CHAPTER VIII
A USURPER
Gathering her short, green skirt about her, for she wore, as on thatFebruary day in her father's laboratory, what he called the "nixiegreen", the sylvan Camp Fire uniform, the inventor's daughter stretchedherself breast downward, upon the flat ledge of the Pinnacle's crest.
Working her body carefully backward, without another glance at theprecipice beneath, she slid warily over the edge, her face to the rock,and down the dozen feet of almost smooth, nearly perpendicular slab,until her feet touched the stone seat of that curved armchair, a deepembrasure in the mountain granite.
It was not such a wildly difficult feat then for a girl on her mettle toturn cautiously until her tingling back was pressed hard against theslab, and thus to lower herself to a sitting position on the rockythrone.
For that Devil's Chair was a spacious one--fairly so! The seat extendedoutward at least three feet and was roomy enough to allow of two peoplestanding upright on it at the same time.
And what a view old Lucifer must have from it, was Pem's firstthought--provided he didn't, as an Irishman would say, reside away fromhome!
Off to the right and left stretched the wonderful landscape of theBerkshire Hills, Massachusetts' Highlands--the Berkshire mountains inMay where, afar, a summit snow-cap vied with the driven snows ofblossoming fruit trees, lower down; where the pink-shot pearl of a lakegleamed, opal-like, from an emerald setting, and many a silver threadwinding, expanding, showed where some madcap river or brook had becomewith spring a wild thing.
"Oh, hurrah! I can really see off to Mount Greylock--old KingGreylock--even the steel tower upon it--oh! so plainly," murmured themadcap in the Chair, and nestled triumphantly against its rocky back.
"Greylock, cloud-girdled, from his purple throne, A shout of gladness sends, And up soft meadow slopes, a warbling tone, Of Housatonic blends."
Yes! she felt as if they were two throned dignitaries, she and Greylock;for she wore the crown of derring do, and King Greylock, still wearing athin diadem of snow, was enthroned for ever in her imagination as thefavored peak from which the first experiments with her father's immortalrocket were to be made.
Upon Greylock's crest within a week or two, maybe--at all events beforesummer dog-day heat clogged and fogged the air--her transcendentdream--or the first part of it--would come to pass: her yearning thumbwould press the button and start the little Thunder Bird off, to fly upa couple of hundred miles, or so, with its diary in its cone-shapedhead, and send back that novel explorer's log, the little recordingapparatus, attached to a black silk parachute--the first, the very firstrecord from the outer realm of space.
No wonder that old Greylock sent her back a shout of gladness now, as,squirming in the Chair, she turned her gaze away from the distantmountain to green meadow slopes, to the right, where the broadest silverribbon, intertwined with the matchless landscape, showed where theHousatonic River, the blue Housatonic, flowed and sang.
"Oh, dear! I wouldn't have missed this for anything," she exultedsilently. "But the idea of that perfectly horrid boy actually daring meto do it! He didn't mean to, but he did--strutting off, like that,crowing about his climbing! As if a girl were--gingerbread! Well--"indignantly--"that was just one with his passing Una and me when we onlywanted to thank him, felt as if we naturally must thank him,for--for.... Bah! I won't think of the horrid wreck now! Or of him,either! I'll be taken up with the view! Isn't it exquisite--sublime? Notinterrupted as it is up there on the--Pinnacle's--crest!...--Ah-h!"
The little pinched exclamation came when--all too suddenly--she changedthe point of view, and looked down.
Beneath her yawned the precipice over which her feet dangled--treadingair, with never a break between them and that grove of dwarf pine treesmore than a hundred feet below, pointed by their glinting rocks.
The little trees bowed to her, now, like servants--green pages.
But, somehow, their homage made her feel uneasy; it put too great adistance beneath her and them.
The crown of daring which she wore did not fit quite so easily.
She began to feel like a usurper whose head might at any moment be takenoff.
And, with that, she decided to vacate!
Drawing up her feet much more gracefully than her predecessor had done,she curled her body in the seat and raised it slowly until she was in astanding position, grasping the stone arms of the chair, turned--turnedrather sickeningly, to be sure, until her breast was against the broadrock down which she had slid, then reached upward for a handhold bywhich to climb--to draw herself up.
There was one. The nickum--churlish climber--had pulled himself up byit. Like him, she had fought shy of it, sliding down, for fear it shouldcatch in her clothing.
A little spur it was, projecting from a slight fissure, what he called a"nick," in the rock, rather more than half-way up,--a good seven feetfrom the rocky armchair.
Breathlessly she reached upward, to grasp it.
And, lo! her lips fell apart--like a cleft stone.
At the same time her heart slunk out of her body and dropped into theprecipice behind her.
Her fingers just missed that spur--fell short!
They touched it; they could not curl over it--and grip.
Flattening herself to a green creeper against the rock which seemedspurning her, wildly she stretched every tendril--every sinew.
In vain! Make as long an arm as she could, this daring Pem, her fivefeet three of slim girlish stature would not become the five feet nineof the daredevil who preceded her!
Emergency balks at extension.
That right arm, racked, fell limply back.
The blue of her eyes, hooking to the spur, if her fingers couldn't, grewglazed like enamel.
She felt as if she were tumbling backward already, the daring essence ofher, to break her too spunky backbone among those glowing pine-dwarfsfar beneath.
Spread-eagled against the rock's cruel breast, she turned a blanchedface, a convulsed face, upward!
Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl Page 9