Then Bessie told her the whole story. Wanaka watched her closely as Bessie told of her life with the Hoovers, of her hard work and drudgery, and of Jake"s persecution. Her eyes narrowed slightly as Bessie described the scene at the woodshed, and told of how Jake had locked Zara in to wait for her mother"s return, and of his cruel and dangerous trick with the burning embers.
"Did he really tell his father that you had set the shed on fire--and on purpose?" asked Wanaka, rather sternly.
"He was afraid of what would happen to him if they knew he"d done it,"
said Bessie. "I guess he didn"t stop to think about what they"d do to me. He was just frightened, and wanted to save himself."
Wanaka looked at her very kindly.
"These people aren"t related to you at all, are they?" she asked. "You weren"t bound to them--they didn"t agree to keep you any length of time and have you work for them in return for your board?"
"No," said Bessie.
"Then, if that"s so, you had a right to leave them whenever you liked,"
said Wanaka, thoughtfully. "And tell me about Zara. Who is her father?
What does he do for a living?"
"I don"t believe she even knows that herself. They used to live in the city, but they came out here two or three years ago, and he"s never gone around with the other men, because he can"t speak English very well.
He"s some sort of a foreigner, you see. And when they took him off to prison Zara was left all alone. He used to stay around the cabin all the time, and Zara says he would work late at night and most of the day, too, making things she never saw. Then he"d go off for two or three days at a time, and Zara thought he went to the city, because when he came back he always had money--not very much, but enough to buy food and clothes for them. And she said he always seemed to be disappointed and unhappy when he came back."
"And the people in the village thought he was a counterfeiter--that he made bad money?"
"That"s what Maw Hoover and Jake said. _They_ thought so, I know."
"People think they know a lot when they"re only guessing, sometimes, Bessie. A man has a right to keep his business to himself if he wants to, as long as he doesn"t do anything that"s wrong. But why didn"t Zara stay? If her father was cleared and came back, they couldn"t keep her at the poor-farm or make her go to work for this Farmer Weeks you speak of."
"I don"t know. She was afraid, and so was I. They call her a gypsy because she"s so dark. And people say she steals chickens. I know she doesn"t, because once or twice when they said she"d done that, she"d been in the woods with me, walking about. And another time I saw a hawk swoop down and take one of Maw Hoover"s hens, and she was always sure that Zara"d done that."
Wanaka had watched Bessie very closely while she told her story.
Bessie"s clear, frank eyes that never fell, no matter how Wanaka stared into them, seemed to the older girl a sure sign that Bessie was telling the truth.
"It sounds as if you"d had a pretty hard time, and as if you hadn"t had much chance," she said, gravely. "It"s strange about your parents."
Bessie"s eyes filled with tears.
"Oh, something must have happened to them--something dreadful," she said. "Or else I"m sure they would never have left me that way. And I don"t believe what Maw Hoover was always saying--that they were glad to get rid of me, and didn"t care anything about me."
"Neither do I," said Wanaka. "Bessie, I want to help you and Zara. And I think I can--that we all can, we Camp Fire Girls. You know that"s what we live for--to help people, and to love them and serve them. You heard us singing the Wohelo cheer when we first saw you. Wohelo means work, and health, and love. You see, it"s a word we made up by taking the first two letters of each of those words. I tell you what I"m going to do. You and Zara must stay with us here to-day. The girls will look after you. And I"m going into the village and while I"m there I"ll see how things are."
"You won"t tell Maw Hoover where we are; or Farmer Weeks?" cried Bessie.
"I"ll do the right thing, Bessie," said Wanaka, smiling. "You may be sure of that. I believe what you"ve told me--I believe every word of it.
But you"d rather have me find out from others, too, I"m sure. You see, it would be very wrong for us to help girls to run away from home. But neither you nor Zara have done that, if your story is right. And I think it is our duty to help you both, just as it is our pleasure."
CHAPTER IV
AN UNEXPECTED FRIEND
Bessie wasn"t afraid of what Wanaka would find out in Hedgeville. Wanaka wouldn"t take Jake Hoover"s word against hers, that much was sure. And she guessed that Wanaka would have her own ways of discovering the truth. So, as Wanaka changed from her bathing suit to a costume better suited to the trip to the village, Bessie went out with a light heart to find Zara. Already she thought that she saw the way clear before them.
With friends, there was no reason why they should not reach the city and make their own way there, as plenty of other girls had done. And it seemed to Bessie that Wanaka meant to be a good friend.
"Oh, Bessie, have you been hearing all about the Camp Fire, too?" asked Zara, when she espied her friend, "It"s wonderful! They do all sorts of things. And Minnehaha is going to teach me to swim this afternoon.
She"ll teach you, too, if you like."
But Bessie only smiled in answer. She could swim already, but she said nothing about it, since no one asked her, seeming to take it for granted that, like Zara, she was unused to the water. Moreover, while she could swim well enough, she was afraid that she would look clumsy and awkward in comparison to the Camp Fire Girls. Most of them had changed their clothes now, before dinner.
Some wore short skirts and white blouses; one or two were in a costume that Bessie recognized at once as that of Indian maidens, from the pictures she had seen in the books she had managed to get at the Hoover farmhouse. She noticed, too, that many of them now wore strings of beads, and that all wore rings. Two or three of the girls, too, wore bracelets, strangely marked, and all had curious badges on their right sleeves.
"We"ve got to wash the dishes, now," said Minnehaha, who bore out her name by laughing and smiling most of the time. She had already told Zara that her real name was Margery Burton. "You sit down and rest, and when we"ve done, we"ll talk to you and tell you more about the Camp Fire Girls and all the things we do."
"No, indeed," said Bessie, laughing back. "That won"t do at all. You cooked our meal; now we"ll certainly help to clean up. That"s something I can do, and I"m going to help."
Zara, too, insisted on doing her share, and the time pa.s.sed quickly as the girls worked. Then, when the things were cleaned and put away, and some preparations had been made for the evening meal, Zara begged to have her first swimming lesson at once.
"No, we"ll have to wait a little while for that," said Minnehaha. "We must wait until Wanaka comes back. She"s our Guardian, you see, and it"s a rule that we mustn"t go into the water unless she"s here, no matter how well we swim, unless, of course, we have to, to help someone who is drowning. And it"s too soon after dinner, too. It"s bad for you to go into the water less than two hours after a meal. We"re always careful about that, because we have to be healthy. That"s one of the chief reasons we have the Camp Fire."
"Tell us about it," begged Zara, sitting down.
"You see this ring?" said Minnehaha, proudly.
She pointed to her ring, a silver band with an emblem,--seven f.a.gots.
"We get a ring like that when we join," she explained. "That"s the Wood-Gatherer"s ring, and the National Council gives it to us. Those seven f.a.gots each stand for one of the seven points of the law of the fire."
"What are they, Minnehaha?"
"They"re easy to remember: "Seek Beauty; Give Service; Pursue Knowledge; Be Trustworthy; Hold on to Health; Glorify Work; Be Happy." If you want to do all those things--and I guess everyone does--you can be a Wood-Gatherer. Then, later on, you get to be a Fire-Maker, and, after that, a Torch-Bearer. And when you get older, if you do well, you can be a Guardian, and be in charge of a Camp Fire yourself. You see, there are Camp Fires all over. There are a lot of them in our city, and in every city. And there are more and more all the time. The movement hasn"t been going on very long, but it"s getting stronger all the time."
"Are you a Fire-Maker?"
"Not yet. If I were, I"d wear a bracelet, like Ayu. And instead of just having a bunch of f.a.gots on my sleeve, there"d be a flame coming from them. And then, when I get to be a Torch-Bearer, I"ll have a pin, as well as the ring and the bracelet, and there"ll be smoke on my badge, as well as fire and wood. But you have to work hard before you can stop being a Wood-Gatherer and get to the higher ranks. We all have to work all the time, you see."
"I"ve had to work, too," said Bessie. "But this seems different because you enjoy your work."
"That"s because we like to work. We work because we want to do it, not because someone makes us."
"Yes, I was thinking of that. I always worked because I had to--Maw Hoover made me."
"Who"s Maw Hoover, Bessie?"
So Bessie told her story, or most of it, all over again, and the other girls, seeing that she was telling a story, crowded around and listened.
"I think it"s a shame you were treated so badly," said Minnehaha. "But don"t you worry--Miss Eleanor will know what to do. She won"t let them treat you unfairly. Is she going to find out about things in the village?"
"Yes."