CHAPTER X
CAMP FIRE SISTERS
Never was a diversion more welcome!
"We're on the map, R-ready to prove it with snap!"
Snap was in the very sunset as the evening breeze learned the song.
As for the inventor's daughter, her joyous relief was now a hop and nowa dance, anon a pine-caught hullabaloo, as she gleefully turned her backupon the Devil's Chair and nickum memories--her face to the glowing sunof sisterhood.
"Camp Fire sisters! Camp Fire sisters! Was ever such luck?" she cried."Oh! come, let's find them--let's join them."
"Oh--let us!" assented Una, her excitement, too, running like wildfirethrough the wood.
And, presently, the two city girls, wafting themselves airily overbowlders, threading their way in and out among pigmy pines, with hereand there a needled patriarch among them, came upon a forest scene thatmight well have wakened Queen Mab from her sleep in a cobweb net andmade her think that some, at least, of the fairy dreams with which sheinspired mortals had come true.
A dozen, and more, of sylvan figures, the green tassels of theirTam-o'-shanters waving like the tasseled green of the cinnamon fernflitted busily in and out among their passive brothers, the trees, notpines here, but a few beautiful stripling birches planted in a sunnyspot.
To these white-stemmed saplings, tall and taper-like, some of thenymphs, maidens from thirteen to seventeen, were playing fairygodmother, affixing to their slender trunks placards proclaiming theexaction of dire forfeits from any wanton human churl found guilty ofmutilating a silver birch tree, stripping it even of an inch of tenderskin, thus entailing upon it decay and death.
Other of the maidens were gathering fagots for an outdoor fire to thetune of a version of Andrew's song, not without humor in the presentcrisis:
"Singing whack fol de ri do, 'Twill comfort their souls, To get such fine fagots, When they've got no coals!"
One, brisk spoon in hand, was busily stirring some fairy brew, batterrather--an older figure superintending, Queen Mab herself maybe, havinga golden sunburst embroidered upon the heaving emerald of her breast.
Now! to these came forth two other maidens, emerging, breathless, fromthe Pinnacle pines, and made the hand-sign of fire.
Up went gracefully a dozen green arms, in charming tableau, as thewoodland nymphs paused in their work, their curving fingers typifyingthe warmth of the curling flame behind the finger--the Camp Fire welcometo heart and hearth.
A genial flame which the Guardian--she of the golden maturity--put intowinsome words, as she approached.
"Welcome--thrice welcome,--Sisters!" she cried. "We are the White BirchGroup of Lenox, at present engaged in protecting our younger brothers,the little trees which we planted ourselves. I am Tanpa--signifyingBirch--Guardian of the Group; in everyday life just Myra Seaver."
"And my name is Lorry--Pemrose Lorry--my ceremonial name Wantaam, a WiseWoman." Here the spokeswoman for the two strangers had the grace toblush, remembering the Devil's Chair. "And this--this is my friend, UnaGrosvenor, who has just been initiated into 'Camp Fire.' We belong tothe Woo-hi-ye--Victory--Group of Clevedon which, you know, is only ahundred miles, or so, from here; and we--"
But Tanpa's face had become suddenly fascinated--illumined--to rival thesunburst upon her breast.
"'Pemrose!'" She echoed the words softly, with transient glow. "Hownovel--and pretty! But--Lorry! Oh-h! you don't mean to say--you don'ttell me--that you're anything to the great inventor, of whom the wholeworld is talking: the professor who has invented an apparatus to--totravel anywhere through the air, through space--even to reach themoon?... Ah-h, there she is now! I wonder if she's listening to us!"
It was, indeed, at that moment that Yachune herself, the Silver Queen,showed her placid face above the Pinnacle pines, pale on the rim of thewaning sunset. Did she dream of the Earth-valentine in store for her,mild old Mammy Moon?
No knowing! The Pinnacle, the green Pinnacle, towered until it seemedvery near to her with the mounting pride in one girl's breast.
"Toandoah, the inventor, is my father--oh! Professor Lorry, I mean. TheThunder Bird--the record-breaking Thunder Bird--is his invention. I callit that; an ordinary rocket he says it is."
Well! the sky was in Pem's eyes, of a truth, now, enough blue to make aBlue Peter, the flag of embarking, the flag of adventure; no rudeness of"nickum", earthbound, boastful, could ever humiliate her again, withToandoah's emblem in her heart.
Yet, as she felt the Guardian's saluting kiss upon her young forehead,so starred by fate, as she was introduced, one by one, to her sisters ofthe White Birch Group and was invited, she the center of a flatteringfuss, to sit with them by a Pinnacle blaze, instead of being at thepleasant pains to build her own fire, her thoughts would turn back--turnback every now and again, to Jack at a Pinch!
To the quick-witted, surefooted youth, so daring, if so unmannerly--sucha chuff--who had not even waited to make the rope fast around his ownbody before sliding down the rock to the Devil's Chair a secondtime--and who had, a second time too, climbed, unaided.
But she said nothing of him--or of her recent escapade.
And she was glad that Una didn't!
Instead, she bathed every sore spot left by the experience in the gloryof telling her new friends all that she might tell of the romantic,space-conquering Thunder Bird, while, above, the Man in the Moon,eavesdropping, learned of the surprise in store for him.
Perhaps he cribbed some hint, too, from the excited girlish tongue ofthe demonstration so soon to take place upon Mount Greylock, when theinvention would be tried out; and lastly of the thrilling invitation tothe White Birch Group to be present--not then--but on that Great Day,far ahead, when the real Thunder Bird, full-fledged with magic,red-eyed, fiery-tailed, would embark on its hundred-hour flightmoonward, as Pem was sure it would start, no matter where the gold-mineto equip it came from.
"Well! we seem, truly--truly--to be treading the 'margin of moonshineland', don't we?" said the Guardian dreamily, enchantment in her voice."I--almost--feel as if, some day, we might be inviting the Man in theMoon to supper with us here on the Pinnacle, to shoot himself back inthe small hours. Joking apart, it does draw the Universe very neartogether, doesn't it--open the road to such wonderful possibilities!"
Her hands came together as she gazed, that graceful, green-clad woman,speechless, transfigured, along the aerial high-road on which theThunder Bird would first pay toll by dropping its golden egg, itsrecord, off--off beyond the low night-clouds to the mysterious sky-wayswhere daylight now mated with dusk and the lunar lamps were being softlylighted, even to the gateway of Mammy Moon herself. Throbbing, sheflushed from head to heel, as she thought of the two hundred and thirtythousand miles to be traversed before the first barrier between theheavenly bodies had been let down--and the Thunder Bird had won home.
"It's--too--gr-reat for words," she said, a break in her voice now."Well-ll! if we are not playing hostess to the Man in the Moon--quiteyet--at least, we seem to be entertaining angels unawares, with thelatest rumors from the sky," laughingly. "How about supper now? Later onmaybe we can show you two dear girls that we--as a Group--can dosomething with red fire, too, a very earth-bound something, mere child'splay compared to the future of your celestial Bird. Ha!But--what's--that?"
And then, for the first time in its yet unwritten story, the ThunderBird had its nose put out of joint by a modest little earth-bird--ahermit, too, as it would be among the starry spaces--by a little,brown-backed evening thrush singing its good-night song in a thicket ofscrub near by.
"O wheel-y-will-y-will-y-_il-l_!"
it caroled, as a naturalist has translated the wonderful, silver-sweetprelude of the master-singer of the woods, the nightingale of America,rising, trilling until--now--with the voice-throwing magic of theventriloquist, its song seemed to come from quite another corner of thethicket, while girls' hearts melted in their breasts, as, climbing amaypole of ecstasy, the notes trembled--fluted--upon
a gossamer pinnacleof gladness at the close of a perfect day.
"Oh-h!"
There was no breath in girlish bodies for more than the one answeringnote of passion.
No wonder the Thunder Bird's nose was out of joint.
Earth has a magic all her own.
But was it ventriloquism at large? Had the hermit power to throw hismelody right into the center of the ring of girls--so to answer himself?
It was the visitors' turn now for a stupendous sensation.
Almost as airy and flute-like, though not as liquidly sweet and soaring,were bird-notes which answered back from within the very halo of Pemroseherself; and she turned, with her heart in her throat, to see who--whohad the thrush in her pocket.
Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl Page 11