The Camp Fire Girls' Larks and Pranks Part 5

"How are the tickets going?" asked Sahwah.

"We've sold over a hundred," announced the Captain with pride. "We're famous people, we are."

"Speak for yourself," said Sahwah. "It isn't we who are the attraction, though-it's Sandhelo. I rode him through the streets and sold nearly fifty tickets to the children that followed us. They're all attracted by the promise of a free ride after the show."

"It'll probably take all evening to give them the ride, and we'll never get to that jubilation spread we're going to have after the show, but we have to make our word good," said Nyoda.

"Put them on four at once and we'll get done somehow," said Sahwah.

Hinpoha laid down her sewing and stretched her arms above her head. "I never knew circuses were such a pile of work," she sighed.

"'Wohelo means work,'

So dig like a Turk,"

chanted Sahwah.

"I move we all go to the 'movies' tonight and see 'If I Were King,'"

continued Hinpoha.

"Can't," said Nyoda briefly, checking up on her fingers the things she still had to do. "I still have to evolve a tail for the Salmonkey and a frontispiece for the Camelk, make four banners, rehea.r.s.e the living statuary, make a bonnet for the Better Baby, teach the Crabbit how to hop and crawl at the same time and make a costume for the bareback rider."

"I'd come and help you," said Sahwah, "but we're going to have a test in Latin tomorrow and I have to cram tonight. I'll just have time to practice with the band."

"A test in time saves nine," murmured Hinpoha. "What are the Sandwiches doing now?"

"Erecting the flying trapeze," answered Sahwah, looking out of the window. "Captain is hanging by his eyebrow to the top of a pole and Bottomless Pitt is standing below, waiting to catch him when he falls."

The Captain caught her eye, as she leaned over the sill and shouted:

"All right below, O Wohelo, Now _please_ go mix some pancake dough!"

"All right," called Sahwah cheerily. "You'll soon smell something doughing!"

Nyoda and Gladys went home on an errand, and Hinpoha, worn out with her arduous labors with the needle, stretched out on the bearskin bed and fell sound asleep in the warmth of the fire. Sahwah puttered about collecting the ingredients for flapjacks to make a treat for the boys, who had worked like Trojans ever since school was out. The wood in the fireplace had burned down to lovely glowing embers, and she laid the toaster on top of them to act as a rest for the frying-pan. The Captain, tying ropes into the branches of the big tree just outside of the window, looked in and admired the scene. Hinpoha, with her marvellous red curls falling around her face in the light of the fire, looked like a sleeping princess in a fairy tale, and Sahwah, holding her dish of batter in one hand and skilfully putting grease into the pan with the other, was a cheery little housewife indeed. Through the half-open window he could hear her singing "A Warrior Bold."

A moment he looked in, filled with whole-souled admiration for these many-sided girls who were his new friends, and then without warning something happened inside. The panful of sizzling fat suddenly burst into a sheet of flame that left the confines of the fireplace and seemed to leap all around Sahwah. A burning spark shot out and fell into a pile of cheesecloth lying on the floor at the far side of the room, and it blazed up instantly, the flames enveloping the sleeping Hinpoha. It took less than a moment for the Captain to spring down from the tree, run into the barn and up the ladder. But it was too late for him to do anything. In the twinkling of an eye Sahwah had seized the burning cheesecloth and flung it into the fireplace, thrown a bearskin rug over Hinpoha and now stood calmly pouring sand from a bucket on top of the burning fat in the pan. And all the while she was doing it she had never stopped singing!

The Captain stood still in his amazement and listened idly to the words:

"So what care I, though death be nigh?

I'll live for love or die--"

A hoa.r.s.e sound made her turn around and she saw the Captain standing beside her with face pale as ashes. The dreadful sight he had seen from the tree when the room seemed filled with flame was still in his mind.

"How did you manage to keep so cool and do everything so quickly?" he asked in amazement.

Sahwah laughed at his expression of astonishment. "That's not the first fire I've put out," she said calmly. "We always keep both water and sand on hand whenever we have an open fire, to prevent serious accidents.

Having the cheesecloth go up at the same time rather complicated matters, but I got it into the fireplace without any trouble. I don't know what made the fat in the pan take fire; it's never done that before up here.

But don't worry; I'll get your flapjacks made, all right."

The Captain looked at her with more admiration than ever. "Most girls would have been in a faint by that time, and have had to be doused with smelling salts," he told the Sandwiches later, "instead of coolly promising you your flapjacks anyway and apologizing for the delay!"

"Your hands are burned!" he exclaimed in concern, as he saw Sahwah looking ruefully at her blackened fingers. "Let me do something for them."

"Nothing serious," said Sahwah, turning them down so he could not see the blistered palms.

"They are, too!" persisted the Captain. "Have you any oil handy?"

"In the First Aid box over there," said Sahwah. "It's in that bottle labeled A Burned Child Dreads the Fire."

The Captain returned with cotton and gauze and the oil and proceeded to bandage the scorched hands that had been so quick to avert disaster.

"Won't Hinpoha be furious when she wakes up and finds her costume that she worked so hard on all burned up?" she said, as he wound the bandages under her direction. "I hated to throw it into the fire, but it had to be done."

"She'd better not be furious," returned the Captain. "She's got you to thank that she didn't burn up herself. She had a close call that time, and if you hadn't s.n.a.t.c.hed that burning rag off her and covered her with a rug I'd hate to think what would have happened. I tell you it's great to be able to do the right thing at the right time. A lot of people talk about what they would do in an emergency, but very few of them ever do it."

"Well," returned Sahwah coolly, holding up her hands and inspecting the bandages with a critical eye, "there is an emergency before us right now.

Suppose you stop talking and get busy and fry those pancakes for the boys. They're dying of starvation outside."

The Captain started, blushed and looked at her keenly to see if she were making fun of him, and then fell to work without a word finishing Sahwah's interrupted labor.

CHAPTER V THE ARRIVAL OF KATHERINE

Preparations were completed and the day for the presentation of the greatest show on earth had arrived. It was crisply cool, but clear and sunshiny, as the last Sat.u.r.day in beloved October should be; and not too cold to sit still and witness an out-of-doors performance. Tickets had sold with such gratifying readiness that a second edition had been necessary, and the Committee on Seating Arrangements was nearly in despair over providing enough seats.

"It's no use," declared Bottomless Pitt, "we've done the best we could and half of them will still have to stand. It'll be a case of 'first come, first served.'"

Sahwah and Hinpoha, their arms filled with bundles of "props," which they had spent the morning in collecting, sank wearily down at a table in the "Neapolitan" soda dispensary and ordered their favorite sundaes. "Now, are you perfectly sure we have everything?" asked Hinpoha, between spoonfuls.

"There's the Better Baby's rattle," recounted Sahwah, identifying her parcels by feeling of them, "the Magician's natural hair a foot long, the china eggs he finds in the lady's handbag, the bareback rider's spangles, and-O Hinpoha!" she cried in dismay, dropping her spoon on the tile floor with a great clatter, "we forgot the red, white and blue c.o.c.kade for Sandhelo. I'll have to go back to Nelson's and get it. Dear me, it's eleven o'clock now and we still have to go out home and dress. And the marshmallows have to be bought yet; that's another thing I promised Nyoda I'd see about. Won't you please get them, Hinpoha, while I run up to Nelson's? There's a dear. Get them at Raymond's-theirs are the freshest; and then you had better go right on home without waiting for me. It will take me a little longer, but I'll hurry as fast as I can. And please tell Nyoda that I didn't forget the marshmallows this time; I just turned the responsibility over to you." And Sahwah gathered up her bundles and retraced her steps toward the big up-town store, while Hinpoha took her way to Raymond's. Five pounds of marshmallows make a pretty big box, and Hinpoha had several other parcels to carry. She had them all laid out on the counter with an eye to tying some of them together to facilitate transportation when a voice suddenly called out: "Dorothy! Dorothy Bradford!" She turned and saw Miss Parker, one of the teachers at Washington High, at the other end of the counter. "Come and meet my cousin," said Miss Parker, and brought forward a young girl she had with her. "This is Katherine Adams," said Miss Parker. "Katherine, I would like you to meet one of my pupils, Dorothy Bradford."

Hinpoha acknowledged the introduction cordially, but it was all she could do to suppress a smile at Katherine's appearance. She was an extremely tall, lanky girl, narrow chested and stoop shouldered, with scanty straw-colored hair drawn into a tight knot at the back of her neck, and pale, near-sighted eyes peering through gla.s.ses. She wore a long drab-colored coat, cut as severely plain as a man's, and a narrow-brimmed felt sailor hat. She wore no gloves and her hands were large and bony.

Her shoes-Hinpoha looked twice in her astonishment to make sure-yes, there was no mistake, the shoes she had on were not mates! One was a cloth-top b.u.t.ton and the other a heavy laced walking boot. Miss Parker followed Hinpoha's surprised glance and looked distressed. But Katherine was not at all disconcerted when she discovered the discrepancy in her footgear.

"That's what you get for interrupting me in the middle of my dressing,"

she said coolly. "Now, I've forgotten which pair I intended to wear." She had an odd, husky voice, that made everything she said sound funny.

Miss Parker seemed rather anxious that her cousin should make a good impression on Hinpoha. Katherine was from Spencer, Arkansas, she explained, and had gone as far in school as she could out there and had now come east to stay with her cousin and take the last year in high school. Hinpoha promised to introduce her around to the girls in the cla.s.s, with her eyes on the clock all the while and her mind on the performance she should be helping to prepare that minute instead of standing there talking.

"Won't you come to our circus this afternoon?" she said politely, fishing among the small "props" in her handbag. "Here's a ticket. It's going to be in the big field at the corner of May and --th streets. Come into the barn if you come and I'll introduce you to some of my friends."

Miss Parker and her caricature of a cousin finally departed, and Hinpoha hastily gathered up her bundles. Something about the package of marshmallows struck her as unfamiliar, and she examined it in consternation. It certainly was not her package, though like it in shape.

Somebody had taken hers by mistake. She looked around the store and was just in time to see her box being carried out the front door under the arm of a woman. Hinpoha gathered her packages into her arms. .h.i.t and miss and rushed after her. But impeded as she was she got stuck in the revolving door and was delayed a full minute before she escaped to the sidewalk. She was just in time to see the object of her pursuit board a car at the corner. Before Hinpoha could reach the corner the car had started. Hinpoha stamped her foot with vexation, mostly directed toward Miss Parker and her freak cousin for taking her attention away from her belongings. Then she considered. The car the woman had boarded must make a loop and come out a block below and it would be possible to catch it there. Hinpoha puffed along the sidewalk at a great rate, worming her way through the Sat.u.r.day noon crowds and colliding with people right and left. She reached the corner just as the car did and made a mad dash over the pavement, dodging in among wagons and automobiles at dire peril of life and limb. She scrambled aboard and landed sprawling on the back platform, while her bundles scattered over the floor in every direction.

Breathless and embarra.s.sed, she gathered them up and entered the car just in time to see the lady carrying her box of marshmallows get out of the front door. Hinpoha made a wild dash for the rear exit, but the door was closed and the car already in motion. She rang the bell frantically, at the same time following the woman with her eyes to see in which direction she went. The car finally released her two blocks up street, and then began the mad chase back again. Poor Hinpoha was never built for speed; her breath gave out and she developed an agonizing pain in her side. Her bundles weighed her down and her hat flopped into her eyes. Chugging along thus she ran smartly into someone and again her packages covered the sidewalk.