Now come over here and help.”
Dora crossed her arms and shook her head. “No,” she said.
“Look here, Dora,” Mrs. Lambert cajoled. “The only reason Jenny knows so much more about this than you do is that she and her dad used to go camping together sometimes. Isn’t that right, Jenny?”
Jenny thought about her father often, but hearing other people talk about him always brought the hurt of his death back with an intensity that made her throat ache. Jenny bit her lower lip. She nodded but said nothing.
“So come over here and help, Dora,” Mrs. Lambert continued. “That way, the next time, you’ll know what to do.”
“I don’t want to know how to pitch a tent,” Dora stormed. “Why should I? Who needs to learn how to pitch tents anyway? ‘These days people live in houses, not tents.”
Rather than waste any more time in useless discussion, Mrs. Lambert turned to Jenny. “Never mind. Here, Jenny. Let me help. We’ll have this up in no time. Besides, we’re due at the evening campfire in twenty minutes.”
“Campfire!” Jenny exclaimed. “It’s too hot for a campfire. And it isn’t even dark.”
“In this case, campfire is only a figure of speech. With the desert so dry, it’s far too dangerous to have one even if there aren’t any official restrictions here. We won’t be having a fire at all. I brought along a battery-powered lantern to use instead. When it comes tome for after-dinner storytelling, we can sit around that.”
“Storytelling is for little kids,” Dora grumbled. “Who needs it?”
Mrs. Lambert didn’t respond, but Jenny heard her sigh. For the first time it occurred to her that maybe her troop leader didn’t like Dora Matthews any more than the girls did.
It was almost dark before all the tents were up and bedrolls and packs had been properly distributed. As the girls reassembled around their makeshift “campfire,” Jenny welcomed the deepening twilight. Not only was it noticeably cooler, but also, in the dim evening light, no one noticed the mess she had made of’ her sit-upon.
Once all the girls were gathered, Mrs. Lambert distributed the sack lunches followed by bags of freshly popped microwave popcorn and a selection of ice-cold sodas, plucked from the motor home’s generator-powered refrigerator. Taking a refreshing swig of her chilled soft drink and munching on hot popcorn, Jenny decided that maybe bringing a motor home along on a camping trip wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
“First some announcements,” Mrs. Lambert told them. “As you can probably guess, Mr. Foxworth’s motor home has a limited water-storage capacity for both fresh water and waste water. For that reason, we’ll be using the rest room as a number-two facility only. For number one, you can go in the bushes. Is that understood?”
Around the circle of lantern light, the girls nodded in unison.
Jenny raised her hand. “What about showers?” she asked.
“No showers,” Mrs. Lambert said with a smile. “When the Apaches lived here years ago, they didn’t get to take showers every day. In fact, they hardly took showers at all, and you won’t either. Unless it rains, and that doesn’t appear to be very likely. The reason, of course, is that since we don’t have enough water along for showers for everybody, no one will shower. That way, when we go home, we’ll all be equally grubby.
“As for meal preparation and cleanup, we’re going to split into six teams of two girls each. Because of limited work space in the motor home, two girls are all that will fit in the kitchen area at any given time. Tomorrow and Sunday, each tent will do preparation for one meal and cleanup for another. On Monday, for our last breakfast together, Kelly, Amber, and I will do the cooking and cleanup honors. Does that sound fair?”
“What if’ we don’t know how to cook?” Dora objected. She had positioned herself outside the circle. Off by herself, she sat with her back against the trunk of a scrub oak tree.
“That’s one of the reasons you’re here,” Mrs. Lambert told her, “To learn how to do things you may not already know how to do. Now,” she continued, “it’s time for us to hear from one of out interns. We’re really lucky to have Kelly and Amber along. Not only are they both former Girl Scouts themselves, they also are well-versed in the history of this particular area.
“When I first came to
