“Wall, boy, sort of a miracle took place. That little gal of mine had fallen asleep while I sat holdin’ her, but jest as I made that promise, silent to God, she lifted up her little hand and put it soft like on my face, an’ says, still asleep, seemed like—‘I love you, Pa Heger.’ An’ when she woke up next mornin’, the fever was gone, and she was well as ever.
“I kept my promise,” he went on grimly. “I went all over the mountain an’ I took them steel traps, one by one, unsprung ’em and dropped ’em down into that crack some earthquake had split into Bald Peak. It’s bottomless, seems like, an’ what goes into that crack never does no more harm. Now, when I kill a critter that needs killin’, I shoot an’ they never know what hits ’em. Meg is a sure-shot, too, though she’d never pack a gun if ’twant that I make her.”
They had reached the spot where the mountain lion still lay, and the old man stooped to examine it. “I reckon that was a sure shot, all right.” Then he shouldered the limp creature. “Thar’s fifty dollars bounty, so I might as well have it. I’ll hunt for the cubs tomorrer. So long. Hit the trail up our way often.”
As Dan walked slowly down the mountain road toward his home cabin, he found that he was more interested in this unknown Meg than he had ever before been in any girl.
Jane’s headache was better when Dan returned, but her disposition was worse, and poor Julie was about ready to cry. She had been spoken to so sharply when she had really tried to help. Gerald was angry and indignant. He had at first urged his small sister and comrade to pretend that Jane was being pleasant, but, after a time, even he had decided that such a feat was too much for anyone to accomplish. Then he had intentionally slammed a door and had declared that he hoped it would make “ol’ Jane’s” head worse.
It was well that Dan returned just when he did. He entered the cabin living-room calling cheerily, “Good, Jane, I’m glad to see you are up.” Then he looked from one to the other. Julie, tearful, rebellious, stood near the kitchen door, and Gerald, with clenched fists, had evidently been saying something of a defiant nature. “Why, what’s the matter? What has gone wrong?”
Dan was indeed dismayed at the picture before him. Jane, who had seated herself in the one comfortable chair in the room, said peevishly: “Everything is the matter. Dan, you can see for yourself what a mistake I made in coming to this terrible place, and trying to live with these two children who have had no training whatever. They are defiant and rebellious.”
Even as Jane spoke, a memoried picture presented itself of Julie’s sweet solicitude for her earlier that morning, but she would not heed, so she hurried on: “I have been lying in there with this frightful headache thinking it all out, and I have decided that either the children must go back or I will.” A hard look, unusual in Dan’s face, appeared there and his voice sounded cold. “Very well, Jane, I will help you pack. The stage passes soon. If we hurry, we may be ready.” The children could hardly keep from shouting for joy. Something which Julie was cooking, boiled over and so she darted to the kitchen, followed by Gerald, who stood upon his head in the middle of the floor. But they had rejoiced too soon, for Gerry, who a moment later went to the brook for water, returned with the disheartening news that the stage was passing down their part of the road. Julie plumped down on the floor and her mouth quivered, but before she could cry, Gerald caught her hands, pulled her up and said comfortingly: “Never mind, Jule. The stage will be going past again on Monday. Me and you’ll stay on the watch and tell Mister Sourface to stop for Jane when he goes back to Redfords on Tuesday. That is not so awful long. Oh, boy, then won’t we have the time of our lives?”
Julie agreed that they would indeed and decided to be very patient during the remaining two days. So she went back to her cooking and, with Gerald’s help, soon had the lunch spread.
Jane ate but little, and again shut herself up in her room for all that afternoon. Dan was almost as glad as were the children that she was to go back to the East, but Jane, strangely enough, was deeply hurt because her brother, who had been her playmate when they were little, and her pal in later years, had actually chosen the younger children in preference to herself. That proved how much he really cared forherand, as for his health, he seemed to be recovering remarkably. He had coughed a while the evening before, and for a shorter time that morning.
Then he had evidently been on a long hike. Of all that had happened Dan had said nothing, knowing that Jane would not wish to hear about the mountain girl, toward whom she felt so unkindly.
That afternoon Dan gave the children another lesson at shooting cones from an old pine, far enough from the cabin to keep from disturbing Jane. Julie grew braver as she watched Gerald’s success, and at last she too tried, and when, after many failures, she sent a brown cone spinning, she leaped about wild with joy.
“Now we are both sharpshooters,” Gerald cried generously. Then, glancing over at the cabin, he added: “There’s Jane sitting out on the porch. She does look sort of sick, doesn’t she?”
Dan’s heart was touched when he saw the forlorn attitude of the sister he so loved. “You youngsters amuse yourselves for a while,” he suggested, “I want to have a quiet talk with Jane.” Dan neglected to tell the children not to wander away.
Left alone, Julie and Gerald scrambled to the road and looked both up and down. “Which way will we go?” Julie inquired.
“We’ve been down—or, I mean, we’ve been up the down road.” Then the boy laughed. “Aw, gee! You know what I mean. We came up the road yesterday in the stage; so now, let’s go on further up.”
Julie hopped about, clapping her hands gleefully. “Ohee, I know what! Let’s see if we can find that cabin the innkeeper lady said was about a mile up the mountain road from our place. Wouldn’t that be fun? And maybe that nice girl will be at home from school, and, if she is, I just know she’ll let me ride her pony.”
Gerald, nothing loath, fell into step by his sister’s side, the gun over his shoulder. After the fashion of small brothers, he could not resist teasing. “I bet you couldn’t stay on that pony, however hard you tried. It’s a wild Western broncho sort, like those we saw at Madison Square Garden that time Dad took us to Buffalo Bill’s big circus.” Then, in a manner which seemed to imply that he did not wish to boast, he added: “I sort of think I could ride it easy. Boys get the knack, seems like, without half trying.”
They had rounded the bend and were nearing the very spot where the mountain girl had shot the lion, when Julie clutched her brother’s arm and drew him back, whispering excitedly: “Gerry! Hark! What’s that noise I hear?”
The boy listened and then crept cautiously toward the bushes. He also heard queer little crying sounds that were almost plaintive. “Huh!” he said boldly. “’Tisn’t anything that would hurt us. Sounds to me like kittens crying for their mother.”
A joyful shout from the girl, closely following him, turned into “Gerry! That’s just what they are! Great big kittens! See how comically they sprawl? They haven’t learned to walk yet. Their little legs aren’t strong enough to stand on. See, I can pick one right up. He doesn’t seem to mind a bit.” The small girl suited the action to the word, and it was well for her that the mother lion had been killed, or Julie would soon have been badly torn, despite the fact that her brother still carried his small gun.
The boy had lifted the other weak creature, which had not been alive many days, and, with much curious questioning as to what kind of “pussy cats” they might be, they continued their walk and soon reached the cabin.
Meg Heger, who had remained long in the forest that day, having sought a rare lichen high on the mountain, was just descending from the trail that led into her “botany gardens” when she saw the two children entering the front yard of her home cabin. Unbuckling the basket which she carried much as an Indian squaw carries a pappoose, the girl leaped down the rocks and exclaimed: “Oh, children, where did you find those darling little mountain lion babies?”
Luckily she took the one Julie was holding in her own arms as she spoke, for if she had not, that particular “baby” would have had a hard fall, for when the small girl from the East heard that she was actually holding a mountain lion, she uttered a little frightened scream and let go her hold. But Gerald, being a boy, realized that even a future fierce wild animal was harmless when its legs were too weak for it to stand on, and so he continued to hold his pet, even venturing to admire it.
“It’s a little beauty, ain’t—I mean, isn’t it?” He glanced quickly at Julie, but the slip had evidently not been observed, for she was intently watching the mountain girl, who was caressing the little creature she held as though she loved it, as she did everything that lived in all the wilderness.
But as Meg Heger held that helpless, hungry baby her heart was sad, for well she knew that it was unprotected and perhaps starving because she had shot and killed its mother. Of course she had to kill the lion to save the life of the lad who had gone too close to the place where the mother had her young; but, nevertheless, she felt that, in a way, her act had made her responsible for these helpless little wild creatures, since they had been brought to her.
Brightly she turned to the children. “Don’t you want to come with me to the hospital?” she invited. “We’ll give them some supper.”
She did not ask who the children were, nor from whence they had come. Perhaps she remembered having seen them the day before on the stage; or Sourface Wallace may have told her.
Julie and Gerald followed, wondering what the “hospital” might be.
Back of the cabin, on a rocky ledge, the children saw a queer assortment of wooden boxes, small cages and little runways. “This is the hospital.” Meg flashed a merry smile at them over her shoulder. “There aren’t many patients just now. Most of them have been cured. Here’s one little darling, and I’m afraid he never will be well. Some prowling creature caught him and had succeeded in breaking a wing when it heard me coming. Why it dropped its prey when it ran, I don’t know, but I brought the little fellow home and Pap helped me set its wing. It’s ever so much better, but even yet can’t fly, but it can scuttle along the ground just ever so fast.”
Gerald was much interested.
“What kind of a bird is it, Miss Heger?” he began, very politely, when the girl’s musical laughter rippled out. “Don’t call me that!” she pleaded. “It makes me feel as old as the thousand-year pine Teacher Bellows told our class about. It’s a little quail bird, dearie. You’ll see ever so many of them in flocks. There are sixty different kinds of cousins in their family. The Bob Whites with their reddish brown plumage have a black and white speckled jacket. They live in the grass rather than in trees and are good friends of the farmer because they devour so many of the insects that destroy grain and fruits. This one is a mountain quail; it is one of the largest cousins. The one that lives in the South is called a partridge.”
Gerald listened politely to the life history of the pretty bird, but his attention had been seized and held by what Meg had said about the very ancient pine. “Was there ever a tree that lived a thousand years?” he asked with eager interest. The girl nodded. “Indeed, there are many that have lived much longer, but this pine was blown over, and Teacher Bellows was allowed to cut it up to read its life history. He found that it had been in two forest fires, and about five hundred years ago an Indian battle had been fought near it, for there were arrow heads imbedded in the rings that indicated that year of its life.”
Then Meg concluded with her bright smile: “Some day, when Teacher Bellows is up here, I’ll have him tell you the names and probable ages of all our neighbor trees! It’s a fascinating study.”
Julie was not much interested in the length of a tree’s life and so she began eagerly: “Miss—I mean—do you want us to call you Meg?” she interrupted herself to inquire.
The older girl nodded. Every move she made seemed to express bubbling-over enthusiasm and interest. “Haven’t you any more patients?”
Gerry was peering into empty boxes in which there were soft, leaf-like beds.
“Only just Mickey Mouse. He’s a little cripple! His left foot was cut off in a trap, but he gets around nicely on one stump. That’s his hole over there. I put grain and bits of cheese in front of it. Keep ever so still and I’ll put a kernel of corn right by his door. Then perhaps you’ll see his bright eyes.” And that is just what happened. As soon as the corn kernel rolled in front of the hole, out darted a sharp brown nose with twitching whiskers and two beady black eyes appeared just long enough for their owner to drag his supper into the safe darkness of his particular box.
Meg laughed happily. “He’s the cunningest, Mickey is! I sometimes take him with me in my pocket. He likes to ride there, or so it seems. At any rate he is just as good as he can be. Often he goes to sleep, but at other times, he stands right up and looks out of the pocket, just as though he were enjoying the scenery.”
At that moment a sharp, almost impatient cry from the small creature she held recalled to the head doctor of the hospital the fact that she had started out to feed the baby lions. She brought milk from a cave-like room, only the front wall of which was wood, the rest being in the mountain. “That’s our cooler,” she told Gerald, whom she could easily observe was interested in all the strange things he saw. Dipping one corner of her handkerchief into the milk, she put it in the mouth of her tiny lion and the children were delighted to see how readily and joyfully the creature seemed to feast upon it. Having gathered courage, Julie wished to feed the other baby lion and then Meg suggested that they be put in a soft lined box on the rocks near, since they were used to being high up. The baby lions, being no longer hungry, cuddled down and went to sleep. Gerald’s conscience was troubling him. “We’ll have to be going,” he said. “Nobody knows where we are.” Then he hesitated. He knew that it would be polite to ask the mountain girl to call upon them, but he was afraid that Jane would not treat her kindly, so, in his embarrassment, he caught Julie by the hand and fairly dragged her away as he called, “Goodbye, Meg, I’m coming up often.” When they were on the down-road, the boy cautioned Julie to say nothing whatever of their adventure to their sister, but just to Dan.
Sunday dawned gloriously, and Dan declared that he felt better than he had supposed that he ever would again. Jane, too, though she did not voice it, was conscious of feeling more invigorated than she had been in the East, and yet, of course, she was very glad that she was going back again on the following Tuesday. She would go directly to Newport to visit Merry Starr, as had been their original plan. Her conscience would not trouble her, since it was Dan’s wish that she be the one to leave.
The two children, on the evening before, had failed to confide that they had visited the cabin up the mountain road. They were wild to tell Dan, but they wished to get him off by himself before they did so. They dragged him out into the kitchen after the Sunday morning work was done and asked him if he would go with them for a hike up along the brook to a natural bridge that they could see from their door-yard.
The older lad hesitated. “I’ll ask Jane if she would like to go,” he began, but the immediate disappointment expressed by the two freckled faces made him turn back to add, “Or, rather, I’ll ask Jane if she minds our going, just for a little while.” This suggestion was far more pleasing to the children.
They all entered the living-room where Jane sat reading. “My goodness, don’t go far,” she said petulantly. “Don’t you remember that the terrible overseer from the Packard ranch is coming to take dinner with you today? I intend to shut myself in my room and stay there until he is gone.”
“Hm!” Dan snapped his fingers as he ejaculated. “Queer I’d forget that visit, since I have been looking forward to it so eagerly.” Then he queried: “Why do you say that he is terrible, Jane? A foreman on a vast cattle ranch is not necessarily an uncouth specimen of humanity.”
The girl flung herself impatiently in the chair as she emphatically replied: “Of course he’ll be terrible! A big, rawboned creature who will speak with a dreadful dialect, or whatever you call it; and he will be so embarrassed at meeting people from the city, that he will stutter more than likely.”
Dan laughed at the description. “Maybe you are right, sister of mine, but we’ll be home to prepare the meal for our guest, long before the hour he is to arrive. Goodbye! Fire off the gun if you are frightened at anything.”
The girl merely shrugged her shoulders, and when they were gone she decided, since it really was very lovely out-of-doors, to take her book to the porch, and so she dragged thither the comfortable chair with the leather pillows. She was soon reading the story, which interested her so greatly that she did not notice the passing of time until she heard a step near by. Jane supposed that her family was returning, and did not glance up until she heard a pleasant, well-modulated voice saying:
“Pardon me if I intrude, but is this the cabin occupied by the Abbott family?”
Looking up in astonishment, Jane saw before her a handsome youth whose wide Stetson hat was held in one hand. He wore a tan-colored shirt of soft flannel, and his corduroys, of the same shade, were tucked into high, laced boots. Even before she spoke, Jane was conscious that the youth with the clean-shaven face, strong square chin, pleasant mouth, blue eyes with clear, direct gaze was not in the least embarrassed by her presence. He was indeed the kind of a lad she had always met in the homes of her best friends, the kind that Dan was. But that of which she was most conscious was the fact that he was very good looking, and that in his eyes there was an expression of sincere admiration for her.
Graciously Jane rose and held out a slim white hand. “We are the Abbotts,” she began; then, laughingly confessed that, unfortunately, she was the only one at home, as the others had gone on a hike—she really had not inquired where.
The lad did not seem to consider it unfortunate. “Please be seated again, Miss Abbott, and I’ll occupy the door-step, if you don’t mind. I’d heaps rather meet strangers one by one. It’s easier to get acquainted.”
Then, as he thought of something, he exclaimed: “I hope I have not come over much earlier than I was expected. I hiked all the way. I thought it might be easier to come cross-lots, so to speak, than to ride horseback to Redfords and then up your mountain road.”
“Was it?” Jane asked, wishing to appear interested.
“It was great! I adore mountain climbing, don’t you, Miss Abbott?”
Then, not waiting for her reply, he continued with boyish enthusiasm: “I tell you, it means a lot to me to have you Abbotts here. I love the West, but I’ve missed my friends. We’ll have great times! How long are you going to stay?”
Jane hesitated. She should have replied that she was leaving on Tuesday, but now she was not sure that she wished to go.
For a merry half hour these two chattered. The lad seemed to be quite willing to talk of everything but his home, and Jane was too well bred to ask questions. Jean told of his college life, and when she asked if he regretted that his days of study were over, he laughingly declared that they never would be. “Mr. Packard is a great student,” he looked up brightly to say, “and our long winter evenings, that some chaps might call dull, are the most interesting I have ever spent. We take one subject after another and go into it thoroughly. We’re most interested in experimental inventions and we have rigged up all sorts of labor saving contrivances over on the ranch.” Recalling something which for the moment had been forgotten, Jean exclaimed: “Mr. Packard wished me to invite you all to visit us as soon as you are quite settled here.”
Then with that unconscious admiration in his eyes, he concluded: “For myself I most eagerly second the invitation.” Jane’s vanity was indeed gratified. She laughed a happy musical laugh which sounded natural, although it had really been cultivated. “I am greatly flattered that you should be so anxious to entertain the Abbotts,” she told him, “since I am the only one of us whom you have met.”
“True!” he confessed, merrily, “but you know we scientists can visualize an entire family from one specimen. How could the other three be undesirable when one is so lovely? Maybe it’s because I am a blonde that I admire the olive type of beauty.”
Just why she said it Jane could not have told, unless the memory of what that awful Gabby at the station had said still rankled. Be that as it may, almost without her conscious direction she heard herself saying: “I suppose, then, that you must be a great admirer of Meg Heger?” There was a note in the girl’s voice which made the lad look up a bit puzzled. What he said in reply was both pleasing and displeasing to his companion. With a ring of sincerity he assured his listener that there were few girls finer than Meg Heger.
“I do not know her personally very well,” he told Jane. “She seems to shun the acquaintance of all young people. I sometimes think that she may believe her friendship would not be desired since she is supposed to be the daughter of that old Ute Indian, but this is not true. We in the West ask not the parentage but the sincerity of our friends. It’s through her foster-father that I know the girl, really. I often go with him to the timber line and above it, when I am not needed on the ranch. It’s a beautiful thing to hear him tell how Meg has enriched their lives.”
Then, as his direct gaze was again lifted to the olive-tinted face of the girl near him, he said frankly: “Many of the cowboys and others of our neighbors rave about Meg’s beauty. But I do not admire the Spanish or French type as much as I do our very own American girl.”
Jean did not say in words which American girl he thought wonderfully lovely to look upon, but his eyes were eloquent.
Jane could have sat there basking in the lad’s evident admiration for hours, but the position of the sun, high above them, suggested to her that something must be amiss. “I wonder why Dan and the children do not return,” she said, rising to look up the brook trail. Jean leaped to his feet and together they went around the cabin and scanned the mountain-side and the lad yodeled, but there was no response.
“Of course, nothing could have happened to them all,” Jane assured him. “They have gone farther than they planned, I suppose.” Then, turning with a helpless little laugh, she said in her most winning way (and Jane could be quite irresistible when she wished), “I have a terrible confession to make. You will have to starve if they do not return, for I have never learned to cook.”
“Great! I’m glad you haven’t, because that will give me an opportunity of shining in an art at which I excel.” The lad seemed brimming over with enthusiasm. Jane smiled up at him. He stood a head taller than she, with wide, square shoulders that looked so strong and capable of carrying whatever burden might be placed upon them.
“How did you happen to learn how to cook?” the girl inquired, and then wondered at the sudden change of expression in his handsome face. The joyful enthusiasm of the moment before was gone and in its place was an expression both tender and sad. “The last year of my little mother’s life we two went alone to our cabin on the Maine coast. Mums wanted to take our Chinaman, but I begged her to let me have her all alone by myself, and so under her direction I learned to cook. Miss Abbott,” the boy turned toward her, seeming to feel sure of her understanding sympathy, “that was the happiest summer of my life, but it had the saddest ending, for, try as I might to keep her, my little mother faded away and left us.” Then abruptly he exclaimed, as though he dared not trust himself to keep on: “Won’t you lead me to the kitchen, and when the wanderers return we will have a feast ready for them.”
Such a pleasant half hour was spent by these two who seemed content just to be together, Jane, with a twinge of regret, realized that the youth was idealizing her. He constantly attributed to her qualities that she well knew that she did not possess. He told her that he could understand why she had not learned to cook simply because for years she had been away at a fashionable seminary. “But now is your golden opportunity, and I am indeed lucky to be your first teacher.” That he was pleased was quite evident. “I am sure you agree with me, Miss Abbott, that cooking is as essential in a young woman’s education as painting or singing.” Then he laughed boyishly. “I’m afraid, when I am hungry that I would far rather have a beautiful girl cook for me than sing to me. Now, what is the menu to be?”
Jane looked about the kitchen helplessly. She did not wish to confess to Jean Sawyer that she had not before been in there except to pass through it to their outdoor dining-room.
“Julie and Dan were planning the meal. I really don’t know.” The situation was relieved by Jean’s asking: “May I prepare anything I can find?”
“Oh, yes, do please! It really doesn’t matter which of our supplies are used first.” The girl was glad to have the problem thus easily solved. After a few moments of ransacking, the lad looked up from a box as he asked: “Miss Jane, will you pare the potatoes?”
She shrank away before she realized what she was doing. “Oh, wouldn’t they stain my hands terribly?” Then, with her most winning smile, she held them both out to him. “You see, they haven’t a stain on them yet, and I did hope they never would have.” The boy made a move as though to take the hands in his. But he stooped quickly over the box of potatoes and said earnestly: “Right you are, Miss Abbott. They are far too lovely to mar.”
Perhaps because of associated ideas it was that he recalled a poem that went somewhat in this way: “Beautiful hands are those that do work that is useful, kind and true.” What he said was: “Suppose you set the table. I’ll make the fire and have a pot of goulash in no time. That is my favorite camp menu, perhaps because it is the simplest.”
Everything was in readiness when merry voices were heard without, and Julie, evidently believing they were unheard, said in a stage whisper: “Don’t tell Jane that we’ve been up to see Meg Heger’s hospital, will you, Dan? She’d be mad as anything.” The older lad was opening the kitchen door at that moment, and the two, who had been keeping so still in the kitchen that the surprise might be complete, could not but hear. Vaguely Jean Sawyer wondered why Jane would be “mad” because the rest of her family had been to call upon a neighbor. Glancing at her proud, beautiful face, he saw a scornful curl to the mouth which he had thought so lovely, and it was not pleasant to behold. But a moment later he had forgotten it, in the excitement that followed his discovery. Dan advanced with glowing eyes and outstretched hand. “Jean Sawyer! How glad we are to have you with us. These are the youngsters, Julie and Gerald.” The little girl made a pretty curtsy and Gerry thrust out a chubby, freckled hand, smiling his widest as he looked admiringly at the cowboy’s costume. “Gee!” he confided, “I’d like awful well to have one of those rigs. Dan, don’t you s’pose they make ’em small enough for boys?”
But it was Jean who answered. “They do, indeed, and what is more, there is one over at the Packard ranch more typical than mine, which I am pretty sure will fit you. A grandson of Mr. Packard’s was with us last summer, but he isn’t coming this year and he’d be glad to have you wear it.” Then, smiling at the older girl, he said to Dan: “Your sister, Miss Jane, has agreed to bring you all over to our place to spend next Sunday. That is a week from today.” Julie, upon hearing this, was about to blurt out her disappointment by saying, “How can she, if she’s going back East on Tuesday?” But a cold glance from her sister’s eyes made the small girl turn away with quivering lips. After all Jane was going to stay and their summer would be spoiled. Jean Sawyer had also witnessed this by-play and he felt a sense of great disappointment.
It was quite evident that Jane Abbott’s beauty was only skin deep.
When Jean Sawyer took his departure that afternoon, Dan accompanied him part way “cross-lots,” as the former lad had called it.
They crossed the brook and after climbing many a jagged boulder, began the descent on the side of the mountain nearest the wide valley in which was located the fertile Packard ranch.
These two lads, so near of an age, found that they were most congenial. When Dan confessed that his dearest desire was to become a writer of purpose fiction, Jean heartily applauded. “Great! I’d give anything if I had the ability to do something fine for this old world of ours, but, just at present, I believe I will continue being Mr. Packard’s foreman. Really, Dan, reading and studying with that man is as good as having a post-graduate course at college.”
Then apropos of nothing (or so it seemed), Jean said: “What a beautiful girl your sister is. What a pity that she has not had the love and direction of a mother. I had such a wonderful mother myself, Dan, I well know what girls and boys have missed when they lost their mothers while they were very young.”
Dan grew serious at once. Then he confessed:
“Jean, I feel as though I had known you for a long time, and so I am going to tell you my greatest problem. My sister Jane is beautiful, and before she went away to that fashionable Highacres Seminary she was as sweet and lovable a girl as any you could find, but for some reason she learned there much that was not in the curriculum. Pride of family, snobbishness, and because of our father’s position, many of her companions were so differential to her that she has come to expect it from everyone. How I wish I knew how to save Jane from herself.”
It was just as Jean had feared. He surprised himself by saying: “If she would chum with Meg Heger a while, I believe it would help her to overcome those artificially acquired qualities, for Meg is sincerely natural. But your sister would have to make the advances. Meg never will. She keeps apart by herself, and will probably continue doing so until it is proven that she is not that Ute Indian’s daughter. I know that you have met Meg, for I overheard your little sister saying that you had been there this morning.”
“Yes, we were. The children pleaded so hard that I go and see their baby lions.”
Then he told the story of the death of the mother lion to an interested listener. “I wondered why Meg Heger disappeared directly after having saved my life. Nor would she come to her home while she know that I was there. It is too bad that she shuts herself away from people who would gladly be her friends.”
Jean nodded. “That is just what she does. Last year, as I was telling Gerald, Mr. Packard’s daughter, Mrs. Delbert, and her young son were with us. When Mrs. Delbert heard the story of Meg’s devotion to her foster-parents and how she is trying to become a teacher that she might make life easier and pleasanter for them, she at once wished to make Meg’s acquaintance. We hiked up to the Heger cabin one Saturday morning, and although Meg willingly showed Mrs. Delbert her botany gardens, and her hurt animal hospital, she was so reserved and shut away from us, that we realized at once that she did not wish our friendship. Mrs. Delbert invited Meg to spend a day with her at the ranch, but the girl never came, nor have I seen her since.”
The other lad understood.
“With me she is also distant and reserved,” he said, “but when she talks to Julie and Gerald she is very different.”
Then, returning to a remark made earlier, he concluded: “My sister Jane would be greatly helped if she could see how much more naturalness is admired than cultivated poses, but she will never learn from Meg Heger, whom she considers greatly beneath her.” Then, stopping, he held out his hand. “Jean,” he said seriously, “I hope I have not given you a wrong opinion of my beautiful sister. I honestly believe that the girl she used to be still lives beneath all this artificial veneer that she has acquired at the fashionable seminary and my most earnest wish is to find a way by which that other girl, who was my dearly loved sister-pal, can be returned to me. I would not have spoken of this were it not that I am as greatly troubled for Jane’s sake as my own.”
“I am glad you told me, Dan. I, too, have faith in her. Goodbye till next Sunday.”
Dan walked slowly back to the cabin, pleased, indeed, with his new friend.
Dan found his sister Jane alone with her book on the front porch of their cabin. She looked up with a smile of welcome. “I was agreeably surprised in our guest,” she began at once, “and so, before you tease me for having described him as raw-boned and illiterate, I will make the confession that I never met a better looking or nicer mannered youth.”
“Tut! Tut!” her brother, sinking to the doorstep where earlier in the day Jean had sat, merrily shook a finger at his sister, “That is extreme praise, and I may take offense, since I consider myself good looking and nice mannered.”
The girl laughed happily. Her brother reflected that, not in many a day, had he seen her brow unclouded with frown or fretfulness.
Suddenly he said: “Jane, have you changed your mind about going East next Tuesday?” He looked up inquiringly, eagerly.
The girl flushed, then said with an effort at indifference: “I thought perhaps it is hardly fair to decide that I do not like the mountain life, after having been here for such a few days. Shall you mind if I postpone my departure until a week from Tuesday?” The lad caught the hand that hung near him and pressed it with sudden warmth to his cheek. “Jane,” he said, “I’m desperately lonesome for the comrade that my sister used to be. Won’t you give up all thought of going away and try once again to be that other girl?”
Jane looked puzzled, then she drew her hand away, saying coldly: “You are evidently not satisfied with me. I suppose that you also admire a girl who prefers to pare potatoes and stain her hands, than you do one who keeps herself attractive.”
Dan was astonished at the outburst, but wisely made no comment, though his thoughts were busy. Evidently Jean Sawyer had told his sister that he admired a girl who could be useful as well as ornamental. What would the result be, he wondered. But on the following day Jane permitted the other three to do all of the work of the cabin while she idled hours away at letter writing to her many girl friends in the East; finished her book, and started a bit of lace making which had been the popular pastime at the seminary.
At nine o’clock on Monday the stage drew up in front of their stone stairway and the discordant sound from a horn seemed to be calling them, and so Gerald hopped down to receive from Mr. “Sourface” Wallace a packet of newspapers and letters. “Oh, thanks a lot, Mr. Wallace!” the boy shouted, knowing that the stage driver was deaf, and then up the stairway he scrambled to distribute the mail. There was a letter for each of the Abbotts from their father and a tiny note inclosed from grandmother with good advice for each, not excluding Jane, whose lips took their favorite scornful curve when it was read.
But a glance at her other two letters sent her to her own room, where she could read them undisturbed. One was from Merry Starr and, instead of containing enthusiastic descriptions of the gay life at Newport, which it was her good fortune to be living, the epistle was crammed full of longing to see the wonderful West.
“Tastes are surely different!” Jane thought as she opened the second epistle, which was from Esther Ballard. In it she read a news item which pleased her exceedingly. “Jane, old dear”—was the very informal beginning.
“Put on your remembering cap and you will recall that you told me, if ever I could find another string of those semi-precious cardinal gems that you so greatly admired, to buy them at once, notify you and you would send me the money. Well, the deed is done. I have found the necklace, and, honestly, Jane, it holds all of the glory of the sunset and sunrise melted into one. They will set off your dark beauty to perfection. But I’ll have to confess that I haven’t a penny. Always broke, as you know, and so, if you want them, you’ll have to mail me twenty-five perfectly good dollars by return post.
“Yours in great haste,E. B.”
Jane sat looking thoughtfully out of the window. In about two weeks she would have a birthday, and on that occasion her aunt, after whom she was named, always sent her the amount needed for the gems, but in a postscript Esther had said that she had asked to have the chain held one week, feeling sure that by that time Jane would have sent the money.
Taking from her purse two bills, she put them in an envelope addressed to Esther, added a hurried little letter, stamped it and was just wondering how she would get it to the post when she saw Meg Heger coming down the road on her pony. Although she herself would not ask a favor of the mountain girl, she called Julie and requested that she hail Meg and ask her to mail the letter. Not until it was done did Jane face her conscience. Had she any right to use the tax money for a necklace? She shrugged her shoulders. What would two weeks more or less matter?
Upon arriving in Redfords, Meg Heger had at once given the letter which had been marked “Important! Rush!” to the innkeeper, who was about to start for the station to meet the eastbound train. He promised the girl to attend to putting the letter on the train himself, and thus assured that she had served her neighbors to the best of her ability, Meg went across the road to the school, only to find that her good friend, Teacher Bellows, was not to be there that day as he had been sent for by a dying mountaineer in his capacity as preacher, and had left word that he wished Meg to hear the younger children recite, and dismiss them at two, which was an hour earlier than usual.
Nothing pleased the girl more than to have an opportunity to practice the art of instruction, since that was to be her chosen life work, and a very happy morning she had with the dozen and one pupils, queer little specimens of childhood, although, indeed, several of them were beyond that, being long, lanky boys and girls in their teens. They, one and all, loved Meg devotedly and considered it a rare treat to have her in charge of the class. This happened quite often, as, in his double capacity as preacher as well as teacher, the kindly old man had various calls upon his time; some of them taking him so far into the mountains that he was obliged to be gone for days at a time.
Meg had a charming way, quite her own, of teaching, with story and word pictures. Even the master had to concede that she was more fitted by nature than he was to instruct the child mind. At two o’clock, when the young teacher dismissed her class, they flocked about her as she crossed the road to the inn.
The tallest among her pupils, a rancher’s daughter, who was indeed as old as Meg, put an arm lovingly about her as she said, “When yer through with yer schoolin’, don’t I hope yo’ll come back to Redfords an’ be our teacher.”
The mountain girl laughed. “Why, Ann Skittle!” she teased. “You will be married, with a home of your own, by the time that I am ready to teach. You are seventeen, now, aren’t you?”
Ann’s sunburned face flushed suddenly and her unexpected embarrassment caused Meg to believe that she had guessed more accurately than she had supposed. “Yeah, I’m seventeen. But I’ll be eighteen before snowfall, an’ then Hank Griggs an’ me’s goin’ to be married. He’s pa’s hired man. A new one from Arizony.”
“Then why should you care whether or not I teach the Redford school?” Meg turned at the lowest step of the inn porch to inquire. Her dark eyes seemed always to hold a kindly interest in whatever they looked upon, were it a hurt little animal or, as at that moment, a girl who had not been endowed with much natural intelligence.
Ann Skittle, again visibly embarrassed, stood looking down, twisting one corner of her apron as she said in a low voice: “Me an’ Hank is like to have kiddies an’ I’d be wishin’ you could teach ’em.”
Suddenly Meg leaned over and impulsively kissed the flushed face of her surprised companion. “Of course you’ll have little ones, dear,” she said, and in her voice there was a note of tenderness. “No greater happiness can come to any girl than just that; to be a mother and to have a mother.” She turned away to hide the tears that, mist-like, always rose to her own eyes when she thought of the mother whom she never knew. Ann, calling goodbye, walked away toward the corral back of the school where her pony had been for hours awaiting her.
When Meg entered the front room of the inn, her smile was as bright as ever. Mrs. Bently often said that it didn’t matter how gloomy the day might be, when Meg appeared with “that lighten’ up” smile of hers, somehow it seemed as though the sun had burst through, and even if things had been going wrong, they began to go right then and there. “Mrs. Bently,” the girl said, “Pa Heger told me not to come home today without the County Weekly News. It’s days overdue.”