Chapter XVI: "such a Lovely Slide"

"I believe I am tired out," declared Harriet laughingly. She sat down, then straightened and lay at full length on the ground.

"Thank goodness for a level spot on which to lay one's weary bones!" sighed Margery, stretching herself beside Harriet. There was moss over the rocks and it felt soft and restful to their aching bodies. Hazel was not far behind the other two girls in lying down. The little company were quite ready to rest.

"Girls, you mustn't lie there without blankets under you," warned the guardian.

"We are not going to lie here, Miss Elting," replied Harriet. "We are going to get up at once and prepare supper for our hungry selves. Oh, but my feet are tired!"

"Mine weigh a ton," declared Margery.

"Yeth, I imagine they do," said Tommy with a knowing nod.

"You can go on resting if you like, Harriet. Jane, Tommy and I can get the supper."

"And Janus," added the guide. "You've done finely, young ladies. I'd like to see any young men go through a hard day as well as you have. Why, they would have been laid out along the trail from here to Sokoki Leap. We'd have had to send a couple of men with a stretcher to pick some of them up. Let me tell you something. You are trotting Janus Grubb a lively race, and he isn't ashamed to say so. Any one who says girls haven't as much pluck and endurance as boys may have an argument with Janus Grubb at any time."

"Thome girlth," corrected Tommy.

"Yes, some girls. That's what I meant--you girls in particular. It's a pity all girls don't slant in the same direction. Miss Thompson, if you will pick out some stones for the stove I will rustle the wood. No, not that way. I swum! You'll be down the Slide if I don't watch you."

"The Slide!" exclaimed the girls, turning eagerly to the guide.

"Yes. We're at it now. Where'd you think we were?"

"O, where is it?" questioned Harriet eagerly.

"Come here, I'll show you. Everybody that's able to walk come here, so you'll know where it is, then there won't be any excuse for your walking into it in the dark. There!"

All they could see was a slight depression in the rocks. It was several feet wide, very steep and so smooth that its polished surface reflected the light from the match that the guide lighted.

Harriet tossed a stone over on the smooth surface. They heard it sliding and rattling down, terminating in a faint splash.

"My goodness! Is there water down there?" exclaimed Crazy Jane.

"Yes, a pond or a pool, whatever you wish to call it. I was telling you about the Indians who used to take the Slide here. I know two young fellows who took it just to be smart. One was unhurt but the other had to be fished out of the pool. He was taken with a cramp and almost died before they got him. But this Slide isn't a circumstance to the one over on Moosilauke. That one is nigh to a thousand feet long. That ends in a lake, too. I'd like to see any fresh young gentleman take _that_ slide."

"Harriet could do it," declared Tommy.

"Harriet is not going to try it, my dear young friend," retorted Harriet laughingly. "She has had quite enough falls to satisfy her. Besides, she values her life, liberty and happiness."

"How long is this slide, Mr. Grubb?" asked the guardian.

"Over a hundred feet," replied the guide, measuring the distance with his eye.

"Oh, what a lovely thlide!" bubbled Tommy. "How funny it would be to thee Buthter toboggan down that thlide! Wouldn't that be funny, Mith Elting?"

"All of you keep away from here," ordered the guide. "I'll lose my reputation if what we have already experienced gets out. Nobody will want a guide who can't take care of his party better than I've done."

"You aren't to blame," replied Harriet. "It has been just Meadow-Brook luck, that is all. We always have plenty of excitement. Why, it is tripping right along ahead of us all the time, though we do not always catch sight of it until too late to stop. We will keep away from the Slide until morning. I want to see it before we leave, and so do the other girls. Maybe we might have some fun bowling stones down it. Are there any big ones that we may roll down, Mr. Grubb?"

"There's a whole mountain of them."

"Hooray!" cried Crazy Jane. "We will have a rolling bee in the morning, and Margery and Tommy shall bring the stones for us."

"Yeth. Buthter will fetch the thtoneth, too. It will be good exerthithe for her."

"Grace Thompson, if you don't stop making remarks about me I'll never speak to you again as long as I live," threatened Margery.

Tommy did not reply to this awful threat. She appeared to ponder deeply over it, then, edging up closer to her companion, gazed up into the latter's face with twinkling eyes.

"Do you mean that, really and truly?"

"Yes, I do."

Tommy shook her head.

"I'm tho thorry I teathed you, Buthter, but you know that you do need exerthithe," repeated Tommy.

"Tommy!" expostulated Margery hopelessly.

"There! You did thpeak to me! you did thpeak to me!" cried Tommy, dancing about and clapping her hands. "You didn't mean it at all. You thee, I knew you didn't really and truly mean it. Oh, I'm tho glad!" She danced about until Janus laid a heavy hand on her shoulder.

"Do you see where you're getting to? In a second more you'd have been taking the Slide on your head." Janus led her away from the dangerous spot. Miss Elting walked over to Tommy and placed a firm hand on the shoulder of the heedless little girl.

"Tommy, why will you be so careless? You distress me very much," rebuked the guardian.

"I'm thorry, Mith Elting. I'll try to be good after thith. But I didn't fall into the tree thith afternoon, nor out of it either, did I?"

"Her point is well taken," answered Harriet. "Nearly every one of us, except Tommy, distinguished herself this afternoon. How about our supper?"

"Oh-h-h-h!" chorused the girls. "We forgot all about it."

"Yeth, Mr. Januth. I'll fetch the thtoneth for the thtove. You get the wood, and we will have a nithe, warm thupper and have a nithe vithit, and then a nithe thleep and pleathant dreamth. Won't we, Buthter?"

"If you give us the opportunity," answered Margery sourly.

"Thee! Buthter thpoke to me again," chuckled the little, lisping girl. Harriet took her by the arm and led her gently back to the campsite, which was now so enshrouded in darkness that they were barely able to locate their packs.

Harriet assisted Tommy in getting stones of the proper size for their stove, after which these stones were piled and made ready for the fire that the guide was to start when he returned with the wood. Little more could be done without light. Hazel got the lantern from a pack, only to find that the globe had been broken. Very soon, however, the cook-fire was snapping and crackling, the girls sitting near it with elbows on their knees. Then came supper. It was wonderful what a difference there was in their appetites, now that they were out in the open, compared to them at home. But there was not as much to eat here as there would have been at home in Meadow-Brook. What there was seemed the best ever served to a company of hungry girls.

Supper over, it was not many minutes before the girls sought their beds. They were more tired than at any time on their journey, for this had been a day long to be remembered, the fifteenth. They would post it up in their rooms to look at every day through the winter and think of the excitement, the peril and the joys that marked that day of their vacation.

The girls rolled themselves in their blankets, Indian fashion, as before mentioned. They were beginning to enjoy this way of sleeping, wrapped up like mummies, feeling warm and comfortable in the soft blankets. No one who has not tried this method of sleeping in the open in cool weather can have the slightest idea of the blissfulness of it. Of course, if there are insects they will find one. There were insects on Chocorua and they found the Meadow-Brook Girls, creeping over their faces, getting into their hair, but failing to find their way under the tightly rolled blankets. The girls were as wholly oblivious to the insects as to the chattering squirrels that leaped from one rolled figure to another, then off up the rocks, only to return again and take up their game of "leap" over the sleeping Meadow-Brook Girls.

The day had no more than dawned when Tommy was awake, unrolling herself, but taking the precaution to see where the unrolling would land her. She had not forgotten her experience at Sokoki Leap, or the fall from the shelf into space. This ground was fairly level and there were no jumping-off places, except the Slide. She was not rolling in that direction. Freeing herself, Tommy shook Margery awake, then began calling her companions. Janus sat up, took account of the time and lay back for another nap.

"Januth ith taking hith beauty thleep," observed Tommy wisely.

Margery complained at being called so early; but when Tommy told her they were going to skip stones down the Slide, Buster was all eagerness to be up and at it. The girls did not even take the time to wash their faces, but ran to the Slide and gazed timidly down its slippery way.

"Come on. Let'th get thome thtoneth," urged Grace. She uttered a merry shout as the first round stone rolled down the Slide, bumping from side to side, finally landing with a splash in the pond, sending up a little white geyser of spray. Buster also began to take a more active interest in life. She, too, shouted as she sent a fair-sized boulder spinning down the incline.

"My, what a racket!" cried Jane. "Harriet, shall we go join the game?"

"I am getting ready as fast as I can. You had better remain quiet for a time yet, Hazel."

Hazel said she would. Miss Elting also lay gazing up at the sky, following with her eyes the flight of the birds, many of which, high in the air, were soaring toward the east to meet the coming of the day.

Harriet picked up a boulder on her way to the Slide, and, reaching there, sent it spinning with the wrist movement peculiar to bowlers. The boulder skipped some rods out into the pond far below them before it sank under the water and disappeared, leaving a white trail in its wake.

"I can do that," declared Tommy Thompson.

Janus unwound himself from his blanket and stood with his hands in pockets, observing the jolly party.

"Don't lean over too far forward when you throw," warned Harriet.

"You jutht watch me. I'm going to make thith one thkip clear acroth the pond. Here it goeth. Oh, what a lovely Thlide!"

In her excitement, Tommy leaped to the end of the slippery course, jumping up and down. In her left hand she held another round stone ready to send it after the previous throw before the latter should have reached the pond. Margery was standing at hand ready to send hers down.

"Look out!" warned Harriet, who saw the danger of Grace's position. "Get back instantly!" Both she and Jane started on a run, fearing the result of Tommy's imprudence. But they were too late.

Tommy Thompson's feet slipped from under her. With a scream she plunged head first to the Slide, starting down it on her stomach.

"Catch her!" screamed Jane.

Margery made a frantic effort to do so. Then her feet, too, went out from under her, but in making a desperate attempt to recover her balance, Margery turned completely around, landing on her back on the slippery Slide.

"Hold your breath," screamed Harriet, starting to run again, for she had halted instinctively as she saw the two girls lose their footing. Jane followed. Janus stood fairly paralyzed with amazement. It had all come about with such suddenness that he had had no time in which to collect his thoughts. When he did, he uttered a yell.

"Come back!" he roared.

But the two girls were past coming back for the time being. The third girl, Harriet Burrell, was running toward the upper end of the Slide, having made a short detour to enable her to get exactly in line with it. Now she raised herself on her tiptoes, at the same time bending over and taking a low, shooting leap, dived headfirst to the Slide, down which she shot at a dizzy rate of speed.

"Oh, she'll be killed!" Crazy Jane halted at the top, gazed down the long, slippery rock, then plumped herself down on the Slide in a sitting posture. She was on her way before she found time to change her mind. When she did change her mind it did her no good, so far as changing the situation was concerned. A procession of Meadow-Brook Girls was well started on a perilous journey, the result of which could not be foreseen by the three members of the party left in the camp.