Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party Part 25

As they were returning, crowned with success, they met the Senora just back from a stroll with Mrs. Judson. The three other girls were already sitting suggestively about the board.

"There," said Blue Bonnet triumphantly, as she deposited the fruit-jar in the centre of the table with its graceful ferns and honeysuckle trailing over the oil-cloth, "feast on that!"

"I call that a pretty slim dinner," said Kitty.

Blue Bonnet, disdaining the insinuation, departed rather hastily to the kitchen, drawn thither by a strong odor and a still stronger suspicion of disaster. The sheet-iron stove was red-hot. Catching up a cloth she flung open the oven door, and then backed abruptly away from the cloud of acrid yellow smoke that rolled thickly into her face.

"Oh, Blue Bonnet!" wailed Amanda. "Everything's burned to a cinder! We shouldn't have gone off."

Blue Bonnet's only reply was a violent fit of coughing. The smoke continued to pour in dense billows from the oven. "Grab the pans, quick!" she managed to choke out.

Amanda made a valiant dive through the smoke, and had just time to seize the pans from the top and bottom of the oven, when she, too, was overcome, and in the paroxysm of coughing that followed threatened to burst a blood-vessel. Finally with crimson faces and streaming eyes, both cooks gazed ruefully down on the black marbles that had been potatoes, and the charred drum-stick that had once been a leg of spring lamb.

"Keep back--no trespa.s.sing!" called Blue Bonnet as the other girls, scenting fun as well as the odor of burning things, came running from the dining-room. "This is our funeral and we don't want any mourners!"

She waved them back peremptorily, at the same time screening the ruins with her ap.r.o.n.

The discomfited We are Sevens returned to their seats, and a moment later there came the sound of spoons being vigorously thumped on the table.

"We want dinner!" came imperiously from the hungry girls.

Amanda looked imploringly at her partner. "What shall we do?"

Blue Bonnet thought hard for a moment. All at once her brow cleared.

"Here, take the meat, go find a gopher-hole and push that bone down into it as far as it will go. The potatoes can't be burned all the way through,--we'll sc.r.a.pe what's left into a bowl. And I'll tell Uncle Joe I've changed my mind,--we'll have the trout for dinner. And, Amanda, you'll hurry back, won't you, and put the fish in the pan--I simply can't touch 'em!"

Each sped to fulfil her allotted task, and in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time a family of gophers was sniffing about a strange object blocking their front door; and a pan of fragrant trout sputtered on top of the little stove. As Blue Bonnet set the great platter of perfectly browned fish in front of her grandmother, there was a flattering "ah!" of antic.i.p.ation that repaid--almost repaid, her for the previous bad quarter of an hour. Canned pears and the cookies that should have been saved for future emergencies, completed a dinner which was voted "not half bad" by the other girls, who secretly marvelled at getting any dinner at all. No one noticed that neither Blue Bonnet nor Amanda partook of potatoes, and there proved to be ample for the rest.

"I'll wash the dishes, Amanda," Blue Bonnet offered, when at last that night-mare of a dinner was over. "I ought to walk over red-hot plowshares, or wear a hair-shirt or something as a penance for my sins of this day. Lacking both plowshares and shirt, I'll subst.i.tute dish-washing. And you may bear me witness--I'd take the hair-shirt if I had my choice!"

It was a very weary Blue Bonnet who turned the dishpan upside down and hung the dish-cloth on a bush to dry. The long tramp of the morning, the preparations for the bonfire party, and then the exhausting experience of getting dinner, had tired even her physique, which had seldom known fatigue.

"I wish we could dis-invite the company," she said to Amanda.

"So do I," groaned her partner. "Fancy having to sit around a bonfire and sing 'merrily we roll along'--! It makes me ache all over."

Later, when the inmates of both camps were gathered in a great circle about the fire, singing, jesting and story-telling, both girls forgot their weariness and might have been heard singing the same "merrily we roll along" with great zest and vocal strength.

The bonfire did its builders proud and without any preparatory sulking or coaxing burst almost at once into pillars of soaring flame. There was a backing away at first on the part of the spectators as the intense heat began to scorch the circle of faces; then a gradual drawing near again. It was not until the flames had died down and the logs were a ma.s.s of glowing coals that Blue Bonnet handed around her willow-wands. Each one was now tipped with a white ball, puffy, round and mysterious.

To most of the boys this was an innovation, and they had to be shown how to hold the white globules over the coals until they spluttered and swelled to bursting.

"Now eat them!" she commanded. There was a chary tasting and then an ecstatic cry--"Marshmallows!"

The rapidity with which the tin boxes were emptied might have appalled a less generous provider than Blue Bonnet; but she had relied upon Uncle Cliff to fill her order for marshmallows, and consequently felt no fear of "going short."

When little Bayard had consumed his ninth "moth-ball" as he persisted in calling the sweets, his mother rose to take her brood home. Mr.

Judson bent to lift Joe who had fallen asleep in Sarah's arms, and then turned to Blue Bonnet. "Good-night," he said, holding out his free hand and smiling down into the girl's tired face; "this is the first time I ever partook of toasted moonshine, and I've enjoyed my initiation."

Carita kissed her impulsively. "It's the loveliest party I've ever been to," she whispered.

Blue Bonnet looked wistfully after the departing group. "Aren't families the nicest things in all the world?" she asked Sarah, as she sank on the blanket beside this member of a numerous clan.

"The very nicest." And Sarah, whose arms still felt the warmth of little Joe, stared into the fire with eyes that saw in the coals the picture of a family in far-off Woodford.

There were a few more songs; an eighth or ninth rendition of

"Meet me, dearest Mandy, By the water-melion vine"--

for the benefit of Amanda, who hated it, and then the rest rose reluctantly to depart.

"It's the swellest thing in the bonfire line I've ever attended,"

Sandy a.s.sured Mrs. Clyde; and she could excuse the phrase because of the undoubted enthusiasm of the speaker.

Half a dozen of the boys tramped away in a bunch, and there floated back to the group about the fire the rhythmic refrain of "Good-night, ladies!" until it finally died away in a sleepy murmur.

Only the older boys had lingered and they, after making arrangements for a horse-back ride on the morrow, slowly straggled away.

"Where's Blue Bonnet?" asked Alec; he was one of the last, loitering for a final word with his hostess.

"She was sitting by me a little while ago," said Sarah, looking towards the Navajo.

The spot was in shadow, but as they looked in that direction, a log fell, and a slender flame sprang up. In the light they saw Blue Bonnet, curled up on the bright blanket, with her head pillowed on her arm.

She was fast asleep.

CHAPTER XIV

A FALLING IN

"HOW'S the Sleeping Beauty this morning?" was Alec's salutation to Blue Bonnet, when he appeared early next day in advance of the other picnickers. Blue Bonnet asleep at her own party had been a spectacle he would not soon forget; it was almost as funny as being absent from her first tea, on that memorable day in Woodford.

"The Sleeping Beauty could find it in her heart to envy Rip Van Winkle; a nap like his is just what I crave. But no,--Sarah must needs have breakfast at c.o.c.k-crow," Blue Bonnet complained.

"Why, Blue Bonnet, it was after eight o'clock when I called you,"

returned Sarah in a grieved tone.

"Sarah didn't want breakfast mistaken for lunch again," said Amanda.

"My prophetic soul tells me that we are going to conduct ourselves like a model Sunday-school cla.s.s to-day," Blue Bonnet remarked.

"What makes you think so?" asked Amanda, in whom the memory of yesterday's trials was still undimmed.

"'Well begun is half done,' you know. And this beginning is obnoxiously perfect." Blue Bonnet was wiping off the oil-cloth as she spoke; dishes were already washed, beds done, and all without a hitch.