“Why should they swarm about now, when we never saw one on the way here?” asked Joan, in an aggrieved tone.
“It’s going to rain, and that always drives them up from the underbrush and wet places where they live during the dry hours,” explained Mr. Gilroy.
He had been occupied in crushing caribou leaves between his palms, and now the scouts turned to watch him. When he had extracted the juice from the leaves, he showed the girls how he rubbed it over his neck, face, and arms. This was very effective to keep away the pests for a time; but one had to keep on rubbing the fresh leaf-juice on the skin at intervals because the moisture evaporated with the heat from the body.
Supper—and it was a delicious one—over, Mr. Gilroy said to the guide, “Tally, we’ve got to make a smudge fire all right.”
“Um!” agreed Tally, “see tent; him all cover wid bites.”
The girls laughed at the Indian’s graphic words, for the canvas was black with pests,—mosquitoes and black flies, as well as the midges.
Every available pan was requisitioned for use as braziers. And movable smokes, that Tally manufactured of pine shavings, smudged with damp material, effectively fumigated the camp and drove away most of the insects. But the scouts had to wave balsam fans quite vigorously to make the choking smoke that circled about them eddy away.
Tally arranged a chain of these smudge-fires about the camp ground, and provided elaborate means of keeping the pests away through the night. But all precautions were useless when the mean little mosquitoes got in between the open places in the canvas, and began their songs. Every one was healthily tired, though, and all the needlelike thrusts of the insects could not keep the girls awake.
In the morning, Julie said, “What should we have done if Tally had not smoked away millions of the creatures!”
And Joan said, “Why, infinitesimal atoms of Dandelion Troop would now be flying all over Estes Park to await Judgment Day!”