"Oh, we"re going to beat them all the way!" said Dolly, happily.
Bessie and Dolly, holding the blanket together, wasted no time in making the signal that let those on the other peak know that the Camp Fire was ahead in another stage of the race, and, just as the second smoke was made, a faint cheer was carried across the s.p.a.ce between the two peaks by the wind, which had shifted.
But it was fully twenty minutes after the girls had begun their meal before two pillars of smoke rose from South Peak as a sign that over there, too, the meal was ready.
"What a shame that we"ve got to waste a whole hour eating!" said Dolly.
"I don"t call it waste. I"m dog-tired," said Margery. "I"m mighty glad to sit down and rest, and I"m mighty hungry, too."
"So"m I," said Bessie. And there were plenty to echo that.
"Well, if no one else will say it, I will," said Margery, presently. "This is a good dinner, if I did help cook it."
"No one ever praises your cooking any more; they"re too busy eating," said Eleanor. "You established your reputation long ago."
"Well, this was the sort of dinner you couldn"t spoil," admitted Margery, frankly. "And when people are frightfully hungry, you only waste your time if you do any really fine cooking for them. All they want is food, and they don"t care much what it is, or how it"s cooked."
"You don"t go on that principle, though, Margery. I notice you take just as much trouble with your cooking whether it"s likely to be appreciated or not."
"I do that for my own sake because I really enjoy cooking. I know what I"m going to do next year if I can. Teach cooking in the high school. And I think I can get the work, too."
"That"s fine, Margery. I know you"ll enjoy it."
"I think it will be pretty good fun. You know, it isn"t only just the girls in school. A whole lot of older girls come down--brides, and girls who are going to be married. And they are the silliest things, sometimes!"
"Time"s nearly up," said Eleanor, looking at her watch. "Bessie, signal four times with the smoke. I want to see if my watch is right by Mr. Hastings"."
Four times the smoke rose, and from the other peak rose two short answering smokes.
"We arranged that signal, you see," said Eleanor. "Now, watch! He"ll show the time by his watch. Count the smokes carefully."
First of all came two smokes.
"That"s the hour; two o"clock," said Eleanor. "Now count the next lot carefully; that"ll be the first digit of the minutes."
Four smoke pillars rose, at regular intervals. And then, after a well-marked pause, six more went up.
"All right," said Eleanor. "Answer with four smokes. That means it was forty-six minutes past two, fourteen minutes to three, when they started signalling. And my watch and his agree exactly, so that"s all right."
"We"ll have a good lead when we are able to start cleaning up," she continued. "But we can"t waste any time. We start at two minutes to three, and you want to remember that they know just how far behind they are, and we won"t be able to gain any more time from now on."
"Why not, Miss Eleanor," asked Margery, "if we"ve done it so far?"
"It"s going to be very different now, Margery. I don"t say that they exactly despised us before, but I certainly do believe they underestimated us. They thought they were going to have an easy time, and they probably loafed a little this morning. But now, you see, they know that they"re in for a licking if they don"t do mighty well, and they"ll strain every nerve to beat us."
"Oh, I suppose so, but we"ve really got a splendid lead."
"Yes. And do you know what will happen if we don"t look out? We"ll be over-confident, just the way they were this morning, and it will have just the same result. In a race, you know, a good runner will very often let a slower one stay ahead until they are near the finish. They call it making the pace. And then, when he gets ready, he goes right by, and wins as he likes."
But the warning, although Eleanor was sure that it had been needed, seemed to spur the girls on. They were waiting eagerly when she gave the word to start cleaning up, and each girl, her task a.s.signed to her in advance, was at work as soon as the command to go was given.
In no time at all, as it seemed, the dishes ware washed. Then Bessie and Dolly, as tenders of the fire, brought buckets of water and poured them over the glowing embers, for the rule of the Camp Fire never to leave a spark of flame behind them in the woods was strictly enforced.
They put the fire out while the others finished packing the things that had to be taken back. All the rubbish had been burned before water was poured on the fire, and when everything was finished and the girls were ready to start the march back to Long Lake there was no sign of their visit except the blackened ring where the fire had burned.
"Zara, I"m going to leave you here as a sentry when we start," said Eleanor. "I"ll carry your pack until you join us."
"How long am I to stay?" asked Zara.
"Until you see that their fire is put out. That will mean that they will be ready to start within two minutes, and I want to know just how much of a start we have on the hike home."
"I see. As soon as they put it out I"m to start after you and report?"
"Yes. Here"s my watch. Remember the exact time. If they catch up with us, it will be on this hike."
Then they started, singing happily as they went down the hill. The homeward path was easy. Burdens were lighter than they had been on the trip from Long Lake, and the path was mostly down hill. And, moreover, the Camp Fire Girls had the consciousness that, in order to win, they needed only to hold the advantage they had gained.
"Here"s Zara!" cried Bessie, who had been looking behind her.
"Good! What time did they put out their fire?" asked Eleanor.
"Just ten minutes after you started," said Zara. "I came as quickly as I could, but you must have been walking fast."
"I told you they"d begin gaining on us," said Eleanor. "See, they picked up ten minutes in clearing up. Come on, now, we must hurry!"
Hurry they did, and when they reached Long Lake there was a brief period of bustle. A new fire had to be made, and they worked with feverish haste. But they were in time. Bessie and Dolly sent up the first smoke signal before any pillar appeared at the other end of the lake. But the margin was small, for the first Boy Scout pillar rose just as they sent up their third!
CHAPTER XI.
OFF TO THE MOUNTAINS.
Two days after the triumph over the Boy Scouts in the test of the trip to Twin Peaks and back, and bidding good-bye regretfully to Long Lake, the girls started on the long tramp that was to take them through the mountains and to the valley below them on the other side.
"I"ve decided not to try to do any camping on the trip," said Eleanor, "We could have more fun that way, perhaps, but it would mean carrying a lot more, and I think the loads we"ve got are plenty big enough. I know my own pack is going to feel heavy enough when we strike some of the real climbing later on."
"I should think we could do much better, too, in the way of interesting others in the Camp Fire," said Margery, "if we stay at farm houses or wherever they will take us in. We"ll seem to be more among them, and of them. Don"t you think so?"
Eleanor smiled at Margery, pleased that she should have guessed one of her reasons for adopting the course she had chosen. She was already thinking seriously of the time when Margery should be able to take her place as a Guardian.
"We won"t start tramping right away, you know," said Eleanor, as they disembarked from the boats at the end of Long Lake, and started over the trail for the railroad. "We could tramp through these woods, but it"s very slow going, and I feel that we"d do better if we took the train to Crawford, or Lake Dean, where we strike the road through the notch. That will give us a good start, and give us very beautiful and interesting country for our first day"s walk."
"Shall we go on the same railroad we came up on, Miss Eleanor?" asked Bessie.
"For a little way. We change a few stations further on, though, and get on the line that climbs right up into the mountains. There"s no real road that we could follow. We"d have to take wood trails. So we"ll save a lot of time here, and have it for the part of the trip where we can have some really good walking."
The trip to Moose Junction did not take long. The place seemed hardly worthy of its name. There was no imposing station, but only a little wooden shack with a long platform for freight. But at one side of the shack was a train that provoked exclamations of delighted laughter.
"Why, that train hasn"t grown up yet!" exclaimed Dolly, immensely amused when she saw it.
"It"s a narrow gauge railroad, you see, Dolly," said Eleanor. "This road is really only used in the summer time. In the winter no one is up here except a few guides who haven"t any use for trains, anyhow, and the tracks are covered with snow."
"I suppose it was cheaper to build than a regular railroad would be?"
"Yes, a good deal cheaper. The cars are smaller, you see, and then, when they built it, they had a chance to get their cars and engines very cheap. In the old days, a great many railroads were built like this, even the regular roads that were used all the year round. But gradually they were all changed, and the rails were made the same on railroads all over the country, and then these people were able to get their cars and the other things they needed second hand. And it"s plenty good enough, of course, for all the use anyone wants to make of this."
Two puffing little engines were at the head of the two-car train that was waiting at the junction, and, in a little while, after the pa.s.sengers for Crawford, the terminal station of the road, were all aboard, they pulled out with a great snorting and roaring that amused the girls immensely. But, ridiculous as they looked, the little engines were up to their work, and they took the sharp, steady climb well enough.
"I like this," said Dolly. "It"s awfully slow, but you can see the country. On some of those big trains you go so fast you can"t see a thing, and this is really worth seeing."
"It certainly is!" exclaimed Bessie, who was gazing raptly out of the window. "Look back there where we came from! Who would ever have thought that there were so many lakes and ponds?"
"We"re getting so high above them now that we can see them, Bessie. Look, there"s Long Lake, and I do believe I can see Loon Pond, too!"
"I"m sure of it, Dolly. Oh, this is splendid! But we can"t see much up ahead, can we?"
"Nothing but trees. It"s like the old story of the man who wanted to see a famous forest, and when he was in the very middle of it he said he couldn"t see the forest because there were so many trees."
"I"ve seen mountains before," said Zara. "But they weren"t like this. Where I used to live there would be one or two big mountains, but they stood out, and you could see all the way up no matter how close you were."
"Were they all covered with trees, like this?"
"No, not at all. There were lots of little farms, and olive trees, and gardens. And sometimes there would be smoke coming from the top of the mountains."
"You mean the volcanoes, don"t you?" said Dolly. "I"d like to see an eruption some time. Like the ones at Vesuvius."
"I never saw one," said Zara, with a shudder. "But I"ve seen the paths where the lava came down, and the places where people were killed, and where whole villages were wiped out. I"m glad there aren"t any around here."
"So is Dolly, Zara," said Bessie, dryly. "She"s always wishing for things she doesn"t really want at all, because she thinks they would be exciting."
That would have started an argument without fail, if Dolly had not just then had to devote her attention to something that she noticed before anyone else. She sniffed the air that came in through the car windows once or twice.
"I smell smoke," she said.. "And look at the sun! It"s so funny and red. See, you can look at it without it hurting your eyes at all. And it"s a good deal darker, the way it gets before a thunder shower, sometimes."
"She"s right," said Bessie. "I believe the woods must be on fire somewhere near here."
"I"m afraid they are," said Eleanor Mercer, who had stopped in the aisle beside them and had overheard Bessie"s remark. "But not very near. You know the smoke from a really big forest fire is often carried for miles and miles, if the wind holds steady."
"Well, it can"t be so very far--not more than twenty or thirty miles, can it, Miss Eleanor?"
"It"s impossible to say, but I have known the smoke from a fire two hundred miles away to make people uncomfortable. They can"t smell it, but it darkens the air a little."
"Why, I had no idea of that!"
"Well, here"s something stranger yet. I heard you all talking about volcanoes. A good many years ago there was a frightful eruption in j.a.pan, or near j.a.pan, rather, when a mountain called Krakatoa broke out. That was the greatest eruption we know anything about. And a long time afterward people began to notice that the sunsets were very beautiful half the way around the world from it, and no one knew why, until the scientists explained that it was the dust from the volcano!"
"Well, I hope this fire isn"t where we are going!" said Dolly.
"So do I," said Eleanor. "That"s the very first thing I thought of, though. It wouldn"t do to go into a country while the fire was on, because it might be dangerous and we"d certainly be in the way of the people who were fighting it, and that wouldn"t be right."
"Whatever should we do, Miss Eleanor? Go home?"
"Oh, I hardly think it"s likely to be as bad as that. We might have to stay at Crawford for a day or two, but I was planning to spend tonight there, anyhow. Some friends of ours have a big camp on the lake, and they said we could stay, if we wanted to."
"Is it as pretty a place as Long Lake?"
"I think so. But it"s quite different. Lake Dean is a great big place, you know. It"s more than thirty miles long, and you could put Long Lake into it and never know where it was. But it"s very beautiful. And it"s the highest big lake anywhere in this part of the world. It"s right in the mountains."
"I suppose there will be lots of people there?" asked Dolly.
"Plenty," said Eleanor, smiling back at her. "But we won"t have much to do with them, we"ll be there such a short time."
"Oh, well, I don"t care!" said Dolly, defiantly, as she heard the laugh that greeted Eleanor"s answer. "I probably wouldn"t like them, anyhow!"
"I really do think it"s getting darker. We must be getting nearer to the fire," said Bessie, who had been looking out of the window. "Do you suppose it was some careless campers who started it, Miss Eleanor?"
"That"s pretty hard to say. But a whole lot of fires do get started by just such people in the woods. It shows you why we are so careful when we build a fire and have to leave the place."
In the next hour, as the train still crawled upward, the smoke grew thicker and thicker, until presently it was really like dusk outside the car, and, though it was hot, the windows had to be closed, since the smoke was getting into the eyes of all the pa.s.sengers and making them smart.
"I used to think a forest fire would be good fun," said Dolly, choking and gasping for breath, "but there isn"t any fun about this. And if it"s as bad as this here, think of what it must be like for the people who are really close to it."
"It"s about the most serious thing there is," said Eleanor, gravely. "There"s no fun about a forest fire."
At Crawford they saw the big lake, but much of its beauty was hidden since it lay under a pall of heavy smoke. Even then they could see nothing of the fire, but the smoke rose thickly from the woods to the west of the lake, and they soon heard, from those about the station, that a great section of the forest in that direction was ablaze.
"Good thing the lake"s in the way," said one of the station porters. "That"s the only thing that makes us safe. It can"t jump water. If it wasn"t for that it"d be on us by morning."
"There are cottages and camps on the other side of the lake though, aren"t there?" asked Dolly.
"Yes, and they"re fighting hard to save them," said the porter. "They ain"t got much chance, though, unless the wind shifts and sends the fire back over the ground it"s burned over already. It"s got out of hand, that"s what that fire"s been an" gone and done."
"We"ll have to stay here until it"s out," said Eleanor, with decision. "Our road begins right up there"--she pointed to the northwest end of the lake--"and the chances are the fires will be burning over that way before the night"s over. However, I don"t believe there"ll be a great amount of damage done, if they can save the buildings on the sh.o.r.es of the lake."
"Why not, Miss Eleanor?" asked Margery. "It looks like a pretty bad fire."
"Oh, it is, but there isn"t a great deal to burn. About two or three miles back from the lake there"s a wide clearing, and the fire must have started this side of that, or it wouldn"t have jumped. And it can"t have been burning very long, or we"d have had the smoke at Long Lake."
Then she went off to make some inquiries, and was back in a few minutes.
"Come on, girls," she said. "It"s only about ten minutes" walk to Camp Sunset, where we are to stay."
And she led the way down to the lake, and along to a group of buildings made out of rough hewn logs, that stood among trees near the water.