THE
CAMP FIRE GIRLS
AT THE END OF
THE TRAIL
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 Company
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. A Strange Background 7
II. White Robes 22
III. A New Dawn 32
IV. A New Girl 46
V. The Patient 59
VI. A Wager 67
VII. A Study in Temperaments 78
VIII. Possibilities 90
IX. An Adventure 103
X. A Good Samaritan 116
XI. The Canyon 127
XII. The Man from Above 139
XIII. Disillusion 151
XIV. Facing the Music 161
XV. Expiation 170
XVI. The Pine, not the Olive 190
XVII. The Passionate Pilgrim 200
XVIII. An Appeal 209
XIX. The Arrest 222
XX. The Grand Canyon 231
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
“When He Appeared He was Leading, Half Carrying, a Girl who did
not Look like a Formidable Intruder.” _Frontispiece_
“They Heard the Sound of Low Voices Before Seeing Any One.” 111
“With the Rope now about His Own Waist, Howard Brent Crawled Down
to Her.” 143
“‘I Just Wanted to Thank You,’ She Said.” 229
The Camp Fire Girls
at the End of the Trail
CHAPTER I
A Strange Background
The castle had been built before the first known palace in Europe. It was
fashioned centuries ago inside the walls of a stone cliff with two taller
cliffs rising on either side. Beyond was a break between, allowing a
narrow entrance to the cliff dwelling from the outside. In front there
was a small plateau of rock ending in a precipice, which descended with a
drop of a hundred feet to a new ledge, and then came another still deeper
fall.
That afternoon a group of four persons were inside the ancient cliff
dwelling. One of them—a young girl in an odd costume which was partly
modern and yet suggesting an older race—had climbed to the crest of the
ruins and stood, with her hand above her eyes, gazing about her.
Another girl, in a chamber below, was sitting upon a comfortable camp
stool which she had undoubtedly brought with her, she was hammering
industriously with a small steel hammer, and now and then stopped to work
with her chisel at a solid stone wall. Evidently she believed some
extraordinary treasure was embedded inside, since she never glanced away
from her labors.
On the bottom floor historic influences had not kept the two remaining
girls from the cheering occupation of preparing tea. The wood must have
been brought from the country behind the cliffs, for a camp fire was
burning in the old stone chamber, with a large kettle of water simmering
above it.
One of the two girls—tall and foreign in appearance, with large dark eyes
and thick dark hair parted in the middle over a low brow—left her task
now and then. She would then walk twenty yards or more toward a figure
lying quietly in the sunshine. In spite of the warmth this figure was
wrapped in a great blanket which allowed only a fair head and thin face
to show forth.
If no attention was vouchsafed her, she would quietly return to her
occupation. But, by and by, without speaking, she came and spread a small
cloth on a flat surface of rock. Then she unpacked an Indian basket
stored with things for making tea. Immediately afterwards, putting her
fingers to her lips, she summoned the other girls to join her.
In response Alice Ashton rose up at once and carefully stored away her
precious bits of stone and her hammer and chisel into the bag she carried
for the purpose. Then she climbed down the jagged but secure steps cut
into the face of the rock so many years ago.
But Peggy Webster, at the summit of the cliff dwelling, refused to
descend in any such sensible fashion.
Instead, she began to slide over the face of the rock, losing and then
regaining her foothold. Below the others watched her half fascinated and
half annoyed.
“Peggy!” one of the girls called warningly.
For Vera Lageloff had seen her safely reach a flat surface about ten feet
from the plateau below. She had walked out to the edge of it and there
stood poised for a moment with her back to the sun. Her pose was as
virile and graceful as that of a young boy.
Then, before the watchers exactly realized her purpose, she had crouched
and sprung from the ledge. For the instant she was in the air she was a
figure of bronze and crimson. The moment had struck the earth, she was
merely Peggy Webster, in a khaki Camp Fire costume with a red band about
her black hair and a little out of breath from her plunge.
“There I have been wondering if I could accomplish that feat ever since I
arrived in this stone age country,” she announced penitently, appearing
more ashamed of her performance than proud.
“Well, as long as you are gratified and still alive, Peggy, I only
request that you never make the same attempt again,” Betty Graham
returned, her color returning swiftly, now that her momentary nervousness
had passed. For she had come away from her task of guarding the fire just
in time to behold the other girl’s act.
“Really, since we came West, Peggy dear, I am becoming more and more
convinced that the Fates never intended you for a feminine person,” she
went on. “There is never any guessing what reckless thing you may do
next. I am afraid an accident may happen to you.”
While she was speaking, Bettina Graham had taken her seat on the ground
and had begun pouring the hot water into a tea-kettle of generous size.
Peggy now dropped down beside her.
“Don’t say I am masculine, please, Bettina; I do so hate a masculine
woman. Your last remark was only a more polite way of expressing the same
unpleasant idea. Why don’t you say instead that I am ‘Seraphita?’ She is
Balzac’s charming character—half girl, half boy, neither and both. When I
am in favor with Tante she has a way of declaring me another Seraphita.”
“Besides your sudden plunge might have frightened Billy,” Vera Lageloff
interrupted, not realizing how her speech betrayed the interest usually
uppermost in her mind.
The figure, still wrapped in the blanket, was at present sitting up,
looking from one girl to the other in a quietly disinterested fashion.
“Oh, no, I am never worried over Peggy when she is attempting athletic
feats,” he announced. “She will never do herself serious harm in that
way. What I fear for her, what I know will hurt her some day, are the
experiences about which she is so scornful at present. You see she is
perfectly convinced that she will never care for any human being outside
her family and a few friends. So nothing and no one can ever harm her.”
Billy Webster accepted the cup of tea and a comfortable number of
sandwiches which Vera now offered him.
“Don’t be absurd, Billy,” Peggy challenged, her face reddening in spite
of her effects to appear undisturbed. “As far as you are concerned you
will look ever so much better as soon as you cease behaving like an
invalid. I do believe you are in better health than you wish us to think
you are.”
“Perhaps I am; really I don’t exactly know,” Billy returned
dispassionately, as if he were speaking of some one else. He was holding
his cup and gazing over its rim. “I do enjoy having so little asked of
me. It has never happened before, as I have always been expected to do
the things I dislike. Now, I would far rather be half ill than to have to
shoot and fish and do the kind of things Dan and the other fellows out
here like to do. Besides, I really tried to make myself ill, so that
father would have to consent to my coming West.”
Billy made this announcement without embarrassment, but not as if he
cared whether or not it were believed.
It was his sister, Peggy, who flushed uncomfortably as she always did
over her brother’s oddities. To her truthful mind and straightforward
nature his peculiarities were impossible to understand.
But Billy did not look as if his words had been altogether true. In spite
of his sister’s speech, he was far more fragile than he had been when she
had said farewell to him at their farm in New Hampshire a few months
before. She had then started west to join her aunt, Mrs. Burton, and
become a member of the Sunrise Hill Camp Fire club in Arizona.
At this instant and without being observed, Vera shook her head at Peggy.
If no one else understood Billy Webster’s vagaries, the Russian girl with
whom he had so deep a friendship apparently did, or if not she usually
had an excuse for him.
But Peggy suddenly remembered that her brother was not supposed to know
how ill he had been.
Then, almost at the same time, an interruption followed in the form of an
extraordinary sound, or combination of sounds. First there was the
long-drawn-out wail of annoyance and protest made by a small western
burro; then an intermingling of faint shrieks of fear with gay laughter.
Peggy and Bettina both ran forward to the narrow opening between the two
cliff walls. Then they beheld an extremely pretty, rather plump woman,
with rose-colored cheeks and grey in her brown hair, riding astride a
burro. The burro was being lead by another woman of the same age,
extraordinarily like and yet unlike the other one. The woman on foot was
more slender and paler, her hair was darker and not grey, and her eyes a
deeper blue.
“Peggy, darling, for goodness sake help me get your mother off this
beast,” she called out as soon as the two girls were inside the defile,
“I have had to drag both the animal and Mollie Webster every inch of the
way. See, Mollie, I told you that our camp was not far from this old
cliff dwelling which the girls and I discovered and adopted the other
day. You might easily have walked here.”
“So I might and would have, Polly O’Neill Burton, had I dreamed that you
were going to make this wretched animal actually trot with me across a
stone wilderness.”
During her protest, with some difficulty, Mrs. Webster was being
persuaded to dismount from her burro by Peggy and Bettina. But she seemed
not to have acquired the art of making the proper beginning, for her too
long and too full skirt kept getting twisted around her.
“Better wear a proper Camp Fire costume, especially adapted for a Camp
Fire guardian at the Grand Canyon of Arizona, Mollie,” Mrs. Burton
suggested, going forward and leaving the girls to find some place to
fasten the burro, when finally her beloved twin sister had made the
descent to earth in safety.
Mrs. Burton’s costume was in fact charming and so simple that one would
not easily have known how expensive it was. She wore tan-colored, high
kid boots, wrinkling above the foot like mousquetaire gloves, a
khaki-colored broadcloth coat and a short skirt with trousers of the same
material beneath. Her hat was of French felt, a little deeper shade of
brown, and trimmed with a soft red scarf.
“Billy, you look like an Indian chief with that blanket wrapped about
you, provided one does not look too carefully on the inside,” she
announced. “Hope the tea isn’t all gone; your mother needs some
refreshment, although I don’t care for any.”
Then walking over to the edge of the cliff Mrs. Burton stood looking
down, with a curious sensation of fascination and fear.
A moment later Mrs. Webster sat down beside her son, giving a suppressed
sigh of relief. Billy seemed so much better, although he had been at the
new Sunrise Camp but little over a week.
A short time before the Sunrise Hill Camp Fire party, who had been for
several months living in a group of tents on the borders of the Painted
Desert, had moved on to the neighborhood of the Grand Canyon. They were
now in camp not far from the famous Angel Trail.
But before they were fairly settled a letter had arrived from Mrs.
Webster saying that she would like to join the Camp Fire party and wished
to bring along her two sons, Dan and Billy Webster.
There was no possibility of declining to welcome the newcomers, for it
was Billy’s serious illness which had made a western trip necessary and
forced his father’s consent to their joining his aunt’s camping party.
However, the campers were extraordinarily well pleased and particularly
Polly Burton. For if her beloved Mollie were with her, surely her
difficulties as Camp Fire guardian were over. She and Mollie were so
unlike they were complements to each other.
“Fact is when we are together, Mollie mine, we have all the virtues and
leave none to be desired,” Polly O’Neill, who was now Mrs. Richard
Burton, had more than once announced to her twin sister.
And Mollie had laughed as she always did, accepting the speech as only
one of her gifted sister’s absurdities. For, in spite of her Polly’s
genius, her opinions never made much impression upon Mrs. Webster.
Nevertheless, perhaps on this point she was not altogether wrong.
Already, since Mrs. Webster’s coming, the group of Camp Fire girls
unconsciously were under the spell of its truth. There were some to whom
Mollie Webster represented the influences which they needed and desired.
She was far more motherly than her sister and loved to fuss and worry
over each girl’s health and appetite. Yet, in her gentler fashion, she
was really more exacting than Mrs. Burton, as such apparently yielding
natures often are.
Already Alice Ashton and Vera Lageloff felt more closely drawn to Mrs.
Webster—Vera, because she was Billy’s mother and had been her friend
before she met Mrs. Burton.
With Alice Ashton the circumstances were different. For one thing, Alice
felt that her Aunt Mollie took her more seriously and had a real respect
for her intellectual interests and abilities. She could not always be
perfectly certain that the other Camp Fire guardian was not sometimes a
little amused by her ambitions.
Vera and Alice were both engaged in serving Mrs. Webster with tea. A
moment later Bettina and Peggy walked over and stood on either side of
Mrs. Burton.
“To what on earth, Tante, did you expect us to hitch that wretched
beast?” Bettina demanded. “Peggy did finally manage to tie him to a cliff
but it required an extraordinary amount of talent.”
Laughing, Mrs. Burton slipped one hand inside Peggy’s and the other in
Bettina’s.
“Sorry, children, but I could not persuade Mollie to come with me in any
other way and I did want her to see this wonderful view. You know how she
hates walking, but perhaps we may get her into better habits while she is
in the West with us. Look down there. The distance is tremendous, isn’t
it? and yet this is only one of the smaller canyons—not the Grand Canyon.
The roaring of the water sounds as far beneath as if it were the River
Styx. But don’t get so close to the edge, Bettina. I thought looking down
great heights made you feel uncomfortable.”
“Some one jumped or fell over this cliff the other day,” Peggy announced.
“Ralph Marshall told me that the man had been a guest at the hotel where
he is staying.”
Mrs. Burton shivered, drawing back in her usual impressionable fashion.
“Don’t tell us any gruesome details, please, Peggy dear. Remember it is
the wonder and beauty of nature we must think of, and not its
terribleness.”
Afterwards the woman and two girls were silent for a little while, each
pursuing her own train of thought and each admiring in her fashion the
marvelous spectacle before them.
It was as if a sunset had been inverted and its colors dropped down
inside the cliffs, using the stones for clouds to hold the lights.
Farther down, the walls of earth grew dark and finally a black stream ran
between them.
A little later Mrs. Webster called to her sister and the two girls to
join her. They then returned at once to the rest of the group and for
half an hour sat there laughing and talking. For their background they
had one of the most ancient dwellings of the human race ever found upon
the earth, and their foreground was a portion of one of the great wonders
of the world.
Nevertheless the Camp Fire party talked chiefly of their own affairs.
After all, human beings are seldom vitally interested for long in
anything save themselves and their own kind.
But, by and by, Mrs. Burton arose.
“Please hurry, everybody, we must get back to camp as soon as possible,”
she suggested. “We forget that now September is here the days are getting
shorter. I for one have not the courage to be lost in this part of the
world. Moreover I have something to tell you when we reach camp which may
surprise you.”