The Campfire Girls of Roselawn: or, a Strange Message from the Air

The children were not the most interested part of the audience in the tent. From two o’clock until closing time Jessie Norwood presided at eight shows. She sometimes faced almost the same audience twice. Not only did some of the children pay their way in more than once, but grown people did the same. Curiosity regarding radio science was rife.

Doctor Stanley came more than once himself to listen. And the minister’s boys wanted to take the radio set all apart between shows to “see how it went.”

“I bet we could build one our own selves,” declared Bob Stanley.

“I betcha!” agreed Fred.

“Only, it will cost a lot of money,” groaned the minister’s oldest son.

“You can do it for about ten dollars – if you are ingenious,” said Jessie encouragingly.

“Gee whiz! That’s a lot of money,” said Fred.

The girl knew better than to suggest lending them or giving them the money. But she told them all the helpful things she could about setting up the radio paraphernalia and rigging the wires.

“I guess Nell would help us,” Bob remarked. “She’s pretty good, you know, for a girl.”

“I like that!” exclaimed Jessie.

Bob Stanley grinned at her impishly.

In the evening when the electric lights were ablaze the Norwood lawns were a pretty sight indeed. People came in cars from miles away. It was surprising how many came, it seemed, for the purpose of listening to the radio. That feature had been well advertised, and it came at a time when the popular curiosity was afire through reading so much about radio in the newspapers.

Among the hundreds of cars parked near by were those of several of the more prosperous farmers of the county. One ancient, baldheaded, bewhiskered agriculturist sat through three of the radio shows, and commented freely upon this new wonder of the world.

“The telegraph was just in its infancy when I was born,” he told Jessie. “And then came the telephone, and these here automobiles, and flying machines, and wireless telegraph, and now this. Why, ma’am, this radio beats the world! It does, plumb, for sure!”

The surprise and the comments of the audience did not so much interest Jessie Norwood as the fact that the money taken in by the tent show would add vastly to the profit of the bazaar.

“You sure have beaten any other individual concession on the lot,” Amy told her at the end of the evening. “You know, Belle Ringold bragged that she was going to take in the most money at the orangeade stand, because it was a hot night. But wait till we count up! I am sure you have beaten her with the radio tent, Jess.”

CHAPTER XIV

JEALOUSY

Jessie Norwood had not much personal desire to “beat” either Belle Ringold or any other worker for the bazaar; but she confessed to a hope that the radio show had helped largely to make up the deficit in church income for which the bazaar had been intended.

Miss Seymour had added up after each show the amount taken in at the door of the tent. Before the lights were put out and the booths were dismantled she was ready to announce to the committee the sum total of the radio tent’s earnings.

“Goody! That will beat Belle, sure as you live,” Amy cried when she heard it, and dragged Jessie away across the lawn to hear the report of the sum taken from the cash-drawer under the orangeade counter. Groups of young people milled around the “concession” which served the delicious cooling drinks.

“Walk right up, ladies and gentlemen – and anybody else that’s with you – and buy the last of the chilled nectar served by these masked goddesses. In other words, buy us out so we can all go home.” It was Darry Drew up on a stool ballyhooing for the soft drink booth.

“Did you ever?” gasped the young collegian’s sister. “He is helping that Belle Ringold. I am amazed at Darry!”

“He is helping the church society,” said Jessie, composedly.

But she could easily believe that Belle had deliberately entangled Darry in this thing. He never would have chosen to help Belle in closing out her supply of orangeade.

There she stood behind her counter, scarcely helping wait on the trade herself, but aided by three of her most intimate girl friends. Belle gave her attention to Darry Drew. She seemed to consider it necessary to steady him upon the stool while he acted as “barker.”

“Come away, do!” sniffed Amy to Jessie. “That brother of mine is as weak as water. Any girl, if she wants to, can wind him right around her finger.”

But Jessie did not wholly believe that. She knew Darry’s character pretty well, perhaps better than Amy did. He would be altogether too easy-going to refuse to help Belle, especially in a good cause. Belle Ringold was very shrewd, young as she was, in the arts of gaining and holding the attention of young men.

But Darry saw his sister coming and knew that Amy disapproved. He flushed and jumped down from the stool.

“Oh, Mr. Drew! Darrington!” cried Belle, languishingly, “you won’t leave us?” Then she, too, saw Amy and Jessie approaching. “Oh, well,” Belle sneered, “if the children need you, I suppose you have to go.”

Burd, who stood by, developed a spasm of laughter when he saw Amy’s expression of countenance, but Jessie got her chum away before there came any further explosion.

“Never you mind!” muttered Amy. “I know you’ve got her beaten with your radio show. You see!”

It proved to be true – this prophecy of Amy’s. The committee, adding up the intake of the various booths, reported that the radio tent had been by far the most profitable of any of the various money-making schemes. By that time the booths were entirely dismantled and almost everybody had gone home.

Belle and her friends had lingered on the Norwood veranda, however, to hear the report. It seemed that Belle had not achieved all that she had desired, although with the restaurant department, her stand had won a splendid profit. Of course, the money taken in at the radio tent was almost all profit.

“She just thought of that wireless thing so as to make the rest of us look cheap,” Belle was heard to say to her friends. “Isn’t that always the way when we come up here to the Norwoods’? Jess skims the cream of everything. I’ll never break my back working for a church entertainment again if the Norwoods have anything to do with it!”

Unfortunately Jessie heard this. It really spoiled the satisfaction she had taken in the fact that her idea, and her radio set, had made much money for a good cause. She stole away from her chum and the other young people and went rather tearfully to bed.

Of course, she should not have minded so keenly the foolish talk of an impertinent and unkind girl. But she could not help wondering if other people felt as Belle said she felt about the Norwoods. Jessie had really thought that she and Daddy and Momsy were very popular people, and she had innocently congratulated herself upon that fact.

The morning brought to Jessie Norwood more contentment. When Momsy told her how the ladies of the bazaar committee had praised Jessie’s thoughtfulness and ingenuity in supplying the radio entertainment, she forgot Belle Ringold’s jealousy and went cheerfully to work to help clear up the grounds and the house. Her radio set was moved back to her room and she restrung the wires and connected up the receiver without help from anybody.

When Mr. Norwood came home that evening both she and Momsy noticed at once that he was grave and apparently much troubled. Perhaps, if their thought had not been given so entirely to the bazaar during the last few days, the lawyer’s wife and daughter would before this have noticed his worriment of mind.

“Is it that Ellison case, Robert?” Mrs. Norwood asked, at the dinner table.

“It is the bane of my existence,” declared the lawyer, with exasperation. “Those women are determined to obtain a much greater share of the estate than belongs to them or than the testator ever intended. Their testimony, I believe, is false. But as the apportionment of the property of the deceased Mr. Ellison must be decided by verbal rather than written evidence, the story those women tell – and stick to – bears weight with the Surrogate.”

“Your clients are likely to lose their share, then?” his wife asked.

“Unless we can get at the truth. I fear that neither of those women knows what the truth means. Ha! If we could find the one witness, the one who was present when the old man dictated his will at the last! Well!”

“Can’t you find her?” asked Momsy, who had, it seemed, known something about the puzzling case before.

“Not a trace. The old man, Abel Ellison, died suddenly in Martha Poole’s house. She and the other woman are cousins and were distantly related to Ellison. He had a shock or a stroke, or something, while he was calling on Mrs. Poole. It did not affect his brain at all. The physicians are sure of that. Their testimony is clear.

“But neither of them heard what the old man said to the lawyer that Mrs. Poole sent for. McCracken is a scaly practitioner. He has been bought over, body and soul, by the two women. You see, they are a sporty crowd – race track habitues, and all that. The other woman – her name is Bothwell – has driven automobiles in races. She is a regular speed fiend, they tell me.

“Anyhow, they are all of a kind, the two women and McCracken. As Ellison had never made a will that anybody knows of, and this affidavit regarding his dictated wishes is the only instrument brought into court, the Surrogate is inclined to give the thing weight.

“Here comes in our missing witness, a young girl who worked for Mrs. Poole. She was examined by my chief clerk and admitted she heard all that was said in the room where Ellison died. Her testimony diametrically opposes several items which McCracken has written into the unsigned testament of the deceased.

“You see what we are up against when I tell you that the young girl has disappeared. Martha Poole says she has run away and that she does not know where she went to. The girl seems to have no relatives or friends. But I have my doubts about her having run away. I think she has been hidden away in some place by the two women or by the lawyer.”

“Oh, Daddy!” exclaimed Jessie, who had been listening with interest. “That is just like the girl I tried to tell you about the other night – little Henrietta’s cousin. She was carried off by two women in an automobile. What do you think, Daddy? Could Bertha be the girl you are looking for?”

CHAPTER XV

CAN IT BE POSSIBLE?

“What is this?” Mr. Norwood asked, staring at his eager daughter. “Have I heard anything before about a girl being carried away?”

“Why, don’t you remember, Daddy, about Henrietta who lives over in Dogtown, and her cousin, Bertha, and how Bertha has disappeared, and – and–”

“And Henrietta is the champion snake killer of all this region?” chuckled Mr. Norwood. “I certainly have a vivid remembrance of the snakes, at any rate.”

“Dear me!” cried Momsy. “This is all new to me. Where are the snakes, Jessie?”

“Gone to that bourne where both good and bad snakes go,” rejoined her husband. “Come, Jessie! It is evident I did not get all that you wanted to tell me the other evening. And, it seems to me, if I remember rightly, you got so excited over your radio business before you were through that you quite forgot the snakes – I mean forgot the girl you say was run away with.”

“Don’t joke her any more, Robert,” advised Momsy. “I can see she is in earnest.”

“You just listen here, Daddy Norwood,” Jessie cried. “Perhaps you’ll be glad to hear about Bertha. She is little Henrietta Haney’s cousin, and Henrietta expected Bertha to come to see her where she lives with the Foleys in Dogtown.

“Well, the day that Bertha was expected, she didn’t come. That was the day Amy and I first thought of building our radio. And when we were walking into town we heard a girl screaming in Dogtown Lane. So we ran in, and there was this girl being pulled into an automobile by two women.”

“What girl was this?” asked Mr. Norwood, quite in earnest now. “A girl you and Amy knew?”

“We had never seen her before, Daddy. And I am not positive, of course, that she was Bertha, Henrietta’s cousin. But Amy and I thought it might be. And now you tell about two women who want to keep a servant girl away from you, and it might be the same.”

“It might indeed,” admitted Mr. Norwood thoughtfully. “Tell me what the two women looked like. Describe them as well as you can.”

Jessie did so. She managed, even after this length of time, to remember many peculiarities about the woman who drove the big car and the fleshy one who had treated the girl so roughly. Mr. Norwood exclaimed at last:

“I should not be at all surprised if that were Martha Poole and Mrs. Bothwell. The descriptions in a general way fit them. And if it is so, the girl Jessie and Amy saw abused in that way is surely the maid who worked for Mrs. Poole.”

“Oh, Robert! can it be possible, do you think?” cried his wife.

“Not alone possible, but probable,” declared Robert Norwood. “Jessie, I am glad that you are so observant. I want you to get the little girl from Dogtown some day soon and let me talk with her. Perhaps she can tell me something about her cousin’s looks that will clinch the matter. At least, she can tell us her cousin’s full name, I have no doubt.”

“It’s Bertha for a first name,” said Jessie, eagerly. “And I supposed it was Haney, like Henrietta’s.”

“The girl I am looking for is not named Haney, whatever her first name may be. Anyway, it is a chance, and I mean to get to the bottom of this mysterious kidnaping if I can, Jessie. Let me see this little Henrietta who kills snakes with such admirable vigor,” and he laughed.

It was, however, no inconsiderable matter, as Jessie well understood. In the morning she hurried over to the Drew house to tell Amy about it. Both had been interested from the very beginning in the mystery of the strange girl and her two women captors. There was something wrong with those women. Amy said this with a serious shake of her head. You could tell!

And when, on further discussion, Jessie remembered their names – Poole and Bothwell – this fact brought out another discovery.

“Bothwell! I never did!” ejaculated Amy Drew. “Why, no wonder I thought she looked like somebody I knew. And she drives a fast car – I’ll say she does. Jess Norwood! where were our wits? Don’t you remember reading about Sadie Bothwell, whose husband was one of the first automobile builders, and she has driven in professional races, and won a prize – a cup, or something? And her picture was in the paper.”

“That is the person Daddy refers to,” Jessie agreed. “I did not like her at all.”

“Ho! I should say not!” scoffed Amy. “And I wasn’t in love with the fat woman. So she is a race track follower, is she?” Then Amy giggled. “I guess she wouldn’t follow ’em far afoot! She isn’t so lively in moving about.”

“But where do you suppose they took Bertha – if it was Henrietta’s cousin we saw carried off?”

“Now, dear child, I am neither a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter nor–”

“Nor one of the Seven Sleepers,” laughed Jessie. “So you cannot prophesy, can you? We will go down to Dogtown this afternoon and see if Mrs. Foley will let us bring Henrietta back to see Daddy.”

“The child hasn’t been up to see you at all, has she?” asked Amy.

“Why, no.”

“Maybe the woman won’t want her to come. Afraid somebody may take little Hen away from her. Did you see the child’s hands? They have been well used to hard work. I have an idea she is a regular little slave.”

“Oh, I hope not. It doesn’t seem to me as though anybody could treat that child cruelly. And she doesn’t seem to blame Mrs. Foley for her condition.”

“Well, Hen knows how to kill snakes, but maybe she is a poor judge of character,” laughed Amy. “I’ll go with you and defend you if the Foley tribe attack in force. But let’s go down in the canoe. Then we can steal the cheeld, if necessary. ‘Once aboard the lugger!’ you know, ‘and the gal is mine’.”

“To hear you, one would think you were a real pirate,” scoffed Jessie.

At lunch time Nell Stanley had an errand in the neighborhood, and she dropped in at the Drew house. The three girls, Mrs. Drew being away, had a gay little meal together, waited on by the Drew butler, McTavish, who was a very grave and solemn man.

“Almost ecclesiastic, I’ll say,” chuckled Nell, when the old serving man was out of the room. “He is a lot more ministerial looking than the Reverend. I expect him, almost any time, to say grace before meat. Fred convulsed us all at the table last evening. We take turns, you know, giving thanks. And at dinner last evening it was the Reverend’s turn.

“‘Say, Papa,’ Fred asked afterward – he’s such a solemn little tike you have no idea what’s coming – ‘Say, Papa, why is it you say a so-much longer prayer than I do?’

“‘Because you’re not old enough to say a long one,’ Reverend told him.

“‘Oh!’ said Master Freddie, ‘I thought maybe it was ’cause I wasn’t big enough to be as wicked as you and I didn’t need so long a one.’ Now! What can you do with a young one like that?” she added, as the girls went off into a gale of laughter.

But she had other news of her young brothers besides this. Bob and Fred were enamored of the radio. They were ingenious lads. Nell said she believed they could rig a radio set with a hair-pin and a mouse-trap. But she was going to help them obtain a fairly good set; only, because of the shortage of funds at the parsonage, Bob and Fred would be obliged themselves to make every part that was possible.

So she drew from Jessie and from Amy all they knew about the new science, and Jessie ran across to her house and got the books she had bought dealing with radio and the installation of a set.

Jessie and Amy got into their outing clothes when Nell Stanley had gone and embarked upon the lake, paddling to the landing at despised Dogtown. It was not a savory place in appearance, even from the water-side. As the canoe drew near the girls saw a wild mob of children, both boys and girls, racing toward the broken landing.

“Why! What are they ever doing?” asked Jessie, in amazement, backing with her paddle.

“Chasing that young one ahead,” said Amy.

They were all dressed most fantastically, and the child running in advance, an agile and bedrabbled looking little creature, was more in masquerade than the others. She wore an old poke bonnet and carried a crooked stick, and there seemed to be a hump upon her back.

“Spotted Snake! Spotted Snake! Miss Spotted Snake!” the girls from Roselawn heard the children shrieking, and without doubt this opprobrious epithet referred to the one pursued.

CHAPTER XVI

SPOTTED SNAKE, THE WITCH

“What are they trying to do to that poor child?” repeated Jessie Norwood, as the crowd swept down to the shore.

“Spotted snake! Spotted Snake!” yelled the crowd, and spread out to keep the pursued from running back. The hump-backed little figure with poke-bonnet and cane was chased out upon the broken landing.

“She will go overboard!” shrieked Jessie, and drove in her paddle again to reach the wharf. Amy, who was in the bow sheered off, but brought the side of the canoe skillfully against the rough planks.

“What are they doing to you, child?” Amy cried.

“Goin’ to drown the witch! Goin’ to drown the witch!” shrieked the rabble in the rear. “Spotted Snake! Spotted Snake!”

“It’s little Henrietta!” screamed Jessie suddenly. “Oh, Amy!”

Amy, who was strong and quick, reached over the gunwale of the canoe and seized upon the crooked figure. She bore it inboard, knocking off the old bonnet to reveal Henrietta’s freckled little face. The cloak and the hump under it were likewise torn off and went sailing away on the current.

“For pity’s sake, Henrietta!” gasped Jessie.

“Yes’m,” said the child composedly. “Did you come to see me?”

“Not expecting to see you in this – this shape,” hesitated Jessie.

Amy went off into a gale of laughter. She could not speak for a minute. Jessie demanded:

“Who are those awful children, Henrietta?”

“Part Foleys, some McGuires, two Swansons, the Costeklo twins, and Montmorency Shannon,” was the literal reply.

“What were they trying to do to you?”

“Drown me,” said Henrietta composedly. “But they ain’t ever done it yet. I always manage to get away. I’m cute, I am. But once they most nearly burned me, and Mrs. Foley stopped that. So now they mostly try to drown the witch.”

“‘The witch’?” murmured the amazed Jessie.

“Yep. That’s me. Spotted Snake, the witch. That’s cause I’m so freckled. It’s a great game.”

“I should say it was,” marveled Jessie, and immediately Amy began to laugh again. “I don’t see how you can, Amy,” Jessie complained. “I think it is really terrible.”

“I don’t mind it,” said Henrietta complacently. “It keeps ’em busy and out from under their mothers’ feet.”

“But they shriek and yell so.”

“That don’t hurt ’em. And there’s plenty of outdoors here to yell in. Where we moved from in town, folks complained of the Foleys because they made so much noise. But nobody ever complains here in Dogtown.”

As Amy said, when she could keep from laughing, it was a great introduction to Henrietta’s home. They went ashore, and Henrietta, who seemed to have a good deal of influence with the children, ordered two of the boys to watch the canoe and allow nobody to touch it. Then she proudly led the way to one of the largest and certainly the most decrepit looking of all the hovels in Dogtown.

Mrs. Foley, however, was a cheerful disappointment. She was, as Amy whispered, a “bulgy” person, but her calico wrapper was fairly clean; and although she sat down and took up her youngest to rock to sleep while she talked (being too busy a woman to waste any time visiting) she impressed the girls from Roselawn rather favorably.

“That child is the best young one in the world,” Mrs. Foley confessed, referring to “Spotted Snake, the Witch.” “Sometimes I rant at her like a good one. But she saves me a good bit, and if ever a child earned her keep, Hen earns hers.”

Jessie asked about the missing cousin, Bertha.

“Bertha Blair. Yes. A good and capable girl. Was out at service when Hen’s mother died and left her to me. Something’s wrong with Bertha, or she surely would have come here to see Hen before this.”

“Did Bertha Blair work for a woman named Poole?” Jessie asked.

“That I couldn’t tell you, Miss. But you take Hen up to see your father, like you say you want to. The child’s as sharp as a steel knife. Maybe she’ll think of something that will put him on the trace of Bertha.”

So they bore Spotted Snake away with them in the canoe, while the Dogtown gang shrieked farewells from the old landing. Henrietta had been dressed in a clean slip and the smartest hair ribbon she owned. But she had no shoes and stockings, those being considered unnecessary at Dogtown.

“I believe Nell could help us find something better for this child to wear,” Amy observed, with more thoughtfulness than she usually displayed. “What do you think, Jess? Folks are always giving the Stanleys half-worn clothes for little Sally, more than Sally can ever make use of. And Hen is just about Sally Stanley’s size.”

“That might be arranged,” agreed Jessie. “I guess you’d like to have a new dress, wouldn’t you, Henrietta?”

“Oh, my yes! I know just what I would like,” sighed Henrietta, clasping her clawlike hands. “You’ve seen them cape-suits that’s come into fashion this year, ain’t you? That’s what I’d like.”

“My dear!” gasped Amy explosively.

“I don’t mind going barefooted,” said Henrietta. “But if I could just have one dress in style! I expect you two girls wear lots of stylish things when you ain’t wearing sweaters and overall-pants like you did the other day. I never had anything stylish in my life.”

Amy burst into delighted giggles, but Jessie said:

“The poor little thing! There is a lot in that. How should we like to wear nothing but second-hand clothes?”

“‘Hand me downs’,” giggled Amy. “But mind you! A cape-coat suit! Can you beat it?”

“I saw pictures of ’em in a fashion book Mrs. McGuire sent for,” went on Henrietta. “They are awful taking.”

Little Henrietta proved to be an interesting specimen for the Norwood family that evening. Momsy took her wonted interest in so appealing a child. The serving people were curious and attentive. Mr. Norwood confessed that he was much amused by the young visitor.