IN CAMP
BY the time that the Ethels had learned how to swim well enough to
induce Mrs. Morton to let them go across the lake to the Girls' Club
camp the season was so far advanced that they had trouble in getting
their names on the list at all. Dorothy and Della waited to take their
turn at the same time, and when the Institution motor-boat at last
carried them over it was the last trip of the season.
They found the camping ground on the other side in perfect order for
their coming.
"Every squad of campers finds all that it needs to pitch camp with
immediately, even down to the wood to make the camp fire," explained
Miss Roberts.
"See," cried Ethel Blue, "there it is, stacked up for us. Who does it?"
"The last campers. There was a detachment from the Boys' Club here last
night."
"They were fine cleaners--for boys," commented Della.
"Boys are good cleaners," asserted Ethel Brown.
"Oh, Roger has Army and Navy ideas about neatness, but ordinary boys
aren't so careful."
"On an earlier trip you girls would leave the camp in just the order in
which you found it, wood and all. This is the last one, however, so you
won't have to chop wood, but everything else must be so arranged that
the men who come over to dismantle the camp will find everything in its
place."
It was an evening of delight, to all the girls but especially to Ethel
Blue, who had heard her father tell of his camping experiences so often
that she felt as if she were repeating one of them through the kind
influence of some good fairy who had touched her with her wand without
her knowledge.
Pitching the tents was not easy but the girls managed it under the
direction of one of Miss Roberts's assistants. Their united strength was
needed for that, but when it was done they divided the remainder of the
tasks. Dorothy was one of the squad that made the fire. Ethel Brown went
with the girls who took the camp pails to the nearest farmhouse to draw
drinking water from the well. Della and three others went up the road a
little farther to a dairy to get the evening's supply of milk. Ethel
Blue helped unpack the food supplies that had come over in the launch.
When everything was out of the boat and it was chug-chugging away from
the shore the campers felt that now they were really cut off from home
even if they were not on a desert island.
Not one of the girls ever had eaten a supper that tasted so good as that
prepared in the open air and eaten with appetites sharpened by the
exercise of preparation. Dorothy and three of her companions of the
cooking class volunteered to prepare the main dishes, while Ethel Blue,
who had become expert in the water, assisted the swimming teacher to
give a lesson to a few girls who had arrived only a week before. At a
suitable time after the lesson was over every girl was directed to cut a
forked stick from a near-by hedge. Then they gathered about the fire and
each one cooked her own bacon on the end of the fork. Sometimes the
flames leaped up and caught the savory bit, and then there was a scream
at the tragedy. A huge broiler propped against a stick driven into the
ground held a chicken whose skin turned a delicate brown in response to
the warmth of the blaze. Potatoes in their jackets and ears of corn in
their husks were buried in the ashes with heated stones piled over them
so that they should be roasted through evenly. The elders made coffee by
the primitive method of boiling it in a saucepan and clearing it with a
dash of cold water, and they maintained that no coffee with a percolator
experience ever tasted better. None of the girls drank coffee at night,
but they all praised the delicious milk that they had brought from the
dairy, and started a rivalry of enthusiasm.
When everything was made tidy after supper the fire was heightened to a
roaring blaze and the girls sat around it cross-legged and told stories.
"Br'er Rabbit" and the "Tar Baby" seemed just in the shadows beyond the
flames and if you listened hard you could hear the hiss of the water as
an Indian canoe slipped down the lake in pursuit of Brule or La Salle. A
folk dance in the firelight ended the evening's amusement.
Bedtime brought an orderly arrangement of the sleeping equipment and a
quick going to sleep, for the girls were tired enough to have fatigue
overcome the strangeness of their surroundings.
The Ethels, Dorothy, and Della were together. It was at that end of the
night when darkness is just giving way to the dim light that comes
before the rosiness of the dawn, that Dorothy was roused by heavy
breathing outside the tent. A chill of fear stiffened her. In the space
of an eyeflash her mind went back many years to a faraway land where she
had been roused in just this way by heavy breathing outside her window.
Then there had been a low call and her father had come into her room and
exchanging a word or two over her bed with the man beneath the window,
had gone out doors. Almost before she realized that he had gone there
was the snap of a revolver and a sharp cry of agony and her mother had
shrieked and rushed out, leaving her alone. She was wide awake then and
she lay in her narrow bed shivering and wondering.
Her mother came back weeping, and little yellow men had brought in her
father's limp body and he had lain on the bed for two days, not opening
his eyes, not stirring, until men came once more and carried him away,
and she never saw him again.
She had almost outgrown the nightmare that attacked her every once in a
while after her father's death, but the memory of the whole happening
came back to her now with the sound of the heavy breathing. The suspense
was more than she could endure. She reached over and touched Ethel
Blue's hand.
Ethel Blue roused and was about to ask what was the matter when
Dorothy, scarcely visible in the dim light, made a sign for silence.
Both girls sat up in their cots and listened. Nearer and nearer came the
sound. It seemed too heavy for a man's breathing,--yet--they had been
talking about Indians before they went to bed--perhaps Indians breathed
more heavily than white men. No man would come at such an hour with a
good purpose--perhaps bad men breathed more heavily than good men. Ethel
Blue clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. Dorothy crawled
down into the bed and drew the cover over her head.
At that instant a roar boomed through the tent. Every girl sat up in her
bed with a sharp, "What's that?" There were stirrings in the other
tents; but the roar came again right there beside Ethel Blue's cot, and
so near that it seemed in her very face.
"It's something awful!" she thought, chilled with fright; and then, "I
won't let my imagination run away with me. It may not be as bad as it
sounds. If it does hurt me I can bear it!"
Slowly she pushed back her blanket and looked down whence the clamor had
come. The roar was followed by a tearing sound and a noise of struggle.
"Oh, girls," cried Ethel Blue, "it's a cow! It's nothing but a cow! Poor
old thing, she's caught her horns under the edge of the tent and she
can't get loose."
Dorothy's head came out from its covering.
"A cow!" she breathed with relief and sank back, weak but thankful.
"She's going to pull the tent down!" screamed Della.
"Can't you shoo her out, Ethel Blue?" asked Ethel Brown. "You're
nearest."
Ethel Blue was well aware that she was nearest. She was startlingly
near. But the cow seemed to want to withdraw quite as much as the girls
wanted her to, and that encouraged Ethel Blue to help her. Leaning out
of her cot she lifted the edge of the tent as far as she could with one
hand and with her slipper in the other slapped the cow on her forehead
as a hint that backwards was her next best move.
With a gasp of disgust the invader departed and the girls heard Miss
Roberts, who had been aroused from her tent, driving her away. In fact,
everybody was wide awake by this time.
"Let's get up," suggested Della. "I've never seen the sun rise and this
is a good chance."
Evidently the girls in the other tents were holding a caucus to the same
effect and there shortly appeared a shivering group of campers. Ethel
Brown was the only one who seemed not to think the happening good fun,
but she was ashamed to seem cross when everybody else was in good humor,
and when Miss Roberts set her to work on the breakfast preparations she
soon forgot that she had not made a brave showing before the marauder.
Dorothy was pale but gave no other sign of having been especially
disturbed. After breakfast came the packing up and setting of the camp
in order and then two of the girls who had been studying signalling,
wig-wagged across the lake for the launch to come for them.
"Since we've made such an early start we might as well go back early,"
decided Miss Roberts, "because to-night is the exhibition of the School
of Physical Education, you remember, and those of you who are in it will
be glad of the extra time for rehearsing."
The girls left with the feeling that they had had almost as memorable a
time as if the camp had been attacked by Indians. Now that it was over
they were glad the cow had happened in. Ethel Blue had a real glow when
she recalled that although she had been badly scared she had pulled
herself together and really driven the cow away, and Dorothy felt that
since her nightmare had once had so laughable an ending perhaps it would
not come again.
Because of their early rising all the girls took a nap in the afternoon.
"You want to put spirit into your folk dances to-night," Mrs. Morton
replied to the Ethels' remonstrances against this hardship. "I want my
girls to move with life and not as if they were half asleep."
"Sleep now and you won't sleep then," added Helen, who was taking the
last stitches on a pierrot dress which Ethel Blue was to wear.
The seats in the pit of the Amphitheatre were all removed so that the
audience was crowded into the benches on the sloping sides. The parents
of the boys and girls who were to take part were present in force and
the members of the Boys' Club and Girls' Club who were not to take part
sat together in solid blocks at the front.
A grand procession of all the participants opened the program.
"There's Roger," cried his grandmother.
"Tom Watkins is with him and James is just behind," Grandfather Emerson
informed his wife after looking through his glass.
"Some one of those funny pierrots is Ethel Blue, but you can't
distinguish her."
"She is to march with Dorothy, and Ethel Brown and Della are to be
together in the butterfly dance."
"And Helen?"
"She is in one of the folk dances. She must be in this division wearing
gymnasium suits."
"Or in the next one; that first detachment looked to me as if it was
made up of teachers of gymnastics who are taking a normal course here."
The program continued with a set of exercises by the smallest members of
the Boys' Club who executed a flag drill with precision and general
success, although Dicky wandered from the fold when Cupid Watkins
trotted his bowlegged way on to the stage looking for some member of his
human family. Nevertheless, Dicky won the applause of the audience by
seizing Cupid in his arms and planting a kiss on the cross-piece of his
muzzle before leading him off on his search.
The butterfly dance was charming, the little girls waving in exact time
to the music the filmy wings that hung from shoulder and wrist. Mrs.
Morton never succeeded in making out Ethel Brown and Della but the
whole effect was delicately graceful. Ethel Blue and Dorothy were
equally indistinguishable among the pierrots who stamped and whirled and
stretched arms and legs with funny rapid motions.
Ethel Brown had a part in a dance in which rubber balls were bounced in
time with a difficult series of steps. Helen and Margaret and Tom
Watkins were in one of the folk dances, and Roger and James, with some
other large boys and young men, illustrated various wrestling holds in a
fashion both graceful and exact. On the whole, the audience seemed to
think the program was well worth their commendation.
Into this busy week was crowded yet one more event of especial interest
to the Morton household and its friends--the annual circus of the
Athletic Club. Roger had been playing baseball on the second team all
summer and this team was asked to take part in a burlesque game which
was to be one of the numbers on the program. There had been much
practicing in private and Roger had come home one day with a black eye
which seemed to promise that when he made his slide for base in the show
it would be a spectacular performance.
The baseball teams, absurdly dressed, and taking Dicky and Cupid with
them for mascots, had a float to themselves in the procession that wound
about the grounds in the early part of the afternoon. The Superintendent
of Grounds and Buildings led the way in his buggy and behind him came a
detachment of Chautauqua police, one man strong. The special features
were led by another buggy, this one drawn by a mule wearing a pair of
overalls on his front legs.
A pretty pink and white float was filled with small children from the
Elementary School; another was laden with a host of Girls' Club members
in the pierrot costume of the Exhibition dance. Ethel Blue and Ethel
Brown were among them, Ethel Brown wearing Della's dress because Della
preferred to ride with Dorothy on the float with the Model Cooking
Class.
James Hancock was in the baseball team with Roger but Tom Watkins
provided the legs for one of the herd of three ostriches which walked
with dignity behind the floats. The line ended with a flock of bicycles
all aflutter with ribbons and pennants.
The performance was on the baseball field and it began as soon as the
parade arrived and the trousered mule was securely tied. Small boys
laden with popcorn and ice cream cones went through the grandstand with
their wares, a policeman wearing a badge of giant size kept order, and a
solemn-faced announcer presented the numbers of the program. There were
several comic dances, some funny songs, a contortionist who twisted
himself into such knots that the announcer expressed doubts as to
whether he would ever straighten out enough to leave Chautauqua when the
season was ended, a snappy banjo quartet, excellent horizontal bar work,
and Roger's baseball team.
The baseball team took the prize awarded by the Men's Club for the best
exhibit. The _Daily_ of the next morning described their playing as
"distinctly original," and mentioned especially the superb slide to base
made by Roger Morton, who, as short-stop, picked balls out of the sky
with no apparent difficulty.
It was when the Mortons reached home, aching with laughter at the jokes
which the clown pretended to get off and didn't, that they were
surprised to find awaiting them a telegram from Captain Morton, Ethel
Blue's father.
"Leaving Vera Cruz to-day," it read. "Reach Chautauqua next Thursday.
Love."