"He won't come around again at night, but it would be just like him to snoop around here in the daytime, Bessie."
"I hadn't thought of that, Zara. But he might. If he stops to think and realizes that someone turned his own trick against him, or if he tells someone, and they laugh at him, he'll want to get even. I'd certainly hate to have him see one of us."
But their fears were groundless. For, as soon as breakfast was over, Wanaka called all the girls together.
"We're going to move," she said. "I know we meant to stay here longer, but Bessie and Zara will be happier if we're somewhere else. So we will go on to-day, instead of waiting. And I've a pleasant surprise for you, too, I think. No, I won't tell you about it now. You'll have to wait until you see it. Hurry up and clean camp now, and begin packing. We want to start as soon as we can."
Bessie was amazed to see how complete the arrangements for packing were. Everything seemed to have its place, and to be so made that it could go into the smallest space imaginable. The tents were taken down, divided into single sections that were not at all heavy, and everything else had been made on the same plan.
"But how about the canoes?" asked Bessie. "We can't carry those with us, can we?"
"I've often carried one over a portage—a short walk from one lake to the next in the woods," said Minnehaha, laughing. "It's a lot easier than it looks. Once you get it on your back, it balances so easily that it isn't hard at all. And up in the woods the guides have boats that they carry that way for miles, and they say they're easier to handle than a heavy pack. But those boats are very light."
"But we'll leave them here, anyhow," said another girl. "They don't belong to us. They were just lent to us by some people from the city who come here to camp every summer. They own this land, too, and they let us use it."
And then Bessie saw, as the first canoe was brought in, the clever hiding-place that had been devised for the boats. They were dragged up, and carried into the woods a little way, and there a couple of fallen trees had been so arranged that they made a shelter for the canoes. A few boards were spread between the trunks, and covered with earth and branches so it seemed that shrubbery had grown up over the place where the canoes lay.
"In the winter, of course, the people that own them take them away where they'll be safe. But they leave them out like that most of the summer. Some of them come here quite often, and it would be a great nuisance to have to drag the canoes along every time they come and go."