[Illustration: VERA’S MOVEMENT HAD BEEN TOO QUICK]
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS ON THE EDGE OF THE DESERT
BY
MARGARET VANDERCOOK
Author of “The Ranch Girls” Series,
“The Red Cross Girls” Series, etc.
ILLUSTRATED
PHILADELPHIA
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1917, by
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.
STORIES ABOUT CAMP FIRE GIRLS
Eight Volumes
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS AT SUNRISE HILL
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS AMID THE SNOWS
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS ACROSS THE SEA
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS’ CAREERS
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS IN AFTER YEARS
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS ON THE EDGE OF THE DESERT
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS AT THE END OF THE TRAIL
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FLOWER OF GOLD 7
II. DREAM PLACES 21
III. THE HUMAN EQUATION 31
IV. THE APRIL WOODS 42
V. OBSERVATION 55
VI. EXPERIENCE 67
VII. SUNSET PASS 77
VIII. AT THE DESERT’S EDGE 92
IX. UNDERCURRENTS 109
X. THE RIDE 121
XI. DAWN LIGHT 139
XII. THE PAINTED DESERT 153
XIII. THE ETERNAL FEMININE 166
XIV. ANTAGONISMS 177
XV. THE STORM 190
XVI. AFTER EFFECTS 205
XVII. MISTAKES 223
XVIII. THE INDIAN VILLAGE 238
XIX. READJUSTMENTS 255
XX. UNDERSTANDING 268
ILLUSTRATIONS
VERA’S MOVEMENT HAD BEEN TOO QUICK _Frontispiece_
PAGE
BILLY GAVE AN UPWARD LEAP 50
A SECOND TIME THE INDIAN PICKED UP BETTINA 146
THE GREAT MASS WRIGGLED AND CURVED 253
The Camp Fire Girls on the Edge of the Desert
CHAPTER I
FLOWER OF GOLD
The last flames of the camp fire were slowly dying. But, as the sun was
sinking, the little space in the woods surrounding the fire was lit with
the color of flame.
A girl sat there alone in her ceremonial camp fire dress. A band of
bright gold braid bound her head. One could learn from the insignia on
her costume that she was already a torch bearer. Above the orange and
red of the flame was the touch of white in her emblem, portraying the
ascending smoke. She was like a guardian spirit of the fire.
Perhaps she may have been dreaming or merely repeating something aloud
to herself. For, seated on the ground, the girl was leaning forward with
her chin resting in her hand, and, although her eyes were closed, a book
lay open in her lap. Between the leaves of the book was a sheet of paper
upon which some lines were written in lead pencil. Here and there a word
was marked out and another inserted in its place.
Finally the camp fire girl, unclosing her eyes, picked up this paper
and, after first glancing around to be sure that the trees and grass
about her had no ears, read aloud in a low voice:
In the moon of the peach blossoms,
Towards the land of the setting sun,
Ghosts of old camp fires keep calling;
Camp fires whose race has been run.
I can see the sands of the desert;
I can hear strange desert cries;
And ever my thoughts go homing
To a tent under desert skies.
“Bettina,” a voice called.
And, like a flash, the girl in the camp fire dress, leaning over,
dropped the paper with her poem upon it into the fire.
“Polly, I am here under our pine trees,” she called back.
Then, getting up, she stood with her back to the sun. She had
yellow-brown hair which looked gold in this light, a slender figure and
delicate features, and must have been about sixteen.
The girl who joined her was a complete contrast. Since they were in the
woods together, one might have been thought a gypsy and the other,
except for her dress, some Norse maiden who had stepped forth from
Scandinavian mythology.
The younger girl was small and had dark hair falling to her shoulders.
Her eyes were black and her color brilliant. She was wearing a short
skirt, a red sweater and a black velvet tam o’shanter, while over her
arm she carried a long gray cloak.
“How could you come out here alone, Bettina?” she demanded
reproachfully, marching forward as soon as she appeared upon the scene
and throwing the coat about the other girl’s shoulders.
“As soon as our Camp Fire girls had disappeared mother asked me what had
become of you, and I have been looking for you ever since. It must have
been an hour ago? What makes you such a goose?”
She spoke straightforwardly but without ill nature, so the older girl
only laughed and shook her head.
“I am accustomed to being called a dreamer, Polly, cousin of mine, and a
good many other things by my family, but not a goose. Still, I expect
you are right.”
She put her arm across her cousin’s shoulder.
“When the girls were getting ready to go I slipped out here to the woods
by myself. I was tired and wanted to be alone for a little while, but I
should have told some one. Has Aunt Mollie worried about me? I built a
fire, so I was not cold.”
Polly glanced back at the dying flames, as the two girls started for
home.
“Your fire does not appear very warming,” she answered bluntly. “And
mother was worrying. As you came to us, Bettina, because you were not
well, naturally we feel responsible. But I suppose you were reading or
writing, or else in the clouds. Funny why people in the clouds always
wish to inhabit them alone. There ought to be room in the clouds for
companions as well as in other places.”
The two girls were walking now arm in arm through a small pine woods in
New Hampshire, just as another Polly and Betty had walked a good many
years before. But these two girls—although their names were alike, and
although they too were members of a Sunrise Hill Camp Fire Club—were
utterly unlike the former ones in temperament and experience.
Bettina was the daughter of Betty Ashton and Anthony Graham. After her
father had served his state as Governor for two terms, he had been sent
as United States senator to Washington, where the family had since been
living, coming back home to New Hampshire only for occasional summer
vacations.
Yet now it was April and Bettina was on her way to the old Webster
farmhouse which stood, as it always had, not far from the first Sunrise
Hill Camp.
In reality she and Polly Webster were not cousins, since Polly was
Mollie O’Neill’s oldest child and named for her famous aunt; but the
friendship between the mothers and the families was so great that it had
passed into an intimacy closer in this world many times than the
intimacies of relationship. For since Polly O’Neill, who was now Mrs.
Richard Burton, traveled a great part of the year, because of her own
and her husband’s profession, and because of her fondness for Europe,
Mollie and Betty, now Mrs. Webster and Mrs. Graham, had grown to depend
more on each other than in their girlhood days. So, when the spring
came, and Bettina was not well in Washington, she had been sent at once
to Mollie Webster’s home and Mollie’s care.
The girls walked quickly, as it was nearly dusk; Polly with the ease and
swiftness of a girl who had been brought up in the country, and Bettina
nearly as easily, yet with a different kind of grace. For there are
persons who seem to be able to move with almost no effort, and their shy
fleetness is characteristic of certain temperaments. In almost all cases
you will find it among persons who have deep emotions but strange
reserves.
Bettina Graham talked very little and perhaps this alone made her
unusual among girls.
After a few further moments of silence on her part, Polly glanced up at
her.
“It is curious, Bettina, that no one of your names suits you. You were
called Bettina and ‘Little Princess’ when you were a tiny girl and now
you are taller than your mother or any of us. ‘Tall Princess’ would be a
better title at present. Even your Camp Fire name is too difficult to
say—‘Anacaona,’ Flower of Gold—though I suppose the meaning is charming.
But I am too matter-of-fact a person to like anything so fanciful.”
An elusive sense of humor may sometimes hide behind reserve, which
served Bettina now and then not to take Polly too seriously.
“I am afraid nothing altogether suits about me,” she returned, smiling,
however, and not speaking as if she were sorry for herself. “At least, I
fear that is what my mother sometimes thinks, although she is good
enough to try to conceal the fact. I am a disappointment to her. Here I
am nearly sixteen and supposed to come out in society in another two or
three years—and with a mother who is almost the most popular woman in
Washington. Yet I hate even to appear at one of our own small tea
parties. I never can think of a single thing to say to strangers. The
truth is, Polly, one of the reasons I was not well this spring was
because mother wished me to help her entertain more and I dreaded it. It
is such peace to be here in these quiet woods.”
Then both girls paused for a moment.
The woods were no longer still.
Some one was walking toward them—a young fellow who kept striking at the
trees and shrubs with a small stick he held in his hand. He was singing
in a charming tenor voice, but stopped, took off his hat and bowed
almost too gracefully to the two girls.
“Hello!” Polly said, indifferent but friendly enough.
Bettina scarcely moved her head. She flushed a little though as the
young man passed, but did not speak until he was out of sight.
“I wish I might have had my visit without any other guest. I don’t like
Ralph Marshall.” And then, “but please do tell me at once, Polly. I have
been realizing ever since you joined me that you had more news. All day
I have been feeling it in the atmosphere. You have had another letter.”
Nodding, Polly slipped her hand into her pocket.
“You do know about things, Bettina, before they happen. It is what
everybody says about you, but please don’t guess about my future, I
prefer not knowing till the time comes.”
She took out the letter and her eyes were brilliant.
“Yes, Tante has written again; the letter is addressed to me, but is for
both of us. She says we are to talk over her plan to our families at
once and that of course they will disapprove as they always have
disapproved of everything she has ever suggested or done. But, just the
same, we are to make them agree finally. She says _we must_—even if she
has to come home and then go from here to Washington to argue the
question.”
“It is too like what one has dreamed of to come true,” Bettina began,
and then stopped because Polly had taken her by both shoulders and was
shaking her.
“The things that Tante plans always come true, no matter how everybody
else opposes them. That is one of the blessed facts about her. Ever
since I can remember she had been more than a fairy godmother to us.”
And Polly’s face showed that there was one person in the world about
whom she was not matter-of-fact. Indeed, no one understood—not even
Polly herself how much hero worship she felt for her mother’s famous
sister.
But they were nearly at home. Lights were shining through the windows of
the living room at the big farm, and on the veranda two persons were
waiting.
“Let us not speak of the plan until after tea,” Polly whispered, as her
father and mother walked forward to meet them.
Polly slipped her hand in her father’s and they went swinging along hand
in hand back to the house.
Mrs. Webster walked more slowly with Bettina keeping beside her. She was
still unchanged from our Mollie O’Neill, except that there were a few
gray hairs which had come when her children were ill. She was plump, of
course, but then soon after her marriage Mollie had settled down to the
serenities of life, and they had kept her eyes as blue and her skin as
soft and rose-colored as ever.
She enjoyed being solicitous about some one’s health and at present was
much concerned about Bettina’s. But she was more concerned later
because, when supper time arrived, one of her sons had not come in. And
this was Billy Webster, who was not in the least like his father—the
Billy Webster of other days. This Billy was always in the habit of doing
all the things he should not, and Dan, all the things he should. And
Mollie might have remembered that this difference in her twin sons was
not unlike her own and her sister’s behavior in other days. But they had
had no father to guide them and her husband was strict with his sons.
Ralph Marshall—the other visitor at the farm whom the girls had passed
in the woods—was having dinner with other friends, and for this Bettina
at least was grateful.
Yet the meal was not so agreeable as usual. Bettina and Polly were too
silent and too absorbed, Mrs. Webster was plainly nervous and Dan, who
was like her in almost every way, shared her emotion.
“It would not be a propitious evening for persuading her father to see
things as she wished him to,” Polly thought. But Billy was always the
family difficulty.
Half an hour later he had not yet appeared in the library. Neither had
Polly or Bettina broached the subject on both their minds, although
Polly sat on the arm of her father’s chair reading the same book with
him.
Better than any one, she understood her father. He would not show
anxiety; but until Billy came in he would not be able to give his
attention to anything else, and his reading was only a pretense.
Then, just a few moments after half-past eight, there was an unexpected
noise along the drive leading up to the front door.
Polly reached the window first. She could see the lights of an
approaching automobile which, a moment later, stopped at the foot of
their steps.
To her amazement her small brother, who had been at home but a few hours
before, stepped out of the car with a suitcase in his hand. The next
instant some one following ran in ahead of Billy.
Polly reached the front door in time to open it for their visitor; but,
by this time the family was in the hall, and the figure swept by Polly
to throw her arms about her mother’s neck.
“Mollie O’Neill, are you glad to see me? I have just traveled hundreds
of miles until I am nearly dead. Yes, I know I ought to have
telegraphed, but I’ve something I want to talk to you about and I did
not want you to know I was coming. You might have tried to stop me,
Richard did try.”
Then she stopped embracing Mrs. Webster and kissed Polly and Bettina and
Dan and Mr. Webster—all as gaily and quickly as possible.
Of course it was Polly O’Neill—Mrs. Richard Burton—for no one else had
such a fashion of turning up at unexpected moments.
“But, Tante, we have not even mentioned your scheme—your letter only
arrived today,” Polly Webster said aloud.
Mrs. Webster shook her head and laughed at the same time.
“Of course you want to do something impossible, Polly O’Neill Burton,
but I am glad to see you for any reason. It has been two years since you
were here. Where did you find my Billy?”
A boy of about fourteen, small for his age and with fair hair and blue
eyes, had by this time slipped quietly in and put down the suitcase. He
had spoken to no one.
“Where did I find Billy?” Polly was moving toward the big living room.
“I found him because he and I are birds of a feather, which means we
know where to look for each other.”