The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit by Hildegard G. Frey
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Hildegard G. Frey >> The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit
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12 THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS DO THEIR BIT
OR, OVER THE TOP WITH THE WINNEBAGOS
By HILDEGARD G. FREY
AUTHOR OF The Camp Fire Girls Series
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
1919
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS SERIES
A Series of Stories for Camp Fire Girls Endorsed by
the Officials of the Camp Fire Girls Organization
By HILDEGARD G. FREY
The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods
or, The Winnebago's Go Camping
The Camp Fire Girls at School
or, The Wohelo Weavers
The Camp Fire Girls at Onoway House
or, The Magic Garden
The Camp Fire Girls Go Motoring
or, Along the Road That Leads the Way
The Camp Fire Girls Larks and Pranks
or, The House of the Open Door
The Camp Fire Girls on Ellen's Isle
or, the Trail of the Seven Cedars
The Camp Fire Girls on the Open Road
or, Glorify Work
The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit
or, Over The Top With the Winnebago's
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS DO THEIR BIT
CHAPTER I
A DREAM COMES TRUE
The long train, which for nearly an hour had been gliding smoothly
forward with a soothing, cradling motion of its heavy trucked Pullmans,
and a crooning, lullaby sound of its droning wheels, came to a jarring
stop at one of the mountain stations, and Lieutenant Allison wakened
with a start. The echo of the laugh that he had heard in his dream still
sounded in his ears, a tantalizing, compelling note, elusive as the
Pipes of Pan, luring as a will-o'-the-wisp. Above the bustle of
departing and incoming passengers, the confusion of the station and the
grinding of the wheels as the train started again that haunting peal of
laughter still rang in his ears, still held him in its thrall, calling
him back into the dream from which he had just awakened. Still heavy
with sleep and also somewhat light-headed--for he had been traveling
for two days and the strain was beginning to tell on him, although the
doctors had at last pronounced him able to make the journey home for a
month's furlough--he leaned his head against the cool green plush
back-rest and stared idly through half-closed eyelids down the long
vista of the Pullman aisle. Then his pulses gave a leap and the blood
began to pound in his ears and he thought he was back in the base
hospital again and the fever was playing tricks on him. For down in the
shadowy end of the aisle there moved a figure which his sleep-heavy eyes
recognized as the Maiden, the one who had flitted through his weeks of
delirium, luring him, beckoning him, calling him, eluding him, vanishing
from his touch with a peal of silvery laughter that echoed in his ears
with a haunting sweetness long after she and the fever had fled away
together in the night, not to return. And now, weeks afterward, here she
stood, in the shadowy end of a Pullman aisle, watching him from afar,
just as she had stood watching in those other days when he and the fever
were wrestling in mortal combat.
He had known her years before he had the fever. Somewhere in his dreamy,
imaginative boyhood he had read the Song of Hiawatha, and his glowing
fancy had immediately fastened upon the lines which described the Indian
girl, Minnehaha, Laughing Water, daughter of the old arrow-maker in the
land of the Dacotahs:
"With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter,
Wayward as the Minnehaha,
With her moods of shade and sunshine,
Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate,
Feet as rapid as the river,
Tresses flowing like the water,
And as musical a laughter;
And he named her from the river,
From the waterfall he named her,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water."
The image thus conjured up remained in his mind, a tantalizing vision,
until at last he found himself filled with a desire to find a maiden
like the storied daughter of the ancient arrow-maker in the land of the
Dacotahs, dark-eyed, slender as an arrow, sparkling like the sunlight on
the water, with laughter like the music of the Falls. Sometimes he saw
her in his dreams, and through the long weeks in the hospital at the
aviation camp when he had the fever she was with him constantly,
beckoning, calling, luring him back to life when he was about to slip
over the edge into the bottomless abyss, her laughter ringing in his
ears after she had vanished into the mists. Then one night she and the
fever had fled hand in hand and after that he could not recall her
image, though her memory still tantalized him.
Not until today, when the soothing motion of the long Pullman car and
the lullaby droning of the wheels had lulled him to sleep with his elbow
on the windowsill and his head resting on his thin, transparent hand,
did she come back to him in a dream. In that daytime nap he had suddenly
heard her laughter ring out and with flying footsteps followed the
sound, hoping to come upon her at every turn, but just when he was about
to overtake her the train stopped with a jerk and startled him back into
consciousness, with the echo of her laughter still ringing in his ears.
And now, when his pursuit had been vain and her luring laughter had died
away in his ears, she came back and stood in the shadowy end of the
aisle, watching him with large, luminous eyes, just as she used to come
and watch him wrestle with the fever. Breathless, he looked at her,
waiting for her to vanish, but she did not. Then it came to him that he
might go to her, might reach her this time before she fled. But
something lay on his shoulder, something that weighed him down and kept
him from moving, kept him from rising and going to her. He tried to
shake it off, but it remained. He tried again, keeping his eyes on her
all the time. Then the long vista of green plush seats leading to her
was blotted out and he found himself gazing into a dusky countenance,
while an unctuous voice murmured in his ear:
"How you feelin', Looten't? Gettin' light-headed, wasn't you? Here's
the milk you ordered for two o'clock. Just drink it now, Looten't, and
you'll feel all right."
Robert Allison mechanically reached out his hand for the glass of milk
which the solicitous porter held out to him and dutifully drank it,
while the porter hovered over him like an anxious hen, clucking out a
constant stream of encouraging remarks.
The porter and the glass finally disappeared down the aisle, and Robert
Allison, now wide awake and flooded with returning energy, remembered
with a whimsical smile the illusion that had overtaken him at midday. He
glanced boldly down the aisle to assure himself that his mind was now
free from phantoms. The heavy foliage along the mountainside, through
which they had been passing, and which had created a twilight atmosphere
in the car, had given way to wide open fields, and the long corridor was
flooded from end to end with glaring June sunlight. Robert Allison
caught his breath with a start and dug his thumb-nail into the palm of
his hand to make sure he was awake. For the illusion of a moment ago was
not an illusion at all; she was a flesh and blood girl; she had left her
shadowy foothold in the far end of the car and was coming down the aisle
toward him. Spellbound, he waited as she approached, slim as a fawn,
erect as an arrow, moving as lightly as the ripples that danced upon the
surface of the river along whose banks they were rolling. Whether or
not she was the image of the vision in his fever dream he would never be
table to tell, for already the dream phantom was fading from his mind
and the reality taking its place; the Laughing Water of his boyhood
fancy had come to life in the person of this slim young girl who was
moving down the aisle toward him.
Stupidly he had thought she was coming directly to him, and he
experienced a shock of surprise when she passed him with no more than a
casual glance. Even with her indifferent passing a thrill seemed to go
through him; his blood began to sing in his veins, and through his mind
there flashed again the lines which had stirred his boyhood fancy years
ago:
"She the moonlight, starlight, firelight,
She the sunshine of her people,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water!"
CHAPTER II
IN THE TRAIN
Sahwah the Sunfish came tripping blithely down the Pullman aisle to
rejoin the Winnebagos after a sojourn on the platform with the brakeman,
whom she left exhausted with answering questions. When Sahwah traveled
she traveled with all her might and there was nothing visible to the
naked eye that she did not notice, inquire about, and store up for
future reference. She observed down to the last nail wherein a Pullman
differed from a day coach; she found out why the man ran along beside
the train at the stations and hit the wheels with a hammer; why the cars
had double windows; what the semaphore signals indicated; why the
east-bound freight trains were so much more heavily loaded than the
west-bound; she noticed that there were no large steamboats running on
the Susquehanna, although it looked like a very large river; she counted
the number of times they crossed the river on the run through the
Alleghenies; she noticed the different varieties of trees that grew
along the mountain sides; she scrutinized every passenger in the car
and tried to guess who they were, what their business was and where they
were going. Sahwah's mind was like a photographic plate; everything she
looked at became imprinted there as upon a negative, accurate in every
detail. Like the Elephant's Child, Sahwah was full of 'satiable
curiosity, and her inquisitive trunk was always stretched out in a
quivering search for information.
The brakeman, an amiable personage, was interested in her thirst for
knowledge of railway affairs, and answered her innumerable questions in
patient detail until his head began to buzz and he began to feel as
though he were attached to a suction pump.
"Goodness gracious, child, what do you think I am, an encyclopedia?" he
exploded at last, and sought refuge in the impenetrable regions at the
forward end of the long train.
Sahwah, deprived of her source of information, turned to join her
traveling companions, Gladys and Hinpoha and Migwan, up in the other end
of the car. She stood for a moment at the water cooler, looking down the
car at the people facing her and indulging in her favorite pastime of
trying to read their faces. The car was crowded with all kinds of
people, from the stately, judicial-looking man who sat in front of the
Winnebagos to a negro couple on their honeymoon. There was a plentiful
sprinkling of soldiers throughout the car and one or two sailors.
Sahwah looked at them with eager interest and classified their different
branches of service by the color of the cord on their hats. One
Artillery, three Infantry, one Ambulance Corps and one Lieutenant of
Aviation, she checked off, after a long and careful scrutiny of the last
one, whose insignia puzzled her at first.
A porter brushed by her as she stood there with a glass of milk in his
hand. Sahwah watched the progress of the milk idly, and the porter
stopped beside the Lieutenant of Aviation with it. The lieutenant seemed
to be asleep, for the porter had to shake him before he became aware of
his existence. Just then Hinpoha caught Sahwah's eye and motioned her to
come back to her seat, and Sahwah went tripping down the aisle to join
her friends. She glanced casually at the young lieutenant as she passed
him; he was staring fixedly at her and she dropped her eyes quickly. A
little electric shock tingled through her as she met his eyes; he seemed
to be about to speak to her. "Probably mistook me for someone else and
thought he knew me," Sahwah thought to herself, and dismissed him from
her mind.
"Where have you been all this while?" asked Hinpoha with a perspiring
sigh, laboriously "knitting backward" across the length of the needle in
vicious pursuit of a stitch that should have been eliminated in the
process of decreasing for the heel turn.
"Pursuing knowledge," replied Sahwah merrily, settling herself in the
seat beside Hinpoha, facing Migwan and Gladys.
The four girls were on their way to spend the summer vacation with their
beloved Guardian, Nyoda, at her home in Oakwood, the little town in the
hills of eastern Pennsylvania where she had lived since her marriage to
Andrew Sheridan--"Sherry"--the summer before. Sherry was in France now
with the Engineers, and Nyoda, lonesome in the huge old house to which
she had fallen heir at the death of her last relative, old Uncle Jasper
Carver, had invited the Winnebagos to come and spend the summer with
her.
Vacation had begun inauspiciously for the Winnebagos. To their great
disappointment Katherine wrote that she was not coming east after all;
she was going to remain in Chicago with Miss Fairlee and help her with
her settlement work there. They had rejoiced so at the first news of her
coming and had so impatiently awaited the time of her arrival that the
disappointment when it came was much harder to bear than if they had
never looked forward to her coming. As Sahwah remarked, she had her
appetite all fixed for Katherine, and nothing else would satisfy her.
The news about Katherine had only been one of a series of
disappointments.
Hinpoha had been called home the week before college closed officially,
to attend the funeral of Dr. Hoffman, Aunt Phoebe's husband, whose
strenuous work for his "boys" in the military camp during the past year
had been too much for his already failing strength, and Aunt Phoebe,
worn out with the strain of the last months, had announced her intention
of closing the house and going to spend the summer with a girlhood
friend on the Maine coast. Hinpoha had the choice of going with her or
spending the summer with Aunt Grace, who had a fractured knee and was
confined to an invalid's chair.
Migwan had come home from college with over-strained eyes and a weak
chest and had been peremptorily forbidden to spend the vacation
devouring volumes of Indian history as she had planned, and had a lost,
aimless feeling in consequence.
Sahwah, thanks to the unceasing patriotic activities of Mrs. Osgood
Harper during the previous winter, found herself unexpectedly in
possession of a two months' vacation while her energetic employer
recuperated from her season's labors in a famous sanatorium. As Sahwah
had not expected a vacation and had made no plans, she found herself, as
she expressed it, "all dressed up and no place to go."
For Gladys's father, head over heels in the manufacture of munitions,
there would be no such glorious camping trip as there was the summer
before, and Mrs. Evans refused to go away and leave him, so Gladys had
the prospect of a summer in town, the first that she could recollect.
"I can't decide which I shall do," sighed Hinpoha plaintively to the
other three, who had foregathered in the library of the Bradford home
one afternoon at the beginning of the summer. "I know Aunt Phoebe would
rather be alone with Miss Shirley, because her cottage is small, and it
would be dreadfully dull for me besides; but Aunt Grace will be laid up
all summer and she has a fright of a parrot that squawks from morning
until night. Oh, dear, why can't things be as they were last year?"
Then had come Nyoda's letter:
DEAREST WINNEBAGOS:
Can't you take pity on me and relieve my loneliness? Here I am, in a
house that would make the ordinary hotel look like a bandbox, and since
Sherry has gone to France with the Engineers it's simply ghastly. For
various reasons I do not wish to leave the house, but I shall surely go
into a decline if I have to stay here alone. Can't you come and spend
your vacations with me, as many of you as have vacations? Please come
and amuse your lonesome old Guardian, whose house is bare and dark and
cold.
Sahwah tumbled out of her chair with a shout that startled poor Mr. Bob
from his slumbers at her feet and set him barking wildly with
excitement; Migwan and Gladys fell on each other's necks in silent
rapture, and Hinpoha began packing immediately. Just one week later they
boarded the train and started on their journey to Oakwood.
Sahwah sat and looked at the soldiers in the car with unconcealed envy.
Her ever-smouldering resentment against the fact that she was not a boy
had since the war kindled into red rage at the unkindness of fate. She
chafed under the restrictions with which her niche in the world hedged
her in.
"I wish I were a man!" she exclaimed impatiently. "Then I could go to
war and fight for my country and--and go over the top. The boys have all
the glory and excitement of war and the girls have nothing but the
stupid, commonplace things to do. It isn't fair!"
"But women _are_ doing glorious things in the war," Migwan interrupted
quickly. "They're going as nurses in the hospitals right at the front;
they're working in the canteens and doing lots of other things right in
the thick of the excitement."
"Oh, yes, _women_ are," replied Sahwah, "but _girls_ aren't. Long ago,
in the days before the war, I used to think if there ever _would_ be a
war the Camp Fire Girls would surely do something great and glorious,
but here we are, and the only thing we can do is knit, knit, knit, and
fold bandages, and the babies in the kindergarten are doing _that_.
We're too _young_ to do anything big and splendid. We're just
schoolgirls, and no one takes us seriously. We can't go as nurses
without three years' training--we can't do _anything_. There might as
well not _be_ any war, for all I'm doing to help it. Boys seventeen
years old can enlist, even sixteen-year-old ones, and go right to the
front, but a girl sixteen years old isn't any better off than if she
were sixteen months. I'm nearly nineteen, and I wanted to go as a
stenographer, but they wouldn't consider me for a minute. Said I was too
young." Sahwah threw out her hands in a tragic gesture and her brow
darkened.
"It's a shame," Hinpoha agreed sympathetically. "In books young girls
have no end of adventures in war time, girls no older than we; they
catch spies and outwit the enemy and save their lovers' lives and carry
important messages, but nothing like that will ever happen to us. All
we'll ever do is just stay at home peacefully and knit."
Hinpoha gave an impatient jerk and the knitting fell into her lap with a
protesting tinkle of needles, while the stitch which she was in the act
of transferring slipped off and darted merrily away on an excursion up
the length of the sock. Hinpoha threw up her hands in exasperation.
"That's the third time that's happened in an hour!" she exclaimed in a
vexed tone. "I hope the soldiers appreciate how much trouble it is to
keep their feet covered. I'd rather fight any day than knit," she
finished emphatically.
"Here, let me pick up the dropped stitches for you," said Migwan
soothingly, reaching over for the tangled mess of yarn. "You're getting
all tired and hot," she continued, skilfully pursuing the agile and
elusive dropped stitches down the grey woolen wake of the sock and
bringing them triumphantly up to resume their place in the sun.
"It takes me an age to get a pair of socks done for the Red Cross,"
Hinpoha grumbled on, "and they're as cross as two sticks if you drop a
single stitch! That woman down at headquarters made the biggest fuss
about the last pair I brought in, just because I'd slipped a stitch in
the wrong place--it hardly showed a bit--and because one sock was an
inch longer than the other. War isn't a bit like I thought it would
be," she sighed plaintively, with a vengeful poke at the knitting, which
Migwan had just restored to her.
Poor romantic Hinpoha, trying to sail her ship of rosy fancies on a sea
of stern reality, and finding it pretty hard sailing! Leaning back
against the green plush of the train seat, which set off like an
artist's background the burnished glory of her red curls, and dreaming
regretfully of the vanished days when chivalry rode on fiery steeds and
ladies fair led much more eventful lives than their emancipated
great-granddaughters, it never occurred to her--nor to the rest of the
Winnebagos either, for that matter--that romance might have become up to
date along with science and the fashions, and that in these modern days
of speed and efficiency High Adventure might purchase a ticket at the
station window and go faring forth in a Pullman car. So Hinpoha dreamed
dreams of the way she would like things to happen and built airy castles
around the Winnebagos as heroines; but little did she suspect that
another architect was also at work on those same castles, an architect
whose lines are drawn with an indelible pencil, and whose finished work
no man may reject.
Hinpoha did not resume her knitting again. She opened her hand bag and
drew forth her mirror, and propping it up against her knee, proceeded to
arrange the curls that had escaped from their imprisoning pins and were
riding around her ears. Then she put the mirror back and drew out a
bottle of hand lotion and examined the stopper. She slipped it in and
out several times and then idly dropped a few violet petals from the
bunch at her belt into the bottle, shaking it about to make them whirl,
and then holding it still to watch them settle.
"It looks as though you were telling fortunes," remarked Sahwah,
watching the petals alternately whirl and sink, "like tea leaves, you
know."
Hinpoha brightened at once and animation came back into her face. Better
than anything else under the sun, Hinpoha loved to tell fortunes.
"Do you want me to tell yours, Sahwah?" she asked eagerly.
Sahwah agreed amiably; she did not care two straws about
fortune-telling herself, but she knew Hinpoha's hobby and willingly
submitted to countless "readings" of her future, in various ways, by the
ardent amateur seeress.
Hinpoha shook the bottle energetically, and then watched intently as the
petals gradually ceased whirling and came to rest at the bottom of the
bottle.
"There is a stranger coming into your life," she began impressively,
"awfully thin, and light."
"Like the syrup we had on our pancakes in the station this morning,"
murmured Migwan.
Sahwah and Gladys giggled; Hinpoha frowned. "All right, if you're going
to laugh at me," she began.
"Go on, we'll be good," said Migwan hastily.
"Tell us some more about the light-haired stranger. Please tell us when
he is coming into her life, so we can be there to see."
"He has already come," announced Hinpoha, after thoughtfully squinting
into the bottle.
"News to me," laughed Sahwah, amused at the seriousness with which
Hinpoha delivered her revelations. "Oh, I know who it is," she
continued, giggling. "It's the brakeman. He was a Swede, with the
yellowest hair you ever saw. He was awfully skinny, too. He was very
polite, and told me everything he knew, and then went away to find out
some more."
Migwan and Gladys shouted; Hinpoha pouted and snatched up the bottle,
shaking it with offended vigor, setting the petals whirling madly and
breaking up the "cast" of Sahwah's fortune.
"There was another man, too," she announced, with a
don't-you-wish-you'd-waited air, "but I won't tell you about him now. He
was awfully queer, too; he was there twice, and once he was dark and
once he was light!"
"How do you know it was the same one?" inquired Gladys curiously.
"Because it _was_," replied Hinpoha knowingly.
"Maybe he faded," suggested Sahwah, giggling again.
"No, he didn't," replied Hinpoha mysteriously, "because he was light
_first_ and dark _afterward_!"
Hinpoha's voice rang out like an oracle, and the judicial-looking man in
the seat ahead of them turned around and surveyed the four with a smile
of amusement on his face.
"That man's laughing at us," said Sahwah, feeling terribly foolish.
"Quit telling fortunes, Hinpoha. It's all nonsense, anyhow."
"Maybe _you_ think it's nonsense," returned Hinpoha in an offended tone,
"but they do come true, lots of times. Do you remember, Gladys, the time
I told you you were going to get a letter from a distance, and you got
one from France the very next day?"
"Yes," replied Gladys, "and do you remember the time you predicted I
was going to flunk math at midyears and I took the prize?"
"And do you remember the light man that came into _your_ life, Hinpoha?"
said Sahwah slily.
Hinpoha turned fiery red at this reference to Professor Knoblock and
looked out of the window in confused silence. Sahwah realized that she
was figure-skating on thin ice when she mentioned that subject and
forebore to make any further remarks. A strained silence fell upon the
four. Migwan cast about in her mind for a topic of conversation that
would relieve the tension.
"Has anyone heard from Veronica lately?" she asked.
"I haven't heard from her for several months," replied Sahwah, "but I
suppose she's still in New York. She must be doing great things with her
music. She's given a concert already."
"It's queer about Veronica," continued Sahwah musingly. "Although she
wasn't with us so much I seem to miss her more and more as time goes on.
I often dream I hear her playing her violin." Sahwah's admiration for
Veronica had never waned, although Veronica had never had what Sahwah
described as a "real emotional case" on her.
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