“How do they do it?” asked Migwan.
“Well,” said Nyoda, “there is a tradition among certain tribes that if anyone refuses to tell a story when he is asked he will grow a tail like a donkey. Sometimes, however, they do not wait for Nature to perform this miracle, but fasten a tail themselves onto the one who will not entertain the crowd when he is bidden, and he must wear it until he tells a story. Their way of asking one of their number to tell one is to remark ‘There is a tail to you,’ as a delicate way of expressing the fate that will be his if he refuses.”
“Oh, what fun!” cried Sahwah.
“And now Gladys,” said Nyoda, “‘there is a tail to you.’”
Gladys placed more wood on the fire, which was burning low, and returned to her seat on the blanket. “Did I ever tell you,” she began, “about my Aunt Beatrice? She and my Uncle Lynn were visiting here from the West with my little cousin Beatrice, who was only six months old. They were staying in a big hotel downtown. One night they went to a party, leaving Beatrice in their room at the hotel in the care of her nurse. At the party there was a fortune teller who amused the guests by reading their palms. When it came my aunt’s turn the woman said to her, ‘You have had one child, who is dead.’ Everybody laughed because they knew Aunt Beatrice had never lost a baby, and little Beatrice was safe and sound in the hotel that very minute. But it worried my aunt almost to death, and she couldn’t enjoy herself the rest of the evening.
“Finally she said to my uncle, ‘I can’t stand it any longer, I must go home,’ so they left the party just as the guests were sitting down to a midnight supper, and everybody made fun of her for being such a fussy young mother. When they got downtown they found the hotel in flames and the streets blocked for a long distance around. Aunt Beatrice finally broke through the fire lines and ran right past the firemen who tried to keep her out, into the burning building, and fought her way up-stairs through the smoke to her room, where she could hear a baby crying. She was blind from the smoke and could hardly see where she was going, but she picked up a rug from the floor, wrapped it around the baby and carried her out in safety. When she got outside they found it was not little Beatrice at all that she had saved, it was a strange baby. She had mistaken the room up-stairs in the smoke and carried out someone else’s child. The building collapsed right after she came out and no one could go in any more. Beatrice and her nurse were lost in the fire.” A murmur of horrified sympathy went around the circle in the tepee. “And,” continued Gladys, “my Aunt Beatrice has never been herself since. She can’t bear even to see a baby.”
“Is that the reason you wouldn’t let me bring Marian Simpson’s baby over the day she left it with me to take care of?” asked Hinpoha. “I remember you said your aunt was visiting you.”
“Yes, that was why,” said Gladys. “And now, Mr. Landsdowne,” she added, “‘there is a tail to you!’”
Farmer Landsdowne stared thoughtfully into the fire for a moment, and then a reminiscent smile began to wrinkle the corners of his eyes. “Would you like to hear a story about the old house?” he asked.
“You mean Onoway House?” asked Migwan.
Mr. Landsdowne nodded. “Only it seems strange to be calling it ‘Onoway House.’ It has always been known as ‘Waterhouse’s Place,’ because old Deacon Waterhouse built it. Well, like most old houses, there are different stories told about it, but whether they are true or not, no one knows. People are so apt to believe anything they want to believe. Well, I started out to tell you the story about the gas well. But before I tell you about the gas well I suppose I ought to tell you about the Deacon’s son. Mind you, the things I am telling you are only what I have heard from the folks around here; I never knew Deacon Waterhouse. He was dead and the house empty before the farm was split up, and it wasn’t until the part that I now own was offered for sale that I ever came into this neighborhood. Well, to return to the Deacon’s son. They say that there never was a finer looking young fellow than Charley Waterhouse. He was a regular prince among the country boys. But he didn’t care a rap about farming. All he wanted to do was read; that and take the horse and buggy and drive to town. The old Deacon was terribly disappointed, of course, for Charley was his only son, and he couldn’t see that the boy wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. He railed about his love of books and wouldn’t give him money for schooling. Charley stood it until he was eighteen and then he ran away, after forging the Deacon’s name to a check. The folks around here never saw him again. Mrs. Waterhouse died of a broken heart, they say. They also say,” he added with a twinkle in his eye, “that she died before she had her attic cleaned, and that her ghost comes back at night and sets the old furniture straight up there.” Migwan and Hinpoha exchanged glances.
“Now about the gas well,” resumed Mr. Landsdowne. “The Deacon was digging for water on the farm. The old well had dried up during a long, hot spell and he was bound to go deep enough this time. Down they went—two, three hundred feet, and still no good water. The ground had turned into slate and shale. The well digger lit a match down in the hole when suddenly there was a terrific explosion which caved in the sides of the well and all the dirt which was piled around the outside slid in again, completely filling it up. A vein of gas had been struck. That very day the Deacon received word that his son was in San Francisco, dying, and wanted to see him. He forgot his anger over Charley’s disgrace and started west that very night. He never came back. He stayed in San Francisco a whole year and then died out there. While he was there he mentioned the gas well to several people, or they say he did, and that’s how the story got round. But if such a thing did happen, there was never any trace of it afterward. Personally I do not believe it ever happened. But superstitious folks around here say they can still hear the buried well digger striking with his pick against the earth that covers him.”
“Two ghosts at Onoway House!” said Nyoda, “we are uncommonly well supplied,” and the girls shivered and drew near together in mock fear. Thus, with various stories the evening wore away, until Farmer Landsdowne, looking at his big, old-fashioned silver watch with a start, remarked that he should have been in bed an hour ago, whereupon the company broke up. Calvin Smalley went home reluctantly. That evening spent by the fire in the tepee had been a sort of wonderland to him, unused as he was to family festivities of any kind.
Nyoda lingered after the rest had gone to see that the fire in the tepee was properly extinguished. As she watched the glowing embers turn black one by one she became aware of a figure standing in the doorway. The moonlight fell directly on it and she could see that it was robed in flowing white, and instead of a face there was a hideous death’s head. Horribly startled at first she recovered her composure when she remembered that she was living in a household which were given to playing jokes on each other. Flinging up her hands in mock terror, she recited dramatically,
“Art thou some angel, some devil, or some ghost?” The figure in the doorway never moved. Nyoda picked up the thick stick with which she had stirred the fire and rushed upon the ghost as if she intended to beat it to a pulp. It flung out its arm, covered with the flowing drapery, and Nyoda dropped her weapon and staggered back against the side of the tepee, sneezing with terrible violence, her eyes smarting and watering horribly. When the force of the paroxysm had spent itself and she could open her eyes again the ghost had vanished. Blind and choking, she made her way back to the house, intent on finding out who the ghost was, who had thrown red pepper into her eyes. That it was none of the dwellers at Onoway House was clear. The girls were already partly undressed, Ophelia was in bed, and Tom was taking a foot-bath in the kitchen under the watchful supervision of his mother to see that he got himself clean. A chorus of indignation rose on every side at the outrage, when Nyoda had told her tale.
“Could it have been Calvin Smalley?” somebody asked. But this no one would believe. The boy was too gentle and manly, and too evidently delighted with his new neighbors to have done such a dastardly deed. Then who had dressed up as a ghost and thrown red pepper at Nyoda in the tepee?
CHAPTER V.—SAHWAH MAKES A DISCOVERY.
As there was no one of their acquaintance whom they could suspect of being the ghost, the trick was laid at the door of some unknown dweller along the road with a fondness for horseplay. The girls spent the morning working quietly in the garden, and in the afternoon they went to the city in Gladys’s automobile, all but Sahwah, who wanted to work on a waist she was making. Then, after the automobile was out of sight she discovered that she did not have the right kind of thread and could not work on it after all. With the prospect of a whole afternoon to herself, she decided to take a long walk. The Bartlett farm was not very large and she was soon at its boundary, and over on the Smalley property. In contrast to their little orchard and garden and meadow, the Smalley farm stretched out as far as she could see, with great corn and wheat fields, and acres of timber land. Somewhere on the place Calvin Smalley was working, and Sahwah made up her mind to find him and ask him over to Onoway House that night. But the extent of the Smalley farm was ninety-seven acres, and it was not so easy to find a person on it when one had no definite knowledge of that person’s whereabouts. Sahwah walked and walked and walked, up one field and down another, shading her eyes with her hand to catch sight of the figure she was looking for. But Calvin was somewhere near the center of the cornfield, stooping near the ground, and the high stalks waved over his head and concealed him completely. Sahwah passed by without discovering him and crossed an open field that was lying fallow. Beyond this was a strip of marsh land which was practically impassable. Under ordinary circumstances Sahwah would have turned back, but being badly in want of something better to do she tried to cross it. She had seen two boards lying in the field, and securing these she laid them down on the treacherous mud, and by standing on one and laying the other down in front of her and then advancing to that one she actually got across in safety.
On the other side of the bog she spied a little clump of trees and headed toward them, for the sun was very hot in the open and the thought of a rest in the shade was attractive. When she came nearer she saw that this little copse sheltered a cottage, old and weatherbeaten and evidently deserted. Weeds grew around it, higher than the steps and the floor of the porch, and the crumbling chimney, which ran up on the outside of the house, was covered with a thick growth of Japanese ivy. “It’s a regular House in the Woods,” said Sahwah to herself, “only there are no dwarfs. I wonder what it’s like inside,” she went on in her thoughts. “Maybe we could come here sometime and build a fire—there must be a fireplace somewhere because there’s a chimney—and have a Ceremonial Meeting or a picnic. How delightfully private it is!” The trees hid the house from view until one almost stumbled upon it, and then the marsh and the broad vacant field stretched between it and the farm, and behind it was the river, its banks hidden by a thick growth of willows and alders, so that the cottage was not visible to a person coming along the river in a boat. There was not a sound to be heard anywhere except the zig-a-zig of the grasshoppers in the field and the swish of the hidden water as it flowed over the stones. “A grand place to have a secret meeting of the Winnebagos,” said Sahwah to herself, “where we wouldn’t always be interrupted by Ophelia pounding on the door and wanting to come in. I wonder if it’s open?”
She stepped up on the porch and tried the door. It was locked. She peered into the window. The room she saw was absolutely empty. She could not see whether there was a fireplace or not. She was seized with a desire to enter that cottage. It was deserted and tumble down and fascinating. Whoever owned it—if anyone did, for she was not sure whether it stood on the Smalley property or not—had evidently abandoned it to the elements. There was no harm at all in trying to get in. She pushed on the window. It apparently was also locked. But she pushed again and this time she heard a crack. The rotten wood was splitting away from the rusty catch. She pushed again and the window slid up. She stepped over the sill into the room.
The window was so thick with dirt that the light seemed dim inside. At one end of the room there was an open fireplace, long unused, with the mortar falling out between the bricks. There was another door in the wall opposite the front door, so evidently there was another room beyond. This door was also locked, but the key was in the lock and it turned readily under her hand and the door swung open. Sahwah stood still in surprise. This room was as full of furniture as the other had been empty. Around all four walls stood cabinets and bookcases, and besides these there was a couch, a desk, a table and several chairs. The table was covered with screws, little wheels and the works of clocks, and before it sat an old man, busily working with them. He had on a long, shabby grey dressing-gown and a high silk hat on his head. He did not look up as she opened the door, but went right on working, apparently oblivious to her presence. She stared at him in amazement for a moment, and then, remembering her manners, realized that she had deliberately walked into a gentleman’s room without knocking.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, in embarrassment, “I didn’t know there was anyone here.”
The old man looked up and saw her standing in the doorway. “Come in, come in,” he said, affably, in a deep voice. Sahwah took a step into the room. The old man went back to his wheels and rods and took no more notice of her.
“What is that you’re making?” asked Sahwah, curiously.
“It’s a long story,” said the man, taking off his hat, pulling a handkerchief out of it and putting it back on his head, and then falling to work again.
“Must be a genius,” thought Sahwah, “that’s what makes him act so queerly.” She waited a few minutes in silence and then curiosity got the better of her. “Is it too long to tell?” she asked.
“Eh? What’s that?” asked the man, turning toward her. He took off his hat, put his handkerchief back in again and then put the hat back on his head.
“I asked you,” said Sahwah, politely, “if the story of what you are making is too long to tell.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said the man, and resumed his work without another word.
“How impolite!” thought Sahwah. “To urge me to stay and then refuse to answer my questions.” Her eyes strayed around the room at the bookcases and cabinets. Every cabinet was filled with clocks or parts of clocks. The books as far as she could see were all about machinery. One was a book of such astounding width of binding that she leaned over to read the title. The letters were so faded that they were hardly visible. “L,” she read, “E, F, E——”
“It’s a machine for saving time,” said the man at the table, so suddenly that Sahwah jumped.
“How interesting!” she said. “How does it work?”
The man fitted a rod into a wheel and apparently forgot her existence. She sat silent a few minutes more and then decided she had better go home. She rose softly to her feet. “It’s something like a clock,” said the man, without looking up from his work.
“It’s coming after all,” she thought, and sat down again.
After a silence of about five minutes the man spoke again. “It measures the time just like any clock,” he explained, “only, as the minutes are ticked off, they are thrown into a little compartment at the side,—this thing,” he said, holding up a little metal box. He lapsed into silence again and after an interval resumed where he had left off. “This compartment,” he said, “holds just an hour, and when it is full a bell rings and the compartment opens automatically, throwing the block of time, carefully wrapped to prevent leakage of seconds, out into this basket.” He took off his hat, brought out his handkerchief, polished a bit of glass with it, put it carefully back into the crown and replaced the hat on his head.
It suddenly came over Sahwah that her ingenious host was not quite right in his mind, so rising abruptly she hastened out of the room. The man took no notice of her departure. She locked the door carefully after her, and went out by the window whence she had entered the house, pulling it shut from the outside. She did not undertake to cross the marsh again, but made a wide detour around it. When she was once more in the fallow field she looked back, but the house was invisible among the trees and bushes which surrounded it. As she sped past the rows of standing corn on her way home, Abner Smalley, bending low among them, saw her and straightened up with a suspicious look in his eyes. He glanced in the direction from which she had come. On one side was the empty field bordered by the marsh and the woody copse, and on the other was the path from the river which went in the direction of Onoway House. He breathed a sigh of relief. The girl had come from the direction of Onoway House, of course. The next day he put his bull to graze in the empty field before the copse. Then, in different places along the rail fence which enclosed this field he put signs reading: BEWARE THE BULL. HE IS UGLY.
When the girls came back from town Sahwah told her discovery. “Nyoda,” said Gladys, suddenly, “do you suppose it could have been this man who threw the pepper at you?”
“Perhaps,” said Nyoda, and all the girls shuddered at the thought. Before Sahwah’s discovery they had agreed among themselves to say nothing about the ghost episode to anyone outside the family, so that the perpetrator of the joke, if he were one of the farmer boys living near, would not have the satisfaction of knowing that they were wrought up about it. In the meantime they would send Tom to get acquainted with all the boys on the road and try to find out something about it from them.
Calvin Smalley was over that evening and something was said about Sahwah’s adventure of the afternoon. “Calvin,” said Nyoda, directly, “who is the old man who lives in that house?”
Calvin looked very much distressed, and frightened too, it must be admitted. Then he laughed, although to Nyoda his laugh seemed a trifle forced, and said in his usual straightforward manner, “The man in the old house among the trees? That is my great uncle Peter, grandfather’s brother. He was something of an inventer and invented a time clock, but the patent was stolen by another and he never got the credit for inventing it. He worried about it until his mind became unbalanced. For years he has worked around with wheels and things, making strange contrivances for clocks. He is perfectly harmless and wouldn’t hurt a fly. He will not live in a house with people and he will not leave the cottage he lives in even for an hour, he is so afraid something will happen to his machine while he is away. We don’t like to have people know that he is there because they would say we ought to send him away, but Uncle Abner won’t do that because Uncle Peter hates to be with folks and he might not be allowed to play with his machine in an institution the way he can here. So as long as he is happy what is the difference? But you know how country people talk. So would it be asking a great deal to request you not to say anything about this to anyone, not even the Landsdownes? If Uncle Abner ever found out you knew he would be very angry, and would sure think I told you. I don’t see how you ever got in, anyway; the door is usually kept locked, and to all appearances the house is empty.” Sahwah looked decidedly uncomfortable as she met the eyes of several of the girls, but no one mentioned the manner in which she had gained entrance. Inasmuch as she had pried into this secret she felt it was no more than right to promise to keep it.
“All right, we won’t say anything,” she said, reassuringly. All the others gave an equally solemn promise, and were glad that Ophelia had heard none of the talk about the matter, for she had been over at the Landsdowne’s since before Sahwah told her adventure. Little pitchers have wide mouths as well as big ears.
The girls all looked at each other when Calvin asserted that his Uncle Peter never left the house even for an hour. Clearly then, he had not been the ghost.
Migwan had bad dreams that night. Just before going to bed she had been reading a volume of Poe, which is not the most sleep producing literature known. She dreamed that she was lying awake in her bed, looking at a big square of moonlight on the floor, when suddenly a black shadow fell across it, and the figure of a monkey appeared on the windowsill, stood there a moment and then jumped into the room. Shuddering with fright she woke up, and could hardly rid herself of the impression of the dream, it had seemed so real. There was a big square of moonlight on the floor. “I must have seen it in my sleep,” she thought, “it’s exactly like the one in my dream.” She lay wondering if it were possible to see things with your eyes closed, when all of a sudden her heart began to thump madly. Into the moonlight there was creeping a black shadow. It remained still for a few seconds, a grotesque-shaped thing with a long tail, and then something came hurtling through the window and landed on the floor beside the bed. Migwan gave a scream that roused the house. Hinpoha, starting up wildly, jumped from bed and landed squarely on the black specter on the floor. The form struggled and squirmed and sent forth a long wailing ME-OW-W-W.
“What is the matter?” cried Nyoda and Gladys and Betty and Sahwah, running to the rescue.
“It’s a cat!” said Migwan, faintly. “I thought it was a monkey!”
“Moral: Don’t read Poe before going to bed,” said Nyoda, while the rest shouted with laughter at the cause of Migwan’s fright.
“It must have jumped in from the tree,” said Hinpoha. “I see our screen has fallen out.”
There was little sleep in the house the rest of the night. During the time when the screen was out of the window the room had filled with mosquitoes, which soon found their way to the rest of the rooms. “If you offered me the choice of sleeping in a room with a monkey or a swarm of mosquitoes, I believe I’d take the monkey,” said Nyoda, slapping viciously. Altogether it was a heavy-eyed group that came down to breakfast the next morning.
“What are we going to do to-day?” asked Gladys.
“The usual thing,” said Migwan, “pull weeds. That is, I am. You girls don’t need to help all the time. I don’t want you to think of my garden as merely a lot of weeds to be forever pulled. I want you to remember only the beautiful part of it.”
“We don’t mind pulling weeds,” cried the girls, stoutly, “it’s fun when we all do it together,” and they fell to work with a will.
“I declare,” said Migwan, “I have become so zealous in the pursuit of weeds that I mechanically start to pull them along the roadside. I actually believe that if a weed grew on my grave I’d rise up and eradicate it. I little thought when I proudly won an honor last summer for identifying ten different weeds that they’d get to haunting my dreams the way they do now. Now I know what people mean when they say ‘meaner than pusley.’ It’s the meanest thing I’ve ever dealt with. I cut off and pull up every trace of it one day and the next day there it is again, just as flourishing as ever.”
“I don’t call that meanness,” said Nyoda, “that’s just cheerful persistence. Think what a success we’d all be in life if we got ahead in the face of obstacles in that way. If I didn’t already have a perfectly good symbol I’d take pusley for mine. If it were edible I think I’d use it as an exclusive article of diet for a time and see if I couldn’t absorb some of its characteristics.”
While she was talking Ophelia came along with a frog on a shovel, which she proceeded to throw over the fence. “Come back with that frog,” said Migwan, “I need him in my business. Don’t you know that frogs eat the insects off the plants and we have that many less to kill?” Ophelia was standing in the strong sunlight, and Nyoda noticed that the circle of light hair on her head was still golden clear to the roots, although the ringlets were visibly growing.
“It must be a freak of Nature,” she concluded, “for it certainly isn’t bleached.”
Rest at Onoway House was again doomed to be broken that night. Nyoda had been peacefully sleeping for some time when she woke up at the touch of something cold upon her face. She started up and the feeling disappeared. She went to sleep again, thinking she had been dreaming. Soon the feeling came again, as of something cold lying on her forehead. She put up her hand and encountered a cold and knobby object. At her touch the thing—whatever it was—jumped away. She sprang out of bed and lit the lamp. The sight that met her eyes as she looked around the room made her pinch herself to see if she were really awake and not in the midst of some nightmare. All over the floor, chairs, table, beds, bureau and wash-stand sat frogs; big frogs, little frogs, medium-sized frogs; all goggling solemnly at her in the lamplight. She stared open mouthed at the apparition. Could this be another Plague of Frogs, she asked herself, such as was visited upon Pharaoh? At her horrified exclamation Gladys woke up, gave one look around the room and dove under the bedclothes with a wild yell. To her excited eyes it looked as if there were a million frogs in the room.
“What’s the matter?” asked Ophelia, sitting up in bed and staring around her sleepily.
“Don’t you see the frogs?” cried Nyoda.
“Sure I see them,” said Ophelia. “Aren’t you glad I got so many?”
“Ophelia!” gasped Nyoda, “did you bring those frogs in here?”
“Betcher I did,” said Ophelia, with pride, “and it took me most all afternoon to catch the whole sackful, too. What’s wrong?” she asked, as she saw the expression on Nyoda’s face. “Yer said they’d eat the bugs and yer made such a fuss about the mosquitoes last night that I brought the toads to eat them while we slept.” Nyoda dropped limply into a chair. The inspirations of Ophelia surpassed anything she had ever read in fiction.
If anybody has ever tried to catch a roomful of frogs that were not anxious to be caught they can appreciate the chase that went on at Onoway House that night. The first faint streaks of dawn were appearing in the sky before the family finally retired once more. Sufficient to say that Ophelia never set up another mosquito trap made of frogs.
CHAPTER VI.—THE WINNEBAGOS SCENT A PLOT.
“Where are you going, my pretty maid, and why the step ladder?” said Nyoda to Migwan one morning. “Have your beans grown up so high over night that you have to climb a ladder to pick them?”
“Come and see!” said Migwan, mysteriously. Nyoda followed her to the front lawn. Migwan set the ladder up beside a dead tree, from which the branches had been sawn, leaving a slender trunk about seven feet high. On top of this Migwan proceeded to nail a flat board.
“Are you going to live on a pillar, like St. Simeon Stylites?” asked Nyoda, curiously, as Migwan mounted the ladder with a basin of water in her hand.
“O come, Nyoda,” said Migwan, “don’t you know a bird bathtub when you see one?”
“A bathtub, is it?” said Nyoda. “Now I breathe easily again. But why so extremely near the earth?”
Migwan laughed at her chaffing. “You have to put them high up,” she explained, “or else the cats get the birds when they are bathing. Mr. Landsdowne told me how to make it.” The other girls wandered out and inspected the drinking fountain-bathtub. Hinpoha closed one eye and looked critically at the outfit.
“Doesn’t it strike you as being a little inharmonious?” she asked. “Black stump, unfinished wood platform, and blue enamel basin.”
“Paint the platform and basin dark green,” said Sahwah, the practical. “There is some green paint down cellar, I saw it. Let me paint it. I can do that much for the birds, even if I didn’t think of building them a drinking fountain.” She sped after the paint and soon transformed the offending articles so that they blended harmoniously with the surroundings.
“It’s better now,” said Nyoda, thoughtfully, “but it’s still crude and unbeautiful. What is wrong?”
“I know,” said Hinpoha, the artistic one. “It’s too bare. It looks like a hat without any trimming. What it needs is vines around it.”
“The very thing!” exclaimed Migwan. “I’ll plant climbing nasturtiums and train them to go up the pole and wind around the basin, so it will look like a fountain.”
“Four heads are better than one,” observed Nyoda, as the seeds were planted, “when they are all looking in the same direction.”
Just then a young man came up the path from the road. “May I use your telephone?” he asked, courteously raising his hat. He spoke with a slight foreign accent.
“Certainly you may,” said Migwan, going with him into the house. She could not help hearing what he said. He called up a number in town and when he had his connection, said, “This is Larue talking. We are going to do it on the Centerville Road. There is a river near.” That was all. He rang off, thanked Migwan politely and walked off down the road. The incident was forgotten for a time.
That afternoon Gladys was coming home in the automobile. At the turn in the road just before you came to Onoway House there was a car stalled. The driver, a young and pretty woman, was apparently in great perplexity what to do. “Can I help you?” asked Gladys, stopping her machine.
“I don’t know what’s the matter,” said the young woman, “but I can’t get the car started. I’m afraid I’ll have to be towed to a garage. Do you know of anyone around here who has a team of horses?”
Gladys looked at the starting apparatus of the other car, but it was a different make from hers and she knew nothing about it. “Would you like to have me tow you to our barn?” she asked. “There is a man up the road who fixes automobiles for a great many people who drive through here and I could get him to come over.”
The young woman appeared much relieved. “If you would be so kind it would be a great favor,” she said, “for I am in haste to-day.”
Gladys towed the car to the barn at Onoway House and phoned for the car tinker. The young woman, who introduced herself as Miss Mortimer, was a very pleasant person indeed, and quite won the hearts of the girls. She was delighted with Onoway House, both with the name and the house itself, and asked to be shown all over it, from garret to cellar. “How near that tree is to the window!” she said, as she looked out of the attic window into the branches of the big Balm of Gilead tree that grew beside the house, close to Migwan and Hinpoha’s bedroom. It was much higher than the house and its branches drooped down on the roof. “How do you ever move about up here with all this furniture?” asked Miss Mortimer.
“Oh,” answered Migwan, “we never come up here.”
The barn likewise struck the visitor’s fancy, with its big empty lofts, and she fell absolutely in love with the river. The girls took her for a ride on the raft, and she amused herself by sounding the depth of the water with the pole. They could see that she was experienced in handling boats from the way she steered the raft. The girls were so charmed with her that they felt a keen regret when the neighborhood tinker announced that the car was in running shape again.
“I’ve had a lovely time, girls,” said Miss Mortimer, shaking the hand of each in farewell. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“Come and see us again, if you are ever passing this way,” said Migwan, cordially.
“You may possibly see me again,” said Miss Mortimer, half to herself, as she got into her machine and drove away.
There was no moon that night and the cloud-covered sky hinted at approaching rain, but Sahwah wanted to go out on the river on the raft, so Nyoda and Migwan and Hinpoha and Gladys went with her. It was too dark to play any kind of games and the girls were too tired and breathless from the hot day to sing, so they floated down-stream in lazy silence, watching the shapeless outlines made against the dull sky by the trees and bushes along the banks. On the other side of Farmer Landsdowne’s place there was an abandoned farm. The house had stood empty for many years, its cheerless windows brooding in the sunlight and glaring in the moonlight. Just as they did with every other vacant house, the Winnebagos nicknamed this one the Haunted House, and vied with each other in describing the queer noises they had heard issuing from it and the ghosts they had seen walking up and down the porch. As they passed this place, gliding silently along the river, they were surprised to see an automobile standing beside the house, at the little side porch, in the shadow of a row of tall trees.
“The ghosts are getting prosperous,” whispered Migwan, “they have bought an automobile to do their nightly wandering in. Pretty soon we can’t say that ghosts ‘walk’ any more. Ah, here come the ghosts.”
From the side door of the house came two men, who proceeded to lift various boxes from under the seats of the car and carry them into the house. Then they lifted out a small keg, which the girls could not help noticing they handled with greater care than they had the boxes. The wind was blowing toward the river, and the girls distinctly heard one man say to the other, “Be careful now, you know what will happen if we drop this.”
“I’m being as careful as I can,” answered the second man.
After a few seconds the first one spoke again. “When’s Belle coming?”
“She arrived in town to-day,” said his partner.
When they had gone into the house this time the machine suddenly drove away, revealing the presence of a third man at the wheel, whom the girls had not noticed before this. The two men stayed in the house.
“What on earth can be happening there?” said Sahwah.
“It certainly does look suspicious,” said Nyoda.
They waited there in the shadow of the willows for a long time to see what would happen next, but nothing did. The house stood blank and silent and apparently as empty as ever. Not a glimmer of light was visible anywhere. Sahwah and Nyoda were just on the point of getting into the rowboat, which had been tied on behind the raft, and towing the other girls back home, when their ears caught the sound of a faint splashing, like the sound made by the dipping of an oar. They were completely hidden from sight either up or down the river, for just at this point a portion of the bank had caved in, and the water filling up the hole had made a deep indentation in the shore line, and into this miniature bay the Tortoise-Crab had been steered. The thick willows along the bank formed a screen between them and the stream above and below. But they could look between the branches and see what was coming up stream, from the direction of the lake. It was a rowboat, containing two persons. The scudding clouds parted at intervals and the moon shone through, and by its fitful light they could see that one of these persons was a woman. When the rowboat was almost directly behind the house it came to a halt, only a few yards from the place where the Winnebagos lay concealed.
“This is the house,” said the man.
“I told you the water was deep enough up this far,” said the woman, in a tone of satisfaction. Just then the moon shone out for a brief instant, and the Winnebagos looked at each other in surprise. The woman, or rather the girl, in the rowboat was Miss Mortimer, who had been their guest only that day. The next moment she spoke. “We might as well go back now. There isn’t anything more we can do. I just wanted to prove to you that it could be towed up the river this far without danger.”
“All right, Belle,” replied the man, and at the sound of his voice Migwan pricked up her ears. There was something vaguely familiar about it; something which eluded her at the moment. The rowboat turned in the river and proceeded rapidly down-stream. The Winnebagos returned home, full of excitement and wonder.
The barn at Onoway House stood halfway between the house and the river. As they landed from the raft and were tying it to the post they saw a man come out of the barn and disappear among the bushes that grew nearby. It was too dark to see him with any degree of distinctness. Gladys’s thought leaped immediately to her car, which was left in the barn. “Somebody’s trying to steal the car!” she cried, and they all hastened to the barn. The automobile stood undisturbed in its place. They made a hasty search with lanterns, but as far as they could see, none of the gardening tools were missing. Satisfied that no damage had been done, they went into the house.
“Probably a tramp,” said Mrs. Gardiner, when the facts were told her. “He evidently thought he would sleep in the barn, and then changed his mind for some reason or other.”
Migwan lay awake a long time trying to place the voice of the man in the rowboat. Just as she was sinking off to sleep it came to her. The voice she had heard in the darkness had a slightly foreign accent, and was the voice of the man who had used the telephone that morning.
Sometime during the night Onoway House was wakened by the sounds of a terrific thunder storm. The girls flew around shutting windows. After a few minutes of driving rain against the window panes the sound changed. It became a sharp clattering. “Hail!” said Sahwah.
“Oh, my young plants!” cried Migwan. “They will be pounded to pieces.”
“Cover them with sheets and blankets!” suggested Nyoda. With their accustomed swiftness of action the Winnebagos snatched up everything in the house that was available for the purpose and ran out into the garden, and spread the covers over the beds in a manner which would keep the tender young plants from being pounded to pieces by the hailstones. Migwan herself ran down to the farthest bed, which was somewhat separated from the others. As she raced to save it from destruction she suddenly ran squarely into someone who was standing in the garden. She had only time to see that it was a man, when, with a muffled exclamation of alarm he disappeared into space. Disappeared is the only word for it. He did not run, he never reached the cover of the bushes; he simply vanished off the face of the earth. One moment he was and the next moment he was not. Much excited, Migwan ran back to the others and told her story, only to be laughed at and told she was seeing things and had lurking men on the brain. The thing was so queer and uncanny that she began to wonder herself if she had been fully awake at the time, and if she might not possibly have dreamed the whole thing.
The morning dawned fresh and fair after the shower, green and gold with the sun on the garden, and Migwan’s delight at finding the tender little plants unharmed, thanks to their timely covering, was inclined to thrust the mysterious goings-on at the empty house the night before into secondary place in her mind. But she was not allowed to forget it, for it was the sole topic of conversation at the breakfast table. Gladys, with her nose buried in the morning paper, suddenly looked up. “Listen to this,” she said, and then began to read: “Another dynamite plot unearthed. Society for the purpose of assassinating men prominent in affairs and dynamiting large buildings discovered in attempt to blow up the Court House. An attempt to blow up the new Court House was frustrated yesterday when George Brown, one of the custodians, saw a man crouching in the engine room and ordered him out. A search revealed the fact that dynamite had been placed on the floor and attached to a fuse. On being arrested the man confessed that he was a member of the famous Venoti gang, operating in the various large cities. The man is being held without bail, but the head of the gang, Dante Venoti, is still at large, and so is his wife, Bella, who aids him in all his activities. No clue to their whereabouts can be found.”
“Do you suppose,” said Gladys, laying the paper down, “that those men we saw last night could belong to that gang? You remember how carefully they carried the keg into the house, as if it contained some explosive. They couldn’t have any business there or they wouldn’t have come at night. And they called the woman in the boat ‘Belle,’ or it might have been ‘Bella.’”
“And that man in the boat was the same one who came here and used the telephone yesterday morning,” said Migwan. “I couldn’t help noticing his foreign accent. He said, ‘We are going to do it on the Centerville Road. There is a river near.’ What are they going to do on the Centerville Road?”
The garden work was neglected while the girls discussed the matter. “And the man we saw coming out of the barn when we came home,” said Sahwah, “he probably had something to do with it, too.”
“And the man I saw in the garden in the middle of the night,” said Migwan.
“If you did see a man,” said Nyoda, somewhat doubtfully. Migwan did not insist upon her story. What was the use, when she had no proof, and the thing had been so uncanny?
They were all moved to real grief over the fact that the delightful Miss Mortimer should have a hand in such a dark business—in fact, was undoubtedly the famous Bella Venoti herself. “I can’t believe it,” said Migwan, “she was so jolly and friendly, and was so charmed with Onoway House.”
“I wonder why she wanted to go through it from attic to cellar,” said Sahwah, shrewdly. “Could she have had some purpose? Migwan!” she cried, jumping up suddenly, “don’t you remember that she said, ‘How near that tree is to the window’? Could she have been thinking that it would be easy to climb in there? And when she asked how we ever moved about with all that furniture up there, you said, ‘We never come up here’! Don’t you see what we’ve done? We’ve given her a chance to look the house over and find a place where people could hide if they wanted to, and as much as told her that they would be safe up here because we never came up.”
Consternation reigned at this speech of Sahwah’s. The girls remembered the incident only too well. “I’ll never be able to trust anyone again,” said Migwan, near to tears, for she had conceived a great liking for the young woman she had known as “Miss Mortimer.”
“Do you remember,” pursued Sahwah, “how she took the pole of the raft and found out how deep the water was all along, and then afterwards she said to the man in the boat, ‘I told you it was deep enough.’ Everything she did at our house was a sort of investigation.”
“But it was only by accident that she got to Onoway House in the first place,” said Gladys. “All she did was ask me to tell her where she could get a team of horses to tow her to a garage. She didn’t know I belonged to Onoway House. It was I who brought her here, and she only stayed because we asked her to. It doesn’t look as if she had any serious intentions of investigating the neighborhood. She said she was in a hurry to go on.” Migwan brightened visibly at this. She clutched eagerly at any hope that Miss Mortimer might be innocent after all.
“How do you know that that breakdown in the road was accidental?” asked Nyoda. “And how can you be sure that she didn’t know you came from Onoway House? She may have been looking for a pretense to come here and you played right into her hands by offering to tow her into the barn.” Migwan’s hope flickered and went out.
“And the man in the barn,” said Sahwah, knowingly, “he might have come to look the automobile over and become familiar with the way the barn door opened, so he could get into the car and drive away in a hurry if he wanted to get away.” Taken all in all, there was only one conclusion the girls could come to, and that was that there was something suspicious going on in the neighborhood, and it looked very much as if the Venoti gang were hiding explosives in the empty house and were planning to bring something else; what it was they could not guess. At all events, something must be done about it. Nyoda called up the police in town and told briefly what they had seen and heard, and was told that plain clothes men would be sent out to watch the empty house. When she described the man who had called and used the telephone, the police officer gave an exclamation of satisfaction.
“That description fits Venoti closely,” he said. “He used to have a mustache, but he could very easily have shaved it off. It’s very possible that it was he. He’s done that trick before; asked to use people’s telephones as a means of getting into the house.”
The girls thrilled at the thought of having seen the famous anarchist so close. “Hadn’t we better tell the Landsdownes about it?” asked Migwan. “They are in a better position to watch that house from their windows than we are.”
“You’re right,” said Nyoda. “And we ought to tell the Smalleys, too, so they will be on their guard and ready to help the police if it is necessary.”
“I hate to go over there,” said Migwan, “I don’t like Mr. Smalley.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” said Nyoda, firmly. “The fact that he is fearfully stingy and grasping has no bearing on this case. He has a right to know it if his property is in danger.” And she proceeded forthwith to the Red House.
Mr. Smalley was inclined to pooh-pooh the whole affair as the imagination of a houseful of women. “Saw a man running out of your barn, did you?” he asked, showing some interest in this part of the tale. “Well now, come to think of it,” he said, “I saw someone sneaking around ours too, last night. But I didn’t think much of it. That’s happened before. It’s usually chicken thieves. I keep a big dog in the barn and they think twice about breaking in after they hear him bark, and you haven’t any chickens, that’s why nothing was touched.” It was a very simple explanation of the presence of the man in the barn, but still it did not satisfy Nyoda. She could not help connecting it in some way with the occurrences in the vacant house.
Mr. Landsdowne was very much interested and excited at the story when it was told to him. “There’s probably a whole lot more to it than we know,” he said, getting out his rifle and beginning to clean it. “There’s more going on in this country in the present state of affairs than most people dream of. You have notified the police? That’s good; I guess there won’t be many more secret doings in the empty house.”
As Nyoda and Migwan went home from the Landsdownes they passed a telegraph pole in the road on which a man was working. Silhouetted against the sky as he was they could see his actions clearly. He was holding something to his ear which looked like a receiver, and with the other hand he was writing something down in a little book. Migwan looked at him curiously; then she started. “Nyoda,” she said, in a whisper, “that is the same man who used our telephone. That is Dante Venoti himself.” As if conscious that they were looking at him, the man on the pole put down the pencil, and drawing his cap, which had a large visor, down over his face, he bent his head so they could not get another look at his features. “That’s the man, all right,” said Migwan. “What do you suppose he is doing?”
“It looks,” said Nyoda, judicially, “as if he were tapping the wires for messages that are expected to pass at this time. Possibly you did not notice it, but I began to look at that man as soon as we stepped into the road from Landsdowne’s, and I saw him look at his watch and then hastily put the receiver to his ear.”
“Oh, I hope the police from town will come soon,” said Migwan, hopping nervously up and down in the road.
“Until they do come we had better keep a close watch on what goes on around here,” said Nyoda. Accordingly the Winnebagos formed themselves into a complete spy system. Migwan and Gladys and Betty and Tom took baskets and picked the raspberries that grew along the road as an excuse for watching the road and the front of the house, while Nyoda and Sahwah and Hinpoha took the raft and patrolled the river. As the girls in the road watched, the man climbed down from the pole, walked leisurely past them, went up the path to the empty house and seated himself calmly on the front steps, fanning himself with his hat, apparently an innocent line man taking a rest from the hot sun at the top of his pole.
“He’s afraid to go in with us watching him,” whispered Migwan. Just then a large automobile whirled by, stirring up clouds of dust, which temporarily blinded the girls. When they looked again toward the house the “line man” had vanished from the steps. “He’s gone inside!” said Migwan, when they saw without a doubt that he was nowhere in sight outdoors.
Meanwhile the girls on the raft, who had been keeping a sharp lookout down-stream with a pair of opera glasses, saw something approaching in the distance which arrested their attention. For a long time they could not make out what it was—it looked like a shapeless black mass. Then as they drew nearer they saw what was coming, and an exclamation of surprise burst from each one. It was a structure like a portable garage on a raft, towed by a launch. As it drew nearer still they could make out with the opera glasses that the person at the wheel was a woman, and that woman was Bella Venoti.
The hasty arrival of an automobile full of armed men who jumped out in front of the “vacant” house frightened the girls in the road nearly out of their wits, until they realized that these were the plain clothes men from town. After sizing up the house from the outside the men went up the path to the porch. The girls were watching them with a fascinated gaze, and no one saw the second automobile that was coming up the road far in the distance. One of the plain clothes men, who seemed to be the leader of the group, rapped sharply on the door of the house. There was no answer. He rapped again. This time the door was flung wide open from the inside. The girls could see that the man in the doorway was Dante Venoti. The officer of the law stepped forward. “Your little game is up, Dante Venoti,” he said, quietly, “and you are under arrest.”
Dante Venoti looked at him in open-mouthed astonishment. “Vatevaire do you mean?” he gasped. “I am under arrest? Has ze law stop ze production? Chambers, Chambers,” he called over his shoulder, “come here queek. Ze police has stop’ ze production!”
A tall, lanky, decidedly American looking individual appeared in the doorway behind him. “What the deuce!” he exclaimed, at the sight of all the men on the porch. At this moment the second automobile drove up, followed by a third and a fourth. A large number of men and women dismounted and ran up the path to the house.
“Caruthers! Simpson! Jimmy!” shouted Venoti, excitedly to the latest arrivals, “ze police has stop ze production!”
“What do you know about it!” exclaimed someone in the crowd of newcomers, evidently one of those addressed. “Where’s Belle?”
“She is bringing zeze caboose! Up ze rivaire!” cried the black haired man, wringing his hands in distress.
The plain clothes men looked over the band of people that stood around him. There was nothing about them to indicate their desperate character. Instead of being Italians as they had expected, they seemed to be mostly Americans. The leader of the policemen suddenly looked hard at Venoti. “Say,” he said, “you look like a Dago, but you don’t talk like one. Who are you, anyway?”
“I am Felix Larue,” said the black haired man, “I am ze director of ze Great Western Film Company, and zeze are all my actors. We have rent zis house and farm for ze production of ze war play ‘Ze Honor of a Soldier.’ Last night we bring some of ze properties to ze house; zey are very valuable, and Chambers and Bushbower here zey stay in ze house wiz zem.”
The plain clothes men looked at each other and started to grin. Migwan and Gladys, who had joined the company on the porch, suddenly felt unutterably foolish. “But what were you doing on top of the pole?” faltered Migwan.
Mr. Larue turned his eyes toward her. He recognized her as the girl who had allowed him to use her telephone the day before, and favored her with a polite bow. “Me,” he said, “I play ze part of ze spy in ze piece—ze villain. I tap ze wire and get ze message. I was practice for ze part zis morning.” He turned beseechingly to the policeman who had questioned him. “Zen you will not stop ze production?” he asked.
“Heavens, no,” answered the policeman. “We were going to arrest you for an anarchist, that’s all.”
The company of actors were dissolving into hysterical laughter, in which the plain clothes men joined sheepishly. Just then a young woman came around the house from the back, followed at a short distance by Nyoda, Sahwah and Hinpoha. Seeing the crowd in front she stopped in surprise. Larue went to the edge of the porch and called to her reassuringly. “Come on, Belle,” he called, gaily. When she was up on the porch he took her by the hand and led her forward. “Permit me to introduce my fellow conspirator,” he said, in a theatrical manner and with a low bow. “Zis is Belle Mortimer, ze leading lady of ze Great Western Film Company!”
CHAPTER VII.—MOVING PICTURES.
The Winnebagos looked at each other speechlessly. Belle Mortimer, the famous motion picture actress, whom they had seen on the screen dozens of times, and for whom Migwan had long entertained a secret and devouring adoration! Not Bella Venoti at all! “Did you ever?” gasped Sahwah.
“No, I never,” answered the Winnebagos, in chorus.
Miss Mortimer recognized her hostesses of the day before and greeted them warmly. “My kind friends from Onoway House,” she called them. The Winnebagos were embarrassed to death to have to explain how they had spied on the vacant house and thought the famous Venoti gang was at work, and were themselves responsible for the presence of the policemen.
“I never heard of anything so funny,” she said, laughing until the tears came. “I never heard of anything so funny!” The plain clothes men departed in their automobile, disappointed at not having made the grand capture they had expected to. “Would you like to stay with us for the day and watch us work?” asked Miss Mortimer.
“Oh, could we?” breathed Migwan. She was in the seventh heaven at the thought of being with Belle Mortimer so long. Then followed a day of delirious delight. To begin with, the Winnebagos were introduced to the whole company, many of whose names were familiar to them. Felix Larue, having gotten over the fright he had received when he thought the piece was going to be suppressed by the police for some unaccountable reason, was all smiles and amiability, and explained anything the girls wanted to know about. The piece was a very exciting one, full of thrilling incidents and danger, and the girls were held spellbound at the physical feats which some of those actors performed. The house on the raft was explained as the play progressed. It was filled with soldiers and towed up the river, to all appearances merely a garage being moved by its owner. But when a dispatch bearer of the enemy, whose family lived in the house, stopped to see them while he was carrying an important message, the soldiers rushed out from the garage, sprang ashore, seized the man along with the message and carried him away in the launch, which had been cut away from the raft while the capture was being made. Migwan thought of the tame little plots she had written the winter before and was filled with envy at the creator of this stirring play.
It took a whole week to make the film of “The Honor of a Soldier” and in that time the girls saw a great deal of Miss Mortimer. And one blessed night she stayed at Onoway House with them, instead of motoring back to the city with the rest of the company. Just as Migwan was dying of admiration for her, so she was attracted by this dreamy-eyed girl with the lofty brow. In a confidential moment Migwan confessed that she had written several motion picture plays the winter before, all of which had been rejected. “Do you mind if I see them?” asked Miss Mortimer. Much embarrassed, Migwan produced the manuscripts, written in the form outlined in the book she had bought. Miss Mortimer read them over carefully, while Migwan awaited her verdict with a beating heart.
“Well?” she asked, when Miss Mortimer had finished reading them.
“Who told you to put them in this form?” asked Miss Mortimer.
“I learned it from a book,” answered Migwan. “What do you think of them?” she asked, impatient for Miss Mortimer’s opinion.
“The idea in one of them is good, very good,” said Miss Mortimer. “This one called ‘Jerry’s Sister.’ But you have really spoiled it in the development. It takes a person familiar with the production of a film to direct the movements of the actors intelligently. If Mr. Larue, for example, had developed that piece it would be a very good one. Would you be willing to sell just the idea, if Mr. Larue thinks he can use it?”
Migwan had never thought of this before. “Why, yes,” she said, “I suppose I would. It’s certainly no good to me as it is.”
“Let me take it to Mr. Larue,” said Miss Mortimer. “I’m sure he will see the possibilities in it just as I have.” Migwan was in a transport of delight to think that her idea at least had found favor with Miss Mortimer. Miss Mortimer was as good as her word and showed the play to Mr. Larue and he agreed with her that it could be developed into a side-splitting farce comedy. Migwan was more intoxicated with that first sale of the labors of her pen than she was at any future successes, however great. Deeply inspired by this recognition of her talent, she evolved an exciting plot from the incidents which had just occurred, namely, the mistaking of the moving picture company for the Venoti gang. She kept it merely in plot form, not trying to develop it, and Mr. Larue accepted this one also. After this second success, even though the price she received for the two plots was not large, the future stretched out before Migwan like a brilliant rainbow, with a pot of gold under each end.
Miss Mortimer soon discovered that the Winnebagos were a group of Camp Fire Girls, and she immediately had an idea. When “The Honor of a Soldier” was finished Mr. Larue was going to produce a piece which called for a larger number of people than the company contained, among them a group of Camp Fire Girls. He intended hiring a number of “supers” for this play. “Why not hire the Winnebagos?” said Miss Mortimer. And so it was arranged. Medmangi and Nakwisi and Chapa, the other three Winnebagos, were notified to join the ranks, and excitement ran high. To be in a real moving picture! It is true that they had nothing special to do, just walk through the scene in one place and sit on the ground in a circle in another, but there was not a single girl who did not hope that her conduct on that occasion would lead Mr. Larue into hiring her as a permanent member of the company.
Especially Sahwah. The active, strenuous life of a motion picture actress attracted her more than anything just now. She longed to be in the public eye and achieve fame by performing thrilling feats. She saw herself in a thousand different positions of danger, always the heroine. Now she was diving for a ring dropped into the water from the hand of a princess; now she was trapped in a burning building; now she was riding a wild horse. But always she was the idol of the company, and the idol of the moving picture audiences, and the envy of all other actresses. She would receive letters from people all over the country and her picture would be in the papers and in the magazines, and her name would be featured on the colored posters in front of the theatres. Managers would quarrel over her and she would be offered a fabulous salary. All this Sahwah saw in her mind’s eye as the future which was waiting for her, for since meeting Miss Mortimer she really meant to be a motion picture actress when she was through school. She felt in her heart that she could show people a few things when it came to feats of action. She simply could not wait for the day when the Winnebagos were to be in the picture. When the play was produced in the city theatres her friends would recognize her, and Oh joy!—here her thoughts became too gay to think.
The play in question was staged, not on the Centerville road, but in one of the city parks, where there were hills and formal gardens and an artificial lake, which were necessary settings. The day arrived at last. News had gone abroad that a motion picture play was to be staged in that particular park and a curious crowd gathered to watch the proceedings. Sahwah felt very splendid and important as she stood in the company of the actors. She knew that the crowd did not know that she was just in that one play as a filler-in; to them she was really and truly a member of this wonderful company—a real moving picture actress. Gazing over the crowd with an air of indifference, she suddenly saw one face that sent the blood racing to her head. That was Marie Lanning, the girl whom Sahwah had defeated so utterly in the basketball game the winter before, and who had tried such underhand means to put her out of the game. Sahwah felt that her triumph was complete. Marie was just the kind of girl who would nearly die of envy to see her rival connected with anything so conspicuous.
The picture began; progressed; the time came for the march of the Camp Fire Girls down the steep hill. Sahwah stood straight as a soldier; the supreme moment had come. Now Mr. Larue would see that she stood out from all the other girls in ability to act; that moment was to be the making of her fortune. She glanced covertly at Marie Lanning. Marie had recognized her and was staring at her with unbelieving, jealous eyes. The march began. Sahwah held herself straighter still, if that were possible, and began the descent. It was hard going because it was so steep, but she did not let that spoil her upright carriage. She was just in the middle of the line, which was being led by Nyoda, and could see that the girls in front of her were getting out of step and breaking the unity of the line in their efforts to preserve their balance. Not so Sahwah. She saw Mr. Larue watching her and she knew he was comparing her with the rest. Her fancy broke loose again and she had a premonition of her future triumphs. The sight of the camera turned full on her gave her a sense of elation beyond words. It almost intoxicated her. Halfway down the hill Sahwah, with her head full of day-dreams, stepped on a loose stone which turned under her foot, throwing her violently forward. She fell against Hinpoha, who was in front of her. Hinpoha, utterly unprepared for this impetus from the rear, lost her balance completely and crashed into Gladys. Gladys was thrown against Nyoda, and the whole four of them went down the hill head over heels for all the world like a row of dominoes.
Down at the bottom of the hill stood the hero and heroine of the piece, namely, Miss Mortimer and Chambers, the leading man, and as the landslide descended it engulfed them and the next moment there was a heap of players on the ground in a tangled mass. It took some minutes to extricate them, so mixed up were they. Mr. Larue hastened to the spot with an exclamation of very excusable impatience. Several dozen feet of perfectly good film had been spoiled and valuable time wasted. The players got to their feet again unhurt, and the watching crowd shouted with laughter. Sahwah was ready to die of chagrin and mortification. She had spoiled any chances she had ever had of making a favorable impression on Mr. Larue; but this was the least part of it. There in the crowd was Marie Lanning laughing herself sick at this fiasco of Sahwah’s playing. Good-natured Mr. Chambers was trying to soothe the embarrassment of the Winnebagos and make them laugh by declaring he had lost his breath when he was knocked over and when he got it back he found it wasn’t his, but Sahwah refused to be comforted. She had disgraced herself in the public eye. Breaking away from the group she ran through the crowd with averted face, in spite of calls to come back, and kept on running until she had reached the edge of the park and the street car line. Boarding a car, she went back to Onoway House, wishing miserably that she had never been born, or had died the winter before in the coasting accident. Her ambition to be a motion picture actress died a violent death right then and there. So the march of the Camp Fire Girls had to be done over again without Sahwah, and was consummated this time without accident.
When Sahwah reached Onoway House she wished with all her heart that she hadn’t come back there. She had done it mechanically, not knowing where else to go. At the time her only thought had been to get away from the crowd and from Mr. Larue; now she hated to face the Winnebagos. She was glad that no one was at home, for Mrs. Gardiner had taken Betty and Tom and Ophelia to see the play acted. As she went around the back of the house she came face to face with Mr. Smalley, who was just going up on the back porch. He seemed just as surprised to see her as she was to see him, so Sahwah thought, but he was friendly enough and asked if the Gardiners were at home. When Sahwah said no, he said, “Then possibly they wouldn’t mind if you gave me what I wanted. I came over to see if they would lend me their wheel hoe, as mine is broken and will have to be sent away to be fixed, and I have a big job of hoeing that ought to be done to-day.” Sahwah knew that Migwan would not refuse to do a neighborly kindness like that as long as they were not using the tool themselves, and willingly lent it to him.
She was still in great distress of mind over the ridiculous incident of the morning and did not want to see the other girls when they came home. So taking a pillow and a book, she wandered down the river path to a quiet shady spot among the willows and spent the afternoon in solitude. When the other girls returned home Sahwah was nowhere to be found. This did not greatly surprise them, however, for they were used to her impetuous nature and knew she was hiding somewhere. Hinpoha and Gladys were up-stairs removing the dust of the road from their faces and hands when they heard a stealthy footstep overhead. “She’s hiding in the attic!” said Hinpoha.
“She’ll melt up there,” said Gladys, “it must be like an oven. Let’s coax her down and don’t any of us say a word about the play. She must feel terrible about it.”
So it was agreed among the girls that no mention of Sahwah’s mishap should be made, and Hinpoha went to the foot of the attic stairs and called up: “Come on down, Sahwah, we’re all going out on the river.” There was no answer. Hinpoha called again: “Please come, Sahwah, we need you to steer the raft.” Still no answer. Hinpoha went up softly. She thought she could persuade Sahwah to come down if none of the others were around. But when she reached the top of the stairs there was no sign of Sahwah anywhere. The place was stifling, and Hinpoha gasped for breath. Sahwah must be hiding among the old furniture. Hinpoha moved things about, raising clouds of dust that nearly choked her, and calling to Sahwah. No answer came, and she did not find Sahwah hidden among any of the things. Gladys came up to see what was going on, followed by Migwan.
“She doesn’t seem to be up here after all,” said Hinpoha, pausing to take breath. “It’s funny; I certainly thought I heard someone up here.”