“I made the answering sign, which they answered in turn; then there were no more smoke signals from either side. That is all I know about it.”
“Smoke signals,” reflected the guardian. “I know of no one in these parts who would know how to make them. Do you?”
“Well, no; no one whom we have reason to look for here at this time. But I have my suspicions. If I am right, we shall know about it either to-night or early to-morrow morning.”
“Oh! tell us,” begged Margery eagerly. “Please do tell us what you think.”
“Pleathe don’t,” commanded Tommy sharply. “If I know, then I won’t be curiouth any more. If I don’t know, I’ll lie awake all night thinking and guething about it, and oh, I tell you I’ll enjoy it! I do love a mythtery, and thith ith a mythtery, ithn’t it, Harriet?”
“We will call it that. No, not a word, girls; not another word to-night. I don’t want to spoil Tommy’s pleasant prospects. Think what a lot of comfort she will get out of worrying for fear that sometime during the night a party of Indians may swoop down on us, cut off the top of Tommy’s head and run away with her flaxen locks.”
“Can you beat it?” glowed Jane McCarthy. “I almost have the shivers myself.”
“If you girls persist in working up a fright, I see a nice case of nightmare for some of you before morning,” warned Miss Elting. “I am inclined to the belief that what you saw must be a camp of timber cruisers or lumbermen. There are no Indians up here, nor would any tramps come to this desolate place. Please don’t be foolish. Go on with your supper and put aside this nonsense.”
“I don’t want to put it athide!” exclaimed Tommy. “I jutht want to be thcared till I’m all fluthtered up; then I want to be thcared thome more.” Tommy leaped from the blanket and dived head first into their little tent.
At that moment a chorus of wild war-whoops rose from the bushes all about them. Yell upon yell sounded, and a great threshing about in the bushes sent the hearts of the Meadow-Brook Girls to their throats—so it seemed to them. Margery Brown, frightened nearly out of her wits, sprang up and started to run down the hill diagonally from the camp. She caught her foot on the stub of a burned-off sapling, plunged headforemost and went rolling down a sharp incline, her cries of alarm heard but faintly by her companions.