CHAPTER XUP THE RIVER
THE first of July saw Sunflower Troop packed up and ready for the month up the river. This time they did not go by way of the canal, and it was too warm to think of a long hike, so fourteen girls were piled into two motor cars, a third taking Miss Dodge and Miss Chesney with some of the supplies. It was a very merry company, the only regret being that two of the troop were not able to come, as they had gone the month before to Maine. Although Unc’ Aaron was on hand he had been given to understand that the girls must be left to their own devices, though it must be said that he obeyed these instructions with great reluctance.
The sun was still high when they arrived, for the automobiles must return to the city. There were little flickering shadows upon the grassy plot in front of the lodge, and sparkling gleams upon the river. The season of bird song was over, but the wind whispering in the trees, the murmur of the river as it tumbled over stony shallows, the hum of bees in the clover broke the absolute quiet.
For a while there was much scurrying around. Eight of the party had been told off to occupy the bungalow; for the rest a couple of tents were set up. Joanne begged to be one of the tent-holders. “I’ve always longed to sleep in a tent,” she averred, “do, please let me.” So she, with Claudia, Winnie and Esther Rhodes, was permitted to set up her belongings in one of the tents, ranging the photographs of her parents, her grandparents, Mrs. Marriott and Chico side by side as decorations, and stowing away the articles in her kit as best she could.
Then the routine of the camp began. Miss Dodge issued her orders. No one was to go out of bounds without permission. The farm was big enough and the woods extensive enough to allow of all the room for rambling that might be required. The bugle calls would tell them when to get up, when meals were ready, and so on. Each morning the girls for the various duties of the day were appointed. No one was to speak after lights were out at night. At first Joanne found these rules rather difficult to obey, but she soon fell into line with the rest of the girls, and at last had no desire to chatter after taps had sounded, for, tired out by the day’s activities, she was ready to drop off as soon as her head touched the pillow, and could scarcely have distinguished the notes of the bugle from the hooting of an owl or the murmur of the river.
Every morning Pablo appeared with Chico saddled and bridled so that whoso would could take a ride.Every morning, too, appeared Unc’ Aaron to ask if “de ladies had any requirements.” They seldom had, but once in a while they humored him by pretending to want his services.
“Dey sutt’nly is de mos’ ondependent an’ onres’less young ladies uvver I see,” he confided to Joanne. “Don’t ’pear to me lak dey still a minute, dey at it mo’nin’ an’ night. Dey runs aroun’ lak little mices, fus’ hyar den dere. Is dey do dat way in de city, Miss Jo? Is dey cook an’ wash an’ i’on? Don’t none o’ dey mas keep nobody to do de wuk?”
The old man was so distinctly puzzled that Joanne had to laugh. “They don’t have to do it unless they want to,” she told him, “but they like to know how.”
The climax was reached so far as Unc’ Aaron’s opinion was concerned when the girls bore off the lock-keeper’s baby and kept it most of a day while its mother did her wash. “Das a huckleberry ’bove my ’simmon,” he said, shaking his head. “I gives up. Dey is sholy nice, kind young ladies, but, honey, uh uh, dey pintedly does quare things.”
The girls, however, considered the baby a great find. “He is an awfully nice little thing,” said Betty Streeter, who was his discoverer, “and he is so ragged and dirty that it gives us a lovely chance to bathe him and patch him up. I told his mother, who bears the sweet name of Violet Scraggs, that we could keep him all day, if she didn’t mind, and we can take turns in looking after him.”
“He doesn’t look scraggy,” remarked Winnie, which speech brought forth a groan from the rest. “What do they give him to eat?”
“I asked Mrs. Scraggs and she said: ‘He eats pretty much what we do.’”
“Mercy me!” exclaimed Claudia. “How awful! I suppose they feed him on bacon and cabbage or any old thing. It is a wonder he lives.”
“He was eating a nice large chunk of cake,” Betty told her, “but I managed to get it away from him without his realizing it. It was pretty rich-looking cake, too.”
“How old is he?” inquired Joanne.
“A year and a half.”
“He might be a right pretty child if he were clean and had on decent clothes,” continued Joanne. “I wonder why his mother doesn’t keep him looking better.”
“Oh, my dear, she has a raft of children, and a whole lot of the canal people to cook for; she doesn’t get the time.”
“What is the name of our young hero?” inquired Winnie.
Betty giggled. “He rejoices in the cognomen of Claude Lafayette. He is so sleepy, poor little tot, that he must have a nap, then when he wakes up we will give him a bath. If I thought his clothes would dry I would wash them out while he is asleep.”
“There is no knowing how long he may sleep; itmay be for only a few minutes,” said Esther, who had more knowledge of babies than the rest.
“In this hot sun they should dry in a few minutes,” put in Winnie.
“I think I’ll risk it,” said Betty. “Where had I better lay him down?”
“Oh, please, not on my bed,” came a chorus; “he is so dirty.”
Betty stood still looking helplessly from the sleeping child to the group of girls. “I can’t stand and hold him all day,” she said plaintively; “he will have to go somewhere.”
“I know,” cried Joanne. “Just wait a minute, Betty.” She rushed off to a cupboard where a pile of quilts had been thrown; these she folded and heaped them upon a table which she had overturned so that the legs stood in the air. “There,” she exclaimed, “that makes a fine four-poster for him, and he can’t possibly fall out.”
“I call that a pure stroke of genius,” declared Winnie. “Who but you would have thought of it, Jo?”
Claude Lafayette was laid upon his improvised bed while Betty went off to wash out his clothes, leaving two girls as watchers.
“I don’t see,” said Joanne as she and Winnie followed Betty, “why we can’t make him some clothes; it will give us a good chance to do what is necessary for a needlework badge.”
“But where can we get materials?”
“There is a little store, or rather quite a good-sized country store in the village. They sell all sorts of things. We’ll ask Miss Dodge to let us go there; she’ll give us permission when she knows why we want to go.”
“Brilliant idea. Let’s go and ask her now before any one else gets ahead of us, not that any number of garments wouldn’t be acceptable, but Miss Dodge doesn’t like too many of us to go out of bounds at once. We’ll ask Clausie to go, too. She’ll like the walk, and she is off duty in the kitchen this afternoon.”
They did not delay in making their request, then, after receiving consent, they went to relieve the watchers of the baby’s slumbers.
Joanne had not wasted her opportunities of improving her Spanish, and every day had a half hour’s conversation with Pablo, who, if he did not speak pure Castilian, had at least a full vocabulary, and knew the idioms so that Joanne was becoming quite voluble in the language while Pablo made great progress in his English. He was a quiet, grave little fellow, so serious, in fact, that Joanne wondered if he were happy, and if he did not long to return to his own people. She asked him one day.
“Are you happy, Pablo? Do you ever get homesick?”
He looked a little puzzled over the last word, then his face cleared. “I have themal del pais? Si, señorita, some days I have thees, but it is not good that Ireturn, better is that I remain where comes to me a future. No? It give me a very sad no to hear my language, but I shall accustom, yes, I shall accustom. When no longer I can endure no to hear the Spanish, then I speak to Chico, my little brother Chico, and I think he understand.”
“I think you are very brave,” said Joanne sympathetically, “and I wish you had neighbors to whom you could speak your own language. If Unc’ Aaron were not so old you could teach him, and then you two could talk together.”
Pablo’s grave face broke into a smile at this idea. “Thees Onc’ Aaron he have learn a few words, but he speak them very fonny. I wish if you hear him.”
Joanne laughed. She could imagine the bungle Unc’ Aaron would make of a foreign language. “I’d like to hear him,” she said, “but while I am here, Pablo, you have some one to talk to.”
“This is true, but it when you go that I have the homesick.”
Joanne corrected this speech and then, since the half hour was up, went off to join her comrades. She thought a good deal about the situation, however, and wished that she might transplant some Spanish family to the neighborhood, but this would be an undertaking beyond her powers, therefore Pablo would have to get used to being lonely. Having decided this she thought no more about it, having, indeed, plenty of other things to think about.
Just now it was Claude Lafayette and his wardrobe which interested her, and she set off with Winnie and Claudia to the country store where they meant to lay in a supply of materials. It was a walk of about three miles, along a country road, a short cut through a piece of woods, then the highway to the village.
“We might have had Chico,” said Joanne when they were turning off into the woods. “We could have taken turns in riding him.”
“Pooh!” exclaimed Winnie. “Who wants to ride? It is a great deal better for us to walk. It will be only six miles all told, three miles there and three miles back; that is nothing, and we don’t have to go at a rush. It is warm here in the woods, to be sure, but that doesn’t matter. We’ll get the breeze from the river when we are out on the road again, though it won’t be so shady there.”
They loitered along through the sweet smelling woods, stopping once in a while to take note of a bed of moss or a new species of fern. It was so still that only the distant sound of rushing waters or the rustle of leaves in the tree-tops reached their ears, though once in a while the voices of men working in the fields came uncertainly.
It was when they had almost reached the point where trees ended and road began that Joanne stopped short. “Hark!” she said.
The other girls came to a halt. “What is it?” Winnie was the first to ask.
“I thought I heard something like some one crying,” replied Joanne.
“Probably some child at one of the houses farther on,” Claudia decided.
“It sounded quite near,” protested Joanne. “There it is again.”
The three stood still to listen.
“There! I hear it,” Claudia exclaimed, “over in that direction. Let’s go see what it is.”
“I hope it isn’t a wildcat,” said Winnie.
“More likely to be a tame cat,” returned Claudia scoffingly, “though I must say it doesn’t sound to me like any kind. There may be a negro cabin over that way; very likely there is, but we may as well go and investigate.”
They turned off from the path and worked their way through the underbrush toward the direction from which the sounds came. In a few minutes they came upon a couple of cows which had evidently strayed from their pasture and were cropping the bushes near by. They lifted their heads and stared at the girls, then moved a little farther on.
“It couldn’t have been the cows,” remarked Winnie with a little laugh. “There! I see something moving. Maybe it is a calf.”
“A calf wouldn’t make a noise like that,” declared Claudia. “Calves don’t cry; they baa. Let’s get down to facts. Just look at the blackberries. We must come here and get some.”
They forced their way through a thicket of brambles beyond which they caught sight of a little girl standing forlornly, with torn frock and tear-stained face.
“What is the matter, little girl?” inquired Claudia coming up, but the only response she received was a shake of the head.
“Can’t you tell us, little girl?” Joanne was the next to question, but no answer came except another shake of the head.
“Do you suppose she is deaf?” Winnie ventured. She put her face close to the child’s and said in a loud voice: “Can’t you hear us?”
This had the effect of making the child shrink away terror stricken.
“She hears all right,” Claudia concluded. “Either she doesn’t want to speak or she doesn’t understand. She thinks you are scolding her.”
Joanne had been observing the child closely. “She looks like a foreigner,” she decided.
“Parlez vous Français?” said Claudia.
Still the puzzled look.
“Sprachen sie Deutsch?” this from Winnie, who made the other girls giggle, but brought only a hurt, wondering expression to the little girl’s face.
“Habla usted Espanol?” inquired Joanne.
The child’s look of perplexity cleared; “Si, si, señorita,” she replied joyfully.
“What is the matter? Why were you crying?” inquired Joanne in Spanish.
The child poured forth an excited recital to which Joanne gave an understanding attention. When the tale was told she turned to the others. “It seems that she came out to pick blackberries. Suddenly the cows came. She thought they were after her, and ran into the thicket pell-mell to escape them. When she got over her fright she found herself so confused that she didn’t know which way to turn and wandered around getting more and more mixed up. She lives somewhere around here but hasn’t an idea in which direction. Her name is Mariquita Carriles.”
“We’d better take her along with us to the village,” decided Claudia; “they will know at the post-office all about her. You tell her to come with us and we’ll see that she gets home.”
Joanne turned to the little Mariquita who willingly joined the group, evidently glad to have their protection against the fearsome cows, sidling up very close to Joanne as they passed the creatures, and answering her questions unhesitatingly, if not very intelligently.
It was not more than half a mile to the village and they were soon there making their inquiries of the genial storekeeper, who was also postmaster. Oh, yes, he knew all about Carriles. He was working on Joel Sykes’s place, a very good man, from Cuba or some of those parts. He had been working for Joel all spring and had just brought his family up; they were living in the tenant house, reckoned they would stay all winter. Hard to get labor nowadays, and Joel thoughthimself very lucky, for this Carriles had a couple of big boys who weren’t above working.
“Is it far to Mr. Sykes’s?” asked Joanne.
“About half a mile beyond the cross roads,” answered the storekeeper.
Joanne consulted the other girls who were busy at the counter discussing the merits of various pieces of white goods.
“It will be ever so much out of our way,” said Claudia. She turned to the storekeeper. “Will any one from here be going by the Sykes place this afternoon?” she asked.
“Pretty sure to be,” was the answer. “If there isn’t some one can come from Sykeses and get her. I’ll call ’em up and tell ’em she’s here.”
This was declared a perfectly satisfactory plan, and after having made their purchases the girls started back saying good-bye to Mariquita, who was assured by Joanne that she needn’t be afraid, for some one would come for her and take her home.
“It’s lucky we came around that way,” said Winnie as they started off. “That poor little thing might have wandered farther and farther into the woods and there is no knowing when they would have found her. Such a pretty little thing she is, too, with those big dark eyes and that smooth olive skin. There’s another thing, too, Jo; this should get you your Interpreter’s badge. You’ll be plastered all over with badges by this time next year, if you keep on.”
“I’m not thinking of badges just now,” returned Joanne, “but I am thinking of what this will mean to Pablo. It will be a great thing for him to have neighbors to whom he can speak in his own language; he gets very homesick sometimes.”
“Nice little Pablo,” said Claudia; “he is always so polite and ready to do things for us; I surely am glad he will have companions, but to return to the question of badges. How many do you expect to earn this summer, Jo?”
“Oh, dear, I don’t know; all I can, of course. Now that I have qualified as Second Class Scout, I am working for the First Class, but my goal is the Golden Eaglet.”
“So say we all of us,” Winnie put in. “Jo is nothing if not ambitious, Clausie.”
“Why shouldn’t she be? Mark my words she will reach her goal as soon as we do. How many badges have you earned already, Jo, I mean of those required for the Golden Eaglet?”
“Let me see,” Joanne began checking them off on her fingers. “I have the one for Athletics, for Bird Hunter and Needlewoman. I am studying up on First Aid. Oh, yes, and I have my Pioneer’s badge and the one for Personal Health. That’s how many? Five, I believe, and I mean to add at least three more before we leave these diggings, which will make eight.”
“You certainly are a whole team and the little dog under the wagon,” said Winnie.
Joanne looked sober. “If only I don’t fall down on the behavior part I shall come out on top, I hope, but it is so hard to keep from flying all to pieces on occasions. I do think, though, that I am learning a little self-control. I can’t always control my lachrymal glands but I don’t howl.”
“That is a lot gained,” returned Claudia encouragingly. “You’ll get there, Jo, never fear.”
“You are such a dear old chirker up,” responded Joanne gratefully. “Win administers bad tasting doses like castor oil or liver medicine, but you give me stimulating cordials. It’s all right, Win; I need the castor oil sometimes, and you are a corking good doctor when you hold my nose and pour it down my throat. I class you with Cousin Sue, who doesn’t spare me.”
“Oh, but Jo,” said Winnie in a distressed tone, “I don’t mean to be horrid. If I didn’t love you so much I wouldn’t call you down when I see you need it.”
“Just so; you are a friend in need, and I want you to know I value my friend, Miss Merryman, very, very highly.”
“There’s Pablo,” said Claudia as they approached the river farm. “Let’s tell him about Mariquita, such a pretty name it is.”
“It is the diminutive of Maria, or as we would say, of Mary,” Joanne told her, “just as Juana is the Spanish for Joanne.”
Here they came up to Pablo. He was sitting by theroadside, having tethered Chico near by. “I am thinking perhap you are fatigue,” he said, “so I come with the leetel ’orse.” Pablo, like Unc’ Aaron, could never get used to the idea that the girls, generally, would rather walk than ride at such times as these.
So to spare his feelings, Winnie, at Joanne’s urging, mounted the little pony, and galloped off, leaving the others to follow on foot, and to tell Pablo about the Carriles family.