"It _is_ Sandhelo!" she exclaimed. "Here"s part of his red, white and blue c.o.c.kade still sticking in his hair."
"That"s our donkey," cried all the girls and boys, pressing close around.
"Where did you get him?"
"He is not," declared the man angrily. "I raise him myself since he was young."
"That is not true," said Sahwah shrewdly. "If you had had him very long you would know how to make him go. It seems to me that this is the first time you"ve ever tried to drive him."
"He is mine, he is mine," declared the man. "I know how to make him go.
He always go for me."
"Then make him go," said Sahwah coolly.
The man tried to urge the donkey forward, but in vain.
"Now, _we"ll_ show you how to make him go," said Sahwah. "Where"s that boy with the horn?" She ran up the street a distance and found the boy seated on a doorstep and bribed him with a few pennies to let her take the horn. Then, walking along ahead of Sandhelo she played a half dozen lively notes, such as had sent him flying round the circus ring. No sooner had she started than he started at a great rate. When she stopped he stopped.
"It"s Sandhelo without mistake," they all cried, and the last doubt vanished when he came up alongside of Sahwah and laid his head on her shoulder the way he always had done.
"He belongs to us," said the Captain, looking the man in the eye, "and you"ll have to give him up."
The man shifted his gaze. "I give him to you for five dollar," he muttered. "I pay so much for him."
"Not much," said the Captain. "n.o.body sold you a donkey for five dollars and you can"t get that much out of us. Now you either give him to us or we"ll report it to the police." The man protested loudly, but he was evidently thinking all the while that a donkey that only went when he heard music was not such a good bargain after all, even if he did get it by the simple and inexpensive method of finding it in his dooryard and tying it up. So, after growling some more that they were robbing him, he suffered Sandhelo to be unharnessed from the cart and led away in triumph in the wake of the horn.
"Well, our charitable enterprise didn"t turn out so badly, after all,"
said Katherine, when Sandhelo was once more established in his cozy stall in the House of the Open Door. "If it hadn"t been for that fuss about the babies we wouldn"t have been on the street in time to see Sandhelo. And if we hadn"t wanted to help those people there wouldn"t have been any fuss. It does really seem that virtue is its own reward and one good turn deserves another. Let"s do it some more."
And as usual the others agreed with her.
CHAPTER VIII A SELECT SLEEPING PARTY
"Gracious, Katherine, what is the matter with your fingers?" asked Gladys curiously, as Katherine came into the room with all five fingers on her right hand tied up.
"Oh," replied Katherine cheerfully, "I burned one, cut one, pounded one with a hammer and slammed the door on one, and that left only one good one, so I tied that up, too, for safe-keeping and only take it out when I want to use it. It"s a good thing I don"t need my hand to sing carols with, or I would be out of the running. Are we all here?"
"All but Veronica," answered Nyoda, "and Sahwah-and Sahwah will be here presently. By the way, where is Veronica?"
"She"s over at the theater where her uncle is orchestra director,"
answered Gladys. "She goes over there almost every Sat.u.r.day afternoon. I believe she plays sometimes when one of the regular violinists is absent."
Veronica, it must be confessed, was a great puzzle to the Winnebagos. Try as they might, they could never get her to enter into their work and fun with any degree of vim. She always sat aloof, her brooding eyes staring off into s.p.a.ce. Not that they loved her any the less-they were too genuinely sorry for her-but they never seemed to be able to break down the barrier between them and her. They constantly stood abashed before her aristocratic airs. When the friends went together to get ice cream Veronica had a way of flinging a dollar bill down on the table and bidding the waitress keep the change that made the others feel cheap somehow, although they knew it was useless extravagance. When a poor woman came to the door one day, just as she was going out, and asked if she had any old clothes to give away she promptly took off her expensive furs and gave them to her.
The girls were mightily impressed by this act until Nyoda talked it over with them and made them see that the gift was entirely inappropriate. So while they admired her to distraction and each one secretly hoped that Veronica would single her out as a special friend, they had to admit that as yet they had not made much headway.
"If Sahwah doesn"t come in five minutes, we"ll have to start without her," said Hinpoha, walking impatiently to the window. "Carol practice begins at two and it"s half-past one now."
Just then the telephone rang. "It"s Sahwah," reported Hinpoha, upon answering, "and she says she"s got a real charity case for us to look into-some old woman-and she"s down at Sahwah"s house now and we should all come down. She says it"s the saddest thing she ever heard. What shall we do, girls, shall we go?"
"Of course," said Katherine promptly.
"What about carol practice?" asked Gladys. "Won"t it make us dreadfully late?"
"We"ll just have to be late, then," said Katherine, jabbing her hatpins in swiftly. "Come on."
Sahwah met them at the door with an unusually solemn countenance. "You"re a load of bricks to come, girls," she said, "but I knew you would. Come right upstairs. In here," she said, pausing before the door of her room.
"Maybe you"d better go in one at a time. You go first, Hinpoha."
Hinpoha, feeling queer, pa.s.sed in. The next minute those outside heard a great shout. "Migwan! My Migwan! When did you come? We thought you weren"t coming for two whole days yet. Sahwah, you wretch, how could you get us so worked up?"
The others burst in and smothered Migwan in embraces while Katherine stood looking on curiously, until Gladys remembered her manners. "This is our Katherine," she said, drawing her forward, "that we have all written you about. Make a speech, Katherine, to show her how you do it!"
And Katherine obligingly complied and Migwan laughed extravagantly and was soon sitting on the bed beside her with her arm locked in hers, and talking to her as if she had known her all her life instead of only five minutes. That was the effect Katherine had on everybody.
Then they dragged Migwan out to the House of the Open Door and introduced her to the Sandwiches, who were playing basket ball in their half of the barn. The Sandwiches began to plan a Christmas barn dance in her honor on the spot, and n.o.body thought of carol practice again until it was too late to go. Migwan had to explain how she got through with her work at college two days earlier than she had expected and came home to surprise them. She went to see Sahwah first and Sahwah worked the little stratagem which brought them all down to her house in such a hurry. Each one insisted upon Migwan"s going home with her to spend the night, but she could not be enticed away from her own home. "I guess you"d want to stay at home, too, if you hadn"t seen your mother for three months." But she promised to attend a select sleeping party some night up in the House of the Open Door, which Sahwah had just "germed."
"There"s a loose shingle on the roof and the snow comes in a little,"
said Hinpoha regretfully. "It really ought to be fixed."
"Never mind the shingle," cried the others. "When did the Winnebagos ever balk at a snowflake or two on their beds?"
The barn dance was a grand success in spite of the fact that Slim fell down the ladder in his excitement and sprained all the portions of his anatomy that he needed most for dancing, besides demolishing a frosted cake in the tumble.
"Too bad you can"t dance," said the Captain sympathetically, when Slim"s ankles had been strapped with plaster and he had been comfortably settled on a pile of bearskins brought down from the bed upstairs. "But you don"t need to waste your time. You can be musician and play the banjo while the rest of us dance."
"But I can"t play the banjo," objected Slim.
"Play anyway," commanded the Captain. "Here, I"ll teach you a couple of tunes that you can play with one finger that we can do most of the dances to." So Slim learned to play the banjo under pressure and picked banefully away while the rest whirled about on the floor. Sometimes he got his tunes or his time so badly mixed that it was impossible to dance and then the Captain would make him sing and beat time with a hatchet on the floor. Finally Nyoda took pity on him and took over the banjo, producing such lively strains and keeping the dancers going at such a mad pace that they sank down breathless one by one, and a series of loud thumps from Sandhelo"s stall told them that he was also capering to the music and nearly battering his stall down in the process.
The boys went home reluctantly at eleven o"clock and the girls climbed the ladder to the joys of the "select sleeping party." This was the first time any of them had stayed all night in the House of the Open Door.
"Covers were laid for nine," as Katherine wrote in the Count Book. Nyoda had her camp bed, Sahwah had her pile of bearskins, Gladys her Indian Bed and Nakwisi her willow bed. Migwan was invited to share them all and chose the bearskins. Katherine had brought a couch hammock, which she declared surpa.s.sed them all in comfort. The rest of the girls played John Kempo for the privilege of sleeping with Nyoda, and Veronica got it, and the other two spread their blankets on mattresses on the floor. The fireplace was filled with glowing hard coals, which would keep all night, and the Lodge was as warm as toast, so the snowflakes which drifted in through the hole in the roof were never noticed. Of course they talked half the night, for there was so much to tell Migwan and so much she had to tell them it seemed they never would get it all told. But finally the conversation was punctuated by steadily lengthening yawns, and then trailed off into silence.
Nyoda was awakened by the touch of a cold hand on her face. "What is it?"
she asked, sitting up.
"It"s I-Migwan," said the figure standing beside her. "Do you know where Sahwah is?"
"Isn"t she in bed with you?" asked Nyoda, still in a low tone of voice, so as not to disturb the other girls.
"No, she isn"t," whispered Migwan. "I woke up a minute ago and felt around for her and she wasn"t there. I called and asked where she was and there was no answer."
Nyoda got up and lit a candle, and looked carefully around the room. All the other girls were sound asleep in their beds; Sahwah"s clothes lay on a chair, but there was no sign of Sahwah. "She can"t be under the bed,"
said Migwan, "because this bed has no "under.""