Hidden Valley
“The night is heavy-hearted,” said the Guardian.
“It’s ‘up to us’, then, to put a good face on its heavy heart by being
extra chipper,” laughed Dorothy Bush—a fair-haired girl. “We’ll be in
luck if it doesn’t rain more than it has done,” she shrugged herself
together, witch-like, “just little ‘neezly-noozly’ showers, that fit
into each other even-end-ways,” with a brooding pout, “at the moment
when you think each one is going to be over—bah! beastly.”
“The clouds have been following us all day,” wailed Frances. “And I
don’t believe they’ve done with us yet. Who’s to light the fire?”
“Pemrose. I believe she could light a fire with a piece of damp bark and
a snowball, as the saying is.” Madeline Fitch threw a chuckling glance
in the direction of the girl with the blue-lit face, who was “ilka
body’s body”, a general favorite. “Hereditary ingenuity, I suppose.”
Madeline pursed up her lips. “If I had a father like hers.... Well!
never mind, a fire will drive the dumps from Hidden Valley. There, I’ve
named it!”
“I don’t like Hidden Valley. Gloomiest old place we’ve struck yet!”
murmured Una glancing up and down the heart-shaped glen, hoarding the
evening shadows between its narrowing head-walls.
“You—you won’t know it when we get a blaze going.” Pemrose was chopping
away with a light axe—the handle symbolically carved—at a dead limb of a
larch tree, to strip off outside layers, damped by the ‘noozly’ showers
and get at the dry wood, inside.
Already she had her roll of curly birch bark, stripped from a withering
bough, on the hike, before afternoon rain came on—and kept dry in her
pack.
Soon the fire was lighting up the tall walls of the V-shaped valley,
between two ragged mountains which seemed, at some time or other, to
have thrust their heads up, promiscuously, out of the earth—just to have
a look around. A peculiarity of most of the hills through which the
girls had passed!
Away to the north loomed the rounded outline of a taller mountain, the
Dome; and in the dim distance, before the evening shadows herded on the
trail—the day’s long trail—there had been mighty glimpses of giant Mount
Mansfield and Camel’s Hump.
“The old farmer whom we met, back there, said that this valley was where
two brooks had ‘gouged out a hollow’, eaten the heart out of a hill,”
remarked Terry Ross, Assistant Guardian, her brown eyes blinking at the
blaze; “that we had ‘civ’lization’, at a ‘far-come’, on either side of
us—nothing between.”
“Yes! he cheerfully told us that, here, we were ‘two miles an’ a half
beyond God bless you’!”? came with a sidelong wink from Pemrose, who was
using her vigorous young lungs as bellows. “Humph! He’s beyond the pale
himself; his farm’s right here in Hidden Valley—not quarter of a mile
away. If it should come on a reckless downpour, we may have to storm his
old barn, before morning.”
“We must wait till he’s asleep then—otherwise he’d turn us out; he was
the crankiest mountaineer we’ve run across yet; you—you could hear him
‘cur-murring’ a mile off.” Una knelt, stretching her hands to the fire
that valiantly defied the tail end of a shower.
“Yes, he said this country was only ‘fit for b’ars’, that they ought to
chase all the folks out of it,” pouted Dorothy; “then, I suppose, he’d
be quite at home.”
“He seemed awf’ly peeved over something, out of luck, somehow. But don’t
you remember he did drawl out—” Pemrose wrinkled up a moist little nose,
with a smut on the end of it, to imitate the high-pitched twang of the
old Green Mountaineer—“he did drawl out, looking us over: ‘Wal! I reckon
you birds can stand more’n _most_ city folks!’ Bah! this ‘bird’ can’t
stand another thing until she’s been fed—with crumbs. Has any one filled
the kettle?”
“Yes.” Dorothy produced it. “We filled it at the clearest of the two
brooks, the one with the stony bed, which that peeved old farmer said
made the noise of the devil’s pans and kettles—the devil at his
dish-washing.”
“But what a ‘solemncholy’ old demon he must be, judging by the night,”
laughed Terry Ross.
For now, indeed, the night was growing heavy-hearted—even to bitterness.
The moon, as she rose, was in mourning. Rain stole, sighing, through
Hidden Valley. Thunder hummed-and-hawed, afar.
But the blaze kindled by a fire-witch, who wore brown honors for
building a fire in wind and rain, put a fair face on everything—that and
the toasted bacon, the steaming flapjacks, to say nothing of the evening
star of anticipation radiantly in the ascendant.
“Well! this will be our last night of sleeping out,” said the Guardian,
“our fourth and last, so even if it isn’t very comfortable, we’ll make
the best of it. To-morrow, if we cover our ten miles—we made nine
to-day—’twill bring us to Mount Pocohosette, the horse-farm at the
foot—our snug camp on the side-hill!”
“And Revel and Revelation!... Revel and Revelation—in more than
horseflesh, too!”? laughed blissful voices. “Oh! to-night we’ll just
dream of the Long Pasture; the horses to be caught with chaff—no,
oats—saddled, bridled.”
“The radio concerts of an evening! A morning ‘hamfest’—gossip with
father—space obliterated,” supplemented Pemrose. “Let’s turn in
early—and bring it nearer—all nearer! Hush! Here comes the dream man.”
They were not afraid of less flexible footsteps than his, to-night, as
they piled the fire up and lay down beside it.
Two quiet nights in the open had lent a green seasoning even to
tenderfoot nerves.
But some stronger “pep” was needed in Hidden Valley—as this side of
midnight proved.
Eleven o’clock—and not the soothing Dream Man, but the black Rain Hand,
was upon them—groping for their faces with chilling fingers!
“Goodness! It’s going to be a deluge—a bitter downpour.” The Guardian
sat up, gasping under the wet blanket. “I’m not sure but that we had
better break camp quickly, girls—fly for shelter—that barn isn’t far
off.”
“Nor the old b’ar who said we were ‘beyond God bless you!’ either,”
piped Dorothy glumly.
“Pshaw! he’d be ‘beyond praying for’, if he were to shoo us out,” came
from Madeline. “Ugh! How cold the rain is! I was just falling
asleep—dr-reaming of the horses.”
“Um-m. Novel experience, any way, breaking camp by flash light! My
shoes! Oh! where _are_ my shoes? My ring! I have that safe! One teeny
drop of rain would spoil that new crystal—as a detector, a ‘radio
soul!’” Pemrose was excitedly tucking away the ring and
paraphernalia—tucking it away in her bosom.
“The fancy paper-rolls! Oh! don’t let the colored paper-rolls get
wet—all wet an’ pulpy—then, there would be no flower party on my
birthday!” wailed Una.
“Bah! You and your last straw! They’re done up in oilskin,” hooted
Pemrose. “What—what are you looking for Dorothy?”
“My—toothbrush.”
“Oh-h! come; we’ve no time for tomfoolery.” Whereat every one
laughed—the lightning, too!
“My-y hair-brushes; where did I lay them?” Rain was pelting pitilessly
on Lura’s burnished “nob”, as she knelt, feeling round in the sodden
grass.
“Before a storm everything goes wrong!” hooted the jeering thunder.
“Cheep! Cheep! Tweak! Tweak! Very wrong, indeed!” echoed the poor little
birds in their rocking nests, complaining of the pecking rain-crow.
“But it isn’t as bad as if we had a tent to take down, girls.” The
Guardian was searching for a silver lining, mislaid among other things.
“That’s—_weird_. Pulling tent pegs in a hurry, tent collapsing, just
shuddering down, canvas grating on the rough edge, something sure to be
left under.... _What!_”
The tent had collapsed, indeed—the tabernacle of human spirits—and the
silver lining was left under.
The flash light had gone out.
The flash light had fainted, at the very most inopportune moment that a
craven battery could have chosen to give out.
If confusion had reigned before—and hurry-scurry—now it was
extremity—the “neb-end” of extremity! The camp fire black as a “tinker’s
pot”, with a dismal brew of shrieks and groanings! The rain-hand
slapping right and left in the darkness! Faces running into trees, toes
stubbed against stone and stump—wet hair caught on dripping branches
that tweaked and plucked at it.
“But—but there was a second battery! Who had charge of—that?”
“Pemrose.”
“I’ll find it in a ‘twink’,” said Pemrose manfully. “I hid it under this
bush—lest somebody should step on it.”
But the bush protested that she didn’t, laughing in her face, as
lightning played through it—while she felt all round it in the wet
grass.
“No-o—oh! dear, I remember—it was at the foot of this little tree.”
“Out again!” said the sapling—and deluged her all over, for her pains.
“Give it up,” said the Guardian desperately. “We can find our way to
shelter, without it.”
“What! Go home and tell Father that I lost—mislaid—a battery, our only
other live battery.” The hapless wail of the traitor was in Pem’s voice
now—traitor to precise laboratory training, where vigilance meant
safety. “Not—oh! not if I stay here till I dr-rown,” miserably.
She was groping round upon her knees now, others with her, in the black
wet, feeling amid vine and scrub.
“I do believe they’re passing it from one to the other, the dark
bushes—playing hunt-the-slipper—”
“The host of paradise are with us!” cried one suddenly. “She’s _found_
it.”
The hosts of paradise are always on the side of light—even a “spunky”
flash light.
With heaven reinstated in sundry hearts, led by a triumphant
torch-bearer, the barnstorming party set out, a shadowy horde, wrapped
in ponchos for raincoats.
“The light went out in the farmhouse quite a while ago,” said the
Guardian. “Perhaps we can get into the barn, find the stairs, the
ladder—find our way up into the barn, without disturbing anybody—”
“Without rousing the old bear from his lair, who said we were beyond
‘God bless you!’” muttered Dorothy vindictively. “We’re not. The hosts
of heaven are with us still. The door’s open.”
“And now for clover—dry clover—the hay above!” cried Pemrose, swinging
her flash light. “Oh! come on, girls. The menagerie—that’s nothing!”
For at the heavy reek of animal bodies streaming out through a broad
doorway; at the snorting stamp of great farmhorses, rolling the whites
of their eyes in nocturnal curiosity, at the grunt of cows rattling
their chains against the stall-head, baaing of sheep—from somewhere the
squeal of a distressed little piggie—Una and others drew squeamishly
back.
“Steady now! Keep the hush up! We don’t want to wake that old bear of a
farmer. The stairs—the ladder—is at the far end, I guess, leading up to
the hayloft.”
Pemrose was tiptoeing along the straw-littered aisle, on the trail of
her own whisper, the flash light in her hand a cynosure for every
blinking, brute-eye in the barn; tap, tap, patter, patter, came the
staccato stamp of sheep’s feet, saluting it, from the pen behind the
horses’ stall.
The Guardian brought up the rear.
“Careful now! Don’t make a sound. Keep the hush—”
But eighteen barn raiding girls, seeing the midnight adventure now in
the light of a huge joke, crowding up a dark and narrow ladder are not
likely to be too circumspect.
A false step, a rung missed—and one was back upon the shoulders of the
others amid an hubbub of shrieks, poorly stifled.
Simultaneously a near-by bedroom window was flung up. A hoarse old voice
was shouting:
“Heaven an’ earth! What’s all this hally-baloo? What’s all this uproar,
I say? Now—now you stay right there till I come!”
“Up! Up! Up—girls!” cried Pemrose. “If he tries to mount the ladder to
turn us out—we’ll push him down!”
But as girls crouched in the hay at the ladder-head, arms down-stretched
to oust the besieger, that besieger, when he thrust a wild gray head up
into the light, showed signs of amazement—blank amazement—rather than
hostility.
“My soul! So it’s you birds!” He wagged a crinkly beard. “You city birds
that I met ’way back there on the trail—dark-benighted,
wet-benighted!... An’ I thought ’twas Her. An’ s’elp me, if it had bin
Her, I’d ha’ come within a cow’s thumb o’ shootin’ Her.”
He pulled his right hand, with something in it, up the ladder.