“Miss Douglas, them week-enders done cl’ared the coop. Thain’t nary chicken lef’ standin’ on a laig. Looks like these here Hungarians don’t think no mo’ of ‘vourin’ a chicken than a turkey does of gobblin’ up a grasshopper.”
“All of them gone, Oscar?”
“Yas’m! Thain’t hide or har of them lef’. If I hadn’t er wrung they necks myself, I would er thought somethin’s been a-ketchin’ ’em; but land’s sakes, the way these week-enders do eat chicken is a caution!”
“All right, I’ll get our young people to start out today and find some more for us. A big crowd will be up on Friday.”
“Yes, I’ll be bound they will, and all of them empty. I should think the railroad cyars would chawge mo’ ter haul the folks back from this here camp than what they do to git ’em here.They sho’ goes back a-weighing mo’ than what they do whin they comes a-creepin’ up the mountain actin’ like they ain’t never seed a squar’ meal in they lives.”
Oscar’s grumbling on the subject of the amount of food consumed by the boarders was a never failing source of amusement to the Carter girls. They were never so pleased as when the boarders were hungry and enjoyed the food. No doubt Oscar was pleased, too, but he was ever outwardly critical of the capacity of the week-enders.
Lucy and Lil, Skeeter and Frank were delighted to be commissioned to go hunting for food. Many were the adventures they had while out on these foraging parties and many the tales they had to tell of the inhabitants of the mountain cabins. There were several rules they must obey and besides those they had perfect liberty to do as they felt like. The first rule was that they must wear thick boots and leggins on these tramps. The snake bite Helen had got early in the summer had been a lesson learned in timeand now all the campers were made to comply with the rule of leggins whenever they went on hikes. The second rule was that they must be home before dark and must report to Douglas or Helen as soon as they got home. The third was that they must tell all their adventures to one of the older girls. If they obeyed these three rules they were sure to get into no trouble.
“Fix us up a big lunch, please, Helen. We are going ’way far off. There’s a man on the far side of Old Baldy that Josh says has great big frying-sizers,” declared Lil.
“Well, be sure you are back before dark,” admonished Helen, in her grownupest tone, according to Lucy.
“All right, Miss Grandma, but I don’t see why I have to get in before dark if you don’t. You know you and Doctor Wright came in long after supper one night—said you got lost, but you can tell that to the marines,” said Lucy pertly.
“Just for that, I’ve a great mind to put red pepper in your sandwiches,” said Helen, blushing in spite of herself.
“Well, I suppose if we get lost, we won’t have to get in before dark, either,” teased Lucy.
“Yes, but don’t you get lost. Douglas and I are always a bit uneasy until you are back, as it is,” pleaded Helen. “You know mother would have a fit if you were out late.”
“Oh, don’t listen to her, Miss Helen. We’ll take care of the girls and bring ’em back safe. Frank and I couldn’t get lost on these mountains if we tried,” and Skeeter drew himself up to his full height, which was great for a boy of fifteen and seemed even greater because of his extreme leanness.
“Can’t we take our guns, Miss Helen?” pleaded Frank.
There was another rule that the boys must not take the guns if the girls were along. Guns are safe enough if there are no bystanders.
“Oh, Frank, ask Douglas! I am afraid to be the one to let you do it.”
“Can I tell her you say yes if she does?”
“Yes, I reckon so! But if she does say yes, please be awfully careful.”
“Sure we will! I tell you, Miss Helen, if anything happens to these girls, Skeeter and I’d never show our faces in camp again.”
“I know you will look after them,” said Helen. These boys were great favorites with Helen, and they admired her so extravagantly that sometimes Lil and Lucy, their sworn chums, were a bit jealous. “I’ve made your kind of sandwiches, Frank, sardines. And I’ve stuffed some eggs with minced ham the way you like them, Skeeter.”
“Bully!” exclaimed both knights.
“And I s’pose what Lil and I like or don’t like didn’t enter your head,” pouted Lucy.
“Why, Lucy, you know you like sardine sandwiches better than anything, you said so yourself,” admonished Lil.
“Helen didn’t know it.”
“If you don’t like what I put up, you can do it yourself next time,” snapped Helen.
“‘’Tis dog’s delightTo bark and bite,’”
“‘’Tis dog’s delightTo bark and bite,’”
“‘’Tis dog’s delightTo bark and bite,’”
sang Douglas, coming into the kitchen to spy out the nakedness of the land preparatory to sending her order for provisions to the wholesale grocer in Richmond. “What are you girls scrapping about?”
“Helen said——”
“Lucy’s always——”
“Yes, I haven’t a doubt of it,” laughed the elder sister, who was ever the peacemaker. “I haven’t a doubt that Helen did say it, but she was just joking, and I know Lucy is always trying to help and is a dear girl. Now you children trot along and bring back all the chickens you can carry. Have you got your bags?” Gunnysacks were always taken to bring home the provender. “And money to pay for the chickens? If you see any eggs, buy them, and more roasting ears, but don’t try to carry everything you see. Have the mountaineers bring them to camp. Good-bye! Be sure to come back before dark.”
“Ask her about the guns,” whispered Frank to Lil.
“Douglas, can the boys take their guns?Helen says she says yes if you say yes. They won’t carry ’em loaded.”
“We—ll, I believe we can trust you; but do be careful, boys.”
With a whoop the boys flew to their tent for the guns. The sizable lunch was dumped in the bottom of a gunnysack and slung over Skeeter’s shoulder, and the cavalcade started, after many admonitions from Douglas and Helen to be careful of their guns and to come back before dark.
“Ain’t they the scared cats, though?” laughed Lucy.
“Yes; what on earth could happen to us?” said Lil.
“Nothing, I reckon, with Skeeter and me here to protect you—eh, Skeeter?”
“I just guess we could hold a whole litter of bears at bay with these guns. I almost wish we would run into some kind of trouble just so Frank and I could show your big sisters we are responsible parties.”
“Maybe we will,” and Lil danced in glee at the possible chance of getting into trouble sotheir devoted swains could extricate them. “Maybe we will meet a drunken mountaineer—or maybe it will be a whole lot of drunken mountaineers, a camp of moonshiners—maybe they will capture Lucy and me and carry us to their mountain fastness and there hold us for ransom.”
“Huh! And what do you think Skeeter and I’ll be doing while they are carrying you off?” sniffed Frank. “Standing still, I reckon, and weeping down our gun barrels!”
“Well, s’pose they are all of them armed to the teeth, a company of stalwart brigands,” suggested Lil, who, by the way, was something of a movie fan, “and they come swooping down on us, the leader bearing a lasso in his brawny hand.”
“Yes,” put in Lucy, “and he will swirl it around and will catch both of you in the same coil and then will tie you to a tree there to await his pleasure. I think there had better be two leaders, though, Lil. So you can have one and I can have one. I bid for the biggest.”
“Bid for him! If you girls don’t beat all! I do believe you would like to be attacked by outlaws,” and Skeeter looked his disgust at the eternal feminine.
“Of course we’d like it if it came out all right; that is, if the leaders fell in love with us and reformed and turned out to be gentlemen who took to moonshining and highwaying because they had been cheated out of their inheritances by fat-faced uncles in Prince Albert coats,” and Lil looked very saucy as she switched on ahead of the others down the narrow trail.
“And where would we come in?” asked Frank whimsically. “We would have to stay tied to the tree while you and Lucy acted about a thousand feet of reels. I tell you what I mean to do. I mean to train a squirrel to come gnaw me free. What you say to that, Skeeter?”
“Squirrel much! I’m going to be so quick with my gun that the bold brigands will wish they had stayed with Uncle Albert. As for lassoing—I am some pumpkins myself with the rope. Look at this!” and twirling the gunnysackaround with the lunch serving as ballast, Skeeter caught his chum neatly around the neck.
“Oh, oh! You’ll mash the sandwiches!” wailed the others.
“Let’s sit down and eat ’em up now,” suggested Skeeter. “I am tired of being made the beast of burden. I believe in distribution of labor.”
“Why, Skeeter, we haven’t walked a mile yet, and it can’t be more than ten o’clock.”
“Well, then, my tumtum must be fast. I shall have to regulate it. It tells me it is almost twelve.” No one had a watch so there was no way to prove the time except by the shadows, and Skeeter declared that the shadows on the mountain perforce must slant even at twelve.
“Let’s eat part of the lunch,” suggested Lucy. “That will keep poor Skeeter from starving and lighten the load some, too. There is no telling what time it is, but if we are hungry I can’t see that it makes much difference what time it is. I’m starved myself almost.”
“Me, too,” chorused the others.
They ate only half, prudently putting the rest back in the gunnysack for future reference.
“Gee, I feel some better,” sighed Skeeter, whose appetite was ever a marvel to his friends since it never seemed to have the slightest effect on his extreme leanness. Oscar always said: “That there young Marster Skeeter eats so much it makes him po’ to carry it.”
“Do you boys know exactly where we are going?” asked Lil. They had walked a long distance since the distribution of burdens and now had come to a place where the trail went directly down the mountainside.
“Of course we do! Josh said that when we got to a place where the path suddenly went down we were almost over the cabin where Jude Hanford lives. Didn’t he, Frank?”
“He sure did!”
“But there was a place back further where a path forked off. I saw it, didn’t you, Lucy?”
“Yes, but I thought it was maybe just a washed place.”
“This is right, I’m sure,” said Skeeter confidently,so the young people clambered down the mountainside following Skeeter’s lead. The path went almost exactly perpendicularly down the mountain for fifty yards and then, as is the way with mountain paths, it changed its mind and started up the mountain again.
“This is a terribly silly path,” declared the self-constituted guide, “but I reckon it will start down again soon. Josh said that Jude Hanford lives almost at the foot of the mountain.”
“Let’s keep a-going; there’s no use in turning back,” said Frank. “This path is obliged to lead somewhere.”
“Maybe it leads to the brigand’s cave,” shivered Lil.
“Which way is home?” asked Lucy.
“That way!”
“Over there!”
“Due north from here!”
But as the three of her companions all pointed in different directions, Lucy laughed at them and chose an entirely different point of the compass as her idea of where Camp Carter was situated.They had been walking for hours and as far as they could tell had not got off of their own mountain. No one seemed to be the least worried about being lost, so Lucy calmed her fears, which were not very great. How could they get lost? All they had to do was retrace their steps if they did not find Jude Hanford’s cabin, where the frying-sized chickens and the roasting ears were supposed to thrive.
“Let’s eat again,” suggested the ever empty Skeeter.
They had come to a wonderful mountain stream, one they had never seen before in their rambles. It came dashing down the incline singing a gay song until it found a temporary resting place in a deep hole which seemed to be hollowed out of the living rock.
“What a place to swim!” they exclaimed in a breath.
“I bet it’s cold, though, cold as flugians.” Lil trailed her fingers through the icy water and a little fish rose to the surface and gave a nibble. “Look! Look! Isn’t he sweet?”
“Let’s fish,” suggested Lucy.
“Fish with what? Guns?” asked Skeeter scornfully.
“No, fishing lines with minnows for bait,” and Lucy found a pin in her middy blouse and with a narrow pink ribbon drawn mysteriously from somewhere tied to the pin, which she bent into a fine hook, she got ready for the gentle art. A sardine from a sandwich made excellent bait, at least the speckled beauties in that pool thought so as they rose to it greedily.
“E—e-ee!” squealed Lucy, flopping an eight-inch trout out on the bank. “I caught a fish! I caught a fish!”
“Oh, gimme a pin, please,” begged the boys, so Lucy and Lil had to find fish hooks for their cavaliers and more strings and in a short while all of them were eagerly fishing.
“I never saw such tame fish in all my life,” said Frank. “They are just begging to be caught. It seems not very sporty to hook them in, somehow.”
“I didn’t know there were any trout in thesestreams. Doctor Wright says there used to be but the natives have about exterminated them. Gee, there’s a beaut!” and Skeeter flopped a mate to Lucy’s catch out on the grass.
“Let’s stop fishing and fry these,” he suggested, “I’m awfully hungry.”
“Hungry! Oh, Skeeter! I’m right uneasy about you,” teased Lil.
“Well, I never did think sandwiches were very filling. Somehow they don’t stick to your ribs. Come on, Frank, we can get a fire in no time.”
“How can we fry anything without lard and a pan?”
“Oh, we won’t fry, we’ll broil.”
“We, indeed!” sniffed Lucy. “You know mighty well, you boys, that when cooking time comes, Lil and I’ll have to do it. I know how to cook fish without a pan—learned in Camp-Fire Girls. Just run a green switch through the gills and lay it across on two pronged sticks stuck up on each side of the fire. You go on and make the fire while Lil and I try to catch some morefish. I wonder what Doctor Wright will say when we tell him we caught game fish with a bent pin tied on lingerie ribbon. He brought up all kinds of rods and reels and flies and whipped the streams for miles around and never caught anything but Helen’s veil.”
The trout seemed to have become sophisticated when two of their number had been caught and refused to be hooked any more with bent pins and lingerie ribbon, although it was pink and very attractive. The fire went out and Lucy and Lil had to try a hand at it before it could be persuaded to burn.
“It looks to me like fire-making must be woman’s work because they certainly can do it better than us men,” said Skeeter solemnly, and the others laughed at him until Lil slipped into the water. Only one foot got wet, however, so there was no harm done.
The fire finally burned and the two little fish, after being scaled and cleaned, were strung across on a green wand. Of course the fire had not been allowed to get to the proper state of redembers so the fish were well smoked before they began to cook.
“Umm! They smell fine!” cried the famished Skeeter.
“They smell mighty like burnt fish to me,” said Frank.
They tasted very like burnt fish, too, when they were finally taken from their wand and the young folks drew up for the feast. They lacked salt and were burnt at the tail and raw at the head, but Skeeter picked the bones and pronounced them prime.
“I believe it’s getting mighty late and we have not found Jude Hanford’s cabin yet. You stop stuffing now, Skeeter, and let’s get along,” said Frank, gathering up the gunnysacks and guns.
“Do you think we had better cross this stream?”
“Sure, if we go back, it will just take us home. We won’t dare show our faces at camp unless we have at least the promise of some chickens and roasting ears. I hope to carry back some in the gunnysacks.”
“Of course we must go on,” chorused the girls. “We are not one bit tired and if we go on we are sure to come to Jude’s cabin.”
Go on they did, how far there was no telling. The path went down, down, down, but led only to another spring. The boys shot some squirrels and the girls found a vine laden with fox grapes.
“Let’s get all we can carry so we can make some jelly. Helen was wishing only the other day she had some. They make the best jelly going,” said Lucy, and so they pulled all they could reach and decided the ones that hung too high would be sour.
“Do you know I believe it’s most supper time—I’m getting powerful empty,” declared the insatiable Skeeter.
“Supper time! Nonsense! I betcher ’tain’t three o’clock,” and Frank peered knowingly at the sun. “That mountain over yonder is so high, that’s the reason the sun is getting behind it. I betcher anything on top of the mountain it is as light as midday.”
“I do wish we could find Jude’s cabin. Thishas been the longest walk we ever have taken,” sighed Lil. “Not that I am the least bit tired.” Lil was not quite so robust as Lucy, but wild horses would not drag from her the admission that she could not keep up with her chum.
“Let’s sit down a minute and rest,” suggested Frank, “and kinder get our bearings. I’m not sure but perhaps it would be less loony if we start right off for home.”
The sun had set for them and it was growing quite gloomy down in the valley where the path had finally led them. Of course they well knew that it was shining brightly on those who were so fortunate as to be on the heights, but the thing is they were in the depths.
“All right, let’s go home,” agreed Skeeter. “We will strike them at supper, I feel sure.”
They retraced their steps, stopping occasionally to argue about the trail. There seemed to be a great many more bypaths going up the mountain than they had noticed going down.
“This is right. I know, because here is the fox grape vine we stripped on the way down,” criedLucy, when there was more doubt than usual about whether or not they were on the right road.
“Well, more have grown mighty fast,” declared Skeeter. “Look, this is still full.”
“But we couldn’t reach the high ones and decided like Brer Fox that they were sour.”
“Brer Fox, indeed! That wasn’t Brer Fox but the one in Aesop,” laughed Lil.
“Well, he acted just like Brer Fox would have acted, anyhow, and I bet Aesop got him from Uncle Remus. But see, Lil! This isn’t the same vine. We never could have skipped all these grapes. Only look what beauts!”
“We might just as well pick ’em,” said Skeeter, suiting the action to the word. “They might come in handy later on for eats if we can’t find our way home.”
“Not find our way home!” scoffed Frank. “Why, home is just over the mountain. All we have to do is keep straight up and go down on the other side. These paths have mixed us up but the mountain is the same old cove. He can’t mix us up.”
The pull up that mountain was about the hardest one any of those young people had ever had. As a rule Lil and Lucy required no help from the boys, as they prided themselves upon being quite as active as any members of the opposite sex, but now they were glad of the assistance the boys shyly offered.
“Just catch on to my belt, Lil; I can pull you up and carry the grapes and my gun, too,” insisted Frank, while Skeeter made Lucy take hold of his gun so he could help her.
“We are most to the top now,” they encouraged the girls. Their way lay over rocks and through brambles, as they had given up trying to keep to a trail since the trails seemed to lead nowhere. They argued if they could get to the top they could see where they were.
The top was reached, but, strange to say, it wasn’t a top, after all, but just an excrescence on the side of the mountain, a kind of a hump. It led down sharply into a dimple covered with beautiful green grass, and then towering up on the other side of this dimple was more and more mountain.
“Well, ain’t this the limit? I didn’t know there was a place like this on our mountain!” exclaimed Frank.
“Th’ain’t! This is no more our mountain than I’m Josephus,” said Skeeter.
“Do you think we are lost?” asked Lil.
“Well, we are certainly not found,” and Skeeter’s young countenance took on a very grim expression.
“Somebody please kick me, and then I’ll feel better,” groaned Frank.
“Why kick you? You didn’t lose us; we lost ourselves,” said Lucy.
“You just say that to keep me from feeling bad. I said all the time we were on our own mountain and I was certainly the one to suggestour climbing up to the top. I don’t see how or when we managed to get in this mix-up.”
“You see, we were down at the foot of the mountain and we must have spilled over on another one without knowing it. They so kinder run together at the bottom,” soothed Lucy.
Lil was so worn out after the climb that she could do no more than sink to the ground; but she smiled bravely at poor self-accusing Frank as she gasped out:
“What a grand, romantic spot to play ‘Babes in the Wood’! I bid to be a babe and let you boys be the robins.”
“In my opinion it is nobody’s fault that we have got lost, but lost we are. Of course Frank and I ought to have had more sense, but we didn’t have it, and I reckon what we ain’t got ain’t our fault.—But if it wasn’t our fault for losing you girls, it is sure up to us to get you home again and now we had better set to it somehow.”
Skeeter deposited his gunnysack of squirrels beside the one of grapes and threw himself downbeside Lil on the green, green grass of the unexpected dimple.
“Well, Lil and I are not blaming you. If we haven’t got as much sense as you boys, I dare one of you to say so. We could have told we were getting lost just as much as either one of you, and it is no more your business to get us home than it is our business to get you home, is it, Lil?”
“I—I—reckon not,” faltered Lil; “but I’ve got to rest a while before I can get myself or anybody else home.” Poor Lil! She was about all in but she kept up a brave smile.
“There must be water here or this grass would not be so pizen green in August,” said Skeeter. “Let’s go find the spring first, Frank.” The boys wanted to get off together to discuss ways and means and hold a council of war.
“Say, Skeeter, what are we going to do?” asked Frank, as they made for a pile of rocks down in the middle of the dimple, where it seemed likely a spring might be hidden.
“Darnifiknow!”
“Do you know it’s ’most night? I thought when we got to the top there would be lots of light, but all the time we were coming up the sun was going down, and blamed if it hasn’t set now.”
“Yes, and no moon until ’most morning. What will Miss Douglas and Miss Helen say to us?”
“I’m not worrying about what they will say, but what will they think? I am afraid Lil can’t take another step tonight. She is game as game, but she is just about flopped.”
“We might make a basket of our hands and carry her thataway,” suggested Skeeter.
“Yes, we might! Lil is not so big but she is no dollbaby, and I don’t believe we could pack her a mile if our lives depended on it.”
“Well, what will we do? Can you think of anything?”
“Well, I think that one of us must stay with the girls and the other one go snooping around to try to find somebody, a house, or something. You stay with them and I’ll go. I bid to!”
“All—right!”
But Skeeter did think, considering he was at least two months older than Frank and at least three inches taller, that he should be the one to go the front. The rôle of home guard did not appeal to him much, but when a fellow says “he bids to,” that settles it.
The spring was found down low between the rocks—such a clear, clean spring that even the greatest germ fearer would not hesitate to drink of its waters.
“Look, there’s a little path leading from the other side! It must go somewhere!” cried Frank.
“Yes, it must go somewhere just as all the trails we have followed today must—but where? Don’t tell me about paths! They are frauds, delusions and snares. I reckon there won’t be any supper for us tonight, so I might just as well fill up on water,” and Skeeter stooped and drank until his chum became alarmed. Skeeter’s capacity was surely miraculous.
“Let’s not tell the girls we might not be able to get back before night. It might get them upset,” cautioned Frank.
They reckoned without their host, however, in this matter. When the boys returned to the forlorn damsels bearing a can of water for their refreshment, the can having been discovered by the spring, they found them not forlorn at all. They had spunked up each other and now were almost lively. Lil was tired and pale and Lucy had a rather bedraggled look, but they called out cheerily:
“What ho, brave knights!”
“Listen! Don’t you hear a strange sound, kind of like music without a tune?” said Lucy.
There was a sound, certainly. It might be the wind in the pines and it might be a giant fly buzzing in a flower that had closed its doors for the night.
“It is coming closer,” cried Lil. “Maybe it is the bold brigands who are to bear us off to captivity in their mountain fastnesses. I tell you, if they want me they will have to bear me. I can’t hobble.”
Just then there came through the scrub growth on the opposite side of the green dimple whereour young people had made their temporary abiding place, a strange figure. It was a tall, lean young man dressed in a coat of many colors, a shirt that seemed to be made of patches, no two patches of the same color and none of them matching the original color of the shirt, which was of a vivid blue. His trousers were of bright pink calico, the kind you see on the shelves of country stores and that is usually spoken of as “candy pink.” His head was bare; his hair long and yellow. A large tin bucket was hung on his arm while he diligently played a jew’s-harp.
The effect of this strange figure was so weird as it appeared through the gathering twilight that the girls could hardly hold in the screams that were in their throats. They controlled them, however, so that they only came out as faint giggles.
The music of the jew’s-harp can be very eyrie in broad daylight when made by an ordinary human being; but just at dusk in a mountain fastness when four young persons have decided they are lost and may have to spend the night in thewoods, this music, coming from such a strange, motley figure, seemed positively grewsome.
“Speak to it!” gasped Lucy.
“‘Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned,Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,Be thy intents wicked, or charitable,Thou com’st in such a questionable shape,That I will speak to thee,’”
“‘Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned,Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,Be thy intents wicked, or charitable,Thou com’st in such a questionable shape,That I will speak to thee,’”
“‘Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned,Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,Be thy intents wicked, or charitable,Thou com’st in such a questionable shape,That I will speak to thee,’”
spouted Skeeter.
The youth stood still in his path but went on with his weird near-tune. Skeeter approached him and the others followed, although poor Lil found herself limping painfully.
“Please, we are lost!”
“Oh, no, not lost, for I have found you uns. We uns is always findin’.” His voice had an indescribable softness and gentleness and his blue eyes a far-away look as though he lived in some other world. “Only t’other day we uns ’most found a great bird floating in the sky, but it flew away. We uns thought at first it was lost but itwasn’t. If it had a been lost, we uns would have found it. A great big bird, bigger’n a bald-headed eagle, bigger’n a buzzard.”
“Now that you have found us, what are you going to do with us?” asked Lil.
“Oh, what we uns finds, we uns hides ag’in. Thar’s a hole in the mounting whar we uns puts things.”
“Uhhh—a brigand, sure enough!” whispered Lucy.
“But you wouldn’t put us there, because we are alive. You have a home somewhere near here, haven’t you?” asked Frank. But the half-witted fellow shook his head sadly.
“We uns ain’t got no mo’ home since they came and found my maw—they came and found her and hid her in the ground. We uns must have lost her and never can find her—but there are lots of other things to find,” and his blue eyes that had looked all clouded at the sad thought of never finding his mother, now began to sparkle. “Only this evening we uns found the prettiest light in the sky—it’s gone now—gone—beforewe uns could hide it in the hole, but we uns will find another.”
“Where do you live?”
Skeeter asked it gently.
“Oh, we uns lives with the spring-keeper.”
“The spring-keeper! Who is he?”
“Oh, we uns found him when they took my maw! He is a little daffy—that is what folks say, but we uns can’t see but he is as smart as them what laughs at him.”
The young people were quite aghast at the news that the person with whom this strange being lived was considered daffy. The boys had their doubts about the advantage of asking shelter in a house where two crazy people lived, but perhaps the spring-keeper was not crazy, after all. This young man certainly seemed harmless enough, and perhaps he could show them the way to Greendale.
“Does the spring-keeper live far from here?” asked Lil.
“Oh, no, just round the mounting. We uns will show you uns the way.”
He filled his bucket at the crystal spring and then led the way along the narrow path.
“Who taught you to play the jew’s-harp?” asked Lucy.
“Nobody! We uns just makes the music we uns finds in the trees. We uns can make the tune the bee tree makes, too. We uns can do so many things. We uns made these pants and every day we uns sews a pretty new color on this shirt. The spring-keeper fetches pretty cloth from the store and sometimes we uns sews quilts. Look, thar’s the place whar the spring-keeper lives when he ain’t a-tendin’ to his business.”
“What is his business?” asked Frank.
“We uns done told you he’s a spring-keeper. Be you uns daffy, too?”
That made them all laugh, and then the guide laughed too, delightedly.
“Now we uns is found some happiness!” he exclaimed. “The spring-keeper says that is all that’s worth finding. He says he has found it but he never laughs like that. He just smiles butnever makes no music when he’s happy. But neither does the sunshine.”
The cabin which they were approaching was different in a way from the usual one found in the mountains. It was made of logs and had the outline of the ordinary abode of the mountaineer, but a long porch went along two sides and this porch was screened. Screening is something almost unheard-of with the natives, although the flies abound in the mountains as well as in the valleys. A little clearing around the cabin was one great tangle of flowers: golden glow, love-in-the-mist, four o’clocks, bachelor’s buttons, zenias, asters, hollyhocks, sunflowers, poppies, cornflowers, scarlet sage, roses and honeysuckles. Some greedy bees were still buzzing around the roses, although the sun was down and it was high time all laborers were knocking off for the night. There was a light in the cabin which sent a very cheering message to the foot-sore travelers—also an odor of cooking that appealed very strongly to all of them but sent Skeeter off into an ecstasy of anticipation.
The guide put down his bucket of water and placing his jew’s-harp to his lips gave a kind of buzzing call. Immediately an old man came out of the door.
“Is that you, Tom Tit?” It was such a kind, sweet voice that the four were made sure they were right in coming to his abode.
“Yes, Spring-keeper, and we uns found something.”
“I’ll be bound you have! What is it this time? Another aeroplane or a rainbow?”
“No, it is four laughs, look!”
The old man did look, and when he saw the wanderers, he hastened out to make them welcome. Never was there a more charming manner than his. No wonder the half-witted youth thought of the sunshine in connection with his smile.
He was tall and stalwart, with a long gray beard that could only be equalled by Santa Claus himself. His hair was silver white and his cheeks as rosy as a girl would like to have hers. His eyes were gray and so kind and twinklingthat all fear of his being crazy was immediately dispelled from the minds of our young people.
“They thought they were lost but they were wrong—we uns found ’em.”
“Good work, Tom Tit! And now what are we to do with them?” he asked, although he did not wait to find out what his poor companion had in his befuddled mind but ushered them to the porch, where he made the girls comfortable in steamer chairs and let the boys find seats for themselves.
Their story was soon told and much was their amazement to learn that they were more than ten miles from Greendale.
“You must have been walking all day in the wrong direction. No wonder this poor little girl is limping. Now the first thing for us to do is to have something to eat.”
“Ahem!” from Skeeter.
The spring-keeper smiled.
“Ah, methinks thou hast a lean and hungry look.”
“Hungry’s not the word. Starving Belgium is nothing to me. I feel as though I had had nothing to eat since yesterday.”
“Oh, Skeeter! Think of all that lunch!” exclaimed Lil, lolling back luxuriously in the steamer chair with grass cloth cushions tucked in around her. “Why, Mr.—Mr.—Spring-keeper, he has done nothing but eat all day!”
“We think it is very hard on you for all of us to come piling in on you this way,” said Lucy.
“Hard on us! Why, Tom Tit and I are so happy we hardly know what to do to show it,” said the old man kindly. “But you must excuse me while I go prepare some food for you.”
“But you must let us help!” from the girls, although Lil was rather perfunctory in her offers of assistance. She felt as though nothing short of dynamite could get her out of that chair.
“No, indeed! Tom Tit and I are famous cooks and we can get something ready in short order.”
“Please, sir,” said Frank, who had been very quiet while the others were telling their host oftheir adventures, “I—I—must not stop one moment to eat or anything else. I want you to tell me how to find my way back to Greendale so I can tell the people at the camp that Lucy and Lil are all right. They were put in our charge, and I must let them know.”
“Of course, I am going, too,” put in Skeeter, “but I thought I might eat first.”
Everyone had to laugh at poor Skeeter’s rueful countenance. The spring-keeper smiled broadly, but he patted Frank on the back.
“Have you a telephone at camp?”
“Yes, we had to put one in.”
“Well, then, we’ll just ’phone them even before we begin to cook our feast.”
“’Phone! Have you a telephone here?” exclaimed Lucy.
“Yes, my dear young lady. I love the wildwood, but I have to know what’s going on in the world. A man who does not take the good the gods provide him in the way of modern inventions is a fool. I may be a fool, but I’m not that kind of a fool.”
“Lucy, you had better do the ’phoning so they’ll know you girls are safe, first thing,” suggested Frank.
“Yes, and it had better be done immediately,” said their host. “Central in the mountains goes to roost very early, and you might not get connection. I’ll call up Greendale and make them give me the camp.”
Connection was got without much trouble and Lucy took the receiver.
“Hello! Is that Camp Carter? Well, this is me.”
“Lucy! Is it you?” in Helen’s distracted tones from the other end.
“Yes, it’s me, and all of us are all right, but we are going to spend the night out.”
“Out where?”
“About ten miles from Greendale!”
“You mean outdoors?”
“Oh, no; with a spring-keeper!”
“A what? Oh, Lucy, are you crazy? We are so uneasy about all of you, we are nearly wild! It’s dark as can be and we are trying to keep itfrom mother and father that you have not come home. Tell me where you are. Speak distinctly and loudly and stop giggling.” Of course the usual giggles had rendered Lucy unable to speak.
“Here, Skeeter, come and tell her!” she gasped.
“Hello, Miss Helen! I’m Skeeter. The girls are all right. Yes, Frank and I are, too. We got lost somehow and never did find Jude Hanford’s, but we found a kind gentleman who lives ’way over on another mountain and he is going to feed us right now.”
“Who is the gentleman?”
“Mr. Spring-keeper is his name.”
“You can’t get home somehow tonight?”
“No’m! Lil is mighty tired and will have to rest up some. We’ll be home tomorrow. You mustn’t worry about the girls—they’re all right and the gentleman is bully. We’ll tell you all about it when we see you. Say, Miss Helen, the lunch was out of sight.”
“You bet it was when once Skeeter got hishooks into it,” muttered Frank. “The supper will be, too, in no time.”
“Well, good-bye, Skeeter! We are still trusting you and Frank to take care of our girls and bring them back safely. I knew all the time you were doing your best, although I was uneasy about all of you. I was afraid you had shot each other or snakes had bitten you or something.”
“Not on your life! We shot some squirrels and got you some fox grapes, though. Good-bye! Good-bye!”
“I tell you, Miss Helen is a peach,” he added to Frank, after he hung up the receiver. “She is still trusting us.”
“I’m dying to know who he is and what he is,” whispered Lil to Lucy, as they tidied themselves up a bit in the neat little room to which the gray-bearded host had shown them.
“So’m I! Did you ever see such a cute little room? It looks like a stateroom on the steamboat. Do you reckon we will sleep in here?”
It was a tiny little room with one great window. Two bunks were built in the wall opposite the window, one over the other. A little mirror hung over a shelf whereon the girls found a white celluloid comb and brush, spotlessly clean—indeed, the whole room was so clean that one doubted its ever having been occupied. The floor was scrubbed until Lucy said it reminded her of a well-kept kitchen table. A rag rug was the only decoration the room boasted and that was a beautiful thing of brilliant hue. The walls werewhitewashed, also the doors, of which there were two, one opening into the main room and the other one, the girls fancied, into a cupboard.
“Ain’t it grand we got lost?” from Lil, as she made a vain endeavor to see her sunburned nose in the mirror that was hung so high she was sure Mr. Spring-keeper had never had a female visitor before, or if he had, it had been a giantess.
“Hurry up! Your nose is all right.—Maybe we can help him some, and I’m just dying to hear the story of his life. Do you reckon he will tell us all about himself and poor Tom Tit without our pumping him? I believe he is a king or something.”
Whether the old gentleman were a king or not, he could certainly cook a supper to a king’s taste. Skeeter’s nostrils were quivering with anticipatory enjoyment as the lost ones took their seats around the massive table in the comfortable living room.
“It looks like a room I saw at the movies last spring,” Frank had said to Skeeter, as they waitedfor the girls to finish dolling up. “That one had a stone fireplace and furniture that looked just like this, great big tables and chairs that must have been made out of solid oak or walnut or something. The hero had fashioned them himself with a jack-knife, I believe. The mantelpiece was high just like this one, but there were skins spread on the floor instead of these rag rugs.”
“It is a bully room, and, gee, what a good smell of eats.”
The supper was a simple one, consisting of corn pone and buttermilk, bacon and scrambled eggs.
“I am giving you exactly what Tom Tit and I were to have. I only tripled the quantity,” said their host, as they drew up the chairs to the great table.
“Then we aren’t so very much trouble?” asked Lil.
“Trouble! Why, my dear young lady, Tom Tit and I would not live on this thoroughfare if we did not love visitors.”
“Thoroughfare!” gasped Lucy. Maybe the old gentleman was daffy.
“Why, certainly! You don’t know how many things happen in the mountains. Someone is always turning up. Eh, Tom Tit?”
“Yes, indeed! We uns finds something every day. One time it was a baby fox and one time it was a man in ugly striped pants.”
“He means our convict. It was a poor fellow who had escaped from a road gang and took refuge in the mountains and Tom Tit found him almost starved to death. We fed him up until he could go back to work.”
“You didn’t give him up!” asked Frank, his eyes flashing.
“Oh, no; he gave himself up. I got him to tell me just exactly why he was put in the penitentiary, and since his crime surely warranted some punishment, I made him understand that the best thing for him to do was go back to his road making and expiate his crime. That was much better than being hounded for the rest of his time. What do you think about it?”
“Y-e-s, you are right, but I’m glad you didn’t give him up.”
“Tom Tit and I go see him every now and then. Tom Tit feels sorry for him because his trousers are so ugly. He likes to work and wouldn’t mind road-building a bit.”
“When we uns digs, we uns finds so many things, but we uns couldn’t wear such ugly pants. Sometime we uns is a-goin’ to make the poor sick man some pretty pink ones like these,” and he stood up to show his bright pink trousers. They were strangely fashioned, looking rather like Turkish trousers.
“Was the man sick?” asked Lucy, devoutly praying that a fit of the giggles would not choke her.
“You see, Tom Tit and I think that when persons are what the world and the law calls bad, they are really sick. Sometimes they are too sick to be cured, but not often. It is the fault of the doctors and the system and not theirs when they are not cured.”
“Do you live here all the time?” asked Lil. Shewas dying of curiosity about the strange pair who were so ill assorted and still so intimate.
“Tom Tit does, but I have to go away for a time every fall and winter and Tom Tit keeps house for me while I am gone. He is a famous housekeeper.”
“Do you get lonesome all by yourself?” asked Lucy.
“We uns ain’t never alone. There’s the baby fox and the cow and the chickens, and every day we uns tries to find something and then we uns has to write it down for the spring-keeper ’ginst he comes home. Every day we uns has to go to the post office for the letter, too, and that takes time. The days in winter are so short.”
“Oh, do you get a letter every day? How jolly! My mother doesn’t write to me but once a week,” said Lil, “—although of course she ’phones me in the meantime and sends me candy and things.”
“We uns never does git letters from maw,” and poor Tom Tit’s eyes clouded sadly. “Ever since the men came and found her and hid herin that hole she ain’t writ a line to poor Tom Tit.”
“But you write to her every time you write to me, don’t you, Tom Tit?” and the old gentleman put a calming and kindly hand on the shoulder of the trembling youth. It seemed that at every mention of mothers the thought of his own mother came back to him and the agony he went through with at the time of her death seized hold of him. The young people learned later from their host, while Tom Tit was washing the supper dishes, all about the poor boy’s history.
“Tom Tit’s mother was a very fine woman of an intelligence and character that was remarkable even in these mountains where intelligence and character are the rule rather than the exception. She had no education, but the things she could accomplish without education were enough to make the ones who have been educated blush to think how little they do with it. She had evolved a philosophy of her own of such goodness and serenity that to know her and talk with her was a privilege. She seemed to me to be likethese mountains, where she was born and where she died. She had had trouble enough to break the spirit of any ordinary mortal, but she said her spirit was eternal and could not be broken.
“Her husband was a very desperate character. Convicted of illicit distilling, he was sentenced to serve a term in the penitentiary, but he managed to escape and for one whole year he evaded the sheriff, hiding in the mountains. Of course his wife had to go through the agony of this long search. She told me she had never slept more than an hour at a time while her husband was in hiding. That was the one thing she was bitter over—that long hounding of her husband. She used to say if the government had spent the money and energy in educating the mountaineers that they had in hunting for them, there would have been no cause for hunting for them. Moonshining is to them a perfectly reasonable and lawful industry, and nothing but education can make them see it differently. His hiding place was finally ferreted out and he was surrounded and captured, but not before he hadmanaged to shoot five men, killing two of them and being fatally wounded himself.
“That was many years ago when Tom Tit was a little chap of three. Melissa, the mother, was wrapped up in the child. His intelligence then was keen and his love of Nature and beautiful things was so pronounced from the beginning that if this cloud had not come over his intellect he would surely have been a great artist of some kind, whether poet, painter or musician, I can’t say.”
“Perhaps all of them, like Leonardo da Vinci!” exclaimed Lil, who always did know things.
The old gentleman smiled at her appreciatively.
“What is an artist but a person who finds things, just like my poor Tom Tit, and then is able to tell to the world what he has found?”
“When he writes to you, does he tell you things in poetical language?” asked Lucy, her gray eyes very teary as she listened to the story of the mountain youth.
“My dear, his writing is not ordinary writing.He can neither read nor write as you think of it. His letters to me are written in another way. He tells me what he has found each day with some kind of rude drawing or with some device of his own.”
“Please show us some of them!” begged all four of the guests.
“I am going to let you guess what he meant.” He took from his desk in the corner a packet of large envelopes. “I leave with my friend enough addressed and stamped envelopes to run him until I return, and all he has to do is put in his letter and seal it and drop it in the box at Bear Hollow, our post office. Sometimes he draws me a picture and sometimes he just sends me something he has found. What do you think he intended to convey by this?”
On a sheet of paper were drawn many stars of various kinds and sizes, and down in the corner was what was certainly meant for an axe.
“Clear night and going coon hunting, I think,” said Skeeter solemnly.
“No!” cried Lucy and Lil in a breath. “Thoseare meant for snow flakes! It has begun to snow!”
“Right you are! Good girls, go up head! And how about the axe, since it is not meant to signify coon hunting?”
“It is going to be cold,” suggested the practical Frank, “and he must go to work and lay in wood before the snow gets deep.”
“Fine! I am glad to see there are others who can interpret my poor Tom Tit’s letters. Now this is the one I received the next day.”
It was evidently meant for a deep snow. The roof of a house and a few bare branches were shown but from the chimney a column of smoke ascended and in that smoke was plainly drawn a grin: a mouth with teeth.
“Snowed under!” cried Skeeter.
“But he got his wood cut and is now sitting by the fire quite happy, even grinning,” declared Lucy.
“Right again! Now comes a piece of holly and a pressed violet. That means that he finds a little belated violet in our flower beds in spiteof the fact that the holly is king at this season. Sometimes he has so much to tell me that he must make many pictures. Here he found a sunset and it was so beautiful that he had to paint it with his colored crayons. This is where he fed the birds during the deep snow. He has a trough where he puts grain and seeds and crumbs for his winged friends. This is a picture of the trough and see the flocks of birds he has tried to draw to show how many are fed in his trough. This means a stranger has come in on him!” It was a picture of a hat and staff and down one side of the page were many drops of water, at least that was what the interested audience thought they were. At the top was an eye.
“Oh, I know!” exclaimed Lil. “If a hat and staff mean a stranger, those drops of water must mean rain.”
“The eye looks like a Mormon sign,” suggested Skeeter.
“I bet it means this,” said Lil, studying the page intently. “It means the stranger is old, or he would not have a staff, and it means heis unhappy. Those drops are tear drops. See how sad the eye looks!”
“‘Oh, a Daniel come to judgment!’ Young lady, you are right. That was a tired, sick traveler that our Tom Tit found and brought in and looked after for two weeks last winter. He was trying to cross the mountains and got lost and Tom Tit picked him up, almost starved and frozen. In this one, he shows the sick guest is still with him and in bed. He cannot draw faces well and hates to make anything too grotesque, so he usually has a sign or symbol for persons. The staff and hat in bed mean the guest is there. These little saddle-bags and hat mean he had to send for the doctor. Look at the medicine the poor staff and hat must take from the cruel saddle-bags! His own symbol is usually a jew’s-harp, although sometimes he makes himself a kind of butterfly——”
“Just like Whistler!” cried Lil.
“Yes, and in his way he is as great an artist as Whistler,” said the old man sadly. “If he had only had his chance! Well, well! Maybe heis happier as he is. I never saw a happier person, as a rule, than my poor boy. Tom Tit could never have written letters that would have been put in a book and called ‘The Gentle Art of Making Enemies,’ as that other great artist did. He makes friends with every living thing, and inanimate objects are friendly to him, too, I sometimes think. If his wits had been spared him, the world would have called him and the peace of the mountains would no longer have been his.”
The old man fingered the packet of letters tenderly while the young guests sat thoughtfully by. They could hear the cheerful Tom Tit in the kitchen washing dishes and whistling a strange crooning melody.
“Here it is spring and he has found the first hepatica. See, he sends me a pressed one! And this is my love letter. What do you make of it?”
It was six little stamped envelopes, all with wings, and in the corner was a jew’s-harp unmistakably dancing a jig.
“I know! I know!” cried Lucy.
“So do I!” from Lil.
“I can’t see any kind of sense in it!” pondered Frank.
“Nor I,” grumbled Skeeter. “You girls just make up answers.”
“I’m going to whisper my answer to Mr. Spring-keeper,” suggested Lil.
The old man smiled as Lil whispered her answer.
“Good! Splendid! And now what do you think?” turning to Lucy.
“I think that he has only six envelopes left, and that means you will be back in six days. He is so happy he is dancing and he is so busy the days are just flying away.”
“Well, if you girls aren’t clever! No wonder they say women are the most appreciative sex although men are the creative. A few men create while all women appreciate. And now, my dear young people, this is so pleasant for me that I am afraid of being selfish, so I am going to insist on your going to bed. You have had a hard day and must be tired.”
“We have had a wonderful day with a wonderfulen——” said Lil, a yawn hitting her midway so she could not get out the “ding.”
“But I hate to go to bed until you tell us something about yourself,” blurted out Skeeter.
The story of the half-witted young mountaineer was very interesting, no doubt, but Skeeter wanted to know why this highly educated gentleman was spending so much time in the mountains, cooking for himself and taking care of lost sheep.
“Oh, my story is such an ordinary one I can tell it while I light a candle for these young ladies,” laughed their host, not at all angry at Skeeter’s curiosity, although Lil and Lucy were half dead of embarrassment when Skeeter came out so flat-footed with the question which was almost bubbling over on their lips, but which they felt they must not put.
“I am a successful manufacturer—— I have made enough money selling clothes pins and ironing boards and butter tubs to stop. In fact, I stopped many years ago and now I do nothing but enjoy myself in my own way.”
“And that way is——?”
“Trying to help a little. In the winter I live in New York and teach the boys’ clubs on the East Side, and in the summer I am spring-keeper in the mountains.”
“But isn’t your name Mr. Spring-keeper?” asked Lil.
“No, my dear, spring-keeping is my occupation. My name is Walter McRae. Here is your candle, and pleasant dreams.”
“Won’t you tell us some more about yourself?” asked Lucy as she took the candle from him.
“Another time! Anything so dry as my story will keep.”