Wo-he-lo for health,
Wo-he-lo, Wo-he-lo,
Wo-he-lo for Love!”
On Wigwam Hill the pine-tree—the noble standing pine, emblem of “simplicity and strength,” symbol of membership in the Camp Fire Sisterhood—bent its head, listening with every needle, as if it knew itself the special patron of this winding chant. Maple and elm-tree, amid whose rich foliage reposed like flaming birds of paradise the last rays of the setting sun, fluttered their approval as the chanting procession wound beneath them. The white-birch-tree rocked with applause. The evening breeze curled the ears of the lake and bade it listen to “Wohelo!”
Only the great-horned, straw-eyed owl, a life prisoner on the lake shore—imprisoned years ago by some naturalist who led a hermit’s existence within a stone’s throw of the water—ruffled his dappled plumage until he looked as big as an eagle upon the dim perch of his cage-house, and pessimistically hissed the chant.
He might have hooted, but in captivity he had lost his voice, was as dumb, so far as natural expression went, as the little deaf-mute of the city playground, reduced to declaring his feelings,—highly embittered ones,—by a goose-like hiss.
“Poor old owl, I do feel so sorry for you—you poor, soured old prisoner!” murmured the fringed and beaded leader of the chanting Wohelo procession, winding out from the leafy foot of Wigwam Hill past the captive’s cage, as she met the painted eye, golden as a wheaten straw and as lifeless, with a little black dot of a pupil within the yellow ring.
Whereupon the captive opened his beak until she could almost see past the roots of the pink, kitten-like tongue down into his stomach, and hissed her, turning his head upon its swivel neck, without moving another muscle or feather of his body, until he faced, now, sideways, now, directly backward, taking stock of the girl-leader’s brown-robed followers. At intervals he lowered over the painted-looking straw-eye the tiny, mysterious curtain, grey as asbestos, which he kept tucked up under his eyelid, as if the stately procession of fourteen brown figures gliding, single file, in and out among the outstanding tree-trunks, with pearly glitter of head-band and flash of many-colored honor-beads upon girlish necks, dazzled him.
“Good land! is it old Wigwam Hill—or the maidens who sleep in that Indian graveyard on the top of it—come to life?” gasped Captain Andy to his “artist” who had kept him in the city in order to paint his ground colors, the hardy flame of the skin, the indomitable blue of the eye, for her picture of “The Breaker King.” “Only I’ll wager those dead-an’-gone maidens couldn’t touch these in looks or in the bravery of their beads an’ fixings; I’ve seen all sorts of fashions an’ rigs, but this is a style of its own—eh?” He gave a breezy puff of admiration as his mariner’s eye followed the procession of maidens in leather-fringed khaki, lit by embroidery and bead, the filleted figures whose hair fell in long braids to their waists, Morning-Glory (to-night to be initiated into higher rank) leading, as they crossed an open space upon the lake shore and glided past a stationary figure of mature grace, with a yellow sun embroidered upon the left breast of her ceremonial dress, which matched theirs.
“It is Gheezies, our Guardian—Guardian of the Morning-Glory Camp Fire,” was the joyous recognition in each girlish breast, as the members of the procession, in turn, saluted her with a hand-sign, their right arms gracefully upraised, following the curves of an imaginary flame, the hand-sign of fire; fire of the heart and fire of the hearth, fire of the sun and fire beneath the shingled or slated roof-tree that shelters a home, being the glowing symbol of the Camp Fire Girl.