Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl

  CHAPTER XIV

  STOUTHEART

  "W-wedged!... Wedged!"

  Now--now it was another word which jabbered faintly in the darkfissure's mouth! A girl caught it--or thought she did.

  "_Wedged!_" she echoed wildly. "Caught! Oh, maybe--maybe--there'snothing in there but Ruddy himself!"

  "Maybe--so!" Stud panted heavily while, across an inner, gaping hollow,the next words took a giant stride to his lips: "Anyhow--I'm going up!"

  "Oh--Studley!" But beyond this one faint cry, Jessie, stanch littlepartner,--the girl behind the lines,--said no more to hinder him now, asshe watched the scout detach his little lamp from his hatbrim and hookit on to his khaki breast.

  With it glowing there, a headlight for his gallant heart, Stud sethimself to climb. Standing upon the shoulders of two brother scouts, inhis belt a club snatched from one of them, he reached the lowest pointof the tapering fissure.

  "Ha! There he goes, in spite of his teeth," tremored a younger boy.

  "His teeth aren't chattering!" Pem's eyes--lightning-blue--hurled backthe charge.

  The denial rang in Stud's ears as he thrust his head into the blackopening, entering, amidships, as the former muddle-headed explorer haddone.

  "That girl's a trump--the girl with eyes the color of the little'heal-all', that blue flower we pick up here in May! A trump! But so'slittle Jess, too!"

  Thus did Stoutheart, a knight of to-day, pay tribute to the world heleft behind him, when he felt in his exploring knees, now creeping alongthe bottom of the Tinker's Pot, that there was a chance of his leavingit behind forever.

  "I don't see what else he _could_ have done," said Tanpa, theGuardian, her fingers hysterically interlocking. "Somebody had to go up;and he's the oldest boy--a Patrol Leader. But, oh! I wish my husbandwere here. Run and meet him, a couple of you!" She glanced appealinglyat the scouts. "Oh! do--and hurry him back--back from the spring."

  Meanwhile Stud had forgotten even his backers in the feminine heartsbelow and was banking all on just one trusty ally--the headlight on hisbreast.

  "Without the light, the little safety lamp, I couldn't do-o it," he toldhimself. "Gee! but it is as black in here as Erebus, a Tinker's Pot,indeed--the blindest passage--blindest bargain--I ever struck! So--sosharp underneath, too!"

  Yes, difficulty masked was in the "bargain", yet he crept on overtapering ridges of rock that now and again buckled like teeth. But heknew by the parched sound of his own voice, as he shouted a question,that his courage might have ended in smoke, there and then, if itweren't for the little lamp at his breast.

  So rosily it burned now, in here, that its feeding oil seemed the redblood of his heart!

  "Anyhow--anyhow, with it, I'll be able to see which way the cat jumps!"

  Here, Stoutheart more tightly gripped the club; the last words mightprove more than mere figure of speech.

  From ahead came strange, gurgling, choking sounds, rising fromsomewhere--growing weaker.

  "Where--where are you, Ruddy? Answer! R-rap--rap out something, if youcan!" he adjured.

  And it was--truly--a rapping reply that reached him; a queer, hollowknocking at the door of some throat that semed shutting.

  "My word! What on earth ... what in thunder's got him?" Stud felt hisown breath blow hot and cold together, but--this crucial moment it cameback to him--the eyes of a girl out there had driven it home, with bluelightnings, that he did not _have_ to defy his teeth.

  "Humph! I'm no quitter," he told the piloting breast-ray, blazing itsruby trail ahead. "Well-ll! for the love of Mike! Well! what do you knowabout that?... What have we h-here?"

  In answer to his gasping snort, as he gaped and gasped there in thedarkness, the little safety lamp told him what it made of it--of thestaggering sight--it made a pair of big feet in rough cowhide bootstightly wedged by the ankles in a buckling switch of rock where twosharp, narrow ridges that formed the bottom of the Tinker's Potdovetailed into each other,--after the manner of rails at a switch.

  Ruddy, the slipslop explorer, had gone in heels over head, so to speak.He was hanging by the heels now. Nothing visible of him but thosepinioned feet!

  "_Hea-vens!_ he did strike a blind bargain. S-such a snag! Thepassage ends here. A drop! A--blank--fall of rock! Gee-ee!"

  Dank--dank as cave-tears now was the moisture upon Stud's forehead. Forthe first time his teeth almost chattered. What would he see when heheld the lamp over the edge of the Tinker's Pot into the horror of thatempty space beyond where the passage broadened into blankness and therock shelved sharply down? A dead boy? Or one so far gone from hangingthat he could not be rescued?

  At the first sight of those wedged feet he had felt inclined to laugh.Now he was laughing at the wrong side of his mouth, as he peeped overthe brink.

  "Oh-h! the rock _isn't_ perpendicular; it slants down, though,pretty sharply--down into an inner cave--by gracious! And Ruddy, the wayhe's hanging his nose, is within an inch or two o' the floor of thatother cave!... And, yet, he's helpless! Helpless as if he had a halterround his neck! Oh-h! if some of the other fellows were here."

  But Stud did not seem to be quite alone; he was one and a half; for thehearts of two girls were pendent from _his_ neck; outside he knewthey were backing him,--praying for him.

  Also, that frenzied gurgle from the victim's throat, his choking cry asthe light struck him, the squirming body and up-rolling eyes told theboy scout that he was just in time; although the foam was pink uponRuddy's lips and his congested head was a fire-ball, indeed,--that brashhead with all his chances in it.

  "Ha!

  "No Loyal Scout gives place to doubt, But action quick he shows!"

  The song, his own, the original march-song of his troop, sang itselfthrough Stud's brain, seethed in the low whistle upon his lips, as,guided by his ruby breast-eye, he slid down into that strange and secretdungeon in which the black passage ended and, thrusting his sturdyshoulders under the pendent body of the victim whose convulsed handsclutched vainly at the bare slab, raised it so that the choking boycould breathe freely again--and in due time shake off the dizziness ofhis awful plight, hung up by the heels by the rock itself.

  But not until the Scoutmaster came to his patrol leader's assistancecould those pinioned feet be really freed and their owner brought todaylight again, not by a return via the fissure route, but hoisted in arope-noose, as Pem had been from the Devil's Chair, through agrass-covered opening discoverable in the roof of that inner cave.

  "Goodness! after all, he wasn't so much more foolish--headstrong--than Iwas. But Una! Una! If you ever-r tell them!" Thus did the maiden of thechowchow name spill her spice into her friend's ear,--burning spice,for, privately, she was shocked at seeing her own folly, parodied,vulgarized, as it were.

  "Well! I should say! He was hanging between hawk and buzzard--if ever afellow was," happened to be Stud's moved comment as, clinging to thatlowered rope, he was hoisted, too, through that covert opening, theloyal little lamp upon his breast paling now into a penny candle heldtowards the sun.

  But the rescuer's halo did not pale.

  It burnished the picnic luncheon which followed, encircling,rainbow-like, little Jessie who basked in it more than did therebellious hero, pelted with wild flowers by the girls--as symbolic ofother bouquets.

  "Oh! let up--let up--will you? Those big fellows will take me for the'goat'--somebody's 'goat'!" protested Stud helplessly, striving todirect attention from himself by training it upon a straggling group ofdistant youths, really too far off to take stock of what was going onamong the merry picnic party.

  But Pemrose was taking stock of them. Her widening eyes, her reddeningcheeks, the little piqued shiver that electrified her chin, told thatone figure--one figure--called for recognition; called for it, indeed,so loudly that it couldn't be denied him.

  Every member of that group--a canoeing party, a wading party, it was,just landed from the near-by river, the blue Housatonic--was a blaze ofcolor.

  But the sturdiest among them was
simply barbaric. The warm sunlight ofMay dripped golden from his nickum shoulders, bronzed to the hue of astatue, bathed his bare knees and feet, his khaki shorts, the flame ofan apricot jersey, the black and yellow cap,--the sheaf of mayflowerswithin his arm.

  "Oh! how boys--big boys--do revel in color. A girl--any girl I everknew--is demure in her taste beside them," murmured the Camp FireGuardian, with amused, motherly tolerance.

  "Pshaw! I think it's hor-rid. So flashy!" snapped Pemrose; Jack at aPinch had made gorgeous his incivility and was parading it before hereyes.

  "Oh, boy! Look at that middle fellow. He'd have a grosbeak 'skun amile'!" gasped Stud, following the direction of her glance, with avirtuous consciousness of his own cave-soiled khaki, moderately lit bymerit badge and service stripe.

  "'Grosbeak!' Oh, but I love grosbeaks! And all that color--why! itpaints the landscape," came flutteringly from Aponi, the White BirchButterfly, least Priscilla-like in her tastes of the Group, when she wasnot in Camp Fire green, or soft-toned ceremonial dress.

  "Maybe 'twill paint the blues in old Tory Cave, if we run across themthere," put in Tomoke, maiden of the flambeau and the fire-talk. "Theycertainly are a perfect 'scream', those big boys," her eyes merrilyfollowing that clamor of color now wending back towards the canoes.

  "Humph! they'd have to 'go some' to leaven the blues of Tory Cave,"remarked the Scoutmaster, laughingly addressing himself to a roll. "Thebiggest bonfire on earth wouldn't half dry the cave-tears there."

  "Yes, that's the den of the Doleful Dumps--their diggings!" laughed ayounger scout, flourishing aloft a mess-mug, the gray of his rollingeyes. "Bats--bats as big as saucers--no, soup-plates! And, far in--farin--the sound of running water, like a weak wind!"

  "Running water! Invisible running water! A--weak--wind! Oh-h! do let ushurry and go on there. We have to cross the river; haven't we?" Thegurgle of that cloistered brooklet was already in Pem's heart as herdilating gaze spanned the Housatonic, broad and open, "warbling" amidits soft meadow slopes, as she had looked upon it from the Devil'sChair. "But, goody! I hope we _won't_ run across him there--Jack ata Pinch! Flaunting round like a grosbeak!" She bit the thought into anolive. "Stud's no grumpy riddle--if he is a Stoutheart, like the other!"