The valley fairly bristled with the promptness of it--the skilled directness of the message, so rapidly, so spontaneously given that the poised Lightning on the crag was hard-pressed to keep up with the meaning--to read the handwriting of fire and give the interpretation thereof.

Old Round-top had seized the shining hour. The Henkyl Hunters were no "chuffs", no conundrums, with the strange riddle of incivility up a sleeve.

"'Invite them to the picnic--and don't forget the cocoa!'" Tanpa laughed. "Just like them! We did promise to lay in a fresh supply of sundries, as we pa.s.s through the town to-night--if there's still a store left open. And that reminds me, girlies, that it's getting late. We have no right to keep the birds out of bed any longer, demoralizing the feathered world."

But the Lightning had recovered its morale, its memory, prompted by a Morse code-card excitedly s.n.a.t.c.hed from a green breast pocket and explored 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 itself out in a dazzlement on "dance,"--in an effulgence of sparks that fell like 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 the chauffeur's declaration that it was "magerful" show, "yon fire-talk", that he never expected to see the like carried on by "tids o' la.s.sies", but that it really wasn't in him to stand there any longer rolling his eyes over it, like a duck in thunder. "Now, Andrew!" reasoned his employer's young daughter. "You know that you've driven my father and mother, and Professor Lorry, too, to a dinner-party, where the professor is to give a talk about the Thunder Bird--and oh! may its fiery tale be a long one to-night--you won't have to fetch them home for another two hours yet."

"Hoot! It's saft as peppermint. I am wi' ye, Miss Una, but it's time for all la.s.sies 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 thoroughly extinguished," 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 a piazza affair, if the evening is fine--the festive wind-up of an exciting day, our White Birch anniversary which we celebrate with rites and symbolic dancing, in honor of our patron, our woodland lady, the leafing birch tree."

"How lovely; per-fect-ly love-ly!" flowed from the visitors, both, in a silvery ripple.

"Well! how about your spending a few days in camp with us then--at our camp on the Bowl--if your elders are willing?" went on the gracious grown-up woman, with warmth as golden as the sunburst on her breast.

"We'll let Pemrose Lorry plant the tallest birch sapling in honor of the Thunder Bird. Long--long before it's a full-grown tree, let us hope, the Bird will have made its great migration, crossing, not a continent, but s.p.a.ce! And now, dears, _au revoir_! to meet again at s...o...b..rd Cave."

CHAPTER XIII

COBWEB WEED

"Well! you certainly are the laziest bunch; you'd carry a whole bakery in your knapsacks rather than do any cooking--especially if there are girls around. Lazy as Ludlam's dog you are! Next time--next time, I'll set you to peeling potatoes."

It was the chaffing voice of the Scoutmaster, Malcolm Seaver, which spoke, addressing some twenty scouts who were scattered about the vine-draped entrance to s...o...b..rd Cave, where, yearly, the little gray-white junco birds--otherwise snow-birds--fluffy b.a.l.l.s, with no heads to speak of, wintered among the low hemlocks near the cavern's mouth and fed upon the spicy hemlock bark.

"I--I wonder if you could tell me of what breed Ludlam's dog was, sir?

If he could burn up daylight chasing his tail any better than this crowd can, lolling around on a picnic, he must be the limit."

The answer came with the low, drawling laugh of Stud Bennett, otherwise Studart, brother to Jessie, the "merle's" calling mate, who was himself playing fiddle-faddle in the sunshine, after a four-mile hike.

"Humph! Well, _I'm_ off to locate a spring--where's the blue bucket? When I get back you'll _have_ to turn to, you dummies, build a fire and unpack the commissariat--otherwise rolls by the dozen.

The 'duff' and Frankforts are in the 'Baby', I guess." The Scoutmaster shot a glance at a big, brown duffle bag reposing on a mound, capable of containing ten bags of rations, each pertaining to individual scouts on a long hike, yet hardly sufficient to transport the "cates", the luncheon for eighteen Camp Fire Girls and twenty scouts, plus a couple of invited guests, on a Together picnic.

"Are there any boys and girls who are dying to come with me, to prospect for water?" he put forth alluringly, to the rhythmic swing of the big water bucket in his right hand, painted bright blue.

There was an instant volunteering flutter among certain green-clad girls and lads in khaki, breezing up from the gra.s.s where they had languished; others held back.

"I'd rather explore the cave--I love creepy caves--and we haven't been half through it yet," said Pemrose Lorry.

Forthwith Stud, the Henkyl Hunter, decided that cave-exploiting was the pastime for him; there was rarely a younger boy--Studart was barely fifteen--who did not become the captive knight of this older girl with the sky in her eyes under jet-black lashes!

Jessie, sister of Stoutheart, she of the thrush-song in her heart, wanted to be near to the girl who was mate to a Thunder Bird, too; and others were drawn by the same abstract birdlime--or else the bat-stirred cave had lures.

"There--there's a secret lobby in it," said Stud, "a dark, rocky pa.s.sage leading off from that queer black, three-cornered fissure in the right wall, ten feet from the ground--I guess n.o.body has ever explored it; n.o.body has cracked the nut of what's behind that triangular crevice, so high up!"

"Come--come; that sounds exciting, very exciting!" remarked Tanpa, the Guardian, remaining behind too, as chaperon.

But her husband wheeled upon his jog-trot off after water, swinging his galvanized iron bucket after a manner to give the air the blues.

"Well! I wouldn't try to crack the nut, solve the riddle, of what's behind that queer-shaped crevice, Stud," he said. "It's black--black as a tinker's pot in there. You wouldn't know what you were heading into!"

"Aw, gammon! I wouldn't be afraid to tackle that fissure--find out what's back of it--although I'm not a Tin Scout--ha! ha!--out with the whole toyshop to-day; all my monkey trappings," exploded a rough voice suddenly from among a trio of clownish-looking boys who hovered, vulture-like, on the edge of the picnic ground, transfixing with a sanguinary eye the Baby, whose soft heart was of blueberry "duff."

"An' I tell you what's more, if I were to climb up an' in there, I'd trust to my own 'bean' and a few matches, 'thout any gimcracks," craked the boastful voice further, the special gewgaw on which the braggart fixed his eye, at the moment, being the little Baldwin safety lamp, four inches high, which Stud was just lighting, attached to the front of his olive-green scout hat.

"Tr-rust to your own 'bean'--your own head--an' what's inside it! Well!

I'll admit it's fiery enough," flouted the Henkyl Hunter, piqued even in the presence of girls into giving back t.i.t for tat. "But you're carrying too many eggs in one basket, let me tell you, and you're likely enough to take a leap in the dark an' smash 'em all."

"Ha! Am I now," snarled the other, resenting the implication that his brick-red head was a brash basket into which to pack all his chances of safety, such as were not anch.o.r.ed to the poor stay of a few fickle matches.

"Am I now-ow?" he chortled, very red in the face--and tongue-tied--as he shadowed the picnic party through the cave.

At his wits' end for a verbal retort, he presently proceeded, after the manner of his kind, to throw a stone in his own garden.

"See here! you kids, if you'll let me stand on your shoulders, you two, I'll give those Tin Scouts an eye-opener," he said, retaliating after a manner to hurt only himself, as he addressed the two younger boys with him, his eyes cast up to that mysterious fissure, outlined, a rocky tripod, above his head, of which the Scoutmaster had remarked that all behind it was black as a tinker's pot.

Into that ebony pot, forthwith, climbing by the willing step-ladder of his companions' bodies, Ruddy, the rashling, presently thrust his head--that flaming head with all his chances in it!

His body followed, finding entrance through the crevice amidships, so to speak, where it broadened out to some three feet across from the tapering point of the lowest corner.

"Oh-h! look at him. Do look at him!" panted the girls, held up in their search for pale-faced cave flowers and strange fungi by the "derring-do"

act.

"Gracious! some of you scouts ought to stop him--re-al-ly ought to stop him," shrilled Jessie, catching her breath at the shock of darkness visible in the yawning fissure's mouth, where the brief flicker of a match now chased bogies.

"Humph! We can't head him off, Jess." Her brother disclaimed responsibility with a shrug--while the little lamp winked sarcastically from his hatbrim--but in the heedful tone of the boy who had been trained to feel--as Toandoah did with his little petticoated pal--that Life was a game in which two could hunt together, even upon the trail of a Thunder Bird, and make good headway. "We can't turn him back!" Stud shrugged his khaki shoulders. "But he'll strike a blind bargain in there. Ha! There goes another 'niggling' match!"

A frippery flame, indeed, its reflection flickered a moment, a gold tooth in the fissure's grinning mouth--darkness followed!

Two or three of the boy scouts--those who did not, like Stud, show incredulity, sarcasm gleaming, hawk-eyed, from a ruby lamp hooked to a hatband, and from a level eye beneath it--held their breath, dazzled; for the moment beaten at their own brave game of exploring.

So did the girl who had been piqued and dared into sitting in the Devil's Chair--with a sheer abyss beneath her!

Again did her wide-open, staring eyes, under their black lashes, sport a Blue Peter, the flag of adventure.

"Oh! he's plucky, anyhow. I wonder what he'll find in there?" her palms were laid together upon a spicy filling of excitement. "He really is daring--awfully daring, you know!"

"Ha! Courage cobweb-weed!" muttered Stud laconically. "Well--well, he'll have tears in his eyes before I go after him!"