"Some lady?" repeated Jack.
"Mrs. Lewis, likely," suggested Cora. "I hope she did not go out in that down-pour to tie the tents."
"I rather hope she did," admitted her brother. "I had some things in that tent not warranted rainproof. Hey, fellows!" he called to the other members of Camp Couldn"t. "Hurry up. Our tent was struck, they say."
At the word the crowd from the beach ran helter-skelter through the woods toward the camp colony. Surely there was enough excitement around Crystal Bay that afternoon to last for some time, and there was every prospect now of new adventures developing.
"Any tents down?" asked Dainty, as he puffed along.
"Thinking of spilled grub?" queried Walter. "Nothing doing. We have a salvage corps department to our housewives" league, you know, and they are bound to protect the members from bandits. So you may just run along and see what is going on at the Cattle."
The storm had played havoc in the woods. Pine branches had scratched deep furrows in the white sand paths, beautiful bushes of blooming mountain laurel and mountain pinks were shorn of every bloom, and the wild roses were scattered like pink b.u.t.terflies on the catch leaves of shrubs.
The first camp to be met by the boys was Camp Hyphen. This was quite a pretentious establishment with a smaller tent adjunct. The adjunct stood for the hyphen, and it now lay in a heap like a discarded potato sack, its store of supplies settled uncertainly in nearby bushes.
"My, and they had just joined the League," wailed Jack. "I suppose we will all have to put up for the reinforcements."
"We are not an insurance company," Ed objected. "Why should we make good for a storm?"
"Because we have a calamity clause. You had better look up your rules and regulations, young man. The last time I saw them they were pasted with a daub of good family flour on our back door."
"Thank goodness the rain will have suspended our const.i.tution," Ed replied. "That back door never could have gone dry through the torrent. Don"t you remember how the small showers doused it?"
"We do," Walter answered, "and as we have the only written rules, that same fact of the back door may stand us in well."
"Pikers!" Jack called them with a laugh. "But will you observe the Hys! They are going to rebuild!"
A hyphenated name seemed the worst of luck for this camp, for there was no strong pole or cast iron bar to hold the two tents together, and the "hy" was merely a strip of ground that gave extra play to the wind. The smaller tent was now being dragged from the bed of wet sand into which it had partly buried itself, and the campers were struggling heroically to get it back to its pegs.
"Too bad!" called Walter, sympathetically.
"Worse than that," replied one fellow, who looked as if he might have been shipwrecked.
"But we are insured--in the league, you know," shouted another member of the demolished camp. "We are coming up for supper."
"You are?" returned Dray. "Say, fellows," to his own camp company, "the best thing we can do is to take what stuff we find left and hide up at the Mote. Those fellows will come down on us and won"t believe about the washed-away const.i.tution. Who on earth put that indemnity clause in, anyhow?"
"Oh, Clem did. He"s studying engineering, and I suppose he is lonesome for his math. We ought to make him pay the a.s.sessment. But I agree with Dray," continued Walter. "We ought to "beat it" up to the Mote, quick. There are other tents flopping around, and everybody will be good and hungry, you can be sure."
"Queer how old Denny made for his shack as soon as we got in," Ed remarked. "I wonder if he thought that would be demolished?"
"No, not likely," Jack said, "but the old fellow was pretty wet and played out. He"s plucky, all right, and I don"t believe we would be in yet but for him and Freda. But he is old, just the same, and only his pluck keeps him up to it. I would like to have been more decent to him, but he won"t give one a chance. We must fix it up some way, though."
"We sure must," agreed the others.
"There"s another," announced Jack, as a perfectly flat tent almost blocked their way. This was evidently deserted, for not a boy was to be seen, either lamenting or trying to right the canvas.
"Funny," commented Ed. "They must have gone to the hotel."
"Hotel!" exclaimed Jack. "Why, they borrowed a pint of our kerosene this morning. They may have gone to jail."
"Let"s run," suggested Ed. "This funeral march is getting on my nerves. Besides, I am anxious to see the Couldn"t."
In a few minutes the boys sighted their own tent. It looked all right.
"Thank goodness!" breathed Dray, fervently. "I really couldn"t stand any more nerve-racking experiences."
"We look intact," said Walter. "I wonder if my dress suit is still unwrinkled."
"Your overalls?" asked Jack, mimicking Walter"s tone of voice. "Oh, I am sure they are perfectly all right, for I saw them in the wood box just before we left."
"Brute!" responded Walter. "But I say! What"s that? We are inhabited!"
Sounds of voices issued from inside the tent. Jack dashed ahead and raised the flap.
"Robbers! Thieves! Police!" he yelled, then he had to dodge something.
"We are here for our rights," sang out a strong voice. "We demand our insurance!"
"Seems to me the demand is rather violent," replied Ed, as the Couldn"ts saw what was going on. The entire tent was filled with boys from the wrecked camps, and they were making away with practically everything in the line of eatables they could lay their hands on.
"Clear out!" ordered Dray, "or we will call the police. What sort of way is this to keep law and order?"
"The only way," replied Hal, a boy from the "Mist." "We couldn"t even keep up in starvation, but with something to sustain us we might be able to keep the law. As a matter of fact, it was civic pride that compelled us to come in here and eat."
There was no help for it now, the Couldn"ts had been robbed. Even their party paper napkins were being made into b.a.l.l.s.
"Isn"t it awful!" moaned Jack, falling into the one dry spot on the sandy floor. "And we were the real benefactors of this ranch. That"s the way goodness is repaid in this hard, cruel world."
n.o.body noticed the sermon--everyone was too busy looking for food.
Finally Walter and Ed, after a private conference with Dray and Jack, decided to give to the unfortunates all the food they possessed, "in order to avert worse damage to their property."
"But we are dining out," Ed put in, "and it"s only fair that you should take the provender home. We want to wash our little faces, you know. We dine with ladies."
"Oh, we will pay it all back," declared Clem, who was scooping up empty boxes in the hope of being agreeably disappointed in their contents as compared with their weight.
"Yes--you--will!" mocked Jack, "when we can skate on the sand of the desert. But hustle. There"s not another sc.r.a.p around. Land that oil can, Ted. It"s empty."
After considerable urging, ordering and coaxing, the Couldn"ts rid themselves of their uninvited guests, and were once again in possession of their own tents.
"Did the girls invite us?" asked Dray. "I hate to intrude."
"They did not," replied Jack, "and we are not going to intrude. We are just going over to thank Mrs. Lewis for saving this camp from destruction. She hammered down those stakes. Look at them!" he ordered. "Ed, did you ever wield a hammer as truthfully as that?"
CHAPTER XIII