The Camp Fire Girls’
Larks and Pranks

OR
The House of the Open Door

By HILDEGARD G. FREY

AUTHOR OF
The Camp Fire Girls Series

A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York

SHE WAS NUMB FROM THE COLD AND VERY NEARLY ASLEEP WHEN THE CAPTAIN FOUND HER.
The Camp-Fire Girls’ Larks and Pranks. Page 178.

THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS’
LARKS AND PRANKS

CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE OF THE OPEN DOOR

It was the crisp chill of an early October evening; in the still air the dead leaves came rustling down with a soft sound like whispers, while the crickets chirped a cheery welcome from the waiting earth. Over the treetops a big yellow hunter’s moon was rising; its comical face grinning good-naturedly. It looked down on the dark outlines of a large barn standing in the shadow of a tall tree and the grin widened perceptibly. Evidently something was happening on earth.

A dark form stole softly up the long drive leading to the barn and paused before the door. Through the silence there rose the whistling wail of the whippoorwill, repeated three times, and ending abruptly in the squall of a catbird. From within the blackness of the barn came an echo of the whippoorwill’s call, followed by a much more cheerful note—the carol of the bluebird. Then a clear voice called from inside, “Who goes there?”

“A friend,” came the reply.

“Stand and give the countersign,” commanded the voice inside.

“Other Council Fires were here before,” responded the newcomer.

“Advance and give the Inner Password,” said the invisible sentinel.

The figure passed through the dark entrance and came to a halt just inside, crying, “Kolah Olowan!”

“Mount!” commanded the voice above, and the stranger lost no time in obeying the invitation. Scrambling up the ladder fastened to the wall which did duty as a staircase, she thrust aside the curtain at the top and stepped out into the lighted upper chamber.

Anyone seeing that dark and deserted looking building from the outside would never guess how bright and cheerful was that upper room within. A wood fire roared in a cobblestone fireplace, its gleam lighting up walls hung with leather skins and gay Indian blankets and festooned with sprays of bittersweet. Several more Indian blankets were spread out on the floor in lieu of rugs, while from the rafters were suspended woven baskets and pieces of pottery. Ranged around the sides of the chamber, where the sloping roof met the floor, were four beds, all different, and only one indicating that the dwellers in that secret lodge were civilized persons. The first was a neat cot bed with blankets tucked in smoothly all around, and a dust cover folded up at the foot; the second was an “Indian bed” made of pine branches, dried ferns and sweet grasses, piled several feet high and ingeniously confined by woven reeds and pliant twigs. The scent of the sweet grasses, mingled with the aromatic odor of the pine, filled the room with a dreamy fragrance that seemed like a charm to lure down the Sleep Manitou. The third was a pile of bearskins and the fourth was another kind of Indian bed, made of smooth round willow rods tied together with ropes and laid across two poles fastened into the wall.

No windows were visible, as these had been covered with skins. Except for the camp bed, the wide hearthstone and one other detail it might have been the lodge of some Indian Chief of olden time. That other detail was a green felt pennant stretched across the chimney above the stone shelf of the fireplace, bearing in clean-cut English letters the word WINNEBAGO. Most of our readers have probably guessed the truth before this—the Indian lodge we have been describing is the meeting place of the Winnebago Camp Fire Girls and the solitary visitor who uttered the plaintive cry of the whippoorwill with its grotesque ending in a cat call is none other than our old friend, Sahwah the Sunfish.

“O Nyoda, such larks!” cried Sahwah, skipping across the room and bestowing a hasty embrace on the sentinel guarding the fire, whom the reader has doubtless suspected of being Miss Kent, the Guardian of the Winnebago group.

Nyoda laughingly shook herself free and smoothed out the Ceremonial dress she held in her hand, which had become sadly crumpled during the process of Sahwah’s bear hug. “What mischief are you into this time?” she asked fondly, smiling down into Sahwah’s dancing eyes.

Sahwah went into a gale of giggles before she could explain. “You know Gladys was going to drive all of us girls down in the Glow-worm to-night,” she said, controlling her laughter with an effort, “and she telephoned Hinpoha while I was there to dinner that she was over at Mrs. Varden’s, the dressmaker’s, having a fit, and the Glow-worm was standing out in front of the house, so we should gather up the other girls and get into the car and wait for her to come out, to save her the time of going around after the girls, for her fit threatened to be a lengthy one. So Hinpoha started out after Medmangi and Nakwisi and I went back home after these apples, which I’d forgotten to take along to Hinpoha’s. When I got to the corner of the street along came Gladys in the Glow-worm and said she had an errand to do for her mother in a hurry and we had