  “Well! What a funny footprint! It’s a woman’s track, too, with spikes on the heel. Now, gracious! it couldn’t be that somebody else—somebody else has been trying my radio game, out here, listening in, in this wet spot, with a little portable receiving set?... That’s what it looks like! My-y!” A breathless image of astonishment, Pemrose Lorry knelt in the underbrush near the trail, the scrubby tangled trail, broad enough to pass muster for a grass-grown road, with ruts in either side and a cart track in the center, which led from the girls’ camping-place of the night before—through an arm of woods—to the farmhouse on whose land they had slept. Right on the trail, submerging it in one spot, was stagnant pond-water. Beside the pond was the curious footprint. Her face aflame, red as the Turk’s cap—flame lily, near—the girl knelt, examining it. “I—I’ll wager that’s what it is,” she cried half-wildly. “Another radio amateur, radio fan, has—judging by appearances—been here, this morning, with her heel in the wet mud and her wire out to a tree—or smuggled away in an umbrella, possibly, listening in with a toy set, like mine—or probably with something larger—better—so far as results go. Oh, goody! ‘When Greek meets Greek!’ Don’t I wish we might run on to her.” She craned her neck, also red with amazement, as the painted wood-lily, searching the early sunlight, the woodland aisles. “I don’t see why that mightn’t very well be,” said Una. “If our automobile is rigged up with radio, so that we can pick up messages within twenty miles, as we speed along, why mightn’t somebody have a little Kodak-like set, out here—and play with it out-of-doors, in the early morning. You—you aren’t the only lion,” laughingly. “In one of the out-of-the-way farmhouses there may be a red-hot amateur, like you; so many of them.... Heavens! What’s—that?” She jumped three feet. Right in front of her was a bulky pincushion, a huddled pincushion, bristling all over with black and brown spikes, menacingly white-tipped. And the pincushion inopportunely grunted. She screamed. So did bronze-haired Lura—and Naomi, a brown-haired girl, who nursed a sketchbook. “Gracious! A porcupine! Dandering Kate—as woodsmen call it!” shrieked Pemrose, startled from her contemplation of the mysterious footprint. “Oh! don’t go near him—her,” panted Una. “It’ll shoot its quills into you.” “Not—unless it’s attacked!” “But—but it does into a dog.” “Because the dog shoots his face into the porcupine’s overcoat,” laughed the inventor’s blue-eyed daughter, going nearer to the bristling ball, which startled the pincushion into a grunting shuffle for the long grass at the roadside, where it lay, curled up into a spiky hump-back, the barbed quills erect on a three-inch tail. “I thought we’d see one somewhere in the woods this morning,” said Lura. “They’re generally abroad early, before the dew goes.” “And in the evening,” added Pemrose. “They ‘hole up’ during the heat of the day, so father—” She caught her breath, with a sudden stifled feeling of being “holed up”, herself. Was it another Dandering Kate—the figure which, suddenly appeared by the roadside—the porcupine was not the only round-shouldered thing. Looking ahead under the shadow of maples and birches, overarching, Pemrose caught sight of another. It flashed out of the woods almost simultaneously with a prolonged shriek from Una—who had almost stumbled on to a second grunting pincushion. It wore a woman’s riding habit, leather-faced breeches, leggings, gray coat, with a red handkerchief knotted round the neck and felt hat jammed down upon the head. But that—that which the coat covered; Pemrose—Lura—felt their eyes water. It was Nature’s “grueling” pack, a lamb on the back, as mountaineers pityingly call a lump between the shoulders, not obtrusive—but obvious in the tight riding coat. But what did obtrude itself, what plowed deep into their young breasts, was the flash of the eyes, very dark, very keen, against the green radiance of the wood. It just crashed across Pemrose’s gaze, as it were, because for a moment, the tiniest moment, she seemed to see something known, the ghost of something familiar, in it, which, yet, was so wild, so adrift, so unknown, as to seem a misfit for the morning—a misfit for the woods, with their happy-hearted girlhood. It was almost as if the horsewoman felt that, herself, for she vanished immediately, to reappear, a minute later, leading a bay horse forth from a bridle path. With the bright, obtrusive flash of a heel now, a steel-shod heel, she was in the saddle—which had a camper’s pack slung across it—and riding off, with just one backward glance which lit like a brilliant moth on Una. “Well—for goodness sake!” Pemrose stared vacantly—hands clasped. “Did you see the shining creeper on her heel, the bulky umbrella in her stirrup strap? So—so she’s the radio ‘bug’—amateur!” as if she could hardly find breath for the discovery. “I’ll engage she has a nice little receiving set tucked away in that umbrella, the antennÆ running round the steel ribs. Oh! it’s true—no longer am I the only lion,” with a tragic chuckle. “Only witch—rather,” corrected Lura. “She! She just came and went, like an apparition.” “Don’t talk of apparitions: caroled Pemrose, laughing all over, in quivering excitement, at the memory of how illusory moonlight, long-haired goats, half-bred Angora, with the novelty of the wee ’oor had—a few hours before—put phantoms over upon the imagination. “Well—well! do you know that it isn’t goats we ought to think of now, but cows, if we re going after milk for breakfast.” Naomi waved her sketchbook—a rallying pennon. “They’ll say, the other girls, hungry girls, that we—we’d be good ones to send out after trouble, because we’re so slow in getting back,” with a fluttering dimple. “But—but I say,” began the budding artist again, as girlish feet pursued the trail, “where’s the use of our all plodding on to the farmhouse? Can’t ‘Jack’—Una—and I wait here—and you pick us up on the way back?” “Yes! Oh! this wood.” Una the ultra-feminine “Jack”, sniffed greedily. “This wood! It smells just like glorified strawberry jam; the wild strawberries are late here.” “And there’s the most delectable little brook that ever you saw over there,” pleaded Naomi. “The shadows, reflections, in it: blue-greens of pines, greeny-greens of rocks, gray-green of the water, itself. And—and the light that never was on land or sea, this hour of the morning!” The cooing whisper was the very voice of the green-gold radiance, itself. “Una could hunt—wild—flowers—” Was it—was it the light that didn’t seem to belong on land or sea, the light that seemed adrift as it flashed from under a riders hat, just a minute or two before, that stiffened Pemrose’s tart answer then. “No-o, you don’t!” She decided quickly. “I’m leader of this expedition—and we stick together. Forward march—and no straggling! Good-bye, Dandering Kate!” As girlish hands waved farewell to the spiky pincushions, the wood-road abruptly gave out in a field, which, in turn, yielded to a potato patch that led up to the farmhouse door. Milk cans clashing together like cymbals, brought the farmer’s wife, sunbonneted, from a meadow where she had been helping with the first crop of hay. “Yes, my sakes! you can get all the milk you want,” she cried, “but my son ain’t through milking yet, though it’s on for eight o’clock. He’s as awk’ard as a one-armed paper hanger this morning,” in a lowered tone, “you see his right arm has been pretty bad ever since the war. It was broken by a machine-gun bullet; sometimes he can use it—sometimes it worries him, ain’t no good, at all. You can go round to the barn yerselves.” They did, with hearts beating slowly, like muffled drums, as they pictured that one-armed milker. But suddenly feet moved to a quick step again, a merry quick step—though stealthy—as they caught the whistle and then the chant—“swanky” challenge—that came through the barn-door. “It always was a good job; wasn’t it?” Suddenly a girl’s head was thrust mischievously near to his—a head that burned like a lamp in the dim stall. “Always a good job!” White teeth flashed within a foot of his ear. “Oh! I can parlez-vous a cow. I’ve taken full care of one for a month.” He started—the one-handed soldier. White jets flew, between his fingers, giving each girl a milk-eye. “Here—just let me try. Let me ‘spell’ you for a while!” “Copper-nob” pushed him off the stool. “I’m a Camp Fire Girl—with honors for milking. Watch me ‘parlez-vous’ her! Hove—lady?” This to the cow. “Well! by George, I’ve ‘no kick coming.’” The ex-service man rose, with a glance at his Y. D. button. “I’m as awkward as a one-handed fiddler, this morning,” he confessed ruefully. “And—and surely the others won’t mind, the other campers—if we keep breakfast waiting.” Lura from the milking stool looked up at Pemrose, “not when we tell them how—whom—we’ve been helping! ’Tisn’t as if we had ‘mooned’ round in the woods—” the milk was coursing richly now—“watching—apparitions—in red handkerchiefs.” She broke off, cooing to the placid Jersey, for Pemrose seemed seeing apparitions at the moment, staring bewitched, at a mountainside opposite, where a figure on a small bay horse was slowly climbing a rough bridle path. Her blue eyes, those of the inventor’s favored daughter, shone half-petulantly with the feeling that she was not the only lion in the desert, with fabulous hearing, if not roaring, powers, as she caught the far, bright flash of metal—of more than the stirrup from the rider’s right foot. “But who—is—she?” The girl’s black eyebrows drew together. “If Andrew was here, he’d say she looked ‘fey’, unbalanced—rather unbalanced. Her eyes, they were the strangest—wild and bright. But she looks like a sort of ‘needle nose’, too,” with a sudden snap, “cunning in her face—and she rivals me with radio—plays with it out-of-doors ... who ...” broke in “Copper-nob” triumphantly. “Look Pem, I’m down to ‘skimmings’ now,” as the milk thinned to a frothy trickle, “but the pail is three-parts full. Hove—lady! You’re a winner,” in grateful compliment to the Jersey cow. |
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