“Over there. No very far. No can see him. Too much tree.” Blue Wolf indicated the location of the lake with a sweep of his hand. “To-morrow, I take you see him.”
“To-morrow will be time enough,” declared Miss Drexal. “It is after four o’clock now. Remember, we are going to gather the boughs for our beds. After that is done and we have made them, it will be supper time. First of all, we must arrange about our tent quarters. How shall we divide the party? There will be five of us to each tent. We will put the trunk of clothing in one tent and the box of kitchen utensils in the other. When the weather is good, we will eat our meals in the open. When it rains, we shall have to use one of the tents.”
“As long as we are a just and equitable band, I don’t see that it makes much difference how we are divided,” laughed Marian.
The others instantly agreeing with her, Miss Drexal proposed that Jane, Frances, Sarah, Betty and Anne take one tent, leaving Ruth, Emmy, Marian, Blanche and herself to occupy the other. “Blue Wolf tells me that he has built himself a little shack of bark halfway between here and the lake. At night, he will be within easy reach of us if we should call out, and also be near the canoes,” she explained. “Now, girls, suppose we take possession at once. Leave your packs in your tents, and let us get to work on our beds. The sooner they are made, the earlier we can have supper.”
“I could eat it right now,” sighed Sarah. “I’m almost starved.”
The long ride in the bracing air having had a similar effect on her companions, the girls hastened to obey Miss Drexal’s directions. Fifteen minutes later, they were following the Indian’s tireless feet through the woods on a hunt for the necessary materials for their makeshift couches. They had not traveled far when they stumbled upon a pleasant surprise. With the nearest approach to a grin that his somber features would permit, Blue Wolf stopped beside two huge heaps of fragrant green pine and balsam boughs, which it had taken him the greater part of the morning to secure.
“Plenty bed here,” he announced, a note of grim pride in his voice at his own achievement.
“I should say so,” chuckled Frances. “There’s enough stuff on these two piles for twenty beds. Talk about your busy little workers,” she added under her breath to Ruth, “Blue Wolf is the star of them all.”
Amid exclamations of gratified delight, the foresters pounced avidly upon the fruits of the Indian’s labor. Under his direction, they first piled their arms with the spicy boughs and set off for the tents in high spirits. Prior to their arrival, Blue Wolf had already laid the foundations in the tents for the bough beds. These consisted of five inch tree trunks about six feet in length. Each set of two had been laid parallel about four feet apart. They ranged two on a side with only a foot’s space between them, with one pair of logs at the back.
The art of building a bough bed was not an unfamiliar one to the Equitable Eight. They had mastered it the previous summer when they had camped for a week in the Catskills. They, therefore, set to work with a will, breaking off the boughs to a suitable length and sticking them into the soft earth, tops uppermost and as close together as possible. The result of this process was a series of fragrant green mounds. On top of these more boughs were placed, so carefully as to allow no sharp ends to stand up. Covered by heavy blankets, folded double, they became couches that were not only comfortable, but also sturdy enough to warrant no breakdown.