THE HIDEOUT
Helen had drawn close to her chum and they sat upon the pile of
leaves that had blown into this lair under the bank, with their arms
about each other's waists.
"What do you suppose will become of us, Ruthie?" Helen whispered.
"Why, how can we tell? Maybe the boys and Long Jerry are searching
for us right now----"
"In this dreadful storm? Impossible!" declared Helen.
"Well, that they _will_ search for us as soon as it holds up, we can
be sure," Ruth rejoined.
"But, in the meantime? They may be hours finding us. And I am sure I
would not know how to start for Snow Camp, if the storm should stop."
"Quite true, Helen."
"We won't an-n-ny of us start for Snow Camp again!" quavered Lluella
Fairfax. "We'll be frozen dead--that's what'll happen to us."
"I _am_ dreadfully cold," said Madge. "How are you, Heavy?"
"Stiff as a poker, thank you!" returned the irrepressible. "I
haven't any feet at all now. They've frozen and dropped off!"
"Don't talk so terribly!" wailed Belle. "We are freezing to death
here. I am sleepy. I've read that when folks get drowsy out in a
storm like this they are soon done for. Now, isn't that a fact, Madge
Steele?"
"Nonsense!" exclaimed the older girl; but Heavy broke in with:
"It strikes me that now is the time to make use of Ruth's matches.
Let's build a rousing fire."
"How?" demanded Helen. "Where can we get fuel? It's all under the
snow."
"There's plenty of kindling right under _us_" declared Jennie Stone,
vigorously. "And Ruth spoke about the under branches of these trees
being dry----"
"And so they are," declared Ruth, struggling to her feet. "We must
do something. A rousing fire against this rock will keep us warm. We
can heat the rock and then draw the fire out and get behind it. It
will be fine!"
"Oh, I can't move!" wailed Lluella.
"Luella doesn't want to work," said Madge. "But you get up and do
your share, Miss! If you freeze to death here your mother will never
forgive me."
Of course, it would be Heavy that got into trouble. She made a
misstep off the platform and sunk to her arm-pits in a soft bank of
snow, and it was all the others could do to pull her out. But this
warmed them, and actually got them to laughing.
"I believe that laughing warms one as much as anything," said Madge.
"Ha, ha!" croaked Heavy, grimly. "_Your_ laughing hasn't warmed _me_
any. I'm wet to my waist, I do believe!"
"We shall have to have a fire now to dry Jennie," said Ruth. "Now
take care."
They had all abandoned their snowshoes long since, and the
racquettes would have been of no use to them in the present
emergency, anyway. But Ruth and Madge got to the nearest tree, and
fortunately it was half dead. They could break off many of the
smaller branches, and soon brought to the platform a great armful of
the brush.
Ruth's matches were dry and they heaped up the leaves and rubbish
and started a blaze. The other girls brought more fuel and soon a hot
fire was leaping against the side of the rock and its circle of
warmth cheered them. They got green branches of spruce and pine and
brushed away the snow and banked it up in a wall all about the
platform, which served them for a camp. Then they scraped the fire
out from the rock, threw on more branches (for the green ones would
burn now that the fire was so hot) and crowded in between the blaze
and the rock.
"This is just scrumptious!" declared Heavy. "We sha'n't freeze now."
"Not if we can keep the fire going," said Helen.
Being warm, they all tried to be cheerful thereafter. They told
stories, they sang their school songs, and played guessing games.
Meanwhile, the wind shrieked through the forest above their
"hideout," and the snow continued to fall as though it had no
intention of ever stopping. The hours dragged by toward dark--and an
early dark it would be on this stormy day.
"Oh, if we only had something to eat!" groaned Heavy. "Wish I'd
saved my snow-shoes."
"What for?" demanded Bell. "What possible good could they have been
to you, silly?"
"They were strung with deer-hide, and I have heard that when
castaway sailors get very, very hungry, they always chew their boots.
I can't spare my boots," quoth Jennie Stone, trying to joke to the
bitter end.
The wind wheezed above them, the darkness fell with the snow. Beyond
the glow of the pile of coals on the rocky ledge, the curtain of snow
looked gray--then drab--then actually black. Moon and stars were far,
far away; none of their light percolated through the mass of clouds
and falling snow that mantled these big wastes of the backwoods.
"Oh! I never realized anything could be so lonely," whispered Helen
in Ruth's ear.
"And how worried your father and Mrs. Murchiston will be," returned
her chum. "Of course, we shall get out of it all right, Helen; but
_did_ you ever suppose so much snow could fall at one time?"
"Never!"
"And no sign of it holding up at all," said Madge, who had overheard.
"Sh! Belle and Lluella have curled up here and gone to sleep," said
Helen.
"Lucky Infants," observed Madge.
"I'm going to sleep, too," said Heavy, with a yawn.
"There is no danger now. We're as warm as can be here," Ruth said.
"Why don't you take a nap, Helen? Madge and I will keep the first
watch--and keep the fire burning."
"Suppose there should be wolves--or bears," whispered Helen.
"Ridiculous! no self-respecting beast would be out in such a gale.
They'd know better," declared Madge Steele, briskly.
"And if one does come here," muttered Jennie, sleepily, "I shall
kill and eat him."
She nodded off the next moment and Helen followed her example. Madge
and Ruth talked to keep each other awake. Occasionally they fought
their way to the half-dead tree and brought back armfuls of its
smaller branches.
"It's a shame," declared Miss Steele, "that girls don't carry
knives, and such useful things. Did you ever know a girl to have
anything in her pocket that was worth carrying--if she chanced by
good luck to have a pocket at all? Now, with a knife, we could get
some better wood."
"I know," Ruth admitted. "I know more about camping out than ever I
did before. Next time, I'm going to carry things. You never know what
is going to happen."
As the evening advanced the cold became more biting. They stirred up
the fire with a long stick and the glowing coals threw out increased
warmth. The four sleeping girls stirred uneasily, and Madge, putting
her hand against the back wall of rock, found that it had cooled.
"When it comes ten o'clock," she said, consulting the watch she
carried, "we'll wake them up, make them stir around a bit, and we'll
drag all these coals over against the rock again. Then we'll heap on
the rubbish and heat up the stones once more. We ought to keep warm
after that till near daylight."
"The smut is spoiling our clothes," said Ruth.
"I don't know as that matters much. I'd rather spoil everything I've
got on than run the risk of freezing," declared Madge, with conviction.
They did what they could to keep the other girls warm; but before
the hour Madge had proposed to awaken them, Lluella roused and cried
a little because she was so chilly.
"My goodness me, Lu!" yawned Heavy, who was awakened, too, "you are
just the _leakiest_ person that I ever saw! You must have been
born crying!"
"I never heard that we came into the world laughing," said Madge;
"so Lluella isn't different from the rest of us on that score."
"But thank goodness we're not all such snivelers," grumbled Heavy.
"Want me to get up? What for?"
But when Madge and Ruth explained what they intended to do, all the
girls willingly bestirred themselves and helped in the moving of the
fire and the gathering of more fuel.
"Of course we can't expect any help to-night," said Helen. "But I
know that they'll start out hunting for us at daybreak, no matter
whether it keeps on snowing, or not."
"And a nice time they'll have finding us down in this hole,"
complained Belle Tingley.
"Lucky I fell into this hole, just the same," remarked Heavy. "It
just about saved our lives."
"But I guess we would have been a whole lot better off if we hadn't
moved from the first big tree Ruth got us to creep under," Helen
said, thoughtfully. "We couldn't have been more than two miles from
Snow Camp then. _Now_ we don't know where we are."
"Never mind that, Helen," advised Madge. "Help get in the wood. Now,
we want a big, rousing fire. We'll just heat that old rock up so that
it will stay warm all night. It will be like sleeping as the Russian
peasants do--on top of their stoves."
They had piled the brush on the coals, after scraping the coals back
upon the ledge, and the firelight was dancing far up the rock, and
shining out into the steadily drifting snow, when suddenly Helen
seized her chum's hand and cried:
"Listen! what's that?"
The girls grew silent instantly--and showing no little fear. From
somewhere out in the storm a cry came to their ears.
"There it is again," gasped Helen. "I heard it twice before."
"I hear it," repeated Madge. "Wait."
Again the distant sound came forlornly to their ears. That time they
all distinguished it. And they knew that their first hope was
quenched. It was no sound of a rescuing party searching for them in
the storm, for the word--repeated several times, and unmistakable--
they all identified.
"_Help!_"