Pigeon Post

  WHEN Mrs Tyson called them in for breakfast not a tent was standing in the orchard dormitory. A row of paler patches on the ground close under the wall showed where they had been. Some of the tents were already folded up and packed on the handcart. Others were being knelt on to make them stow a little flatter. John was overhauling the alpine rope. Susan was going through the stores they had so far had no chance of using. Knapsacks were being stuffed to bursting point.

  “What’s gone with you, Miss Nancy?” said Mrs Tyson. “You’ll never be carting all this up the wood to bring it down again. For bring it down again you will. I can’t have you up there with no water, and cooking, too. The bent’ll flare like hair in a candle if you get a spark in it. Eh me, and what you want up there these hot days I can’t see. You’d be better off playing in the bottom … There’s no cooler place than our orchard, without it’s the dairy.”

  “We’ve got plenty of water up there now,” said Nancy.

  “You mun tell me a better one nor that,” said Mrs Tyson. “And you aren’t going up the wood before your mother comes, are you?”

  But that was exactly what Nancy had in mind.

  The moment breakfast was over, the last of the tents was put on the handcart. The big pigeon cage, in which Sappho the undependable was travelling alone, was planted on the top of them, and roped down. Knapsacks for which there was no room on the handcart were slung underneath it. Susan and Peggy pushed. John and Nancy hauled from in front, with ropes over their shoulders. The shifting of the camp had begun.

  “We’ll do our best to get back before mother comes,” said Nancy to the four able-seamen, who were to wait for Mrs Blackett. “But we must get some of the tents up to make it look like a camp already. Don’t let her get talking to Mrs Tyson and deciding things in a hurry. And whatever happens don’t let her bolt before we’re back. Puncture her tyres … anything you like … but keep her here. She may easily put her foot down the wrong way if she doesn’t see the well and doesn’t know what a beauty of a camp it’s going to be.”

  The handcart wobbled out of the gate. The able-seamen followed, and watched their elders get it round the first sharp corner in the steep path up the wood.

  “There’s only just room for it,” said Dick.

  “Fine big donks,” said Roger.

  “Donk yourself,” said Peggy over her shoulder. “You wait till it comes to lugging up the dromedaries.”

  The able-seamen went back to the orchard and arranged all that was left, ready for the next journey. They led the dromedaries out of the barn, propped them against the wall, and slung bundles of sleeping-bags across saddles and carriers.

  “We can’t do any more without the knapsacks,” said Dick.

  “Let’s go and meet her,” said Dorothea.

  They left the orchard and went through the farmyard, across the little bridge, and sauntered slowly down the road above the dried-up Amazon. They took their shoes off and paddled where the water came just over their ankles in what had once been a deep pool. Their minds were far away. Nancy had seemed fairly confident, but what if Mrs Blackett took a native view of things? What if the well had dried up? What if Mrs Tyson refused to be persuaded?

  “Listen,” said Titty at last, and began putting her shoes on.

  Far away down the valley they could hear the clatter and clang of old Rattletrap.

  “It’s Mrs Blackett,” said Dorothea.

  They had just time to get their shoes on and scramble up to the road.

  “Here she comes,” said Roger, and round the corner came the ancient motor-car. Mrs Blackett jammed the brakes on hard and it stopped with a squawk as the locked wheels scraped on the road.

  “Hullo,” she said. “Where are the others? Hop in if you can find room. Take the pigeon-basket on your knee … And get your feet up on the top of those cases. I’ve brought you three dozen bottles of ginger pop. But where’s Nancy?”

  “They’ve all gone up to the new camp,” said Dorothea.

  “You haven’t really found water, have you?”

  “It may have dried up by now,” said Titty.

  “There was lots yesterday,” said Dorothea.

  “Has Timothy come?” asked Roger.

  “No,” said Mrs Blackett. “I enquired at the station only yesterday. And no letter from my brother. Funny. He may be nearly home by now, and we don’t even know the name of his ship. Hold tight, everybody. Sorry. The thing always does start with such a jerk.”

  Everybody bumped backwards as old Rattletrap leapt uneasily forward with a sudden clash of gears.

  “Perhaps if you let them in slowly,” said Dick.

  “It always stops if I do. I don’t believe I’ll ever get in the way of it.”

  She drove on, swerved sharply to the right over the narrow bridge and stopped in the farmyard.

  “I’d better turn while I’m about it,” she said, when they had clambered out. Dick and Roger, Titty and Dorothea kept watch and shouted to let her know when anything looked like touching as she worked the car round in a series of short dashes to and fro across the cobbled yard.

  “Oh well,” she said, as she stalled the engine and got out and looked round the car. “That front mudguard was dinted already several times. And that one at the back’s always unlucky. There’s no real harm done.”

  “Don’t go in to see her till they come back,” said Titty urgently.

  “Nancy’ll be here any minute,” said Dorothea.

  But Mrs Tyson was in the porch and Mrs Blackett had seen her and they went into the farm together.

  “They’re just coming,” said Roger. “I can hear the handcart bucketing down.”

  But it was too late. A council of the natives had begun. When the captains and mates came racing into the yard with the handcart, they saw Rattletrap and the four able-seamen alone.

  “Giminy!” said Nancy. “You haven’t let her go in.”

  “We did our best to stop her,” said Dorothea.

  But just then Mrs Blackett came out and they heard Mrs Tyson talking to her. “Of course, Mrs Blackett, it’s for you to say.” Good. Oh good. Nothing was settled yet.

  “What’s all this, you savage creatures,” said Mrs Blackett, kissing Nancy and Peggy, “about moving your camp up to the Topps? And Mrs Tyson says you were so comfortable here.”

  “We were … We are,” said Nancy, getting between her mother and the porch. “Too comfortable,” she added, in a hollow whisper, making saucer eyes at the same time. “But it’s not only that. We’ve got to be nearer our work. And you said we could if there was any water. Just wait till you’ve seen Titty’s well. And we’ll be much less bother to Mrs Tyson. And Susan’s just bursting to do some cooking. Aren’t you, Susan? And … Oh, anyway … come along and see it …”

  “Where is it?”

  “By the old pitstead. Just where we want to be. On the edge of High Topps.”

  “Climb right up there?” said Mrs Blackett. “I’ll be dead half-way …”

  “Oh no you won’t,” said Nancy. “Look here. We’ve got the handcart. We’ll easily run you up, all pulling together.”

  “If I must, I must,” said her mother. “But not on the handcart, thank you. You must let me go my own pace.”

  UPHILL WORK

  “We won’t be going fast,” said Peggy. “We’ve another load to take up.”

  “She’s brought cases and cases of grog,” said Roger.

  “Well done, mother!” said Nancy.

  “You’re never going to take all those bottles up there only to bring them down again.” Mrs Blackett was talking almost like Mrs Tyson.

  “We won’t have to bring them down,” said Nancy. “Not till they’re empty. Just you wait till you’ve seen the camp.”

  *

  Titty herself was surprised to see how much had already been done, when Mrs Blackett and the laden dromedaries, each with a pulling donkey on a rope ahead, and the handcart, with the cases of ginger pop, and all the rest of the baggage and stores
, with Homer and Sophocles in the travelling-basket roped on the top, came through the bushes into the old clearing left by the charcoal-burners. She had last seen it as a bare platform among the trees at the top of the wood. It was now a camp. Susan had built her usual stone fireplace in the middle of the pitstead, and five of the tents were up, all facing towards the fireplace and well shaded by the trees.

  “Well, I must say, it is rather charming,” said Mrs Blackett, who was very out of breath after the long climb.

  “And you’ve got a lovely cool place for the pigeons,” she added.

  “It’s simply miles better than that orchard,” said Nancy. “It wasn’t like a camp at all, being down there. This is the best we’ve ever had except Wild Cat Island.”

  “But where’s your water?” said her mother.

  “Come and look,” said Nancy, and led the way through the trees at the back of the camp, when Titty had another surprise.

  The stone-built walls of the well looked already quite old. Somebody had put a lot of moss in the crevices between the stones and wetted it to give it a chance. In that hot weather, just to see damp green moss was refreshing, and, as for the well itself … the mud had settled and the little pool was sparkling clear.

  “Do you mean to say you made it?” said Mrs Blackett.

  “It took all yesterday,” said Susan.

  “And there was nothing here before?”

  “Jolly stony ground,” said Roger.

  “And Titty found the water with a divining rod?”

  Mrs Blackett did not ask to be shown how it was done. Perhaps, while she was climbing up the wood, she had heard something from Nancy about that first experiment by the Tysons’ pump.

  “Well, Titty,” she said. “You’ll make your fortune if you want to, going about conjuring wells out of dry ground for anybody who wants them.”

  “This is the Great Wall,” said Nancy, leading the way past the bramble thicket to the foot of the rock, “and we go up this private gully … not private for you … and then we can see out over the Topps.”

  “Funny,” said Mrs Blackett, looking out over that wild country, at the great mass of Kanchenjunga rising on the further side of it, at the curving ridge of the mountain that shut it in from the north, at the rolling fells to the south and west. “Funny. It must be a hundred years since I was up here last …”

  Dick looked at her with serious doubt.

  “Yes,” she said. “There were no things like that when I was up here last. Rattletrap and all his kind had hardly been invented.”

  She was looking away to the south, where a short length of the Dundale road showed white and dusty, climbing over the fells. A motor-car was drawn up there, and little specks of colour at the roadside showed where the motorists were resting on the scorched, drab grass. The specks vanished. They were getting into the motor-car which presently moved off and was gone.

  “And Atkinson Ground is just round the corner, isn’t it?” Mrs Blackett was saying. “Much nearer for you to get your milk from.”

  “But we can’t,” said Nancy. “There’s someone …”

  “Oh yes,” laughed Mrs Blackett. “Your hated rival. Some harmless visitor, I expect. I don’t suppose he knows the part you’ve cast him for …”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen him messing about on the Topps,” said Nancy, “and painting white spots up on the Screes.”

  “Oh well,” said her mother, “if he’s busy up there you won’t be in each other’s way. But don’t go and play any tricks on him. Remember he isn’t your long-suffering uncle.”

  They had been some ten minutes on the top of the Great Wall, and had found a comfortable seat for Mrs Blackett in the heather, when Dick, who had been looking for a lizard and had decided that no lizard was likely to show himself with so many people about, began looking far away in hopes of seeing a hawk or buzzard, and suddenly asked, “I say, Titty, have you got the telescope?”

  “I have,” said John.

  “Where that motor-car was, along the Dundale road,” said Dick. “Is that smoke?”

  “You’ve got very good eyes in spite of your spectacles,” said Mrs Blackett. “If you can see anything over there.”

  “I can see all right with spectacles. It’s only without them I can’t,” said Dick, “or when they get a bit damp.”

  “He’s right,” said John. “Have a look, Nancy.”

  “Some muttonhead visitor’s been chucking matches about,” said Nancy.

  “I’ll race you.”

  She dropped the telescope in her mother’s lap, and was off. John went racing after her.

  “May I look?” said Roger, picking up the telescope.

  “John’s catching her up,” said Titty.

  “Nancy’s still ahead,” said Dorothea.

  “I can see the smoke quite plainly,” said Roger.

  Mrs Blackett jumped to her feet. “I don’t wonder all the farmers are nervous,” she said. “You know that was the real reason Mrs Tyson wanted to keep you under her eye. They’re all terrified of a fire this weather. And a fire gets started so easily. If Dick hadn’t happened to look that way …”

  “They’ve got there,” said Roger. “Dancing on it …”

  “May I look?” said Dorothea.

  Everybody looked in turn. There was no more smoke to be seen, but John and Nancy close together, stamping on the ground. At last they started back, looking over their shoulders now and again for fear some spark they had not noticed might be still alive in the dry turf.

  “Good job you spotted that,” said John, when they came back to the rock.

  “Well done both of you,” said Mrs Blackett. “I’ll tell Mrs Tyson on my way home. Who knows where that might have ended? I’ll tell her she can sleep the easier for having you up here to keep an eye lifting for things like that. Only, whatever you do, don’t set fire to the place yourselves.”

  “Mother,” said Nancy indignantly, “have we ever?”

  “No, I must admit, you haven’t. And the old pitstead’s a pretty safe place for a camp. If only everybody made fireplaces as good as Susan’s, we might get through the drought without ever giving old Colonel Jolys a chance.”

  “He’d be awfully disappointed,” said Peggy.

  “I suppose he would,” said her mother, “but other people would be very pleased. You’ve no idea what a fire can do. I remember when we were children seeing the hills on the other side of the lake ablaze. You know where you had your igloo last winter … up above there it started, and killed every tree for seven miles each way, and left three farmhouses burnt out. I don’t wonder Mrs Tyson’s nervous. People were lucky to get away with their lives.”

  “Do tell us all about it,” said Dorothea.

  They took Mrs Blackett halfway down the wood.

  She would let them come no farther.

  “You’ve got your camp to get going. And you’ve been up and down twice already. No, no. You run back. I’ll put in a good word for you with Mrs Tyson.”

  “I never really thought she’d agree,” said Susan, as they came back to the clearing.

  “She wouldn’t if it hadn’t been for Titty’s well,” said Nancy.

  “And the putting out of the fire,” said Titty.

  “It all helped,” said Nancy. “She’ll use that to calm down Mrs Tyson.”

  “What about having fire-brooms of our own?” said John.

  “Why not?” said Nancy. “If that doesn’t please Mrs Tyson, nothing will.”

  There was no prospecting done that day. John began making the fire-brooms at once, and, as Nancy said, nobody can make a camp in a minute and a half. After those dreadful nights in the orchard dormitory, with civilisation at their very elbows, they wanted to make this camp a good one. They pitched the rest of the tents, Roger’s and Titty’s, with the others at the edge of the clearing, and slung the store tent between a couple of young pine trees. They made a cool cellar for the ginger pop under an elder bush. They built supports to k
eep the pigeon cage off the ground. Susan and Peggy, cooks once more in their own right, demanded firewood. All hands were turned on to gather fallen branches and bring them into camp, where they were broken up and piled in a stack. John and Nancy made big brushwood brooms and bound them with string to strong young ashpoles. Susan had built the best fireplace of her life in the middle of the clearing, well out of the way of overhanging trees, and the fire-brooms came in useful at once in sweeping the ground all round the fireplace clear of the dead leaves that might so easily have been lit by a chance spark.

  “They’re better fire-brooms than they’ve got at Tyson’s,” said Titty.

  “Let’s make a fire in the grass somewhere … just a little one … to see how quickly we can put it out,” said Roger.

  “Not until there’s been some rain,” said John, who had been hankering after the same thing himself. “One spark when it’s as dry as this and we’d have the whole Topps ablaze.”

  “Stack them like they do at Tyson’s,” said Nancy, and the eight fire-brooms were piled together, with the handles on the ground, and all eight brooms meeting at the top.

  “Like a stork’s nest,” said Dorothea.

  “On eight legs,” said Dick.

  In the middle of the day they were glad enough of Mrs Tyson’s sandwiches, but towards evening Susan lit the camp-fire in the new fireplace. John and Nancy were just thinking of tossing up to see who was to go down to Tyson’s for milk when heavy steps sounded on the path and Robin Tyson came tramping into the clearing. Mrs Tyson had heard what Mrs Blackett had to say about Titty’s well, and had agreed to let them camp there, but she had sent Robin up the wood to see for himself. He had brought a can of milk with him.

  “And mother says you’ve nobbut to ask if you want owt.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Susan.

  Robin Tyson looked curiously round.

  “And where’s this water of yours?” he said.

  “Here you are,” said Nancy. “Come along and look.”

  And Robin Tyson followed her out of the camp and in among the trees between the old pitstead and the Great Wall. There she showed him Titty’s Well, where, at that very moment, Peggy was dipping water to fill the big kettle.