Ethel Morton at Chautauqua

by Mabell S. C. Smith

When everything was out of the boat and it was chug-chugging away from the shore the campers felt that now they were really cut off from home even if they were not on a desert island.

Not one of the girls ever had eaten a supper that tasted so good as that prepared in the open air and eaten with appetites sharpened by the exercise of preparation. Dorothy and three of her companions of the cooking class volunteered to prepare the main dishes, while Ethel Blue, who had become expert in the water, assisted the swimming teacher to give a lesson to a few girls who had arrived only a week before. At a suitable time after the lesson was over every girl was directed to cut a forked stick from a near-by hedge. Then they gathered about the fire and each one cooked her own bacon on the end of the fork. Sometimes the flames leaped up and caught the savory bit, and then there was a scream at the tragedy. A huge broiler propped against a stick driven into the ground held a chicken whose skin turned a delicate brown in response to the warmth of the blaze. Potatoes in their jackets and ears of corn in their husks were buried in the ashes with heated stones piled over them so that they should be roasted through evenly. The elders made coffee by the primitive method of boiling it in a saucepan and clearing it with a dash of cold water, and they maintained that no coffee with a percolator experience ever tasted better. None of the girls drank coffee at night, but they all praised the delicious milk that they had brought from the dairy, and started a rivalry of enthusiasm.

When everything was made tidy after supper the fire was heightened to a roaring blaze and the girls sat around it cross-legged and told stories. "Br'er Rabbit" and the "Tar Baby" seemed just in the shadows beyond the flames and if you listened hard you could hear the hiss of the water as an Indian canoe slipped down the lake in pursuit of Brule or La Salle. A folk dance in the firelight ended the evening's amusement.

Bedtime brought an orderly arrangement of the sleeping equipment and a quick going to sleep, for the girls were tired enough to have fatigue overcome the strangeness of their surroundings.

The Ethels, Dorothy, and Della were together. It was at that end of the night when darkness is just giving way to the dim light that comes before the rosiness of the dawn, that Dorothy was roused by heavy breathing outside the tent. A chill of fear stiffened her. In the space of an eyeflash her mind went back many years to a faraway land where she had been roused in just this way by heavy breathing outside her window. Then there had been a low call and her father had come into her room and exchanging a word or two over her bed with the man beneath the window, had gone out doors. Almost before she realized that he had gone there was the snap of a revolver and a sharp cry of agony and her mother had shrieked and rushed out, leaving her alone. She was wide awake then and she lay in her narrow bed shivering and wondering.

Her mother came back weeping, and little yellow men had brought in her father's limp body and he had lain on the bed for two days, not opening his eyes, not stirring, until men came once more and carried him away, and she never saw him again.

She had almost outgrown the nightmare that attacked her every once in a while after her father's death, but the memory of the whole happening came back to her now with the sound of the heavy breathing. The suspense was more than she could endure. She reached over and touched Ethel Blue's hand.

Ethel Blue roused and was about to ask what was the matter when Dorothy, scarcely visible in the dim light, made a sign for silence. Both girls sat up in their cots and listened. Nearer and nearer came the sound. It seemed too heavy for a man's breathing,—yet—they had been talking about Indians before they went to bed—perhaps Indians breathed more heavily than white men. No man would come at such an hour with a good purpose—perhaps bad men breathed more heavily than good men. Ethel Blue clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. Dorothy crawled down into the bed and drew the cover over her head.

At that instant a roar boomed through the tent. Every girl sat up in her bed with a sharp, "What's that?" There were stirrings in the other tents; but the roar came again right there beside Ethel Blue's cot, and so near that it seemed in her very face.

"It's something awful!" she thought, chilled with fright; and then, "I won't let my imagination run away with me. It may not be as bad as it sounds. If it does hurt me I can bear it!"