KULLIBÍGAN
The Indian game of Kullibígan was in full swing.
Supper was over, a wonderful outdoor banquet, for which the high tide
furnished the orchestra, the white sands the table linen, with the last
rays of the dying sun showering bouquets upon its damask.
As if in answer to Captain Andy’s question earlier in the evening when
he beheld the bevy of maidens in Indian dress upon the beach, there were
two unexpected “braves” at the feast and hungry guests they were; Kenjo,
who was entered upon the school-roll of his native town as Kenneth
Jordan, bearing in mind that “A Scout is courteous,” the fifth point of
the Scout Law, insisted on toasting fresh relays of bacon for the hungry
girls and for the Astronomer, who ate enormously.
Captain Andy, in the absence of any severe symptoms of lead poisoning,
had come to the conclusion that the tenderfoot was not going to share
the fate of the chewink, that he, apparently, did not stand in need,
even, of an antidote; still, as a precautionary measure, he flooded him
inwardly with strong tea, beneficial in any case of poisoning, until the
fat Astronomer declared that he could hear his final mouthfuls of cake
splash as they went down.
The after-banquet songs were furnished by the hostesses who chanted
their “Wohelo!” cheer, greatly to the edification of the Scouts,
followed by their song, “Mystic Fire,” gracefully dramatized by the
waving of fringed arms, the swaying of girlish forms around the camp
fire upon the twilight sands, lending the final touch of romance to the
white wildness of the Sugarloaf, moving the flame of admiration in Kenjo
to flicker up into:
“Gee! I thought we Boy Scouts were the ‘whole show’ when it came to new
stunts, but I guess it’s as Captain Andy says, ‘Skirts go ahead!’” with
a boyish laugh.
“Well! _you’ll_ show _them_ something by ’n’ by, when it gets dark, when
you signal with lanterns or an old broom dipped in kerosene to our camp
on the dunes across the river to say we’re safe here, for Captain Andy
says he won’t let us row back there to-night,” spoke up the now drowsy
Astronomer. “He says we can sleep in his tent—a bully tent, divided up
into rooms—at the foot of a sand-hill; he was going to have his niece
there, but he says she can bunk with the girls.” Tommy waved a fat hand
in the direction of Kitty.
“_I_ don’t care; that’s what I want to do,” spoke up little Kitty,
erstwhile of “the bleeding heart,” rejoicing in the freedom of her green
bloomers. “Morning-Glory—I can’t pronounce her Indian name—says I can
sleep with her,” shyly. “And we’ll wake up early and watch the dawn
across the river and I may help her cook the breakfast—she’s to be one
of the cooks to-morrow.”
“Indeed, you may, but don’t mistake me for Mary-Jane Peg in your sleep;
I don’t want to be taken for a pig in a poke!” laughed Jessica,
otherwise Welatáwesit. “And now for Kullibígan! What question shall we
ask it first?”
“Who’ll be married first?” suggested the Astronomer. “That’s what girls
always want to know, isn’t it?”
And then the excitement of the night began in earnest.
The great burnished top, painted by firelight, was set to spinning madly
upon a flat stone set in the sand, surrounded by a ring of sitting
girls; it revolved dizzily for many seconds, then fell over upon its
broad head, as if bowing to Kitty.
The laughter that followed this exploit of the guessing-top made dunes
and sea ring; Kitty was to be wedded first, instead of prematurely
departing this life.
“Let us ask it something sensible, something that might have an answer
in the near future,” suggested Betty Ayres—gay little Betty, whose Camp
Fire name was Psuti, the Holly—after sundry other riddles had been
propounded to the Kullibígan top for divination—questions as distant in
speculation and wild in their answer as the lot which had fallen upon
Kitty. “Let’s ask who’ll be the first to attain the highest rank among
the Camp Fire Girls, and become a Torch Bearer!”
“Good!” approved Gheezies, the presiding Guardian of the Fire.
Psuti, with two little hands upon the broadest point of the tall top’s
circumference, skilfully set it revolving upon the stone; as before, it
seemed to have no sense of the fitness of things; it toppled toward her,
as nearly as its falling direction—a wide point of debate—could be
determined, she having swiftly resumed her seat in the circle.
“Pshaw! it doesn’t know much: Morning-Glory will be the first Torch
Bearer; she’s a Fire Maker already,” burst impetuously from one or two
of the girls. “And she’s going to do some work among _little_ girls when
we go back to the city, form a Nest of Blue Birds, as it’s called, among
the poor children of that big playground which we visited, show them how
to dress their dolls and so forth,” suggested Sesooā, “make them happy
once a week for three months; that’s part of the test for becoming a
Torch Bearer.”
“I suppose you’ll draw that little deaf-and-dumb girl whose life you
saved into the nest—eh?” Mŭnkwŏn turned inquiringly toward
Morning-Glory. “Whew! I’ll never forget that day—the shock we all got!”
The breast of Arline’s ceremonial dress, embroidered with her rainbow
symbol, heaved; the many-colored honor-beads upon her neck shook.
“Fancy! the poor child drowning, or next door to it, in two feet and a
half of water!”
“Two feet and a half of water! Drowning! A deaf-and-dumb child!” Nobody
had noticed the “shock” which Kenjo experienced as the Rainbow’s words
fell upon his ear, reaching him where he squatted on the sands, just
outside the circle of girls gathered round the fortune-telling top, now
lying idle upon the flat stone.
“Is—is a Torch Bearer the highest rank among the Camp Fire Girls?” Kenjo
went on to ask eagerly, thrusting the flame of his red head dangerously
near to the Council Fire. “To be an Eagle Scout is the highest a fellow
can go among the Boy Scouts—and mighty few ever get there! A Scout must
have twenty-one merit badges for that! But we have an Eagle Scout in our
camp,” proudly. “He’s a sort of Assistant Scoutmaster, directing the
athletics. _He_ saved a deaf-and-dumb child from drowning in shallow
water this summer—dragged her out and brought her to, resuscitated her;
a Camp Fire Girl helped him.”
“Helped _him_! He helped _her_, you mea-ean!” The excited challenge
delivered in three girlish voices rose to a screaming trio. “Where did
it happen? What’s his name?” followed in a minor key.
“Yes, where did it happen?” gasped the Blue Heron, Olive, bending
excitedly forward from her place near the fire.
“In the city of Clevedon, I think. Stack comes from there or from some
town near it; he was dressed for a big Boy Scout Rally at the Clevedon
Armory and was taking a short cut across a public playground when he
heard a lot of children yelling—girls shrieking——”
“_We_ weren’t shrieking at all! There!” flung out Sesooā between her
teeth. “If ‘Stack’ is the only name he’s got, I don’t think much of it.”
The firefly in Sally’s eyes danced upon the twilight.
“That’s what we call him in camp; his name is Miles Stackpole.”
“That’s better,” came from Morning-Glory, Miles’s partner in that
playground rescue.
“Stack said the girl who helped was a pippin.” Here the Astronomer who
had been dozing upon the firelit sands suddenly awoke from a dream in
which Penelope’s red cheek was a poisoned cherry and he a chewink
pecking at it to his destruction. “He said she was a peach and could do
something,” went on Tenderfoot Tommy; “that she wasn’t all fluff an’
stuff or frills an’ stuff, like most girls, afraid of a little wetting!”
“Oh! _indeed_? A lot he must know about girls!” Every voice in the
feminine circle went to swell this sarcasm or something like it.
Each feminine soul there felt that life could not be all mystic motions
and ceremonial dresses, their rich cream at present, nor yet bloomers
and middy blouses; all looked forward to the pleasing variety of frilly
hours again, with hearts, if only for the space of a short party-hour,
correspondingly frivolous.
Meanwhile the Astronomer, with his gaze slanting upward from the sands
and trained upon the feminine circle, was suffering at the hands of
Kenjo who had tried to stifle his confidences.
“Oh! Won’t Stack just lick you when we get back to camp and he hears how
you gave him away?” scolded the older Scout. “You go to sleep again;
that’s the only time you’re safe, Fatty. We’re going to ask the
Kullibígan top another question, something exciting, with real ‘pep’ in
it, this time: ‘Who’s going to dig up a fortune from the sands?’ May I
come in on the answer to this?” Ken appealed eagerly to the Guardian of
the Camp Fire.
“Certainly. And may you come in on the fortune, too, if there is one!”
Thus Gheezies gave her smiling consent, tagging it with a good wish.
“Oh! that’s too far-fetched to be exciting; nobody really believes in
finding Captain Kidd’s treasure nowadays, although Captain Andy says
that some of it was certainly hidden along the coast here, but that the
tidal current must have sucked it out into the river long ago,”
protested Betty, in a fringed flutter.
“And Stack says that he met a professor of something who was round here
studying tides, and the prof said he didn’t believe that the current
could do any such thing!” threw back Ken hotly.
“Oh! it’s such a hackneyed old question, anyway.” Thus Morning-Glory
backed up Betty.
“A regular ‘chestnut,’” yawned Penelope, who was getting sleepy.
“Well! isn’t a ‘chestnut yarn’ the best kind to anchor to with a hope of
its coming true?” Kenjo appealed to the Guardian with a fire that
matched his ruddy hair. “At least”—muttering low—“I think I learned in
high school that some old fellow said that.”
“He said a ‘platitude’ was; I’m not sure but that they’re one and the
same thing,” replied Gheezies, with a smile.
“Ah, but we’ve something to anchor to besides a ‘chestnut’—Stack and I!”
Kenneth Jordan, second-class Scout, thrust his fiery head close to
Jessica’s and spoke in a hollow voice of mystery scarcely to be heard in
the firelit twilight beyond her ear, although Sesooā, on the other side
of him, caught crumbs of the confidence. “We said we wouldn’t tell
anybody lest they’d laugh at us for digging.” The Scout became a husky
shell for his secret. “But I guess, maybe, Stack won’t mind my telling
you as you helped him save that dumb child. He an’ I”—the secret began
to crack the shell—“he an’ I were down on the Neck yesterday,” jerking
an elbow in the direction of the sand-bar at the river’s mouth, “and
there was an old man there, hunting big hen-clams, at low tide; he told
us he was over ninety; we asked him how long he expected to live an’ he
said: ‘Down here, you live as long as you want to!’”
“Is _that_ the secret?”
There was a shout from the girls. Ken’s voice had risen like the tide
upon the old clam-hunter’s words. It sank mysteriously again.
“We asked him, too”—the secret was popping out now in Jessica’s favored
ear—“whether _he_ believed there was treasure hidden along that beach or
among the dunes. He said, ‘Sure as a hen-clam hops there is!’ Then he
put his face close to Stack’s—he hadn’t a tooth—and pointed to a certain
spot among the dunes and said that a few years ago (we dug out of him
that ’twas about thirty) a handful of old gold and silver coins had been
picked up there. We pumped him further, but his mind wandered, he didn’t
seem able to pin it long to anything, he only mumbled and shuffled off
after a big hen-clam—surf-clam, you know—that tried to get away from him
by hopping off on its one funny little leg that it thrust out of the
shell. ’Twas the queerest thing you ever saw to watch him trying to rake
it up with his iron fork.”
“Must ha’ been! A hopping clam!” This set Penny giggling, for the
Scout’s voice had risen again upon the irrelevant matter of the aged
clam-hunter’s raking among the treasures left by the last high tide.
Her paroxysm brought Kenjo to himself and to his manners, set him
diffidently apologizing to the Guardian for daring to drop a secret
within her magic ring, at the other end of her firelit circle.
“Stack’d go for me for doing such a thing,” he gasped. “I guess I put my
foot in it, too, like Fatty! Well! here goes for pumping the
guessing-top about that treasure!”
With a strong twist of his tanned hands he set the Kullibígan revolving;
it spun itself dizzy and fell between Sally and Arline.
“Never mind; we’ll try again; best two out of three!” cried the Scout.
“Now, then, old top, spin your _durndest_. Tell us who digs up a fortune
from the sands!”
The Kullibígan answered his appeal, thrilled him with a
half-superstitious tingle from neck to heel by sprawling over toward
him.
“Again! Again! Once more!”
It fell precipitately toward Morning-Glory, turned a somersault and
stood upon its head.
“Well! it has given _me_ one chance to come in on the treasure, anyhow.”
Thus Kenjo, crestfallen over its last dizzy feat, consoled himself.
“Stack an’ I’ll dig; you bet we’ll dig; we’ll take Toiney into the
secret. I believe he’d scent a coin as he scents a spring a mile off!”
“Who’s Toiney!” For the last minute the girls had sat very still, not a
leather fringe stirring; now they spoke again.
“Toiney! Oh! he’s an Assistant Scoutmaster who gives us lessons in
wood-lore and in tracking an’ trailing; he’s a French Canadian, with a
strain of Indian in him. Well!” Kenjo heaved a long breath. “He’ll be
organizing a search party to look for us—if he hasn’t done so already.
_He’s_ the stuff, although I guess you girls would call him queer
stuff!”
“Are you going to try to signal to the opposite dunes to let them know
you’re safe?” asked the Camp Fire Girl whose name meant Peace.
“I’m not going to ‘try.’ I’m going to do it, signal by semaphore code
the word ‘Safe,’ if Captain Andy can let me have a couple of camp
lanterns—that is, if I can make ’em see me at our camp, get their
attention!”
“I guess I have only one lantern that’s strong enough to be seen at a
distance,” responded the mariner.
“Well! if you have some kerosene oil and an old broom that you don’t
mind being burned up?”
“Hurrah! we’ll furnish you with that,” cried the girls, all eager for
the exhibition.
And, now, the Boy Scouts had their innings so far as a “showing-off
stunt” was concerned.
Scaling a very high rock whose base was laved by the tide, pushing the
corn broom for a burnt offering before him, Ken drew up the lantern and
oil-can shoved aloft by the captain.
A ring of excited girls, with their Guardian, scattered to a little
distance whence they could have a good view of the signaling Scout and
his performance.
One minute, and the oil-soaked broom flamed, its blaze streaming forth,
a mighty flare-up, to be seen miles off!
The Scout waved the burning besom to and fro, making strange, mysterious
passes with it, before attempting to signal a message. “If I can only
get their attention at our camp!” he muttered yearningly.
There were a few very anxious moments.
Then Captain Andy roared up to the signalman:
“It’s all right! You’ve got ’em! They see you. There’s a light showing
upon a peak of those other dunes that wasn’t there before. Most likely
they were out searching an’ watching for a signal from you. Go ahead
with the message!”
Then Ken lowered the lantern with its strong reflector almost to his
feet, his left arm held the blazing broom at arm’s length—sowing a
hissing fire-crop in the sea—to form the letter S.
“Safe. Kenjo.” He spelled it out by the code, fiery letter by letter.
“Isn’t it wonderful—that _fire-talk_?” breathed little Kitty; Mary-Jane
Peg and the orchard seemed very far away; she had not begun to live
until now.
“Broom’s not burned out yet, Cap!” shouted down the Scout to Captain
Andy. “Here’s for signaling a message that’ll keep ’em guessing all
night!”
“What’s that?”
“‘Safe at Camp Morning-Glory’! Sounds as if we were camping on the sun’s
trail. Here goes! Watch—me!”
The broom-handle, sprayed with oil, was sacrificed to Glory, the
lingering flame of the besom, of the compressed corn fibre, having given
out.
But if ever a camp broom perished gloriously, that one did.
Its waterside illumination set the sea aflame, lit up the brown, beaded
figures of the girls, caused far distant lighthouses, with other
nocturnal eyes gleaming from headland and hill up and down the opposite
shore of the river, to pale and wink themselves out for the moment.
Ken tossed the handle into the river, a proud Scout having demonstrated
that along every line it was not “Skirts go ahead—skirts take the lead!”
even if they were ceremonial skirts.
“Well! I guess our Scoutmaster and Toiney will feel easy about us now;
they surely got some of that message I flashed ’em,” he proclaimed
sliding down the rock, feeling like a king-boy. “’Twas good of you girls
to let me make a fire-stick an’ fiddlestick out o’ your camp broom,”
laughing triumphantly. “We owe you a supper, too, Tommy an’ I—I hope
you’ll let us pay it back some time!”
“Oh! yes, when we visit your camp—if we ever do. Boys can’t cook like
girls, though!”
“Can’t they? Haw! Haw!” came in accents of cotton-wool irony from the
Astronomer’s padded throat. “We’ll give you red-flannel hash, with
frills to it. I say, Ken, let’s give ’em something now—let’s give a
rousing Scout yell for them! _She_”—leveling a fat finger at
Penelope—“first got me to thinking that I only thought I thought, she
thought I was poisoned. Hey! that was the way of it, wasn’t it?”
appealing to the convulsed Penny. “Now, then, rise to it, Kenjo!”
The youthful signalman fought shy of this ebullition at first, but on
Captain Andy’s saying approvingly: “That’s the very caper! Good idea,
Ken; go ahead an’ drive it!” he did drive the patriotic yell in honor of
their girl-hostesses with all the might that was in him.
With his arm across the Astronomer’s fat back as the latter stood with
cushioned legs wide apart upon the sands, Tommy’s arm, likewise,
embracing his backbone, swaying together like double bellows, they
pantingly drove that yell while the dune-breeze joined in and the
sonorous gush of the high tide, too, seemed to proclaim that it _was_
the “very caper,” a proper tribute, indeed.
“A-M-E-R-I-C-A
Boy Scouts! Boy Scouts!
U. S. A.
Camp Fire Girls! Camp Fire Girls!
_Camp Fire Girls!_”
“Oh-h!” It was a prolonged ejaculation; the girls’ eyes were wet and
winking above the wreathing smiles upon their lips as the notes boomed
off over the night-tide, setting the river a-roar.
“Oh, this has been a won-der-ful evening altogether,” said the Guardian,
her face an illumination that beamed softly upon the final echo which
seemed to strike those distant dunes upon the opposite side of the
tidal-river.
“Aye! Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls!” chuckled Captain Andy
meditatively. “Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls, theirs—_theirs_ is the
coming tide!”