The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows. Vandercook Margaret
way home.
At about the same hour of this same evening, two other young women were walking slowly up and down in front of a log house in a clearing near the base of a hill, with their arms intertwined about each other’s shoulder. Outside the closed front door of the house a lighted lantern swung. From the inside other lights shone through the windows, while every now and then a face appeared and a finger beckoned toward the sentinels outside. Nevertheless, they continued their unbroken marching, only stopping now and then to stare out across the snow-covered landscape.
“They simply have not tried to attempt it, Polly; it is foolish for you to be so worried,” one of the voices said.
But her companion, whose long black hair was hanging loose to her waist and who wore a long red cape and a red woolen cap giving her a curiously fantastic appearance, only shook her head decisively.
“You can’t know the Princess as well as I do, Rose, or you would never believe she would give up having her own way. She went into town when the rest of us thought it unwise and she will come back, frozen, starved, goodness only knows what, still come back she will. Poor Esther is but wax in her hands. I wonder if anything happens to break the Princess’ will whatever will become of her?”
The other girl sighed and her friend gazed at her sympathetically but a little curiously.
“Betty will bear disappointment just as the rest of the world does,” she answered, “filling her life with what she can have. But I do wish she and Esther would come back to camp now, or at least send us some word. The storm has been over for several hours and none of us will be able to sleep to-night on account of the uncertainty.”
With one of her characteristic movements Polly O’Neill now moved swiftly away from the speaker. “I am going to ring our emergency bell if you are willing, Rose,” she announced. “Oh, I know we Camp Fire girls hate to appeal to outsiders for aid, but it’s got to be done for once, for I simply can’t stand this suspense about Betty and Esther any longer.” Then without waiting for an answer, she ran toward the back yard of the cabin and an instant later the loud clanging of a bell startled the peace and quiet of the country night, but only for a moment, because before the second pull at the bell rope Polly felt her arm being held fast.
“Don’t ring again, Polly, or at least not yet,” her companion insisted, “for I am almost sure I can see a dark object coming this way along our road and there’s a chance of its being Betty and Esther.”
Ten minutes later the front door of the Sunrise cabin was suddenly burst open and out into the snow piled half a dozen other girls in as many varieties of heavy blanket wrappers. The music of Fire Star’s sleigh bells had reached their ears several moments before the arrival of the wayfarers.
However, very soon afterwards, following a suggestion of Sylvia Wharton’s, Betty Ashton was borne into the cabin, four of the girls carrying her on a light canvas cot. This they set down before their big fire glowing in the center of the living room of the Sunrise cabin – Sunrise cabin which had not existed even in the dreams of the Sunrise Camp Fire girls until one afternoon in September not four months ago. Esther, with Mollie O’Neill’s arm about her, walked into the cabin on foot, since she was only stiff with fatigue and cold. However, on throwing herself back in a big arm chair and allowing her shoes to be changed by Mollie for slippers, she seemed more affected, by their adventure than Betty.
For Betty, in Princess fashion, with Polly, Sylvia and Nan, and the girl whom Polly had called Rose, all kneeling devotedly at her feet, was talking cheerfully.
“He was just the most impossible, ridiculous looking person you ever could imagine, with red hair and glasses and dreadfully shabby clothes, the kind of a man in a German band to whom you would throw pennies out the window, but he declared that he had once lived here in Woodford for a short time years ago and had come back on some business or other. Oh, Esther, don’t look at me so disapprovingly; I am saying nothing against him really. I am sure it was I who invited him to come out to our cabin and play for us girls. He looked so poor I thought I might be able to pay him then and I couldn’t quite offer him anything for helping Esther mend the sleigh and then seeing us part of the way home. Home! Oh, isn’t our beloved Sunrise cabin the most delightful and original home a group of Camp Fire girls ever possessed!”
And Betty’s eyes clouded with tears, partly from pain and weariness but more from joy at her return, as she looked from the faces gathered about hers in the neighborhood of the great fireplace and then saw all their glances follow hers with equal ardor throughout the length of their great living room.
For if ever Betty Ashton had proved her right to her friend Polly’s definition of her as a “Fairy Princess,” it was when through her desire and largely through her money, Sunrise cabin rose on the very ground covered by the white tents of the Sunrise Camp Fire girls only the summer before.
The cabin was built of pine logs from the woods at the foot of Sunrise Hill and the entire front of forty-five feet formed a single great room. The end nearer the kitchen the girls used as their dining room, while the rest of the room was music room, study, reception and every other kind of a room. And, except for the piano which Betty had brought from her own blue room at home and a few chairs, every other article of furniture and almost every ornament had been made by the Sunrise Camp Fire girls themselves.
On either side the high mantel there were low book shelves and a music rack stood by the piano filled with the songs of the Camp Fire. Polly, Nan and Sylvia had manufactured a dining room table which was considered an extraordinary achievement although the design was really very simple. Four wide pine boards about ten feet in length formed the top and the legs were of heavy beams crossed under it at the center and at either end. The furniture of the living room was stained a Flemish brown to match the walls and floor done in the same color. On the floor were rag rugs of almost oriental beauty made by the girls and dyed into seven craft colors. On the walls hung pieces of homemade tapestry, leather skins embossed with Camp Fire emblems, and flowers so pressed and mounted as to give the effect of nature. Then on the mantelpiece were two hammered brass candlesticks and a great brass bowl filled with holly and cedar from the surrounding wood. On odd tables and shelves were Indian baskets woven by the girls and used for every convenient purpose from holding stockings waiting to be darned to treasuring the Sunrise Camp Record Book which now had twenty-five written and illustrated pages setting forth the history of Sunrise Camp since its infancy.
But Eleanor Meade had given the living room its really unique distinction. Having once read a description of a famous Indian snow tepi, she had painted on the ceiling toward the northern end of the room seven stars which were to represent the north from whence the winter blizzards blew and on the southern side a red disc for the sun. The artist had pleaded long to be permitted to make the rest of the ceiling a bright blue with outlines of rolling prairie on the walls beneath, but this was greater realism in Indian ideals of art than the other girls were able to endure.
Yet notwithstanding so much artistic decoration, Science also had her place in the Sunrise cabin living room. For Sylvia Wharton had established a cupboard in an inconspicuous corner where she kept a collection of first aid supplies: gauze for bandaging, medicated cotton, peroxide, lime water and sweet oil, arnica, and half a dozen or more simple remedies useful in emergencies. True to her surprising announcement at the close of their summer camp Sylvia, without wasting time, and in her own quiet and apparently dull fashion, had already set about preparing herself for her future work as a trained nurse by persuading her father to let her have first aid lessons from a young doctor in Woodford. So now it was stupid little Sylvia (although the Camp Fire girls were no longer so convinced of her stupidity) who took real charge of caring for Betty’s foot, going back and forth to her cupboard and doing whatever she thought necessary without asking or heeding any one else’s advice.
Nevertheless, her work must have been successful, because in less than an hour after their return Betty, Esther and all the other girls were in dreamland in the two bedrooms which, besides the kitchen, completed Sunrise cabin. So soundly were they sleeping that it was only Polly O’Neill who was suddenly aroused by an unexpected knocking at their front door. It was nearly midnight and Polly shivered, not so much with fear as with apprehension. What could have happened to bring a human being to their cabin at such an hour? Instantly she thought