The Camp Fire Girls on the Open Road Part 9

KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS

Dec. 28, 19--.

Dearest and Best of Winnies:

Oh, you angels without wings, how am I ever going to thank you? How on earth did you manage to do it all? Such a Christmas present!

When I saw that array of boxes in the express office at Spencer all addressed to me I said to the agent, "There's some mistake. Those can't possibly be all mine."

"You're the only Katherine Adams in these parts, aren't you?" said the agent, eyeing that imposing pile with unconcealed curiosity.

I admitted that I was, as far as I knew.

"Then they're yours," said the agent, and mine they proved to be.

Altogether there was a wagonload.

"What on earth?" said father and Justice when I drove up to the house.

"Have you gone into the trucking business?"

"Christmas presents, Father!" I shouted. "All Christmas presents. I've got the whole of Santa Claus's load. Quick, bring me a hammer and an ax and a jimmy!"

Oh, girls, when I saw what was in those first three boxes I just sat down on the floor and wept for joy. Only the Winnebagos could have thought of sending me the House of the Open Door. There were the Indian beds and Hinpoha's bearskin and all the Navajo blankets and the pottery, just as I had seen it last in the Open Door Lodge, big as life and twice as natural. And the note from Sahwah that came along with them was a piece of Sahwah herself.

"The things are lonesome," she wrote, "and pining for someone to love them and use them. I am sending them to your new Camp Fire because I know your girls will love them as they deserve to be loved. The ghosts of all the good times we had in the House of the Open Door are hovering around the things, so anyone that gets them can't help falling under the old spell and learning how to squeeze the most fun out of every minute.

"The gymnasium apparatus is the Sandwiches' Christmas present. It was Slim's and the Captain's idea to send it out to you for your girls and boys to use.

"The House of the Open Door is being turned into Red Cross work rooms for Camp Fire Girls and we need every inch of s.p.a.ce for the work tables. Even our beloved Lodge is Giving Service."

Gladys Evans, your father is an _angel_! He doesn't need to wait until he gets to heaven for his halo, it's visible a mile off, this minute! To think of sending me a graphophone and a hundred records! I simply can't tell you what that is going to mean to my school. I won't be able to _drive_ the boys and girls away now!

And your mother! That lantern machine and the slides showing the Red Cross work and all the other splendid things is worth its weight in gold.

Oh, my dears! _Where_ did you ever find time to make those twelve ceremonial dresses?

"FROM THE LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS TO THE FIRST OF THE WENONAHS. LET BIG SISTER WINNIE SEE THAT LITTLE SISSY WEENIE IS PROPERLY CLOTHED."

I'll bet anything your friend Agony wrote that. I have a feeling that she and I are kindred spirits.

Won't my girls revel in those beads and looms, though?

BOOKS! Four whole cases of them! What on earth have you done now?

"THE WINNEBAGO LIBRARY Pa.s.sED ON BY THOSE WHO KNOW AND LOVE GOOD BOOKS TO THOSE WHO WILL SOON KNOW AND LOVE THEM"

How did you do it? Asked a hundred girls to give one book apiece? You don't mean to say that there are a hundred girls interested in us poor backwoods folks out here in Spencer? I can't believe it! Oh, we'll work and work and _work_, to prove ourselves worthy of it all!

And oh, all those little personal pretties just for me! Hinpoha, _where_ did you find that darling pen-holder with the parrot's head on the end, and Gladys, who told you that I broke my handgla.s.s and was pining for a white ivory one?

And even a lump of sugar for Sandhelo and a bow for Piggy's tail! I admire the artist who drew that bow.

The last box bore Nyoda's return address. What do you suppose was in it?

Her chafing dis.h.!.+ The very one she used to have in her room, that I used to admire so much. Dear Nyoda! She knew I would rather have that than anything else.

O my dears, there never _was_ such a Christmas! There never _will_ be such a Christmas! n.o.body ever had such friends before. If I live to be a thousand years old I'll never be able to return one-tenth of your kindness.

Yours, swimming in ecstasy, Katherine.

GLADYS TO KATHERINE

March 25, 19--.

Dearest Katherine:

Listen, my beloved, while I sing you a song of Migwan. She has awakened at last to find herself famous, and the rest of us, by reason of reflected glory, found ourselves looked upon as different from all other animals, and wonderfully popular and run after by five o'clock in the afternoon, like Old Man Kangaroo. And, all precepts upon precepts to the contrary, it wasn't conscientiously applying herself to her task that turned the trick, but deliberate s.h.i.+rking. After all, though, it was mostly a matter of chance, because if it hadn't rained so that night last October, Migwan would have gone to the library as she should have, and the world would have lost a priceless contribution to Indian lore.

It happened thusly. One of Migwan's cronies in the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s has a weak throat and a condition in Indian History. On the night I have mentioned she trickled tearfully into Migwan's room and confided that she simply had to have an Indian legend to read in cla.s.s the following day or be marked zero. She had had all the week in which to look one up in the library, but, according to immemorial custom, she had left it for the last night. Now it was raining pitchforks and she didn't dare go out, because she got a terrible attack of quinsy every time there was an east wind. Migwan, like the angel she is, promptly offered to go over and hunt one up for her.

"What kind of an Indian legend?" she inquired.

"Oh, any kind," replied Harriet carelessly, "so long as it's _Indian_.

We're studying the Soul of the Savage as revealed by legend, or something like that. Slip it under my door when you come back with it. I'm going to bed and coddle my throat. Be sure you don't get one that's too long," she called back over her shoulder, "remember there are twenty in the cla.s.s to help reveal the Savage Soul."

Harriet ambled placidly back to her room and Migwan began hunting through her closet for her raincoat and rubbers. She didn't find them, because she had lent them to somebody the week before and couldn't remember whom she lent them to. She looked out of the window at the torrents coming down and decided that her little rocking chair by the lamp held out more attraction than a trip to the library. But she didn't have the heart to disappoint Harriet by not getting her an Indian legend to read in cla.s.s the next day, so she sat down and manufactured one, which is as easy as rolling off a log for Migwan. Harriet would never know the difference, and neither would the teacher, off hand, and a made-up legend would save the day for Harriet as well as a genuine one. The chances were she wouldn't be called upon to read it anyway. You never are, you know, when you've broken your neck to be ready. Migwan slipped it under Harriet's door and then forgot all about it.

Several weeks later, when the _Monthly Morterboard_ came out, there was Migwan's Indian legend, big as life. It had obviously been used to fill up s.p.a.ce and was not credited to the literary talent of the college; but to Joseph Latoka, or "Standing Pine," the Pen.o.bscot Indian who had collected the legends of his tribe into a book, which was in the college library and which was our authority on things Indian. Migwan laughed to herself over it, but never gave away the fact that she had written it.

She discovered in a roundabout way that the Literary Editor of the _Morterboard_ had been in despair over lack of material when the October number was due, and told her tale of woe to Miss Percival, one of the teachers, and asked her if she had any essays fit to print. Miss Percival replied that she hadn't had a decent essay this semester, but a girl in one of her cla.s.ses had brought in a rather remarkable Indian legend several days before, which might serve to cast into the breach. The _Morterboard_ editor promptly hunted up Harriet and demanded the legend.

Harriet still had it among her goods and chattels, and gave it to her readily, saying that it was one of Joseph Latoka's _Legends of the Pen.o.bscot Indians_, which she honestly believed to be the fact. The _Morterboard_ editor took her word for it and used the legend to fill up the c.h.i.n.ks in the October issue.

It was not long after this that Very Seldom paid his annual visit to Brownell. His name really wasn't Very Seldom; it was Jeremiah Selden, but everybody referred to him as Jerry, and it wasn't long before "Jerry Selden" became "Very Seldom." He used to be Professor of Sociology at Brownell, but he had to give up lecturing because he lost his voice. He was a sad little man with a plaintive droop to his white mustache and only a whisper of a voice. He had lost his whole family in some kind of a railroad accident and always went around with such a homeless air that everybody felt sorry for him. His hobby was Indian History, Indian Legends and Indian Relics. After he gave up teaching sociology he took to writing books, dry old essays and that sort of thing. n.o.body ever read them, and he didn't make much out of them, but he kept plodding along, always hoping that he would make a hit the next time.

Once every year he came back to Brownell to spend Sunday, to keep alive the memories of his former life, he used to explain sentimentally. Miss Allison, his successor as professor of sociology, and who has him beat forty miles for teaching, always entertained him at tea on the occasion of his visit, and used to ask him stacks of questions, jollying him along and making him believe she was in doubt about a lot of things she knew better than he did. Having his opinion consulted that way made him feel quite cheerful and important, and his visit to Brownell always put new life into him.

It happened that one Sunday afternoon Migwan went to Miss Allison's room to ask her about something and ran into Very Seldom paying his annual visit. Miss Allison herself wasn't there. She had been called out of town the night before and had turned over the job of entertaining Very Seldom to her room-mate, Miss Lee. Miss Lee taught mathematics and didn't care a rap about sociology, and still less about Indians. Miss Lee is very fond of Migwan, and invited her to stay to tea. Migwan is forever getting asked to tea by the faculty; it's because she always gets her hair parted so straight in the middle, and never upsets her teacup.

Migwan had heard about Very Seldom, and was just as anxious to help cheer him up as anybody, but this time he didn't need any cheering. He was positively radiant. He was talking about his latest book and was nearly bursting with enthusiasm.

It seems that all his life he had been having an argument with another Indian History shark as to whether, before the coming of the white man to this continent, the eastern Indians had ever lived on, or visited the western plains. He maintained that they had, while his friend insisted that they hadn't. Just recently he had read, in a magazine published by the Indian Society of North America, a hitherto unpublished legend of Joseph Latoka's, a curious legend of the White Buffalo. To his mind this proved beyond a doubt that the Pen.o.bscot Indians had, at some time or other, lived on or visited the Great Plains, and had seen the Buffalo. It was the only Pen.o.bscot legend that mentioned the buffalo as an object of wors.h.i.+p. He had immediately written a monograph on the subject which was even then in the hands of the publisher. It was a great point to have discovered. Fame would come to him at last. Very Seldom's air of desolation had vanished; his hour of triumph had come.

It was at this point that Migwan, the expert tea drinker, suddenly upset her cup all over Miss Allison's cherished Mexican drawnwork lunchcloth.

That foolish legend that she had manufactured to save herself a trip to the library in the rain had been taken as authentic and had been copied from the _Morterboard_ into other magazines! At the time she wrote it she was in too much of a hurry to pay attention to any such trifles as the difference between Eastern and Plains Indians. Anyway, she hadn't _said_ anywhere that they were Pen.o.bscot Indians, it was Harriet who had said so to the _Morterboard_ editor.