Chapter 7

WHITE CLOUDS

"White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep, Light mists, whose soft embraces keep The sunshine on the bills asleep."

The sun was just rising above the crests of a group of the White Mountains called long ago by the indians "Waumbek" because of their snowy foreheads. But this morning, instead of shining like crystal, the snow at their summits was opal tinted rose, yellow and violet from the early rays of the June sun.

Sunrise Hill, standing in the foreground, seemed to catch an even stronger reflection from the sky, for the colors drained down its sides until they emptied into a small, wooded lake at its base.

On either side this hill the sloping lands were a soft green and the meadows beyond golden with the new summer grain, but only fifty yards away a grove of pine trees made a deep mass of shade, and with the birds in their branches singing their daily matins, suggested an old cathedral choir.

The singers were evidently indifferent to intruders, for, close by, four white tents were pitched in a square as though a caravan had halted on its travels. But the caravaneers must have been in the place for some days and showed no intention of moving on, for their arrangements had been made with the idea of permanent comfort.

Around each tent a narrow trench several inches deep had been dug to prevent flooding in case of rain, farther off two large bins held all rubbish until such time as it could be conveniently burned. The camp ground was also beautifully clean, not a scrap of paper nor a tin can could be seen anywhere, and even the grass itself had been swept with a novel, but at the same time, a very old-fashioned broom, for a stake tightly bound with a few sprigs of birch rested against one of the tents, plainly--from the evidences about it--the kitchen tent. At a safe distance a camp fire was smoldering, a fire built according to the best scout methods. Two stout stakes driven slantwise in the ground with three logs cut the same length, one on top the other, resting against these stakes. On either side this elevation two logs lay on the ground like fire logs, with a third crossing them in front, and inside this enclosure a bed of ashes still glowed, carefully covered over for the night. On the lake two birch bark canoes were moored to willow stakes, and hanging on a line stretching from a tree to a pole a number of girls' bathing suits flapped and danced in the air, but no human being was yet in sight.

Suddenly there came a ripple of music from one of the pine trees, "Whee-you, whee-you," a small bird with a spotted breast and a cream-buff coat sang to itself and then began a whistling, ringing monotone that for a moment silenced the other bird chorus.

A girl in a dark red dressing gown quietly opened a tent flap.

"There, the morning has come at last, for that is the voice of 'Oopehanka', the thrush. So after a week in the woods I really am beginning to recognize some of the birds and the Indian names for them." She clapped her hands softly together.

"Oh, Princess, do wake up and let us have a swim before any one else wakens," she whispered imploringly.

Then disappearing inside her tent, she knelt by a bed of hemlock branches covered with soft blue blankets. "Princess," she whispered again.

A sleepy voice answered. "Polly child, please go back to bed, it must be the middle of the night and I ache all over from carrying water and digging trenches. Who could have supposed camping would be such a lot of work!"

"Or such a lot of joy!" Polly laughed. "Ah, Betty, I thought you were yearning to be useful; think of the honor beads you mean to earn! But come now and be useful to me; do let us have a swim together."

Betty was never proof against her friend's pleading. "All right," she agreed, searching about near her bed for her sandals while Polly wrapped a light woolen gown about her, "I don't know whether Miss McMurtry will like our going off by ourselves, but I don't remember her having said we should not, though Camp Fire life does mean doing things together."

The two girls had been talking in the lowest possible tones and were now tiptoeing softly out of their tent, when another voice from another bed interrupted them.

"Betty and Polly, you are sneaks!" Mollie O'Neill exclaimed indignantly. "Just because I can't swim as well as you do and Esther can't swim at all, you are going off without us. You are fine Camp Fire girls; please bring our bathing suits here, too."

Both girls nodded and laughed in rather an abashed fashion. But at a safe distance away Betty turned to Polly. "Won't you confess, please, that it is rather a nuisance having Esther Clark in the tent with us? I don't see why Martha McMurtry insisted upon it when we might have had Meg or most anybody else."

Polly looked unusually grave. "You don't care for Esther, do you?" she questioned. "It is curious, because though you haven't been particularly nice to her, she is devoted to you and I believe would do anything in the world for you."

Ten minutes later the four girls in their Camp Fire bathing suits were in the waters of the lake near their camp, Polly and Betty swimming with long even strokes toward its center, Mollie hovering near the shore, while Esther stood shivering in a foot of water trying vainly to warm herself by splashing and throwing handfuls of water on her chest and face.

Half a mile out Betty turned over on her side. "Say the Law of the Camp Fire to yourself, Polly. I have just said it and I am going back toward shore. I suppose if one makes a vow to 'give service' it is little enough to show another girl how to swim. If Esther didn't look so big and wasn't so horribly shy, I am sure I should like her better, but here goes!"

It wasn't easy work teaching Esther to swim, for she was so much larger than Betty and had such an absurd fashion of keeping both feet down and splashing the water into her own and her teacher's face. Polly laughed softly to herself as she swam slowly forward to offer her assistance. She was wondering if a single week in camp had really begun to reform her spoiled Betty and if it had, had any change also been wrought in her? She was to find out in a very few minutes.

One Camp Fire law, that there was no escaping, was that the girls were not to spend but fifteen minutes in bathing. Really it hardly seemed like half that time before the four girls were once again on land getting into their bathing gowns which had been left hanging on a willow tree nearby. They were to dress later on in their tent, so they were hardly on shore more than a few moments, but even in that short space of time a noise a few yards away startled them. The four girls turned indignantly. In the entire week of their stay in camp they had not been disturbed by a single intruder. Sunrise Hill, with its tall pines--the emblem of the Camp Fire--its wooded lake for fishing, bathing and canoeing, and its utter seclusion, had seemed, after several weeks of careful search in the neighborhood about Woodford, the ideal place for the girls' summer camp. So far not even a friend, man or woman, had been allowed to visit them, because the camp was to be in running order before they received any outside criticism.

Now a young fellow of perhaps sixteen stood only a short distance off from the lake with an expression of superior amusement on his face. He was a country boy, for he wore no hat and his hair was burnt to a light straw color at the ends, his skin was almost bronze.

"Please go away," Polly demanded haughtily. She had gathered her bathing gown about her as though it were a Roman matron's robe and was feeling that her presence must be impressive although her hair was extremely wet and drops of water were trickling down her face.

However, the intruder paid not the least attention to her request, except to laugh as though her indignation gave him special pleasure. He was carrying a large tin pail on one arm and a basket on the other and of course his behavior was hardly that of a gentleman.

Anger for the moment kept Polly speechless, but a chorus of protests arose from Betty, Mollie and Esther. "We are camping here and we would rather not have visitors, so would you mind going back the way you have come?" Betty requested in her most Princess-like fashion.

"Not until I have seen the sights," the newcomer answered. He did not really look impertinent, only mischievous, and his eyes were as blue as Polly's.

"You don't suppose that I have walked a mile before breakfast and carried these heavy things except to find out what on the face of the earth you crazy girls are doing here, trying to pretend you are scouts or Indian squaws. Of all the foolishness!"

Perhaps even this short acquaintance with Polly O'Neill has suggested that she had, what is for some reason or other called an Irish temper, though temper does not belong wholly to Irish people. Polly herself did not know when this temper would take possession of her nor where it would lead her. At present the young man continued to walk slowly on toward the white tents, whistling to show his complete indifference, while the four girls could see that their friends were now stirring about in camp evidently getting ready to start breakfast.

Without reflecting Polly stooped. There on the ground before her lay a sharp rock, ground and polished by the waters of the lake, and like a shot from a bow she flung this stone whistling through the air at the intruder.

Whether she thought her stone would strike the young man or what particular effect her childish bad manners would have if it should, Polly herself did not know. However, she was startled and flushed hotly when, with an exclamation of pain, the boy put down his pail, placing one hand quickly to his head.

The four girls had started for their camp, but now Mollie, first flashing a look of surprise and scorn at her usually beloved sister, ran on ahead of the others. "I am so sorry," she said in a gentle, reserved manner peculiar to her, "you were rude not to go away when we asked you, but it is far worse for one of us to have been so childish as to strike you. I am dreadfully ashamed."

The young man smiled, not very cheerfully it must be admitted, but at least not looking so angry as he had the right to. "Did you throw the stone?" he inquired. "I never would have believed a girl could throw straight if I hadn't felt the blow, so perhaps you are learning one or two things by living like boys. Never mind, I can see you are not the guilty one."

"We are not trying to live in the least like boys, only like sensible girls," Mollie started in to reply quietly, but the last part of her sentence trailed off into a faint whisper, for the young man had just taken his hand down from his head and his fingers were covered with blood, a few drops were even trickling down the back of his neck inside his soft flannel shirt.

The other three girls had now come close enough to see the blood also, and except for Betty, Pony would everlastingly have disgraced herself. There are many persons in the world whom the sight of blood fills with a strange shrinking and terror that is almost like faintness, and Polly was one of them. Now she wanted to run away, she even turned to fly, when her friend caught hold of her. "Don't be utterly stupid, Polly, you have done a foolish trick and you've got to face the music, for if you don't, you know Mollie is apt to take the blame upon herself."

Polly's knees were shaking and her thin expressive face so pale that she looked quite unlike herself. However, she managed to save a part of her dignity by saying with an attempt at a smile, as she stopped alongside Mollie and the young fellow, "I am sorry, I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet, so please feel all the anger against me. I do hope I haven't hurt you very much."

The young man now stared at Polly and then at Mollie and afterwards back again from one to the other. He started to whistle but stopped himself in time. "Gee, but you are alike--with a difference," he returned, neither accepting nor refusing to accept Polly's half-hearted apology.

Hardly knowing why, except that the back of his neck was apparently covered with perspiration when there was no heat to explain it, the boy again put up his hand to his head. This time it was impossible to ignore the amount of blood that covered his hand nor the horrified faces of his small audience.

"I expect I can't go up to your camp, after all, when I am in such a fix, so you've come kind of close to getting your own way. I guess you, usually do!" he said, frowning up at Polly. "I wonder if it is too much to ask you girls to carry these things up to your tents; the pail has your morning's milk and is pretty heavy; the basket is only filled with strawberries. My father is the farmer who owns the land about here and I thought it would be a lark to find out what you campers were trying to do. Didn't mean anything serious but I guess you'll have to come for your own supplies after this as there ain't no one but me to bring 'em." He spoke rather churlishly, but then he did have cause.

"Hadn't you better wash your cut at the lake or come on up to the tent and let us do something there for you," Betty proposed, not knowing exactly what they should do in the present situation and yet feeling that something ought to be done. "I am afraid walking home in the sun with your head in that condition may make you ill."

The young man shook his head and then winced. "It ain't anything," he replied, beginning to back away, but at the same moment Mollie O'Neill took firm hold on his sleeve. "Come down to the water," she demanded quietly, "you are cut pretty badly, but I think I can stop the bleeding. I suppose the other girls will laugh at me, but ever since I have been in camp I have been carrying some gauze bandage about in my pocket and finding out what to do in case of accidents. I won't hurt you."

The young fellow had intended utterly to decline Mollie's kindly offer, but now her suggestion of not hurting amused him, besides he was sensible enough to know she was right. It was embarrassing, however, to have three other girls looking on during the operation, so whatever anguish Mollie caused him he felt prepared to endure in silence.

In a very business-like fashion the young girl drew her roll of surgeon's lint from an inside pocket of her bathing gown and a small pair of scissors. Then she made her patient sit down on the ground by the water's edge while she carefully examined his cut.

"I ought to help, Mollie," her sister suggested faintly, but Mollie shook her head and the young man appeared grateful. "I don't mind blood and you do, Polly," she returned, "besides if anybody is to help I would rather have Esther. I am afraid, if you don't mind, I have got to cut your hair away, it is already so matted with blood."

To almost any suggestion the patient would have agreed, since he had but one desire now, and that to get away from the strange girls about whom he had been so curious an hour before.

Mollie cheerfully snipped away several locks of his hair covering a space about as large as a dollar. The cut she discovered was deeper than she had expected and, as it was still bleeding profusely, she next called Esther for advice. Very carefully then the two girls washed out the cut with clean water and then Mollie, finding a flat stone, made a pad by wrapping it a number of times with gauze. This she placed over the wound, binding the young man's head, Esther assisting in making the bandage as tight as he could endure.

All this time Polly, with Betty's hand firmly clutching hers, had stood quietly looking on at the scene. She was feeling penitent and ashamed, and yet her Irish sense of humor made her a little bit amused as well. Mollie was so entirely unconscious, but she did seem to be intensely enjoying her first opportunity to prove herself a worthy Camp Fire Girl.

Perhaps the young man vaguely felt Polly's amusement, although he did not look at her and certainly did not give her the satisfaction of knowing whether or not she had been forgiven. But he managed to thank Mollie and Esther more politely for what they had done for him, than his boorish manners earlier in the morning suggested, and even insisted on going on up to the camp with them in order to carry the heavy pail.

Several others of the Camp Fire girls, were by this time engaged in getting break fast and although they could hardly help showing surprise at the unexpected appearance of a wounded hero no questions were then asked.

Miss McMurtry did not seem annoyed at seeing the young man, indeed it turned out that she and several of the girls had walked over to Mr. Webster's farm the day before to ask as a special favor that milk be sent their camp each day. If she felt any displeasure, Betty and Polly were sure it was directed toward them, for the first week of Camp Fire life had not been altogether smooth and there were still adjustments to be made between some of the girls and their guardian.