A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire Part 3

CHAPTER III

WO-HE-LO

Two or three miles further along the road, Bessie spied the landmark she had been looking for.

"We'll turn off here," she said, "Cheer up, Zara. It won't be long now before we can go to sleep."

The full moon made it easy to pick their way along the wood path that Bessie followed, and before long they came to a small lake. On its far side, among the trees near the sh.o.r.e, a fire was burning, flickering up from time to time, and sending dancing shadows on the beach.

"There's someone over there, Bessie," said Zara, frightened at the sign of human habitation.

"They won't hurt us, Zara," said Bessie, stoutly. "Probably they won't even know that we're around, if we don't make any noise, or any fire of our own. Here we are--here's the hut! See? Isn't it nice and comfortable? Hurry now and help me to pick up some of these branches of pine trees. They'll make a comfortable bed for us, and well sleep just as well as if we were at home--or a lot better, because there'll be no one to be cross and make trouble for us in the morning."

Bessie arranged the branches, and in a few moments they were asleep, lying close together. Pine branches make an ideal bed, but, even had their couch been uncomfortable, the two girls would have slept well that night; they were too tired to do anything else. It was long after midnight, and both had been through enough to exhaust them. The sense of peace and safety that they found in this refuge in the woods more than made up for the strangeness of their surroundings, and when they awoke the sun was high. It was the sound of singing in the sweet, fresh voices of girls that aroused them in the end. And Bessie, the first to wake up, aroused Zara, and then peeped from the door of the cabin.

There on the beach, their hair spread out in the sun, were half a dozen girls in bathing dresses. Beside them were a couple of canoes, drawn up on the beach, and they were laughing and singing merrily as they dried their hair. Looking over across the lake, in the direction of the fire she had seen the night before, Bessie saw that it was still burning. A pillar of smoke rose straight in the still air, and beyond it, gleaming among the trees, Bessie saw the white sides of three or four tents.

Astonished, she called Zara.

"They're not from around here, Zara," she whispered, not ready yet for the strangers to discover her. "Girls around here don't swim--it's only the boys who do that."

"I'll bet they're from the city and here on a vacation," said Zara.

"They look awful happy, Zara. Isn't that lady with the brown hair pretty? And she's older than the rest, too. You can see that, can't you?"

"Listen, Bessie! She just called one of the girls. And did you hear what she called her? Minnehaha--that's a funny name, isn't it?"

"It's an Indian name, Zara. It means Laughing Water. That's the name of the girl that Hiawatha loved, in the poem. I've read that, haven't you?"

"I've never been able to read very much, Bessie. But that girl isn't an Indian. She's ever so much lighter than I am--she's as fair as you. And Indians are red, aren't they?"

"She's not an Indian, Zara. That's right enough. It must be some sort of a game. Oh, listen!"

For the older girl, the one Zara had pointed out, had spied Bessie's peeping face suddenly.

"Look, girls!" she cried, pointing.

And then, without a word of signal all the girls suddenly broke out into a song--a song Bessie had never heard before.

"Wohelo for aye, Wohelo for aye, Wohelo, Wohelo, Wohelo for aye; Wohelo for work, Wohelo for health, Wohelo, Wohelo, Wohelo for love!"

As they ended the song, all the girls, with laughing faces, followed the eyes of their leader and looked at Bessie, who, frightened at first when she saw that she had been discovered, now returned the look shyly. There was something so kind, so friendly, about the manner of these strange girls that her fear had vanished.

"Won't you come out and talk to us?" asked the leader of the crowd.

She came forward alone toward the door of the cabin, looking at Bessie with interest.

"My name is Wanaka--that is, my Camp Fire name," said the stranger. "We are Manasquan Camp Fire Girls, you know, and we've been camping out by this lake. Do you live here?"

"No--not exactly, ma'am," said Bessie, still a little shy.

"Then you must be camping out, too? It's fun, isn't it? But you're not alone, are you? Didn't I see another head peeping out?"

"That's Zara. She's my friend, and she's with me," said Bessie. "And my name's Bessie King."

She looked curiously at Wanaka. Bessie had never heard of the Camp Fire Girls, and the great movement they had begun, meant to do for American girls what the Boy Scout movement had begun so well for their brothers.

"Well, won't you and Zara spend the day with us, if you are by yourselves?" asked Wanaka. "We'll take you over to camp in the canoes, and you can have dinner with us. We're going back now to cook it. The other girls have begun to prepare it already."

"Oh, we'd like to!" cried Bessie. "I'm awfully hungry--and I'm sure Zara is, too."

Bessie hadn't meant to say that. But the thought of a real meal had been too much for her.

"Hungry!" cried Wanaka. "Why, haven't you had breakfast? Did you oversleep?"

She looked about curiously. And Bessie saw that she could not deceive this tall, slim girl, with the wise eyes that seemed to see everything.

"We--we haven't anything to eat," she said. And suddenly she was overcome with the thought of how hard things were going to be, especially for Zara, and tears filled her eyes.

"You shall tell me all about it afterwards," said Wanaka, with decision.

"Just now you've got to come over with us and have something to eat, right away. Girls, launch the canoes! We have two guests here who haven't had any breakfast, and they're simply starving to death."

Any girls Bessie had ever known would have rushed toward her at once, overwhelming her with questions, fussing around, and getting nothing done. But these girls were different. They didn't talk; they did things.

In a moment, as it seemed, the canoes were in the water, and Bessie and Zara had been taken into different boats. Then, at a word from Wanaka, the paddles rose and dipped into the water, and with two girls paddling each canoe, one at the stern and one at the bow, they were soon speeding across the lake, which, at this point, was not more than a quarter of a mile wide.

Once ash.o.r.e, Wanaka said a few words to other girls who were busy about the fire, and in less than a minute the savory odor of frying bacon and steaming coffee rose from the fire. Zara gave a little sigh of perfect content.

"Oh, doesn't that smell good?" she said.

Bessie smiled.

"It certainly does, and it's going to taste even better than it smells,"

she answered, happily.

They sat down, cross-legged, near the fire, and the girls of the camp, quiet and competent, and asking them no questions, waited on them.

Bessie and Zara weren't used to that. They had always had to wait on others, and do things for other people; no one had ever done much for them. It was a new experience, and a delightful one. But Bessie, seeing Wanaka's quiet eyes fixed upon her, realized that the time for explanations would come when their meal was over.

And, sure enough, after Bessie and Zara had eaten until they could eat no more, Wanaka came to her, gently, and took her by the hand. She seemed to recognize that Bessie must speak for Zara as well as for herself.

"Now suppose we go off by ourselves and have a little talk, Bessie," she suggested. "I'm sure you have something to tell me, haven't you?"

"Yea, indeed, Miss Wanaka," said Bessie. She knew that in Wanaka she had found, by a lucky chance, a friend she could trust and one who could give her good advice.

Wanaka smiled at her as she led the way to the largest of the tents.

"Just call me Wanaka, not Miss Wanaka," she said. "My name is Eleanor Mercer, but here in the camp and wherever the Camp Fire Girls meet we often call one another by our ceremonial names. Some of us--most of us--like the old Indian names, and take them, but not always."

"Now," she said, when they were alone together in the tent, "tell me all about it, Bessie. Haven't you any parents? Or did they let you go out to spend the night all alone in the woods that way?"