CHAPTER VI
JEANIE’S SECRET
The summer would have passed happily enough but for a rumor that there had been seen some hostile Indians in the next settlement; and this information so affected Fergus Kennedy that he became stricken with a continual fear, and was powerless to do anything but cower, rifle in hand, in the corner of the cabin. Brave man that he had always been, this condition seemed the more pitiful to his friends who had known him in his strength.
“It’s not like father,” Agnes told Polly, “and I don’t know what we shall do. The M’Cleans want us to leave here and go over to them, but who then will look after our clearing?”
“Jerry Hunter ’ud do it.”
“Maybe he would, but I don’t like to leave here just as we are fairly settled.”
“It ’ud be safer; we’re no so near to neighbors, and your fayther so distracted.” Polly pinched her chin thoughtfully. “Then there’s the childer. I’d shootdown the redskins, and shed my last drop of blood for ’em; but would it save ’em if the beasts came?”
“Then you think we ought to go to the garrison house?”
“It would be safer. I don’t care for mysel’, Nancy; but when I think of Jimmy’s childer, I can’t peril them; for what would he say when he comes back, and finds them gone because of their mother’s foolhardiness?”
“But I don’t like the fort with the cabins so close together, and the blockhouses so threatening and ugly. I do love the freedom of our own clearing. I don’t believe the Indians have an idea of coming here; the settlement is too big, and it is only a rumor that they have been seen in the neighborhood. I think we might wait awhile and enjoy our freedom.”
“Land o’ mercy, Nancy! I’m no better pleased than you to go; but if there’s a chance of our being in danger, we must be on the safe side. I am as daring as the next; but I must say when we beeta have Injuns for visitors, I want to git out.”
Therefore Agnes reluctantly packed up the things she most cared for—her favorite wolfskin that Archie had given her in place of the one she had taken such pride in at the first settlement; a little bowl quaintly carved, a belt ornamented with porcupine quills, and such like things. Polly’s feather-beds and the rest of the family necessities were packed on two horses, and the children were established in crates at the sides ofthese beasts of burden; and so the journey was taken to the fort, now the centre of quite a large, though scattered, community.
Several families, at the report of Indians near, had come into the fort, but there was still a number of the clearings occupied by those who did not easily take alarm, and who waited for a confirmation of the news before they should leave their comfortable quarters.
Jeanie insisted that Agnes should come immediately to her, but Agnes refused to leave her father altogether, though she spent many a day at the M’Cleans’ clearing, and there made the acquaintance of David Campbell, who, being a near neighbor, found it convenient to drop in often, despite the fact that Jeanie obstinately declared that she did not like him.
“He is a good fellow,” Agnes insisted, “and I don’t see why you don’t like him. You must and shall,” which was a sure way of encouraging Jeanie in her decision not to like him.
“It is a pity Archie is your brother, for then you could take him and give me David,” said Agnes, one day, when Jeanie had been singing Archie’s praises.
“You can have David for aught I care,” returned Jeanie, bridling.
“Do you say so? Well then, I’ll go with him to meeting next Sabbath day.”
“You’d better wait till he asks you,” retorted Jeanie.
“Oh, he’ll ask me fast enough,” Agnes replied, nodding her head with an air of conviction.
Jeanie bit her lip but said nothing. David had asked her and she had refused. Like most girls she was in a contrary frame of mind when it came to a question of meeting a lover halfway. In her secret heart she was only too anxious to accept David’s company, but she would not have Agnes know it for the world, and though Agnes made many sly references to the pleasures to be expected upon the coming Sabbath, neither girl was particularly jubilant when she considered it, though of the two Agnes was the more pleased. She had noted Jeanie’s lofty expression, and laughed in her sleeve at the success of her little plot.
Not only one but two rather disconsolate members of the M’Clean family appeared at church the next Sabbath day. Not relenting in her determination to tease Jeanie, as well as to punish Archie for a fit of sulks he had had during the week, Agnes triumphantly had her way and led David to offer his escort. What did she care if heretofore he had seemed to have eyes and ears only for Jeanie? She would let Jeanie see that there were other girls beside herself, and it would also raise Archie’s estimation of her if he knew that she could walk off so easily with another girl’s lover, so she argued. Very adroitly she made Jeanie the main topic of conversation, so that David was entertained greatly, and the two were chatting like old friends when Jeanieand Archie passed them on the road. David was always rather silent in Jeanie’s company, and she felt a jealous pang as she noticed how ready he seemed to talk to Agnes. She gave the two a stiff little nod as she passed, and Agnes smiled to herself. “It’s all for her own good,” she thought, “and I am glad I could make her put on that top-loftical look. As for Archie, he looks sour enough, but I don’t care.” She had learned some of Polly’s saucy ways, and the toss of her head was Polly’s own. Yet when Mrs. M’Clean urged her and David to come home with her to supper, the girl was nothing loath, and indeed was mischievously curious to see how Jeanie would treat her, and to carry further her harmless little flirtation with David.
The M’Cleans had made of their clearing one of the most comfortable places thereabouts. Both father and son had a genius for the mechanic arts, so that they were well supplied with hominy blocks, hand-mills, tanning vats, looms, and such affairs, all of their own manufacture, and though rude and clumsy, these were well adapted to their needs. The house was more commodious than at first, having besides its living-room, a bedroom on the first floor and a lean-to, or kitchen. A loft overhead gave two or three sleeping rooms. The building, floored with smooth puncheons, and, being well roofed and chinked, was very comfortable. Archie’s latest achievement, a milk bucket having staves alternately red and white, Jeanie displayedwith great pride, and though Agnes really thought it beautiful, she declared that it was too gaudy.
At table a discussion of the day’s services was considered proper and fit, the sermon being the chief topic of conversation. Joseph M’Clean was still a strict Presbyterian, and did not uphold the lapses from a serious deportment into which so many of the pioneers had fallen. He was bound that his own family should be “releegious and orderly on the Sabbath, no matter what his neighbors did,” and so the Sabbath evening was passed soberly in singing psalms, and in reading from the Bible, and in discussing at great length the chapters read. Archie quite warmed up to the debate, but David had little to say, putting in only a word now and then, his eyes between times upon Jeanie, who had treated him with a cold scorn all day.
It was when the two girls went up to their loft room to prepare for bed that Jeanie had her say. She, too, had been very quiet, for Agnes had lured David over to her side upon the settle, and had ignored Archie entirely.
“I think you treat Archie too badly,” said Jeanie, shaking down her dark locks of hair.
“Oh, no, you mean I treat David too well,” returned Agnes, saucily.
“What do I care how you treat David?”
“You care a great deal; confess that you do, and I’ll not treat him so well.”
“I’ll not confess.”
“Very well, you shall be tortured till you do.”
“You are a heartless girl, Nancy Kennedy.”
“Indeed, then, I’m not; I am too soft hearted.”
“Then why do you turn a cold shoulder to poor Archie?”
“‘I’m ower young to marry,’ and Archie does try one with his talk of what he means to do when he is twenty-one.”
“Just think what fine buckets and bowls he could make you, Nancy. There would be no one anywhere about who could make such a display as you.”
“As if I’d trade my heart for a red and white bucket; I’m not an Indian squaw to be bought with trinkets.”
“And Archie doesn’t think so. It was only I who said that. Archie is very modest.”
“He’s well aware of his own good traits. He will make a good meenister, and I’m no one to hanker after being a meenister’s wife.”
“You ought to feel honored if ever you are.”
“Maybe, but I think, as I said before, I am ower young.” She put on an innocent, childlike expression, and gave a side glance at Jeanie. “David can make fine bowls, too, and he is to make me one, and, moreover, he is going to tan a famous bearskin for me.” She gave her information carelessly and laughed at the “Oh!” that it extracted from Jeanie. “You must learnfrom the Indians not to make a sound when you’re being tortured,” she said calmly. “I’ll tell you something else, and see if you can’t do better. David’s mare goes beautifully, and I am to try her some day. He will borrow another, and we are going to—to—” She peeped around at Jeanie who had averted her head and whose face was buried in her hands.
“You didn’t make a sound,” Agnes went on, trying to unclasp her friend’s closely locked fingers. “You are getting on famously.” She laughed softly as she finally pulled away the resisting hands from Jeanie’s face. “Do you hate me, Jeanie?”
“No,” came reluctantly.
“Because it’s wicked to hate people, or because it is I, and you can’t help loving me even if I do tease you?”
Jeanie made no answer.
“Will you confess? Will you say that you like David better than any one in the whole wide world?”
Jeanie shook her head decidedly.
“Peggy Wilson said that David was a fine lad, and I was in luck to get ahead of you.”
Jeanie never stirred.
“And Phil Beatty came up when we were going to mount to ride home, and he said, ‘When you give your housewarming, Dave, count on me; you’ll be wanting some one to help you if you’re going to add to your house soon,’ and David laughed; and when he put meon the horse, I vow he squeezed my hand. I think I like David very much, and as long as you don’t care for him—why—there would be nothing wrong in liking him, would there? Now if I had tried to attract him behind your back and without learning whether you wanted him or not, that would be another thing, and it would be too dishonorable to think of, but as it is—let me see—he is twenty and I am now sixteen; in another year I might like him well enough. Do we look well together, Jeanie? I ask only on my own account, since you don’t admire David. David—it is a nice name, isn’t it? Mrs. David Campbell, I wonder how I should like to be known as that.”
Jeanie sprang to her feet, and flung Agnes’s hand from her. “You are a mean, aggravating girl. I don’t love you, if you want to know. I wish I had never seen you.” And she burst into tears.
“Now, haven’t I gone and done it!” exclaimed Agnes. “But still—now don’t cry, Jeanie—still if you don’t care for David, why can’t you let me have him?”
“I do care,” sobbed Jeanie, “if that satisfies you—if you like to be a fiendish Indian and torture my secrets out of me.”
“Was it a secret?”
“You know it was. You know you had no right to tease it out of me when I didn’t want to tell it. You know it was cruel.”
“I didn’t know. I forgot you might want to keep iteven from me, and that I hadn’t any right to make you tell me. I forgot everything except that I was bound to make you acknowledge that I had prophesied truly. I did that,” she added, half in triumph, though she was really much subdued. She went close to Jeanie, and attempted to put her arm around her friend, but Jeanie pushed her away. Agnes grew more penitent as she realized how deeply she had offended, and she stood the picture of contrition. “I’m so sorry, Jeanie,” she said, after a pause in which only Jeanie’s sobs could be heard. “I’ll never, never tell any one. I will not, truly. I see now I was very wicked to tease you so, but I know David likes you better than anybody, and—please be friends and I’ll tell you why he seemed to like being with me—I talked about you all the time.”
At this Jeanie raised her head. “Are you telling me the truth, Nancy?”
“Of course I am. You shouldn’t say that even if I have teased you. You know I always tell the truth.”
“How came you to think of that—of talking about me?”
“Because—” It was Agnes’s turn to hang her head. “You said once when you wanted to please Archie and get him to do anything for you that you had but to talk of me.”
“Then—now tell me the truth, since you know my secret—do you like Archie?”
“Yes—I like him, but I do not like to think ofmarrying any one. I will not think of it till I see my mother again.”
“But we are as old as our mothers were when they were married.”
“Yes, and older than Polly, who was but fifteen, and is now only twenty-four. But I want to wait, so don’t fash me about it, Jeanie, till my mother comes. I am in no haste.”
“No more am I, though I—I—”
“Yes, I know; you—you—will wait for David, and you will not have long to wait if you but give him half a chance.”
At this Jeanie put her arms around Agnes and peace was concluded, Agnes feeling that though she had gained her point, it was at the sorry cost of a bit of her own self-respect, and she felt ashamed at having pressed Jeanie so hard as to make her give up the secret which was her own dear girlish dream. She determined at once that she would do all that she could to make matters easy for the pair, and that they should never have reason to reproach her for a lack of friendship.
The Indian alarm came to nothing, yet because of her father Agnes was glad to stay at the fort all summer, though she longed for the little cabin and for the time when her mother should come. How long it seemed since she left her old home and started forth to this new Ohio country. It had been a month or more since she had been down to the little clearingto which she and Polly hoped soon to return, for now the cold weather would soon set in and the danger from Indians would be over. Archie, who had ridden by frequently, reported all in good order, and they concluded that Jerry Hunter must be there, as Archie had seen smoke coming from the chimney on more than one occasion. “I didn’t go in,” he told Agnes, “for it seemed all in first-rate condition.”
“That’s good to know,” Agnes returned. “I dreaded to see it looking dilapidated, and, besides,—” she hesitated, “I didn’t know but that Humphrey Muirhead might have tried to do some damage to the place, knowing we were away.”
“I don’t know that he does know it; he has been keeping pretty quiet lately. I suppose he feels safe, and knows that you will not trouble him again.”
“I wish I could.”
Archie smiled. “It would only be worse for you if you did. Faith, Agnes, in this country where there’s land enough, and to spare, why do you hanker after Naboth’s vineyard?”
“If it were Naboth’s vineyard, I wouldn’t hanker, for I’d have no right to, but I feel, and always shall feel, that grandfather intended my mother to have that place. It is the best about here. He put time and money in it, and the house is such a good roomy one, while the farm is cleared far more than most of the others, and one could make a good living from it. Ifwe could have the place all so well cleared, with the truck patch and the orchard and all that, we could send for mother at once. But now that father cannot work as heartily as he once did, it will be years before we can hope to have as good a place as that.”
“I should have your mother come, anyhow, if I were you.”
“Oh, I mean to have her come as soon as there is a chance for her to find company this far. I have sent her word. Our little cabin is small, to be sure, and with two families in it we shall be crowded, but we are going to add a lean-to, and I don’t doubt but that we can get along after a fashion.”
“I wish you would remember that I shall soon be ready to take one member of the family away to another home,” said Archie, pointedly. Agnes, for answer, gave a shrug of her shoulders and walked away. She did not care to bring up that question.
It was a crisp, clear morning—the last of November—when the family returned to the cabin. There were evidences to be seen of a man’s presence when they entered the door. A pipe lay on the table, a pair of shoepacks on the floor, a book, half open, had been tossed on the settle. Agnes took in all these details. “Jerry is still here,” she remarked, “but I didn’t know he ever touched a book.”
“Never mind the book, or what he touches,” said Polly; “we’ve got to stir our stumps and get thesethings of ours where they belong. Where’s your father?”
“He’s gone out to the truck patch.”
“So much the better. We shan’t need him till mealtime. By then Jerry will be back, I’m thinking. Trust the men for bein’ on hand when the vittles is on the table.”
But it was not till they were snugly settled in bed that night that they heard the sound of some one at the door which Agnes had securely bolted. She gave Polly a gentle shake and whispered, “There’s some one at the door, Polly; I expect it’s Jerry.”
“Whist!” said Polly. “Don’t wake your fayther, though he do sleep that heavy you could fire off a gun in the room and it wouldn’t stir him. I’ll go to the door and ask who it is.” She suited the action to the word and put the question, “Is it yersel’, Jerry?”
“No,” was the reply in an unfamiliar voice. “Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?”
Polly drew back. “The man’s stark, starin’ mad!” she exclaimed. “What’s he doin’ wanderin’ about without a kaper?”
“Don’t let him in! Don’t let him in!” cried Agnes. “See that the window’s shut, Polly, do.”
But Polly’s curiosity got the best of her, and she went to the window to peer out. The man was fumbling at the door, trying to get it unfastened. Failing in this he went toward the window. Pollyquickly slammed to the wooden shutter, at the same time crying out, “Get out of here wid ye, and do it quick.”
“I’ll do nothing of the kind,” came the reply. “This is my house, and naturally I should like to get into it.”
Polly opened the shutter a crack. “Who says it is your house?” she asked.
“I’ve been living here for a month, and it’s mine by good right. The people who used to live here have gone back east, as perhaps you know, and as I came here before you did, I have the best right to the place. First come, first served, you know. If you don’t let me in by the door, I will have to climb in by one of the windows. Where’s your husband? Perhaps he’ll listen to reason.”
“It’s mesel’ who’d be glad to know where he is,” returned Polly, seriously, “and I’d be glad if you’d tell me.”
The man gave a little chuckle.
Agnes by this time had drawn near to Polly and was listening.
“I don’t believe he’s crazy, Polly,” she whispered; “he’s only impudent. Shall I call father?”
“No, I’ll manage him,” returned Polly, coolly. “Let him try to get in wanst, an’ I’ll make it hot for him. If he’s not a crazy man nor an Injun, I’m not afraid to tackle him.”
The man was now occupied in wresting the leathernhinges of the shutters from their fastenings, and seemed likely to succeed. It would be easy enough then to cut through the piece of linen which, smeared with bear’s oil, served in lieu of window-glass.
“You stop right there,” cried Polly, “or I’ll give you a taste of shot. The best thing for you is to mount yer hoss, or if you haven’t one, to go foot-back if you like to where you came from, for go you shall, or you’ll be sorry.”
There was no answer but the bang of the shutter as it fell from its hinges. Polly’s temper was up, and without further ado she snatched up her rifle from its accustomed corner. There was a flash, a report, a heavy fall, and Polly backed away from the window, while Agnes sank to the floor covering her face with her hands.