THE OLD MAN
“That rope should go the other way!”
“No, I remember Jack saying you should fasten the other rope first.”
“Are you sure the pegs are driven in tightly enough?”
“There! I knew something would be missing. We haven’t a hammer to drive
in the pegs with.”
“But where are the tent pegs?”
Thus the girls questioned and commented as they had gathered about an
indiscriminate collection of canvas, boards, ropes and other things at
the campsite on Green Lake. They had made a quick trip in the train, and
the little lake steamer had landed them at Crystal Springs, as their
camping-ground was called.
“There are the pegs,” said Alice, after a look about, and she indicated
some articles that looked like exaggerated clothes pins, save for the
slot.
“That’s so, we must decide where they are to go, and drive them in, so
we’ll have something to fasten the ropes to,” declared Natalie. “I
remember Blake saying that.”
“But no hammer!” cried Marie.
“Use a stone, girls,” suggested Mrs. Bonnell. “There are plenty
hereabouts. Then we must set up the oil stove and make tea. I’m famished
for some.”
“I hope the man left oil,” murmured Alice.
“Yes, here’s some in a can,” called Mabel, who was looking about. “And
the stove is just like one we have.”
“Girls!” called the Guardian, “just slip your middy-blouses over your
waists, and put on the skirts too. You can work so much better then, and
not be afraid of soiling anything.”
The change was quickly made, the girls having brought in their suit
cases their Camp Fire garments. Then they began once more to try to
solve the problem of the tent. But it was not so easy as they had
supposed, even with the help of a diagram Marie had made from Jack’s
vivid description.
“Oh, dear!” sighed Alice. “I wish the boys were here after all. One
never knows how much one needs them until they are not on hand.”
“Oh, we can do it!” asserted Mabel. “Let’s try the small cooking tent
first. That will be easier.”
“Why didn’t we think of that?” asked Alice. “We can use it as a sort of
model. Come, girls. Wo-he-lo!”
“If you shout like that some will surely hear, and come to help us,”
said Marie. “I wonder where the boys are?” and she looked toward the
point of land, where a waving flag denoted the presence of the camp of
their brothers. But the boys were not in evidence.
“Probably they did not know just when we would arrive,” suggested Mrs.
Bonnell, as she helped Natalie lay out the smaller tent.
“It’s just as well—if we can get the tent up alone,” spoke Mabel. “So
much the more credit for us. But it does look like one of those Chinese
puzzles,” she went on rather hopelessly. By dint of much changing and
shifting, trying first one rope then another, turning the pile of canvas
first this way and that the girls finally, with the help of Mrs.
Bonnell, got it in such a position that, after a sort of council of war
they decided that they could erect it.
“Now, all together!” called the Guardian of the Camp Fire Girls. “Raise
it up, Mabel and Marie, while Natalie and Alice fasten the ropes to the
pegs.”
The three of them raised, while two excited girls, on either side, took
the trailing side ropes and began to catch them around the notched pegs,
that had, with much labor, been driven into the earth with stones.
“Now let go!” ordered Mrs. Bonnell.
The girls stepped back.
The tent came down with a dismal flop.
“Oh, dear!” sighed Natalie.
“Isn’t it a shame! Just when we had it nearly up?” spoke Alice.
“Well, we’ll have to do it all over again,” decided the Guardian. “But
we have the right idea now.”
“I don’t believe Natalie and Alice put the ropes on the pegs quickly
enough,” declared Mabel.
“Oh, we did so!” chorused the two.
“Then why should it come down?” demanded Marie, as if the question was
unanswerable.
“I don’t know,” declared Natalie. “I know I bruised my knuckles on that
one peg. Where is your cold cream, Alice? I left mine in my suit case,
and it’s so hard to open.”
“This is no time for cold cream—nor ice cream, either!” declared Alice.
“Let’s try once more.”
“’Twon’t do you a bit of good ladies!” suddenly exclaimed a voice from
the lake shore. “You can work ’till doomsday tryin’ t’ git a tent up
that way, but lessen you puts th’ ridge pole on top of th’ end poles,
an’ raises them fust, you won’t never git no tent up.”
They looked whence the voice came and saw an old man, in a clumsy
rowboat, regarding them with half-quizzical, half-amused glances.
“The poles!” murmured Natalie.
“That’s why the tent wouldn’t stay up!” added Marie.
“How silly of us!” chorused Alice and Mabel.
“Goin’ t’ camp here?” asked the old man.
“We—we hoped to,” answered Mrs. Bonnell. “But if we don’t know enough to
put up a small tent I don’t see——”
“I’ll help you,” volunteered the visitor. “I often help camping parties
that don’t know much about the game. I’ll help you.”
“We’re Camp Fire Girls!” declared Mabel with dignity.
“Ha! Ha!” chuckled the old man. “I have seen folks what could git up a
good meal over a camp fire, but they was mighty few. I see you’ve
brought an oil stove. That’s what they mostly does up here. There’s some
fellows over on Stony Point that have got their camp going in good
shape.”
“They are our brothers,” said Mabel.
“So! Wa’al, now let’s see about your tent,” and he lumbered up from his
boat which he tied to a stump on shore. “Have you got poles?” he asked.
“They are over there,” replied Mrs. Bonnell, rather put out at her own
inability to recall that her husband had, several times, had her help
him erect their tent.
“That’s good. Now I’ll show you. I guess between us we can manage to
raise the tents.”
As he spoke he came face to face with Natalie who had gone for some cold
cream to apply to her bruised knuckles. At the sight of
breath-of-the-pine-tree the old man started back, and a queer look came
over his face. Staring at Natalie he exclaimed in a whisper:
“Who—who are you? Have—have you come back to me?”