he said, "just five minutes until train time."
Consternation reigned in the group. The Captain gallantly offered to miss the train and hunt her up, but the others would not hear of it. Hasty telephoning to her house brought the news that Katherine had left half an hour ago for the station.
"Then she"ll be here," said Nyoda, eyeing the clock nervously. "If she doesn"t make it she"ll have to miss it, that"s all." There were times when she would have liked to shake Katherine for her unbusiness-like ways.
But eight twenty-five came and no Katherine. The long train pulled in and Uncle Teddy swung them all aboard, and with a great cheering and waving of snowshoes they were off. Other pa.s.sengers looked with interest at the lively group that occupied one whole end of the car, singing, laughing, shouting nonsense at one another.
"Time for the Better Baby to have his bottle!" said the Bottomless Pitt, gaining possession of the thermos bottle. He unscrewed the lid and held it to Slim"s lips, making him drink w.i.l.l.y-nilly. It was hot chocolate, as Sahwah had guessed. Slim choked and sputtered and had to be patted on the back.
"Do behave, children," said Nyoda, as the fun threatened to block the aisle, "that magazine man can"t get through."
The man stood in the midst of the scufflers, patiently trying to cry his wares above the din.
"Buy a maggyzine," he chanted. "All the latest maggyzines!"
"Good ones for the ladies, Bad ones for the gents; All the latest maggyzines For fifteen cents!"
Amused, they stopped talking to listen to his ridiculous singsong.
"Buy a maggyzine, lady?" he said, holding one out to Nyoda. On the last sentence his voice cracked in three directions and leaped up the scale a full octave, so the word "lady" was uttered in a high falsetto squeak.
"Katherine!" exclaimed Nyoda, seizing the magazine seller by the arm in amazement.
"At yer service, mum," replied that worthy, with a low bow.
Then, amid the hubbub that ensued she calmly proceeded to remove the fuzzy little black mustache that had adorned her upper lip, took off the fur cap that had covered her hair and threw back the long ulster that covered her from neck to heels, and stood smiling wickedly at them.
"Katherine, you awful, awful, wonderful, wonderful girl, how did you manage to do it?" gasped Gladys, breathless with astonishment.
"And when did you get on the train?" cried Hinpoha in the same breath.
"You didn"t get on with us."
"I got into the wrong street car this morning," replied Katherine, producing her gla.s.ses from her sweater pocket and polishing them on the end of her m.u.f.fler, "and got carried east instead of west. When I found it out there wasn"t time to come back to the Union Station, so I went on out to the Lakeside Station and go on the train there. I had planned to be waiting for you on the step when we got into the Union, but on the way out I met a magazine seller and had an inspiration. I bribed him to let me take his cap and books and coat for ten minutes. The mustache I had with me. I thought it might be useful in case I should be called up to perform a "stunt" at Lonesome Creek. The rest you already know, as they say in the novels." She tossed the borrowed plumage into an empty seat and settled herself beside Slim.
"By the way," she said quizzically, looking at the boys, "what was it I heard you declaring a while ago, that no girl could masquerade as a boy and really fool a boy?"
"Pooh, you didn"t really fool us," said Slim.
"Oh, no, I didn"t," jeered Katherine.
"Well, we"d have found you out before long," said the Captain.
"Maybe you would and maybe you wouldn"t," said Katherine. "The only thing I noticed you doing was looking with envy at my little mustache."
The Captain blushed furiously and the rest shouted with laughter.
"Anyway, Nyoda knew me first," she continued, "and that shows that girls are smarter than boys. I can just see us being fooled by one of you dressed as a girl."
"I bet I could do it," said the Captain.
"Maybe _you_ could, Cicero," said Hinpoha sweetly. Relations between her and the Captain were somewhat strained these days, but how it began or what it was all about, no one could tell.
The Captain turned angrily at the taunting use of his name. He knew it was meant to imply that he was "Cissy" enough to pa.s.s off for a girl. "So you think I"m a Cissy, do you?" he said hotly. If Hinpoha had been a boy there would have been a scuffle right there, but as it was he was helpless.
"Tell them how you trailed the fox up in Ontario, father," interrupted Aunt Clara hastily, and Uncle Teddy began a thrilling tale of adventure in the backwoods that held them spellbound until they reached their station.
"Now for the long white trail!" cried Uncle Teddy cheerily, when all snowshoes were adjusted to their owners" satisfaction. "Nine o"clock and all"s well! Catertown and dinner at twelve o"clock, ten miles due south as the crow flies! Here, Captain, you be the first pathfinder. Here is a map of the way we are to take. You may be leader until you get us off the track, and then we"ll let one of the girls try her hand. Forward, march!"
Whole new worlds lie before the hiker on snowshoes. All the ugliness in Nature is concealed by the soft white mantle of snow, like a scratched and stained old table covered with a spotless cloth, and everything is glistening and wonderful and beautiful. The snowshoes are seven league boots in very truth. On them you go right over stumps and fences and hummocks and stones and little hollows. You do not need to keep to the road or to the beaten track. Dame Frost, like Sir Walter Raleigh, has spread her mantle over the unpleasant places and over it you may pa.s.s in safety.
"Where are we now?" asked the Bottomless Pitt.
"Casey"s Woods," replied the Captain, referring to his map.
"Oh," cried Sahwah, "don"t you remember how we wanted to come here to a picnic once in the summer, but we couldn"t go into the woods at all, because the mosquitoes were just terrible? Why didn"t we ever think of holding a picnic in the winter? There are no ants to crawl into your shoes and no spiders to get into your cocoa."
"And no poison ivy," said Gladys. "Why, winter is the very best time to hold a picnic!"
And they made up a hiking song to the tune of "Marching Through Georgia,"
and sang it until the woods echoed:
"Hurrah, hurrah, said the possum to the "c.o.o.n, Hurrah, hurrah, what makes you come so soon?
We started in the morning, and we"ll get there before noon, As we go hiking on our snowshoes!"
"Doesn"t Aunt Clara look just like a Teddy Bear in that brown fur coat?"
whispered Gladys to Sahwah. Aunt Clara was nearly as broad as she was long, and, wrapped in furs as she was, seemed rounder yet.
"Halt!" cried Uncle Teddy, as the company came out on the edge of a deep ravine. "Oh, I say, Captain, what"s this? It doesn"t seem to me I included this in my order."
Much confused, the Captain spread his road map on a log and set the compa.s.s on it, trying to find out where he had gone wrong. "Shucks," he said disgustedly, after a moment"s study. "We should have gone at right angles to that hundred-foot pine tree instead of in a line with it.
Everybody back up-I mean, right about face. Shucks!" And he handed the map and the compa.s.s to Sahwah with as good grace as he could and took the end of the line, as became an officer who had been reduced to the ranks.
Sahwah led them back to the pine tree and in the right direction from it, as indicated on the map, and they soon came to the bridge which spanned the gorge a mile below the spot where the Captain had reached it. Detour and all they reached Catertown at twelve o"clock, where their ravenous appet.i.tes worked fearful havoc with the good dinner set before them.
Uncle Teddy insisted upon having Slim"s thermos bottle filled with milk, to guard against his getting faint on the way, although Slim blushed and protested. Ten more miles to make in the afternoon. But to these practised hikers the distance before and behind them seemed nothing wonderful and they declared the going was so good on snowshoes that they could keep on forever. Sahwah followed the map accurately, and brought them out at the right crossroads at the end of five miles, where she relinquished her office as pathfinder to Bottomless Pitt, who was next in line. It had been decided en route that five miles should be the length of any leader"s service.
"Honorable discharge," said Uncle Teddy, patting Sahwah on the head.
"I"ll wager there aren"t many girls who could have done that."
"All of us could," answered Sahwah, eager to sing the praises of the group as a whole.
The Captain said nothing. He felt that he had disgraced the Sandwiches by letting a girl get ahead of him. It did not help him any to note that Hinpoha was looking at him and evidently thinking the same thing. The Captain was very sore at heart. He liked and admired Hinpoha more than any of the other Winnebagos, and they had always been the best of friends until suddenly, for some reason which he could not explain, she had turned against him. And she had done the one thing to him that he could never forgive. She had called him "Cicero." All was over between them.
Winter hikes weren"t such a lot of fun after all, he told himself.
"Hi, look at the rabbit," shouted Pitt, pointing out an inquisitive bunny that sat upon his haunches under a tree, "to see the parade go by."
"Don"t hurt him, don"t hurt him," cried Sahwah, dancing up and down and trying to focus her camera on him.
"Who"s hurting him?" said the Captain. "We haven"t anything to hurt him with, unless Slim steps on him." Sahwah clicked her camera and at the click Br"er Bunny vanished into s.p.a.ce.