“I guess, if they knew there were two strange girls in camp–such girls–they’d scuttle to ‘come across’ with an invitation, too!” laughed the one slangy member inseparable from every group, whose talk is the long stitch in the thread of conversation.
“Do you think they would? Oh! I don’t know about that. Boys are such–such griffins, sometimes.”
Wormwood was in the eye of Pemrose, pointing the accusation, a new and gloomy pessimism born of the Devil’s Chair and Jack at a Pinch.
“Ours aren’t!” It was the voice of the little girl-thrush lifted in blue-jay belligerence now. “Our boys aren’t queer fish–not a bit!” rising to hot defense of Stud, the Stoutheart, who even in callow youth, was of opinion that Life in every phase was a game for two–in which two, of differing sexes, could hunt together and make good headway.
“To be sure, they do love to get off jokes on each other–and occasionally on us,” went on Jessie, the brown-haired merle in maiden form. “They have a society of older boys in their camp called the Henkyl Hunters’ Brigade. My brother Stud–he’s a patrol leader–belongs to it. And they go on the war-path occasionally–and publish a bulletin about their doings.”
“What’s a henkyl?” Una’s mouth was wide open; upon its gusty breath rode horned toads and plated lizards, in imaginary solution.
“A henkyl! Oh! if you ask them, they say it’s a freak of an animal that they hunt up and down in the woods, trying to get its scalp, or–or catch it alive. Which they seldom or never do!” Jessie’s eyes sparkled. “Stud says a whole ‘henkyl’ is hard to capture; it’s so sure to shed its horns or its teeth just as you pounce upon it.”
Pem was staring intently at the speaker, her black brows drawn together over eyes as speculatively blue as ever they had been in Toandoah’s laboratory when grasping, or trying to, grave problems of the air.
“Oh! I know. I know!” she cried suddenly, the blue breaking up in the firelight into a harlequin patchwork of merry gleams. “A henkyl! Why-y! it’s a joke. A joke that they’re forever chasing up and down, trying to get a laugh against somebody,–that absurd brigade!”
“Companionship with a Thunder Bird has sharpened your wits,” smiled the Guardian. “A practical joke it is, that most elusive thing to pull off whole, point and all, with the laugh entirely on one side! Well! we mustn’t give them any occasion to turn the chase against us, air their wit in our direction, by failing in our demonstration presently–the signaling practice to which we challenged them; eh, Tomoke?”