The Meadow-Brook Girls on the Tennis Courts; Or, Winning Out in the Big Tournament

"I want thome exthitement," complained Grace Thompson petulantly.

"Have patience, Tommy," answered Jane McCarthy. "Did you ever know the Meadow-Brook Girls to go long without it?"

"I don't know that we can look for anything exciting up here on this side hill, surrounded by stumps, burned trees and blackened logs," returned Margery Brown. "I shall just perish from doing nothing. We have been up here nearly two days and nothing has happened. I should rather be down in the meadows than up here in this dismal place."

Miss Elting, the guardian of the party of girls encamped on the hillside, smiled tolerantly.

"Wait," she advised.

"I'll tell you what," suggested the towheaded Tommy. "Buthter, you are fat and round. We'll thcrape off a thmooth plathe all the way down the thide of the hill, then you roll down to the bottom. That will give you exthitement and make uth laugh, too."

"But there is a jumping-off place at the bottom," objected Margery. "I should fall down on the stones."

"Yeth, I know. But that would be exthitement and make uth laugh. Why thhould you be fat, if it ithn't to make other folkth laugh?"

Margery elevated her nose disdainfully.

"Do it yourself," she answered.

"Yes, Tommy. You wish excitement. Suppose you run down and jump into the creek at the bottom of the hill," called Harriet Burrell, raising a flushed face from the fire over which she was cooking their supper. "Run down and jump in. If the water is deep, you might pretend you are drowning; then Margery will rush to your rescue and save you. Drowning is exciting enough. I know, for I was nearly drowned once."

"I fear a little trout stream at the foot of a hill would not prove very exciting to a girl who has been lost at sea for hours on a dark night," observed the guardian. "You will have to think of something else, Harriet. Are you, too, suffering from inactivity?"

"Not at all. Miss Elting," answered Harriet brightly. "I came out here with you for the sake of the outing, for the fresh air and the birds and the odors of--"

"Burned stumps," finished Margery. "The whole place smells like a country smoke-house, where the farmer smokes his hams for the winter. Ugh!"

"As far as I am concerned," resumed Harriet Burrell, "I am not looking for excitement. I am enjoying myself thoroughly. What is more, were I looking for the unusual, I do not think it would be necessary to look far for it."

Tommy regarded her companion with narrowed eyes and wrinkled forehead.

"Do you know thomething that we don't know, Harriet?"

"Perhaps I do and perhaps not," was the evasive reply. "Why don't you use your eyes and your ears and your nose, you and Margery?"

"My nose?" sniffed Buster. "That's the trouble. This horrible, smoky, burned smell makes me ill. When I shut my eyes I think the side of the hill is on fire right this minute, instead of a year or so ago, or whenever it was."

She gazed first down the slope to the valley below, where a slender stream was to be seen threading its way through the blackened landscape, then up the hill to where the trees had begun to grow again after the forest fire had seared their leaves and blackened their young trunks. The trees were making a noble fight for life, the green at their tops showing that some success had attended their unequal fight. Here and there blackened slabs of granite protruded from the uninviting landscape between the camp of the young women and the denser forest beyond, which the fire had failed to reach. Still farther on the campers saw the road that led back to their homes at Meadow-Brook.

The small tent, that had been packed in sections, had already taken on something of the dispiriting color of the landscape in which it had been set. Within the tent the girls had leveled off the ground as well as possible and dug deep trenches on the uphill side, so that they might not be drowned out in case of a heavy rainstorm. They had chosen this uninviting spot principally because it was different from any place in which they had made camp during their summer vacations of the past two years. They could easily shift to another location were they to tire of this one. One advantage of the present site lay in the fact that it was removed from human habitation by some miles. Their own homes lay about twelve miles to the eastward.

Hazel Holland, the fifth girl of the Meadow-Brook Girls' party, also saw that Harriet had something in mind. She walked over near the fire and sat down, regarding Harriet inquiringly.

"What do you mean, Harriet?" she questioned.

"I haven't said. Use your eyes. I am too busy getting supper now to make any explanations. Haven't you girls seen anything unusual?"

"Yes, I have," answered Margery. "Everything is unusual around here-too much so to suit my cultivated tastes."

"There ith thome mythtery here," observed Tommy Thompson wisely.

Miss Elting asked no questions. She knew that Harriet would speak of what was in her mind when she was ready to do so. The supper was soon cooked, the dishes set on a blanket, which had been spread on a fairly level place. Other blankets had been laid down on which the girls took their places with their feet curled underneath them. The dishes were mostly tin and paper, but the supper, smoking and steaming on the blanket, was savory and appetizing. The girls forgot their dismal surroundings in the pleasure of eating what Harriet Burrell had prepared for them, though Margery did her best to look sour, in order to hide her satisfaction, while Tommy now and then regarded her with a smile.

"I don't believe Buthter intendth to thtop eating to-night," was the little lisping girl's comment.

"You stop making remarks about me," exploded Buster. "Didn't I tell you I should go right back home if you did it again this summer?"

"Buthter never liketh to hear the truth about herthelf," averred Tommy with an impish grin.

"The truth!" exclaimed the now angry Margery. "I'll never speak to you again, Grace Thompson."

"If you girls only knew how silly you are, you would reform," said Harriet.

"The only way for a fat perthon to reform ith to run all day in the hot thun," answered Tommy. "Why don't you try it, Buthter?"

Margery glared speechlessly at her tormentor, but before she could frame a fitting reply Hazel suddenly asked Harriet a question that quickly changed the current of thought in the minds of the two disputants.

"Perhaps you will tell us what you meant when you made that remark a short time ago, Harriet," she said.

"What remark, Hazel?"

"About not having to look far for excitement, about using our eyes, ears and noses," replied Hazel. "What did you mean?"

"Just what I said," repeated Harriet.

"Be good enough to explain, pleathe?" urged Tommy. "I'm not clever at guething riddleth."

"Had you girls used your ears, you would have heard something; had you used your eyes, you would have seen smoke; had you used your noses, you would have smelled smoke. Now do you understand?"

"Yeth, I underthtand," replied Tommy after a brief interval of silence.

"What do you understand?" demanded Margery.

"That Harriet ith lothing her mind. Maybe thhe'll find it under the blanketth."

"More likely to find a snake under there," suggested Hazel, whereat there were screams from Tommy and Buster, who sprang to their feet, gazing at the ground with a frightened expression in their eyes. "Sit down if you wish any more supper," urged Hazel, laughing.

"That wathn't funny in the leatht, Hathel," declared Grace severely. "Now tell uth truthfully, Harriet, what you meant by hearing and theeing and thmelling thingth?"

"Here, I will draw you a map." Harriet traced a square in the ashes with a stick, making a round dot in the lower left-hand corner. "This dot is the camp of the Meadow-Brook Girls," she said. "At the extreme upper side are the woods that you see over the brow of the hill, and these," making a series of rings, "are smoke-smoke rings. Well, why doesn't some one say something?" she chuckled.

"Smoke rings?" questioned the guardian.

"Yes, Miss Elting."

"Where?"

Harriet Burrell waved one hand toward the brow of the hill, giving the guardian a meaning look.

"What do you mean?"

"That we have neighbors," replied Harriet calmly.

"Neighbors!" screamed Margery.

"Where? who? what?" asked the girls in chorus.

"Thave me! I thhould die of fright if I were to thee a thtrange human being again," cried Tommy. "Do-do you think it ith a man, a real live man?"

Harriet Burrell nodded. Tommy's eyes grew larger.

"I think it is. Perhaps more than one. Listen. I heard some one shout shortly before I began getting the supper. Then as I was getting the fire going I saw smoke rings rising from the forest up yonder. They were well done and they were signals."

"Indianth!" breathed Grace. "Grathiouth! We'll all be thcalped. Oh, thave uth!"

"I answered them by making some smoke signals. There wasn't enough smoke in my fire, though, to do it very well."

"So that is what you were up to?" laughed Jane McCarthy. "I thought you were fanning the fire with the blanket."

"I made the answering sign, which they answered in turn; then there were no more smoke signals from either side. That is all I know about it."

"Smoke signals," reflected the guardian. "I know of no one in these parts who would know how to make them. Do you?"

"Well, no; no one whom we have reason to look for here at this time. But I have my suspicions. If I am right, we shall know about it either to-night or early to-morrow morning."

"Oh! tell us," begged Margery eagerly. "Please do tell us what you think."

"Pleathe don't," commanded Tommy sharply. "If I know, then I won't be curiouth any more. If I don't know, I'll lie awake all night thinking and guething about it, and oh, I tell you I'll enjoy it! I do love a mythtery, and thith ith a mythtery, ithn't it, Harriet?"

"We will call it that. No, not a word, girls; not another word to-night. I don't want to spoil Tommy's pleasant prospects. Think what a lot of comfort she will get out of worrying for fear that sometime during the night a party of Indians may swoop down on us, cut off the top of Tommy's head and run away with her flaxen locks."

"Can you beat it?" glowed Jane McCarthy. "I almost have the shivers myself."

"If you girls persist in working up a fright, I see a nice case of nightmare for some of you before morning," warned Miss Elting. "I am inclined to the belief that what you saw must be a camp of timber cruisers or lumbermen. There are no Indians up here, nor would any tramps come to this desolate place. Please don't be foolish. Go on with your supper and put aside this nonsense."

"I don't want to put it athide!" exclaimed Tommy. "I jutht want to be thcared till I'm all fluthtered up; then I want to be thcared thome more." Tommy leaped from the blanket and dived head first into their little tent.

At that moment a chorus of wild war-whoops rose from the bushes all about them. Yell upon yell sounded, and a great threshing about in the bushes sent the hearts of the Meadow-Brook Girls to their throats-so it seemed to them. Margery Brown, frightened nearly out of her wits, sprang up and started to run down the hill diagonally from the camp. She caught her foot on the stub of a burned-off sapling, plunged headforemost and went rolling down a sharp incline, her cries of alarm heard but faintly by her companions.