Still convulsed, they descended into the midst of the amazed cooks.
"I thought you said you"d gone to the Point of Pines?" said Mr. Evans, in his surprise completely forgetting to introduce Colonel Berry.
"We did," replied Mrs. Evans sweetly. "It wasn"t our fault that you misunderstood our note."
"I"d like to see anybody that wouldn"t have misunderstood it," retorted Mr. Evans.
"Don"t be cross, dearest," said Mrs. Evans, still more sweetly. "Of course you misunderstood our note; we meant that you should. You have played so many tricks on us that we thought it was time we played one on you. We intended to stay up there until you had supper all ready and then come down to the feast, and planned on a nice enjoyable time seeing you work. But the reality surpa.s.sed the expectation by a hundred miles.
We never expected to see such a show as we did. When you sent the searching party out after us we were nearly convulsed; the spectacle of Slim sitting there in that ap.r.o.n paring potatoes with the butcher knife was almost fatal to the branch I sat on; but when he tripped and sat down in the tomato kettle it was beyond human endurance and we just naturally exploded. Now won"t you forgive us and introduce your guest?
He seems to have made himself quite at home already."
Mr. Evans came to himself with a start and performed the introduction.
It was impossible to be formal with the colonel in that ridiculous short ap.r.o.n, and every introduction was accompanied by a fresh peal of laughter.
"The idea of deceiving your good husband like that," said the colonel, "and deliberately writing misleading notes! I shall entertain a very equivocal opinion of you young ladies," he continued with twinkling eyes. "The Point of Pines, indeed!"
"Well, weren"t we at the Point of Pines, I"d like to know?" demanded Katherine. "There was the point of a pine poking me in the back all the while. If you"d been up in that pine you would have appreciated the point. And if we couldn"t get down again we would have had to stay there all night."
Supper was ready to serve before anybody remembered about the Captain, who had been sent over to the real Point of Pines to look for the girls.
Slim and Pitt immediately went after him and met him when they had gone half way across the lake, returning to camp with the discouraging news that he had not been able to find anybody on the Point.
"Was there ever such a topsy turvy day as this?" asked Gladys, as they sat around the glowing camp fire that night after supper. "First Katherine gets us up at half past three on a false alarm; we have crew practice and then go back to bed and don"t get up until nine. And things have kept happening all day until the grand climax just now. Some days stand out like that from all others as _the_ day on which everything happened."
Colonel Berry was a delightful talker and told many stories of his life as a guide in northwestern Canada, as well as many anecdotes of the Indians among whom he lived for some time.
"Colonel Berry," said Hinpoha during one of the pauses in his speech, "may I ask you something?"
"Ask anything you want?" replied the colonel gallantly.
"Did the Indians ever bury anything under stones?"
"Did the Indians ever bury anything under stones?" repeated the colonel.
"You mean the bodies of their dead? Customs varied as to that. Some tribes buried their dead in the ground, some left them on mountain tops unburied, and some wrapped the bodies and placed them in trees."
"I don"t know whether I mean people or not," said Hinpoha, and told about finding the marked rock in the ravine.
"It is barely possible that something is buried there," said the colonel, "although rocks have been marked for a good many reasons."
"It seemed such a good place to hide something," said Sahwah shrewdly.
"The ravine itself was dark and hard to get into, but it was easy to find your way back to it if you had been there once, because all you had to do was keep on going until you had pa.s.sed seven big cedar trees. If we picked our way through the woods by that trail, other people probably have done the same thing. Maybe the Indians buried something there they intended to come back after, and marked the rock they put it under."
"Possibly," said the colonel doubtfully. "A great many Indian relics have been dug up around the sh.o.r.es of these lakes; arrow heads, pieces of pottery and ornaments of various kinds. Such things might have been buried before a hasty flight and never recovered."
"Wouldn"t it be wonderful if there _was_ something buried under that rock, and we should go there and dig it up!" said Hinpoha, half starting up in her excitement.
"Mind, I"m not saying there _is_ anything buried there," said the Colonel hastily. "I only said it was remotely possible. The Indians have been gone from this region for so long that it is not safe to speculate upon anything they might have left. I only know that from time to time things _have_ been found accidentally."
"Do you think we"d better dig?" asked Hinpoha eagerly.
"Well, there wouldn"t be any harm in it," said the colonel quizzically.
"You might find something of interest, and if you don"t--digging is good exercise." And there the subject was left.
"Tell us a real Indian story," begged Gladys of the colonel. "A story of the old Indians."
The colonel obligingly consented and told them a tale as follows:
THE STORY OF BLUE ELK
"Blue Elk was the son of a Chieftain. During his boyhood the tribe to which he belonged lived in the barren, hilly country lying to the north of our great plains. They were forced to live there by their enemies, who drove them out of the fertile hunting grounds which were theirs by right. Thus the tribe was poor and had very few horses and other things which the Indians counted as wealth. Their war costumes were not nearly so splendid as those of other tribes and their women had very few ornaments. They often had hard work getting enough to eat, for they lived far away from the places where the buffalo were plentiful, and when the winter was long and hard there was much suffering.
"Blue Elk, though only a boy, thought deeply on the condition of his people. He wanted them to be rich and powerful as other tribes were.
When he reached the age where the Indian youth leaves boyhood behind him and becomes a brave, he entered upon a fast, as every Indian boy must do before he can be counted a man. He first built a sweat lodge and purified himself with the steam bath; then he blackened his face and went off by himself to a lonely rock ledge up the side of the mountain where he stayed for three days without eating anything, watching for some sign from the Great Spirit, which would be a guide for his future life.
"To the Indian this fast is of great significance. It is the conquering of the body by the mind; the freeing of the soul from the desires of the flesh. To him the silence around him is the Great Mystery, and he believes that during this time he talks face to face with the Great Spirit.
"Blue Elk lay for a long time, his soul steeped in profound peace, waiting for the Great Spirit to speak to him through some phenomenon of nature. There was only one wish in his heart; that through him his people might become prosperous and great. At last he fell asleep and dreamed that the Great Spirit stood before him in the form of a white buffalo and spoke thus: "Where the two bright eyes of heaven (the Twin Stars) are seen shining at noonday, there will the fortune of my people be found."
"Blue Elk awoke much perplexed at this message from the Great Spirit.
What could it mean? "It is not possible for the Two Stars to shine at midday," he said. But that was the message the Great Spirit had given him, and so great was his faith that he never doubted for a moment that a miracle would occur which would bring about the fortune of his people.
"Time pa.s.sed on; Blue Elk became a brave and went on the warpath and brought home the scalps of many enemies. But the tribe was still poor and the winter often brought famine. One day when Blue Elk was being hotly pursued by a band of enemies he hid in a deep cave in the side of a hill. Faint and exhausted he flung himself on the floor. As his eyes turned upward in a prayer to the Great Spirit he saw there was an opening high up in the top of the cave and through the dark shaft thus formed the Twin Stars were shining brightly. He sprang to his feet in amazement and wonder, the words of the prophecy coming back to him.
"Where the two bright eyes of heaven are seen shining at noonday, there will the fortune of my people be found." It was just midday. And there were the stars shining down the shaft. The Great Spirit had brought the miracle to pa.s.s! But where was the fortune? Forgetting that he was hard pressed by the enemies, Blue Elk ran from the cave. His pursuers were nowhere in sight. He looked eagerly into the sky to behold the sight of the stars shining in daylight. They had vanished. Was it a dream, a trick of the imagination?
"He ran back into the cave and there were the stars shining as brightly as before. Then the truth came to him. The Great Spirit had said that where the stars shone there would the fortune be found. They were not shining outside, there was no fortune there; they were shining in the cave, so the fortune was in the cave. He looked around carefully. On the floor were some pieces of what he thought were stones. But they glittered in a strange way. "The stars have come down into the stones!"
said Blue Elk. "These Star Stones are the fortune of my people!" (The Star Stones were silver ore.) And a fortune they proved to be. With them his people were able to buy peace with the surrounding tribes and extend their hunting grounds so that they no longer wanted for food or skins or blankets. And Blue Elk believed firmly to his dying day that the Great Spirit had spoken to him in person during his fast on the mountain."
"Oh, what a lovely story!" said Gladys. "Thank you very much for telling it. Is it a true story?"
"The Indian who told it to me certainly believed it," replied Colonel Berry.
"But," objected the practical Sahwah, "how was it possible for the stars to shine in daylight?"
"Have you ever looked up through a very tall chimney?" asked the colonel. "By looking through a long, dark, narrow shaft it is possible to see the stars in daylight. I myself have seen the Little Dipper at noonday in that manner. You will remember that Blue Elk was in a cave in a hillside. A long, narrow pa.s.sage through the rocks led to a hole in the roof. Looking through this he saw the Twin Stars, and the supposed miracle was merely a phenomenon of nature. Naturally, when he went outside, he could not see them."
Colonel Berry told many more tales of the red men, but the story of Blue Elk remained the favorite. That glimpse of a far-away boyhood struck a sympathetic chord that tales of middle-aged wisdom and cunning failed to awaken. The colonel left Ellen"s Isle at noon the next day and the whole camp escorted him as far at St. Pierre in the canoes, like a squadron of battleships accompanying a liner. They parted from him with genuine regret and sang a mighty cheer in his honor as they pushed off on the return trip to Ellen"s Isle.
"Uncle Teddy," said the Captain, as they sat around the fire at Ellen"s Isle that night, talking over the events of the previous day, "I am going to do the three-day fast like the Indian boys did."
"Ho-ho-ho!" shouted Slim. "You couldn"t go a day without something to eat."
"Don"t judge others by yourself," retorted the Captain. "_You_ couldn"t, I know well enough. But I believe the Indians were right in saying that the mind should conquer the body. I like that idea of going off by yourself and watching for some sign from nature. Being away from people and not hearing them talk gives you a great chance to think out the things that are puzzling you. I am going over on the mainland, in the woods, and keep the fast three days."
Of course, Aunt Clara didn"t want him to do it. She immediately had visions of him starved to death. But there was a wonderful gleam in Uncle Teddy"s eyes when he looked at his nephew. He said very little about the proposed fast, either to encourage or discourage him; simply gave his consent.
Hinpoha regarded the Captain with wondering admiration. She also burned with the desire to do something hard, to prove that girls as well as boys can practise self-control. "Oh, Captain," she said, "if you keep the fast I"ll keep the silence! I"ll not speak a word for three days."