Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl
Page 16
CHAPTER XV
AIRDRAWN AEROPLANES
Running water! Invisible running water! The voice behind the scenesprompting the play,--the grim play of bat and rat and reptile in oldTory Cave, where the rocks wept, the little strolling sunbeams clappedtheir hands, and the great fungi, primrose-skirted, drooped over a dramanever finished!
It was even more romantic than the girls had hoped for,--such romance asclings, cobweb-like, to melancholy.
Like a weak wind, truly, a sad wind blowing from nowhere, was the purlof that hidden streamlet whose mystery no man had penetrated--nor everseen its flow--mournfully as cave tears it dripped upon the ears andhearts of the girls.
"Pshaw! Who cares for weeping rocks, though they look as if they werebursting with grief and ready to tear their pale hair--that queer growthclinging to them. Humph! Only crocodile tears, anyhow, like 'Alice inWonderland!'" cried Ista, the laughing Eye of the White Birch Group,whose everyday name was Polly Leavitt.
"It's _not_ the tears and it's not that horribly sad lake with thelittle, blind, colorless fish in it, that I mind--it's the Bats!"screamed Una Grosvenor. "Oh-h!" as the mouse-like head of the cavemammal and its skinny wing almost brushed her face.
"Well! They're not brick-bats," came reassuringly from one of the boys,as the Togetherers ranged through the outer part of that vast ToryCave--once the hiding-place of a political refugee, whose spirit seemedflitting among them in the filmy cave-fog which, dank and mournful,clung about the margin of that strange lake of fresh water where blindfish played.
Presumably fed by that cloistered brooklet, whose cell, far in, in animpenetrable recess, no human foot had ever trod, the lakelet had thefloor to itself, so to speak, so that in places scouts with their lamps,and girls pairing off with their exploring brothers, one piloting eyebetween them, had difficulty in skirting it--without a ducking.
"Whew! a ducking in the dark--a cave-bath--horrible!" cried Pemrose."Oh, mer-rcy! what--what is it?"
"Bah! Only a garter snake--a pretty fellow," laughed Studley, pickingthe slim, striped thing up from a corner of the blind lake where it wasamphibiously basking, and letting it curl around his khaki arm,investigating the merit badges of the patrol leader.
The green and red of the life-saver's embroidered badge, the crossedflags of the expert signaler, the white plow of the husbandman, theyenlivened the gloom a wee bit, winking up at the safety lamp hooked tohis hat-band, as he bent over the illumined reptile.
But they did not challenge it as did the flash of an apricot sweater,blood-red in the ruby lamplight, of a black and yellow cap, severalyellow and black caps, suddenly--eagerly--thrust near.
"He's big--big for a garter, isn't he, Buddy?" remarked a voice that didnot come from the ranks of Togetherers, of Boy Scouts and Camp FireGirls, excitedly scrutinizing Stud's novel armlet.
Neither--neither was it the voice of the nickum, so much Pemrose knew,as she edged coldly a little away,--a little nearer to the dim andsighing lake-edge.
Yet he was among them, those gaudy big boys, whose flare of color merelystriped the cave-dusk, like the dingy markings upon the snake'ssquirming back.
He actually had his armful of mayflowers, too, the nickum, not thesnake; _passe_ mayflowers, with the tan of decay on them, wasnursing them carefully, as if they were part of a long lost heritageinto which he had lately come--as if he were afraid to lay them downlest some alien should snatch them from him.
"He doesn't look like a 'chuff'--a boor. He looks like a really nicecollege boy, one with a hazing imp in his eye though, lur-rking in thatlittle star--almost a squint; so--so like Una's," thought the inventor'sdaughter, familiar with the student brand of boy. "Yet how could he beso uncivil to us, really--actually--snub us, after all he did, too?Goodness! wouldn't I like to get a chance to snub him?" It was the VainElf which slept in the shadow of the Wise Woman in the breast of PemroseLorry, that stored this wish, laid it up, a vengeful arrow in the bluequiver of her eyes, now shooting piqued, sidelong glances at thoseflaunting big boys. "Why-y _should_ we run up against them here?Well! he'll never get a chance to play Jack at a Pinch--friend inneed--to me again. Watch me--watch me pick my steps!" She picked them soat random, at the moment, moving off, that she came near slipping in forthat eerie ducking, with the blind fish--pale as phantoms, swimminground--and Stud, flinging the striped garter away, hurried afterher--Jessie, too!
"Gee! this is a peach of a cave; isn't it?" effervesced the scoutsarcastically. "Melancholy so blooming thick that you could almost supits sorrow with a spoon, eh?"
"It's a regular cave of despair." The lonely trill of the featheredhermit was in Jessie's answering note. "That sad voice of water, acascade--a stream--far in, which nobody ever saw!"
"I'd give worlds to see it!" said Pemrose.
"So would I!" Stud's voice was pitched high. "If it weren't for theScoutmaster.... Tradition says that whoever drinks of that hidden waterwill have luck."
"Well! I'd let somebody else have the piping times if I were you,Buddy--if they depend on a draught from that mysterious spring."
Now, it was the nickum who answered; the same scintillating tones theywere--how bully they sounded then--which had quoted Shakespeare on"Something rotten in the State of Denmark", amid other depressingwaters, half hidden, half liberated by their ice-cloak.
"I can look out for my own 'piping times'--thank you! And I'm not goingto buy any pig in a poke--take any leap in the dark."
The scout's reply was bristling. To a fifteen-year-old patrol leader, aHenkyl Hunter, who went up and down upon the trail of a joke, there wasa smack of condescension about that "Buddy", used twice by those bigboys; perhaps he, too, at that moment, laid up something against theyouth of the flaming tone and rig.
"Humph! hasn't he the nerve, butting in?" he muttered.
"He has--has all sorts of nerve," agreed Pemrose readily, glancingsideways after the boy whose courage she knew to be as high as hiscolors.
"The Scoutmaster wouldn't hear of our venturing in so far as toinvestigate that running water, anyhow," said Studley. "My eye! What'sthe rumpus now--the kettle o' fish?"
It was a shriek from one girl--half-a-dozen girls. It was a loud hiss,almost a whistle, from some pallid vegetation near the lake-edge. It wasa black snake rearing a blue-black head and glittering eye within threefeet of Una Grosvenor, novice among Camp Fire Girls, whose scream toreat the very stones of Tory Cave until they cried out in echo.
It was a dozen green-clad girls scattering wildly this way and that,olive-green aspen leaves tossing in a whirlwind, shuffling from pillarto post--from rock to darkling rock.
It was--it was a powerful reptile form, in armor of jetty scales,trailing its six-foot length away, the noise of its mighty tail-blowsagainst the earth and flying pebbles calling all the Dumps--the DolefulDumps--out of the dens where they hid here, making them take strange andshadowy shapes, gigantic shapes, of threat.
"Let me get out! Oh-h! I want to get out, away--anywhere!" shudderedUna. "This is no-o fun."
"Yes! it is--once you get used to it," laughed Pemrose, who--togetherwith the Jack at a Pinch still hovering near--liked her excitement warm."Look--_look_ at him crimp himself along! Ever--ever see anythingso crooked?" as the great muscle in the reptile's body contracted andrelaxed upon its hasty retreat. "When we girls had our War Garden, ayear ago, an old farmer said we planted our potato rows so straight thathe 'vummed 'twould make a black snake seasick to cross from one to theother.'"
"Ha! Because he just naturally has to go ajee!" laughed her scoutknight, estimating the length of that scaly corkscrew, if uncoiled, withhis eye. "Pshaw! I've tamed 'em--and killed 'em, too," he added.
"Yes! a black snake wouldn't harm you, even if he did bite." Pem wasstill reassuring her friend. "Did you hear him whistle?... But--butwhat's that?" It was just half a minute later that she put the question."He isn't making that noise with his tail still; is he?"
She looked at Stud. Under the ruby eye of the lamp his face--the face ofa Sto
utheart--had turned suddenly pea-green.
His eyes were fixed upon a gleam of bloated yellow dimly seen, under thelee of a rock, not very many yards away--the venomous, pale yellow ofthe dropsical cave fungi.
"Why--why! it's only one of those horrid, blowzy, mushroom things. But_what's_ the noise--like--like somebody rattling little marbles,dry peas?"
The girl felt her own breath go ratatat as she put the question.
"Oh-h! only some fellow rattling--rattling--beans in his pocket. Let'sget away--quick!"
And then Pemrose knew what it was to look upon a Stoutheart "rattled."
But, with that, a voice, a cry, not loud, but strong, exploded like aspring gun in the cave,--suddenly halting advance.
"What's that outside? What's that outside?" it whooped. "Is it anaeroplane? _Two_ aeroplanes? Oh! hurry out--and see."
"A dozen aeroplanes! A corps of aeroplanes!" boomed back those flauntingbig boys, of whom the nickum was leader, playing up to the cue of theScoutmaster who had started the concentrated cry. "Oh, hurry--hurry!"
She saw him fling his mayflowers on the ground, that strange youth, andsnatch at Una's hand, to drag her along towards the low cave entrance.He made a wide, circling movement to catch at hers, too. But she dodgedit. Never more should he play Jack at a Pinch to her! Never!
Through old Tory Cave there surged the noise of a rising wind, silencingthat weak gust afar off, now baleful, the sound of the hidden water;reverberating among the rocks, it might be taken for anything, for thehum of aircraft--for a perfect onslaught of sky cavalry!
And the Scoutmaster's cry was convincing.
Yet--yet, when boys and girls tumbled tumultuously through the caveentrance--the girls by some mysterious understanding, first--not aremote sign of a biplane, even a meager _one_, decorated the skyoverhead.
No flying wires sent down their challenge. And the hum resolved itselfinto what it was: the rising, random mockery of Ta-te, the tempest,laughing at their searching looks, going north, south, east and west,aloft, skirmishing in bewilderment to all points of the horizon.
"Hum-m. There isn't a _sign_ of a buzz-wagon! Who pulled off thatstunt--on--us?" bleated a few of the mystified younger boys, while Studsilently brushed moisture like cave-tears from his forehead.
So did the tall Scoutmaster, heavily breathing relief.
"Not an aeroplane in sight! Not a single one!" breezed the girls, allready to be angry. "Who--who put that hoax over?"
"Varnish right--and aeroplane wrong!" It was the freakish voice of anickum which answered. "No! No buzzer, as the boys say, but there was arattler, in there, beside that rock. If some of you girls had goneahead, you'd have stepped right on him!"
"A 'rattler!' A big rattlesnake! And--and you started the cry, to get usout quietly--quickly!"
"Not we! The Scoutmaster had the presence of mind to launch anaeroplane. We boomed it," came the laughing reply, as Jack at a Pinch,second fiddle now, marched off with his companions.
"Who--is he?" Pemrose caught wildly at the arm of Stud, who was wishingthat he and not those patronizing big boys had caught the Scoutmaster'scue and created airdrawn aeroplanes by the corps. "Do you--do you knowwho he is; that biggest--that gaudiest--one among them?"
"Yes! No-o! I do--an' I don't!" stammered the boyish Henkyl Hunter."I--we--" indicating his scout brothers--"have met him a couple of timesin the woods; I guess his father an' he have a camp on the opposite sideof the lake from ours. We've talked with him--tried to be friendly. Andhe--he's always jolly, you know--like now! But--but when it comes tofinding out anything about either of them, gee, you might as wellwhistle jigs to a milestone--so-o you might!"