CHAPTER V
THE BIG BONFIRE
"Bob, isn't this fine?" cried Frank.
"Jolly!" replied Bob, with vim.
"And the eating—um! um!" gloated Sammy, nibbling at a toasted piece of cheese on the end of a stick.
The big bonfire was in progress, and it was a great success. During the afternoon Dave Duncan and some friends had gathered up all the driftwood along the beach of Rainbow Lake for half a mile. It was now blazing cheerily.
Others of the crowd had brought the eatables. A farmer's boy had donated a quarter of a cheese. Another had brought a whole ham, home-smoked. The baker's boy had come on the scene with a box of crackers and some doughnuts.
It was a regular toasting bee. The great fire cast a cheery glow out over the beautiful blue waters of the lake. It lit up a group of lively, happy faces. The crowd roasted potatoes, ham, crackers and cheese. Forks made out of branches were used as toasters, and the novelty and variety gave the boys wonderful appetites.
"I'm sorry Ben Travers and Dick Hazelton are missing this," said Dave, sprinkling some salt into a luscious, roasted potato.
"Yes, they promised to come," spoke Sammy.
"Here they are, now!" cried Bob, as two welcome figures came into the glow of the campfire.
"Hurrah!" shouted half a dozen jubilant voices.
Dick carried over his shoulder a great big corn popper, and Ben a bag.
"Had to do some running around to gather up half a bushel of prime pop corn," reported Ben.
Soon there was the swish-swish! of the hard kernels in the popper. Then—pop-pop-pop! Eager eyes watched the little snow white mountain in the popper grow and try to burst its cage.
"Here you are, fellows!" sang out Ben, emptying several quarts of the popped corn on the spread-out bag he had brought along.
Ben had a can of salt, and each one fixed the corn to his liking. Very soon all hands had eaten their fill and were bubbling over with excitement and fun.
Five mischief-makers, including Bob and Sammy, dubbed themselves a "Committee" to get up a programme. They went aside a little to make their plans. There were some suspicious and mysterious whisperings. Three of the crowd disappeared in the shadows down the beach.
"Now then, fellows," sang out Dave, mounting a rock, as if it was a throne, "attention and order."
"Set the ball rolling," drawled out lazy Tim Barker, who had eaten so much that he lay flat on the sand.
"Speech! speech!" called out Bob.
"Yes, that's good," said Dave. "Let's see—whom shall we select?"
"Why, Clarence Brooks here is the orator of the school, isn't he?" said Sammy, winking.
Clarence was a fussy little fellow whose father was a public lecturer. He was always ready to speak a piece.
"Give us 'The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck,' Clarence," suggested Frank.
"Oh, that's too old," sang out Tim Barker.
"That's why he knows it so well," chuckled Dick Hazelton.
"All right," bowed Clarence, putting one hand behind him, as he had seen his father do on the lecture platform. "'The boy'"
"Hold on!" cried Bob. "You've got to have a 'deck' to stand on."
"Here," said Sammy, "this is just the thing for it."
An anchor log floated right near to the beach. It was pretty steady, and after some wobbling Clarence got a foothold on it.
"'The boy stood on the burning deck'" he began.
Flop!
Splash!
Mischief lovers hiding behind a near rock had given a rope tied to the log a sudden jerk. Clarence took a dive.
His mouth was so full of water and sand, as they fished him out, that he could not say much. He acted pretty grumpy, until the next thing on the programme made him laugh with the others, and forget his own troubles.
"A song!" shouted Bob.
Everybody looked at Dudley Norton. He always sang at the school exhibitions.
"Come on, Dud," called out Dave. "There's no piano here, but 'What Are the Wild Waves Saying' will sound real cute."
Dudley had a fairly good voice. He got the first line out all right. Then
Ba-a!
Me-aiow!
Honk-honk-honk!
To-whit! to-whoo!
Catcalls, hootings, imitations of all kinds of animals rang out from a dozen spots among the shrubbery of the bluff side, where one-half of the crowd had secretly placed themselves. At the end of every line they had some new hoots and calls.
A hideous babel rang out at the end of the song.
Dudley, however, stuck manfully to his task. As he sounded the last note something whizzed through the air. It was then that Clarence laughed.
Some flying missile came whirling towards the bonfire. Then another, and another. The first one landed directly in the open mouth of the singer.
Swish-chug-splatter!
Dudley seemed to swallow the last note of the song. The second missile landed on the nose of the "chairman" of the crowd, Dave. The surprise and the force sent him backwards, and he landed flat on his back on the sand.
"Yah-yahoo! Bob! bing! boo! Biggity-baggity, Blue! Blue! Blue!"
This was the war-cry adopted by "The Blues," as the Burr crowd had dubbed themselves. A regular shower of missiles began to rain down from the top of the bluff.
"Tomatoes!" gurgled Dave, rubbing his face.
"And ripe ones, too!" added Clarence, with a grimace.
"Give them the chase!" said Bob.
"No, they'll round on us and spoil our campfire," said Dave.
The triumphant cries of "The Blues" died away in the distance. Then Dave suggested a game.
The crowd was divided. A space about twenty feet either side of the fire was marked with stakes. It was a sort of "Hunt the Gray," only that one side was given time to disappear in the darkness. They could hide along the beach, or in among the shrubbery of the bluff side, as they chose.
Six of the party held "the fort," as the staked-off space was called, three at either end. The other six were called "scouts." They were sent out to rout out and capture "the enemy." Any of the latter who got into the fort without being tagged, became a "ranger" for the next game as well.
Every once in a while it was the rule that a ranger should give out a signal shout, so as to direct the scouts in the direction of his hiding place.
Bob kept with his fellow rangers until they scattered to different points along the bluff side. Then he tried a scheme of getting into the fort on his own hook.
There was not a foot on the bluff that Bob did not know by heart. He aimed to reach a point where a sharp descent led right down to the campfire. If he could get on a line between the stakes, and could run, tumble or slide fast enough, he counted on landing in the fort before any one could reach and tag him.
Edging along in among the shrubbery. Bob finally reached the bare spot in the shelving bluff where he was to try his dash for the fort.
"I guess the way is clear," he said to himself, peering around the edge of a nest of shrubbery on a shelf of rocks.
Then Bob was a good deal surprised to catch the sound of voices. At first he thought it was some of the Burr crowd lying in ambush, and pricked up his ears sharply.
As he listened. Bob traced the voices right beyond him. They were men's voices. By stooping and peering through a network of vines. Bob made out two men lying on the ground. There was light enough from the campfire to show that they had made a bed of leaves and branches, and that one of them had a green patch over one eye.
"I know the other man," said Bob to himself. "He is the tramp I met to-day."
Bob was very sure of this as he heard the voice of the man.
"Yes," he was saying, "I've picked up some money in the town."
"Then why don't we go to some hotel and be comfortable?"
"What's the matter with this soft bed in such fine weather? Has a haystack got too common for you?"
"No, but if you've got money, let's enjoy it,"
"H'm! See here, we're partners, but I'm the boss."
"You act it, sure," grumbled the man with the green patch over his eye.
"I've got some money," went on the tramp, "but we're going to get so much more, that this little bit isn't worth thinking of."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, it is. We're coming back here soon to rob a place where we'll get a whole fortune."
"What place?"
"Never mind, now. Why I want to stay here till we leave town early in the morning, is because I don't want to be seen around here, so that when we come back again we won't be known—see?"
"I declare!" breathed Bob to himself. "These men are thieves! I wonder who they're going to rob?"
Bob became quite excited over what he had heard. It startled him to run across the tramp so many times in one day. He had had a poor opinion of the man all along. Now it was worse than ever. Bob fidgeted around, hardly knowing what to do next, when something happened.