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WYN'S CAMPING DAYS
BOOKS FOR GIRLS
By AMY BELL MARLOWE
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 75 cents, postpaid
THE OLDEST OF FOUR
Or Natalie's Way Out
THE GIRLS OF HILLCREST FARM
Or the Secret of the Rocks
A LITTLE MISS NOBOBY
Or With the Girls of Pinewood Hall
THE GIRL FROM SUNSET RANCH
Or Alone in a Great City
WYN'S CAMPING DAYS
Or The Outing of Go-Ahead Club
FRANCES OF THE RANGES
Or The Old Ranchman's Treasure
THE GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL
Or Beth Baldwin's Resolve
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS--NEW YORK
[Illustration: IT DID SEEM, BECAUSE THEY WERE IN A HURRY, THAT
EVERYTHING WENT WRONG. _Frontispiece (Page 80)._]
WYN'S CAMPING DAYS
OR
THE OUTING OF THE GO-AHEAD CLUB
BY
AMY BELL MARLOWE
AUTHOR OF
THE OLDEST OF FOUR, THE GIRL FROM SUNSET RANCH,
A LITTLE MISS NOBODY, ETC.
Illustrated
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1914, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Wyn's Camping Days
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. THE GO-AHEAD CLUB 1
II. THE BUSTERS 12
III. POLLY 20
IV. THE SILVER IMAGES 34
V. BESSIE LAVINE 49
VI. OFF FOR THE LAKE 55
VII. THE STORM BREAKS 71
VIII. AT WINDMILL FARM 83
IX. JOHN JARLEY, EXILE 94
X. THE "HAPPY DAY" 104
XI. WHERE THE ACCIDENT HAPPENED 120
XII. AN OVERTURN 129
XIII. A SERIOUS ADVENTURE 144
XIV. THE REPULSE 150
XV. TROUBLE "BRUIN" 161
XVI. TIT FOR TAT 171
XVII. VISITORS 188
XVIII. THE REGATTA 198
XIX. UNDER WHITE WINGS 207
XX. THE CANOE RACE 213
XXI. THE WAY OF THE WIND 224
XXII. THE PRISONERS OF THE TOWER 232
XXIII. WYN HITS SOMETHING 240
XXIV. THE NIGHT ALARM 248
XXV. THE STRANGE BATEAU 258
XXVI. THE BOYS TO THE RESCUE 267
XXVII. IS IT THE "BRIGHT EYES"? 278
XXVIII. A FRIEND IN NEED 288
XXIX. THE SUNKEN TREASURE 296
XXX. STRIKING CAMP 306
WYN'S CAMPING DAYS
CHAPTER I
THE GO-AHEAD CLUB
"Oh, girls! such news!" cried Wynifred Mallory, banging open the door of
Canoe Lodge, and bringing into the living room a big breath of the cool
May air, which drew out of the open fireplace a sudden balloon of smoke,
setting the other members of the Go-Ahead Club there assembled coughing.
Grace Hedges, who was acting as fireman that week, turned an exasperated
face, with a bar of smut across it, exclaiming:
"If another soul comes in that door and creates a back-draught until
this fire gets to burning properly, I certainly shall have hysterics! I
never did see such a mean old thing to burn."
"Never mind, Gracie. We're all here now--all six of us. There are no
more Go-Aheads to come," observed Bessie Lavine, yawning over her book
in the only sunny corner of the room.
"There! it's burning--finally," exclaimed Grace, with blended disgust
and thankfulness. "I never was cut out for a fireman, girls."
"Poor Gracie," purred Wyn, who had approached the blaze that was now
beginning to curl through the hickory sticks piled more or less
scientifically against the backlog. "Don't you know it needed just that
back-draught to break the deadlock in the chimney and start your fire
crackling this way?"
"Bah! it was just hateful," grumbled Grace. "I hate fire making. And it
does seem as though my week for playing fireman comes around twice as
often as it should." Wyn had moved rather too near to the darting
flames, and Grace suddenly pulled the captain of the club aside.
"_Don't_ stand so near, Silly!" she cried.
"Fireman! save my che-ild!" wailed "Frank" Cameron, coming forward and
winding her long arms around Wynifred. "What's the news, Wyn, dear?
Nobody had the politeness to ask you. Wherefore all the excitement?"
"There must be a strike at the blacksmith shop," said Percy Havel, a
curly-headed blonde girl.
"No!" cried Frank, with a droll twist of her rather homely features.
"I'll wager they've laid off one of the hands of the town clock.
Business is dreadfully dull. I heard my father say so."
She was a tall, lanky girl, was Frances Cameron, with a great mass of
blue-black hair and flashing black eyes. She was thin, strong, and
lacking in those soft curves of budding womanhood which girls of her age
usually display. "Straight up and down, my dears," she often said.
"Built upon the most approved clothespin plan, with every bone
perfectly--not to say generously--developed."
"Well," said Wyn, laughing, "if you girls will give me a chance I will
divulge my news."
"Be still!" commanded Frank. "The oracle speaks."
"Oh, hurry up, Wyn!" exclaimed Percy, coming nearer the group before the
now roaring fire. "I've been dying to tell them."
"Well, girls," said Wyn, smiling, so that her brown eyes fairly danced.
"Mrs. Havel--Percy's aunt--says she will go."
"Fine!" exclaimed Frankie.
"You don't mean it, Wyn?" gasped Mina Everett. "Then we really
_can_ go camping?"
"And to Lake Honotonka?" put in Bessie.
"That's what we aimed to do; wasn't it?" demanded Wyn, laughing. "And
when the Go-Ahead Club starts to do a thing, it usually arrives; doesn't
it?"
"At least, the captain arrives for them," said Frank, giving Wyn's arm a
little squeeze. "We wouldn't get far in our 'go-ahead' plans if it
wasn't for you, Wynnie."
"Such flattery!" protested the captain.
"You didn't have an easy time convincing my mother--I know that," said
Mina, shaking _her_ head. "You know, she's so afraid of water."
"And my mother is afraid of high winds," confessed Bessie. "Wyn had to
coax to bring her around."
"And of course, Gracie's mother is afraid of fire," chuckled Frank; "and
there you have the three elements. You can plainly see that Gracie knows
very little about fire. She never built one in her life until we formed
our camping club."
"Oh, well," observed Grace, trying to rub the smut off her face with a
handkerchief and the aid of a pocket-mirror, "this is about the end of
the fire season, thank goodness! If we go into camp after school closes,
on Lake Honotonka, there won't be any fires to build."
"Oh, _won't_ there?" cried Bessie. "You just wait. Instead of
taking turns at being fireman for the week, as we do through the winter,
we'll draw lots to see who shall build _all_ the fires. And you
know very well, Gracie, that you always _are_ unlucky."
"Sure she is," agreed Frank. "She always draws the very boobiest of all
booby prizes out of the grab-bag."
"Oh, dear me!" wailed Grace, who was big, and handsome, and not a little
lazy, "I do so hate to work, too. If there had been another set of girls
I liked at Denton Academy, I'd never have joined the Go-Ahead Club."
"Right. Gracie is better fitted for a Fall-Behind Club," observed Wyn.
"But tell us, Wynnie," begged Mina. "Is it really all arranged? Has
everybody agreed that we can go in our canoes to Lake Honotonka?"
"And stay all vacation if we like?" cried Percy.
"That is the understanding," Wyn assured them. "Percy's aunt is the very
kindest lady who ever was----"
"Vote we buy her something nice," interposed Frank.
"That will come in due season," Wyn continued. "But Mrs. Havel went with
me to all our people. She knows all about the place, of course----"
"So does my father," interposed Bessie.
"And he wasn't hard to convince," Wyn responded. "Of course, there are
wild nooks along Honotonka's shores; but at the upper end is Braisely
Park, where all those rich folks live; and there's the village of
Meade's Forge at this end of the lake. We can get supplies, or a doctor,
or send a telephone message, easily enough. And what more does one
want--camping out?"
"We'll have just a lovely time!" sighed Bessie. "I can hardly wait for
school to close."
"A month and a half yet," said Frank Cameron. "And every day will seem
longer than the one that preceded it. But then! when it does come----"
"Just think of living under canvas--and for weeks and weeks! It almost
makes me feel spooky," declared Grace, beginning to grow enthusiastic.
These girls, all attending Denton Academy and living within the limits
of that town, being the daughters of fairly well-to-do parents, had been
able to enjoy many advantages as well as pleasures that poorer girls
could not have; but none of them had chanced to experience the joys of a
vacation in the woods.
During the preceding autumn they had become immensely interested in
canoeing. Denton was situated upon the beautiful, winding Wintinooski,
and the six members of the Go-Ahead Club had taken several Saturday
cruises on the river. But never had they gone as far up the stream as
Lake Honotonka.
That was a wide and beautiful sheet of water, thirty-five miles to the
west of the town of Denton. Their boy friends had sometimes been allowed
to go camping upon the shores of the lake; and their enthusiastic praise
of the fun to be had under canvas had set Wynifred Mallory and her chums
"just wild," as Frank Cameron expressed it, to try it too.
Wyn was a girl of determination and physical as well as moral courage.
If she made up her mind that a thing was right, and she wanted it, she
usually got it.
When the girls first broached their desire to spend the summer at the
big lake, and actually live under canvas, not one of their parents
encouraged the idea. Because the "Busters," a certain boys' club of the
girls' friends, were going to the lake again for the long vacation, made
no difference to the mothers and fathers--especially the mothers of Wyn
and her chums of the Go-Ahead Club.
"It's no use," Bessie Lavine had reported, at their first meeting after
the idea was born in Canoe Lodge, as the girls called their novel
boathouse overhanging the bank of a quiet pool of the Wintinooski. "Even
father won't hear of it. Six girls going alone into the wilds----"
"But the Busters and Professor Skillings will be near our camp," Frank
had cried. "That's what I told mother. But she couldn't see it."
Wyn had listened at that meeting to the opinions of all the other
girls--and to their hopeless and disappointed complaints as well--and
then she had taken the whole burden on her own shoulders.
"Don't you say another word at home about it, girls--any of you," she
said. "Leave it to me. Our idea of living for the summer in the open is
a good one. We'll come back to school in the fall with ginger and health
enough to keep us going like dynamos during the next school year."
"But you can't make my mother see that," wailed Percy. "She only sees
the snakes, and mosquitoes, and tramps, and big winds, and drowning, and
I don't know but she visualizes earthquake shocks and volcanoes!"
"Give me a chance," said Wyn.
"Voted!" Frankie declared. "When Wyn sets out to do a thing we might as
well give her her head. She's like Davy Crockett; and I hope all our
folks will come down without being shot, like the historic 'coon."
And this present declaration of their captain, which had so aroused the
Go-Ahead Club, was the result of Wyn Mallory's exertions.
She had first obtained the interest and cooperation of Percy's Aunt
Evelyn, who was a widowed lady fond of outdoor life herself. Mrs. Havel
was to act as chaperone. With this addition to their forces, the girls
stood a much better chance to win over their parents to their plan.
And finally Wyn had gained the permission of the most obdurate parent.
The cruise of the Go-Ahead Club in their canoes to Lake Honotonka, and
their camping for the summer at some available spot along the lake
shore, was decided upon.
"And are the Busters going?" asked Frank. "That's the next important
matter."
"Oh, we can get along without those boys, I guess," scoffed Bessie.
"Yes, I know. We don't need 'em. And they are a great nuisance
sometimes," admitted Frank, laughing. "But just the same, we'll have
lots more fun with them around--especially Dave Shepard--eh, Wynnie?"
"I don't see that you need _me_ to witness the truth of your
statement, Frank," returned Wyn, flushing very prettily, for the girls
sometimes teased her about Dave, who was her next-door neighbor. "Of
course we want the boys, even if Bess is a man-hater."
"I guess they'll go," Frank said. "They liked it so much last year. And
the professor is interested in the geological specimens to be found up
that way."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Mina. "Is Professor Skillings going with them
again? He is so odd."
"He's very absent-minded," said Bessie.
Frank began to laugh again. "Say!" she began, "did you hear about what
happened to him last week? Father met him coming down Lane Street--you
know, it's narrow and the sidewalk in places is scarcely wide enough for
two people to pass comfortably.
"There was poor Professor Skillings hobbling along with one foot
continually in the gutter, his eyes fixed on a book he was reading as he
walked. Father said to him:
"'Good morning, Professor! How are you feeling to-day?'
"'Why--why--why!' exclaimed the professor--you know his funny way of
speaking. 'Why--why--why--I was very well when I started out, I thought.
But I don't know what's come over me. Do you know, I've developed a
pronounced limp since leaving the house!'"
"Well, the boys like him," Wyn said, when the girls' laughter had
subsided.
"I thought I saw Dave Shepard and that 'Tubby' Blaisdell around here
when I hurried down from school to light the fire," remarked Grace.
At that moment a strange, scraping sound was heard right above the
girls' heads. Bess and Mina jumped up.
"What's that?" cried Grace.
"It's something on the roof," declared Wyn.
Now, Canoe Lodge was built on a high bank over the river. One stepped
from the level sward into the living room. The roof on one side was a
short, sharp pitch; but over the river it ran out in a long, easy slope
to shelter the canoe landing.
Suddenly there was a crash, and the very house shook. There was a wheezy
shout of alarm, the sound of another voice in wild laughter, and some
heavy body slid down the long side of the roof with the noise of an
avalanche.
"The Busters!" shrieked Percy, and ran to a window overlooking the
river.