The next time Billy and Tom and Winona and Louise went off in Billy's
canoe for the day, they did not take Sandy. She happened to be making
one of her brief visits home. They took, instead, a shot-gun apiece
(that is, the boys did), a book apiece (that was for the girls), a
bagful of socks from the Scouts' mending-basket, and the usual amount of
lunch.
"We look like an Italian moving," Tom observed critically, looking over
their joint baggage. "Three fishing-rods, two baskets, two paddles, two
guns, two sunbonnets. Whew! Louise, I'll trade with you."
"It isn't much at all," said Louise indignantly. "I could carry my
share, and yours, too, if I had to."
"You may," he returned promptly. "Here's my rifle. It won't go off
unless you hit the trigger by accident."
"Heap big chief!" said she, not offering to take it. "If I'd remembered
how you hated carrying innocent little things like this around with
you"--she pointed to the imposing pile of baskets, books and work in the
bottom of the canoe--"I'd have telephoned for an expressman."
"Have you a telephone?" asked Tom. "When did you put it in, and what did
you tie it to?"
"No," said Louise, "but we could have borrowed yours."
The Scouts had just finished installing a telephone from Wampoag to
their headquarters. They had done nearly everything themselves in the
way of connecting and so forth. They were very proud of it, and the Camp
Fire girls were wildly envious, for all _they_ had was a system of
baking-powder-box-and-wire telephone, worked out from the American
Girl's Handy Book by two young geniuses. It was all right as far as it
went, but naturally it wouldn't connect them with the telephones at
home, or at Wampoag.
"Why, of course you could," consented Tom. "In fact, you can. Shall I
paddle you that way?"
"You needn't mind," she smiled. "Do look at Winona!"
Winona had one of Marie's books, and she was sitting on the bottom
reading it, forgetful of the world.
"What does this mean, Billy?" as she looked up suddenly. "Marie has a
note here in pencil 'But Raleigh was not exclusively Elizabethan!' and
two exclamation points after it."
"I don't know," Billy answered frankly. "I don't see why Marie wants to
worry about it."
"Raleigh was Gothic with Queen Anne chimneys," interrupted Tom. "If you
want information just come to me, little one. Here, Winnie, put down
that book. It looks too full of useful information for a nice day like
this. Remember, this is a pleasure exertion."
"All right," and Winona laid down the book. "Only I do wish I knew as
much as Marie does."
"And yet she never seems to study hard," remarked Louise, to whom
lessons were a painful grind. "I believe she's like Billy Wiggs of the
Cabbage-Patch--she 'inherited her education from her paw!'"
"She could!" put in Tom mournfully. "Professor Hunter has enough and too
much. Just wait till you get under him, Louise!"
"Oh, I can wait. I'm in no hurry at all. He's awfully nice out of school
hours, but----"
"But why talk about school in vacation?" broke in Billy impatiently.
"Isn't it a lovely day?"
The girls were curled on the bottom of the canoe, in the middle, and the
boys were paddling at the ends. The morning breeze, cool and fresh,
struck their faces, whipping Louise's red hair about her face in little
curls, and blowing Winona's blue tie straight back over her shoulder in
the sunshine.
"This is something like living!" Tom declared, spatting the water with
his paddle because he was so happy. "Pass me about three bananas, will
you, whoever's nearest the lunch? I feel hungry."
"You aren't," said Louise swiftly. "You just want those bananas because
you know they're there. Have some poetry instead. I brought a bookful."
"Poetry!" snorted Tom, as she hoped he would.
"Caesar! There's a snipe!" cried Billy, dropping his paddle, reaching for
a rifle, and taking hasty aim.
"Never touched it," mocked Tom as the report died, and the snipe
appeared not to have done so at all.
"How do you come to be carrying all these shooting-irons around?" asked
Louise suspiciously. "I thought Mr. Gedney was pretty strict about it."
"Special permission," explained Tom. "We've both always known how to
shoot, and old Billy here is supposed to be the most careful thing that
ever was."
"That wasn't a snipe," said Billy disgustedly. "That was a mosquito, a
nice tame old Jersey mosquito. I always heard they grew to that size,
but I never believed it before."
"Don't cast any asparagus," said Louise. "The advertisements say there
are no mosquitoes here."
Billy eyed the now almost gone snipe.
"Well, he may have been a plain fly," he conceded.... "Let's go on
hunting. Perhaps we'll find a real snipe next time."
They paddled along lazily for the next three-quarters of an hour,
talking a little now and then. For the most part, though, they went on
in silence, except when Louise giggled over "Fables in Slang," which she
had pulled out of her blouse-pocket, or when someone saw what might be
game, or especially good scenery. They went, presently, down an arm of
the river that was scarcely more than a creek, and stopped there till
afternoon for rest and refreshment. It seemed a charming spot, and
almost deserted. Only in the distance one red-roofed farmhouse could be
seen, adding to the picturesqueness of the landscape.
There were three small sandwiches left, and the girls, with the aid of
paper and pencil, had just worked it out that each person present was
entitled to three-quarters of a sandwich. They were trying to decide who
should get the three quarters that were cut out of the three
sandwiches--it was more a point of honor than necessity, for nobody much
wanted any of them--when there was a subdued howl from Tom, who had been
lying on his back in the canoe, gazing up at the sky.
Six stately geese were flying in an arrow-shape across the creek, above
the canoe. Both boys fired.
"Oh, what a shame to kill them!" mourned Winona; but Tom said hurriedly
again that they had special permission from Mr. Gedney, and sat up to
see if he had done anything.
"We each got one!" said Billy in a tense whisper. "They've dropped on
the farther shore--there by the farmhouse!"
The boys pushed the canoe up close and sprang out. They were dashing
excitedly across country after their prey. Suddenly the waiting girls
heard wild howls, and the tall, angry form of a wild-eyed man in
overalls suddenly appeared from nowhere with a pitchfork.
"Oh, he's chasing the boys!" exclaimed Winona.
"He certainly is!" seconded Louise, and began to giggle. "Listen to
him!"
It was really impossible to do anything else.
"My geese! My prize geese!" shouted the overalled man, adding what he
thought of Tom's and Billy's intelligence. "My pedigreed geese, you
young idiots! I'll teach you!"
"You ought to have made 'em wear their pedigrees around their necks,"
Tom shouted back at the man.
"Oh, can they get away?" cried Louise. "Look!"
And Winona, looking, saw that their way back to the canoe was cut off by
a dog--the traditional farmer's dog of the comic papers. He was
stationed on the bank, eying the canoe and the girls in it in a very
threatening way, and most plainly only waiting till the boys came back
to bite them.
Winona gave the canoe a determined push which landed it in midstream,
and both girls began to paddle back by the way they had come, Winona
because she had a plan, Louise because she was following Winona.
"We'll meet them around this point, on the other side," she explained to
Louise. "I saw a glimpse of water on the other side, and I think the
point of land the farm is on is like a peninsula."
Sure enough, they discovered the criminals crouched romantically behind
a clump of trees at the other side of the point of land. They were so
well hidden that the girls would never have seen them if Billy had not
stealthily waved a red handkerchief which he always carried for
wigwagging. The girls paddled up as softly as they could, and the boys
crawled out and waded to the canoe, crouching low. Nobody dared say
anything till the canoe and its crew was well out and downstream again,
far from farmers with dogs and pitchforks and no desire to listen to
explanations.
"And we never even got those geese!" mourned Tom.
"Got those geese!" said Louise severely. "You oughtn't to want to get
pedigreed geese that belonged to a farmer--especially a farmer with that
kind of a disposition."
"He hasn't any business to let tame geese go prowling around the country
that way," growled Billy, "the first day a fellow has leave to go
shooting food for the Scouts at home! How were we to know they had a
coat-of-arms and a family tree? They ought to have been kept at home, in
their ancestral barnyard."
"And we never even got the confounded things!" lamented Tom again. "And
we might just as well have, too, because we'll have to go up and pay for
them, of course, when Mr. Overalls has calmed down enough not to bite us
on sight. They may be worth a thousand dollars apiece, for all we know.
We were the pedigreed geese, I think!"
"Never mind," said Louise soothingly, "be glad Father Goose didn't get
you, instead of sorry you didn't get his pets. They probably would have
been tough, anyway."
"And we can fish," suggested Winona. "Nobody's going to jump out of the
river and tell us that these are his pedigreed perch."
"The game-warden may, if the river's been stocked lately," said Billy.
"It hasn't," asserted Tom. "Don't you remember? We found out all about
that before any of us came up here last year. All these fish are old
enough to die. Pass me the bait, please, Winnie."
"Here you are," said Winona.
She baited a line for herself, dropped it in, and everyone else did the
same thing. After that nobody said anything for quite a little while,
unless an occasional "Confound those geese!" from Tom could count as
conversation.
"Got something!" announced Louise at length, jerking in her line.
"What is it?" asked Tom with interest.
"Feels like a perch--or a trout," said Louise pulling in her line
rapidly.
"It doesn't _look_ like one," said Winona.
"M'm, not exactly," said her brother. "You ought to be interested in it,
though, Win--it's a catfish."
"You can eat catfish," said Louise, quite calmly. "In fact, I believe
they're considered very good eating. I don't know but I'd rather have
them than trout."
"Especially if you can't get the trout," added Tom.
"If you can't get what you want, you must want what you can get." So she
baited her line again.
"Well, what is it this time?" inquired Tom next time she pulled her line
in. The rest had had fair luck.
"Probably another pussy-fish," said Louise resignedly. But this time it
was a real perch, and after that it was a sunfish, and then two more
catfish. And presently there was enough for supper, and by the time they
got back they knew it would be supper-getting time. Winona was cooking
supper that week. So they put the fish in the empty lunch-basket and
paddled for home. Louise took Billy's paddle, and Billy trolled all the
way. He didn't get anything, but he enjoyed himself.
"Who's that on the dock?" asked Tom as they neared the Camp Karonya
landing. "Are they waiting for us?"
"Tom's afraid the farmer with the ducks has come around the other way,"
said Louise. "No, Tommy, my dear, that's only Mr. Sloane, who is a sort
of unofficial uncle to Camp Karonya. We're supposed to have rented that
dock from him, but he comes there and fishes just as much as if we
hadn't."
"Sort of a fourth sub-mascot?" said Billy. "Yes, I remember--the old man
who helped you out about the scows when you were building the float."
"He's the one," said Winona. "He's fishing."
"And there's Puppums, too," said Louise. "Oh, the dear old doggie! He's
come down to the dock to wait for you, Winnie!"
"So he has," agreed Winona. "I wonder if he's been there long."
Puppums liked canoeing very much, and when he thought Winona ought to
have taken him and hadn't, he would go down to the dock, trailing her by
scent, and sit there hours and hours--merely for the sake of looking
reproachfully at her when she did get in, it was thought. Winona always
hugged him, and apologized, and took him for a row if possible, and he
knew it.
When he caught sight of the canoe (like most dogs, he was short-sighted)
he began to bark excitedly and run up and down the dock, and jump wildly
about. He did everything but swim out to the canoe. Puppums hated
water--which gave rise to a theory that there was a little pug in his
ancestry.
Mr. Sloane, too, rose as the canoe came near the landing-place. He did
not jump up and down, because he had not been waiting for the canoeing
party. He had evidently taken their return as a signal that it was time
he went home himself, for he was collecting his rod and bait-can, and
his coat, and the other things he had strewn about the dock. Puppums
still careered wildly around and around. As Winona stepped ashore his
excitement grew so intense that he ran full tilt into Mr. Sloane, who
was bending over picking something up, and nearly knocked him over.
"W-u-ugh!" said Mr. Sloane, and began to hunt frantically about the
dock.
And as the boys and girls gained the shore it became painfully evident
that the little dog had jarred out the old gentleman's false teeth.
Mr. Sloane had never made any secret of the fact that he wore "bought
teeth"--indeed, he had told Winona and Adelaide, who were his especial
favorites, just where he got them and how much they cost, and where
others like them could be gotten. But still, when your friend's teeth
are knocked out all at once by your family dog, well, you _do_ feel a
little embarrassment. With one accord the four looked in the other
direction, as Mr. Sloane, with a "Drat that pup!" continued to hunt for
his teeth. The boys fussed with the canoe, and Winona and Louise began
to hunt for a nonexistent something in the box they used for a locker.
But Puppums was going to be polite at all costs. He trotted over, his
tail wagging wildly at the prospect of being able to do something for
his mistress, picked up the teeth, and carried them proudly to Winona!
"Oh, Puppums--you _naughty_ dog!" she said, trying to take the teeth
away from him as unostentatiously as possible.
But Puppums, realizing from her voice that something was wrong, looked
up at her depreciatingly, wagged his tail again, suddenly put his tail
between his legs and started for the camp!
It was no use to try to ignore things any longer.
"Oh, Mr. Sloane," Winona cried. "I'm so sorry! He's a bad dog. I'll go
straight after him and get them."
"Now, never mind," said Mr. Sloane, kindly if rather indistinctly. He
began to laugh. "That dog o' yours certainly is a rip-snorter!" he said.
"Knock a man down an' carry off his teeth!"
By this time the boys had stopped trying not to laugh, and were howling
in unison in the background. And little Frances, Adelaide's sister, came
up with a nice birch-bark box. She handed it to Mr. Sloane, dropped a
pretty courtesy, and ran. And so did the others. The only unembarrassed
members of the party were Puppums, who wasn't there, to be Irish, and
Mr. Sloane himself.
"Talk about banner days!" sighed Louise. "I was the only one of us that
didn't get into trouble----"
"Louise!" called somebody, from outside the tent where Louise was
washing and getting ready for supper. "Did you know that you left the
store-shed door open this morning when you came in for supplies, and
somebody's carried off every bit of bacon!"