The Camp Fire Girls Behind the Lines

In the past few weeks Marta Clark and Bettina were beginning to feel a deep interest in each other. This was but natural, for although they were unlike in character they had many tastes in common. Marta was quick and passionate, while Bettina was apt to appear almost too serene and self-controlled. Yet they both cared for books, for human beauty and the beauty of the great outdoors.

During the few moments the girls were talking the fog had been closing in more thickly about them until it was only possible to see the road a few yards away through a cloak of mist.

At this instant they distinctly heard the noise of an approaching motor car.

Mrs. Richard Burton, better known to the world as the famous actress, Polly O'Neill Burton, and guardian to the group of Sunrise Hill Camp Fire girls, had chosen to make the journey down the California coast in her automobile.

This afternoon her sister, Mrs. Webster, her nephew, Billy Webster, Vera Lagerloff and the maid, Marie, were traveling with her.

The plan had been that the Camp Fire girls should start on their riding trip several hours ahead and that they meet later and camp for the night at some agreeable place along their journey.

Marta and Bettina ran forward, intending to stop the approaching car. Both girls were thinking that the car was moving much more swiftly than usual.

Almost immediately they saw that the automobile coming toward them was not Mrs. Burton's, but a small khaki-colored roadster driven by a United States officer with another soldier on the seat beside him.

They were going along at full speed as if they were carrying information of great importance.

Then suddenly, without Marta or Bettina recognizing the cause, the car swerved, made a wide detour and quickly overturned. A few seconds later when the two girls, hoping to be of service, had reached the car, the young United States officer was crawling slowly out from beneath the wreck.

He tried to stand up and to smile reassuringly at Bettina, who chanced to be ahead, but the next moment if she had not put out her arm to steady him he would have fallen.

A little while after he was sitting unheroically amid the dust of the roadside, smiling somewhat quizzically up at his rescuer.

"I don't believe I am seriously hurt," he remarked cheerfully, "but as I know you are patriotic and would like to try your first-aid remedies upon me, please go ahead. I am Lieutenant Carson and at present I appear to be a somewhat unsuccessful Paul Revere. But would you mind explaining, while you are washing the dirt out of this plagued cut on my forehead, why you are wearing a costume that seems to suggest a combination of an Indian princess' outfit and a soldier's uniform?"

Marta Clark was devoting her attention to the other soldier, who did not appear to be hurt but only slightly dazed from his mishap.

Bettina for an instant regretted that she was unable to change places with Marta. She had studied first aid, of course, along with her Camp Fire work, but was not accustomed to masculine patients.

Moreover, Bettina considered that the young officer was showing an unwarranted personal interest in his first war nurse. As a matter of fact, she entirely refused to pay any attention to his questioning.

CHAPTER II

The Land of Romance

Two weeks later two women were walking up and down a garden path in the moonlight.

Across from them stood a long, low adobe house of a single story. The veranda, extending from one end to the other, was so thickly covered with a flowering vine that even in the moonlight one could get the reflection of its brilliant color. The air was scented with the fragrant perfume of roses and the blossoms of orange and lemon trees. From behind the soft shading of the vine across the road came the brilliant twanging of a guitar and a mandolin. Two voices were singing a Spanish love song.

Farther away under the deeper shadow of the moon a white cross arose above a mass of fallen stone.

"I declare, Mollie, this is the old world, not the new, isn't it? I feel as if we had traveled away from our own country today into a foreign land; but what land I cannot say, because this place tonight must be more beautiful and more romantic than even Spain itself. Yet one is not sorry to forget for a little while the present world and its tragedies!"

The other woman shook her head. The two sisters were the same height, had nearly the same character of features and the same coloring; nevertheless were curiously unlike.

One conspicuous difference was in their voices.

"Do you know, Polly, I think perhaps you have made a mistake in bringing the Camp Fire girls to spend the summer in so picturesque a place. We probably shall have a romance on our hands before the season is over," Mrs. Webster answered. "It is natural of course that you should be affected by such surroundings. But when a night like this has an influence upon a woman of my age with an almost grown-up family, it makes me feel extremely nervous when I consider the girls."

Mrs. Burton laughed.

"Nevertheless, my beloved Mollie, even if you have a grown-up family and I have no children, I don't see what difference the fact makes in our ages, as we happen to be twins. Besides, I never could see why age should destroy one's susceptibility to beauty! My only feeling is that perhaps we have no right to ease and enjoyment of any kind this summer, now that the United States has entered the war. I don't think I should have invited the girls on this long trip had I known beforehand. I feel I ought to be devoting all my energies to war work; however, we must do whatever we can out here. Richard seemed to think it impossible to have me near the southern camp where he is located."

Mrs. Webster sighed gently in response. She was unhappy over the war, too, but not so inclined as her sister to take deeply to heart the sorrows of the world when they did not touch her personally.

"Well, I am glad we can be together for a few months longer, Polly. I realize it is selfish of me, and yet I do rejoice that neither Dan nor Billy is old enough to be drafted. Dan's desire to volunteer is of course ridiculous! At least, I shall safe-guard my boys. I am also glad my husband is doing war work by increasing the amount of food raised upon our place, instead of entering the service as an ordnance officer as your husband has. Dear me, I really think it is very fine of Richard at his age!"

Shrugging her shoulders, Mrs. Burton smiled a little ruefully.

"You are determined to dwell upon our great age tonight, aren't you, Mollie mine? Please remember that your daughter Peggy bestowed her affections upon Ralph Marshall last summer when we were at the Grand Canyon and not in southern California. Yet I do feel that with the possibility of young soldiers and officers turning up at any moment in our midst, you and I will have to be unusually vigilant chaperons.

"But do let us go now and find what has become of the girls. We have had a long journey and should soon be in bed."

Mrs. Burton slipped her arm inside her sister's and drew her away from the old hotel garden across the gleaming road.

To the right of them, bathed in the half-tropic moonlight, was the old Spanish mission of San Juan Capistrano, named in honor of a warrior-saint of the Crusades. It was the loveliest place in all California.

As they walked slowly on Mrs. Burton recited in an undertone, and with the emotional sweetness which had captivated countless audiences and which never failed to thrill her sister:

"Up from the south slow filed a train,
Priests and soldiers of old Spain,
Who through the sunlit country wound
With cross and lance, intent to found
A mission in that wild to John,
Soldier saint of Capistran."

They stopped a moment as if to let the beauty sink deep, and then the two women entered the gate of the old mission grounds.

Early in the afternoon the Sunrise Camp Fire party had arrived at the little half-foreign town of Capistrano, set midway, like a link with the past, between the two modern cities of San Diego and Los Angeles. For hours they had been exploring the old mission. Then, after dinner, the Camp Fire girls, with Dan and Billy Webster to act as escorts had asked the privilege of returning to remain in the old mission garden until bedtime.

Tonight, to Mrs. Burton's eyes at least, the mission looked like a half-ruined palace of dreams. Once the mission of San Juan Capistrano held a great stone church, a pillared court, a portico, a rectangle; here the Franciscan fathers had their cells, and many rooms for distinguished guests. It was the richest and most splendid mission in old California.

But at present only the ruins of its past remained.

Above, in one of the crumbling arches of the colonnade, an owl hooted so hoarsely that Mrs. Webster clutched her sister's arm in a tighter clasp. The greeting had sounded, not like a welcome, but a warning.

There was no one to be seen and the place was wrapped in a kind of ghostly silence.

"It is most extraordinary how the girls and Dan and Billy have disappeared," Mrs. Burton whispered plaintively, scarcely daring to speak in a natural tone.

She and Mrs. Burton had passed through one of the colonnades and were now in the old court in the rear. Along one side ran a line of forsaken cloisters.

"Wait a moment, Mollie, please," Mrs. Burton murmured.

Adding to the enchantment of the present scene she could hear again the sound of music. The two musicians who had been singing on the veranda across from their hotel also must have wandered into the mission grounds.

Then, almost at the same instant, Mrs. Burton and Mrs. Webster discovered the Camp Fire girls.

Beyond the enclosed space of the old mission lay a broad piece of open ground. Over it tonight poured the unbroken radiance of the moon. In time long past this ground had been devoted to the use of the Indians who were being taught Christianity and the habits of civilization by the Spanish fathers. In those days this ground was encircled by a row of Indian huts. One part was set apart for the Indian women and girls, and here the Indian maiden remained in seclusion until her wedding day.