The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit Part 10

"'This is the forest primeval,'" quoted Sahwah, "'The murmuring pines and the hemlocks--'"

"Only they aren't murmuring pines and hemlocks," she finished. "They're mostly oaks and beeches."

"It isn't the primeval forest, either," said Veronica. "There's a tent over there between the trees."

"Gracious!" exclaimed Sahwah, "and here am I, coming along with my shoes and stockings in my hand!" She sat down hastily and put on her foot-gear.

The tent stood quite close to the brook path and when they were nearly up to it they heard, coming from around the other side of it, a sound of vigorous splashing, punctuated by protesting squawks. Involuntarily the two girls stood still and listened. Above the squawking rose a voice.

"'Curse on him,' quote false s.e.xtus, 'will not the villain drown?'" it declaimed dramatically.

Then in a moment the splashes and squawks increased to an uproar, and then around the corner of the tent there came a chicken in full flight, its leathers dripping with water, in spite of which it made amazingly fast time. After the chicken came a balloon-like figure in a sky-blue bathrobe, uttering breathless grunts which were evidently intended to be peremptory commands to the chicken to halt its flight. At the sight of the two girls standing in the path the bath-robed pursuer fell back in astonishment.

"'What n.o.ble Luc.u.mo comes next to taste our Roman cheer?'" he exclaimed with a dramatic wave of the hand.

Then he stood transfixed, the gesture frozen in mid-air. "Sahwah!" he gasped. "Veronica! where in the world----"

The girls started forward with unbelieving eyes. "Slim!" cried Sahwah.

"What are you doing here?"

"Tenting on the Old Camp Ground," replied Slim, holding his voluminous bathrobe primly around him with one hand to cover the bathing suit which he wore under it, and shaking hands vigorously with the other.

Then, making a trumpet of his hands, he called loudly, "Captain, oh, Captain, come here quick!"

There was an upheaval inside the tent and the sound of something falling, and in a moment a second youth appeared around the corner of the tent, clad in khaki trousers and a blue and white blazer.

"What's the matter?" he asked in alarm. Then he saw the girls and threw up his hands in amazement. "For the love of Mike!" he exclaimed elegantly.

"Captain!" cried Sahwah.

Rapturous greetings followed.

"Of all things," said Sahwah, "to run across you two in the woods like this! What on earth are you doing here? We thought you were doing some summer work at your college."

"We are," replied the Captain, looking from one to the other of the girls with a face beaming with delight at the unexpected meeting. "We're making a survey of different parts of the state--it's part of our course--and incidentally we're compiling certain statistics for the government."

"Oh!" said the two girls respectfully.

"But what, if I might make so bold as to ask," said the Captain, "are _you_ two doing here in the wet, wild woods, all by your wild lone?"

Sahwah explained and extended a cordial invitation for the two boys to come to Carver House whenever they had time.

"Is Hinpoha there?" asked Slim and the Captain simultaneously.

"She certainly is," replied Sahwah.

Slim squinted critically down his nose at his tub-like form. "Do you think I've gotten any thinner?" he asked anxiously.

Sahwah scrutinized, him closely for signs of reduction and decided he _might_ possibly be half a pound thinner than when she saw him last.

Slim sighed and looked pensive and Sahwah had hard work to keep her face straight.

"But what on earth was all that racket as we came up?" she asked, unable to restrain her curiosity on that point any longer. "What were you chasing the chicken for?"

Slim's eye roved regretfully back toward the trees among which the chicken had vanished, and the Captain answered for him.

"You see," he exclaimed, "today is Slim's birthday and we were going to celebrate by having a chicken dinner. So Slim went out to buy a chicken and came back with a live one. Then he didn't have the heart to chop its head off, and was trying to drown it in a barrel of water when you came up. By the way, Slim, where is it now?"

Slim pointed to the bushes with an expression of chagrin on his fat face. "It's gone," he said with a sigh of regret. "A dollar and eighty-seven cents' worth of chicken stew running loose on the landscape."

"But it wasn't the nerve I lacked to chop its head off," he added, looking reproachfully at the Captain. "It was the hatchet. You see," he explained, "we didn't exactly come prepared to catch our meals on the hoof, so to speak, and all I had to chop his head off with was the can-opener on my pocket knife, and that wouldn't work, so I _had_ to drown him."

"Oh, you funny boys!" said Sahwah, laughing uncontrollably.

"I think you might have helped me hold him down," said Slim to the Captain in an injured tone.

"I couldn't," replied the Captain gravely. "The b.u.t.ter got overcome with the heat and I was reviving it with a fan."

"Oh, you babes in the woods, you!" said Sahwah, with another burst of laughter. "You must be having the time of your lives."

"We are," replied the Captain. "Won't you stay to dinner? There isn't anything to eat but a can of tomato soup, but you're welcome to that."

"Oh, we hadn't better," replied Sahwah, "they will be wondering at home what has become of us, and besides, it would make too much trouble for you."

"Too much trouble!" snorted the Captain. "That's just like a girl. As if a girl ever cared how much trouble she made for a fellow! Come on and stay, we want you. We're lonesome."

Thus pressed, the girls accepted the invitation, and pretty soon they were all sitting in a circle under the trees with cups and spoons in their hands, and the Captain was singing at the top of his voice:

"Glorious, glorious, One can of soup for the four of us, Praises be, there are no more of us, For the four of us can drink it all alone!"

Lunch over, they exchanged gossip under the trees for a merry half hour, then the girls took their departure and sped homeward to carry the news to Carver House.

CHAPTER X

THE OPENING CAREER OF MANY EYES

"Good morning, Winnebago friends, With your faces as bright as mine, Good morning, Winnebago friends, You're surely looking fine, Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, If the pancakes don't get you the syrup must Good morning, Winnebago friends, With your faces as bright as, Your faces as bright as, Your faces as bright as mine!"

The Winnebagos, happy and hungry, gathered around the breakfast table in answer to the summons which Hinpoha had just sent echoing through the house. With the advent of the Winnebagos at Carver House, Nyoda's melodiously chiming j.a.panese dinner gong had been discarded in favor of a hoa.r.s.e-throated fish horn, which bore some similarity to the sound of a bugle and was therefore to be preferred because it had more of a military flavor.

"Where's Sahwah?" asked Nyoda, noticing that her place was vacant

n.o.body knew.

Hinpoha blew a second blast of the horn up the stairway, making a noise that would have waked the Seven Sleepers with ease, but there was no answer.