The Camp Fire Girls' Larks and Pranks Part 21

During the tour of inspection Nyoda and Gladys held a whispered consultation in one end of the room. "Nothing here to make a spread with," said Gladys. "I'll have to hurry out and get something."

"Do," said Nyoda. Gladys nudged Hinpoha and drew her down the ladder and together they sped after canned shrimp and condensed milk.

"Now, if you'll excuse us a minute," said Nyoda to the San-Clus, "we'll retire behind our curtains and prepare to do the stunt with which we always inflict company. Come, girls," she added in a whisper, "the Battle of Blenheim." And the players retired to array themselves in the necessary sheets.

Five minutes later the curtains were shoved aside, and the players stood before the audience. They looked in bewilderment. For seated where they had left the San-Clu Camp Fire Girls were the Captain, Bottomless Pitt, the Monkey, Dan Porter, Peter Jenkins and Harry Raymond. The girls had vanished.

"Why, when did you come in, boys?" asked Nyoda in surprise. "And where are the girls?"

"What girls?" asked the Captain.

"Why, the San-Clu Camp Fire girls," said Nyoda, "who were visiting us."

"Here they are," said the six boys, rising and speaking together. "We are the 'San-Clu' Camp Fire Girls. 'San-Clu'-short for Sandwich Club!

Ho-ho-ho, Katherine! You'd know us in a minute with girls' clothes on, would you!" And from under the rugs and furniture they drew the dresses, hats, gloves and wigs which the late San-Clus had worn a-calling.

"Oh-h-h, Katherine, we do this to each other!"

The girls sat staring, speechless for a minute, unable to believe that there really had been no girls there. But the evidence was before their eyes and it could not be doubted. And they were far too game not to see that the joke was on them, and laughed just as heartily over it as the boys did.

"We'll have to have the spread, anyhow, for your benefit," said Nyoda, taking up the cans of supplies that Hinpoha and Gladys had just brought in. "You carried that off too splendidly not to be rewarded. We congratulate you on your ability to act, and confess that we were completely taken in. Where's Slim?"

"We left him behind the fence," said the Captain, with a start of recollection. "We didn't dare let him come in with us, because you'd have recognized him right away."

"Figures never lie, especially stout ones," laughed Nyoda. "Go and bring him to the spread."

"Are you folks going on a trip?" inquired the Monkey, with his mouth full of Shrimp Wiggle and his eyes on the ponchos piled in the corner.

"We are, next Sat.u.r.day," answered Sahwah. "We were just practicing rolling the ponchos today. Sat.u.r.day we're going to take the steamer across the lake to Rock Island. Some friends of Nyoda's have a cottage there, but they haven't gone up yet and they said we might stay in it all night if we wanted to. We're coming home on the boat Sunday night."

"Are you going by yourselves?" asked Slim, leaning across the table and listening to the conversation. He was fis.h.i.+ng for an invitation for the Sandwiches.

"We certainly are going by ourselves," said Sahwah, to his disappointment. "We haven't been off by ourselves for a long time. We're going in a lonely place and have a Ceremonial Meeting on the sh.o.r.e of the lake and tell secrets and do stunts and have a beautiful time. It's strictly a Winnebago affair-a hen party, you'd call it."

Slim sighed and consoled himself with five pieces of fudge and an apple.

He was one of those boys who like to be around girls all the time. Too fat to enjoy the more strenuous society of the boys, he preferred to sit with his gentler friends and dip his hand into the dishes of candy that they usually had standing around. The fact that they made no end of fun of him and never took him seriously only increased his desire for them.

And, like the Captain, he delighted to look upon the hair when it was red. He admired Hinpoha with all his corpulent soul.

The winter and spring months had flown by with swifter wings than the white-tailed swallow, and the clock of the year was once more striking June. Sat.u.r.day found the Winnebagos skimming over the blue waters of the lake in the big daily excursion boat bound for Rock Island. Nakwisi, of course, had her spy gla.s.s and was carefully scrutinizing the empty horizon. "Has Katherine come into your range of vision yet?" asked Nyoda, a trifle anxiously. Katherine had boarded the boat with them safely enough, for she had been personally conducted from home by the whole six, but had disappeared within ten minutes after the boat started.

Nakwisi lowered her gla.s.s and laughed. "No, I don't see her in the sky,"

she said, "though I shouldn't be very greatly surprised if I did."

And they began a thorough search of the boat from top to bottom and finally found her hanging over the rail of a gangway, trying to touch the snowy foam flying in the swirling wake of the paddle wheel. It was the first time she had ever been on a lake, and she took a perfectly childish delight in the racing water. Pulled back to safety by Nyoda, she gave an animated account of her adventures since seeing them last, in the course of which she had nearsightedly walked into the pilot house and caught hold of the wheel to steady herself when the boat gave a lurch, and had been summarily put out by an angry first mate. "I've been everywhere on the boat except down the smokestack," she concluded triumphantly.

Soon Rock Island appeared as a speck on the horizon in Nakwisi's gla.s.s, then as a long black streak which they could all see, and finally grew by leaps and bounds into a beautiful wooded island with trees and lawns and beautiful summer cottages s.h.i.+ning in the sunlight. Shouldering their ponchos, they went ash.o.r.e, and walked around the point of the island to the cottage where they were to spend the night. It was close to the water, where a curving indentation of the sh.o.r.e line made a lovely little beach. If Sahwah did not make the record at poncho rolling, she left them all behind in getting into her bathing suit, and five minutes after the door was unlocked her hands clove the water in a flying dive from the end of the pier.

Katherine splashed about courageously, trying to swim, and finally succeeded in propelling herself through the water by a series of jerks and splashes unlike any stroke ever invented by the mind of man. "This is too hard on my dellyket const.i.tooshun," she remarked at last, clambering out and draping her ungainly length around a rock, thereby disclosing the fact that her bathing suit was minus one sleeve. Katherine regarded the yawning armhole with mild vexation. "Broke my needle when my suit was all done but putting in the one sleeve," she remarked serenely, "and there wasn't time to go out and buy one-I finished the suit at eleven o'clock last night-so I just pasted that sleeve in with adhesive tape, and it didn't show a bit. But it must have let go in the water," she finished plaintively. Nyoda looked at the girls, and the girls looked at Nyoda, and once more they were dumb.

Tired of swimming, they dressed and explored the island and then sat down on the big boat dock and dangled their feet over the edge. Soon a tug came up alongside the pier and the sailor who ran it chanced to be a man whom Nyoda had met the previous summer on the island. "h.e.l.lo, Captain McMichael," she called.

The sunburnt sailor looked up. "h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo," he answered. "What are you doing up here so early in the season?" When Nyoda had explained that she had brought the girls up on a sightseeing trip, Captain McMichael promptly offered to take them for a ride in the tug. "Got to go over to Jackson's Island and get a lighter of limestone," he said. "I'd have to set you ash.o.r.e on Randall's Island while I went over to Jackson's to get the lighter," he continued, "because you'd get all covered with lime dust if you stayed in the tug while they were loading, and it's no place for ladies to go ash.o.r.e. But Randall's is all right. The quarries there aren't worked any more and there are only a few summer cottages. But there are excellent wild strawberries," he finished with a twinkle in his eye. "I'll call for you on the way back and get you here before dark.

Will you come?"

"Oh, Nyoda, may we?" cried the girls, delighted at the prospect.

"Why, yes," answered Nyoda. "I think that will be a delightful way to spend the afternoon. I have always wanted to explore Randall's Island; it looks so interesting from the steamer. We accept your invitation with pleasure, Captain McMichael."

"Glad to have you," responded the tug master heartily, as he set the powerful engine throbbing.

"Don't fall overboard," he yelled above the steam exhaust a minute later as Katherine hung over the stern and trailed her hands in the water.

Nyoda clung to her dress and the rest sang in chorus:

"Sailing, sailing, Over to Randall's I, And dear Sister K would fall into the bay If Nyoda weren't nigh!"

The run to Randall's Island took just fifteen minutes and Katherine managed to get there without accident, other than upsetting an oil can into her lap. The wild strawberries were as abundant and as delicious as Captain McMichael had promised, and it was with sighs of regret that they finally admitted they could hold no more. Then they scrambled around in the abandoned limestone quarries until Nyoda, coming face to face with Katherine, announced it was time to play something else. Katherine had torn her dress on sharp points until it was nearly a wreck; she had stepped into a puddle up to her shoetops, her hat brim hung down in a discouraged loop and her hands and face were scratched with briers.

"If one more thing happens to you, Katherine Adams," said Nyoda sternly, "you'll have to spend the rest of your life on this island, for you won't be respectable enough to take home."

"Then I'll be Miss Robinson Crusoe," said Katherine, "and eat up all the strawberries on the island, and not have to write the cla.s.s paper. I believe I'll consider your offer. Our literary member, Migwan, can write a book about it-_Living on Limestone_, or _The Queen of the Quarry_.

Wouldn't that be a fine sounding t.i.tle!"

"What is that long stone building way over there?" asked Hinpoha, as they promenaded decorously over the island beyond the quarries, two of them arm-in-arm with Katherine, to keep her in the straight and narrow path.

"Looks like a fort," said Sahwah, with immediate interest. "Is it a fort, Nyoda?"

"I doubt it very much," answered Nyoda. "I never heard of a fort on any of these islands. Let's go over and investigate."

Katherine hung back, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her face and rolling her eyes like an old negress. "Don' lead dis child into temptation," she begged. "Feel lak de climbin' debbil would get into mah feet agin foh sartin sure, ef ah went near dat pile of stone, an' den good-bye, dress! Only safe way's to keep dis child far away!"

Her veiled, husky voice made her imitation indescribably droll, and the girls shouted with laughter. "Never fear, my weak sister," said Gladys, "we'll all keep you out of danger."

"I can't imagine what this could have been," said Hinpoha, when they had reached the ruin. "It looks more like a mill than a fort."

"Mill!" exclaimed Sahwah scornfully. "There isn't any wheel, and there isn't a sign of a stream. Mills are always on streams."

"Maybe this was a windmill," suggested Katherine. "It's windy enough to set any kind of machinery going," and she started in pursuit of her hat, which that moment had been whirled from her head by a mischievous zephyr.

The ruin which the girls had found that afternoon was the remains of an old wine cellar which had been used for storing great quant.i.ties of grape wine in the old days when Randall's Island had been in the heart of the grape region, before quarrying became the chief industry. Nothing was left now to tell what valuable stores it had once sheltered, only stones and crumbling brick walls, overgrown with high weeds and wild vines.

"It's an enchanted castle," said Hinpoha. "A beautiful princess used to live here, only she got married and moved to-to the big hotel on Rock Island, and when she left the bad imps came and knocked out the mortar with their little hammers and it all fell to pieces."

"Oh, wonderful," drawled Katherine. "Let's poke about a bit in the ruins and see if we can find any of the solid gold toothpicks the princes used to strew around after a meal."

The ruined wine cellar proved utterly fascinating. They could still see where it had been divided into rooms; and here and there a thick wall still stood higher than their heads.

"Hi, what's this?" asked Katherine, as they stood before a doorway partially filled with debris, behind which a black hole yawned.

"It's a cave," said Sahwah, poking her head forward into the hole like a turtle. "Let's explore it," she continued, stepping carefully over the pile of bricks. "Come on," she called over her shoulder; "it's perfectly wonderful. It's a room, but it's under the hill. Come on in."