Part 15 (1/2)
”Oh, thank you,” said Agony, sitting up and fingering the tempting gift.
She selected a large ripe berry and put it into her mouth, giving an involuntary exclamation of pleasure at the fine, rich flavor of the fruit. This, she reflected, was the reward of popularity--the cream of all good things from the hands of her admirers. Could she give it up--could she bear to see their admiration turn to scorn?
”And Agony,” begged Bengal, ”may I have a lock of your hair to keep?”
The depths of adoration expressed in that request sent an odd thrill through Agony. She knew then that she could not bear it to have Bengal be disappointed in her; could not let her know that she was only posing as a heroine. The die was cast. She would take her chance on no one's ever finding it out.
Right after dinner the little voyaging party pushed out from the dock and headed upstream; three canoes side by side with ponchos and provisions stowed away under the seats, and the Winnebago banner trailing from the stern of the ”flags.h.i.+p,” the one in which Miss Amesbury rode, with Sahwah and Migwan as paddlers. Migwan and Hinpoha had constructed the banner in record time that morning, giving up their swimming hour to finish it. No Winnebago expedition should ever start out without a banner flying; they would just as soon have gone without their shoes. Oh-Pshaw waved them a brave farewell from the dock, philosophically accepting the fact that she could not go in a canoe and making no fuss about it.
Jo Severance, who had paddled up the river before, and knew its course thoroughly, acted as guide and pilot. For the first night's camping ground they were going to a place where Jo had camped on a former trip, a place which she enthusiastically described as ”just made for four beds to be spread in.” It had all the conveniences of home, she a.s.sured them; a nearby spring for drinking water and a good place to swim, and what more could anyone want!
By common consent they paddled slowly at the outset, wisely refraining from exhausting their strength in the first mile or so, as is so apt to be the case with inexperienced paddlers. The Winnebagos had paddled together so often that it was unnecessary for them to count aloud to keep together; the six paddles flashed and dipped as one in time to some mysterious inner rhythm, sending the three canoes forward with a smooth, even motion, and keeping their noses almost in a straight line across the river.
”How beautifully you pull together!” exclaimed Miss Amesbury in admiration, leaning back and watching the six brown arms rising and falling in unison.
”We're used to pulling together,” said Sahwah simply.
The boys from Camp Altamont were at their swimming hour when they pa.s.sed, and hailed them with great shouting, which they returned with a camp cheer and a salute with the paddles. The red canoes were drawn up in a line on the dock and Agony wondered which one it was that had made the stealthy voyage to Camp Keewaydin the night before. This brought back to her mind the subject of Jane Pratt, and she wondered if Jane had really taken her seriously when she had demanded that she confess her breaking of the camp rule; if Jane would really tell Mrs. Grayson herself, or force her to inform upon her. It came over her rather forcefully that she was not exactly in a position to be telling tales about other deceivers--that she was in their cla.s.s herself.
”Why so pensive?” inquired Miss Amesbury brightly, as Agony paddled along in silence, looking straight ahead of her and paying no attention to the gay conversation going on all about her.
Agony collected herself and smiled brightly at Miss Amesbury. ”I was just thinking,” she replied composedly. ”Did I look glum? I was wondering if I had put my toothbrush in my poncho, I forgot it on our last trip.”
Miss Amesbury laughed and said, ”You funny child,” and thought her more entertaining than ever.
Up beyond Camp Altamont lay a number of small islands and beyond these the river began to bend and twist in numerous eccentric curves; the woods that bordered it grew denser, the banks swampy. Signs of human occupation disappeared; there were no more camps; no more cottages.
Great willow trees grew close to the water's edge, five and six trunks coming out of a single root, the drooping branches sweeping the surface of the river. In places rotting logs lay half submerged in the water, looking oddly like alligators in the distance. Usually there would be a turtle sunning himself on the dry end of the log, who craned his neck inquisitively at them as they swept by, as if wondering what strange variety of fish they were. Hinpoha tried to catch one for a mascot, ”because he would look so epic tied to the back of our canoe, swimming along behind us,” but finally gave it up as a bad job, for none of the turtles seemed to share her enthusiasm over the idea, sinking out of sight at the first preliminaries of adoption. In places the banks, where they were not low and swampy, were perforated like honeycombs with holes some three inches in diameter.
”Oh, what are they?” asked Agony in surprise. ”All snake holes?”
”Bank swallows,” replied Sahwah. ”They make their nests in the mud along river banks that way, until the banks are perfect honeycombs. I don't see how each one knows his own nest; they all look alike to me.”
”Maybe they're all numbered in bird language,” remarked Miss Amesbury, in her delightfully humorous way.
The scenery grew wilder and wilder as they glided forward and the talk gradually became hushed into a half awed contemplation of the wilderness which closed about them.
”I feel as if I were on some great exploring expedition,” exclaimed Sahwah. ”Everything looks so new and undiscovered. I wish there was something left to discover,” she continued plaintively. ”It's so discouraging to think that there's nothing more for explorers to do in this country. What fun it must have been for La Salle and Pere Marquette and Lewis and Clark to find those big rivers that no white man had ever seen before, and go poking about in the wilderness. That was the great and only sport; everything else is tame and flat beside it. I'll never get done envying those early explorers; how I wish I could have been with them!”
”But Sahwah, girls didn't go on long exploring journeys,” Gladys interrupted quietly. ”They couldn't have borne the hards.h.i.+ps.”
”Couldn't they?” Sahwah flashed out quickly. ”How about Sacajawea, I'd like to know?”
”Goodness, who was she?” asked Gladys.
”The Indian woman who went with Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the Columbia River,” replied Sahwah with that tone of animation in her voice which was always present when she spoke of someone whom she admired greatly. ”Her husband was the interpreter whom Lewis and Clark took along to talk to the Indians for them, and Sacajawea went with the expedition too, to act as guide, because she knew the Shoshone country.
She traveled the whole five thousand miles with them and carried her baby on her back all the while. Lewis and Clark both said afterwards that if it hadn't been for her they wouldn't have been able to make the journey. When there wasn't any meat to eat she knew enough to dig in the prairie dogs' holes for the artichokes which they'd stored up for the winter; and she knew which herbs and berries were fit for food. And on one occasion she saved the most valuable part of the supplies they were carrying, when her stupid husband had managed to upset the boat they were being carried in. While he stood wringing his hands and calling on heaven for help she set to work fis.h.i.+ng out the papers and instruments and medicines that had gone overboard, and without which the expedition could not have proceeded. She tramped for hundreds of miles, over hills and through valleys, finding the narrow trails that only the Indians knew, undergoing all the hards.h.i.+ps that the men did and never complaining or growing discouraged. On the contrary, she cheered up the men when _they_ got discouraged. Now, do you say that a woman can't go exploring as well as a man?”
Sahwah's eyes were sparkling, her cheeks glowed red under their coat of tan, and she was all excitement. The blood of the explorer flowed in her veins; her inheritance from hardy ancestors who had hewn their way through trackless forests to found a new home in the wilderness; and the very mention of exploring set her pulses to leaping wildly. Far back in Sahwah's ancestry there was a strain of Indian blood, which, although it had not been apparent in many of the descendents, had seemed to come into its own in this twentieth century daughter of the Brewsters. Not in looks especially, for Sahwah's hair was brown and not black, and fine and soft as silk, and her features were delicately modeled; yet there was something about her different from the other girls of her acquaintance, something elusive and puzzling, which, for a better name her intimates had called her ”Laughing Water” expression. Then, too, there was her pa.s.sionate love for the woods and for all wild creatures, and the almost uncanny way in which birds and chipmunks would come to her even though they fled in terror at the approach of the other Winnebagos. Was it any wonder that Robert Allison, seeing her for the first time, should have exclaimed involuntarily, ”Minnehaha, Laughing Water”?
Thus Sahwah was in her element paddling up this lonely river winding through unfamiliar forests, and in her vivid imagination she was Sacajawea, accompanying Lewis and Clark on their famous exploring expedition; and the gentle Onawanda turned into the mighty rolling Columbia, and the friendly pine woods with its border of willows became the trackless forest of the unknown northwest.