A Campfire Girl's Test of Friendship Part 11

"Well, I would never have done it if you hadn't come along, Miss Mercer.

You gave us all courage in the first place, and then you got Jud Harkness and all the others to come and help me this way."

"Oh, they'd have done it themselves, as soon as they heard. I didn't suggest a thing--I just told them the news, and they thought of everything else all by themselves. The only thing I thought of was using your farm so that it would really pay you."

"Now that you've told us how, it seems so easy that I wonder I never thought of it myself."

"Well, lots and lots of farmers just waste their land and themselves, Mrs. Pratt. You're not the only one. My father has a farm, and in his section he's done his level best to make the regular farmers see that there are new ways of farming, just as there are new ways of doing everything else."

"That's what my poor husband always said. He had all sorts of new-fangled ideas, as I used to call them. Maybe he was right, too. But he didn't have money enough to try them and see how they'd do, though we always made a good living off this place."

"Well, the advantage of my idea is that you don't need much money to give it a trial, and if you don't succeed, you won't lose much."

"I think we'd be pretty stupid if we didn't succeed, after the fine start you've given us, and the way you've told me what to do."

"Well, I think so myself," said Eleanor, with a frank laugh. "And I know you're not stupid--not a bit of it! It's going to be hard work, but I'm sure you'll succeed. You'll be able to hire someone to do most of the work for you before long, I think, and then you'll have to have a rest, and come down to visit me in the city."

"Well, well, I do hope so, Miss Mercer! I ain't been in the city since I don't know when. Tom--my husband--took me once, but that was years and years ago, and I expect there's been a lot of changes since then."

"I'm going to keep an eye on you, Mrs. Pratt. And I feel as if I were a sort of partner in this business, so if you don't make as much money as I think you ought to, why, you'll hear from me. I can promise you that!

Girls, we'll sleep in the lean-to to-night, and in the morning we'll be off, bright and early."

"Oh," said Mrs. Pratt, "have you really got to go? And you'll not sleep out to-night! You'll take the house, and we'll be the ones to sleep outside."

"Nonsense, Mrs. Pratt! Who should be the ones to sleep in this fine new house the first night but you? We love to sleep in the open air, really we do! It's no hards.h.i.+p, I can tell you."

And, despite all of Mrs. Pratt's protests, it was so arranged.

"I'll hate to go away from here--really I will!" said Dolly, to Bessie.

"It's been perfectly fine, helping these people. And I feel as if we'd really done something."

"Well, we certainly have, Dolly," said Bessie.

"I do hope that b.u.t.ter and egg business will do well."

"I _know_ it's going to do well," said Eleanor, who had overheard. "And one reason is that you girls are going to help. Now we must all get to sleep, or we'll never get started in the morning. I think we'll have to ride part of the way to the seash.o.r.e in the train, after all. We don't want to be too late in getting there, you know."

And in a few minutes silence reigned over the place. It was a picture of peace and content--a vast contrast to the scene of the previous night, when desolation and gloom seemed to dominate everything.

Parting in the morning brought tears alike to the eyes of those who stayed behind and those who were going on. The experience of the last two days had brought the Pratts and the girls of the Camp Fire very close together, and the Pratt children--the younger ones at least--wept and refused to be comforted when they learned that their new friends were going away.

"Cheer up," said Eleanor. "We'll see you again, you know. Maybe we'll all come up next summer. And we've had a good time, haven't we?"

"We certainly have!" said Mrs. Pratt, and there was sincerity, as well as pleasure, in her tone. "I've often heard that good came out of evil, and joy out of sorrow, but I never had any such reason to believe it before this!"

Before the final parting, Eleanor had shown Mrs. Pratt exactly what she meant about the new way in which the b.u.t.ter was to be made.

"Of course, as your business grows, you will want to get better machinery," she had said. "That will make the work much easier, and you will be able to do it more quickly too, and with less help than if you stuck to the old-fas.h.i.+oned way."

"I'm going to take your advice in everything about running this farm, Miss Mercer," Mrs. Pratt had replied. "You've certainly shown that you know what you're talking about so far."

"Take a trip down to my father's farm some time, Mrs. Pratt, and they'll be glad to show you everything they have there, I know. My father is very anxious for all the farmers in his neighborhood to profit by any help they can get. The only trouble is that a good many of them seem to feel that he is interfering with them."

"Well, if they're as stupid as that, it serves them right to keep on losing money, Miss Mercer."

"But it's natural, after all. You see they've run their farms their own way all their lives, and it's the way they learned from their fathers.

So it isn't very strange that they're apt to feel that they know more, from all that practice and experiment, than city people who are farming scientifically."

"Does your father enjoy farming?"

"He says he does--and it's a curious thing that he makes that farm pay its way, even allowing for a whole lot of things he does that aren't really necessary. That's what proves, you see, that his theories are right--they pay.

"Of course, he could afford to lose money on it, and you can't make a whole lot of those farmers in our neighborhood believe that he doesn't.

So now he is having the books of the farm fixed up so that any of the farmers around can see them, and find out for themselves how things are run."

Tired as the girls of the Camp Fire had been, the night before, they were wonderfully refreshed by their night's sleep. The weather was much more pleasant than it had been, and a brisk wind had driven off much of the smoke that still remained when they reached the Pratt farm as a reminder of the scourge of fire. So the conditions for walking were good, and Eleanor Mercer set a round, swinging pace as they started off.

"I'll really be glad to get out of this burned district. It's awfully gloomy, isn't it, Bessie?" said Dolly.

"Yes, especially when you realize what it means to the people who live in the path of the fire," answered Bessie. "Seeing the Pratts as they were when we came up has given me an altogether new idea of these forest fires."

"Yes. That's what I mean. It's bad enough to see the forest ruined, but when you think of the houses, and all the other things that are burned, too, why, it seems particularly dreadful."

"Tom Pratt told me that a whole lot of animals were caught in the fire, too--chipmunks, and squirrels, and deer. That seems dreadful."

"Oh, what a shame! I should think they could manage to get away, Bessie.

Don't you suppose they try?"

"Oh, yes, but you see they can't reason the way human beings do, and a lot of these fires burn around in a circle, so that while they were running away from one part of the fire they might very easily be heading straight for another, and get caught right between two fires."

Soon, however, they pa.s.sed a section where the land had been cleared of trees for a s.p.a.ce of nearly a mile, and, once they had travelled through it, they came to the deep green woods again, where no marring traces of the fire spoiled the beauty of their trip.

"Ah, don't the woods smell good!" said Dolly. "So much nicer than that old smoky smell! I never smelt anything like that! It got so that everything I ate tasted of smoke. I'm certainly glad to get to where the fire didn't come."

Now the ground began to rise, and before long they found themselves in the beginning of Indian Gap. The ground rose gradually, and when they stopped for their midday meal, in a wild part of the gap, none of the girls were feeling more than normally and healthfully tired.

"Do many people come through here, Miss Eleanor?" asked Margery.

"At certain times, yes. But, you, see, the forest fires have probably made a lot of people who intended to take this trip change their minds.

In a way it's a good thing, because we will be sure to find plenty of room at the Gap House. That's where we are to spend the night. Sometimes when there's a lot of travel, it's very crowded there, and uncomfortable."

"Is it a regular hotel?"

"No, it's just a place for people to sleep. It's where the trail starts up Mount Sherman, and it's the station of the railroad that runs to the top of the mountain, too, for people who are too lazy to climb. There's a gorgeous view there in the mornings, when the sun rises. You can see clear to the sea."

"Oh, can't we stop and see that?"

"We haven't time to climb the mountain. If you want to go up on the incline railway, though, we can manage it. You get up at three o'clock in the morning, and get to the top while it's still dark, so that you can see the very beginning of the sunrise."

There was not a dissenting voice to the plan to make the trip, and it was decided to take the little extra time that would be required.