CHAPTER VI

OPENS WITH AWFUL TIDINGS, AND ENDS WITH A GLEAM OF HOPE

Dire news reached the camp one morning, brought over from the village by a small junior who had gone for the mail. His tale was listened to with incredulous indignation by a large group of the fellows congregated outside of Birch Hall. The junior’s name was Rooke, and he was vastly impressed with his importance when he saw with what breathless interest his news was received. When Dan joined the group, after having reported as orderly to Mr. Ellery, officer of the day, Rooke was telling his story for the second time, and with what Tom called “imposing detail.”

“There’s a fellow over at Crescent staying at the boarding-house named Harry Fraser,” began Rooke.

“Queer name for a boarding-house,” said Dan.

“Shut up, Speede!” some one admonished him.

Rooke looked hurt.

“All right; never mind what the boarding-house is called, Kid,” said Dan. “Fire ahead!”

“I’d met him now and then at the post-office, you know. Well, this morning, when I came out with the mail, he was there----”

“Were there any letters for me?” asked Dan eagerly. Then he retired to a safe distance, and waited for his pursuers to become absorbed again in the narrative.

“‘Say,’ he said, ‘Wickasaw put it on to you fellows good and hard, didn’t they?’ ‘How did they?’ says I. ‘Oh, you don’t know anything about it, do you?’ says he. And of course I didn’t, but I wasn’t going to let on to him.”

“Foxy kid!” murmured Dan.

“‘Oh, that!’ I says; ‘that’s nothing! Any one could do that!’”

“Good for you, Rooke!” his audience laughed.

“Well, pretty soon I found out what he was talking about. And what do you think those chumps have done?” And Rooke paused dramatically, looking very indignant.

“You told us once,” said some one unkindly. “Go ahead!”

Rooke resented this remark, and for a moment seemed inclined to sulk. But Joe Carter patted him on the back, Dan told him he was a smart kid, and he decided to let the incident pass.

“Why, they’ve gone and painted ‘Camp Wickasaw’ on the rocks over at the cliff back of Crescent! And Fraser says the letters are done in red paint and are three feet high, and you can see them for miles!”

“Phew!” said Dan. “Aren’t they the cheeky beggars?”

“When did they do it, Kid?” asked Bob.

“Day before yesterday. They went on a picnic, or something, over that way.”

“Well, we’ll just have to go over and paint it out,” said Carter decidedly, amid a murmur of concurrence.

“You couldn’t do it, my boy,” Dan objected. “It would take more paint than you could lug over there.”

“Don’t you care; they can’t go and paint up the scenery like that,” answered Joe. “Anyhow, we can daub the letters up so they can’t be read.”

“How did they do it, Kid--do you know?” Dan asked.

“Why, they climbed up as far as they could, you see, and just did it.”

“All right; then we’ll just have to climb up farther and paint ‘Camp Chicora’ above it!”

This elicited hearty applause, and Rooke’s small voice was quite lost for a moment. Then he made himself heard:

“You can’t climb any higher!” he shouted triumphantly. “Fraser says you can’t!”

“Fraser’s a liar, then!” answered Bob calmly. “You ought to select your associates more carefully, Kid.”

“But the Wickasaws climbed up the cliff until the smooth rock began,” said Rooke indignantly; “and you can’t climb any higher than that. Any one will tell you so, Bob Hethington.”

“Well, don’t get excited, Kid; we won’t ask you to do it,” said Bob soothingly. “I tell you what, fellows, Dan and I’ll go over there now and have a look at it, and see what can be done. We can get permission, I guess.”

“What’s the matter with the bunch going?” asked a chap named Ridley.

“Clint won’t let a lot go, you idiot! We’ll say we want to go over to Crescent, and then Clint and the councilors won’t need to know anything about it. If they did, they might-- Who was that went away?”

The crowd turned to look. Mr. Verder was walking off toward Maple Hall.

“Gee! I bet he heard!” said Carter.

“He did,” piped Rooke. “I saw him standing over there!”

“That’s all right,” Bob said. “He won’t say anything about it if we keep it quiet. Dan and I’ll go over there right off, and we’ll let you fellows know what can be done. There’s one thing certain: Wickasaw hasn’t any mortgage on that bluff over there.”

“You bet she hasn’t!” Dan concurred earnestly. “And just think how it must look from up the lake!”

“And from Camp Trescott!” exclaimed Carter. “Why, thunder! Trescott’s right under that bluff!”

“Gee!” groaned Carter. “Aren’t they having a fine laugh on us!”

“The laugh will be on some one else when we’re through,” said Dan determinedly. “Come on, Bob!”

The group broke up, and Dan and Bob sought and received permission to go to the village. Naturally, Tom and Nelson wanted to accompany them, but consented to remain behind when Bob explained that they must be careful not to awaken suspicion.

They lifted Bob’s crimson canoe from the rack under the trees, dropped it over the side of the float, and tumbled in. Then each took a paddle and made the craft fairly fly. At the landing by the bridge they pulled it out of the water and set off along the Pine Hill road through the tiny village and along the edge of a sloping meadow that skirts Humpback Mountain. Presently the cliff was in sight, rising sheer from the meadow to a height of some seventy feet. From the side it looked for all the world as though a giant had sliced a piece off the end of the mountain as one might cut the end from a loaf of bread, and had left the crumbs in the shape of big and little boulders piled up at the bottom. From the top of the cliff the ground sloped gradually for a ways and then sprang abruptly upward into the oddly shaped cone that lent the mountain its name. Their first view of the cliff gave them no sight of the face, and it was another minute’s walk before they could see the daubs of bright red paint that adorned it. There, staring down at them across the field, was the legend:

CAMP WICKASAW, ’04

But, after all, the reality was not so bad as what Rooke had described. The letters were _not_ three feet high, and even an eagle would have experienced difficulty in reading them a quarter of a mile away. But it was bad enough, and Dan and Bob scowled wrathfully. Then they climbed the fence and set off across the meadow to get a nearer view. Presently they reached a sort of terrace of tumbled boulders and stones, some of them crumbling and some as impregnable as when they had fallen, which was banked up under the cliff. Bushes and weeds had grown up between them, and it was all the two could do to thrust themselves through; and when, after a minute or two, they had gained the edge of the towering mass of rock their legs and arms were scratched and their jerseys and trunks torn.

“Phew!” said Bob, looking ruefully at his wounds, “that’s a merry place to come through, isn’t it? I hope those Wickasaws got as much as we did!”

Above them the cliff arose at a steep angle for some twenty feet, and from there sprang almost straight into air. That first twenty feet could be climbed in places if one used care, and it was evident that the Wickasaw fellows had climbed it.

“Probably two of them went up there,” said Bob, “and one sort of steadied the other while he painted. But it was a risky thing to do.”

“Pshaw,” answered Dan, “that wasn’t very hard. The trouble is, they’ve got their old patent-medicine sign up as high as any one can reach. And it will be mighty hard work to paint it out, besides taking a whole lot of paint.”

“That’s so,” said Bob, craning his head back to look. “But it’s got to be done somehow.”

Dan was silent for a moment; then, “No, it hasn’t, either!” he exclaimed suddenly.

“What do you mean?”

“Why, what we want to do isn’t to paint out their sign, but to paint our own above it; see?”

“Yes, but how? Use ladders?”

“Where’d we get the ladders?” asked Dan scornfully. “Now, how would ‘Camp Chicora, ’04’ look about twenty feet above their old letters?”

“Fine, but we can’t get it there, can we?”

“Sure! Get some paint and a good big brush, and about fifty feet of rope.”

Bob whistled.

“You’re a wonder, Dan!” he said softly. “I choose to do the painting!”

“Like thunder! Whose idea was it?”

“Yours, but I weigh less than you do, Dan.”

“That doesn’t matter. We’ll get rope that’ll hold three times my weight.”

“Do you think you can do it?” asked Bob, looking upward at the smooth face of the rock.

“Course I can do it; any fellow could. Hello!” He stumbled over the rocks and picked up a paint-brush, very sticky with vermilion paint. “Just the thing,” he chuckled. “We won’t have to buy one. Kind of them to leave it, eh? And here’s the can over here. Think we’ll want that?”

“I don’t believe so, but you might fetch it out in case we do.”

Dan did so, and carried can and brush down through the bushes to the edge of the meadow and there hid them. Then, with many a backward look at the cliff, they made their way to the road, and so to the village, arranging ways and means as they went.

“We’ll go along the road by the river and strike up the mountain from there, keeping along this side. I’ll make a seat out of a piece of board, like a swing, you know, and hitch that to the end of the rope. Then all you fellows will have to do is to lower me down.”

“That’s all right; but how will you move along from left to right when you’re down there?”

Dan considered this problem for a minute in silence; then he was forced to own himself stuck.

“Of course, you can pull me up and move the rope, and then let me down again, but that will take a month of Sundays.”

Nevertheless, no better solution of the problem presented itself, and Dan reckoned that he could paint three letters from each position, necessitating but five changes.

“I guess we’d better not tell the fellows about it,” said Bob. “If we do, it’s sure to get out and Clint will hear of it. If he does, it’s all over.”

“That’s so. We’ll just say that we’re trying to think up a way to do it. And this afternoon some of us had better go to Warder and get a gallon can of nice blue paint. Then to-morrow morning we can get to work before any one knows anything about it.”

“We’ll have to have Nelson and Tom, though.”

“Sure! We couldn’t do it without them. It will take a couple of you to hold the rope. You’ll have to snub it around a tree, or something, you know. I guess you and I’d better go to Warder, because we’ll have to buy the rope too, and I want to have a hand in that; I feel a sort of interest in that rope.”

“I guess you do,” Bob answered with a smile. “But I don’t think I can go with you on account of practise. Take Nelson.”

“All right. Who’s got any money? I’ve drawn my allowance for next week already.”

“I guess I’ve got enough. I suppose we’ll have to stand the thing between us.”

“Sure! What’s the good of trying to collect from the crowd? Besides, if we did, Clint might hear of it. It won’t come to more than a dollar apiece, I guess.”

Nelson and Tom were duly let into the secret, and the latter became wildly excited.

“It’s a du-du-du-dandy scheme!” he sputtered with enthusiasm. “Won’t Wi-wi-wi-Wickasaw be mu-mu-mu-mad?”

“Look here, Tom,” said Dan, “don’t you get to stuttering when you haul me up. If you do you’ll jar me off my perch!”

In the afternoon Dan and Nelson set the signal for the Navigation Company’s boat to stop and take them to Chicora Landing. They found everything they needed at Warder, and were back in time for supper, evading inquiries as to what was contained in the bundles they carried. After supper Dan worked at the bench in the carpenter-shop under Poplar Hall until it was dark, and then sneaked over to Birch Hall and hid the result of his labors under his bunk. During camp-fire the quartet of conspirators sat apart and rehearsed the morrow’s plans in whispers. Of the four, only Bob was calm enough to fall asleep as soon as the lights went out.