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"Stay quiet, Bessie," warned Minnehaha, as she stepped into the canoe. "You'll be all right if you're not seen. I'll bring Wanaka back right away." With swift, sure strokes, Minnehaha sent the canoe skimming over the water. The other girls were busy in various ways. Some were in the tents, changing their clothes for bathing suits; some had gone into the woods to get fresh water from a spring.
When people do right, and still aren't happy for a while, it's always made up to them some way. And usually when they do wrong they have to pay for it, some way or another. That's one of the things we learn in the Camp Fire." "Here comes Wanaka now," said one of the other girls. "There's someone with her." Bessie looked frightened. "I don't want anyone from Hedgeville to see me," she said.
"He was afraid of what would happen to him if they knew he'd done it," said Bessie. "I guess he didn't stop to think about what they'd do to me. He was just frightened, and wanted to save himself." Wanaka looked at her very kindly. "These people aren't related to you at all, are they?" she asked.
"Do you suppose they're coming here?" "Wanaka will come first. See, she's staying on the other side of the lake. It's a man. He's carrying her things. I'll paddle over for her in a canoe. I don't think the man will come with her, but you and Zara go into the tent there. Then you'll be all right. No one would ever think of your being here, or asking any questions." But Bessie watched anxiously.
They are more ready to do that than the states in the east." "Why is that, Wanaka?" asked Margery Burton, one of the Fire-Makers of the Camp Fire. "In the west," said Eleanor, answering the question, "men and women both find it easier to remember the old days of the pioneers, when the women did so much to make the building of our new country possible. They faced the hardships with the men.
Her eyes narrowed slightly as Bessie described the scene at the woodshed, and told of how Jake had locked Zara in to wait for her mother's return, and of his cruel and dangerous trick with the burning embers. "Did he really tell his father that you had set the shed on fire and on purpose?" asked Wanaka, rather sternly.
"Oh, something must have happened to them something dreadful," she said. "Or else I'm sure they would never have left me that way. And I don't believe what Maw Hoover was always saying that they were glad to get rid of me, and didn't care anything about me." "Neither do I," said Wanaka. "Bessie, I want to help you and Zara. And I think I can that we all can, we Camp Fire Girls.
When you get away from a place you begin very quickly to forget everything that was disagreeable that happened there, and you only remember the good times you had. That's why you're homesick." "We'll be able to take walks and go for straw rides here, won't we, Wanaka?" asked Minnehaha. She used Eleanor's fire name, Wanaka, just as Minnehaha was her fire name; her own was Margery Burton.
What Paw Hoover had told her had done more to confirm the truth of Bessie's story than all the talk she had heard in Hedgeville. She liked the old farmer and she wondered what he meant to do. He didn't leave her long in doubt. "I'll just go over with you," he said, "if you'll make out to ferry me back here again." And Wanaka dared not refuse.
"Had an idea you was askin' a lot of questions," said Paw Hoover, with a chuckle. "Got lots of ideas I keep to myself 'specially at home. An' say, if that's Bessie, I want to see her." Wanaka saw that there was some plan in his mind, and she knew that to try to ward him off would be dangerous. There was nothing to prevent him from returning, later, with Weeks or anyone else. "Bessie!" she called.
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