“Every stick!” declared Wyn, firmly.
“And I’d be ashamed, if I were you, to complain,” pursued Bessie. “If you had been gentlemanly you would have offered to cut our wood before. You know that that is the one thing that girls can’t do easily about a camp.”
“Gee! you have quite a heap of stove wood yonder,” said Tubby.
“That is what Mr. Jarley cut for us,” Wyn said. “But it doesn’t matter what other means we may have for getting our firewood cut. Will you accept the forfeit like honorable gentlemen?”
“Why, we’ve got to!” cried Ferd.
“We’re honestly caught,” admitted Dave Shepard. “I’ll do my share. Two of us, for half a day a week, can more than keep you supplied–unless you waste it.”
“And we can have the canoes back?” demanded one of the other Busters, eagerly.
And so it was agreed–“signed, sworn to, and delivered,” as Frankie said. With great glee the girls led the Busters to the steep bank by the waterside, over which a great curtain of wild honeysuckle hung. This curtain of fragrant flowers and thick vines dragged upon the ground. There was a hollow behind it that Wyn had discovered quite by chance.
And this hollow was big enough to hide the six canoes, one stacked a-top of the other. One passing by would never have suspected the hiding place, and in hiding the craft the girls had left no tell-tale footprints.
So, for once at least, the Go-Aheads got the best of the Busters.