“Well, I’ll say you are, anyway,” Mr. Wilde said, as he viewed the place
with a satisfied air. “It’s like manna in the wilderness to get a
bunking-in place like this. I never was fond of sleeping in damp tents
and I’m too blamed old to acclimatize myself to that sort of thing now.
Bless your lil heart, Westy, my lad, you have all the so-called mascots
beaten by a mile when it comes to being of service!”
“A scout is helpful!” Westy said proudly.
“All right, then get some supper and show us what you can do!” Billy
demanded, feigning seriousness.
Westy decided to do the cooking and let Rip do the menial chores about
and so break him in right. He ordered Rip to run down to the brook and
get some water. He sauntered on down very leisurely and splashed the
cool water about for some time before he decided to return.
[Illustration: WESTY DECIDED TO DO THE COOKING AND LET RIP DO THE MENIAL
CHORES.]
Just as he turned away from the brook to go back he felt instinctively
the presence of some one near him. Glancing around, he saw nothing. Then
he looked upward and something moved in the refractory light shining
through the gaunt-limbed trees. Breathless, he fled. His uncle sensed
something amiss as he ran toward them.
“Gee, you know, Unk, strike me pink if I didn’t see a girl sitting up in
a tree down there. Looks to me like an Indian, s’ help me Sam!”
“You’re one heck of a scout, you are,” Mr. Wilde chided him, “running
away from a poor helpless Indian girl. What in thunder were you afraid
of?”
“Aw, I wasn’t afraid of her at all, I was just taken off my feet when I
saw it was a girl. I don’t like ’em much, anyway. That is, most of ’em!”
“Of course not,” Mr. Wilde said with mock sympathy, and as an
afterthought added, “Not until you get a little older! Come on, we’ll
take a stroll down and inquire who this maid of the mountains happens to
be.”
Westy left his bacon to an unknown Fate and followed the rest to the
brook, where they beheld Rip’s dryad sitting, feet under her, on the
limb of a huge tree.
The setting sun threw a halo of scarlet around her. Bobbed hair, dark
and straight, with a band of crimson ribbon encircling her forehead.
Eyes as dark as the forests at night with a laughing light in them. Her
small face and strong looking arms were tanned. They could see at first
glance that here was a child of the open spaces.
A girl of about thirteen, they judged, when she slipped out of the tree
as noiselessly as a wildcat and stood before them slim and tall for her
age.
One _would_ gather at first that she was an Indian, until she smiled at
them one and all, sweetly yet fearlessly.
“How do you do!” Mr. Wilde said, as he bowed graciously. “My name is
Madison Wilde, young lady! Who, may I ask, are you?”
She laughed gayly at Mr. Wilde’s mock gallantry, and her voice echoed
like a silver bell ringing throughout the forest.
“Why--I’m a girl called Lola!”