The Castaways of Pete's Patch

by Carroll Watson Rankin

  CHAPTER III

  A Predicament

  "PETER," queried Mrs. Crane, "what time is it? I'm starved."

  Mr. Black looked at his watch, at first expectantly, then ruefully.

  "The thing's stopped," said he, shaking it. "I dropped it out a coupleof times when I was under the Whale, and once it struck a boulder. Itstopped at half-past twelve."

  "An hour ago?"

  "It _might_ be two hours--or even three! Girls, did you bring awatch--any of you?"

  "I did," said Henrietta, "but I wound it to practise by without settingit, so it's probably wrong--it usually is. It says quarter to nine!"

  "It certainly _is_ wrong. I _know_ it's dinner time--or worse.Sarah----"

  "Build a fire, Peter--there's plenty of wood on the beach. I broughta coffee pot and you'll find a box of matches in it. Jean, spread thecloth that's in one of those hampers--the ground's nice and smoothright there at your feet. You'll find wooden plates and tin cups underthe cloth. Marjory, you can fish for the sugar and cream and the salad.Mabel, you--no, I'll cut the bread myself; you can pick up bits of woodfor the fire."

  "There are two big apple pies and some cheese in my basket," said Jean,"and--yes, a bag of cookies!"

  "Here are my sandwiches," said Henrietta. "Just loads of them; and abig veal loaf---- Oh! It smells so good!"

  "Aunty Jane sent a huge crock of beans and some cold ham," saidMarjory, "and here's a jar of something--pickles, I guess."

  "There's a box of things," said Mr. Black, "fruit, cookies, crackers,sardines, peanut butter, and a thing or two in cans still aboard theWhale, but I guess, with all this good home cooking, we won't need itjust yet--anyway, I'd rather look at the lake than go after it."

  "Can't I take off my shoes and wade out for the coffee water?" pleadedMabel. "I love to wade."

  "Of course you can," replied Mrs. Crane. "Here's the pail--I'll takethe doughnuts out of it."

  "What's this?" asked Mr. Black, holding up a flat, heavy parcel.

  "A piece of bacon--I thought we might need bacon and eggs in additionto our salad--I brought a flat pan to fry them in. And here are saltand pepper."

  "Well!" laughed Mr. Black, as parcel after parcel came out of thetightly packed hampers, "I guess we'll have to set up a grocery storeand sell stuff to the squirrels--we can't possibly eat all this at_one_ meal."

  "Don't be too sure," warned Bettie. "I'm pretty hungry. Mother put in acan of cocoa and a little saucepan to cook it in--and here's a pint ofmilk."

  "We'll make the cocoa and coffee," decided Mrs. Crane, "and eat thesandwiches and other ready-made things. We won't bother to do any othercooking; and, I must say, I'm glad we don't need to. I _never_ was sohungry."

  Everybody it seemed was on the verge of starvation. The Whale'spassengers ate and ate and ate. Even Ambrosial Delight, thethree-colored cat, drank milk as if he had always lived on the lakeshore and dined from wooden plates. After dinner, every one, exceptBettie, who was compelled by solicitous Mrs. Crane to curl up with thekitten under a tree for a nap, went exploring.

  That was great fun, for exploring is interesting, anyway, even if youhaven't anything bigger to explore than your own back yard. But whenyou have a whole wilderness, with a little of every kind of landscapethere is dotted about, here and there; and always so unexpectedly thatyou don't know what you're coming to next, exploring becomes just thevery jolliest pursuit there is.

  In the first place, there was the large, grassy clearing where theyhad eaten dinner. This place was almost circular in shape and as big,Bettie said, as a whole city block. In it were a few scattered trees;but, for the greater part, it was open and almost perfectly level. Onone side was the lake; the other three sides were walled in by mostattractive forest.

  A number of little trails led from the clearing into the woods.Each one, they found, pointed toward some definite object. One, forinstance, carried them to a tiny spring of clear, gurgling water.Another led them to what was evidently a good fishing spot on theriver. A third brought them to a tiny unsuspected lake, dotted withlily pads.

  "This," said quick-eyed Marjory, pointing northwestward, when theexplorers had returned for the third time to the sunny clearing, "isthe widest trail of all."

  "For my part," said Mr. Black, "I don't know why there should be anytrails here at all. No one has lived here for four years. Sometimesfishermen come here in gasoline launches for a few days in the spring,or hunters for a week or two in the fall, but never in sufficientnumbers to make as marked a trail as this--we must certainlyinvestigate _this_ one."

  This wider trail led them for perhaps a hundred feet through a densethicket of shrubbery; then, with a suddenness that was startling, theexplorers found themselves in another clearing, about half the sizeof the first. In it stood a curious structure with a rounded top. Itwas built of bent strips of wood, covered with large sheets of roughbirch bark, bound in place with willow withes, and sewed in spots withbuckskin thongs. It was blackened with age and smoke.

  "It looks," said Henrietta, "like the top half of a big balloon. Andmercy! How horrible it smells."

  "What _is_ it?" asked Mabel. "Is it a bear's den? Ugh! I hope Mr. Bearisn't home."

  "It's a birch-bark wigwam," replied Mr. Black, "and somebody hasoccupied it recently. See the bed in the corner?"

  Sure enough, there _was_ a bed--some balsam boughs covered with adingy blanket and some rags that had once been a quilt. On an upturnedbox was a burlap bag containing potatoes and a few perfectly soundonions. A deer-skin was stretched to dry against one rounded sideof the wigwam and just opposite the doorway of the queer hut were anumber of blackened stones, evidently a rude fireplace. Hanging againsta convenient tree-trunk were some sooty and most uninviting cookingutensils; a camp kettle, a frying-pan, a lard pail or two, a big ironpot, a long-handled spoon.

  "It isn't a great while," said Mr. Black, frowning perplexedly, "sincethese things were used. But who, I'd like to know, used them?"

  "Wild Indians," offered Marjory, glancing fearfully over her shoulder.

  "Pirates," shuddered Mabel.

  "A wild man of the jungle," suggested imaginative Henrietta.

  "Perhaps you're all partly right," admitted Mr. Black. "I believe thesethings belong to a filthy half-breed, trapping game out of season. If_I_ catch him at it, it will be some time before he has a chance to tryit again. Perhaps he'll come back this afternoon. Now, girls, let's goback to the lake--this place certainly does smell 'injun-y'--there's noother smell quite like it."

  "Can't we all go in wading?" demanded Mabel. "The water's pretty cold,but it's nice--makes your toes all pink."

  "Of course you can. There isn't any danger, because the water isshallow for a long, long distance; and the sand is as hard and clean asthe very cleanest thing you can think of."

  "Marble!" cried Mabel.

  "Aunty Jane's house!" shouted Marjory.

  "Yes," laughed Mr. Black, "even as clean as that. Now, away with youall. But keep within hearing distance. I'm going to rest awhile underthis pleasant tree."

  "And I," murmured Mrs. Crane, drowsily, "am going to take a nap under_this_ tree--I can't stay awake a moment longer."

  Presently Bettie, the kitten, and Mrs. Crane were all sound asleep;and, from Mr. Black's leafy shelter, a sound closely resembling gentlesnores proved most interesting to a puzzled chipmunk, who had a pantryin that tree. The chipmunk even perched on Mr. Black's toe to listen;but the good, weary gentleman slumbered unheedingly.

  Jean, Marjory, Mabel, and Henrietta were having a glorious time inthe rippling blue lake. When they were tired of splashing about toscare the abundant minnows, they built wonderful castles in the sand.Mabel's were square and solid, like Mabel herself; Jean's were loftywith aspiring towers and turrets, and Henrietta's were honeycombed withfearsome dungeons. Marjory built long streets of tiny, modern, andexcessively neat dwellings.

  After that, they discovered that the beach near the river's mouth wasstrewn with pebbles of every hue known to pebbles.
There were agates,bits of glittering quartz and granite, and many brown, green, or yellowstones threaded prettily with a network of white. They wanted to gatherthem all to carry back to Bettie, but contented themselves with about abushel--all that their four skirts would hold. But they found to theirsurprise that they were anchored to the ground; that it wasn't possibleto rise with the heavy burden. As for carrying the glittering hoard,that was clearly impossible, too; so they heaped their treasure on thesand and ran to look at the river where it joined the lake.

  Never was there a more companionable river. At the mouth it was only ayard wide and just deep enough to cover one's ankles. A little way up,it spread out as wide as a street, but there it barely covered one'stoes. Farther up, there were big, moss-covered stones and the watergrew perceptibly deeper--up to one's knees. Still further, and theriver grew wide and deep and darkly mysterious, where great trees castbrown and green shadows over the russet surface.

  "Ugh!" shuddered Henrietta, at this point, "let's go back--I like itbetter where it's narrow."

  "So do I," agreed Jean. "If there _were_ crocodiles in this part of thecountry, that's where they'd live."

  "Let's build a bridge across the narrowest place," proposed Marjory.

  All about were stones and driftwood. The girls built a beautifulbridge and sat afterwards on the beach to admire their handiwork; butvery soon the quiet water stealthily washed the sand away from thefoundation stones and in a little while the river's mouth was twice aswide as it had been before the bridge, now floating lakeward, was built.

  "I could stay here forever," said Henrietta, "there are so many thingsto do--nice, foolish things, like sand-castles, bridges that floataway, and stones that look like diamonds when they're wet and like juststones when they're dry. I'd like to _live_ here."

  "So would I," agreed Jean.

  "Wouldn't it be nice," asked Marjory, "if we _could_ come here to camp?"

  "We're here now," returned matter-of-fact Mabel. "Let's pretend wereally _are_ camping."

  "Look at the lake!" exclaimed Jean, suddenly. "It isn't blue anymore--it's all gray and silver."

  "And all the ripples are gone," observed Henrietta. "See how flat andsmooth it is and how _lazy_ it is along the edges. And the sand isturning pink!"

  "Hush!" warned quick-eared Marjory. "I think Mr. Black's callingus--yes, he's waving the tablecloth!"

  After they had picked their way rather painfully over the bed ofsharp pebbles, the barefooted girls ran gaily along the hard, smoothbeach--they were surprised to find themselves so far from theirfoot-gear.

  "Mr. Black seems excited," remarked Jean. "I wonder if anything hashappened."

  "Perhaps," said Henrietta, soberly, "it's time to go home."

  "It _can't_ be," protested Mabel. "We've only just come--anyway, itseems so."

  "That," explained Jean, sagely, "is because this is the very nicestspot that ever grew."

  "Hurry!" shouted Mr. Black; "don't wait to put on your shoes--justbring them along."