The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows

Polly was by this time so angry that she could scarcely think, but, fortunately, Betty, after the first moment of surprise and natural fear, had held herself well in hand.

Now she looked so steadfastly at the figure at her pony’s head that the young man turned his face away.

“You are Nan Graham’s brother,” Betty remarked quietly, “and I hope poor Nan may never hear what you are trying to do. You may not believe I have ever seen you before, but I have. Then as we have told only Nan the reason for our errand to town only she could have told you. I am quite sure though that she did not mean to betray us.”

Betty said this so loyally and in such an unafraid, yet accusing voice, that Anthony Graham wished himself ten thousand miles from the place where he stood and as many leagues from the deed he was doing. However, since he had already disgraced both his sister and himself there was all the more reason why he should go through with this cowardly business and get himself away if he possibly could.

“No matter who I am, you will hand that box over just the same and be quick about it,” he commanded with another threatening wave of his stick.

“We will do no such thing but will have you arrested as a thief,” Polly announced defiantly, wishing with all her heart, in spite of her Camp Fire training, that the despised Billy Webster might appear at this moment driving one of his father’s wagons either to or away from town. At other times she might look down upon Billy for having only a farmer’s ideals, just now, however, the splendid strength that his outdoor life must have given him would have been peculiarly desirable.

However, to Polly’s surprise and chagrin, Betty, whom she had always considered braver than herself, showed signs of weakening.

“I will give you the key to my box if you will let me have some papers that are inside it which can be of no value to you.”

Betty said this with a nervous laugh, her face suddenly turning pale when it had formerly been flushed. Then she set her lips to keep them from trembling. Without waiting for an answer she afterwards leaned forward and began searching under the carriage rug on the bottom of her sleigh for the purse bag in which Polly remembered the key to have been concealed.

Anthony might at this instant have seized the tin box from Polly and been off with it before Betty could have driven Fire Star on. But he was willing enough to have the key to Betty’s box and even to leave her papers behind some tree if she so much desired them. He had never meant to take all her foolish trinkets which were of no value to any one except a girl. So for a brief moment Anthony did not look toward either Betty or Polly but kept his eyes fastened on the pony’s head. In that same moment, hearing a sudden whirr through the air, before he was able to move the boy found himself securely caught by a rope and his arms drawn tight to his sides so that his stick dropped with a clatter on the frozen ground. While Betty Ashton with another rapid movement wound the other end of her rope about the cross bar of her sleigh catching it with a clove hitch and then, with a little gasp of astonishment at her own prowess, dropped back into her seat, only faintly hearing Polly’s cry of delighted amazement.

Not for nothing had Betty Ashton been learning to acquire honors in camp craft for the past six months, practicing different kinds of knot tying with the other girls in friendly rivalry hour after hour. In the bottom of her sleigh along with the purse bag which really did contain her key, Betty had remembered that they had fifty feet of new clothes line being taken back to the cabin. In the moment of fumbling under the rug she had quickly tied the much practiced slip noose and then had thrown it with better skill than she could ever repeat.

Polly gave a characteristic laugh to relieve the tension of the situation. “We have caught the enemy and he is ours now, Betty, dear, but whatever are we going to do with him?”

But Betty had gathered up her reins and was quietly urging Fire Star ahead.

So there was nothing for their prisoner to do but to run along by the side of the sleigh. By superior strength the young man could have jerked away from Betty’s and Polly’s hold, but not from the sleigh itself. Now the more he pulled on the clothes line the tighter it bound him. Besides it was difficult to do even this when all his strength was required keeping up with the pony’s rapid gait.

“I have often wondered how it would feel to be a conqueror driving through the streets of Rome with one’s prisoners lashed to their chariot wheels and this is deliciously like it,” Polly sighed before her companion had once spoken, enjoying with all her vivid imagination the retribution that had overtaken the evildoer.

But Betty’s expression was strangely grave and every now and then she kept glancing aside at the figure running along beside them. For, except for a first oath and a few violent threats, the young man seemed to own himself beaten and had since said nothing. There was a horrible droop instead to his head and shoulders, and indeed to his whole figure, and he looked so ashamed that it made Betty sick to look at him, Polly did not seem to have noticed but Betty felt that she had never seen just such an expression before.

“Polly,” she whispered softly, “do you think we ought to drive up to the cabin taking this fellow with us like this? Of course we can turn around and go back to town and even drive up to the jail with him but that is just as bad. After all, he is poor little Nan’s brother, and if we do the child can never hold up her head again! I keep imagining how I should feel if I were to be taken prisoner and carried before a lot of strange boys to act as my judges.” Then Betty shuddered as though her vision were real, but Polly only laughed so scornfully that the boy, overhearing her, cringed.

“It is an absurd supposition, Betty, and I can’t well imagine your putting yourself in this dreadful fellow’s place. You can hardly expect me to conceive of you, even in these advanced female days, suddenly stopping a number of young men and demanding their pocketbooks.”

Notwithstanding Betty appeared deaf to her beloved Polly’s teasing, for instead of answering she slowed her pony down.

“Don’t you think we owe anything to Nan as a member of our Camp Fire circle?” she asked. “It seems to me that allegiance is one of the first things boys learn and it is because we girls don’t feel it toward one another that women have the harder time.”

Instantly Polly sobered. “That is true, Princess,” she agreed, “and I am desperately sorry for Nan and would spare her if we could, but do you think it right to let an intended thief go free? Besides, if we do cut him loose how do we know he will not seize your box away from us?”

“Because I should drive up almost to the Webster farm, where we could be heard if we called for help before letting him go. And anyhow even if we don’t let him go free I should like to talk to him.”

Polly shook her head. “Don’t try reformation at the eleventh hour, I don’t believe in it,” she declared.

Notwithstanding this Betty drove on until within hailing distance of the Webster farm house and then, without asking further advice from Polly, calmly brought her pony to a standstill.

The young fellow made no effort to come nearer the sleigh or even to tear himself away, but kept gazing in astonishment at Betty as she dismounted and walked fearlessly up to him.

“What made you want to take my jewelry, Anthony?” she inquired. “I know your name because I have heard Nan speak so often of you. I wonder if you have ever tried to steal anything before?” She said this apparently to herself since the boy did not seem inclined to answer. And then Betty shook her lovely head softly. “I wonder what it feels like to want to steal?” she questioned. “It must be some very dreadful reason that tempts one. You see I have never been poor myself or known what it was to want terribly anything I could not have.” And then very swiftly and without allowing time for Polly to stop her, Betty drew out her Camp Fire knife and cut the rope that bound the young fellow’s arms to his sides. “I don’t know whether it is right or wrong for me to do this,” she confessed, “but for Nan’s sake I cannot bear to hold you a prisoner.”

Then both to her surprise and Polly’s, Anthony made no movement and at the same instant the girls to their embarrassment saw that he was crying. Not weeping like some girls to whom tears come easily, but shaken by dry painful sobs, as though his shame and self-abasement were too great to be borne.

“It was for Nan’s sake that I wanted to get away,” he confessed finally, pulling himself together by a tremendous effort. “I thought maybe if I could get a chance like she is having, somewhere away from here where no one knew me, that I might be able to do something for myself. It was nearly killing me thinking I had ruined everything for her.”

“So you were intending to steal in order to begin leading a better life,” Betty repeated thoughtfully, and the young man flashed an angry look at her. But she was not trying to be sarcastic and the expression on her face at that moment he never afterwards forgot.

“I should hate you to stop trying to make things right for yourself and Nan because you began the wrong way,” she continued after a little thoughtful pause. Then with a blush and an humble look very characteristic of Betty when wishing to be allowed to do another person a favor, she picked up her purse bag from the bottom of the sleigh and slipping her hand in it drew out a crumpled bill.

“Won’t you let me lend you the money for your chance?” she asked, as though speaking to a friend and utterly ignoring the ugly scene that had just passed. “I haven’t much money with me, so you must not mind. You can pay it back to me when you get to the new place and have good luck.”

And then, before the dazed boy had time to understand what she was trying to do, Betty had thrust ten dollars into his partially clenched hand and jumping back into her sleigh had driven rapidly away. Fire Star was rather bored with so much unnecessary delay on his journey home and wanted to get back to shelter.

A little later Billy Webster, who had been cutting down trees in a portion of his father’s woods, took off his fur cap to wave to the girls just as Polly in her dramatic fashion dropped down on one knee in their sleigh attempting to kiss Betty’s hand.

“Betty dear, if ever I saw you do a Princess-like act in a Princess-like fashion it was when you gave that abominable boy that money,” she said admiringly. “It is my opinion that either he is absolutely no good or else he will reform from this moment and be your faithful knight to the end of the chapter.”

But Betty only smiled a little uncertainly. “Perhaps it wasn’t honest of me, Polly, to be giving away money when I owe so much to other people.” And then, touching the tin box in her friend’s lap, she said half joking and half serious, “but since I am having to give up my kingdom I am glad to be able to help some one else to come into theirs.”

CHAPTER VIII

Possibilities

“‘Rose of the World,’ my fate is to be decided on this coming Christmas night.” Polly O’Neill made this surprising statement on the same evening following the adventure that had befallen her and Betty earlier in the afternoon. The seven girls were sitting in a crescent upon sofa pillows before their living-room fire with Rose on a low stool in the center. Although it was now nearly bedtime no mention had been made of the cause of the two girls’ trip into town nor of their unusual experience. Nan had come home uncommonly tired and silent, and ever since supper time had been curled up on the floor using her pillow as a kind of bed and almost half asleep.

But at Polly’s extravagant words she sat up and looked at her curiously and so did all the other girls except Betty, who only smiled sympathetically, nodding her head reassuringly at Mollie, who seemed a little puzzled and a little annoyed.

“I don’t see why it is going to be your fate that is to be decided any more than Betty’s or any of the rest of us, Polly.” Mollie answered before their guardian could speak. “Just because you are going to have the chief part in our play when the rest of us just have less important parts.”

But Polly, who was in one of her wildest moods to-night, flung her arms unexpectedly about her sister, almost overturning her by her ardor.

“You don’t know what you are talking about, Mollie Mavourneen, because you haven’t heard my news, since I only learned it to-day in town. It can’t affect Betty or you or any of the other girls as it does me, because you haven’t been yearning ever since you were born to go on the stage as I have until the very thought of the footlights and the smell of the theater makes me hungry and dizzy and frightened and so happy!”

“You haven’t been in the theater a dozen times in your life, Polly O’Neill,” Mollie returned, looking even more serious than before remembering her mother’s opposition and her own to Polly’s theatrical ambition, “and you know nothing in the world about what the life means.”

“Well, I will know pretty soon, Mollie. You see I am sixteen now, almost seventeen. I will be through school in another year – and then – why if I have any talent mother must be persuaded to let me study and see what I can do. And thereby hangs my tale!”

Two vivid spots of color were burning on Polly’s high cheek bones, her eyes were shining as though she saw only the joys of the career she hoped to choose for herself and none of its hardships, and she had to hold her thin nervous hands tight together to try to control her excitement.

“Don’t tell, please, Betty, I am waiting to get more breath,” Polly pleaded, and Betty nodded reassuringly. Not for worlds would she have stolen this particular clap of thunder from her friend, and it was rather a habit with Polly not to be able to breathe very deeply when she was much agitated.

“When Betty and I drove into town this morning,” she said in the next instant, “you know we stopped by Miss Adams’ to go over our Christmas rehearsals with her.” (Miss Adams was the teacher of elocution at the Woodford High School and greatly interested in Polly.) “Well, when we had finished and she had told Betty of half a dozen mistakes she was making and me of something less than a hundred, she said slowly but with a kind of peculiar expression all the time, ‘Girls, I wonder if you will be willing for me to bring a guest to your Christmas Camp Fire play?’ Betty answered, ‘Yes’ very politely, though you know we have asked more people already than we will ever have room for, but as I was mumbling over some lines of a speech I didn’t say anything. Then Miss Adams looked straight at me and said slowly just like this: ‘I am very glad indeed, Polly, for your sake, You remember that I have often spoken to you of a cousin of mine (we were like sisters when we were little girls) who is now one of the most famous, if not the very most famous, actress in this country. We write each other constantly and several times I have spoken to her about you. This very morning I had a letter from her saying she was tired and as she was to have a week’s holiday at Christmas might she come down and spend it with me if I would promise not to let anybody know who she was nor make her see any company.’ My heart had been pounding just like this,” Polly continued, making an uneven, quick movement with her hand, “but when Miss Adams ended in this cruel fashion it must have stopped, because I remember I couldn’t speak and felt myself turn pale. And then my beloved Betty saved me! She answered in just a little bit frightened voice. ‘But you think, Miss Adams, that you may be able to persuade your cousin to come to our play, if we don’t talk about it or let other people worry her, and then she can tell whether Polly has any real talent for the stage or whether we think so just because she wishes us to.’”

At the end of this long speech Polly may have lost her breath. Anyhow, she became frightened and stopped talking, staring instead into the open fire.

“It will be a great trial for the rest of us to have the great Miss Margaret Adams watching us act our poor little Camp Fire play,” Betty continued, “but I am sure we must all be glad to have her for Polly’s sake.”

After this there was silence for a moment, so that the noise of the old clock ticking above the mantel could be distinctly heard.