CHAPTER XVIITHE BURNHAMS
When the simple breakfast was over, Mrs. Burnham bade the lads remain indoors for a moment, saying:
“I want to explain to you, Carlos and Carlota, why I had you make this change of clothing. One reason is, you will feel better for putting on fresh, even if plainer garments. I do not suppose you always wore the one costume when you were at home, did you?”
Carlota laughed and replied:
“No, indeed! We had plenty of changes, though all were made the same.”
“So I judged. Also that, probably, there are no other children in this country attired in just that fashion.”
“My father thought it was the very best sort of dress for us,” returned the little girl, earnestly.
“Dear child, I do not doubt it for a moment,and I wish nobody need be more hampered by their clothes than you have been. I see, too, that those simple skirts you have on now are a burden to you, but you’ll soon get used to them. Maybe soon, also, you’ll return to your own home and habits.”
As she said this she sighed and Teddy shrewdly remarked:
“She doesn’t not believe it, though. She allays bweaves herself that-a-way when she doesn’t not sepect fings.”
They all laughed and the mother exclaimed:
“Why, Teddy! How observant! Yet small boys are not the truest prophets. There are other reasons why it is better you should keep your kid garments—”
“Kid, kidder, kiddest. Kid garments, garments of a kid. A pair of kids,” mumbled Jack who had, by this time, quite forgotten the silent rebuke of Carlota’s eyes. Carlos heard the monologue and was inclined to resent it but, instead, found himself listening to Mrs. Burnham.
“So I will wrap them carefully, and mark them with your names and addresses. You should keep them with you. The blankets andthe other things which the troopers left with you at Leopard are here in my room. They may be useful to you, and aren’t apt to wear out soon. The blankets are the finest I’ve ever seen, though some of the Indians who pass here, on the march, have those nearly like them.”
“They were gifts to our mother. They were woven by some Navajo women to whom she’d been kind. She was always kind to everybody. My father says that she nursed the sick, gave drink to the thirsty, food to the hungry, and rest to the weary. Oh! dear lady, I think you must be like her!” cried Carlota, impulsively.
Letitia Burnham’s eyes filled. She had already taken the motherless wanderer into her inmost heart and had welcomed her as a gift from God which she was thankful to retain, even for a little time. Yet she was greatly concerned for her small guests, knowing how slight a thing may turn the current of a life, and how doubtful it was that news of their whereabouts would at once bring their absent father.
Before he had retired, Mr. Burnham had promptly acted upon the suggestions in Captain Sherman’s brief note. But, would the telegrams and advertisements reach the eyes forwhich they were intended? And the Captain’s information had been very scant.
Adrian Manuel had gone “north”, but nobody knew where. The children had never been told the name of their great aunt, Mrs. Sinclair, nor even, until the Disbrows’ arrival at Refugio, of her existence. Then Miguel had spoken of her as “a wicked old woman”, and had honestly considered her such—simply because she gave annoyance to his master. Neither child had mentioned the lawyers save as “enemies”, and the further cross-examination which the Captain had intended making in the presence of the station-master—for their mutual benefit—had been forgotten in his hurried departure elsewhere. After he had parted from his little charges he had remembered this fact, but trusted to the station-agent’s intelligence to learn what more there was to know.
Moreover, for some time past, Mrs. Burnham had lived in expectation of a removal, and this fact, added to the foregoing, made the children’s future a doubtful one.
Household duties were simple in that narrow cabin, and though there was always sewing to be done, that could be taken out of doors. So, assoon as the place was in order, Mrs. Burnham took Carlota’s hand and said:
“Come, I have one other treasure to show you. Bare as this isolated station may seem to you I have learned to love it. We have lived here for some years and were only temporarily at Leopard. I didn’t wish to go there and was glad to come back, because of—that!”
Carlota’s gaze followed the pointing finger. At some little distance from the cluster of buildings was a small heap of stones. Around the heap there had been set a slender fence of tule reeds, strung together by strips of the same growth. A cactus, larger than ordinary and loaded with brilliant flowers, stood at one end of the enclosure while at the other a struggling tree made a bit of shade. A rude shed had been fixed beyond the spot, and within this a bench, whereon Mrs. Burnham and Carlota now sat down.
“What lovely blossoms! We have some cacti of that kind in our mother’s garden.”
“This one blooms—in my child’s.”
The girl looked up in surprise, but instantly understood. She slipped her hand into the mother’s and softly asked:
“Was it long ago?”
“Five years. She would have almost been a woman now and I often think what she would have been to me as such. Then I look abroad and am glad she is not here to suffer the intolerable loneliness of the plains. The young are not fond of solitude. Her name was Mary.”
“Why, my own mother’s name! I’m glad of that. Maybe she wouldn’t have suffered. Anyway, you know she doesn’t now. My father says that though our mother was so very, very happy on this earth, she is far happier now, with God.”
“Dear little comforter, so I try to believe of my own daughter,” said the woman, laying her hand on Carlota’s head.
“Was that her cactus?”
“Yes. She set it here. Her father planted the tree, which a brakeman brought her from a distant station. There were other things here, too, but they are gone. At first, I felt too desolate to care for them, and, when I had rallied so that I could, it was too late. Yet since it was here that she had made her garden it was here I had her put to rest.”
Carlota looked curiously at the stones.Away off in the distance, also, she could see beside the track another of the dead cattle which had so frightened her while on the hand-car. Mrs. Burnham noticed the glance and answered it:
“We had to put the tule reeds as a precaution against the coyotes.”
The girl shivered and exclaimed:
“How dreadful! Yet the stones don’t make any difference. The dear God knows about her, just the same. And—and—the cactus is very beautiful.”
“Yes, dear, yes. ‘The cactus is very beautiful.’ There is no life so dark or barren but may have its cactus bloom. Now since you have told me all about yourself I’ll tell you what is needful you should know about this Burnham family. It will do for the ‘story’ that Teddy is always begging.”
She smiled upon the little man who now approached, with his fat hands full of a rare yellow blossom which he offered to Carlota.
“Posies, girl, for you.”
“Thank you,niño. You’re a darling, darling baby! I do love flowers better than—than almost anything, I guess.”
Teddy climbed up beside her and watched as, almost unconsciously, she began to pull one of the strange blooms to pieces.
“Girl! No, no! You mustn’t bweak them. It might hurt them, my muvver says.”
“I’m not hurting it, Teddy. See? Little by little, I take it apart, gently, for I’m trying to find out its name. Though, maybe, Señora, you know it?”
“No. I’ve not seen them often. But—at your age—do you understand botany?”
“I don’t understand it—much. Only, most always, if I have a new plant I can find its class and, often, its genus. Like this. Don’t you know?”
“Once I knew. I was a teacher in my girlhood.” The sight of the child analyzing the desert flower had carried the exile’s thoughts back over many years, to a pleasant New England schoolroom and a class of eager maidens who learned from her. Yet she promptly banished her momentary regret, reflecting: “The cactus is very beautiful! And my blessings do outnumber my deprivations.”
It was a wonderfully skillful young hand which dissected the unknown flower and, whenit lay with all its parts separated and arranged, Mrs. Burnham’s interest was as great as Teddy’s. Eager to see, he thrust his dark head between Carlota and her “subject” in a way that hindered her study, so she left its finishing until another time.
“I’ll put the rest of the blossoms in my box, Teddy, but I’m quite sure it’s an orchid. I think it is a ‘Plantanthera.’ I do miss my father so about flowers. He knows everything and everyone there is, I s’pose.”
“I thought that looked like a ‘botany-box,’ when I saw Dennis take it off the car, last night. Yet, I could hardly believe I saw one—here.”
“Oh! yes. We always take our things. Carlos has his hammer. My father teached him, taught him, I mean, about stones, ’cause he doesn’t care so much for flowers. Now, please tell me the story. I love stories as well as Teddy, prob’ly. Old Marta knows heaps of them but Guadalupo knows even more. Beg pardon. I’ll stop talking and listen.”
Yet Mrs. Burnham hesitated a little, trying to decide how much it was necessary Carlota should know; though impelled by the girl’s abounding sympathy to talk freely of mattersusually kept to herself. Carlota helped her, laughingly:
“I know. When I want to tell a story and the words don’t come right away I always begin: ‘Once upon a time’.”
The lady smiled, took a fresh needleful of thread, turned the stocking she was darning, and began:
“Well, ‘once upon a time,’ my husband’s father died, very suddenly, leaving behind him a large debt to a rich woman from whom he had borrowed money to carry on his business—that failed. His two children, Teddy’s father and his Aunt Ella, determined to pay this debt and clear their father’s name and honor. She became a trained nurse and is now in a New York hospital. She has a fine position and good salary and is steadily putting aside part of it, toward her share of the debt. But she works very, very hard and it is a fresh trouble to Mr. Burnham that he isn’t able to provide for himself. He came west to engage in mining, and has made several ventures in that line. Until now none of them have turned out as he hoped, so he took this position till he saw his way to a fresh start. He thinks he sees now the way toleave here very soon. I hope that before we go your friends will have come for you. If not, you may have to be left with other strangers, and I thought best to prepare you; and you understand, now, why I wish you to keep all of your belongings together. But—that’s all. If you could so soon become to me like one of my own, why shouldn’t you to another just as easily.”
It was like Carlota to think first of others, nor had she fully realized the result to herself if her new friends departed before she was “called for.” The word “mining” had roused familiar ideas and she exclaimed:
“Oh! I do wish my father was here to see about Mr. Burnham’s mine! He would know in a minute if it was a good one!”
“But, deary, we have no mine—yet, nor the slightest interest in one. We are merely ‘prospecting’—”
“Beg pardon. Oh, that’s what my father does!”
“Has he a mine of his own?” asked the settler’s wife, with almost pitiful eagerness.
“No, indeed! He doesn’t wish one. It’s just his business to—to location them. I’dbetter ask Carlos, or you would. He knows more about it than I do.”
Then, as the rumble of an approaching train startled her, she sprang up and frantically waved her hand to Carlos and Jack, who were hunting gophers on the plain beyond the track.
“Oh! they’ll be rolled on and killed! The train—the cars—my brother!”
Mrs. Burnham rose and took the little girl’s hand.
“There, there, child! No trains can hurt you or anybody if you keep away from the rails. Try to look upon them as the pleasantest things of our days, and you’ll soon get over your fear. Now, you and Teddy play by yourselves. I see that Mr. Burnham wishes to speak with me, before this train arrives.”