THE GIRLS WILL TRY
“My vase!” gasped Natalie. “He’ll break it!”
“I guess that’s the only way to get it off his head,” answered Mrs.
Bonnell, still laughing. “Poor little fellow! He must have thought it
contained something good to eat.”
This is what the two saw.
A little raccoon was backing about the platform under the eating table,
his head thrust into the now dried neck of the clay vase which Natalie
had moulded. She had brought it up on the boards, under the canvas, to
keep the dew from moistening it.
The raccoon, either through curiosity or hunger, had thrust his slender
snout into the opening, and now could not withdraw it. It went just far
enough over his eyes so that he could not see, and the creature was
rushing aimlessly about, doubtless wondering what queer trap he had
blundered into. The banging of the clay vase against the legs of the
sawhorses which held the table boards, and the thumping on the wooden
floor had aroused the sleepers.
“I’m going to get my vase!” exclaimed Natalie determinedly as she thrust
her feet into a pair of bathing shoes and glided from the tent.
“Come back!” cried Mrs. Bonnell! “He’ll bite you!”
“He can’t,” answered Natalie coolly. “His mouth is inside the vase.”
“Then’ll he scratch you!”
“I don’t believe so. He’s too busy trying to paw that vase off. Anyhow
I’ll grab him by the tail and pull. It won’t hurt him, and I don’t want
my vase smashed, after all my work.”
“What’s the matter?” gasped Mabel, now awake.
“Is—is it the Gypsies?” demanded Marie.
“Where’s your ammonia gun?” cried Alice. “Shoot!”
“Hush! Or you’ll have the boys over here!” exclaimed Mrs. Bonnell. “It’s
nothing but a raccoon who stuck his head into Natalie’s vase. She’s gone
to free it.”
As she spoke the thumping noise outside increased.
“Oh!” cried Mabel.
“Quiet!” urged the Guardian.
“There, there!” Natalie’s voice could be heard to murmur soothingly. “I
won’t hurt you. Wait a minute now, and I’ll have it off you.”
“She talks as if it were a pussy cat,” whispered Alice.
There was a little squeal, a sort of grunt and then a hurried scurrying
of feet over the boards.
“I fixed him!” exclaimed Natalie in triumph, as she came into the tent
carrying her vase.
“However did you dare to it?” demanded Alice.
“Why, the raccoon couldn’t see me, so I just grabbed him by the tail in
one hand, and took the vase in the other. Then I—well, I just pulled
them apart.”
“Oh, dear!” laughed Marie. “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” and she fell back on
her cot in a paroxysm of laughter. “Oh, dear, girls! Hold me, some one!”
“What’s the matter now?” demanded Mabel.
“Oh, I just thought of the funniest thing!” and Marie redoubled her
mirth.
“Be quiet!” commanded Mrs. Bonnell, and then she joined in the gale of
laughter that now swept through the tent. “What is it, anyhow? Tell us
and we’ll laugh with you.”
“Oh, dear!” sighed Marie, as the first spasm passed. “I just happened to
think how dreadful it would be, if, when Nat was pulling on the
raccoon’s tail, it had come loose instead of his head coming out of the
vase. Oh, dear!”
“Silly!” exclaimed Natalie. “It couldn’t happen. Anyhow if it had the
tail would have made a lovely dusting brush!”
And then there was more laughter.
“We’d better bring in all the clay vases,” suggested Natalie, when quiet
had been somewhat restored. “Some other night prowler may come along and
get caught in the same way.”
“I don’t believe that raccoon will,” was Marie’s opinion as she went off
in another fit of laughter. “The idea of pulling him out by the tail!”
“It’s the only way I could grab him,” explained Natalie. “I didn’t want
to get scratched. Bur-r-r-r! It’s chilly!” and she crept back into bed,
while the other girls made hurried trips out to bring in their
handiwork.
There were no more disturbances that night, though Marie kept them all
awake for some time, with her fits of laughter and her murmurings of:
“Suppose his tail had come off!”
“Suppose you go to sleep,” directed Mrs. Bonnell, trying not to laugh.
The clay ornaments were found hard enough by morning to harden in the
fire, and while the girls were making a larger pit than the one Natalie
had originally dug, the boys strolled over.
“Going to have a feast?” asked Blake.
“A feast? no,” replied Alice, who was scooping out the dirt. “Why do you
ask?”
“Because you’re digging a hole, and you have a lot of clay around. I
thought maybe you were going to clay a chicken.”
“Clay a chicken?” repeated Mrs. Bonnell. “Is that a new way of serving
it?”
“It’s the camp version of a casserole,” explained Jack. “You take a
chicken, wrap a cloth around it, and then plaster it all over with clay.
Then you make a fire in a hole, put the clayed chicken in, cover it with
embers, and go fishing.”
“What has fishing got to do with it?” asked Mabel.
“You don’t have to think any more about your dinner,” said Jack. “It’s
like a fireless cooker, with the fire still in it. The clay bakes hard
you see, and the heat cooks the chicken through and through. When you
come back you take out the clay ball with the chicken for a center,
crack it open, and you dine sumptuously. That’s a clayed-chicken.”
“It sounds good,” said Natalie.
“It is good,” declared Blake. “If you can get a chicken over at the
store, we’ll fix it for you.”
The girls voted to do so, and after putting the clay vases in the firing
pit, and having told the boys of the scare of the night, they prepared
for the trip after supplies.
“You can cook an elephant’s foot the same way,” said Blake, seemingly
appropros of nothing in particular, as the boys and girls were walking
up from the lake shore to the grocery at the Point.
“Kindly elucidate,” suggested Natalie.
“I was thinking about the clayed chicken,” Blake explained. “I read
somewhere that they do elephant’s feet the same way.”
“I should think it would hurt the elephants,” remarked Marie innocently.
“They don’t do it until the beasts have passed beyond all pain and
suffering,” went on Blake. “Really, it’s said to be a delicious dish.”
“We’ll have it for breakfast,” declared Jack. “Phil, kindly get an
elephant for our camp-cook.”
“At once, your majesty,” replied Phil, with a mock bow.
The girls spent some time buying needful supplies, as did the boys, for
their stocks had run low. There were some chickens to be had, a farmer
having brought in some fresh ones, and the girls decided to let the boys
experiment with the clay method of cooking one.
“But I’ll fricassee the other to make sure of having a meal,” declared
Mrs. Bonnell with a laugh.
It was just as the girls were getting ready to go back in their two
boats, and the boys were yet lingering in the store, that Natalie
uttered an exclamation.
“What is it?” asked Marie.
“That man—the constable who nearly arrested me. There he is over by the
rifle range. I’m going to ask him if he has located that Gypsy girl
yet.”
“Oh, don’t, Nat!” exclaimed Mabel.
“Yes, I shall. I want to help get your mother’s ring. The boys don’t
seem able to find the encampment. Perhaps we can,” and, before any one
could stop her, Natalie hurried along the dock to where the constable
was standing near a rifle range that served to while away time for some
of the campers.
“Mr. Jackson!” she exclaimed, “have you found Hadee, the Gypsy, yet?”
“Hadee!” he exclaimed, startled. “Oh, I know you now. You’re the girl I
mistook for her. Well, say, do you know I haven’t found them Gypsies
yet! I’ve been hunting all over for ’em, but—guess they’ve skipped out.
I’m on the track though. I’ll let you know if I do locate ’em. Why, do
you want your fortune told?”
“Oh, no!” Natalie exclaimed quickly. “We’ve had all the fortune we want.
We—we just want to see their camp.”
“I guess you wouldn’t mind hearin’ your fortunes,” murmured the
constable. “Well, if I find ’em I’ll let you know,” and he nodded in a
friendly fashion.
Rather disappointed, Natalie was going back to the others who awaited
her in the boat, when she heard the captain of one of the lake steamers
saying to his engineer:
“Say, where does that Italian chap want to get off?” for all the
steamers stopped at the Point as a sort of half-way station, and
continued on from there.
“He isn’t an Italian, he’s a Gypsy,” said the mate. “I’ve seen him
before. His tribe is stopping somewhere in the woods near Bear Pond. He
wants to get off at Madison’s dock. All right. I’ve got a box for there,
too. All aboard!” and he hurried off.
Natalie looked into the steamer, and saw a tall, swarthy man sitting in
the cabin. There were one or two other passengers.
“At Bear Pond!” she murmured. “There are Gypsies at Bear Pond! Perhaps
Hadee is there. We must have a look, and we won’t tell the boys, or Mr.
Jackson.”
Quickly she told her companions what she had overheard.
“Shall we try to find the camp?” she concluded.
“Yes!” agreed Mabel eagerly. “Only I should think that constable would
know enough to inquire of the boat captains about the Gypsies.”
“Probably it was so simple that it didn’t occur to him,” said Mrs.
Bonnell. “But I must consider about letting you girls go off on this
wild-goose chase alone.”
“Oh, you’d come with us; of course!” exclaimed Marie. “I think it will
be fun!”
“So do I!” agreed Alice. “And we can take along the ammonia gun, in case
the dogs bark at us. There are always a lot of dogs about a Gypsy camp.”
“Wait a minute!” called Blake to the girls, as they were rowing away.
“We’ll go with you. We’ve got some news for you!”
Quickly he and his chums sent their craft up to the boats containing the
girls.
“What’s the secret?” demanded Natalie.
“We’re on the track of the Gypsies!” exclaimed Jack. “They’re over on
Mt. Harry, and we’re going to trail them to-morrow. Isn’t that great?”
“But Natalie—” began Marie, when her chum stopped her with a warning
looking.
“We’ll find out all we can for you,” went on Phil, as none of the boys
noticed Marie’s startled exclamation. “And if it’s safe we’ll take you
to the camp later on. Mt. Harry is a nice place to go to anyhow,” and he
nodded in its direction—in a direction directly opposite from Bear Pond.
“We’ll go to the pond,” decided Natalie when the boys had veered out of
hearing. “And we’ll see whether the Gypsies are there. Maybe we can get
ahead of the boys. Shall we go, girls?”
“Yes!” they chorused.