The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods Part 7

"If you would grow thin and graceful, Eat of lemons this whole caseful."

"If you think that you're too large, Swim ahead and tow the barge."

"If you really would grow small, Don't eat anything at all."

"I think you're mean," said Hinpoha, wiping away mock tears.

Immediately all the girls flung themselves on her, hugging and caressing her.

"Never mind, 'Poha," they comforted, "we love you anyhow. We couldn't live without you."

"Did anybody catch up with anybody else today?" asked Sahwah.

Nyoda and Medmangi sprang to their feet, and pointing scornfully at Chapa and Gladys, sang to the tune of "Forsaken:

"O'ertaken, o'ertaken, o'ertaken were they, On a stone by the roadside they sat plain as day; We sat down beside them and sang them this song, Which caused them to rise up and travel along."

"We made a song, too," cried Migwan and Hinpoha, springing to their feet. "It's to the tune of 'Jingle Bells.'" And keeping time with their feet, they sang:

"Marching through the woods, Onward day by day, Round the lake we go, Singing all the way.

Packs strapped to our backs, There our eats we stow, Oh, what fun it is to hike With the girls of Wohelo!

Wohelo, Wohelo, Singing all the day, O what fun it is to hike Around the world away!"

The girls joined in the chorus, and then went back to the beginning, and in a few minutes the song had been "adopted for use." By this time the fire was burning low and Nyoda reminded the girls that they had walked twelve miles that day and had a still longer tramp ahead on the morrow. "It doesn't seem possible that I've walked so far today," said Migwan, sitting up and stretching. "I'm not nearly as tired as I have been some days last winter after school."

The girls had all picked out their sleeping places before dark and made up their beds on the ground. Before retiring they all took a dip in the lake, splas.h.i.+ng around in the darkness and barking their s.h.i.+ns on the rocks. Gladys and Chapa sought their beds first. It was the first time that Gladys had ever slept on the ground. "There's a rock in my back and my feet are higher than my head," she wailed.

"Then let's move," said Chapa, and suiting the action to the word, she picked up the bed and deposited it in another place.

This was fairly comfortable and they subsided.

Next an uproar arose from a bed near the beach. "There's a million ants in my bed!" shrieked Migwan, jumping up and shaking her blankets. She had spread her bed on a colony of ant hills, and the ants had improved the s.h.i.+ning hours until bedtime by crawling between the blankets.

Sahwah was the last in bed, having stayed in the water longer than the others. She was strangely wakeful and lay for a long time staring up at the pines towering above her, that seemed to rise hundreds of feet before a branch appeared. She amused herself by reaching out her hand and identifying her belongings, which hung on a bush at her head. Her hand closed over the can of red paint. Like lightning she had an inspiration. She raised her head and looked at the next bed. "It's Migwan," she said to herself. Grasping the paint brush, she reached over and daubed the face of the sleeper. Then she settled down and slept.

Gladys woke up in the gray dawn and looked out from her sandwich bed. The lake was completely hidden by a thick mist. Drops were coming down, patter, patter, on her poncho. "Chapa," she whispered excitedly to her partner, "it's raining!"

"Well, what of it?" answered Chapa, without opening her eyes, and pulling the poncho over their heads, she resumed her slumbers.

Gladys drew a horrified breath at the idea of sleeping on the ground in the rain, but the cozy dryness of her bed soon wooed her back to slumber. When she opened her eyes again the sun was rising over the lake. No, there were two suns, one in the lake which was making it boil and send up clouds of steam, and another in the sky which was drawing up the vapor. Soon the bugle blew and the camp woke to activity.

With a whoop the girls made for the lake for their morning plunge. "Gladys!" said Nyoda, "what is the matter with your face?" On each cheek, as well as on her nose and forehead, there was a daub of red.

Sahwah stared, then she giggled. "I thought it was Migwan beside me," she explained. "Excuse me, Gladys, I didn't mean to decorate you." Gladys, however, evidently thought differently, for she was decidedly cool to Sahwah from then on.

Just before breakfast the girls a.s.sembled on the high cliff to sing the morning song. Their choice was Rousseau's beautiful hymn,

"When the mists have rolled in splendor From the beauty of the hills."

The mist curtains were rolling up from the lake in the morning sun, disclosing the lofty brow of Mount Was.h.i.+ngton in the distance, and the girls felt very near to G.o.d and Nature as they sang the inspired words.

Breakfast was cooked in the open and consisted of fruit, pancakes and cocoa. Hinpoha heroically pa.s.sed up both the pancakes and the cocoa and contented herself with one piece of dry toast.

The hike proceeded in order just as on the previous day. Right after breakfast the ponchos were rolled and the pathfinders struck the trail through the woods. The first note left by them read: "10:30. First rest. 'Ware the pest!"

"Wonder what they meant by that?" said Hinpoha to Migwan. They soon found out. At the last blaze the path dipped into dense woods. From all sides rose a cloud of mosquitoes which settled on every exposed portion of their persons and stung viciously.

"Ooo, wow!" they cried, breaking into a run and brus.h.i.+ng the mosquitoes off with branches. Before they entered the next woods they stripped the bark off a fallen birch log and made leggings of it, tying them on with their handkerchiefs.

Migwan made up a song as they went along and taught it to Hinpoha. The tune was "Solomon Levi:"

"Oh, we are Winnebagos and our color is the Red, Over the hills and down the dales we go wherever we're led, We follow the blazes through the wood like hounds upon the hunt, We keep our feet upon the path and our faces to the front!

Oh, Winnebagos! 'Bagos, tra la la la, Oh, Winnebagos! 'Bagos, tra la la la la la la, Oh, we are Winnebagos and our color is the Red, Over the hills and down the dales we go wherever we're led!"

"I suppose you'll be a great poet when you grow up," said Hinpoha, stooping to pick a cl.u.s.ter of ripe strawberries.

Migwan sighed. "No, I'll never be a great poet," she answered, "but I may be able to write stories in time, if I learn enough about composition."

"What college are you going to?" asked Hinpoha.

"I'm not going at all," said Migwan seriously. "You know, since father died we have had to live very carefully, and high school is all mother can do for me. I have to go to work as soon as I graduate."

"It's too bad," sympathized Hinpoha. "You ought to go to college more than any of us. Here am I, with no more brains than a rabbit, going to Smith. It isn't fair. Can't you work your way through and go anyhow?"

Migwan shook her head. "You see, we will need the money I earn to send Betty and Tom to high school."

Thus talking earnestly they followed the blazes until they came to a place where the path divided around a very dense piece of woods. "You take one path, and I'll take the other," said Migwan, "and we'll see who comes out first." They separated and Migwan plunged into the darker of the two paths. It was hard breaking through. Small scrub pines closed over the path, their branches intertwined, so that more than once she had to use her hatchet. Roots and vines tangled her feet and made her stumble.

Then she wedged her foot in between two stumps and could not get it out. She pulled and twisted and finally grasped hold of the stem of a small tree and braced herself firmly while she endeavored to free herself. With a sudden jerk her foot came free, and at the same instant the tree came up by the roots, the ground caved in beneath it and Migwan began to fall. She now discovered what she had not noticed before, that the path was on the edge of a very deep ravine which was hidden by the thick bushes. Straight down she rolled for about fifty feet, vainly trying to stop herself by grasping the small bushes. Deep down in the gully she came to a stop not two feet away from a small stream.

"I'm not dead, anyhow," was her first thought as she scrambled to her feet. A red-hot stab of agony went through her left knee and she sank down again, white and faint. "Dislocated," she said to herself after inspecting the injured member. "Let's see if I can put it back." Migwan had had First-Aid work and had learned to set dislocations, so she slipped the joint back into place before it could get a chance to swell, and bound it fast with a strip of the bandage the girls always carried with them. At that the pain made her sick to her stomach and she lay back, her head reeling.

When she could see clearly again she sat up and looked around.

It was nearly dark, as the thick pines shut out the declining rays of the sun. She called aloud till the echoes rang, but there was no answering call. The gravity of the situation came home to her, but Migwan was not one to whimper. She had nothing with her to eat, but there was clear water at hand and she drank and bathed her scratched face and hands. Then she lay still and thought things out.

"They'll surely find me sometime," she reflected, "for Hinpoha knows which path I took. The cave-in will tell the tale.

There's nothing in the woods to hurt me, either man or beast. My knee is back in joint and will begin to heal while I stay here.

Things might have been worse." Beside her lay a dry pine tree and she chopped it up and built a fire. For a long time she lay looking up at the great pines above her, lost in romantic fancies, her beautiful, expressive eyes s.h.i.+ning in the firelight.

By and by she slept, her head pillowed on her sweater.

She was aroused by the squalling of the jays in the pine trees.

Sunlight was filtering down through the branches. She felt chilly from her sleep on the ground, although the trees had kept the dew from her. Sitting up, she exercised her arms to get up the circulation. Then, leaning on a heavy stick and hobbling on one foot, she began to look about her. Not far from where she had fallen there was an opening in the undergrowth and through this Migwan could see another path about six feet lower down the slope.

"I wonder if they would come this way," thought Migwan. "I had better put a blaze in the road so they can find me." She was casting about for something that would attract the attention of the searchers when she heard footsteps coming down the path.

"They're coming," she thought, and was just ready to fall on Hinpoha's neck, when out of the woods came two men, one of them carrying a little boy. A few paces from where Migwan stood, hidden by a large tree trunk, they came to a halt, and the one man, pulling out a purse, began to count money. The little boy was dressed in a white sailor suit and hat, and his hair under the hat brim was yellow and curly. A beam of sunlight fell directly on him, making such a pretty picture that Migwan could not help snap-shotting him. Her camera still hung around her neck in its case, having luckily escaped injury by her fall.

Then she stepped out and called to the men. Both started violently. Migwan hastened to explain her plight.

"Sorry we can't carry you along," said the man with the purse, "but we have to catch the boat at the lake and that would make us miss it."

"Can't you tell someone where I am?" asked Migwan.

"Why, yes, yes," answered the man, pulling out his watch. "We'll send some one for you." They disappeared down the path at a quick pace, and Migwan sat down by the opening and waited.

Hinpoha, following the path taken by the leaders, was tripping blithely along, not looking where she was going, with the result that she ran into a pine branch which caught her long hair, and in freeing herself broke the chain of her locket, which slipped to the ground and hid among the leaves. Hinpoha got down on her knees and hunted for it. The minutes pa.s.sed, but still she did not find it. She did not worry about Migwan because she knew she would wait where the paths met. Chapa and Gladys caught up and helped her search, and finally they found it. Upon reaching the main path, however, they did not see Migwan. "Probably got tired waiting and went on by herself," said Hinpoha. "Serves me right." And she walked on with Gladys and Chapa.