The Camp Fire Girls' Larks and Pranks Part 6

"Oh, excuse me!" she gasped, struggling to get her hat back on her head.

"I couldn't see where I was going. _Why, Captain_--" For it was none other than he with whom she had collided.

"Pretty well loaded down, aren't you?" said the Captain, stooping to pick up the litter on the sidewalk.

"Never mind them," said Hinpoha hastily, "go after _her_."

"Go after _her_?" repeated the Captain in a tone of bewilderment.

Hinpoha pointed speechlessly up the street and then with a mighty effort regained a speck of her breath and panted "Lady-blue coat-plush collar-our marshmallows-left this-Raymond's-go get them," and, shoving the stranger's package into his hands, she indicated with waving arms that he was to pursue the lady in question and regain the club's property. The Captain started off obediently, though her explanation was not yet clear in his mind, but the truth flashed over him when he presently overtook a lady that fitted the description just turning into the door of Raymond's store with a large package under her arm, and he soon made his errand known and recovered the marshmallows. She was just in the act of returning them to Raymond's, having discovered her mistake.

Hinpoha was out in front when the Captain emerged from the store, and she surrendered her bundles to him gratefully, saying with a breathless sigh, "Boys _are_ useful to have around once in a while, after all."

"Only once in a while?" asked the Captain.

"Well, maybe twice in a while, then," said Hinpoha graciously.

Hinpoha arrived on the scene of action so late that there was no time to press her for explanations; she was summarily hustled out of her street clothes and into her orchestra costume. The audience was arriving in crowds and the Sandwiches, who were detailed as ticket takers, had much to do to keep legions of small boys from climbing the fence and seeing the show without the formality of buying a ticket.

The Grand Parade, "including every single member of the entire show," was scheduled to start promptly at two. The parade was necessarily held in sections, as all hands were needed for each section. The clock in a neighboring steeple had not finished chiming the hour when there was an unearthly blare of trumpets and crashing of drums, and the band issued from the entrance of the Open Door Lodge. Nyoda led the band and made a stunning drum major in a fur hat a foot high, made out of a m.u.f.f. The members of the band were dressed as Spanish troubadours in costumes of blinding scarlet, with their instruments hung around their neck by ribbons. They marched around the ring at a lively pace, playing the music of a popular football song, which made the audience cheer wildly, for it was largely composed of students from the two great rival schools, Washington High and Carnegie Mechanic. In the wake of the troubadours stumbled an enormously fat clown in a suit half red and half white, blowing up a rubber bladder, which emitted a plaintive squawk. Loud applause greeted every move the clown made and when he accidentally stumbled into a hole and measured his length on the ground the small boys shrieked in ecstasy.

The band made a stately and melodious exit in the House of the Open Door and once inside broke ranks in haste to prepare for the second section of the parade-the procession of the animals. This was a much more complicated matter than the band had been, but it had been so well rehea.r.s.ed that the crowd, who were being amused by the antics of the clown, had not time to grow impatient before they were ready. Shrieks of delight went up at the appearance of the five ferocious animals from Nowhere-The Camelk, The Crabbit, The Alligatortoise, The Kangarooster and The Salmonkey, and they had to go around the ring five times before being allowed to retire. The parade being such an unqualified success, it is needless to say that the circus proper went even better. The actors had all worked themselves up into the right mood for it.

The magician gave more entertainment than he had counted on, for the mice, which he had concealed in his pocket ready to produce from under the folded handkerchief, bit him before their turn in the show came, and the beholders were startled to see the magician suddenly spring into the air, uttering a wild yell and, thrusting his hand into his hip pocket, throw the cause of the disturbance half-way across the ring. The Fattest Man on Earth, who was Slim, with the addition of several pillows fore and aft, mounted the small stage and laboriously sat on a toothpick, breaking down the stage in the process; and the Inja Rubber Man did such amazing contortions that the audience began to hold their breath for fear he would never come untangled again.

When it happened to be her turn to go out in one of the numbers Hinpoha looked the audience over to see if Katherine Adams had come in response to her invitation, but she did not see her. But, while looking for Katherine, her eye was caught by a strange figure, the like of which she had never seen before. She was a woman, old and bent, and dressed in such old-fashioned clothes that she looked like a caricature out of a funny page. She had on a tight green basque, which flared out below the waist in a ripple and a very full red skirt, held out in a ridiculous curve by that atrocity of bygone days known as a "bustle." She was climbing stiffly up and down among the spectators trying to sell papers which she was crying in a shrill voice. As she went up and down among the benches she held up her skirt in her hand, disclosing purple stockings and enormous flapping slippers. Wherever she went she was followed by a ripple of laughter; the audience seemed to be getting as much fun out of her as they were out of the show. Hinpoha told Nyoda about it when she was in the barn again and Nyoda asked all the players not to do anything to drive her away, as she was no doubt trying to make an honest living by selling papers wherever there was a crowd, and she was adding an unexpected touch to the circus to amuse the audience.

The bareback rider proved a real sensation. Up to that time the numbers had merely been in the nature of stunts-clever and original and highly diverting, and yet something which any group of young people could produce. But here was something different. Veronica was so dark that in her costume she looked like a real gypsy, and as she was not yet well known she was not recognized. She came in riding a beautiful black horse that belonged to Mr. Evans, and, after galloping around the ring several times and making him rear up on his hind legs until the audience thought she must slide off, she set him to leaping obstacles, keeping her seat all the while with amazing ease. There was a touch of realism in her act, too, which made the audience tingle for a while. In their eagerness to see the horse and the daring rider the children down in the front row had pressed forward until they were fairly under the ropes. Without warning a little girl lost her balance and fell out into the ring, rolling right into the path of the galloping horse. An exclamation of horror went up from the crowd, and many covered their eyes with their hands. The others, gazing as if fascinated, saw the horse in obedience to a quick command leap into the air with all four feet and come down several feet beyond the little form on the ground. Shouts rose up from every side and cheers for the skilful horsewoman who had been able to avert a tragedy when it was too late to turn aside. But Veronica sat unmoved, a graceful statue on the beautiful horse, looking out over the audience with brooding eyes that saw them not.

Of course the _piece de resistance_ of the whole show was the trick mule, Sandhelo. He had been the most widely advertised feature and had been the means of selling the most tickets. The small boys came lured by the promise of a free ride after the show and could hardly wait for that time to come. His appearance in the ring was hailed with tumultuous applause.

Led by the clown, who played the mouth organ constantly to a.s.sure his continuous locomotion, he did his tricks over and over again, lying down as if dead when Slim played "John Brown's Body," and springing to his feet with a lively bray when he played "Yankee Doodle"; and sitting up on the table and waving his fore feet at the audience while he tossed a lump of sugar on his nose.

Then the clown tried to ride him and fell off, first on one side and then the other, and after several vain attempts offered a quarter to anyone in the audience who would come out and ride him around the ring. As the players along knew that Sandhelo would only go to music, they antic.i.p.ated no little fun from this business. Sandhelo was perfectly safe to ride-he was as gentle as a kitten-but his refusal to stir when commanded made him appear a very balky mule indeed, and there was no response to Slim's invitation for somebody to come out and ride him. Even the small boys, who were eager to ride him, preferred to wait until the show was over before making the trial.

"Don't all come at once," appealed Slim in derision. "One at a time, please. Who'll ride the famous trick mule, Sandhelo, around the ring and win the handsome prize of twenty-five cents, a whole quarter of a dollar?" Still no volunteers. Sandhelo yawned and looked bored to death.

Slim stretched out his hands to the audience imploringly.

Suddenly there was a commotion at one end of the seats and down from the top of the picnic tables, where the raised seats were, there climbed the little old woman who had gone around selling papers. "I'll ride him for twenty-five cents," she cackled in her high shrill voice. And she hobbled across the ring to where Sandhelo stood. The players were ready to hug themselves with joy. Here was a real circus-y touch they had not counted on.

"Aren't you afraid she'll get hurt?" whispered Hinpoha to Nyoda.

"No danger," returned Nyoda. "Sandhelo won't go a step without the mouth organ."

The little old woman, her back bent almost double, shuffled over and grasped Sandhelo, not by the bridle, but by the c.o.c.kade on his head. Then she suddenly straightened up and a gasp of astonishment went around the circle. She was taller than the tallest of them. Without a.s.sistance from anyone she climbed on Sandhelo's back and sat with her face toward his tail. The audience, suspecting that it was a "put-up job," and this was another stunt, roared its appreciation, but the players looked at each other in utter bewilderment. Who was this strange character?

Sandhelo was a very small donkey, standing no higher than a Shetland pony, and when the old lady was seated on his back her feet dragged on the ground. Calmly crossing them underneath his body, she gave his tail a smart jerk, accompanied by the shrill command, "Giddap!" Sandhelo, mortified to death at the undignified position of his rider, had but one idea in his mind-to escape from the gibing crowd and hide his head in his stable. Around the ring he flew as fast as his tiny legs would carry him, the old woman sticking to him like a burr, her bonnet strings flying in the wind, her big slippers flapping against his sides, and her shrill voice urging him on to greater speed. The act brought down the house and a whole row of folding camp chairs collapsed under the strain of the applause.

Beside himself with rage and shame, Sandhelo bolted into the barn and carried his strange rider into the midst of the company of players.

Sliding off his back, she looked around the ring of curious faces before her with little twinkling gray eyes. Then she held out her hand suggestively. "Where's the quarter I git fer ridin' the mule?" she asked.

Something in her voice awakened a memory in Hinpoha's mind. In a twinkling she was carried back to the incident at Raymond's that noon when Miss Parker stopped to present her cousin from the west. Surely there never were two such voices! At the same time Hinpoha noticed that the old woman's gray hair was sliding back on her head, and a long wisp of yellowish hair was hanging out underneath. She stared at the curious figure in growing wonder, and the woman stared back at her with a knowing grin that became wider every moment. Then with a quick movement the old woman s.n.a.t.c.hed off a gray wig, mopped a damp handkerchief over her face, produced a pair of gla.s.ses from some pocket in the wide skirt, and stood before them the same awkward, ungainly creature that Hinpoha had met that noon. It was Katherine Adams, Miss Parker's cousin.

Such a babel there was when Hinpoha recognized the strange comedian and presented her to the others! The waiting audience was completely forgotten as they listened fascinated while Katherine explained how she had come "by special invitation" to the circus and had decided that people who had "pep" enough to get up a circus were worth knowing, and the best way to get acquainted with the players was to be in the show herself. So she had joined the company without the formality of being asked.

"You're appointed a.s.sistant clown for the remainder of the circus," said Nyoda.

"And you're invited to the spread upstairs afterwards," said Hinpoha.

"It's time for the Chair-iot Race," said the Captain warningly, and the players returned to their duties with a guilty start. The new comedian proved such a diversion and put the regular clown up to so many tricks that he would never have thought of by himself, that the audience refused to go home when the big show was over, and called for encore after encore.

"Let's get her to sell cocoa," suggested Gladys; "they'll buy from her when they wouldn't from us."

So Katherine, who up until a few hours ago had never heard of the Winnebagos and Sandwiches, did more for them in the way of dispensing cups of cocoa at five cents a cup than they were able to do for themselves. She made such inimitably droll speeches in her efforts to advertise her wares that the audience crowded around her just to hear her talk, and bought and bought until the huge kettles were empty and the paper box till was full. The small boys crowded around the Ringmaster, demanding their ride on the trick mule, and, tearing himself away from the fascinating orator, he betook himself to the barn, followed by the whole string of would-be riders. But when he arrived there the stall was empty and Sandhelo was nowhere to be found. Loud chorus of disappointment from the small boys. The Captain turned their interest in Sandhelo to account by enlisting them in the search for him, but it was vain. Nowhere could they find a trace of him. His shame at the indignity heaped upon him that afternoon had been too great. Finding his stall left open in the excitement he had escaped and wandered off while the attention of everyone was riveted on the antics of the new comedian, and hid his head among new scenes and faces. The small boys finally gave up and went home, partly consoled by the a.s.surance that if Sandhelo ever turned up again the promised ride would still be theirs, and the players, rather exhausted, but exulting over the success of the performance, gathered in the Winnebago room of the Open Door Lodge for the jollification spread.

Katherine Adams was the lioness of the evening. Begged for a speech, she obligingly mounted the table and held a discourse that left her hearers limp with merriment. What she said was sidesplitting enough, but her gestures, her expression and her voice were beyond description. She spoke in a lazy southern drawl, mixed up with a nasal tw.a.n.g, and the peculiarly veiled, husky quality of her voice gave it a sound the like of which was never heard before. She still wore the big flapping slippers and had much ado to keep them on when she climbed on the table with the mincing air of a young miss making an elocution lesson. She planted her feet carefully, heels together and toes apart, taking several minutes in the operation, and then surveyed them with a silly smirk of satisfaction that was convulsing. When her discourse became a little heated the feet suddenly flew around and toed in until both heels and toes were in a straight line. At the ripple of laughter which this called forth she looked down at her feet with a sad, pained expression and carefully set them right again. A few moments later she again waxed eloquent and again the feet turned, seemingly of themselves, and this time her toes pointed outward until toes and heels were all one straight line. The shrieks of delight made her look down again, with that same puzzled, pained expression, and again she set them right in an affected manner.

When the speech was over the boys and girls begged her to do it again, and kept her speechifying until she declared she had no voice left to whisper. "You know I have to be very careful of my voice," she said in a tone of confiding simplicity. "It's so sweet that I'm afraid of cracking it all the time."

Katherine was too good to be true. "Just like a character out of a book,"

the delighted Winnebagos whispered to one another. Before the evening was over they had unanimously decided to urge-not merely invite, mind you, but urge-her to become a Winnebago. Katherine was delighted with the idea and accepted the invitation with another convulsing speech. It seemed incredible to the girls that they had met her just that afternoon. It seemed as if they had known her always. She fitted into their group like a thumb on a hand. She was plied with slumgullion and every other delicacy, and her health was drunk in numerous cups of cocoa. The continual flow of banter which the Winnebagos usually kept up among themselves was hushed, and everyone was willing to put the soft pedal on her own speech if only Katherine would talk some more. She told fascinating things about her life on a big stock farm out in Arkansas.

"Are there any Indians around there?" asked Veronica, whose ideas of the American Far West were rather hazy and romantic.

"Indians!" said Katherine. "I should say there were! They're something terrible. Why, you don't dare hang your clothes on the line, because the Indians will shoot them full of arrows! And then," she continued, as she saw Veronica's eyes becoming saucerlike, "there are all kind of wild animals out there, too. We can't keep milk standing around in the pantry because the wildcats come in and drink it up, and the bears shed their hair all over the carpet! Why, one day I came in from the yard and there was a rattlesnake curled up on the piano stool!"

The Winnebagos and the Sandwiches doubled up with merriment at her awful "yarns," but Veronica believed every word of it.

"O Katherine, you awful thing, I'm in love with you," cried Hinpoha, in rather mixed metaphor, and drew her down on the bearskin bed beside her.

"Goodness, Veronica, don't look so excited. All the Indians there are in this country now are on reservations, and they're entirely peaceable. You mustn't believe a word she says."

The jollification supper ended in a hilarious Virginia Reel, which hardly anyone could dance for laughing at Katherine's big slippers, as she shuffled up and down the line.

"What a day this has been," sighed Hinpoha to Gladys, with whom she was spending the night, as she sank down on the bed with all her clothes on.

"We've made enough money to equip the Sandwiches' gym be-yoo-tifully; we've made Veronica famous as a horsewoman; we've lost our trick mule and gained a new member for the Winnebagos. In the cla.s.sic words of our gallant Captain, I think that's 'going some.'"

CHAPTER VI A MORAL OBLIGATION

Katherine's entry into High School life was a complete success-one of those rare, astonishing successes that happen about once in a decade. The regular members of the cla.s.s, who have been together since the beginning, will by constant effort have attained a fair measure of popularity by the fourth year, when suddenly a personality will appear out of the vast and seize and hold the center of the stage. Katherine's spectacular exploit at the Sandebago Circus was heralded far and wide, and when she entered school the following Monday morning she found herself already famous.

Everywhere she was pointed out as "the girl who had ridden the donkey,"

"the girl with the funny voice," "the girl who made the screaming speeches." Teachers agreed unanimously that she was the most erratically brilliant student they had ever had in their cla.s.ses-when she could remember to turn her work in. Her compositions were read out in cla.s.s and brought down the house. When she rose to recite you could hear a pin drop. It was an open secret that the two English teachers had drawn lots to see who would get her, and not a few pupils suddenly discovered conflicts in their recitations and got themselves changed into the cla.s.s where Katherine was.

Her absent-mindedness soon became proverbial. Odd shoes-gloves of two different colors-hat on hind side before, or somebody else's hat altogether-these were everyday occurrences. Her friends told with chuckles how she had climbed one flight of stairs too many on her way to Math cla.s.s and walked into a Freshman English cla.s.s, her mind busy working out the solution of a problem in geometry. When some other Katherine was called upon to recite she rose solemnly and, going to the board, gave a masterly demonstration of a knotty theorem in solid geometry, and then marched out with the cla.s.s, serenely unconscious of her mistake, oblivious to the laughter of the cla.s.s and the amus.e.m.e.nt of the teacher, who let her go on without interruption to see how far she would go. Her bewilderment when asked by the regular geometry teacher to explain why she had cut cla.s.s that morning was comical.

Possessing neither beauty, style, pretty clothes, nor all the dozen other things that make the ordinary girl popular, her very unusualness gave her a distinction, and inside of two weeks she was the best-known girl in the whole school. To be counted as one of her friends was an honor, and to be able to say, "Katherine told me this," or, "Katherine did this up at our house," was to incite the envy of less favored ones. The Uranians, the most exclusive and select girl's society in the school, voted her in as a member because they must have all the prominent girls, although they generally scorned both worth and brains, if clothed in poor garments, and great was their chagrin to find that their disdained rivals, the clever and democratic Dramatic Club, had held a special meeting and taken her in the afternoon before. Urania had not noticed that Katherine had been wearing the Dramatic Club pin a whole day because she had stuck it over a hole in her stocking which she did not have time to mend.

How the Winnebagos exulted because Hinpoha had been polite enough to invite her to the circus and she had consequently landed in their bosom the first thing! No other group of girls would ever know her as intimately as they would. The Camp Fire idea appealed to her from the start. The Open Door Lodge was a paradise for her. The ladder stairs were a constant source of delight.