From the big house on the Meiggs Plantation, standing on a knoll—which means a small hill,—one could see for a long distance all about, in spite of the shade trees, and especially when looking from the third floor windows. Russ Bunker was looking right out over the quarters where the hands lived, and could see far down the slope of the land and to the forest beyond the cultivated fields.
It was a lovely starlit night, but of course the stars did not reveal everything. The strong red light that sprang up beyond the cabins where the colored people lived, revealed a great deal, however.
"It's a house afire!" declared Phillis Armatage.
"Where can there be a house in that direction?" Rose Bunker asked. "Isn'tthat fire beyond the cabins, Russ?"
Russ suddenly sprang to action. He wheeled from the window and ran along the hall to the stairway.
"Russ! Russ! Where are you going?" demanded his sister.
"Tell Daddy and Mr. Armatage. I know what house is afire. It's Mammy June's cabin!" shouted Russ.
He had previously located the direction of the old woman's cabin by the stream, and Russ was sure that he was right now. He left the girls screaming after him; he had no time to tell them how he was so sure of his statement.
Down the two flights of stairs he plunged until he landed with a bang on the hall rug at the foot of the lower flight. He almost fell against Mr. Armatage himself when he landed. And Daddy Bunker was not far away.
"Well, well, young man, what's this?" demanded Mr. Armatage, for a moment quite as stern with Russ as he was with his own children.
Daddy, too, looked upon Russ with amazement. "Why, Russ," he said, "what does this mean? What are you doing down here?"
"There's a fire!" gasped out Russ, his breath almost gone. "There's a fire!"
"Upstairs?" demanded Mr. Armatage, whirling toward the stairway.
"Oh, no, sir! No, sir!" cried Russ, stopping him. "It's down the hill. I saw it from the window."
"The quarters?" demanded the planter.
"No, sir. It looks like Mammy June's. It's a great red flame shooting right up about where her cabin is."
"And the old woman has gone home. She's lame. Like enough she won't get out in time—if it is her shack. Come on, boys!" The planter's shout rang through the lower rooms and startled both the guests and the servants. "There's a fire down by the branch. May be a cabin and somebody in it. Come on in your cars and follow me. Get all the buckets you can find."
He dashed out of the house, hatless as he was, shouting to the colored folks who were gathered outside watching the dancing through the long windows. Daddy Bunker followed right behind him. And what doyou suppose Russ did? Why, he could have touched Daddy Bunker's coat-tails he kept so close to him! Nobody forbade him, so Russ went too.
Mr. Armatage and Mr. Bunker got into one of the first cars to start, and Russ, with a water pail in each hand, got in too. There was a great noise of shouting and the starting of the motor-cars. Men ran hither and thither, and all the time the light of the fire down by the stream increased.
When they were under way, Mr. Armatage's car leading, they found many of the plantation hands running down the grassy road in advance. The cars passed these men, Mr. Armatage shouting orders as the car flew by. In two minutes they came to the clearing in which Mammy June's cabin stood. One end of the little house was all ablaze.
"The poor soul hasn't got out," cried Mr. Armatage, and with Mr. Bunker he charged for the door, burst it in, and dashed into the smoke which filled the interior.
Russ thought that Daddy Bunker was very brave indeed to do this. It looked to the boy as though both men would be burned by theraging fire. But he was brave himself. He fought back his tears and ran to the stream to fill with water both the pails he carried.
When he came staggering back with the filled pails, the water slopping over his shoes, the first of the hands arrived. One man grabbed Russ's pails and threw the water upon the burning logs. Such a small amount of water only made the flames hiss and the logs steam. But soon other filled pails were brought. More of the cars with guests from the party arrived, and a chain of men to the stream was formed.
Almost at once Mr. Armatage and Daddy Bunker fought their way out of the burning cabin through the smoke, and they bore between them the screaming old woman. Mammy June was badly frightened.
"You're all right now, Mammy," declared Mr. Armatage, when he and Mr. Bunker put her into the tonneau of the car. "Here, boy!" he added to Russ, "you stay with her."
"I got to lose all! I got to lose ma home!" wailed Mammy June. "If my Ebenezer had been yere, dat chimbley wouldn't have cotched fire."
"Can't be helped now," said Daddy Bunker soothingly. "We'll try to save your home, Mammy."
But although their intentions were of the best, this could not be done. The cabin—as dry as a stack of straw—could not be saved. The pails were passed from hand to hand as rapidly as possible, but the fire had gained such headway that it was impossible to quench it until the cabin was in complete ruins.
"You be mighty glad, Mammy June," said Mr. Armatage, finally giving up the unequal battle, "that you are saved yourself. And you wouldn't have been if this little Bunker hadn't seen the fire when he did."
"Bless him!" groaned the old woman, hugging Russ to her side in the car. "If my Ebenezer had been home it wouldn't never have happened, Mistah Armatage."
She harped upon this belief incessantly as they finally drove back to the big house. The fright and exposure quite turned Mammy June's brain for the time. She was somewhat delirious.
"S'pose my Ebenezer come home and findde cabin in ruins. He mebbe will think Mammy June burned up, and go right off again. And he might come any time!"
The old woman talked of this even after they put her to bed and a doctor who chanced to be at Mrs. Armatage's party had attended her. The fire, and her bodily illness, had prostrated the old woman.
The end of that Christmas party was not as pleasant as the beginning. It was long after midnight before even the children were in their beds and composed for sleep. The party broke up at an earlier hour than might have been expected.
Rose slept in the room with Phillis and Alice Armatage. Just as she was dropping to sleep and after her companions were already in dreamland Rose saw the door of the room pushed open. The moon had risen, and Rose recognized Russ's tousled head poked in the open door.
"What do you want?" she demanded in a whisper. "Oh, Russ! there isn't another fire, is there?"
"No! Hush! I just thought of something."
"What is it?" askedRose in the same low tone that Russ used.
"We can do something for Mammy June."
"We can't cure her rheumatism, Russ," said Rose. "Even the doctor can't do that in a hurry. He said so."
"No. She's worrying about her boy. That boy with the funny name. Sneezer."
"Yes, I know," said Rose.
"She is afraid he will come back and find the cabin burned and go away again without her knowing it," said Russ gravely, tiptoeing to his sister's bedside.
"Yes. Mother says it's real pitiful the way she takes on," sighed the little girl.
"Well, Rose, you and I can help about that," said Russ confidently.
"How can we?" she asked, in surprise.
"We can write a sign and stick it up on a pole down there by the burned cabin. We'll make a sign saying that Mammy June is up here at the big house and for Sneezer to come and see her."
"Oh, goody!" cried Rose, but still under her breath. "That's a fine idea, Russ."
"Don't say anything about it to anybody," warned her brother, eager to make a secretof the plan that had popped into his head. "We'll write that sign early in the morning and go down there and stick it up. Want to?"
"Of course I do," said Rose, with a glad little jump in her bed. "I think you're just the smartest boy, Russ, to think of it. I won't say a word about it, not even to Philly and Alice."
With this plan dancing in her head Rose soon fell asleep while Russ stole back to the room where he slept with the smaller boys. After that the big house on the Meiggs Plantation becamequiet for the rest of the long night.
Laddie and Vi Bunker felt as though they had been cheated. They had not been allowed to go to the fire, "when Mammy June's cabin had been burned all up," Vi declared. They had only seen the fire from an upper window of the big Armatage house.
"But it wasn't burnedup, Vi," her twin insisted. "It was burneddown."
"Russ said it was burned up when he came back from the fire—so now," Violet declared somewhat warmly.
"How can a house burn up? It just fell all to pieces into the cellar."
"There wasn't any cellar to Mammy June's house," Vi observed.
"Well, it fell down; so of course, it burned down."
"The flames went up," repeated Vi, quiteas determinedly. "And the wood went with 'em—with the flames and smoke. So the cabin burned up."
What might have been the result of this discussion it would be hard to say had not the twins both felt so keenly their disappointment. Russ had gone to the fire and brought Mammy June out of the cabin and brought her up here to the big house! To tell the truth, Russ was so excited when he got back that in telling of the adventure he gave the younger children to understand that he had done it all himself. Daddy Bunker and Mr. Armatage did not appear much in his story.
"Russ is always doing the big things," sighed Laddie. "It's just like a riddle——"
"What is?" almost snapped Vi, for she was just as disappointed as her twin brother.
"Why, Russ getting the best of everything. Why is it?" muttered Laddie, kicking a pebble before him in the path.
"If that's a riddle, I can't answer it," said Vi.
"It isn't any worse to ask riddles than it is to ask questions—so now."
The twins were not always in accord, ofcourse; but they were seldom so near to a quarrel as upon this morning. Perhaps, for one thing, the day before, they had rather over-done and possibly had over-eaten. They were on the verge of doing something that the Bunker children seldom did—quarreling. Fortunately something suddenly attracted Laddie's attention and he stopped kicking the pebble and pointed down the yard in front of them.
"Oh, Vi! See that cunning thing! What is it?"
Something flashed across a green patch of grass away down by the road. It was red, had small, sharp-pointed ears and nose and a bushy tail. This tail waved quite importantly as the small animal ran.
"Come on!" cried Vi, taking the lead at once. She often did so, for Laddie was slower than she. "Come on! Let's get it, Laddie."
Laddie, nothing loath, ran after his twin sister. They raced down the hill and came to the little gully into which the animal with the bushy tail had disappeared. The end of that gully wasthe open mouth of a culvert under the road.
"Did he go in there?" Laddie demanded. "Did he go into that hole, Vi?"
"He must have," declared Violet. "It must be his home. It's a burrow."
"But he wasn't a bunny. Bunnies have burrows," objected Laddie.
"I guess other animals can have burrows, too," said his twin. "And he was lots prettier than a rabbit."
"He was that," admitted the excited Laddie. "It wasn't a rabbit, of course. Rabbits aren't red."
"Let's find the other end of the hole," Vi said eagerly. "We'll stop both ends up and then—and then——"
"Well, what then?" her twin demanded.
"Why, we can catch him then," said Vi, rather feebly. "That is, we can if he wants to come out."
"I suppose we can. If he doesn't take too long. Let's," said Laddie, and he ran across the road and looked to see if there was another opening to the culvert.
But as it chanced, this was an old and unused drain, and the farther mouth of it wasstopped up. This made the hole a very nice den for the little animal the Bunker twins had seen go into it. But neither Laddie nor Vi had any idea as to what the creature was.
"I'm going to get a stick and poke him out," announced Laddie.
"You can't poke him out when there is no other hole over there," rejoined Vi very sensibly.
"I'll poke him till he comes out then," said Laddie, looking all about but not starting to find a stick.
To tell the truth he was at the end of his resources. He did not know how to get at the little red animal.
"Anyway," he said at last, "maybe he didn't run in here after all."
"He did so, Laddie Bunker!" cried Violet. "I saw him."
This seemed final. Laddie looked all around again, quite puzzled as to what to do next. There was no backing out of a thing when once it was begun—not with Vi Bunker! She always insisted upon going on to the end, no matter what that end might be.
"Well," her twin said atlast, "I s'pose I'll have to go in after him."
"How can you?" asked Vi promptly, but excitedly, too.
"I can crawl into that hole——"
"Isn't it too small?"
"Well, I'm not so big," replied Laddie. "I guess I can do it. I'm going to try."
He knelt down before the round mouth of the culvert. It was a piece of drainpipe with a rough rim at the edge of the hole. Laddie poked his head into the hole.
"It's as dark as the inside of your pocket, Vi Bunker," he said, in a muffled voice.
"Shall I run get a candle?" asked his sister.
"No," sighed Laddie; and even his sigh sounded funny from inside the pipe. "If you do they'll want to know what you want it for. And if we are going to catch this—this whatever-it-is, we want to catch it all by ourselves. Wait."
Vi granted that request. She waited, watching Laddie's plump little body wriggling farther and farther into the culvert. His jacket caught several times on the rough rim of the opening. But he persevered.
"Oh!" ejaculated Laddie at last, and hisvoice seemed a murmur from a great way off.
"I guess you better come back, Laddie," said Vi, getting anxious.
Laddie, if the truth were known, thought so too. For just then he had sighted in the dark two fiery points, like flashing bits of glass or mica. He knew what they were; they were the eyes of the little red animal he had chased into this hole. And Laddie thought that when eyes flashed so brilliantly, their owner must be angry.
"He's going to jump at me!" breathed the little boy to himself.
He began to back out hastily. The bottom of his jacket caught on the rim of the pipe. He was stuck there!
"Pull! Pull me out, Vi Bunker!" he shouted.
But his voice was so muffled that his sister could not understand what he said. It looked as though Laddie was unable to get back the way he had come. And he certainly dared not go on ahead.
For now, to increase his fears, he saw other points of light in the darkness—all in pairs, the eyes of several smaller animals, he wassure! He had self-control enough to count them and found that there were five pairs of eyes altogether.
What should he do about it? Struggle as he might he could not back any farther. And no manner of wriggling was likely to get him out of the hole the way he had come in.
Russ and Rose had both got up very early the day after Christmas, for their minds were filled with the idea of helping Mammy June. The poor old woman's anxiety should be relieved, and the two oldest of the Bunker children were determined that they would relieve it regarding her son, "Sneezer," if that were possible.
So Russ found some cardboard boxes that had held certain of their Christmas presents, and he tore these apart and they wrote carefully a message to the old woman's absent son on both faces of these cards. At least, Russ wrote them, for by now he had learned at school to write a very good hand. Rose was not so sure—especially about her "q's" andcapital "S's." Anybody who could read handwriting at all, however, could have read those signs that Russ Bunker wrote.
"It doesn't seem like Christmas time at all," Rose said, as the two ran down the lane right after breakfast toward the branch and the burned cabin. "See the leaves and grass! And there's a flower!"
It was only a weed, but it was a pretty one and Rose gathered it—of course for Mother Bunker. When they came in sight of Mammy June's cabin it was a sad looking place indeed. The little Bunkers had had several nice visits to the old woman's cabin, and they were really very sorry that it had burned down.
The disaster was complete. The log walls were tumbled in heaps and were all charred. The interior of the hut was little but ashes.
"Oh!" cried Rose. "If that Sneezer Meiggs did come home and see all this, he might go away again, just as his mother says. It would be too dreadful, Russ. I am so glad you invented this idea of putting up signs for him."
In fact, Russ was quite proud of his original thought himself. He was naturally ofan inventive turn of mind and this was not the first novel thought he had expressed. He and Rose stuck up the cards on poles that they found near by, and they had so many of them that they quite surrounded the ashes of the old hut.
"He can't help seeing them if he comes here," said Rose, as they departed from the spot. "But do you s'pose he'll ever want to come back to the place where everybody called him 'Sneezer'?"
"He ought to want to come back to see Mammy June," declared Russ warmly. "I think she is just fine."
"So do I," admitted Rose reflectively. "But I wouldn't want to be called by such a name as Sneezer."
It was when they got back to the big house and around to its front that the two oldest little Bunkers became aware that something was happening down by the road. They saw Vi hopping up and down in a funny fashion, and she was screaming.
"Now, what do you suppose is the matter with her?" demanded Rose.
"Don't know. But it's something, sureenough!" rejoined Russ, and he started on a run for the spot where Violet was jumping up and down and screaming.
As Russ and Rose started down the hill the three Armatage children came out of the front door of the big house and ran after them, screaming as well. Then appeared a host of small colored folk—Russ and Rose never could imagine where they all came from. They seemed to spring right up out of the ground when anything exciting happened.
All this troop came streaming down the hill, and very quickly Vi found herself surrounded. Russ demanded:
"What's the matter with you? Has something bitten you?"
"They are biting Laddie!" wailed the twin sister.
"How silly!" exclaimed Phillis Armatage. "Laddie isn't here."
"Yes, he is, so now!" cried Vi.
"Oh! Oh!" screamed Alice. "I see his legs!"
At that they all saw his legs—at least, as much of them as were poked out of the mouth of the drainpipe. And they certainly werekicking vigorously. But the children outside made so much noise that the voice of the boy inside the pipe could not be heard.
"Oh! Oh!" declared Vi, jumping up and down again. "It is biting him."
"What is biting him? Mosquitoes?" demanded Russ, as much puzzled as anybody.
"The red thing! With the pointed ears! And a big tail!" cried Vi in gasps.
"What can she mean?" demanded Rose.
PHILLY GRABBED LADDIE'S ANKLE AND STARTED TO PULL HIM OUT.
PHILLY GRABBED LADDIE'S ANKLE AND STARTED TO PULL HIM OUT.Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's.Page187
But Philly Armatage suspected the reason for Vi's fear at once. She grabbed hold of Laddie's ankles and started to draw him out of the pipe.
"You'd better come out!" she cried. "That old fox will bite your nose off."
"A fox!" cried Russ, in wonder and alarm. "Does a fox live in that hole?"
"And she's got puppies. We saw 'em playing out here one day. Father is only waiting for a chance to smoke 'em out. They are terrible. They eat hens and other poultry."
Russ was vastly interested, as well as troubled by Laddie's fix. For the smaller boy was really wedged by his rolled-up jacket tight into the mouth of the culvert. Hismuffled cries became more imploring, and the other children really feared that the mother fox, fearing for her young, might have attacked the boy.
"I tell you he must be got out!" shouted Russ.
"How you going to do it?" Philly demanded. Then she called to Laddie: "Push in farther, Laddie! Then maybe you can back out all right."
But Laddie Bunker was so much afraid of the foxes by now (he still saw their luminous eyes before him) that he dared not squirm any deeper into the pipe. What would have happened to him finally—whether or not the old fox might not have attacked him—will never be known, for Russ Bunker took desperate means to release his brother.
Russ ran to a pile of cobblestones beside the road, seized a big one, and staggered back with it in both hands. With the stone he pounded the rim of the pipe so hard that it broke in pieces.
"Ow! Ow!" cried the muffled voice of Laddie Bunker. "You are breaking my legs. Don't pound me so!"
"Wriggle out! Hurry up! What's holding you?" demanded Russ, half angrily because he was so excited.
The smaller boy began to move backward now, the rough rim of the pipe no longer holding his jacket. Slowly he pushed out. When he appeared, his face very red and tear-streaked, Russ and Phillis pulled him to his feet.
"Where's the fox?" demanded Vi, still very much excited.
"Is that a fox?" demanded Laddie, panting.
"Yes," said Phillis Armatage.
"That fox has got five pairs of eyes, then," grumbled Laddie.
"She's got four pups," cried Frane, Junior. "I'm going to run and tell father," and he ran away up the hill.
"Come on!" cried Russ, immediately in action again. "Let's stop up the hole. Then the foxes can't get out until Mr. Armatage comes."
They did that—at least, Russ and Vi and the colored boys did. Rose dusted Laddie off and wiped his face. He soon became more cheerful.
"Well," he said, with a long breath, "they didn't bite me after all; but I thought they would. And their eyes shone dreadfully."
"What made them shine?" demanded Vi, her usual curiosity aroused.
"Because they were mad," said her twin promptly. "That old mother fox didn't want me in there."
The adventure was happily ended; that is, for Laddie and Vi. Not so for the foxes. For Mr. Armatage and the gardener came with shovel and club and they dug down to the foxes' den. But the children had not done their work of closing the entrance well, and just as Mr. Armatage broke through into her den, Mrs. Fox and her puppies scurried out and away into the pine woods. But she had to look for a new home, for her old one was completely broken up.
After this the little Bunkers and the Armatage children trooped up to the house and went to the room where Mammy June had been put to bed. The doctor had already been to see her this morning.
The old colored woman was propped up with pillows and she wore the usual turbanon her head. She smiled delightedly when she saw the white children and hailed them as gayly as though she were not in pain.
"Lawsy me, childern!" cried Mammy June. "Has you come to see how I is? I sure has got good friends, I sure has! An' if Ebenezer Caliper Spotiswood Meiggs was back home yere where he b'longs, there wouldn't be a happier ol' woman in all Georgia—no, sir!
"For Mistah Armatage say he's gwine have me another house built before spring. And it'll be a lot mo' fixy than my ol' house—yes, sir! Wait till my Sneezer comes home and sees it—Tut, tut! He ain't mebbe comin' home no mo'!"
"Oh, yes, he will, Mammy June," Philly said comfortingly.
"Don't know. These boys ups and goes away from their mammies and ain't never seen nor heard of again."
"But Sneezer loved you too well to stay away always," Alice Armatage said.
"And when these Bunkers go back North," put in Frane, Junior, "they are going to look for Sneezer everywhere."
"You reckon you'll find him?" asked Mammy June of Rose.
"I hope so," said the oldest Bunker girl.
"Of course we will," agreed Russ stoutly. "And Daddy Bunker will look out for him too. He said so."
According to Russ's mind, that Daddy Bunker had promised to help find the lost boy seemed conclusive that Sneezer must be found. He and Rose began eagerly to tell Mammy June what they had already done to make it positive that Ebenezer Caliper Spotiswood Meiggs would not come back to the burned cabin some day and go away, thinking that his old mother was no longer alive.
"You blessed childern!" exclaimed Mammy June. "And has you fixed it dat way for me? But—but—you says you writ dem letters to Sneezer?"
"Yes," said Rose happily. "Yes, we did, Mammy June. And stuck them up on poles all about the burned house."
"I don't know! I don't know!" sighed the old woman. "I reckon dat won't be much use."
"Why not?" demanded Russ anxiously. "If he comes back he'll see and read 'em."
"No. No, sir! He may see 'em," said Mammy June, shaking her head on the pillow. "But he won't read 'em."
"Why won't he?" Russ demanded in some heat. "I wrote them just as plain as plain!"
"But," said Mammy June, still sadly, "yousee, my Sneezer never learnt to read hand-writin'!"
The Bunker children, especially Russ and Rose, felt truly anxious because of Mammy June's unhappiness about her absent son. The boy they all called Sneezer should have been home now when his mother was crippled with rheumatism and had lost her home and all her little possessions.
She worried audibly and continually about Sneezer. Russ and Rose took counsel together more than once. They had hoped that their signs put up at the site of the burned cabin would have satisfied Mammy June that her son would come up to the big house whenever, or if ever, he returned to his old home. Now the Bunker children were not so sure.
When Russ and Rose told Philly Armatage what they had done she said:
"Mebbe he'll think the writing is just to keep ha'nts away. He can't read writing. He always worked in the fields or up here at the house. Those signs aren't any good—just as Mammy June says."
This opinion caused Russ and Rose additional anxiety. They did not know what to do about it. Even the boy's inventive mind was at fault in the emergency.
While the older Bunker brother and sister were troubled in this way and Laddie and Vi were recovering from their adventure with the red fox, Margy and Mun Bun were, as usual, having their own pleasures and difficulties. The littlest Bunker was a born explorer. Daddy Bunker said so. And Margy was quite as active as the little fellow.
Hand in hand they wandered all about the big house and out-of-doors as well. There was always supposed to be somebody to watch them, especially if they went near the barns or paddocks where the horses and mules were. But sometimes the little folks slipped away from even Mother Bunker's observation.
The gardener often talked to the littlestBunkers, and he saw, too, that they did no more mischief around the greenhouse. When he saw them that afternoon trotting down the hill toward the poultry houses he failed to follow them. He had his work to do, of course, and it did not enter his head that Mun Bun and Margy could get into much trouble with the poultry.
Margy and Mun Bun were delighted with the "chickens" as they called most of the fowl the Armatages kept. But there were many different kinds—not alone of hens and roosters; for there were peafowl, and guineas, and ducks, and turkeys. And in addition there was a flock of gray geese.
"Those are gooseys," Margy announced, pointing through the slats of the low fence which shut in the geese and their strip of the branch, or brook, and the grass plot which the geese had all to themselves.
"Goosey, goosey gander!" chanted Mun Bun, clinging to the top rail of the fence and looking through the slats. "Which is ganders and which is gooseys, Margy?"
As though in answer to his query one of the big birds, with a horny crown on its head,stuck out its neck and ran at the little boy looking through the fence. The bird hissed in a most hateful manner too.
"Oh, look out, Mun Bun!" cried his sister. "I guess that's a gander."
But Mun Bun, with a fence between him and the big bird, was as usual very brave.
"I don't have to look out, Margy Bunker," he declared proudly. "I am already out—so he can't get me. Anyway if he came after us I wouldn't let him bite you."
"I guess he would like to bite us," said the little girl, keeping well away from the fence herself.
"That's 'cause he must be hungry," said Mun Bun with confidence. "You see, he hasn't got anything but grass to eat. I guess they forgot to feed him and it makes him mad."
"That is too bad. He is a real pretty bird," agreed Margy. "Wonder if we could feed him?"
"We can ask that nice cook for bwead," said Mun Bun doubtfully.
"They don't feed gooseys bread, I guess," objected the little girl.
"What do they feed 'em?"
"I guess corn—or oats."
"Let's go and get some," said Mun Bun promptly, and he backed away from the fence, still keeping his gaze fixed on the threatening gander.
They both knew where the feed was kept, for they had watched the colored man feed the stock. So they went across to the stables. And nobody saw them enter the feed room.
As usual it did not trouble Margy and Mun Bun that they had not asked permission to feed the geese. What they had not been literally forbidden to do the little folks considered all right. It was true that they were great ones for exploring and experimenting. That is how they managed to get into so much mischief.
In this matter, however, it did not seem as though Margy and Mun Bun could really get into much trouble. They got a little dish and filled it with corn and trotted back to the goose pen. This time the gander did not charge Mun Bun. But the whole flock was down the slope by the water and the little folks had to walk that way along the edge of the fenced lot.
They came to a place where a panel of the fence was crooked. It had been broken, in fact, and it was much easier to push it aside than not. Why! when Mun Bun leaned against it the strip of fence fell right over on to the grass of the goose yard.
"Now see what you've done, Mun Bun!" exclaimed Margy.
"Why—oh—I didn't mean to," sputtered Mun Bun.
"What do you s'pose Mr. Armatage will say?"
"He won't say anything," said Mun Bun briskly. "For he won't see it. And now, Margy, we can throw the corn to those gooseys and ganders much better. See!"
He grabbed a handful of shelled corn out of the dish and scattered it as far as he could toward the flock. At once the gray birds became interested. They stretched their long necks and the big gander uttered a questioning "honk!"
"It's corn—it's real corn!" cried Mun Bun. "Don't be afraid, goosey-goosey-gander," and he shouted with laughter.
Margy threw a handful of corn too. At once the geese drew nearer. When they reached the first kernels they began grabbing them up with that strange shoveling motion with their bills that all geese and ducks make. The children watched them with delight.
But as the geese waddled nearer the old gander began to wiggle his head from side to side and to hiss softly. Margy and Mun Bun looked at each other, and both drew back.
"I don't like that one much," said Margy. "Do you, Mun Bun?"
"I don't like him at all," confessed the little fellow. "I guess we'd better go back. Maybe Mother will be wanting us."
Margy turned as quickly as he did. She had not thrown out all the corn, but as she turned away a few kernels scattered from the dish. Instantly the gander saw this. With a long hiss he started after the two children, and many of his flock kept right behind their leader.
"Oh! Come quick, Mun Bun!" gasped Margy.
Mun Bun seized her hand. As they ran up the slope the corn scattered from the dish.This was enough to keep the flock following. But the big gander did not chase the little boy and girl because of the scattered corn. He was really angry!
The chubby legs of Mun Bun and Margy looked good to that old gander. He ran hissing after them and began to flap his wings. One stroke of one of those wings would knock down either of the children.
It was just like a nightmare, and both Margy and Mun Bun knew what nightmares were. Those are dreams that, when you are "sleeping them," you get chased by something and your feet seem to stick in the mud so that you can't run. It is a very frightful sort of dream. And this adventure the little ones had got into was surely a frightful peril.
The hissing gander, his neck outstretched and his bill wide open, followed the two children with every evidence of wishing to strike them. His flapping wings were as powerful, it seemed, as those of the big sea-eagle that had been caught aboard ship coming down from Boston, and Mun Bun and Margy remembered that creature very vividly.
Others of the flock of geese came on, too.As long as the grains of corn kept dropping from Margy's dish, the ravenous geese would follow, even if they were not savage, as their leader was.
The chubby legs of the two children hardly kept them ahead of the gander's bill. They shrieked at the top of their voices. But for once none of the innumerable colored folks was in sight. Even their friend, the gardener, had disappeared since Mun Bun and Margy had come down to the goose pen.
"Help! Help us!" cried Margy, looking to the world in general to assist.
"Muvver! Muvver!" cried Mun Bun, who held an unshaken belief that Mother Bunker must be always at hand and able to rescue him from any trouble.
Mun Bun thought he felt the cold, hard bill of the gander at his bare legs. He ran so hard that he lost his breath, somewhere. He couldn't even pant, and as for calling out for help again, that was impossible!
Margy dragged him on a few steps, for she was quite strong for a little girl. But she knew that she was overtaken. There was no help for it. The goosey-goosey-gander was going to eat them up!
But if no human being heard the two children in their distress, there was a creature that did. Bobo, the big old hound, who was only chained to his house at night or when Mr. Armatage did not want him following the mules about the plantation, came out of his kennel and stared down the hill. He observed the running and screaming children, and he likewise saw the gander who was his old enemy. They had had many a tilt before, for the gander believed that everything that came near his flock meant mischief.
Bobo's red eyes expanded and the ruff on the back of his neck began to rise. He uttered a low, reverberating bark. It was almost a growl and it sounded threatening. He dashed down the hill with great leaps.
Mun Bun finally pitched over on his face, dragging Margy with him. Margy's corn went spinning about her and the geese fairly scrambled over the two crying children to get at the corn. Perhaps this helped Mun Bun and his sister some, although they did not think so at the moment. At least, while hisfamily scrambled for the grains of corn the gander could not get at the brother and sister to strike them.
And then great Bobo appeared. He bounded into the middle of the flock and knocked them every-which-way with his great paws. He thrust his muzzle under the hissing gander and sent him over on his back, where he lay and flapped his webbed feet ridiculously. And he did not hiss any more. He "honked" for help.
Mun Bun and Margy scarcely knew that they were saved until Bobo thrust his cold, wet muzzle into first one face and then the other of the two little Bunkers. They had become so used to Aunt Jo's great Dane doing that that Bobo's affectionate act did not alarm them.
"The goosey-goosey-gander's gone, Margy!" stammered Mun Bun. "I told you I wouldn't let him bite you."
Whether his sister was much impressed by this statement or not, is not known. However that might be, she fondled Bobo and got upon her feet as quickly as Mun Bun arose.
"Isn't he a good old dog?" cooed Margy.
"He's pretty good I think. But—but let's come away from that goosey-goosey-gander."
Bobo gave a jump and a bark at the gander, and the latter, which had now climbed to its webbed feet, scurried away, the flock following him. It was then, while the two children were fondling Bobo, who liked to have his long ears pulled by a gentle hand, that Russ and Rose Bunker came upon the scene.
Russ and Rose had been down to the burned cabin and had brought away all their letters to Sneezer Meiggs. If the colored boy had never learned to read writing, there was no use in leaving the notices there. So Russ had said, and Rose agreed with him.
"Oh, my dears!" Rose cried out when she saw the little ones so mussed up and with tear-stained faces, "what has happened to you?"
"Don't be afraid of Bobo," said Russ, running too. "He won't hurt you."
"He hurted the goosey-goosey-gander," declared Mun Bun confidently. "He dug his head under the goosey-goosey-gander and flunged him right over on his back."
"But he wouldn't hurt you," declared Rose.
"No," explained Margy. "Bobo came to help us when the gander wanted to bite our legs. At any rate he wanted to bite Mun Bun's legs."
"'Twas your legs he was after, Margy," declared the little fellow, flushing. "I wouldn't let the goosey-goosey-gander bite mine."
"Anyhow," said Margy, "he chased us. And all his hens came too. And Bobo saw him and he came down and drove them off. See! That gander is hissing at us now."
"Bobo is a brave dog," cried Rose, patting the hound.
"He is pretty good, I think," declared Mun Bun. "But next time I go down to that goose place I am going to have a big stick."
"The next time," advised Russ, "don't you go there at all unless Daddy Bunker is with you. I'd be afraid of that old gander myself."
"Oh, would you?" cried the little boy, greatly relieved. "We-ell, I was a teeny bit scared myself."
The children—all nine of them—spent much of their time in Mammy June's room. The old colored woman had ways of keepingthem interested and quiet that Mrs. Armatage proclaimed she could not understand. Mother Bunker understood the charm Mammy worked far better.
Mammy June loved children, high and low, rich and poor, good and bad, just so they were children. Therefore, Mammy June could manage them. Russ and Rose, finding themselves mistaken in their first attempt to relieve the old woman's anxiety about her son, wondered in private what they could do to let the absent Sneezer know where his mother was, and how much she wanted to see him.
Russ and Rose Bunker were quite used to thinking things out for themselves. Of course, there were times when Russ had to go to Daddy Bunker for help and his sister had to confess to Mother Bunker that she did not know what to do. For instance, that adventure of Russ's with the sailor-boy aboard the steamship.
But this matter of helping Mammy June's son to find his mother, if by chance he came back to the site of the burned cabin, was solely their own affair, and Russ and Rose realized the fact.
"We ought to be able to do something about it ourselves," declared Russ to his sister. "I'm going to ask Mammy June again if she is sure Sneezer can't read a word of writing."
This he did. Mammy June shook her head somewhat sadly.
"Dat boy always have to wo'k," she said. "When first he went away he sent me back money by mail. The man he wo'ked for sent it. Then Sneezer losed his job. But he never learnt to read hand-writin'. Much as he could do to spell out the big print on the front of the newspapers. That's surely so!"
Rose suddenly thought of something—and perhaps it was not a foolish idea at that.
"Oh, Mammy!" she cried, "can your boy read newspaper print?"
"Sure can. De big print. What yo' call de haidlines in big print. Sure can."
"Oh!" murmured Rose, and she draggedRuss away to confer with him in secret.
Rose Bunker's idea was too good to tell in general. Some ideas are too good to keep; but Russ and Rose decided that this one was not in that class. They determined to tell nobody—not even Mammy June or Daddy or Mother Bunker—about what they proposed to do to help the old colored woman.
They had tried once, and failed. And Philly and Alice and Frane, Junior, had laughed at them. Now they proposed to do what Rose had thought of, and keep it secret from everybody.
"Of course," Rose said, "nothing may come of it."
"But that won't be your fault, Rose," said her brother. "It is a perfectly scrumptious idea."
"Do you think so?" asked Rose, much pleased by this frank praise.
"Sure I do. And we'll do it to-night. Then the Armatages won't know and—and laugh at us."
For they had found Philly and Alice and Frane, Junior, rather trying. Not having their childish imaginations so well developed as the six little Bunkers had, the children of the plantation were altogether too matter-of-fact. Many childish plays that the Bunkers enjoyed did not appeal to their little hosts at all.
For instance, when Russ invented some brand new and charming, simple play for all to join in, Philly and Alice and Frane just drifted away and would have nothing to do with it. They were too polite to criticize; but Russ knew that the Armatage children felt themselves "too grown up" to be interested in the building of a steamboat or the driving of an imaginary motor-car.
His little brothers and sisters, however, were constantly teasing Russ to make something new. They enjoyed traveling in reality so much, did the six little Bunkers, that, as Daddy laughingly said,traveling in a wheelbarrow would have amused them.
So this day when Russ made a whole freight train with empty chicken coops, with a caboose at the end and a big engine in front, only Frane took an interest in it aside from the Bunkers themselves. And perhaps his interest was, only held because Russ agreed to make him the engineer while Laddie was fireman.
As for Russ himself, he was the conductor at the end of the long train. He had to explain very plainly that of course a freight train had a conductor. Every train had to have a "skipper" just like a boat. A railroad man had explained all that to Russ Bunker when the family was on its way to Cowboy Jack's early in the autumn.
"And you-all," said Russ, copying Frane's speech, speaking to the little ones and Rose, "must stay back here with me and be brakemen. When we need the handbrakes, I'll tell you, and you run forward over the coops—I mean the cars—and set the brakes."
"But suppose we get flung off?" asked Vi.
"That you must not do," said her older brother sternly. "If the train is going fastyou might get a broken leg. Or if it is going around a curve it would be worse. You must be careful."
"I think this is a dangerous play," said Vi hopefully. There was nobody really more daring than Vi.
The two Armatage girls tried to coax Rose away from the "train"; but Rose liked to play with her brothers and sisters, and she knew that Mother Bunker expected her to. So she excused herself to Philly and Alice.
Unfortunately they took some offense at this. That evening after supper Rose found herself ignored by Phillis and Alice Armatage. At another time this ungenerous act might have hurt the oldest Bunker girl. But she and Russ had their secret plans to carry through, and Rose was glad to get away with her brother in a room where nobody would disturb them.
Again Russ had broken up pasteboard boxes, and he had pen and ink. To make new signs all in "big print" to stick up at the site of Mammy June's burned cabin was more of a task than merely writing them. This was Rose's bright idea.Russ did not deny her powers of invention.
They printed four good signs. Oh, the letters were large and black!
"They ought to be," Russ said. "We've used 'most half a bottle of ink."
"Don't let's tell Philly or any of them," said Rose. "They laugh at so many things we do."
"All right," agreed Russ, although he was less sensitive about being laughed at than his sister.
But this habit the young Armatages had of laughing at what the little Bunkers did caused all the trouble on this night. And it was a night that all of the children and most of the grown folks, too, would be likely to remember.
The Armatage children knew a great deal more about the plantation and the country surrounding it than the Bunkers did. That was only natural. Philly or Alice or Frane, Junior, would not have started off secretly, as Russ and Rose Bunker did, after nine o'clock at night to go down to the place where old Mammy June's cabin had been burned.
To tell the truth, the Armatage childrenhad associated so much with the colored folks about the plantation that they were inclined to believe that there might be such things as "ha'nts." The little Bunkers had heard of "ghosts"; but they looked on such things as being like fairies—something to half-believe in, and shiver about, all the time knowing that they were not real.
So Russ and Rose had no actual fear of haunts when they started down the cart-path toward the wide brook where Russ had had his first adventure catching the big fish.
The colored folks were all at home in their quarters; and although it was a starlight night they were having no celebration. Everything about the plantation seemed particularly quiet. And no sounds at first came to the ears of the brother and sister from the forest.
As they approached the place for which they aimed however there came suddenly a mournful screech from the woods—a sound that seemed to linger longer in their hearing than any strange noise Russ and Rose had ever heard. The brother and sister stopped, frightened indeed, and clung to each other.
"Oh! What's that?" murmured Rose.
"It—it's maybe an owl," returned Russ, trying to think of the most harmless creature that made a noise at night.
"I never heard an owl howl like that," whispered his sister.
"Aw, Rose! owls don't howl. It's wolves that howl—or coyotes such as we saw at Cowboy Jack's. Don't you remember the coyote caught in the trap that you thought was a dog?"
Rose's mind would not be drawn from the thing in question. She said, quite as fearfully:
"Maybe this is a wolf, Russ."
"Of course not," declared the boy trying to speak bravely. "There aren't any wolves in this part of the country. I asked Frane, Junior."
But there was evidently a savage creature here that Russ Bunker had known nothing about, for now it cried out again! Its long, quavering note echoed through the woods and made the boy and girl stand again and shiver.
"I—I guess it isn't any animal after all," said Rose suddenly, and speaking with some relief. "That's a woman. Of course it is.But she must be lost, or something bad has happened to her. Oh, Russ!" she added, suddenly seizing her brother once more. "I know what it must be. And they are almost always ladies, so Phillis says."
"What's that?" demanded Russ, puzzled.
"It's a ha'nt! It's a lady ha'nt! I do believe it must be!"
"Aw, Rose, what you talking about?" demanded her brother, yet secretly quite as much troubled by the strange, eerie sound as she was. "You know that haunts are only make-believe."
"We-ell!" sighed Rose, "maybe that's only a make-believe sound we hear. But—but I don't like it. There!"
For a third time the screech was repeated. It seemed nearer. Russ could not be confident that it was "make-believe." Thestrange sound seemed very real indeed.
"I don't like that noise a bit," whispered Rose, standing close to her brother. "It—it makes me all shivery."
"But, if it is only just a woman calling——"
"There must be something awful the matter with her, if she has to scream like that," declared Rose.
As they did not hear the noise again for a little while, both of them plucked up courage, and they went on to the burned cabin. The sticks they had set up were still standing. Russ fastened each of the four pasteboard "letters" to a stick at the four corners of Mammy June's ruined house.
There was light enough from the stars for the two children to see quite plainly whatthey were about. Rose, however, was looking all about them while Russ did the work of setting up the printed signs for Sneezer Meiggs to see if he came home unexpectedly.
"What do you expect to see, Rose?" demanded her brother loftily.
"I don't know. Philly says ha'nts are all in white."
"I don't see anything very white around here," rejoined Russ.
"But there are so many colored folks, perhaps some of the ha'nts might be black," suggested Rose. "Then we wouldn't see them very well in the shadows."
"I don't believe——" began Russ.
The strange shriek was again heard. Russ stopped in his speech. Rose uttered a sharp cry. The screech—and it did sound like a woman's voice, the voice of a woman in fearful pain or fright—seemed very near them.
"It's right over there in that patch of woods," said Russ. "I guess she is lost—or something."
"Do you believe it is only a lady and not a ha'nt, Russ?" demanded his sister.
"Of course it isn't a ha'nt! Such thingscan't be! And if it was a ghost, a ghost is nothing but air, and how could air have such a voice as that?"
This reasoning seemed to close the argument. Rose felt that her brother must be right. Besides, Russ went right on talking, and talking very bravely.
"I think we ought to see what the matter is with her, Rose. She is in trouble—maybe she is lost and scared."
"So am I scared," murmured Rose.
"But think how much more you would be scared," her brother said seriously, "if you were in those woods alone and didn't know that there was anybody else near."
"I wouldn't make so much fuss about it," muttered Rose, for she suspected the thought in Russ Bunker's mind and she was really too scared to approve of it at once.
"We've got to find her," said the boy impressively.
"Now, Russ!" almost wailed Rose, "you wouldn't go into those woods? Aren't you scared?"
"Of course I'm scared," said Russ. "Who wouldn't be? But just because I am scaredI know the woman must be even more scared. She's got to be taken out of the woods and shown where the big house is. Or, if she is a colored lady, we'll take her to the quarters."
"I—I wish Daddy was here," ventured Rose.
"But he isn't here," said Russ, with some vexation. "So we've got to find the woman by ourselves."
"Oh, dear!" murmured Rose.
But she would not let Russ go alone into the patch of forest behind the site of Mammy June's burned cabin; nor did she feel like remaining alone in the clearing. Russ picked up a good sized stick and started toward the woods.
"Let's shout when we get to the edge," whispered Rose.
They did so; but, really, their voices sounded very faint indeed. No reply came. It was several minutes after, and Russ and Rose were quite a distance into the woods and following what seemed to be a half-grown-over path, before the "woman" screamed again.
"Goodness!How hateful that sounds!" cried Rose.
"I guess she is more scared than we are," ventured Russ. "What do you think?"
"I think I'd like to be back at the house," answered Rose.
But Russ would not agree with her. As he went on he grew more confident. They did not see even a rabbit. And Russ and Rose knew that rabbits were often out at night.
If they had but known it, the awful screech that so disturbed them, disturbed the rabbits and the other small fry of the woods much more. At the sound of that terrible hunger-cry all the rabbits, and hares, and birds that nested on the ground or in trees, trembled.
But Russ seemed to grow braver by the minute. And Rose of course could not fail to be inspired by his show of courage. They walked along the path hand in hand, and although they did not speak much for the next few moments, when they did speak it was quite cheerfully.
"I wish she would yell again," said Russ at last. "For we must be getting near to where she was."
"We-ell, if she isn't a ghost——"
Just then the silence of the wood was broken again by the cry. The boy and the girl halted involuntarily. No matter how brave Russ might appear to be, there was a tone to that scream that made shivers go up and down his back.
"Oh, Russ!" cried Rose.
"Oh, Rose!" stammered her brother.
The scream came from so near that it seemed worse than before. And now Russ was shaken in his proclaimed opinion. It did not seem that any woman, no matter how great her distress might be, could make such a terrible sound.
"I guess we'd better go back," confessed Russ after a minute.
Rose was eager to do so. They turned and, hand in hand, began to run. And in their haste they somehow missed the path they had been following. Or else, it had not been a path at all.
At least, after running so far that they should have reached the burned cabin they came out into quite a different clearing! They both knew that they had missed the way, for in this clearing stood a little cabin with a pitched roof that neither of the Bunker children had ever seen before. Nor was the wide brook in sight.
"I guess we've got turned around," Russ said, trying to hide his disappointment and fear from his sister. "We've got to go back, Rose."
"Do you know which is back?" she asked.
"We've got to hunt for that old path."
"Don't you leave me, Russ Bunker!" cried Rose, as her brother started away.
And just then both of them saw the tawny, long tailed, slinking beast in the edge of the thicket.
"Oh! It's a bear!" shrieked Rose.
"Bears don't look like that," gasped Russ, staring at the great, glowing eyes of the animal. "It looks more like a cat."
"There never was a cat as big as that, Russ Bunker, and you know it!"
"Come on, Rose," said her brother promptly. "We'll go into that house and shut the door. It can't get us then, whatever it is."
In a moment the two children had dashed into the cabin and pulled to the swingingdoor. The door had a lock on the outside, and when Russ banged the door shut he heard the lock snap.
"Now it can't get at us!" cried Russ with some satisfaction. "We're safe."
"But—but I don't like this old house, Russ Bunker," complained Rose. "There is no window."
"All the better," was the brave reply. "That cat can't get at us."
Then the screech sounded again and the boy and girl clung together while the sound echoed through the lonesome timber.
"It's that thing that makes the noise," whispered Rose. "Oh, Russ! if Daddy Bunker doesn't come after us, maybe it will tear the house down."
"It can't," declared Russ.
"How do you know it can't?"
"Why, cats—even big ones—don't tear houses to pieces, Rose. You know they don't! We'll be safe as long as we stay in this place."
"But how long shall we have to stay here?"
"Until that thing goes away," said Russ confidently.
"And maybe it won't go away at all. We'll have to stay here till the folks come to find us, Russ. I—I want—my mo-mother!"
"Now, Rose Bunker, don't be a baby!" said her brother. "That thing can't get at us in here——"
Just then something thumped heavily on the roof of the hut. Russ could not say another word. They heard the great claws of the big cat scratching at the roof boards.
Rose screamed again and this time her brother's voice joined with hers in a hopeless cry for help.