Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: The motor boat kept dashing back and forth, making
swimming almost impossible.]
CAMP FIRE GIRLS SERIES, VOLUME IV
The Camp Fire Girls
In the Mountains
or
Bessie King's Strange Adventure
by
JANE L. STEWART
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
Chicago ---- AKRON, OHIO ---- New York
MADE IN U. S. A.
Copyright, 1914
By
The Saalfield Publishing Co.
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS SERIES
1. THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS IN THE WOODS
2. THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS ON THE FARM
3. THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS AT LONG LAKE
4. THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS IN THE MOUNTAINS
5. THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS ON THE MARCH
6. THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS AT THE SEASHORE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. PEACEFUL DAYS
II. FOREBODINGS OF TROUBLE
III. A NEW PLAN
IV. A FRIEND IN TROUBLE
V. A TANGLED NET
VI. BESSIE KING'S PLUCK
VII. BACK AT LONG LAKE
VIII. A NOVEL RACE
IX. THE PATHFINDERS
X. THE SIGNAL SMOKES
XI. OFF TO THE MOUNTAINS
XII. ENEMIES WITHOUT CAUSE
XIII. A PLAN OF REVENGE
XIV. THE SPIRIT OF WO-HE-LO
XV. COALS OF FIRE
The Camp Fire Girls In the Mountains
CHAPTER I
PEACEFUL DAYS
On the shores of Long Lake the dozen girls who made up the Manasquan
Camp Fire of the Camp Fire Girls of America were busily engaged in
preparing for a friendly contest and matching of skill that had caused
the greatest excitement among the girls ever since they had learned
that it was to take place.
For the first time since the organization of the Camp Fire under the
guardianship of Miss Eleanor Mercer, the girls were living with no aid
but their own. They did all the work of the camp; even the rough work,
which, in any previous camping expedition of more than one or two days,
men had done for them. For Miss Mercer, the Guardian, felt that one of
the great purposes of the Camp Fire movement was to prove that girls
and women could be independent of men when the need came.
It was her idea that before the coming of the Camp Fire idea girls had
been too willing to look to their brothers and their other men folks
for services which they should be able, in case of need, to perform for
themselves, and that, as a consequence, when suddenly deprived of the
support of their natural helpers and protectors, many girls were in a
particularly helpless and unfortunate position. So the Camp Fire
movement, designed to give girls self-reliance and the ability to do
without outside help, struck her as an ideal means of correcting what
she regarded as faults in the modern methods of educating women.
Before the camp on Long Lake was broken up they hoped to have a
ceremonial camp fire, but there were gatherings almost every night
around the big fire that was not a luxury and an ornament at Long Lake,
but a sheer necessity, since the nights were cool, and at times chilly.
This fire was never allowed to go out, but burned night and day,
although, of course, it reached its full height and beauty after dark,
when the flames shot up high and sent grotesque shadows dancing under
and among the trees, and on the sandy beach which had been selected as
the ideal location for the camp.
At these meetings everyone had a chance to speak. Miss Eleanor, or
Wanaka, as she was called in the ceremonial meetings, did not attempt
to control the talk on these occasions. She only led it and tried, at
times, to guide it into some particular channel. It would have been
easy for her to impress her own personality on the girls in her charge,
since they not only admired, but loved her, but she preferred the
expression of their own thoughts, and she knew, also, that to
accomplish her own purpose and that of the founders of the Camp Fire,
it was necessary for the girls to develop along their own lines, so
that when they reached maturity they would have formed the habit of
thinking things out for themselves and knowing the reason for things,
as well as the facts concerned.
"I think we're too likely to forget the old days when this country was
being explored and opened up," Eleanor said one night. "Out west that
isn't so, and out there, if you notice, women play a much bigger part
than they do here. Those states in the far west, across the
Mississippi, give women the right to vote as soon as women show that
they want it. They are more ready to do that than the states in the
east."
"Why is that, Wanaka?" asked Margery Burton, one of the Fire-Makers of
the Camp Fire.
"In the west," said Eleanor, answering the question, "men and women
both find it easier to remember the old days of the pioneers, when the
women did so much to make the building of our new country possible.
They faced the hardships with the men. They did their share of the
work. They travelled across the desert with them, and, often, when the
Indians made attacks, the women used guns with the men."
"But there isn't any chance for women to do that sort of thing now,"
said Dolly Ransom, or Kiama, as she was known in the ceremonial
meetings. "The Indians don't fight, and the pioneer days are all over."
"They'll never be over until this country is a perfect place to live
in, Dolly, and it isn't--not yet. Some people are rich, and some are
poor, and I'm afraid it will always be that way, because it has always
been so. But everyone ought to have a chance to rise, no matter how
poor his or her parents are. That was the idea this country was built
on. You know the words of the Declaration of Independence, don't you?
That all men are created free and equal? This was the first country to
proclaim that."
"But what is there to do about that?"
"Ever so many things, Dolly. Some men who have money use it to get
power they shouldn't have, to make people work without proper
conditions, and for too little money. Oh, there are all sorts of
things to be made right! And one reason that some of them have gone
wrong is that women who have plenty of comforts, and people to look
after them, have forgotten about the others. There is as much work for
women to do now as there ever was in the pioneer days--more, I think."
"The Camp Fire Girls are going to try to make things better, aren't
they, Wanaka?" asked Margery Burton. For once she wasn't laughing, so
that her ceremonial name of Minnehaha might not have seemed
appropriate. But as a rule she was always happy and smiling, and the
name was really the best she could have chosen for herself.
"Yes, indeed," said Eleanor. "So far we've been pretty busy thinking
about ourselves, and doing things for ourselves, but there has been a
reason for that."
"What reason, Miss Eleanor?" asked Dolly.
"Well, it's hard to get much done unless you're in the right condition
to do it. You know when an athlete is going to run in a long race, he
doesn't just go out and run. He trains for it a long time before he is
to run, and gets his body in fine condition. And it's the same with a
man who has some mental task. If he has to pass an examination, for
instance, he studies and prepares his mind. That's what we have to do;
prepare our minds and bodies. In the city, in the winter, we will take
up a lot of these things. I'm just mentioning them to you now so that
you can think about them and won't be surprised when we start to go
into them seriously."
"I know something I've thought about myself," said Dolly, eagerly. "In
some of the stores at home they have seats so that the girls can sit
down when they don't have to wait on people. And in some they don't.
But in the stores where they do have them, the girls get more done, and
one of them told me once that she felt ever so much stronger and better
when the rush came in the afternoon, if she'd been able to sit down
instead of standing up all day."
"Of course. And that's a splendid idea, Dolly. Some of the stores
make the girls stand up all day long, because they think it pleases the
women who come in to shop. But if you could make those store keepers
see that they'd really get more work done by the girls if they let them
rest when the stores are empty, they'd soon provide the chairs, even if
the law didn't make them do it."
"This place looks as if pioneers might have lived here, Wanaka," said
Margery Burton.
"They passed along here once, Margery, years and years ago, but they
were going on, and they didn't stop. You see, the reason this country
has stayed so wild is that it's hard to get at. The trees haven't been
cleared away, and roads haven't been built."
"Isn't it good land? Wouldn't it pay to plough it, after the trees
were cut down?" asked Bessie King.
"It would, and it wouldn't, Bessie. It's just about the same sort of
land as in the valleys below, where there are some of the best farms in
the whole state. But we need the forests, too. You know why, don't
you?"
"No, I don't," said Bessie, after a moment's thought. "I know they're
beautiful, and that it's splendid for people to be able to come up here
and live, and camp out. But that isn't the only reason, is it?"
"No, it isn't even anywhere near the most important, Bessie. You know
what a dry summer means, don't you? You lived long enough on Paw
Hoover's farm at Hedgeville to know that?"
"Yes, indeed! It's bad for the crops; they all get burned up. We had
a drought two or three years ago. It never rained at all, except for
little showers that didn't do any good, all through July and August,
and for most of June, as well. Paw Hoover was all broken up about it.
He said one or two more summers like that would put him in the
poor-house."
"Well, if there weren't any forests, all our summers would be like
that. The woods are great storehouses of moisture, and they have a lot
to do with the rain. Countries where they don't have forests, like
Australia, are very dry. And that's the reason."
"They have something to do with floods, too, don't they, Wanaka?" asked
Dolly. "I think I read something like that, or heard someone say so."
"They certainly have. In winter it rains a good deal, and snows, and
if there are great stretches of woods, the trees store up all that
moisture. But if there are no trees, it all comes down at once, in the
spring, and that's one of the chief reasons for those terrible floods
and freshets that do so much damage, and kill so many people."
"But if that's so, why are the trees cut down so often?"
"That's just one of the things I was talking about. Some men are
selfish, you see. They buy the land and the trees, and they never
think, or seem to care, how other people are affected when they start
cutting. They say it's their land, and their timber; that they paid
for it."
"Well, I suppose it is--"
"Yes, but like most selfish people, they are short-sighted. It is very
easy to cut timber so that no harm is done, and in some countries that
really are as free and progressive as ours, things are managed much
better. We waste a whole forest and leave the land bare and full of
stumps. Then, you see, it isn't any use as a storehouse for moisture,
which nature intended it to be, and neither is it any use to the timber
cutters, so that they have to move on somewhere else."
"Could they manage that differently?"
"Yes, if they would only cut a certain number of trees in any
particular part of the woods in any one year, and would always plant
new ones for every one that is taken out, there wouldn't be such a
dreadful waste, and the forests would keep on growing. That's the way
it is usually done abroad--in Germany, and in Russia, and places like
that. Over there they make ever so much more money than we do out of
forests, because they have studied them, and know just how everything
ought to be done."
"Don't we do anything like that at all?"
"Yes, we're beginning to now. The United States government, and a good
many of the states, have seemed to wake up in the last few years to the
need of looking after the woods better, and so I really believe that in
the future things will be managed much better. But there has been a
terrible lot of waste, here and in Canada, that it will take years to
repair."
"They don't spoil the woods about here that way, do they?"
"No; but then, you see, this is a private preserve, and one of the
reasons it is so well looked after is that some of the men who own it
like to come here for the shooting."
"I know," said Margery. "I thought that was why the guides were kept
here."
"It is, but it's only one reason. A few miles away, if we go that way,
I can show you acres and acres of woods that were burned two years ago,
and you never saw such a desolate spot in all your life. It's
beginning to look a little better now, because, if you give nature a
chance, she will always repair the damage that men do from
carelessness, and from not knowing any better."
"Oh, I think it would be dreadful for all these lovely woods to be
burned up! And that wouldn't do anyone any good, would it?"
"Of course not! That's the pitiful part of it. But a terrible lot of
fires do start in the woods almost every year. You see, after a hot,
dry summer, when there hasn't been much rain, the woods catch fire
easily, and a small fire, if it isn't stamped out at once, grows and
spreads very fast, so that it soon gets to be almost impossible to put
out at all."
"I saw a forest fire once, in the distance," said Dolly. "It was when
I was out west, and it looked as if the whole world was burning up."
"I expect it did, Dolly. And if you'd been closer, you'd have seen how
hard the rangers and everyone in the neighboring towns had to fight to
get control of that fire. It doesn't seem as if they could burn as
fast as they do, but they're terrible. It's the hardest fire of all to
put out, if it once gets away. That's why we have such strict rules
about never leaving a camping place without putting out a fire."
"Would one of the little fires we make when we stop on the trail for
lunch start a great big blaze?"
"It certainly would. It's happened just that way lots and lots of
times. Many campers are careless, and don't seem to realize that a
very few sparks will be enough to start the dry leaves burning.
Sometimes people see that their fire is just going out, as they think,
and they don't feel that it's necessary to pour water on it and make
sure that it's really dead. You see, the fire stays in the embers of a
wood fire a long, long time, smouldering, after it seems to be out, and
then--well, can't you guess what might happen?"
"I suppose the wind might come up, and start sparks flying?"
"That's exactly what does happen. Why, in the big forest preserves out
west they have men in little watch-towers on the high spots in the
hills, who don't do anything but look for smoke and signs of a fire.
They have big telescopes, and when they see anything suspicious they
make signals from one tower to the next, and tell where the fire is.
Then all the rangers and watchers run for the fire, and sometimes, if
it's been seen soon enough, they can put it out before it gets to be
really dangerous."
"Well, I know now why I've got to be careful," said Dolly. "I wouldn't
start a fire for anything!"
"Good! And I think it's time to sing the good-night song!"