Dalton, eighteen on the day of his graduation, was most fortunately a tall, strong lad, with a very practical turn. Vocational training had fostered this and young as he was, Dalton expected, with some help, to build a very respectable log cabin from the timber on the place. His last two vacations had been spent in helping a carpenter and small contractor. While his experience might not apply to handling logs, it would help.
Leslie, like Dalton, was more of the brunette type, though not dark. Brown hair and lashes, grey eyes, good features with a pleasing mouth, laughing or firm as circumstances might demand, were her assets. She was taller at not quite sixteen than her older sister, and according to her own statement could not “draw a crooked line”; but she could play on ukelele or guitar as well as on the piano at home, and she and Sarita knew all the songs, old and new, that their generation afforded.
Sarita, brown-haired, brown-eyed, demure, pretty, half a head shorter than Leslie and a few months younger, was the fortunate one of the party in having a father. An easy-going step-mother let Sarita do very much as she pleased, a delightful, though not altogether safe method of management. But Sarita’s pleasures were always harmless ones and included those of her chum Leslie. Both girls were active, energetic and capable, with many an enthusiastic scheme or ambition originating in their fertile minds. Dalton sometimes called them the “self-starters.”
After a trip with Dalton to view the little lake and to help him bring water from the spring, the girls spent the morning of the second day in arranging their camp quarters. Elizabeth, when challenged to bring forth her curtains for their “dresser,” surprised Leslie and Sarita by producing them, deep ruffles that had once graced some home-made dressing table. “They were in a trunk in the attic,” Beth explained, “and I thought that we could use them here in the Eyrie, if it ever gets built.”
The cots, trunks and the beruffled box took up most of the room in the larger tent, but some perishable supplies were stored there; and Dalton set about making what the girls called a chicken coop, to keep their boxes of food stuffs from harm, all to be covered with a huge piece of waterproofing.
While he was doing this, he had an opportunity to tell Leslie and Sarita about his inquisitive visitor of the evening before. He described the man and gave details of the conversation.
“What do you suppose he meant, Dal?” asked Sarita in some excitement, her brown eyes growing larger. Leslie, too, was alert, scenting some secret.
“Oh, I imagine that there is a bit of rum-running, perhaps,” replied Dalton, driving another nail. “We’d probably better take his advice about minding our own business, though I will admit that it made me hot to have a chap like that laying down the law. I’ll make a few inquiries among the fishermen. I’ve got to see about getting a boat, too. I wouldn’t do this, but we have to make our stuff safe from rain or little foragers. What a waste of time it is to work here, Sarita.”
“Yes, it is. Poor you, Dal—let’s not have an Eyrie.”
“Oh, I’ll like building that, when I get at it. It isn’t going to take so long, when the materials come and the man who is to help me comes with his helpers. I’m going through the woods some time to-day to mark the trees that I want.”