A RESCUE
“I am not going to like it!” Janet announced firmly when she met Phyllis
and Gale on the campus the next morning after breakfast.
“You are lucky so far,” Phyllis told her. “The upper classmen in the
dormitories haven’t come back for the term yet. We have some of the
sorority girls already in the house and do we get looked over!”
“Where is Carol?” Gale inquired.
“Gone to get our tennis racquets,” Janet replied. “We are going to take
advantage of the empty courts now before the upper classmen get here.”
“I’ll come along and watch,” Phyllis offered magnanimously.
“I want to take a walk and explore,” Gale informed them. “I’ll see you
at luncheon, Phyl.”
Classes would not begin for three days yet, but the girls had timed
their arrival at Briarhurst for days ahead to become acquainted with the
general position of their classes and the dormitories.
Gale headed in the direction of the lake that lay on the western border
of the campus. There had been erected diving boards for the students and
canoes were anchored to the shore. Gale watched for several minutes the
cavortings of the gay young girls who frolicked in the water, and then
continued with her stroll.
Readers of The Adventure Girls at K Bar O and The Adventure Girls in the
Air are already familiar with the six girls from the little town of
Marchton. Old friends already know of the desire of the girls to attend
Briarhurst College and of the difficulties along that line experienced
by Phyllis Elton. Now it seemed their dreams were in a fair way of being
fulfilled. All of them, even Phyllis, were actually present at the
college and starting out on an entirely new branch of life. They were
prepared to study hard and also prepared to face the fun and trials of
college life.
On the grassy bank beneath a low-hanging willow tree Gale sat down to
view the water and to think.
Last night they had been met at the door by a welcoming committee of two
Juniors. She remembered her own and Phyllis’ surprise at the odd things
which they saw on their journey to their room on the third floor.
Some delightful soul had christened the staircase the “Golden Stairs,”
but whether they led to heaven or not the girls had not yet discovered.
On the landing of the second floor was a huge poster which might have
been the street sign for a Boulevard proclaiming “Senior Avenue.” On
each floor the corridor was named and some of the rooms themselves had
names.
Phyllis and Gale found themselves in “Sunshine Alley” but there was no
name tacked upon their door.
“How come?” Phyllis wanted to know.
“You have to do something to deserve a name. Then a special committee of
sorority girls gets together and selects one for you. For instance, next
door to you, you have the champion swimming team of last year’s Freshman
class. Their room is named ‘Mermaid Mansion.’ Get the idea?”
“Also farther up the hall is ‘Harmony Heaven,’” the other upper classman
informed them. “That was so named because the girls there are forever
quarreling. The name anything but fits them.”
It was a little confusing to Gale and Phyllis. They could not
immediately adapt the terms for the different floors and rooms in the
house. At dinner when someone asked them what floor they were on, they
innocently said “Third,” and were made to run around the table three
times for not using the correct title “Sunshine Alley.”
For the most part, though, the girls were friendly. The two were shown
about with due ceremony and the rules carefully explained. The house
mother, Mrs. Grayson, who had charge of the building was most courteous
and the girls immediately liked her. Next they met the sorority
president, Adele Stevens. They were at once taken under her wing.
Gale dangled the end of a willow branch in the swirling lake water. The
water at this point was flowing rapidly toward a waterfall where it
joined a rushing river and went on to the sea.
This afternoon she had an appointment with the President of the college
and then one with the Dean. It was customary for all new students to be
thus interviewed, but Gale wondered if they all felt as nervous as she.
She had a strong curiosity and yet a reluctance to meet the new Dean.
She wanted to see the new authority because the girls had talked about
her so much at dinner last night. It seemed the Seniors all sympathized
with the bus driver. They were prepared to strongly oppose any new
policies installed by Dean Travis. From what Gale and Phyllis had heard,
the new Dean’s policies would better things on the campus. At least they
appealed favorably to the new Freshmen. Certainly there could be nothing
wrong in wanting new laboratories for the Chemistry classes, a new organ
for the chapel, stables and horses to teach the girls riding and a few
other such things. Why the older students were so set against them
Phyllis and Gale could not understand. However, they both agreed, in the
privacy of their room, to take neither side until they knew more about
things. At any rate, they were only Freshmen and Freshmen were to be
seen, not heard.
Gale was about to turn back to the campus to meet Phyllis for luncheon
at the sorority house when she halted. Had that been a voice calling?
Faintly another call came across the water. Parting the low thick
branches of the willow tree, Gale looked across the lake.
A canoe was drifting down the center of the lake. It was going more
swiftly every moment, caught in the rush of waters leaping on toward the
waterfall at the other end. In the canoe was a figure, waving
frantically to the shore.
Either the canoeist had lost her oars or she was so panic-stricken at
being caught in the swirling waters that she could not think
conclusively or quickly enough to save herself.
A tree branch had been broken from a tree in a recent storm and now it,
too, swirled around in the lake waters. Gale watched breathlessly while
the branch bore down on the canoe. She was helpless to aid even though
the onslaught would probably upset the canoe. But such was not the case.
Instead of toppling the canoe over the boat became entangled in the wet
leaves still clinging to the wood and so, locked together, the two moved
toward the waterfall.
Gale started to run swiftly back to where, in the calmer waters, the
college girls had been swimming. Someone must rescue that woman in the
canoe. Perhaps there would be a motor boat at the diving boards. Another
canoe would not be much help. Gale kept close to the shore as she ran,
always keeping in view of the canoe. Once she stopped to wave to the
tragic figure being swept to destruction. She saw an answering wave and
heard a call, but she could not distinguish the words.
Fortunately she did not have to run all the way back to the swimmers.
Hidden close to the mossy bank in a thick growth of shrubbery along the
shore was a motor boat. Gale found it with a sense of immeasurable
relief. With trembling fingers she untied the anchor rope and jumped
into the boat. How thankful she was that she had had ample experience
with motor boats back in Marchton! It stood her in good stead now. The
motor responded promptly and she turned the nose of the boat out into
the lake. She drew speed from the boat and wondered what the owner might
say.
The canoe, still tangled with the dead tree branch, was even closer to
the tumbling waters going over the waterfall. Gale was glad the motor
boat was a large, sturdy affair. With its powerful motor working
rhythmically it should be able to withstand the pull of those rushing
waters.
Flinging a heavy spray back over Gale the boat sped eagerly through the
water. It rapidly closed the distance between the drifting canoe and the
would-be rescuer. Almost upon the canoe Gale tried to think of the best
means of getting the woman safely aboard the motor boat. She certainly
could not be transferred from the canoe in the middle of the water.
Therefore, the best procedure would be to tow the canoe to shore. But
first the tree branch must be disposed of. It might drag both the canoe
and the motor boat to the falls.
“Hang on,” Gale shouted to the figure in the canoe, “we’ll make the
shore all right.”
She ran the motor boat as close as she could to the canoe. The swell of
water threatened to upset the smaller craft. Gale shut the motor off.
The boat was immediately swept into the current. Grasping a long, heavy
boat hook which she found lying on the deck, Gale stepped onto the
closed cabinet-like doors which sheltered the engine.
“Go back—you’ll be killed!” the other figure implored.
Gale sent the woman a reassuring smile. She had done such crazy stunts
on Bruce Latimer’s boat back in Marchton. Now she felt no fear at all
for herself, only a fear that she might not be able to push the tree
branch far enough away to loosen the canoe. She tied one end of a coil
of rope to the anchor bolt on the motor boat and threw it toward the
canoe. It fell directly across the small craft. The canoeist grasped it
and made it secure.
Cautiously Gale worked herself farther out to the bow of the boat. She
had only a few seconds now in which to loosen the tree branch and
restart the motor to save them both. At the first thrust of the boat
hook Gale nearly toppled herself into the water. She heard a muffled cry
from the woman in the canoe. She regained her posture. She could never
do it standing upright. Therefore, she lay down flat on her stomach on
the boat. That gave her a freer use of her right arm and less chance of
losing her balance. A gigantic push and the branch swept away from the
canoe and onward to the destruction of the falls.
Gale lost no time in making her way back to start the motor. Luckily it
started with the first try and the motor boat pulled clear of the
swirling waters, dragging behind it the canoe.
Once on shore Gale tied the motor boat securely to its former position
and helped the slender figure from the canoe. The canoeist was a woman
older than Gale, but Gale felt immediately that they could be firm
friends. She liked the other’s frank smile and clear gray eyes.
“You are a brave girl!” the woman said when she was safe and her first
words of thanks were over. “I might be over the falls now if it were not
for you,” she shuddered.
Gale smiled. “It was a lucky thing someone was here. What happened? Did
you go out without any oars?”
“I know better than to do that,” the woman said. “I was sitting in the
canoe farther up along the shore, reading. I often do that. I had no
desire to go out on the lake so I left the oars on shore while the boat
remained anchored. I must have fallen asleep. The next thing I knew I
awoke and I was in the middle of the lake, caught in the rapids.”
Gale looked at the boat and noted the short bit of rope dangling from
its stern.
“It rather looks as though that rope was cut,” she said, noting the
sharpness of its edge as though a knife had severed it.
“You must never mention that to anyone,” the other said quickly.
“Promise me you will never speak such a thought!”
Gale laughed. “Of course—but why shouldn’t I?”
“I can’t explain now, but there is a very good reason.” She held out her
hand. “I would like to say thank you again. Will you come to see me this
afternoon?”
Gale put her hand into the one offered her. “I’m sorry,” she said
regretfully. “You see I am new at the college and I have an appointment
with the Dean.”
A whimsical light came into the gray eyes. “You don’t seem very
enthusiastic.”
“I’m not,” Gale confessed.
“Have you been listening to the upper classmen?”
“A little,” Gale said. “But it isn’t that. I’m not prejudiced against
her. She may be perfectly all right—it is only that—I’m a little
nervous. I guess all Freshmen are. I hope she is nicer than what I hear
about her.”
The other woman laughed. “I hope you find her so. Now I——”
The patter of running feet interrupted her and a group of girls burst
upon them.
“We saw what happened from up the shore,” one gasped. “Are you all
right, Dean Travis?”
Dean Travis! Gale felt the world whirling around her. This was the new
Dean!
“I am quite all right, thank you,” the Dean was saying composedly.
A second later she was gone and the other girls with her. Gale was alone
and she sank down dejectedly on a tree trunk. For a long time she sat
there staring out over the water. Finally she made her way slowly back
to the sorority house where Phyllis was waiting for her.
* * * * *
That afternoon Gale went to the office of the Dean. If she had been
nervous this morning before she met the Dean she was ten times more so
now. To think of the things she had said! They made her cheeks burn now.
How could she have talked so and to the Dean! She sat on the hard outer
office chair and thought of all the places she would rather be. She
thought of Phyllis and Madge and Valerie swimming in the lake. She
thought of Janet and Carol again playing tennis. How she longed to be
with them. How she longed to be anywhere where she did not have to face
the Dean!
“You may go in, Miss Howard,” the secretary said.
Gale stood up and took a deep breath. She covered the distance into the
office in little less than a run. She felt she had to go as quickly as
possible before she turned and fled out of sheer panic.
There was another woman with Dean Travis, a woman with brown curly hair
and a flashing, whimsical smile, absurdly young to be the school
physician, but such Gale found her to be when they were introduced. She
stayed to talk with Gale and the Dean for several minutes and the
Freshman felt all her self-consciousness and timidity melting away
before the warmth of the Doctor’s smile. However, when the Doctor had
gone and the Dean was seated behind her desk, Gale in the chair before
her, the girl felt her discomfiture returning. After all, this woman was
the Dean and she had talked to her and treated her much as she might
have Phyllis or Valerie. Hereafter she must remember to treat the Dean
with the respect and deference required by the head of the girls’
college.
“Is your room at the Omega Chi Sorority house satisfactory?” the Dean
was asking pleasantly. She tapped a white envelope before her. “I have
had a long letter from your former High School teacher, Miss Relso.”
“Everything is perfect, thank you,” Gale said politely.
“Your roommate is your friend from home?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I hope you are going to like Briarhurst, Miss Howard.”
“I am sure I shall.”
“The girls are all pleasant, that is for the most part. Of course there
are some who are selfish and like their own way, but one finds them in
every walk of life. Briarhurst tries to fit the girls to take a definite
place in the world, to help them live the kind of life worth living. We
don’t say we fit you to immediately take charge of whatever line of
endeavor you go into when your four years here are up. All we try to do
is give you the prime essentials for your life—courage, determination,
ambition, the desire to play fair and to take gallantly whatever life
offers you.” She smiled. “What is the matter, Gale?”
“Matter?” Gale was surprised out of her respectful silence.
“You have been sitting there politely listening, but I doubt if a word
I’ve said has remained in your memory,” the Dean said humorously.
“Oh, I assure you, it has,” Gale said hastily.
“Are you still nervous about meeting—the Dean?” the older woman asked,
rising and walking around the desk to Gale’s side.
Gale also rose. “I’m sorry if I was rude this morning,” she said in
embarrassment. “I had no idea——”
“That I was the Dean?” the other said. “Otherwise you would have let the
canoe drift over the falls, is that it? I’m sorry, that was a terrible
thing to say,” she continued breathlessly. “Forgive me.” She laid a hand
lightly on Gale’s shoulder. “This isn’t the type of interview I usually
have with a Freshman.”
“I gathered that much,” Gale smiled. She continued after a while, rather
hesitantly, “You aren’t really worried about—about the things the girls
are saying, are you?”
“No,” the Dean smiled, walking to the door with Gale. “Not really
worried. Goodbye, my dear, and come to see me often—as a friend, if not
in my official capacity.”
Gale stepped out into the world red with the glow from the setting sun
and thought what a grand person Dean Travis was. She had a personality
that made one immediately want to be the best sort of person one could.
That she would in a short time win all the girls over to her side, Gale
did not doubt. She was so pleasant, so easy to approach, so interested
in the girls, that they could not resent her for any length of time no
matter how much they missed their former Dean.
A hand touched her arm and she jumped in surprise, so deep in thought
had she been.
“Did I frighten you?” a laughing voice asked.
Doctor Norcot fell into step beside her. “I waited for you,” she added
with a look around.
Gale saw a few girls across the campus watching her and the Doctor. She
hoped they weren’t the Adventure Girls. If such was the case, she would
be teased intolerably about already being friends with two such
important people as the Dean and the Doctor.
“I wanted to ask you more about that cut rope.”
“Cut rope?” Gale repeated, puzzled. “Oh, you mean on the canoe.”
“Yes. Are you positive it was cut?”
Gale nodded. “There couldn’t be any doubt about it. You see it was just
a new rope. That is, the end that was left was new. It couldn’t have
worn through. The edge was straight and not at all frayed. It had been
cut,” she said firmly. “Did Dean Travis tell you about it?”
“Yes. You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
“No,” Gale said in mystification. “But why shouldn’t I? Anyone who looks
at the canoe will be sure to see it.”
“Freshmen have enough on their minds without adding other people’s
troubles,” the Doctor teased. “Good afternoon, Miss Howard.”
Eyes grown stormy with indignation and then calmer with humor, Gale
watched her stride across the campus and into the red brick building
which housed the infirmary and the Doctor’s quarters.
“What a nice, polite way of telling me to mind my own business,” she
laughed to herself. “But just the same,” she added mischievously, “I
won’t mind it. I, too, would like to know why that rope was cut so Dean
Travis’ canoe would drift out and be caught in the rapids.”
She walked across the campus toward the sorority house. The building was
gray and ivy covered. The sun’s last rays made the vine leaves gleam
silver and gold in turn. “Happiness House!” She smiled. What a fitting
name for the place. Whoever had substituted such a name for the intimate
use of the girls had chosen it rightly enough. There seemed to be
nothing but peace, contentment and utter harmony among the girls. At
least so far she and Phyllis had discovered nothing else. Of course when
the rest of the girls arrived for the semester things might be
different.
She mounted the steps and entered the living room. There were several
girls there, gathered about the piano. One held a ukulele and as Gale
went toward the staircase she started to sing:
“There was a happy young Freshman,
Who rescued the Dean from the water,
But alas and alack, now the Freshman is sad,
Cause she did something she hadn’t oughter.”
Gale laughed and ran lightly up the Golden Stairs to Sunshine Alley. The
rhyming was decidedly bad in the girl’s song.
Just as she reached the door to her room the most blood-curdling yell
came through the panels that she had to pause and put her hands over her
ears. From all along the hall doors opened and heads were poked out.
Gale turned the door knob and entered. Phyllis was sitting on the bed
convulsed with laughter. Astride the footboard of her bed was another
girl, evidently the one who had given voice to that shout because her
mouth was still open.
“What on earth——” Gale began.
“My roommate,” Phyllis managed to gasp between giggles.
“Howdy!” The girl who was using the bed footboard as a horse said,
extending a brown hand. “I’m Ricky Allen. I’m in the room across the
hall.”
“I’m glad to know you,” Gale said, laughing in spite of herself, “but
would you mind telling me what that noise was just now?”
Phyllis wiped the tears from her eyes. “Ricky is from Wyoming and she
was illustrating a cowboy round-up whoop for me.”
There was a heavy knock upon the door. Gale opened it.
“Who is being murdered?” Adele Stevens asked calmly.
Gale shook her head. “It was a mistake. It seems only a cowboy war-whoop
got loose. We have it under control now,” she added.
When the Sorority president was gone Ricky grinned at the two girls.
“Reckon I’m goin’ to like this place now I’ve met you. I didn’t at
first. I was lonesome for my ranch and my horses.”
“I understand the new Dean plans to have stables and horses installed to
teach the girls riding,” Gale said.
“Yipeeee!” Ricky greeted the news eagerly. “That’ll be great. I’ve gotta
tell my roommate that!”
She was gone with the same suddenness and whirlwind speed that
characterized all her actions. Gale and Phyllis looked at one another
and burst out laughing.