Part 17 (1/2)

”Some lady?” repeated Jack.

”Mrs. Lewis, likely,” suggested Cora. ”I hope she did not go out in that down-pour to tie the tents.”

”I rather hope she did,” admitted her brother. ”I had some things in that tent not warranted rainproof. Hey, fellows!” he called to the other members of Camp Couldn't. ”Hurry up. Our tent was struck, they say.”

At the word the crowd from the beach ran helter-skelter through the woods toward the camp colony. Surely there was enough excitement around Crystal Bay that afternoon to last for some time, and there was every prospect now of new adventures developing.

”Any tents down?” asked Dainty, as he puffed along.

”Thinking of spilled grub?” queried Walter. ”Nothing doing. We have a salvage corps department to our housewives' league, you know, and they are bound to protect the members from bandits. So you may just run along and see what is going on at the Cattle.”

The storm had played havoc in the woods. Pine branches had scratched deep furrows in the white sand paths, beautiful bushes of blooming mountain laurel and mountain pinks were shorn of every bloom, and the wild roses were scattered like pink b.u.t.terflies on the catch leaves of shrubs.

The first camp to be met by the boys was Camp Hyphen. This was quite a pretentious establishment with a smaller tent adjunct. The adjunct stood for the hyphen, and it now lay in a heap like a discarded potato sack, its store of supplies settled uncertainly in nearby bushes.

”My, and they had just joined the League,” wailed Jack. ”I suppose we will all have to put up for the reinforcements.”

”We are not an insurance company,” Ed objected. ”Why should we make good for a storm?”

”Because we have a calamity clause. You had better look up your rules and regulations, young man. The last time I saw them they were pasted with a daub of good family flour on our back door.”

”Thank goodness the rain will have suspended our const.i.tution,” Ed replied. ”That back door never could have gone dry through the torrent. Don't you remember how the small showers doused it?”

”We do,” Walter answered, ”and as we have the only written rules, that same fact of the back door may stand us in well.”

”Pikers!” Jack called them with a laugh. ”But will you observe the Hys! They are going to rebuild!”

A hyphenated name seemed the worst of luck for this camp, for there was no strong pole or cast iron bar to hold the two tents together, and the ”hy” was merely a strip of ground that gave extra play to the wind. The smaller tent was now being dragged from the bed of wet sand into which it had partly buried itself, and the campers were struggling heroically to get it back to its pegs.

”Too bad!” called Walter, sympathetically.

”Worse than that,” replied one fellow, who looked as if he might have been s.h.i.+pwrecked.

”But we are insured--in the league, you know,” shouted another member of the demolished camp. ”We are coming up for supper.”

”You are?” returned Dray. ”Say, fellows,” to his own camp company, ”the best thing we can do is to take what stuff we find left and hide up at the Mote. Those fellows will come down on us and won't believe about the washed-away const.i.tution. Who on earth put that indemnity clause in, anyhow?”

”Oh, Clem did. He's studying engineering, and I suppose he is lonesome for his math. We ought to make him pay the a.s.sessment. But I agree with Dray,” continued Walter. ”We ought to 'beat it' up to the Mote, quick. There are other tents flopping around, and everybody will be good and hungry, you can be sure.”

”Queer how old Denny made for his shack as soon as we got in,” Ed remarked. ”I wonder if he thought that would be demolished?”

”No, not likely,” Jack said, ”but the old fellow was pretty wet and played out. He's plucky, all right, and I don't believe we would be in yet but for him and Freda. But he is old, just the same, and only his pluck keeps him up to it. I would like to have been more decent to him, but he won't give one a chance. We must fix it up some way, though.”

”We sure must,” agreed the others.

”There's another,” announced Jack, as a perfectly flat tent almost blocked their way. This was evidently deserted, for not a boy was to be seen, either lamenting or trying to right the canvas.

”Funny,” commented Ed. ”They must have gone to the hotel.”