An instant later Gladys was in trouble. "Watch me dive!" she called, and sprang from the bank. The water was shallow and the bottom soft, and her head stuck fast in the mud while her feet waved in the air. She was rescued from her uncomfortable position, her face and hair plastered with mud. Next, Hinpoha, swimming under water with the swift current, struck her head against a log and emerged with a great bruise. Nyoda, trying to get the pancake batter ready for breakfast, was nearly distracted with this swift succession of accidents. "Every one of you come here and sit in a row beside me," she commanded, "and the first one that causes any excitement until breakfast is over will get spanked!"
"What a lovely cave!" exclaimed Migwan later when they were exploring the woods. "It's a regular witch's cave. Nyoda, won't you dress up like a witch to-night and tell our fortunes?" Nyoda consented and the girls scoured the woods for hanging moss to decorate the cave, and for pine cones to build a charmed fire. They were busily transforming the bare rocks into a green tapestried chamber, when Sahwah came up, crying as if her heart would break, carrying in her arms a dead wild duck.
"What's the matter?" asked Nyoda in alarm.
"I shot it!" sobbed Sahwah.
"But that's nothing to cry about," said Nyoda, "don't you know that wild ducks are game birds? It's a bit out of season and you mustn't shoot any more, but I must congratulate you on your aim." Sahwah was a living riddle to her. Fearless as an Indian in the woods and possessing the skill with a rifle to bring down a bird on the wing, she was so tender-hearted that she could not bear to think of having killed any living thing! Nyoda bade her cheer up and pluck the fowl for roasting, and the girls danced for joy at the thought of the feast in store for them. They left off decorating the cave and went to constructing a stone oven in which to cook the bird. It was a bit scorched on the outside when done, but the meat was so tender it nearly fell apart. Sahwah, who at first wanted to bury the martyr with full honors, changed her mind when she smelled the savory odor and enjoyed the dinner as much as the rest.
When night fell the girls repaired one by one to the cave in the woods to have their fortunes read. Nyoda, clad in her gray bathrobe in lieu of a witch's cloak, trimmed with streamers of ground pine, and with a high-peaked hat with a pine tassel on top, was a weird figure as she bent over the low fire stirring her kettle and muttering incantations. She read such amazing things in the extended palms that the Truth Seekers' eyes began to pop out of their heads. The grinning, toothless old hag (Nyoda had blackened all her teeth but one), was so realistic that they had to look closely to make sure that it was their beloved friend and not a real witch.
Near by Sahwah and Hinpoha were conducting a "Turkish Bath" for the entertainment of the girls who were through having their fortunes told. They had built a shelter of ponchos and had a fire going. They heated small stones red hot and then plunged them into a pail of water. The resulting steam heated the tiny chamber and threw the patients into a dripping perspiration, which limbered up their muscles, which were stiff from paddling. They took the "Turkish Bath" in their bathing suits and went into the river immediately afterward so as not to take cold. Nyoda was the last customer, and helped take down the ponchos, and as Sahwah and Hinpoha had their beds to make up she sent Migwan to put out the fire. Instead of putting it out immediately Migwan sat down to dream fire dreams, until Nyoda called her to come to bed. Hastily scattering the fire brands with her feet she ran in obedience to Nyoda's call, and the camp was soon wrapped in slumber.
In the place where the fire had been a tiny spark lay on a dry leaf. Soon there was only a little curl of smoke where the leaf had been, and the spark looked around for another leaf to eat up. He found it and then put his teeth into a pine cone. From a tiny spark he had grown to a hungry flame. The pine cone crackled and snapped and jumped into a dry pine tree that lay nearby. In a few minutes the twigs were burning merrily and the flame was twice as big as when Sahwah was heating stones. Then the wind came along and carried a flock of sparks into another dry tree, and that one outdid the other and made a still bigger blaze! The ground was covered with dry sticks and pine cones and the fire leaped along with giant strides. Then it did a cruel thing. It caught hold of a living pine tree and thrust its fiery tongues deep into its bark. After that it took no heed whether a tree was living or dead. Whole families of tender green needles blazed up together, and when they fled into the arms of their relatives for shelter started them blazing too.
Nyoda, waking suddenly from a dream, sat up and saw the glare in the woods, and blew the alarm call on the bugle. In an instant the girls were awake and saw what was the matter. Getting quickly into their bloomers and sweaters instead of white middies they dipped into the river to get wet all over and then ran for the blazing woods. The fire was spreading alarmingly through the underbrush, and Nyoda set half the girls to clearing away the dry wood in the path of the flames while the others threw water into the blazing trees and beat the fire with wet ponchos. Sahwah worked like a Trojan with her hatchet, cutting down young trees bodily and hurling them out of the way. Every now and then a shower of blazing pine needles would envelop the workers and if it had not been for their wet clothes and hair they would have been in constant peril of blazing up themselves. It took several hours of the liveliest fighting before the last spark was extinguished and the danger past.
"Now then," said Nyoda when they had washed their blackened hands and faces, "who had charge of putting out the camp fire last night?"