under a pine tree partly protected from the wind and snow by scrub pines growing only a few feet away, the girls found a temporary refuge. There they remained sheltered by the fur rug which Esther brought back on her second trip. The pony safely covered over with his own blanket stood hitched under another tree a short distance away.

Nevertheless, half an hour of waiting found the two girls shivering uncomfortably under their rug and losing courage with every passing moment, for the storm had not abated in the least and Betty was really suffering agonies with her foot, although she had removed her shoe, bathed her ankle in snow and bound it up in her own and Esther’s pocket handkerchiefs.

“Esther,” she said rather irritably, after a fresh paroxysm of pain had left her almost exhausted, “don’t you think that, as we have been Camp Fire girls living in the woods for the past six months, even though conditions do seem trying, we ought to do something and not just sit here in this limp fashion and be snowed under?”

Esther nodded, but made no sort of suggestion. She was so cold and worried about Betty that she hadn’t an idea in her mind save the haunting fear that if they continued long in their present situation they might actually be turned into icebergs.

However, Betty promptly gave her a pinch that was realistic enough to be felt in spite of all her frozenness. “Wake up, Esther, dear, and if you are really so cold, child, just warm yourself by your nose, it certainly is red enough. Now as you girls have always said I dearly loved to boss, please, won’t you let me be general of this expedition and you do what I say since I am too lame to help?”

Again Esther nodded. She generally had done whatever Betty Ashton had asked of her since the day of her coming to the great Ashton homestead in Woodford a little more than half a year before. But as Betty outlined her plan Esther grew interested and in half a moment jumping up began stamping her feet and swinging her arms to get the warmth and vigor back into her body.

“Why, Betty Ashton, of course we can manage even to stay here in the woods all night and not have such a horrid time! It won’t be so difficult, I’ll have things fixed in the least little while.”

A short time afterwards and Esther had brought up from their broken sleigh a portion of the precious grocery supplies which she and Betty had driven into Woodford early that afternoon to obtain – a can of coffee, crackers, a side of bacon and, most welcome of all, a bundle of kindling tied as neatly together as toothpicks. For several weeks of having to gather wood out of doors, oftentimes in the snow and rain, and then drying it under cover, had made an occasional supply of kindling from the shops in town extremely grateful to the camp fire makers. Fortunately, Betty had filled the last remaining space in their sleigh with kindling wood before starting back to camp.

And in Esther’s several absences she had been diligently preparing a place for a fire, first by scooping away the snow with her hands and then by scraping it with a three-pronged stick which she had found nearby.

However, a fire in the snow was not easy to start even by a Camp Fire girl, so that fifteen minutes must have passed and an entire box of matches been consumed before the paper collected from about their packages had persuaded even the kindling to light. And then by infinite patience and coaxing, wet pine twigs and cones were added to the fire until finally the larger logs, discovered under the surrounding trees, also blazed into heat and light.

And while Betty was cherishing the fire, Esther managed to make a partial canopy over their heads with brushwood.

There are but few things in this world though that do not take a longer time to accomplish than we at first expect and require a longer patience. So that when the two girls had finally arranged their temporary winter shelter, the twilight had come down and both of them were extremely weary. Nevertheless, the most wonderful coffee was made with melted snow in the tin can, bacon sliced and fried with the knife no Camp Fire girl fails to carry and the crackers toasted into a smoky but delicious brown. And then when supper was over Betty crept close to Esther under their rug resting her head on her shoulder.

“No one knows where we are to-night, Esther, so no one will worry. The girls will think we stayed in town on account of the storm and our friends in the village that we are now safe back in Sunrise cabin. So do let us make the best of things,” she whispered. “To-night, at least, we are real Camp Fire girls from necessity and not choice, and I believe I can better understand why our ancestors once used to worship the fire as the symbol of home. Then, too, I am glad we chose the pine trees for our refuge. I wonder if you know this legend? When Mary was in flight to Egypt to save our Lord from Herod, she stopped beneath a pine tree and rested there safe from her enemies in a green chamber filled with its balsamy fragrance, the tree proving its love for the Christ Child by lowering its limbs when Herod’s soldiers passed by. And then when the Baby raised its hand to bless the tree, it so marked it that when the pine cone is cut lengthwise it shows the form of a hand – the hand of Christ.”

With the telling of her story Betty’s voice was sinking lower and lower, and as her cheeks were now so flushed with her nearness to the fire and with fever from the pain in her foot, Esther hoped she might soon fall asleep. So she made no reply, but instead began singing the “Good-Night Song” of the Camp Fire girls which has been set to the beautiful old melody “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.” And though she began very softly, meaning her song to reach only Betty’s ears, by and by forgetting herself in the pleasure her music always brought her, she let her voice increase in power, until the final notes could have been heard some distance through the woods and even a little way up the hill which stood like a solid white wall before them. The snow had stopped falling and the wind had died down, but the coldness and the stillness were therefore the more profound.

 
“The sun is sinking in the west,
The evening shadows fall;
Across the silence of the lake
We hear the loon’s low call.
So let us, too, the silence keep,
And softly steal away,
To rest and sleep until the morn
Brings forth another day.”
 

“Betty, Betty!” Instead of allowing her friend to sleep Esther began shaking her nervously only a few moments after the closing of her song.

And Betty started suddenly, giving a little cry of pain and surprise, for evidently she had been dreaming and found it hard to come back to so strange a reality. Here she and Esther were alone in the winter woods not many miles from shelter and yet unable to find it, while she had been dreaming of herself as a poor half-frozen waif somewhere out in a city street listening to strains of music, which were not of Esther’s song but of some instrument. The girl rubbed her eyes and laughed.

“Dear me, Esther, it’s too cold to sleep, isn’t it? Let us put some more wood on our fire and stay awake and talk. I think the Winter Manitou, Peboan, must have been visiting me with the wind playing the strings of his harp, for I have just dreamed I was listening to music.”

“You didn’t dream it; I wasn’t asleep and I heard it also. There, listen!”

The two girls caught hold of one another’s hands and silently they stared ahead of them through the opening in their curious, Esquimaux-like tent. Could anything be more improbable and yet without doubt the notes of a violin could be heard approaching nearer and nearer.

Transfixed with surprise and pleasure Esther kept still but Betty, who in spite of her whims was a really practical person, shook her head in a somewhat annoyed fashion. “It is perfectly absurd you know, Esther, for any human being to be strolling through the New Hampshire woods on a winter’s night playing the violin. We are not in Germany or the Alps or in a story book. But if it really is a person and not the Spirit of Winter, as I still believe, why he might as well help us out of our difficulty. I don’t feel so romantic as I did an hour or so ago.”

At this instant a dim figure did appear around a turn in the road where the girls had previously met disaster and putting her cold fingers to her lips Betty cried “Halloo, Halloo,” in as loud a voice as possible and at the same time seizing one of their burning logs she waved it as a signal of distress.

CHAPTER II
“Sunrise Cabin”

“Ach, gnädige Fräuleins, it ist not possible.”

“No, I know it isn’t,” Betty returned with her most demure expression, although there were little sparks of light at the back of her gray-blue eyes. She rose stiffly from the ground with Esther’s assistance and stood leaning on her arm, while both girls without trying to hide their astonishment surveyed a middle aged, shabbily dressed German with his violin case under one arm and his violin under the other.

“I haf been visiting the Orphan Asylum in this neighborhood where I haf friends,” he explained. “I am in Woodford only a few days now and after supper when the storm is over I start back to town. Then I thought I heard some one singing, calling, perhaps it is you?” He looked only at Betty, since in the semi-darkness with the fire as a background it was difficult to distinguish but one object at a time and that only by concentrated attention. But as she shook her head he turned toward Esther.

“When I hear the singing I play my violin, thinking if some one was lost in these hills I may find them.”

But Esther was not thinking of her discoverer, only of what he had said. “Do you mean we are really not far from the Country Orphan Asylum?” she asked incredulously. “And actually I have gotten lost in a neighborhood where I have spent most of my life! It is the snow that has made things seem so strange and different!” Turning to Betty she forgot for a moment the presence of the stranger. “I’ll find my way to the asylum right off and bring some one here to mend our sleigh and give poor little Fire Star something to eat. I don’t believe we are more than two miles from Sunrise Camp.”

However, Betty was by this time attempting to make their situation clearer to the newcomer. She pointed toward their sleigh at the bottom of the gully and their pony under the tree and told him of camp fires and grocery supplies to be carried to Sunrise cabin, until out of the chaos these facts at least became clear to his mind – the girls had lost their way in the storm and because of Betty’s injured ankle and the broken vehicle, had been unable to make their way home.

At about the same hour of this same evening, two other young women were walking slowly up and down in front of a log house in a clearing near the base of a hill, with their arms intertwined about each other’s shoulder. Outside the closed front door of the house a lighted lantern swung. From the inside other lights shone through the windows, while every now and then a face appeared and a finger beckoned toward the sentinels outside. Nevertheless, they continued their unbroken marching, only stopping now and then to stare out across the snow-covered landscape.

“They simply have not tried to attempt it, Polly; it is foolish for you to be so worried,” one of the voices said.

But her companion, whose long black hair was hanging loose to her waist and who wore a long red cape and a red woolen cap giving her a curiously fantastic appearance, only shook her head decisively.

“You can’t know the Princess as well as I do, Rose, or you would never believe she would give up having her own way. She went into town when the rest of us thought it unwise and she will come back, frozen, starved, goodness only knows what, still come back she will. Poor Esther is but wax in her hands. I wonder if anything happens to break the Princess’ will whatever will become of her?”

The other girl sighed and her friend gazed at her sympathetically but a little curiously.

“Betty will bear disappointment just as the rest of the world does,” she answered, “filling her life with what she can have. But I do wish she and Esther would come back to camp now, or at least send us some word. The storm has been over for several hours and none of us will be able to sleep to-night on account of the uncertainty.”

With one of her characteristic movements Polly O’Neill now moved swiftly away from the speaker. “I am going to ring our emergency bell if you are willing, Rose,” she announced. “Oh, I know we Camp Fire girls hate to appeal to outsiders for aid, but it’s got to be done for once, for I simply can’t stand this suspense about Betty and Esther any longer.” Then without waiting for an answer, she ran toward the back yard of the cabin and an instant later the loud clanging of a bell startled the peace and quiet of the country night, but only for a moment, because before the second pull at the bell rope Polly felt her arm being held fast.

“Don’t ring again, Polly, or at least not yet,” her companion insisted, “for I am almost sure I can see a dark object coming this way along our road and there’s a chance of its being Betty and Esther.”

Ten minutes later the front door of the Sunrise cabin was suddenly burst open and out into the snow piled half a dozen other girls in as many varieties of heavy blanket wrappers. The music of Fire Star’s sleigh bells had reached their ears several moments before the arrival of the wayfarers.

However, very soon afterwards, following a suggestion of Sylvia Wharton’s, Betty Ashton was borne into the cabin, four of the girls carrying her on a light canvas cot. This they set down before their big fire glowing in the center of the living room of the Sunrise cabin – Sunrise cabin which had not existed even in the dreams of the Sunrise Camp Fire girls until one afternoon in September not four months ago. Esther, with Mollie O’Neill’s arm about her, walked into the cabin on foot, since she was only stiff with fatigue and cold. However, on throwing herself back in a big arm chair and allowing her shoes to be changed by Mollie for slippers, she seemed more affected, by their adventure than Betty.

For Betty, in Princess fashion, with Polly, Sylvia and Nan, and the girl whom Polly had called Rose, all kneeling devotedly at her feet, was talking cheerfully.

“He was just the most impossible, ridiculous looking person you ever could imagine, with red hair and glasses and dreadfully shabby clothes, the kind of a man in a German band to whom you would throw pennies out the window, but he declared that he had once lived here in Woodford for a short time years ago and had come back on some business or other. Oh, Esther, don’t look at me so disapprovingly; I am saying nothing against him really. I am sure it was I who invited him to come out to our cabin and play for us girls. He looked so poor I thought I might be able to pay him then and I couldn’t quite offer him anything for helping Esther mend the sleigh and then seeing us part of the way home. Home! Oh, isn’t our beloved Sunrise cabin the most delightful and original home a group of Camp Fire girls ever possessed!”

And Betty’s eyes clouded with tears, partly from pain and weariness but more from joy at her return, as she looked from the faces gathered about hers in the neighborhood of the great fireplace and then saw all their glances follow hers with equal ardor throughout the length of their great living room.

For if ever Betty Ashton had proved her right to her friend Polly’s definition of her as a “Fairy Princess,” it was when through her desire and largely through her money, Sunrise cabin rose on the very ground covered by the white tents of the Sunrise Camp Fire girls only the summer before.

The cabin was built of pine logs from the woods at the foot of Sunrise Hill and the entire front of forty-five feet formed a single great room. The end nearer the kitchen the girls used as their dining room, while the rest of the room was music room, study, reception and every other kind of a room. And, except for the piano which Betty had brought from her own blue room at home and a few chairs, every other article of furniture and almost every ornament had been made by the Sunrise Camp Fire girls themselves.

On either side the high mantel there were low book shelves and a music rack stood by the piano filled with the songs of the Camp Fire. Polly, Nan and Sylvia had manufactured a dining room table which was considered an extraordinary achievement although the design was really very simple. Four wide pine boards about ten feet in length formed the top and the legs were of heavy beams crossed under it at the center and at either end. The furniture of the living room was stained a Flemish brown to match the walls and floor done in the same color. On the floor were rag rugs of almost oriental beauty made by the girls and dyed into seven craft colors. On the walls hung pieces of homemade tapestry, leather skins embossed with Camp Fire emblems, and flowers so pressed and mounted as to give the effect of nature. Then on the mantelpiece were two hammered brass candlesticks and a great brass bowl filled with holly and cedar from the surrounding wood. On odd tables and shelves were Indian baskets woven by the girls and used for every convenient purpose from holding stockings waiting to be darned to treasuring the Sunrise Camp Record Book which now had twenty-five written and illustrated pages setting forth the history of Sunrise Camp since its infancy.

But Eleanor Meade had given the living room its really unique distinction. Having once read a description of a famous Indian snow tepi, she had painted on the ceiling toward the northern end of the room seven stars which were to represent the north from whence the winter blizzards blew and on the southern side a red disc for the sun. The artist had pleaded long to be permitted to make the rest of the ceiling a bright blue with outlines of rolling prairie on the walls beneath, but this was greater realism in Indian ideals of art than the other girls were able to endure.

Yet notwithstanding so much artistic decoration, Science also had her place in the Sunrise cabin living room. For Sylvia Wharton had established a cupboard in an inconspicuous corner where she kept a collection of first aid supplies: gauze for bandaging, medicated cotton, peroxide, lime water and sweet oil, arnica, and half a dozen or more simple remedies useful in emergencies. True to her surprising announcement at the close of their summer camp Sylvia, without wasting time, and in her own quiet and apparently dull fashion, had already set about preparing herself for her future work as a trained nurse by persuading her father to let her have first aid lessons from a young doctor in Woodford. So now it was stupid little Sylvia (although the Camp Fire girls were no longer so convinced of her stupidity) who took real charge of caring for Betty’s foot, going back and forth to her cupboard and doing whatever she thought necessary without asking or heeding any one else’s advice.

Nevertheless, her work must have been successful, because in less than an hour after their return Betty, Esther and all the other girls were in dreamland in the two bedrooms which, besides the kitchen, completed Sunrise cabin. So soundly were they sleeping that it was only Polly O’Neill who was suddenly aroused by an unexpected knocking at their front door. It was nearly midnight and Polly shivered, not so much with fear as with apprehension. What could have happened to bring a human being to their cabin at such an hour? Instantly she thought of her mother still in Ireland, of Mr. and Mrs. Ashton traveling in Europe for Mr. Ashton’s health. Slipping on her dressing gown Polly touched the figure in the bed near hers.

“Rose,” she whispered, so quietly as not to disturb any one else. “There is some one knocking. I am going to the door, so be awake if anything happens.” Then without delaying she slipped into the next room.

Crossing the floor in her slippers Polly made no noise and picking up the lantern which was always kept burning at night in the cabin, without any warning of her approach she suddenly pulled open the door. The figure waiting outside started.

“I – you,” he began breathlessly and then stopped because Polly O’Neill’s cheeks had turned as crimson as her dressing gown and her Irish blue eyes were sending forth electric sparks of anger.

“Billy Webster,” she gasped, “I didn’t dream that anything in the world could have made you do so ungentlemanly a thing as to disturb us in this fashion at such an hour of the night. Of course I have never liked you very much or thought you had really good manners, but I didn’t believe – ”

“Stop, will you, and let me explain,” the young man returned, now fully as angry as Polly and in a voice to justify her final accusation. Then he turned courteously toward the young woman who had entered the room soon after Polly. “I’m terribly sorry, Miss Dyer,” he continued, “I must have made some stupid mistake, but some little time ago I thought I heard the sound of your alarm bell. It rang only once, so I waited for a little while expecting to hear it again and then I was rather a long time in getting to you through the woods on account of the heavy snow. It is awfully rough on you to have been awakened at such an hour because of my stupidity.”

But Rose Dyer, who was a good deal older than Polly, put out both hands and drew the young man, rather against his will, inside the living room.

“Please come in and get warm and dry, you know our Camp Fire is never allowed to go out, and please do not apologize for your kindness in coming to our aid.” She lighted the candles, giving Polly a chance to make her own confession. Though looking only a girl herself she was in reality the new guardian of the Sunrise Camp Fire girls.

Polly, however, did not seem to be enthusiastic over her opportunity to announce that she had been responsible for the alarm bell which had brought their visitor forth on such an arduous tramp. Billy Webster was of course their nearest neighbor, as his father owned most of the land in their vicinity, still the farm house itself was a considerable distance away. And to make matters worse the young man was too deeply offended by Polly’s reception of him to give even a glance in her direction.

Polly coughed several times and then opened her mouth to speak, but Billy was staring into the fire poking at the logs with his wet boot. Rose had disappeared toward the kitchen to get their visitor something to eat as a small expression of their gratitude.

Unexpectedly the young man felt some one pulling at the back of his coat and turning found himself again facing Polly, whose cheeks were quite as red as they had been at the time of his arrival, but whose eyes were shining until their color seemed to change as frequently as a wind swept sky.

“Mr. William Daniel Webster,” she began in a small crushed voice, “there are certain persons in this world who seem preordained to put me always in the wrong. You are one of them! I rang that bell because I thought my beloved Betty and Esther were lost in the storm, but they weren’t, and then I forgot all about having rung it. So now I am overcome with embarrassment and shame and regret and any other humiliating emotion you would like to have me feel. But really, Billy,” and here Polly extended her thin hand, which always had a curious warmth and intensity in keeping with her temperament, “can’t you see how hard it is to like a person who is always making one eat humble pie?”