CHAPTER XIN CAMP AGAIN
ThoughWard was sure a turkey couldn’t break a window pane and Fred and Polly and Margy and Artie, who joined them, were doubtful, Mrs. Pepper said that, for her part, she knew the turkey was in the Larue house.
“And you’ll just have to help me get him out,” said she. “I have company coming to-morrow and I have to get that turkey killed and dressed to-night. Carrie is off with some of her friends—instead of helping me—and Mr. Pepper won’t be home till the late boat. I’ll pay for the broken glass, of course; but you’ll have to help me take that turkey away.”
A turkey hunt promised some excitement, and the six children went into the house determined to find the missing bird. Mrs. Pepper implored them not to chase him, when they found him, “for,” she said, “I’ve been feeding him on English walnuts and chocolates for a week, and I don’t want him to lose his fat. A scrawny turkey is something I can’t abide.”
“I feel as though I was hunting for a burglar,” Polly whispered to Margy, as they tiptoed through the lower rooms.
“So do I,” answered Margy. “Oh! What was that?”
It was nothing but a window shade that had rattled against the pane, blown by the draft which came through the broken window. Dora, the Larue maid, had gone to her own home to stay over the holiday, and there was no one but the searchers in the house.
“Well, he isn’t on the first floor,” said Fred, when all the rooms had been carefully examined. “Artie and I will go up to the attic and have a look around there. A turkey might feel more at home in an attic.”
Mrs. Pepper didn’t seem convinced, but she went on with her hunt and Fred and Artie went to the attic. The door opening on the steep stairway was half open, and as Fred jerked it back, something flapped in his face.
Fred was no coward, but he jumped back with a startled cry. A large turkey scuttled up the attic stairs.
“He’s up here!” shouted Fred. “Come on—we’ll get him! He’s up here!”
The other children came running, and Mrs. Pepper toiled after them.
“Don’t chase it,” she kept saying. “Don’t chase it. You’ll run all the fat off it.”
“You stay down here, Ward, to head him off,” directed Fred. “We’ll go up and get him started, and when you hear me telling you to open the door, you do it slowly. We only want to drive him back to the coop.”
Ward seemed to understand. He took up his station by the door which Fred closed as he followed the rest up the attic stairs.
“There’s Mr. Williamson whistling,” said Ward. “I’ll bet he’s ready to go. He doesn’t know where we are.”
“I’ll go and tell him,” promised Mrs. Pepper. “You stay right where you are, Ward. He’ll wait for you when he knows you’re doing something to help me. I couldn’t get that turkey out of the attic alone in a month of Sundays.”
Mrs. Pepper hurried off. She was short and stout, and Ward had to admit that she would have found turkey-chasing hard work with no younger feet and hands to help her.
Ward, listening at the door, heard the sound of quick footsteps over his head, a shout from Fred and a burst of laughter from Artie. Then the footsteps began to run, and Ward guessed correctly that they were chasing the turkey overthe attic floor. Margy gave an excited shriek, and then an avalanche seemed to be coming down the uncarpeted stairs.
“Open the door!” called Fred. “Open it, quick!”
Ward was so excited that he forgot to open the door slowly. He flung it back with a jerk and an angry and frightened turkey spread its wings and sailed over his head, while Fred, stumbling, fell over Artie and the two boys and Jess came down in a heap on the protesting Ward.
“Catch him!” cried Polly, from the top of the stairs. “He’s going downstairs again. Catch him!”
In a moment the three boys and Jess were on their feet, and, joined by Margy and Polly, they rushed pell-mell down the front stairs. The door in the hall was open and Mrs. Pepper stood talking to Mr. Williamson on the porch. The grown-ups caught a glimpse of a flying brown body and then a colorful flash as six gay-colored sweaters dashed past them. Then the chase headed for the Pepper yard.
“Corn!” cried Mrs. Pepper. “Show him some corn and he’ll walk into the chicken house.”
Polly dashed around to the chicken house and caught up a measure of corn lying on a grain bin.She ran out into the yard and shook this invitingly. Dozens of hens gathered around her, and, sure enough, the fugitive came, too.
Careful not to spill a grain, Polly walked backward into the chicken house, and the moment the gobbler stepped over the sill, she scattered the corn with a lavish hand. As his long neck bent to eat the grains, Polly slipped out and bolted the door.
They were half an hour late in starting, but the richer by an extra fruit cake Mrs. Pepper pressed upon them.
The drive to Lake Bassing was made in good time. It was a cold day, but tucked in the tonneau with the robes, the girls and boys were warm and comfortable.
Lake Bassing, in the winter, was a very different town from the one they had known in the summer season. Some of the houses were closed, and there was no cheerful Dick Hare and his bus to greet them. Mr. Williamson did not stop in town, but drove straight to the bridge that led to Tom’s Island.
“It feels like snow,” he explained, as he helped them out, “and we want to get settled in camp before it is pitch dark. What’s the matter, Polly? Stiff?”
Polly was a little cramped and cold from sittingstill so long, but as soon as she got down and began to walk, she was all right. They all helped to carry the things across the bridge, and then Fred and his father ran the car down to the Meade farm, where they were to keep it in the farmer’s garage.
By the time they had walked back to the island, Mrs. Williamson had a fire built in the kitchen stove and one in the funny little wood stove that had been set up in the mess-house. The girls were spreading the blankets on the cots, and Artie and Ward, having brought in wood, were pumping two pails of fresh water.
They were all so sleepy that they decided to tumble into bed and forego the campfire that night. With the hot water bottles, which Mrs. Williamson filled from the teakettle, and the sleeping bags and blankets, they were as comfortable as could be, when tucked in, and were asleep almost before they had finished saying “good-night.”
Artie was the first to wake in the morning. He opened one eye, glanced around, trying to remember where he was, and then, happening to see through the open end of the tent, he shrieked in delight.
“Fred! Ward! Wake up! It snowed!” he cried.
That roused the camp, and the six chumsdressed in such haste it is doubtful if they missed the steam heat of their bedrooms at home. The girls came out of their tent at the same moment the boys stepped from theirs, and a royal snowball fight was on before breakfast.
“Could you consider an armistice—for flap-jacks?” called Mr. Williamson, from the door of the kitchen lean-to.
Could they? You might have thought they had never had anything to eat since the summer before, to see them at that breakfast table. Mrs. Williamson insisted on baking cakes till no one could eat a morsel more, and then the boys made her sit down, while Polly, under her directions, mixed more batter and baked a fresh and hot supply for the jolly cook. The three boys took turns carrying them in, and Mrs. Williamson said she felt as a queen must feel with some one to wait on her.
After breakfast there was the dinner to be considered. Mrs. Williamson had done nearly everything at home the day before, and after more wood and water had been brought in and Polly and Margy had set the table with a clean cloth and the pretty favors Mr. Marley had given them in a box before he left, the children were told to go off and coast till they were called.
“I’ll ring the old cowbell as a signal,” said Mrs.Williamson, pointing to an old bell that hung on a nail in the kitchen.
Mr. Williamson stayed with her, and the rest went off with Fred’s sled to find a good coasting hill.
“We can’t go off the island, or we won’t hear the bell,” said Polly.
Artie was for coasting down the bluff he had fallen over. “That,” he remarked, engagingly, “would be even more exciting.”
“Yes, and when you landed in that cold water, I guess you’d find it exciting,” observed Fred. “We couldn’t pull you out with a rope, either, because you’d drown before we could get a rope.”
However, it was not necessary to go over the bluff, for they found that the gradual ascent to it formed a hill that was steep enough to offer good coasting. Taking turns with the sled, they coasted to their hearts’ content, and when the cowbell called them to dinner they brought rosy cheeks and huge appetites to the table.
The turkey was the brownest, the cranberry jelly the reddest, that they had ever seen. And they were allowed both kinds of pie—mince and pumpkin—because Mr. Williamson said that playing outdoors so much would keep them from getting ill, no matter how much dinner they ate. Wasn’t that an understanding remark? AsArtie said, it just showed you what kind of a man Mr. Williamson was!
There was a long hill back of the Meade farmhouse, and here Mr. Williamson took them all that afternoon. It was the kind of hill that took your breath away, going down it on a sled, long and steep and with a dip in the middle that made your heart come up in your mouth, so Margy said. The girls couldn’t help screaming each time they went down, but they wouldn’t have stayed away for the world.
When it was too dark to coast any longer, they went back to camp and the boys built a huge bonfire. They had cocoa, steaming hot, in their tin cups and had turkey sandwiches and ate outdoors, grouped around the fire “just like explorers,” Artie said.
“The nicest Thanksgiving I ever had,” said Ward, sleepily, getting into his flannel bag that night.
And Artie echoed him, more sleepily still.
Perhaps it was the snow that made Artie dream of Christmas. At any rate, he sat up in bed the next morning and shouted across to Fred that he heard sleighbells.
“Go to sleep,” said Fred, drowsily. “You’re dreaming.”
“I do, too, hear ’em!” Artie insisted. “There,Fred Williamson! I guess you’ll believe me now!”
“Hello! Hello!” bellowed a hearty voice, and sleighbells crashed as the voice shouted “Whoa!”
“It isn’t Christmas,” Fred heard Artie mutter to himself, and that sent the older boy into fits of laughter.
“You bet it isn’t Christmas,” Fred declared, and not for anything in the world would he have admitted that the same thought had crossed his mind—a picture of gay and gallant Santa Claus, clad in a jolly red suit, driving his reindeer over the snow.
Ward, who didn’t mind the cold, had hopped out of his cot and was leaping, like an antelope, toward the tent door, his sleeping bag a decided handicap.
“It’s Mr. Meade,” he reported, after a brief look. “He’s got two horses harnessed to a long bobsled—at least it looks like a bobsled. Mr. Williamson is down talking to him. Hurry and get dressed!”