A DAY IN THE WOODS
Mollie crept to the door of their hut at sunrise next morning. She thought she heard light footfalls outside their door. The other girls were fast asleep, worn out by the long trip of the day before. Yet when Mollie peeped outside no one was in sight; all was silence.
Only the birds had begun to stir in their nests and call their morning greetings across from one tree top to another. As far as Mollie could see stretched the unbroken forest. A narrow path ran down the hill between the trees. A steeper incline rose back of them and this was broken with deep ravines. Mollie could neither see nor hear anyone. Yet it seemed to her that she was not alone. She had a sense of some unknown presence.
She crept back into the room and put on her crimson dressing gown and slippers. She was bent on making a discovery. It could not be Naki or his wife, whose light footfalls she had heard moving swiftly around the house. They were nowhere to be seen. She was nervous about going out, as Miss Sallie had made dreadful suggestions about wolves and wild cats, yet she slipped out on the tiny porch. Far away through the trees and up the steep hillside she saw flying like a deer, a thin, brown creature. Was it human or a sprite? Mollie could not guess. She caught a glimpse of it, but it had been impossible to observe it accurately, so fast it flew. There was only a whirr of flying feet, and a flash of brown and scarlet to be seen. Could it be the famous ghost of Lost Man’s Trail?
At this same moment Naki came around from the back of the house. “I thought I heard some one,” he grumbled, looking suspiciously at Mollie.
“Yes, so did I,” she answered. “And I saw some one or something fly up the steep side of that hill.”
Naki did not answer. Mollie thought he looked at her queerly.
“You must have been mistaken, Miss,” he declared. “Nothing could have gone up that ravine over yonder. There’s only an Indian trail back there. Nobody travels much over that hill. It’s all cliffs and dangerous.”
Mollie shook her pretty head. She did not argue, but she knew what she had seen.
“I am going to try climbing it, some day, just the same,” she thought to herself, “but of course, I must get used to finding my way about first. I must find out just what I saw this morning.”
“Where have you been, Mollie?” asked Grace, opening her eyes as Mollie came back to bed.
“What’s up?” called Ruth from the next room, where she slept with Miss Sallie.
“Oh, nothing,” Mollie answered, fearful of being thought superstitious. “I thought I heard a sound at the door, but I was mistaken.”
“Girls,” Ruth demanded later, as they sat over their breakfast, “is there anything in the world so good to eat as bacon fried by Ceally over an open fire?” Ruth helped herself to all that was left on the dish.
“Ruth Stuart!” called Barbara. “How dare you take all the bacon, when you have just declared it was so delicious? Miss Sallie, make her divide with me.”
Miss Stuart looked up from her eggs and toast: “What are you children quarreling about?” she asked placidly. “Suppose you bring us another dish of bacon, Ceally. The mountain air certainly creates an appetite. I am sure I don’t see what benefit I am to get from ‘roughing it!’ The one thing I hoped to do by living outdoors was to reduce my figure, but, if my appetite continues at the present rate, I shall certainly not lose an ounce.”
“Don’t you be too sure, auntie,” Ruth demurred. “Wait till we get through with you to-day. Think you can climb the hill back of us?”
Mollie interrupted. “Naki warns us against that particular hill. He says it is unpopular for climbing because of its cliffs and ravines. But he hints that there is an Indian trail over it, so I am dying to explore it. Aren’t you, Bab?”
“Well, it’s not for me!” laughed Ruth hastily. “I am not any too devoted to scaling cliffs, you may remember.”
“What’s the programme for to-day?” Grace asked.
“Somebody must go down the hill with me this afternoon,” Ruth answered. “The automobile is to meet us there you know, to take us to a postoffice to mail our letters to our beloved families. This morning we can just poke round the camp. I want Naki to teach us how to make a camp fire.”
Mollie looked down at her dainty hands. “It is rather dirty work, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Not a bit of it, Mollie,” put in Bab. “Don’t be finicky, or we shall put you out of camp. It’s a good thing to know how to build a first-class fire. Suppose one of us should be lost in the woods some day!”
“We will suppose no such thing,” protested Miss Stuart.
Early in the afternoon Miss Sallie and the four girls started down the hill. Bab, Mollie and Miss Stuart were to go only a part of the way with Ruth and Grace, the two girls continuing their walk until they met the chauffeur, who was to bring the motor car up to the point of the road where Ruth had told him to meet her.
Mollie and Bab begged off from the excursion. “I don’t want to know,” Bab argued, “how near we still are to civilization. If I go to town with you to-day, no matter how long the drive is, it will take away a part of the romance of living in the hills.”
Miss Stuart was not much of a walker. Before they had gone half a mile she decided that it was high time to turn back.
“Good-bye girls,” she called to Ruth and Grace, who were hurrying on. “Do not stay too late. You must be back by dusk, or I shall be most uneasy. At five-thirty I shall expect you in camp. These are my orders.” Miss Sallie turned to Bab and Mollie. “Seriously, children,” she explained, “I think I shall establish military rules. If one of you stays out after dusk, I believe I shall shut you up in the guard house for twenty-four hours.”
“But where is the guard house please, Miss Sallie?” inquired Mollie meekly.
Miss Sallie laughed. “In this case the guard house means only the cabin. The girl who fails to appear when the roll is called in the evening must remain within the limits of the camp all the following day.”
Bab and Mollie left Miss Stuart before the log fire in the living room of their hut. Miss Sallie, who had a taste for romance in the lives of other people, was deep in the reading of a new novel. A part of the camping supplies had been a collection of new books for her.
“Come on, Mollie,” cried Bab gayly. “Let’s go over in the woods and gather some pine and cedar branches for our fire this evening.” Barbara walked ahead, pulling a small wagon behind her with all the ardor of a young boy. “You see,” she avowed to Mollie, “I don’t have to remember I am sixteen, or a girl, while we are living in the woods. I can be just as independent as I like.”
The two sisters were deep in their task. The little wagon was piled high with evergreens. Suddenly Mollie started. She thought she heard a voice calling from somewhere above their heads. “Hi, there! Hello! Hello!”
“Did you hear some one calling?” asked Mollie.
“Why, no,” responded Barbara. “What is the matter with you, Mollie? This morning you heard a ‘spook’ outside the door, this afternoon you believe you hear a voice calling you. Beware, child! Perhaps you are already afflicted with the wood madness, and may see that wonderful ghost.”
“Hi, there! Hi, there!” A voice was surely floating down from the sky.
This time Bab stared. Mollie looked triumphant. As far as they could see around them, there was no other human creature. And the sound did not come from the ground. Mollie was right. The noise was from overhead. But it was so far off and faint, it could not come from the trees above them.
Bab and Mollie ran out into an open space. There was a strange, rattling, swinging noise above their heads, as though a pair of mammoth wings were beating in the sky. The two girls looked up. There, about twenty yards above the tops of the highest trees was the strangest object ever seen by Mollie and Bab!
“What on earth is it?” Bab breathed faintly. The voice sounded more distinctly this time. “Is there some one down there in the woods?”
Bab caught the words. The sound was coming from a megaphone from the strange ship in the air. But Mollie and Bab had no megaphone at their command through which to answer back—only two frightened girl voices.
“Yes, yes!” they called together as loud as they could shout. The sound was ridiculous even to their own ears, and was lost in the vast spaces of the forest. The strange vehicle over their heads was gliding a little closer to the ground. Bab and Mollie could faintly see the figure of a man—two men—when they looked again.
This time the voice came through the megaphone: “Can you get me help? I have broken the rudder of my balloon. We cannot alight without assistance. If we come too close to the ground we will catch in the trees. I want some one to pull us down with ropes.”
“Well,” Mollie spoke to herself, “it is a relief to know that that object is an airship, not some hideous hobgoblin. I would like to know, Bab, how you and I are to get the thing to the ground?”
“Run, fly, Molliekins!” cried Bab, whose mind was always quick in action. “Go to the cabin for Naki and Ceally. Tell them to come here as fast as they can tear. We can manage together.”
Mollie was off in a flash.
Barbara’s voice could now be heard by the men in the balloon above her. “Drop me a line,” she called to them, “before you float too far away. I will tie you to a tree.”
Bab had realized that with a broken rudder it was impossible for the dirigible balloon to remain poised in the air.
A long coil of rope floated down from the sky. Barbara caught it and ran to a tree which was bare of branches. Then she knotted the rope with all her skill and strength. There was nothing to do, now, but wait. Bab fastened her gaze upon the strange white bird she had captured, which hung fluttering and quivering in the sky above her.