CHAPTER XII
OLD ROUND-TOP
"C. F. G.! C. F. G.! We are the Camp Fire C. F. G.! Oh! none with us can compare, For we looked over And picked the clover, And the World's lit up With our Camp Fires everywhere!"
"And, fegs! wi' an aging, sober body like mysel', if he isn't a-pickingo' the clover blossoms, he's a-smelling o' them the night," softlysoliloquized Andrew, the chauffeur, as he listened to that halcyon songaround the Pinnacle blaze--feeling barred out of Clover Land himself, ashe lay among the ferns, because of the "one sair memory", the whiff ofheather ever and anon wafted to his nostrils, as it seemed, from thegrave of a fifteen-year-old lassie away back in Scotland.
"Hum-m! if 'tweren't for that, I could maist fling out an' dance the'Rigs o' Barley' a-watching o' those happy lasses," he whimsicallyconfessed in the ear of a king fern. "I could, for sure, same's we usedto dance it in the glen around a bonfire!"
But if the heather in his heart, reinforcing chauffeur primness, checkedeven the first lashing kick of a Highland Fling, it did not restrainhim, that grave Church Elder, from taking part later in something fullyas giddy; a wild and storming torchlight procession.
"Now! what we need, girls, is a good r-rich pine-knot, with a juicy,resinous knot in it, that will burn ten minutes, anyway, for signalingpurposes," said Tomoke, the personified Lightning, as the "C. F. G."proclamation over, the magic moment came for the flashing of the lightof this particular camp fire in speaking fire from mountain tomountain--across the mile and a half of intervening valley. Thatinflammable knot was not hard to find. Split with the toy axe which thegirl who had won an honor bead for signaling carried at her belt--amodern Maid Marion, at home in all woodcraft--it blazed, transplendent,a foot-long flambeau, searching the Pinnacle's darkest nooks, winningsleepy birds from their slumbers, calling upon them to follow too, asTomoke, nimble of foot as her aerial namesake, presently dashed up thehill, with it held high!
Brilliant as a starshell--where near-by objects were concerned--itcounted the needles upon the little, awed pine trees. It painted thewild excitement upon leaping girls' faces, lit dancing Jack-o'-lanternsin their eyes as, scrambling, they followed the light-shodleader--gold-slippered by the torch--in a breathless tumble-up over rockand needled carpet, amid scandalized bough and shamefaced crag andlittle, blinking torrent.
It turned to nocturnal dewdrops the bright eyes of thebirds,--scandalized, too, yet resolved, at all costs, to come in on thefun!
Robins, flame-breasted in the glow, a black-throated greenwarbler--blossom of the night--a purple grackle, its boat-tail stiff asa fan-shaped rudder, and, "leggeddy-last," a cawing crow, they circledon low wing after the brilliant torch,--all pecking at the wonder in theair!
It caught the whooping amazement on Andrew's smooth-shaven upper lip,shimmering through a veil of anxiety lest, somewhere, there might beanother "Deev's Chair" around, or a madcap lassie to sit in it, as, withan irresistible "Hoot mon!" he brought up the rear of the fantasticrevel; the rush of green-clad maidens, the elfin tassels of theirTam-o'-shanters waving, and of demented birds for the Pinnacle's tallestcrag.
Poised upon that gray rock-shelf, high above the ground, her slight facewith the shining eyes, framed in the radiant torch-light as in a goldenminiature, the signaler's right arm held the blazing knot with itsragged, foot-long flame at arm's length above her head, then described abrief quarter circle to the left with it, quick, snappy--once,twice--the arm being extended on a level with the young shoulder soslim, so stiffened!
"See!--See! That stands for I: two dots! I, three times repeated, givesthe call," breathed the Guardian at Pem's elbow, her mature face agold-set miniature of excitement, too.
"Oh--oh! I wonder if they'll 'get us', those boys--those joking HenkylHunters?" The throbbing question was on every girlish lip. Eyes burned,like the torch, across the valley.
The mountains were falling asleep in their night-caps of mist.
But suddenly one of them, far away, grim and dim, lifted an eyelid--andresponded.
The drowsy valley caught its breath--as old Round-top winked back.
Caught its breath with many a waking scintilla of light in the pointedflash of pool and stream!
A momentary, broken arc, a shattered rainbow dividing the flood of duskabove from the gulf of darkness below; and then--and then the triumphantcry in each gasping throat:
"They've got us! They see us! Now--now for the message: 'Two strangegirls with us. You....'"
But there the Lightning's lore suddenly gave out, her signaling memory,as the news was vivaciously transmitted by staccato dot and lengthierdash, the latter being the same quarter-circle once described in asingle movement to the right.
Over the valley the message was hung up. It was hung up in Pem's heart,too,--and the honor, the fair grace, of boyhood with it.
If old Round-top unhesitatingly played up, "came across" with aninvitation--an invitation to that alluring Get Together at the winterpalace of the Snowbirds, then she would feel that a nickum's rudenesswas atoned for--and Jack at a Pinch might go his graceless road, neverto prove a friend in need to her again--not if she knew it!
"Invite them to the picnic ... and don't forget the cocoa!"
The valley fairly bristled with the promptness of it--the skilleddirectness of the message, so rapidly, so spontaneously given that thepoised Lightning on the crag was hard-pressed to keep up with themeaning--to read the handwriting of fire and give the interpretationthereof.
Old Round-top had seized the shining hour. The Henkyl Hunters were no"chuffs", no conundrums, with the strange riddle of incivility up asleeve.
"'Invite them to the picnic--and don't forget the cocoa!'" Tanpalaughed. "Just like them! We did promise to lay in a fresh supply ofsundries, as we pass through the town to-night--if there's still a storeleft open. And that reminds me, girlies, that it's getting late. We haveno right to keep the birds out of bed any longer, demoralizing thefeathered world."
But the Lightning had recovered its morale, its memory, prompted by aMorse code-card excitedly snatched from a green breast pocket andexplored by the light of the dwindling torch.
"Invite--your--friends--to--our--d-a-n-c-e," slowly spelled out Tomoke,giving back diamond for diamond.
She was beginning upon the word "A-ll", but the pine-knot winked itselfout in a dazzlement on "dance,"--in an effulgence of sparks that felllike golden rain upon the hearts of the visitors.
"Will it--will it be an outdoor affair--a piazza dance?" gasped Una."Oh-h! I do love.... Now! Andrew!" She broke off suddenly at thechauffeur's declaration that it was "magerful" show, "yon fire-talk",that he never expected to see the like carried on by "tids o' lassies",but that it really wasn't in him to stand there any longer rolling hiseyes over it, like a duck in thunder. "Now, Andrew!" reasoned hisemployer's young daughter. "You know that you've driven my father andmother, and Professor Lorry, too, to a dinner-party, where the professoris to give a talk about the Thunder Bird--and oh! may its fiery tale bea long one to-night--you won't have to fetch them home for another twohours yet."
"Hoot! It's saft as peppermint. I am wi' ye, Miss Una, but it's time forall lassies to gang home," returned the other with paternal insistence,lifting his cap in questioning appeal to the Guardian.
"He's right, dear. _We_ must be starting for the home camp,too--just as soon as we've seen that our fire is thoroughlyextinguished," said Tanpa. "Our paths don't lie in the same direction,but we hope they often will in future. As to the dance, it will be apiazza affair, if the evening is fine--the festive wind-up of anexciting day, our White Birch anniversary which we celebrate with ritesand symbolic dancing, in honor of our patron, our woodland lady, theleafing birch tree."
"How lovely; per-fect-ly love-ly!" flowed from the visitors, both, in asilvery ripple.
"Well! how about your spending a few days in camp with us then--at ourcamp on the Bowl--if your elders are willing?" went on the graciousgrown-up woman, with warmth as golden as the sunburs
t on her breast."We'll let Pemrose Lorry plant the tallest birch sapling in honor of theThunder Bird. Long--long before it's a full-grown tree, let us hope, theBird will have made its great migration, crossing, not a continent, butspace! And now, dears, _au revoir_! to meet again at SnowbirdCave."