Katherine raised her head from the blanket to see what was going on and looked right into the open mouth of the creature as it stood over her.
"Murder! It"s going to eat me up!" she shrieked, diving under the covers with a prolonged howl.
By this time Aunt Clara had found the whistle with which she always summoned her husband when she needed him and blew a long, shrill blast. A few minutes later Uncle Teddy appeared at the door, with a string of startled boys running out of their cabin behind him, and at a word of command from him, accompanied by several emphatic pokes and proddings, Mrs. Bossy meekly turned and walked out through the doorway, which was considerably the worse for her entrance. She had probably strayed from the nearest farmhouse and was suffering from the intense cold. Attracted by the light streaming from the little window of the cabin she had come to find shelter, and when n.o.body answered her first gentle knocks with her horns, she had taken matters into her own hands and become housebreaker. She was stabled in a lean-to shelter for the rest of the night and made comfortable with straw and a blanket.
"Isn"t it funny how all the suffering critters come to our hospitable door for shelter?" said Katherine at the breakfast table. "Just like Sandhelo. He came of his own accord, also."
"They must know that we keep the Fire Law," answered Hinpoha. ""Whose house is bare and dark and cold, whose house is cold, this is his own"!"
"Isn"t it strange that she came to our door, and not to the boys"," said Gladys. "They had a light shining, too, but her footprints show that she came past their door to stop at ours."
"That"s because she was a lady," replied Uncle Teddy, helping himself to his fifth slice of fried bacon, "and no lady would come bustling into a gentleman"s apartment like that. Hurry up and get your ch.o.r.es done, you housekeepers and wood-gatherers, and let"s go out and make a snow man."
"Let"s make a totem-pole," suggested Katherine, when they were all out playing in the snow. "It"s lots more epic than making a snow man."
"You mean a "snowtem pole,"" observed Uncle Teddy.
So they set to work and made a marvellous totem-pole, higher than the cabin, with figures carved into its sides such as were never on land or sea. Then Uncle Teddy and the boys, who had done less carving on their sections and consequently were finished first, set up a barber pole on the other side of the doorway, containing the stripes with a crimson of their own concocting, which was a secret, but which involved several trips to the kitchen and the food supply box. All this time the Captain had never spoken one word to Hinpoha. Whenever he would have relented under the spell of the jolly larks they were having, something whispered to him, "She called me Cicero! I won"t stand that from anyone!"
"Who"s ripe for a trifling sprint of five miles this afternoon?" asked Uncle Teddy at the dinner table, taking three scones at once from the plate.
"I! I! I!" cried a chorus of voices, and a dozen hands waved frantically above the table.
"Have you any special place in mind?" asked Aunt Clara, pretending not to see Uncle Teddy stealing yet another b.u.t.tered scone from her plate.
"Well," said Uncle Teddy, "I happen to know that there"s a real sugar camp in action somewhere about here, and I think five miles covers it, there and back. It might not be the worst idea in the world to look in and see how they are getting on. I dare say most of these folks here have never seen maple syrup outside of a can."
A sigh of delight ran around the table. "Hurry up, everybody, and put everything you have left into your mouths, so I can collect the plates,"
said Sahwah, impatient to start at once.
But when the time came to start Hinpoha had developed such a dizzy headache that going along was out of the question. "It"s nothing serious," she stoutly maintained, in reply to anxious inquiries. "Too much noise, that"s all. We might call it "Mal de racket"!" She would not hear of any of them staying at home with her, however, although Aunt Clara and Nyoda both insisted. "Go on, all of you," she begged, pressing her hand to her throbbing temples. "It would make it so much worse if I thought I had kept you away from the fun. All I want is to lie down quietly. I"ll be perfectly all right here. If I feel better soon I"ll follow your tracks and either catch up with you or meet you there and come back home with you. Please go." And so insistent was she that they went without her.
"Be sure you lock the door carefully," called Aunt Clara.
"And be sure you put out a sign, NO COWS ADMITTED," said Sahwah. And laughing they set out, leaving her tucked in her bunk. With the cessation of the noise that had almost lifted the roof of the cabin during the dinner hour, the headache gradually disappeared, and in an hour Hinpoha was herself again. Swiftly buckling on her snowshoes she ran out into the stinging air, which seemed like a cool hand laid on her forehead.
She found the trail of the others easily, for the crust was slightly dented in by every step. The way led through a thick strip of woods.
Hinpoha noticed that there were many tracks of animals here and wished with all her heart that she knew what they were. "It would be such a grand thing to say to the folks at home, "I followed the trail of a "c.o.o.n," and be sure it was a "c.o.o.n," she said to herself, and then laughed aloud at the ridiculous mistake of the Captain. Then she stood still in delight, for just before her a dark, furry body was slipping along over the snow. "I believe that really is one," she said to herself joyfully. "I can"t catch him, of course, but maybe he"ll run up a tree-people always talk about "c.o.o.ns being treed-and then I can see what he looks like." And she sped after the little animal, who took alarm at her first step and disappeared between the trunks of the trees.
Hinpoha looked for him for a while and then realized it was a hopeless search and with a sigh turned to resume her own way through the woods.
Then she stopped in dismay. The broad trail she had been following so easily had vanished from the earth! The only marks on the white ground were those of her own snowshoes. "Of course," she said, coming to herself with a shake, "I got off the trail when I followed that "c.o.o.n. I"ll follow my own tracks back." But her own tracks led her round and round in a circle, in and out among the tree trunks, and did not end up in what she sought. It took her some minutes to realize that she was actually lost in the woods. Then, of course, the first thing she did was to go into a panic, and run wildly back and forth. "Come, this will never do,"
she told herself severely, standing still. "I must stop and think before I do anything else. Let me see, what was it Migwan did the time she was lost up in the Maine woods? She sat down on the ground and wrote poetry, and waited until we came and found her! I can"t write poetry, that"s out of the question, and I can"t sit on the ground, either, it"s too cold.
I"ll have to stand up and wait." But that proved a dreary amus.e.m.e.nt. It was getting bitterly cold, and a strong wind whistled through the bare branches till it made her flesh creep. To make things worse, an early twilight was setting in and the light was rapidly fading. To keep from taking cold she walked up and down bravely among the trees, growing more terrified every minute. She tried to sing, to call, to shout, to make her voice carry across the snow, but it was lost in the moaning of the wind.
Her feet grew numb with the cold and she stamped them vigorously to start up the blood. The crust broke through, and down she went through several feet of snow to her waist. She braced herself with her hands and tried to draw her feet out, but they went through also and she floundered with her face in the icy snowflakes. Then with a growing sense of horror she realized what had happened. The ends of her snowshoes had become firmly wedged under the roots of a tree, and she was unable to pull them out.
And her feet, tightly bound to the snowshoes by the pretty straps and buckles, were trapped. She struggled furiously, and only sank deeper in the snow.
As the "syrup party," as they called themselves, were just ready to cool off the bit of boiled sap that had been given them to taste, the Captain suddenly sprang to his feet and smote his forehead. "Daggers and dirks!"
he exclaimed, "I left my sweater hanging right in front of the fire when we came away-you remember it got all wet in the s...o...b..ll fight this morning-and I bet it"s scorched to cinders by this time. Do you folks mind if I go back to the cabin in a hurry? I got that sweater for Christmas and I hate to lose it so soon. I"m all right, uncle, I can find the way, even if it is getting dark. Don"t hurry yourselves. Give my share of the syrup to Slim. He"s getting thin." And adjusting his snowshoes with a skilled "jiffy twist," he was off down the trail.
Now the Captain, although he had been mistaken about the tracks the day before, was nevertheless an observant lad, and when he came to the place where Hinpoha had left the trail, he noticed the marks going off in another direction and stood still and looked at them. He knew that they most likely belonged to Hinpoha, and he knew also that she had not arrived at the sugar camp and he had not met her on the trail coming home, so, putting two and two together, he decided that she must be in the woods somewhere. A mean little instinct whispered to him to go on his way and let her be wherever she was, and get a good fright until the rest found her; then his better nature rose to the top and he decided to hunt her up and show her the trail to meet the others.
"Glory, she certainly did mess up the trail some," he said to himself, as he followed the marks which wandered up and down and doubled back on themselves and crisscrossed everywhere. It was slow going, for the darkness was hiding the footprints and he had to bend down to the ground to see them clearly. He almost stepped on her at last when he did find her. She was numb from the cold and very nearly asleep and he thought she was dead. The imprisoned snowshoes held her down and he could not pull her out of the snow at first. Finally he suspected what had happened and dug down in and loosened the buckles. It took a good deal of working after she was freed to get life back into the numb feet and ankles, but it was accomplished at last and Hinpoha was ready to walk home.
Then a moment of embarra.s.sment fell between them. Hinpoha flushed and looked uncomfortable. "I"m sorry I called you Cicero," she said, with a sneeze between every word. "You aren"t a Cissy at all. You"re a hero!"
And then for no reason at all, except that the afternoon"s strenuous adventure had unstrung her nerves, she burst into tears.
"Here," said the Captain, entirely light-hearted again, and holding up the little bucket he had carried away from the sugar camp, "cry into the pail. Evaporate the water. Save the salt. It"s worth money."
And Hinpoha giggled foolishly and dried her tears and raced back to the cabin as fast as she could go, to stave off pneumonia on her arrival with hot blankets and steaming drinks.
"He _is_ a hero," she murmured dreamily to Gladys, who hovered around her like an anxious grandmother, after the others were satisfied that she was all right, and had set to work getting supper; "he never once said, "I told you so"!"
CHAPTER XII HINPOHA"S ROMANCE
An indistinct murmur floated down from the Winnebago room of the Open Door Lodge, punctuated by little squeals and exclamations. The firelight shown on four tense faces, and four pairs of eyes were riveted on the two figures in the center of the group who were engaged in a very singular occupation. Balanced between two stiffly outstretched and quivering right forefingers hung a key, and suspended from it by a string was a black-covered book, supposed to be set apart from all secular uses. In a breathless undertone Hinpoha-for she was the owner of one of the aforesaid fingers-was chanting a pa.s.sage of scripture designed for a widely different application. A strained hush was followed by another outbreak of exclamations. "Look, it"s turning! It began to turn the minute she said, "Turn, my beloved." What letter did it turn on, "Poha?"
"D," replied Hinpoha, in a solemn whisper.
"D," repeated the chorus, "what does that stand for?"
"Daniel," supplied Sahwah promptly.
"His name"s going to be Daniel," chanted the chorus. "Now try for the last name."
Again the mystic rite was performed. At "I" the Bible trembled with a premonitory movement. "It"s turning!" whispered the chorus in an awed tone. "No, it isn"t either; it"s still again." After that one tremor the soothsaying volume remained bafflingly motionless through the recitation of the mysteries which accompanied the letter J. K likewise began uneventfully. But no sooner had Hinpoha uttered the fateful words, "Turn, my beloved," when with a suddenness that scared them half out of their wits the key turned sharply in the supporting fingers, twisted itself free and fell to the floor with an emphatic bang.
"It"s K," cried Hinpoha, covering her face with her hands. "What names begin with K?"
"King," said Gladys.
"Knight," suggested Katherine.
"All the n.o.ble names," said Nakwisi dreamily.
"Mrs. Daniel King," said Sahwah experimentally, whereupon Hinpoha hid her face in the bearskin rug.
"You try it, Katherine," said Gladys. "I"ll hold the key with you."
"Oh, I"m afraid to try it," said Katherine, hanging back and looking uncomfortable. "It"s no use, anyway; n.o.body"d have me for a gift."
"It always tells the truth," said the blushing Hinpoha. "You know Miss Vining, Clara Morrison"s old maid aunt? Well, Clara persuaded her to try it and it wouldn"t turn for her at all, and they went through the alphabet three times in succession."
With a skeptical expression Katherine suffered herself to be placed on the box covered with an old piece of tapestry displaying a threadbare figure of the three fates, which was the seat of those engaged in the mysteries. "My beloved is mine, and I am his," she recited jerkily, keeping her eyes glued to the key. "He feedeth upon a row of lilies--"
"It"s "He feedeth upon the lilies," just "the lilies"; the "row" part comes later," interrupted Gladys in a sharp whisper.