CHAPTER VII
TENDERFOOT ADVENTURES
The ends of this story are winding out like the strings of a Maypole, and just like those pretty dancing streamers, do the story lines all swing from the pole of the Girl Scout activities.
The Flosston rally was held for the purpose of planning a broader program, and as told by Lieutenant Cosgrove, the arrangements there were made to afford the mill girls a chance to enjoy the meetings, and to participate generally in the regular membership. These plans had already thrown their influence over an entire chain of the big factories of Eastern Pennsylvania.
Most of the plants employed one or two women welfare workers in their ranks, following the campaign waged by progressive women in the interests of better conditions among women wage-earners. This qualification pertained to girls as well as adults.
So it was that young Molly Cosgrove, an assistant welfare worker, would be allowed to go from one mill to another in carrying out the new movement of Girl Scouts for mill workers between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two years. No girl under sixteen was supposed to be at work in mills, and if any such was found she must have been listed at the required minimum, sixteen.
The sensational news of two girls having run away from the Fluffdown mills was now quickly making its way through Flosston and near-by communities. The Wartliz family had done its part in spreading the scandal, while the Brodix people said little, wagged their heads and grieved sincerely, for their Dagmar was a cherished daughter, and her loss had sadly strained the humble home circle.
The fact that Miss Cosgrove had arrived at Fluffdown and talked with Mrs. Brodix was known only to those workers directly at that particular bench, and they quickly surmised the welfare worker was making inquiries about Dagmar.
Instead, she had brought to the alarmed mother the news of her daughter's safety and secretly a plan had been made, whereby this little black-eyed woman would soon come out to Franklin on an evening, to see Dagmar, now known as Rose, and so make sure that the kind offices of the new found friends would be thoroughly understood, and likewise agreed to by Mrs. Brodix.
Not even the talkative Kate Jordan, who worked next to Mrs. Brodix and kept her eyes and ears attentive during Molly Cosgrove's visit to the afflicted mill hand, guessed any of this, while the escape of Tessie Wartliz, from the very grasp of Officer Cosgrove, remained a secret with those who directly encountered the business end of that experience.
Meanwhile the girls of True Tred were radiant with the prospect of their work—that of assisting the mill girls and actually taking part in real Americanization. To the younger girls, especially Cleo, Grace and Madaline, the plan opened a field of exciting adventure, for they had never been allowed to visit the mills, and were not encouraged to make acquaintance among the workers.
"Now," said Cleo, when the three Tenderfoots got together after school was dismissed, "we will have as much real fun with live girls as we have ever seen played out in the pictures. Some mill girls do the queerest things, talk so funny, you can scarcely understand them, and they act—well, just like a play. Florence Hayden says so, she helped with their Christmas Sunday School entertainment last year."
"Oh, well," demurred Madaline more kindly, "they never went to our schools. Some of them went to the Town Hall night school, but they only met their friends there and never got a chance to learn our ways."
"You're a real good little home missionary, Madie," commented Grace, "and I'll vote for you when the mill committees are made up, only," and she puckered her pretty mouth into a rosette intended to express deep scorn, "of course we're too young, and we are only in the Tenderfoot Class."
"I suppose Margaret will be picked," said Cleo, "she is fifteen and first class and has had a merit badge."
"But she lost it," Grace reminded the trio.
"And is going to get another from headquarters, Captain Clark said so."
"Well, she deserves it, I'm sure," protested Cleo.
"Oh, of course she does, but I would, too, if my plan worked out the other day," went on Grace.
"What plan?" demanded Cleo, while Madaline pulled a long, serious face.
"Oh, I wanted to do something noble and I tried to, but it did not just work out," faltered Grace, "but—I—am going—to try it again!" and her eyes blazed defiance at Madaline.
"You just do, Grace Philow, and I'll—"
"Who cares!" interrupted the unconquerable Grace, while Cleo looked a whole volume of inquiries.
The McKay twins were romping over from a near-by playhouse, a little tepee made of cast off "shutters" the janitor had put outside after wrenching them from hinges, and the girls had promptly availed themselves of the material for a most attractive playhouse.
"Hello! hello!" called both. "Who wants a ride home? Mother is sending the big car."
"Oh, we all do, of course," spoke Cleo, the first to mingle words with her delight. "Who wouldn't love a ride in that big, spiffy limousine!"
"Well, thank you just the same, but I don't, just today," Grace surprised them with answering. "I have an appointment with Brother Benny."
"Oh!" said Winnie McKay significantly.
"I see!" drawled her sister Norma.
"Suit yourself," deprecated Cleo.
"If you can't, you can't," philosophized Madaline.
"That's exactly it," amplified Grace. "I can't, so I can't. Thank you, Winnie and Norma, for the lovely invitation, and please let me put it down to my credit account? I would like a refund," and she laughed her irresistible explosive outburst, in which the whole party joined, whether willingly or from acute inflection.
A few moments later the party, all but Grace, climbed into the lovely, softly lined car, and when Winnie told the chauffeur to drive to the post-office first, Cleo was delighted to find she had a postal card to drop in the box. That would give every one around the Green a chance to see the style of the McKay twins and their school chums.
And while the big car rolled smoothly over Oakley Avenue, Grace and Bennie were hurrying about—over a woodland road too rough and too narrow for other traffic than just nimble, willing feet.
"You're crazy!" declared Benny, halting at the prospect of the long winding path Grace led him to, and insisted was the "right way."
"That's what the girls say," answered the sister, "but really, Benny, I am not at all. Just as sane as—Libby Lintot, and you know every one says she is as crazy as a loon. But all the same if we follow this path we will come to my tree, and maybe we will find a lovely dead tramp all buried in the spring pine needles, tied up by Grace Philow Tenderfoot!"
"Grace Philow lunatic!" answered the brother. "Nice thing to make a fellow miss a whole afternoon on marbles, just to hunt a tied-up tramp!"
"Would you rather hunt tigers'?" asked Grace, running along like a wild squirrel, jumping over rocks and springing across the perpetual little streams and brooklets.
"Sure I would, wouldn't you? What's an old tramp?" sneered Bennie.
"Wait till you see him," promised Grace, "he's lovely. That is I think he is. I didn't exactly see his face, I was so busy tieing him up," explained the sister.
Benny, two years younger than Grace, went forth on the man hunt, armed with his pop gun and water pistol. It was actually two days after the eventful experience of Grace and Madaline in River Bend Wood, when the latter had made such a desperate attempt to rescue the alleged "Mrs. Johnston's wash," but though many hours had passed, Grace was still haunted with the awful possibilities of her beloved tramp dying there, all tied up with clove hitches and running bowlines, while the birds scattered spring blossoms over his handsome face. True, she had hoped today, on this second expedition, to recover the lost wash, but to get to that big tree, and relieve the gnawing anxiety, was her first determination; dead or alive she must have a look at the tramp! Nothing could be worse than this awful uncertainty!
"That's the grove over there! See the big straight tree! That's my tree!" she exclaimed, dragging along the erstwhile brave Benny, who just now showed an inclination to come to a full stop. "Come on, Benny, hold on to me. I'll peek first, from the other big tree back of the ivy stump. Then we can see without being seen."
Like a pair of chipmunks they hopped from tree to tree, being careful to keep well in the shadow of one before risking a new position behind another.
"Just like shadow tag," Benny made chance to whisper. "Gee, Sis, this is some little scouting."
"Better than your Boy Scouts' games, isn't it, Benny?" Grace apologized, for indeed it was no easy matter to inveigle the big boy into a little girl's sport. Benny felt much bigger, and decidedly more mature than Grace—that is, he felt that way.
"Oh, Ben, see!" exclaimed the sister. "There's something flying-over—maybe over a grave!"
"Swell chance he had to—make—his own grave!" in contemptuous tones from Benny.
"Well—it is a red flag, flying over something!" Grace whispered emphatically.
Benny sprang out from his tree and with one hand on the automatic-loaded water pistol, and the other on the lead-loaded pop gun, he confronted the hypothetical grave!
"Come on out, Sis," he invited the frightened Grace. "It isn't no grave. It's just a red handkerchief on a stick."
Glancing furtively in the direction of the road, which ran parallel with the river path, and near enough to it to carry a voice from the woods to the road should emergency demand outcry, Grace stepped very gingerly out from her hiding into the open space in front of the famous "inhabited" tree.
Yes, there was the red flag! "Wasn't that a signal for war? The flag was a red handkerchief, and it swayed from a stick cut from a variegated birch.
"Oh!" sighed Grace, relief and excitement finding an outlet in that short syllable.
"Look at the signal!" called Benny, now going straight up boldly to the flag of fury. "See, it's a wig-wag, pointing to that big rock. Let's look!" and he followed the pointing stick which, tied to the top of the improvised flagpole plainly meant—due west—to any one who understood the scout wig-wag code. "Here!" shouted Benny, now casting caution to the light winds of murmuring pines. "Here's more trail. See? It's our secret code of turned over sliver leaves, and it leads to—let's see." Benny was visibly excited and Grace was almost pulling him down from the rock in her eagerness to follow the signs. He turned over a rock which showed loose soil, and dried leaves clinging to its jagged sides. "Here it is, Grace! Sure enough! Here is a letter from your dead tramp. Maybe he died right after he wrote it," and even the small boy found humor in the queer uncanny situation.
"Take it out by the roadway," suggested Grace, to whom the woods were now a little treacherous. She glared at as many trees as two brown eyes could embrace. "We can read it out under the big maple. Come on, Benny," she begged, dragging him forth again away from all the woodland mysteries.