Winona of the Camp Fire Part 34

"M' yes, I suppose so," said Winona doubtfully. "Are we going to start soon, marshal?"

"In about ten minutes," said the marshal, seeming to be still entranced with the canoe and its decorations. "They burnt one o' my great-grandmothers, a couple o' hundred years ago, for doin' not much worse'n you be," he added.

"We ought to get something, then," said Winona, thinking more of a possible prize than of the marshal's family history.

"You sure ought!" he said darkly, handing them a number and pa.s.sing on to the next boat.

The ten minutes seemed very long and tedious, but between eating some sandwiches which Winona had thoughtfully provided, exchanging compliments with the neighboring boats, and getting their Greek fire ready to set off, they pa.s.sed somehow. The whistle blew, and the long trail of boats, canoes, and floats started on its slow and winding way.

The float was tied far off, at the beginning of the procession, where they could not see it. Marie's canoe was just in sight, but not near enough to talk to-a big silver cobweb spotted with lantern-flies, and Marie and Edith dressed as the Spider and the Fly, at either end of it.

Finally the whistle blew. Billy tucked a final piece of sandwich beneath his mask, and resigned himself to tending the Greek fire for the rest of the evening. As for Winona, finding nothing particular to do, she pulled a book out from under a cushion and began to read.

"Winona, would you kindly lay away that piece of literatuah and wo'k the Gabriel ho'n?" asked Billy in the softest and Kentuckiest of voices.

Winona had observed that when Billy's Southern accent rea.s.serted itself he was generally in deadly earnest. She meekly put the book away and began to press the bulb of the horn at regular intervals.

"Oh, I do wish we could see us, and be us, too!" she said in one of the intervals.

"M'm! Don't I?" said Billy. "I don't know, though. Maybe we'd be disappointed."

"I know we wouldn't," said Winona confidently, and pressed the horn again, which put a stop to conversation.

Meanwhile Tom, on the grandstand, was seeing them, and being very proud of his relationship to the "Ship o' the Fiend." The black-covered canoe, with its belt of shivering fire and its weird occupants, showed up gloriously. The irregularly hung lanterns looked more like skulls than Winona had dared to hope in her wildest moments. All the little demons and skeletons danced realistically on their invisible wires in the air, and, crown of all, the nearly-life-size skeleton swung above, with the witch and the demon watching him from either end, as he roasted above the Greek fire. An occasional shriek from the Gabriel horn gave the final touch. The whole thing was like a vision out of a Poe story, or some German goblin-legend. The people took to clapping as they went by.

"I believe they're clapping for us!" said Winona awedly, as a burst of it came to their ears over the water.

"Sure they are," said Billy. "Shows their good sense, too. It's a mighty good looking canoe we have."

"Can we photograph you, please?" said a polite voice before Winona could answer-and lo, the reporter's boat!

"This _is_ glory!" said Winona, snapping down her mask, and being frankly delighted. "Just think, Billy, we may be in the paper!"

The reporter asked questions and fussed with his flashlight apparatus, and finally took two exposures. They kept very still while the flashlight was exploding, and answered the reporters in full.

"The designer of your decorations certainly was very clever, and had a vivid imagination," ended the smallest reporter as the press-boat went on its way.

Winona sat up straight, and looked very proud.

"At last I'm appreciated!" she said. "Don't you wish you had a vivid imagination, too, Billy?"

"If you straighten up much more," said Billy, leaning over to light fresh Greek fire, "you will certainly hit the decorations, and something will bust."

"I don't care!" and Winona laughed excitedly. "It's my first chance at being famous, and you can't think how nice it is! Listen to that!"

The applause along the banks was certainly continuous enough to make someone older and staider than Winona happy. The canoes were making the circuit of the upper part of the lake now. In the centre was the royal float, where the king and queen of the carnival sat.

When the procession had gone down one side of the lake and up the other it would make a circle about this royal float, and the prizes would be awarded.

They were almost through with this, only a little way from the royal float, when a small green canoe full of sightseers whirled against them, sent by some sudden twist of wind or water. And-neither Winona nor Billy could ever understand how it happened-the shock of the blow, or perhaps some mischievous person in the other boat, parted the ropes that held Winona's canoe lightly to the canoes before and behind it, and sent them far to one side of the lake, out of the radius of the lights. The wind, naturally, took this particular time to blow hard. The decorations made the canoe top-heavy and hard to guide, and they dared not paddle fast for fear of upsetting. They could see from their outer darkness the canoes they had been between being hastily tied together.

Winona paddled frantically. "Do you think we can get back in time to be judged?" she panted.

"We'll try," said Billy, working his paddle more slowly, but with greater effect than Winona's.

"No-oh, Billy, Billy! There goes the signal-they've given the launch prize, and they are to give the float and rowboat prizes right afterwards, and then the canoes! There goes the gun again. Oh, _dear!_"

Winona had really been working harder than she should have over her canoe decorations, and helping with the float besides, as well as doing her routine camp-work. She had been "all keyed up" by the evening's excitement, and her hopes of a prize, and this sudden downfall of her hopes was too much for her self-control. Billy saw two large tears roll down her cheeks from under her mask.

"Poor Winnie! It certainly is a shame!" he said.

"I suppose that horrid little gunboat canoe named 'Flossie' will get our prize," mourned Winona, casting fort.i.tude to the wind-which must have carried it quite a way, for it was blowing more and more strongly. "I know we'd have had one of the fourth prizes, too!"

"You have the glory, anyway," he said. "Everybody applauded us more than they did anything else except that big Queen Elizabeth float."

"But I wanted the money, and I wanted to have the Camp Fire have a prize! There, Billy, I won't be a coward any more. I'm tired, I think, or I wouldn't have acted like this kind of an idiot," she said bravely, pushing up her mask to dry her eyes, and trying to smile.

"You've worn yourself out over this decoration business, that's what the matter is," said Billy. "Do you mind telling me what you want the money for?"

"No, certainly not. I wanted to get a pair of silk stockings apiece for Adelaide and me. I know she wants a pair dreadfully, because she never had them, and if I got a pair like them for myself she'd be more apt to take them-and-well, I wanted a pair, too!"

Billy registered an inward vow that his Aunt Lydia should manage it just as soon as it was humanly possible. He knew that she would do more than that for Winona, for whom she had conceived a strong liking.

"Poor kid, she's all worked up about it," he murmured, forgetting his own disappointment, for he, too, had hoped that his canoe would get a prize.

But help was in sight. About five minutes later (though Winona and Billy always swore it was a full half hour) they felt a violent rocking, and heard the insistent wuff-wuff-wuff of a steam launch.

"Here, catch a-hold and tie yourself on," said the welcome voice of the marshal out of the darkness, without the least waste of words or time.

As soon as Billy's excited fingers could do it they were fastened to the end of the marshal's official launch, and bobbing off towards the royal float at a tremendous rate of speed.

"How did you come to come hunt for us?" Winona called to the marshal as they went.

"You were knocked out o' line an' got blowed away, didn't you?" answered the marshal.

"Then we're going to be judged-we're going to be judged!" she rejoiced.

"Oh, do you think we may get a prize yet?"

"Shouldn't wonder but you got something," said the laconic marshal.

"Here we be."

He bent over and unfastened them.

"You're late, you see," he said, "and you'll just have to paddle out an'

get your sentence alone."

Winona's heart beat frantically, but she straightened up in the canoe, and she and Billy, standing up at front and back (it was risky work with the top-heavy decorations, but they never thought of that till afterwards), paddled out into the open s.p.a.ce before the royal float. All the other entries had been judged. Over in the place where the prize-winners were Winona had time to see that the Camp Fire float and Marie's canoe were herded with the others. So even if she got nothing the glory of Camp Karonya was safe. It was trying to wait there alone, with everyone staring, but it did not last long. The red-and-gold herald came forward very soon.

"First prize, canoe cla.s.s!" he said-and Winona almost lost her balance.

"Awarded to Miss Winona Merriam of Camp Karonya, and Mr. William Lee, of Boy Scouts' Patrol Number Six, for their entry 'The Ship of the Fiend.'

Twenty-five dollars."