Rain fell in torrents on the roof of the hospitable House of the Open Door, and the wind howled dismally around its friendly gables. Inside the “lofty loft” of the Winnebagos the fire shone brightly on the hearth and the rafters rang with merriment. Sahwah had a new hobby, and was riding it to death. This was a Hawaiian guitar, known as a “ukelele,” from which she was producing a series of hair-raising noises.
“Sounds like a cat in its last agony,” remarked Hinpoha.
“Well, that just suits me,” replied Sahwah, undisturbed, drawing a long shivering wail from the strings. “I am the cat that walks by himself——”
“And all racket is alike to you,” finished Hinpoha. “Who’s getting supper tonight, Nyoda? I’m nearly starving.”
“I appointed Gladys and Veronica,” answered Nyoda. “The combination of blonde and brunette ought to produce something pretty good.”
Gladys promptly laid down the bit of leather in which she was cutting a pattern and moved toward the “kitchen end” of the Lodge. “Come on, Veronica,” she said, “let’s make a carload of scones for these hungry wolves.”
Veronica looked up at her without moving. On her face was an expression of surprise; almost amazement. “What,Icook?” she asked scornfully. “That is for servants to do!”
Then it was the Winnebagos’ turn to look amazed. Sahwah dropped her instrument on the floor with a clatter, and the rest sat silent, not knowing what to say to Veronica. Nyoda bridged over the embarrassing situation as best she could. “I’ll be cook tonight,” she said quietly. As she moved about helping Gladys she thought and thought how this new problem must be met. “It’s the fault of her training,” she told herself, “and she really isn’t a snob at heart. She’ll be all right when she has been with the girls awhile and watched them. It won’t do to insist on her doing the things she considers beneath her. She must be made to want to do them first. But we’ll make a real Winnebago of her in time!” And her eyes strayed thoughtfully over to the corner of the hearth where Veronica sat, a little apart from the rest, her brooding eyes on the fire, her sensitive lip twisting into involuntary shivers of disgust when Sahwah produced a particularly ear-splitting yowl.
“Hear and attend and listen, everybody,” said Nyoda when the buttered scones had been reduced to crumbs. “I have been doing some important research work lately and am now ready to present the result of my investigations.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Hinpoha curiously.
“Two weeks ago tonight,” continued Nyoda, “our meeting was broken up by a band of young braves bearing the appetizing title of ‘The Sandwich Club,’ who implored us to let them come and play with us in our Lodge and be lodgers—kindly overlook the pun; it was quite unintentional—providing we weighed them in the balance and found them not wanting.”
“Is there any scale on which ‘Slim’ would be found wanting?” giggled Sahwah,
“I have spent the last two weeks obtaining information,” resumed Nyoda, “which I am happy to report is of a highly satisfactory nature. So, all things considered, and in spite of the informality of the request, I humbly recommend that the aforesaid braves be allowed to lodge in the bottom half of our Lodge at any and all times they may so desire. I might add that I have already obtained the consent of our Bountiful Benefactor, Gladys’ papa. All in favor of letting in the Sandwich Club say ‘Aye.’”
There was a perfect shout of “Ayes,” followed by a ringing cheer.
“When are they going to take possession?” Sahwah wanted to know.
“I’m to tell them tomorrow what your decision was,” replied Nyoda. “It being Saturday, I suppose they will be down in a body to fix up according to their own ideas.”
“What will the interior of a Sandwich Club look like, I wonder?” said Gladys.
“Hark, what was that noise?” asked Nyoda abruptly. The girls listened intently. From the lower floor of the barn there came a thumping noise, followed by a subdued crash.
“Somebody’s in the barn,” said Hinpoha in a frightened whisper.
The sound came again, thump, thump, and a noise as of a box being shoved aside. “It’s a burglar!” said Sahwah, and Nakwisi gave a frightened squeak which Sahwah stifled with a sofa cushion.
“There’s nothing in here to steal,” said Nyoda. “Perhaps it’s a tramp.” Again came the noise from below. Leaving the curtain drawn over the opening, Nyoda went to the top of the ladder and called down, “Who’s there?” There was no answer but another thump. “We have a gun,” said Nyoda coolly, taking Sahwah’s little rifle down from the wall, “and if you put one foot on the ladder I’ll shoot.” Still no answer.
“I’m going down to investigate,” said Nyoda. “This is growing uncanny.”
“Don’t go down,” begged the girls, clinging to her, “something dreadful will happen to you.”
“If you go I’m going with you,” declared Sahwah when Nyoda appeared determined to rush into the jaws of danger. Nyoda threw aside the curtain and flashed her bug light on the floor below. Nothing was visible within the radius of the light, but over in the far corner where the old horse stall was something was moving and thumping about and a sound like a groan came from the darkness.
“Somebody’s hurt,” said Nyoda, hastening down the ladder. “Bring a lantern with you, Sahwah.”
Together they moved toward the corner while the girls above crowded around the opening and watched in breathless suspense. The light revealed a small donkey lying on the floor of the stall. He was kicking out with his hind feet against the partition wall and it was this sound that had frightened the girls above. At Sahwah’s shout the others came hurrying down to behold the find. The donkey made no effort to rise and looked at the faces around him with an imploring look in his eyes as if to say, “Help me, I’m in trouble.”
“What’s the matter, old chap?” asked Nyoda, kneeling down beside him. The donkey answered with a distressed bray that was more like a groan and pawed the air with his front feet, which seemed to be fastened together in some manner. Nyoda turned the lantern around so the light fell directly on him and then they saw what the matter was. A length of barbed wire had become tangled around his front legs, binding them together, and his frantic efforts to get it off had resulted in its becoming deeply imbedded in the flesh, lacerating it badly. The girls shuddered when they saw it and drew back.
“This won’t do, girls,” said Nyoda firmly; “we’ve got to get that wire off the poor animal’s leg. Medmangi, have you the nerve to do it? I’m afraid I can’t.”
“His hind legs would have to be tied together first, so he can’t kick,” said Medmangi. The girls looked at each other and all drew back. All but Veronica. She came forward quietly and took the rope which the others were afraid to use and skilfully slipped a noose over the tiny heels and fastened them down to a ring in the floor.
“I have done it before, when a horse was sick,” she explained in response to the girls’ expressions of amazement at the neat performance. The girls’ liking for her, which had suffered a sudden chill at the cooking episode, warmed again, and they were inclined to overlook that now that she had stepped so neatly into the breach when they were helpless.
Then Medmangi, the Medicine Man Girl who was going to be a doctor, and had no horror of surgery, bent calmly to her task while the others held the lantern for her. Quickly and skilfully she worked, removing the cruel points as gently as possible. Then she washed the wounds with an antiseptic solution from the First Aid Cabinet upstairs and bound them up with clean bandages. Then Veronica took the rope from the donkey’s hind legs and he struggled to his feet, plainly delighted to find his front legs in working order again in spite of the pain. He looked at the girls with a dog-like devotion in his intelligent eyes and when Medmangi patted him soothingly he laid his head on her shoulder affectionately. “My first lover—a donkey!” she said laughingly.
“Poor little mule,” said Hinpoha, stroking him from the other side. “He knew the right place to come to all right. ‘Whose house is bare and dark and cold, whose house is cold, this is his own,’” she quoted dramatically. “We certainly have succeeded in creating the right atmosphere of hospitality if even a lonely donkey can feel it and come straight to our ‘Open Portals!’”
“Now that he has come,” said Nyoda, rather puzzled, “the question is what to do with him. If he goes wandering off again he’ll have those bandages off in no time—he probably will anyhow—and his legs will get so sore he will have to be shot. He undoubtedly belongs to somebody—very likely some children’s pet—and I think we had better keep him right here in the barn until we find the owner. The boys will have to postpone their taking possession in favor of the other donkey if his presence interferes with their activities.” Here the “other donkey” leaned against the wall in such a pathetic attitude, as if his weight were too much for his sore legs, that if they had had any intentions of turning him out into the rain they would have speedily relented.
“It’s a good thing this old stall is still here,” said Gladys. “There isn’t any straw, but there is a box of excelsior and we can spread that out and cover it with a blanket and make him a soft bed. We can give him water tonight and bring food in the morning.”
“And I’ll telephone the Sandwiches about him,” said Nyoda, “so if they are coming over tomorrow they won’t turn him out.”
But that telephone message was unnecessary, for at that moment a number of dark figures appeared in the doorway and after a moment of hesitation, entered.
“Why, here are the Sandwiches,” exclaimed Nyoda cordially, advancing with extended hand. “We were just talking about you. Speaking of angels—you know the rest.”
“We were just going by,” said the Captain (it was likely that they were “just going by” that out of the way place in the rain!) “and saw your light now you’ve left the windows uncovered, and thought we’d just step in and inquire our fate. We just couldn’t wait until tomorrow,” he finished in a boyish outburst. “Is it going to be the Open Door for us?”
“Bless you, yes,” said Nyoda, smiling reassuringly at this manly lad who was already her favorite, “there wasn’t a dissenting vote in the jury box. We——” but the remainder of her sentence was drowned in an ear-splitting cheer that was decidedly less musical than the Winnebago cheers, but none the less hearty.
“Pedigrees satisfactory, and all that?” inquired the Captain.
“Perfect,” answered Nyoda with twinkling eyes. “I’ve dug up more facts about you than you know yourselves. So,” she added demurely, “if you’re still minded to ‘know us better,’ as you flatteringly remarked on the occasion of our first meeting, why, we’re perfectly willing to be known.
“But you can’t take immediate possession of your club room because we’ve rented it temporarily to another don—another fellow,” she said mischievously, turning the light of the lantern away from the stall where the donkey was. The boys’ eager faces fell a trifle.
“Of course,” they answered politely, “that’s your privilege.”
“He’s a very nice chap,” pursued Nyoda, with a warning glance at the girls behind her, who were stuffing their handkerchiefs into their mouths in an effort not to laugh.
“Yes,” assented the boys without enthusiasm.
“Is it anyone we know?” asked the Captain politely, trying to make conversation after a moment of silence.
“Maybe you do know him,” answered Nyoda. “He’s here tonight. Would you like to meet him?”
She led the way to the stall and turned the light on the donkey. There was a moment of surprised silence, followed by a perfect explosion of laughter. “Where’d you get the donkey with the trousers on?” squeaked Slim in his high thin voice. In the dim light of the lantern the bandages on the donkey’s front legs looked like a pair of trousers. Then the girls, after their laugh was out, explained about the visitor who had come to them from out of the vast, and the Sandwiches declared that they did not in the least mind sharing their club room with a needy donkey, and offered to relieve the girls of the entire care of him, besides trying to find the owner.
They were as good as their word about taking care of him, but the weeks slipped by and no amount of advertising produced anything in the shape of an owner.
“We’ll have to adopt him,” the Winnebagos decided. “A Camp Fire Donkey sounds thrilling to me,” said Sahwah. “Think of all the fun we’ll have with him. As long as the boys don’t mind, we can keep him right here in the stall.”
“What shall we name him?” asked Gladys.
“Call him ‘Wohelo,’” advised Hinpoha. “It was the spirit of Wohelo that led him to us. From now on he’ll be a symbolic donkey.”
“But where do we come in on this?” inquired the Captain. “We take care of him and he lives in our house.”
“That’s right,” said Hinpoha. “Then let’s call him ‘Sandwich-Wohelo,’ contracted to ‘Sandhelo.’” And “Sandhelo” he was until the end of the chapter. His sore legs became very stiff until they were healed and he hobbled painfully when he walked at all, which was very seldom. But the scratches healed at last and the day came when Medmangi took off the bandages for good, and led him around the barn for exercise.
Then an amazing thing happened. Sahwah was upstairs in the Lodge, amusing herself with a mouth organ she had just discovered in the depths of her bed. But she had no sooner blown half a dozen notes when Sandhelo jerked up his head, pulling the bridle out of Medmangi’s hands, and rose up on his hind legs. Then he walked on his hind legs over to a box, climbed up on it and sat there with his feet in the air, like a dog sitting up. Medmangi screamed and brought the Winnebagos flying from all directions, to behold the marvel in open-mouthed astonishment.
“He’s a trick mule!” shouted Sahwah, tumbling down the ladder in her excitement and never stopping to pick herself up. “Now I know where he came from. He was with that dog and pony show that was in town a few weeks ago. He must have strayed from the show and got left behind. Hats off to the newest member of the Winnebago group! We certainly do have a way of attracting all the best talent in town to our ranks!”
Just how it started nobody ever knew—it may have been Sandhelo’s turning out to be a trick mule, or it may have been because Slim was fat and would make such a beautiful clown, besides being fine for a sideshow—but before they knew it the Winnebagos and the Sandwich Club were hard at work getting up a circus. The Sandwiches had taken possession of their half of the Open Door Lodge and had converted it into a gymnasium. They had built it on purpose to reduce Slim, they carefully explained to their friends, and regularly put him through a course of exercises strenuous enough to reduce a hippopotamus to an antelope in three weeks, but at the end of that time he had gained just five pounds, so the Sandwiches declared their efforts to be love’s labor lost and left him in peace.
Sandhelo was becoming a well-known and conspicuous figure in the streets. Hitched to an old pony cart of Gladys’, with bells jingling around his neck and ribbons flying from his harness, he never failed to attract a crowd of children. He had all the vagaries of the artistic temperament, some of which caused his drivers no little inconvenience. For one thing, he would not go at all unless he heard music, and it was no small accomplishment to drive with one hand and play a mouth organ with the other if you happened to be alone in the cart. And then, if he happened to pass anything unusual in the street he had a way of sitting back on his haunches and holding up his front feet and looking at them. As he invariably sat down unexpectedly, the cart would go on and bump into him and the shock would throw the driver from her seat, besides making a great mess of the harness. Several times he had done this in the middle of a busy crossing and held up traffic in both directions, while motormen fumed and policemen threatened, and Sahwah (it usually was Sahwah, because she drove him more than the others) played her sweetest on the mouth organ in an effort to make him go on. Nothing would make him move until his curiosity was satisfied and then he would dash off like an arrow from the bow for half a block, after which he would slow down and look over his shoulder to see how his driver was getting on. There was always such a look of anxious solicitude in his eye on these occasions that it was impossible to be angry with him and he continued to exercise his temperament without reproof.
After half a dozen of these free shows Sahwah declared that such an ability to draw a crowd was worth money, and they had better give a real show and charge admissions.
The big space in front of the Open Door Lodge was an ideal place for the ring. Seating arrangements for the audience gave them some anxiety at first.
“We ought to have a grand stand,” said the Captain, who had been chosen Ringmaster.
“Well, we can’t build one,” said the Bottomless Pit. “The audience will have to stand through the performance, and that’ll be a grand stand, all right.”
“Innovation in circuses,” said Nyoda. “Have the audience stand and the circus sit down. Like the picture of the bride standing while the groom sprawls at ease in the photographer’s gilt chair.”
“I think I can get a lot of chairs from a man who rents them out,” said the Captain. “He lets people have them for nothing if it’s a charitable enterprise.”
“Do you call a circus a charitable enterprise?” asked Nyoda.
“Well, ours will be,” said the Captain. “We’re doing it to make money so we can buy the new apparatus for the gym, which will surely make Slim thin, and that surely is charity.”
Upstairs in the Lodge the six Winnebagos were all seated on the bearskin bed having a lively argument as to who should drive Slim in the Chair-iot Race. The Chair-iot Race was a grand inspiration of Sahwah’s, who was keen on features in the circus line. Once, on a rummage, through Gladys’ attic, they had found six horsehair covered chairs furnished with excellent china castors, which caused the chairs to roll with enchanting speed. Sahwah now thought of the chairs and conceived the brilliant idea of harnessing a Sandwich to each one, seat a Winnebago in the chair, and race six abreast down the long cement walk from the barn to the road. The idea was hailed with delight until the Winnebagos began comparing the merits of the prospective steeds, and nobody wanted to be the one to drive Slim and go lumbering along like an ice-wagon in the rear of the others.
“It’s too bad the Captain had to be Ringmaster and can’t take part in the show,” sighed Hinpoha. “Then there’d be enough without Slim.”
“We wouldn’t dare leave him out, anyway,” said Gladys. “It would hurt his feelings. So we’ll just have to draw lots for him, and whoever gets him will have to make the best of it, that’s all.” So they drew slips of paper from a hat and Hinpoha drew Slim, just as she had feared right along. Sahwah drew the Monkey, which suited her down to the ground, for he was a famous sprinter, and she lost no time getting the girls to ask the boys whose names they had drawn in that secret ballot upstairs to be their steeds in the race. Slim’s face lighted up with such a delighted smile when Hinpoha apparently chose him for her own that her heart smote her when she thought how this choice had been thrust upon her. Slim was already beginning to learn the bitter truth that nobody loves a fat man. Nyoda and the Captain plotted the circus parade and it was a triumph of ingenuity. The advance bills which they scattered broadcast among their friends announced that the parade would embrace “Five ferocious animals from the Other Side of Nowhere, these animals being respectivelyThe Camelk,The Crabbit,The Alligatortoise,The Kangarooster, andThe Salmonkey.
Other numbers on the program were as follows:
Ivan Awfulitch, world’s greatest magician; royal entertainer to the King of Spain. Was banished to Siberia; escaped and swam to America; has now opened up a complete line of magic. One day only.
Mr. Skygack, from Mars, in a special song feature entitled the Mars-y-lays.
La Zingara, the bareback rider.
Sandhelo, the famous trick mule. As intelligent as two men and a school teacher.
Mr. Avoirdupois Slim, fattest man on earth. Will sit on a toothpick.
Mr. E. Lastic, Inja rubber man.
Archibald Dimplesthe better baby.
Chair-iot Race.Feat never attemped before on any stage.
Monkey, the Aerial Gymnast, in the sensational dupe-the-dupes.
Twenty Other Great Features
ALL CHILDREN WILL GET A FREE RIDE ON SANDELHO,THE FAMOUS TRICK MULE, AFTERTHE PERFORMANCE
Bottomless Pitt owned a little hand-printing press and printed wonderful tickets to be sold at five cents apiece, which Gladys declared were worth the money as souvenirs, with the circus thrown in extra.
“What are you making, a circus tent?” asked Gladys, dropping into the Lodge, where Nyoda sat stitching together great lengths of red and white striped material.
“No; only a clown suit for Slim,” laughed Nyoda. “Gracious, how much it does take!”
“It reminds me of the riddle: ‘If it takes thirty yards of cloth to make a shirtwaist for an elephant, etc.,’” said Gladys. “Poor Slim! You would have died to see him practice his clown stunt with Sandhelo. You know the boys built him a tiny red cart with two big wheels, and when he sat down in it, it tilted way over backward and the shafts stuck up in the air and pulled poor little Sandhelo right up off his feet, and there he dangled, pawing for dear life. But, whatever are you making, Hinpoha?” she finished, examining the thing which Hinpoha was working on and which resembled nothing in the universe.
“This is Peter’s costume,” answered Hinpoha; “he’s the hind leg of the Kangarooster, you know. By the way, Nyoda, has a Kangarooster one hump or two?”
“None at all,” answered Nyoda hastily. “The humps are on the ‘Cam’ part of the Camelk. That reminds me, have we something to stuff the humps with?”
“Take excelsior,” advised Gladys. “Dear me, who’s screeching like that downstairs?”
They all crowded down the ladder at the sound of a lusty yell from below and found Sahwah hanging head downward from a heavy hook in the wall. She had improved a moment’s leisure to climb up to the top of the window with a spray of bittersweet to see how it would look, and in descending had caught her skirt on the hook and lost her footing. The skirt tore through until the stout serge hem was reached and that offered successful resistance, and Sahwah hung, as Nyoda remarked, like a lamb on the spit.
“I got an idea hanging upside down,” were the first words she gasped as they restored her to the perpendicular and revived her with peanuts.
“It’s the only way you ever would get an idea,” said Hinpoha.
“Is that so?” returned Sahwah, with spirit “Who thought up the Chair-iot Race, I’d like to know?”
“Stop bickering and tell us your idea,” said Nyoda.
“Why, it’s this,” said Sahwah. “Sell hot cocoa with marshmallows in it after the show. Everybody’ll be cold sitting around. We can make almost as much money that way as with the circus.”
“A lake of hot cocoa with an island of marshmallows in it is my dream of heaven,” said Hinpoha, clasping her hands in ecstasy. “Sahwah, you’re a genius. I yield the palm to you without a struggle. You have a ‘head in your mind,’ as absent-minded old Fuzzytop used to say. There’s nothing in the whole world that’ll separate a nickel from its owner like a cup of hot cocoa with a marshmallow floating in it on a cold day.”
“Another innovation,” said Nyoda. “We’ll have that instead of circus lemonade. See to getting the supplies, will you, Sahwah dear? I have so many details to look after now that I simply cannot be responsible for another thing, or my head will burst and out will come everything that’s safely packed in now. Come in, Captain. What’s on your mind?”
“Slim,” said the Captain, with a look of comical despair, as he sat down among the girls. “I’m afraid he won’t do for a Better Baby. He’s smashed three perambulators and a high chair and we can’t get any more. And the biggest size white dress we could buy in the store won’t go half-way around him.”
Nyoda knitted her brows. “We simply have to have a Better Baby,” she affirmed. “It’s one of the best features. We’ll drape cheesecloth around him for a dress and he can play on a quilt on the floor—I mean the ground—instead of being taken for a ride by his nurse in a perambulator.”
“Poor Slim!” said Hinpoha. “How many more things are going to be wished on him? I’m afraid his ‘gall will be divided into three parts,’ too!”
“That would have been a very clever thing for you to say,” remarked the Captain, “if it had been original, but it wasn’t. They spring that over at our school, too. Slim isn’t doing any more than the rest of us at that. Only he’s so conspicuous that everything he does seems like a lot more than it really is.”
“How are the tickets going?” asked Sahwah.
“We’ve sold over a hundred,” announced the Captain with pride. “We’re famous people, we are.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Sahwah. “It isn’t we who are the attraction, though—it’s Sandhelo. I rode him through the streets and sold nearly fifty tickets to the children that followed us. They’re all attracted by the promise of a free ride after the show.”
“It’ll probably take all evening to give them the ride, and we’ll never get to that jubilation spread we’re going to have after the show, but we have to make our word good,” said Nyoda.
“Put them on four at once and we’ll get done somehow,” said Sahwah.
Hinpoha laid down her sewing and stretched her arms above her head. “I never knew circuses were such a pile of work,” she sighed.
“‘Wohelo means work,’So dig like a Turk,”
“‘Wohelo means work,’
So dig like a Turk,”
chanted Sahwah.
“I move we all go to the ‘movies’ tonight and see ‘If I Were King,’” continued Hinpoha.
“Can’t,” said Nyoda briefly, checking up on her fingers the things she still had to do. “I still have to evolve a tail for the Salmonkey and a frontispiece for the Camelk, make four banners, rehearse the living statuary, make a bonnet for the Better Baby, teach the Crabbit how to hop and crawl at the same time and make a costume for the bareback rider.”
“I’d come and help you,” said Sahwah, “but we’re going to have a test in Latin tomorrow and I have to cram tonight. I’ll just have time to practice with the band.”
“A test in time saves nine,” murmured Hinpoha. “What are the Sandwiches doing now?”
“Erecting the flying trapeze,” answered Sahwah, looking out of the window. “Captain is hanging by his eyebrow to the top of a pole and Bottomless Pitt is standing below, waiting to catch him when he falls.”
The Captain caught her eye, as she leaned over the sill and shouted:
“All right below,O Wohelo,Nowpleasego mix some pancake dough!”
“All right below,
O Wohelo,
Nowpleasego mix some pancake dough!”
“All right,” called Sahwah cheerily. “You’ll soon smell something doughing!”
Nyoda and Gladys went home on an errand, and Hinpoha, worn out with her arduous labors with the needle, stretched out on the bearskin bed and fell sound asleep in the warmth of the fire. Sahwah puttered about collecting the ingredients for flapjacks to make a treat for the boys, who had worked like Trojans ever since school was out. The wood in the fireplace had burned down to lovely glowing embers, and she laid the toaster on top of them to act as a rest for the frying-pan. The Captain, tying ropes into the branches of the big tree just outside of the window, looked in and admired the scene. Hinpoha, with her marvellous red curls falling around her face in the light of the fire, looked like a sleeping princess in a fairy tale, and Sahwah, holding her dish of batter in one hand and skilfully putting grease into the pan with the other, was a cheery little housewife indeed. Through the half-open window he could hear her singing “A Warrior Bold.”
A moment he looked in, filled with whole-souled admiration for these many-sided girls who were his new friends, and then without warning something happened inside. The panful of sizzling fat suddenly burst into a sheet of flame that left the confines of the fireplace and seemed to leap all around Sahwah. A burning spark shot out and fell into a pile of cheesecloth lying on the floor at the far side of the room, and it blazed up instantly, the flames enveloping the sleeping Hinpoha. It took less than a moment for the Captain to spring down from the tree, run into the barn and up the ladder. But it was too late for him to do anything. In the twinkling of an eye Sahwah had seized the burning cheesecloth and flung it into the fireplace, thrown a bearskin rug over Hinpoha and now stood calmly pouring sand from a bucket on top of the burning fat in the pan. And all the while she was doing it she had never stopped singing! The Captain stood still in his amazement and listened idly to the words:
“So what care I, though death be nigh?I’ll live for love or die——”
“So what care I, though death be nigh?
I’ll live for love or die——”
A hoarse sound made her turn around and she saw the Captain standing beside her with face pale as ashes. The dreadful sight he had seen from the tree when the room seemed filled with flame was still in his mind.
“How did you manage to keep so cool and do everything so quickly?” he asked in amazement.
Sahwah laughed at his expression of astonishment. “That’s not the first fire I’ve put out,” she said calmly. “We always keep both water and sand on hand whenever we have an open fire, to prevent serious accidents. Having the cheesecloth go up at the same time rather complicated matters, but I got it into the fireplace without any trouble. I don’t know what made the fat in the pan take fire; it’s never done that before up here. But don’t worry; I’ll get your flapjacks made, all right.”
The Captain looked at her with more admiration than ever. “Most girls would have been in a faint by that time, and have had to be doused with smelling salts,” he told the Sandwiches later, “instead of coolly promising you your flapjacks anyway and apologizing for the delay!”
“Your hands are burned!” he exclaimed in concern, as he saw Sahwah looking ruefully at her blackened fingers. “Let me do something for them.”
“Nothing serious,” said Sahwah, turning them down so he could not see the blistered palms.
“They are, too!” persisted the Captain. “Have you any oil handy?”
“In the First Aid box over there,” said Sahwah. “It’s in that bottle labeledA Burned Child Dreads the Fire.”
The Captain returned with cotton and gauze and the oil and proceeded to bandage the scorched hands that had been so quick to avert disaster.
“Won’t Hinpoha be furious when she wakes up and finds her costume that she worked so hard on all burned up?” she said, as he wound the bandages under her direction. “I hated to throw it into the fire, but it had to be done.”
“She’d better not be furious,” returned the Captain. “She’s got you to thank that she didn’t burn up herself. She had a close call that time, and if you hadn’t snatched that burning rag off her and covered her with a rug I’d hate to think what would have happened. I tell you it’s great to be able to do the right thing at the right time. A lot of people talk about what they would do in an emergency, but very few of them ever do it.”
“Well,” returned Sahwah coolly, holding up her hands and inspecting the bandages with a critical eye, “there is an emergency before us right now. Suppose you stop talking and get busy and fry those pancakes for the boys. They’re dying of starvation outside.”
The Captain started, blushed and looked at her keenly to see if she were making fun of him, and then fell to work without a word finishing Sahwah’s interrupted labor.
Preparations were completed and the day for the presentation of the greatest show on earth had arrived. It was crisply cool, but clear and sunshiny, as the last Saturday in beloved October should be; and not too cold to sit still and witness an out-of-doors performance. Tickets had sold with such gratifying readiness that a second edition had been necessary, and the Committee on Seating Arrangements was nearly in despair over providing enough seats.
“It’s no use,” declared Bottomless Pitt, “we’ve done the best we could and half of them will still have to stand. It’ll be a case of ‘first come, first served.’”
Sahwah and Hinpoha, their arms filled with bundles of “props,” which they had spent the morning in collecting, sank wearily down at a table in the “Neapolitan” soda dispensary and ordered their favorite sundaes. “Now, are you perfectly sure we have everything?” asked Hinpoha, between spoonfuls.
“There’s the Better Baby’s rattle,” recounted Sahwah, identifying her parcels by feeling of them, “the Magician’s natural hair a foot long, the china eggs he finds in the lady’s handbag, the bareback rider’s spangles, and—O Hinpoha!” she cried in dismay, dropping her spoon on the tile floor with a great clatter, “we forgot the red, white and blue cockade for Sandhelo. I’ll have to go back to Nelson’s and get it. Dear me, it’s eleven o’clock now and we still have to go out home and dress. And the marshmallows have to be bought yet; that’s another thing I promised Nyoda I’d see about. Won’t you please get them, Hinpoha, while I run up to Nelson’s? There’s a dear. Get them at Raymond’s—theirs are the freshest; and then you had better go right on home without waiting for me. It will take me a little longer, but I’ll hurry as fast as I can. And please tell Nyoda that I didn’t forget the marshmallows this time; I just turned the responsibility over to you.” And Sahwah gathered up her bundles and retraced her steps toward the big up-town store, while Hinpoha took her way to Raymond’s. Five pounds of marshmallows make a pretty big box, and Hinpoha had several other parcels to carry. She had them all laid out on the counter with an eye to tying some of them together to facilitate transportation when a voice suddenly called out: “Dorothy! Dorothy Bradford!” She turned and saw Miss Parker, one of the teachers at Washington High, at the other end of the counter. “Come and meet my cousin,” said Miss Parker, and brought forward a young girl she had with her. “This is Katherine Adams,” said Miss Parker. “Katherine, I would like you to meet one of my pupils, Dorothy Bradford.”
Hinpoha acknowledged the introduction cordially, but it was all she could do to suppress a smile at Katherine’s appearance. She was an extremely tall, lanky girl, narrow chested and stoop shouldered, with scanty straw-colored hair drawn into a tight knot at the back of her neck, and pale, near-sighted eyes peering through glasses. She wore a long drab-colored coat, cut as severely plain as a man’s, and a narrow-brimmed felt sailor hat. She wore no gloves and her hands were large and bony. Her shoes—Hinpoha looked twice in her astonishment to make sure—yes, there was no mistake, the shoes she had on were not mates! One was a cloth-top button and the other a heavy laced walking boot. Miss Parker followed Hinpoha’s surprised glance and looked distressed. But Katherine was not at all disconcerted when she discovered the discrepancy in her footgear.
“That’s what you get for interrupting me in the middle of my dressing,” she said coolly. “Now, I’ve forgotten which pair I intended to wear.” She had an odd, husky voice, that made everything she said sound funny.
Miss Parker seemed rather anxious that her cousin should make a good impression on Hinpoha. Katherine was from Spencer, Arkansas, she explained, and had gone as far in school as she could out there and had now come east to stay with her cousin and take the last year in high school. Hinpoha promised to introduce her around to the girls in the class, with her eyes on the clock all the while and her mind on the performance she should be helping to prepare that minute instead of standing there talking.
“Won’t you come to our circus this afternoon?” she said politely, fishing among the small “props” in her handbag. “Here’s a ticket. It’s going to be in the big field at the corner of May and ——th streets. Come into the barn if you come and I’ll introduce you to some of my friends.”
Miss Parker and her caricature of a cousin finally departed, and Hinpoha hastily gathered up her bundles. Something about the package of marshmallows struck her as unfamiliar, and she examined it in consternation. It certainly was not her package, though like it in shape. Somebody had taken hers by mistake. She looked around the store and was just in time to see her box being carried out the front door under the arm of a woman. Hinpoha gathered her packages into her arms hit and miss and rushed after her. But impeded as she was she got stuck in the revolving door and was delayed a full minute before she escaped to the sidewalk. She was just in time to see the object of her pursuit board a car at the corner. Before Hinpoha could reach the corner the car had started. Hinpoha stamped her foot with vexation, mostly directed toward Miss Parker and her freak cousin for taking her attention away from her belongings. Then she considered. The car the woman had boarded must make a loop and come out a block below and it would be possible to catch it there. Hinpoha puffed along the sidewalk at a great rate, worming her way through the Saturday noon crowds and colliding with people right and left. She reached the corner just as the car did and made a mad dash over the pavement, dodging in among wagons and automobiles at dire peril of life and limb. She scrambled aboard and landed sprawling on the back platform, while her bundles scattered over the floor in every direction. Breathless and embarrassed, she gathered them up and entered the car just in time to see the lady carrying her box of marshmallows get out of the front door. Hinpoha made a wild dash for the rear exit, but the door was closed and the car already in motion. She rang the bell frantically, at the same time following the woman with her eyes to see in which direction she went. The car finally released her two blocks up street, and then began the mad chase back again. Poor Hinpoha was never built for speed; her breath gave out and she developed an agonizing pain in her side. Her bundles weighed her down and her hat flopped into her eyes. Chugging along thus she ran smartly into someone and again her packages covered the sidewalk.
“Oh, excuse me!” she gasped, struggling to get her hat back on her head. “I couldn’t see where I was going.Why, Captain——” For it was none other than he with whom she had collided.
“Pretty well loaded down, aren’t you?” said the Captain, stooping to pick up the litter on the sidewalk.
“Never mind them,” said Hinpoha hastily, “go afterher.”
“Go afterher?” repeated the Captain in a tone of bewilderment.
Hinpoha pointed speechlessly up the street and then with a mighty effort regained a speck of her breath and panted “Lady—blue coat—plush collar—our marshmallows—left this—Raymond’s—go get them,” and, shoving the stranger’s package into his hands, she indicated with waving arms that he was to pursue the lady in question and regain the club’s property. The Captain started off obediently, though her explanation was not yet clear in his mind, but the truth flashed over him when he presently overtook a lady that fitted the description just turning into the door of Raymond’s store with a large package under her arm, and he soon made his errand known and recovered the marshmallows. She was just in the act of returning them to Raymond’s, having discovered her mistake.
Hinpoha was out in front when the Captain emerged from the store, and she surrendered her bundles to him gratefully, saying with a breathless sigh, “Boysareuseful to have around once in a while, after all.”
“Only once in a while?” asked the Captain.
“Well, maybe twice in a while, then,” said Hinpoha graciously.
Hinpoha arrived on the scene of action so late that there was no time to press her for explanations; she was summarily hustled out of her street clothes and into her orchestra costume. The audience was arriving in crowds and the Sandwiches, who were detailed as ticket takers, had much to do to keep legions of small boys from climbing the fence and seeing the show without the formality of buying a ticket.