I had never been left entirely without human companionship before, not even for a night, and I soon began to wonder at the amount of loneliness that can be compressed into a few hours. Before the afternoon was half spent I was mentally reviewing the history of Robinson Crusoe, and was feeling an intense sympathy for that resourceful castaway.
I lingered over my evening tasks, and, sooner than seemed possible, dusk came and night was at hand, so at last I reluctantly closed and made fast the kitchen door. Reluctantly, for to-night, this common and necessary precaution seemed, somehow, to cut me adrift from all chance of human aid, and by this time my mind was running on wild tales of bandits, of lonely camps, and the far sweep of the cattle ranges where, in darkened hollow or at the foot ofshadowy buttes, great gray wolves lay in wait for their midnight prey, indifferent as to whether the prey consisted of cattle or cattleman.
Still, I am sure that I was not really cowardly; it was only the unusual situation that set me thinking of these things. Father’s light rifle hung in its accustomed place over the kitchen fireplace, and, as a last precaution, I took it down, and, after ascertaining that it was properly loaded, put it near the head of the bed, within reach of my hand. To be expert with firearms is almost a matter of course for girls on Western ranches, and I was an unusually good marksman. As it would, to my fancy, but intensify the emptiness and loneliness of the house if I were to light a lamp, I decided to go straight to bed without a light, and, if possible, forget my troubles in sleep. But I had hardly reached this sensible conclusion when I became convinced that I was thirsty. It is not in the least probable that I should have even thought of needing a drink if it had not suddenly occurred to me that there was no water inthe house. I had used it all, and had neglected to fill the pail again. There is no surer provocative of thirst than the knowledge that there is no water to be had, and, as I thought the matter over, my lips grew dry and my throat parched. It was unendurable. In desperation I slipped on the shoes that I had just taken off, and, taking the empty pail from the kitchen sink, unlocked the door and made a hurried trip to the spring, a few rods west of the house.
Returning with a brimming pailful, and disdaining to acknowledge, even to myself, that my knees were shaking, I set the pail on a chair by the bed-room window. I was determined to have water close at hand, in case my thirst became torturing during the night. The cat was mewing plaintively on the kitchen doorstep. I re-opened the door and let her in, then re-locked the door and, disrobing, crept quickly into bed. Curled down snugly under the blankets I was almost dozing when a sudden recollection caused me to laugh softly to myself,there in the darkness. In spite of my terrible thirst I had entirely forgotten to take a drink after the water was at hand. “I’ll get up after a while if I find that I can’t get along without it,” I told myself, sleepily, and with the sense of amusement still upon me, I was far away into dreamland.
I suppose that very few people have escaped the unpleasant, breathless sensation of awakening suddenly and completely under the spell of some unknown challenge, a warning of some impending danger passed by the alert mind to the slumbering senses of the body. I had slept far into the night when I awoke, seemingly without cause, to find myself sitting upright in bed, listening intently. For a moment I heard nothing but the soft padded foot-fall of the cat as, stealing from her place on the foot of the bed, she moved restlessly about the room. “It must have been her springing off the bed that awoke me,” I thought, nestling back into the pillows again. I closed my eyes, but opened them quickly as a soft rustling outside of, and almostdirectly underneath the bed-room window, came to my ears.
The window-shade was pulled down, but it was hung several inches below the top of the window, which had been left open for ventilation. Through this uncurtained space the moonlight streamed into the room; by its light I saw the cat retreating into a corner farthest from the window, her tail swelled out like that of a fox, her hair bristling, and her yellow eyes glaring vindictively. She disliked strangers, and commonly resented their presence in just this manner. I wondered, as my eyes followed the cat’s movements with growing apprehension, if she would act this way because of the vicinity of any large prowling animal. I was sure now, as I crouched tremblingly under the blankets, that the increasing noise that I heard was not made by any harmless midnight prowler. If it had been, the cat, being a great hunter, would have shown an eager desire to get outside the window, instead of away from it. Accustomed to the knowledge that there were wild animalsin plenty up on the mountain slopes and in the encircling forests above us, and having abundant reason to know that they often made stealthy visits to the valley settlements at night, I soon reasoned myself into quietude. Whatever the beast might be, I was in no personal danger; the cows were safe in the high-walled corral, and the poultry-house securely locked. Reassured, as I recalled these facts, I did not get up to make any investigation as to the cause of the noise. “If it’s a bear, it isn’t mine,” I told myself, drowsily; “as Joe says, ‘I ain’ los’ no bear ’roun’ yer.’”
I was half asleep again when a curious sensation, as of a bright light playing over my closed eyelids caused me to open them suddenly. Then I bounded out of bed, uttering a scream that might, I should think, have been heard a mile. A broad sheet of yellow flame was streaming up beside the house and over the uncurtained window space. Obeying an impulse as irresponsible as the one that had caused that useless scream, I seized the loaded rifle at my bedside,and sent a bullet whistling and crashing through the window panes. The impression that some prowling wild animal was about was probably still strong upon me, and, in any case, the shot was not without effect. My shriek and the report of the rifle rang out almost at the same instant. Following them came a cry, a smothered oath, and the sound of running footsteps. Throwing down the yet smoking gun, I ran to the window, tore down the obstructing shade with one sweep of my impatient hand, and leaned forward, scanning the hillside. The flames reached toward me greedily through the opening that my bullet had made, but, although their hot breath half blinded me, I saw a man running swiftly for the shelter of the hillside pines. I glanced toward the rifle—I was a good shot, then. “Thou shalt not kill,” I said aloud, but it had occurred to me also, that the gun was not loaded. An instant more and I was throwing water on the fire from the pailful beside the window ledge. After all, as I soon found, the bullet had done more apparent harm than the fire, forthe heap of inflammable rubbish underneath the window was quickly drenched and the fire extinguished. To make all doubly secure, however, I reloaded the gun and with that faithful friend in hand brought water and poured over the rubbish until it ceased even to smoke. The heap was composed of pine needles, pine cones, and resinous pitch pine, and once fairly started would have set the house on fire, past all saving, in a very short time. When the blackened pile was so thoroughly drenched that I could poke around in the ashes with my bare hands I gave up pouring water on it, went back into the house, locked the door, tacked a heavy blanket up over the dismantled window, and, shivering with cold and excitement, again crept into bed. As I lay with my finger on the trigger of the rifle, with its muzzle trained on the window, I was surer of nothing than that there was no more sleep for me that night. But, soothed by the sensation of returning warmth, and by the feeling of security that the touch of the rifle gave, I closed my eyes—not to sleep, but thebetter to think. Sleep! I could not sleep. Nevertheless—
The sunlight was pouring into the adjoining room when I again opened my eyes. Night with its terrors was a thing of the past. I heard the imprisoned cows lowing for their milk-maid and realized with a pang of self-reproach that I had slept later than I ought. Sitting up in bed I looked around, blinking sleepily. The light from the window was effectually excluded by the thick blanket, and my slumber had been so peaceful that I had scarcely stirred; my relaxed hand had merely dropped away from the trigger of the rifle lying beside me. The cat was in her old place at my feet, and I smiled to see her trying to thrust an inquisitive paw into the muzzle of the gun. Finding the hole too small for that purpose she wriggled around lazily until she had brought an eye to bear on the cavity that she seemed to suspect might contain a mouse. When I had dressed and gone outside I was filled with wonder at the narrowness of the escape that the house had had.There had been no rain for weeks; scarcely a drop, indeed, since the dreadful accident that had left us fatherless—and everything was as dry as tinder. Once started, a fire would have devastated the whole valley. In the retrospect the danger that we had escaped seemed even more terrifying than in the hurry and excitement of the fire itself. And—how came that heap of combustible stuff under the window? Who was that man whom I had seen running up the hillside as if pursued by the furies?
The morning’s chores done, I procured broom and rake and set about clearing away the unsightly heap from under the window. I was raking industriously, when my eye was suddenly attracted by a small glittering object near the outer edge of the pile. Stooping, I picked it up. It lay in the hollow of my hand, and I stood looking at it for a long, long time. “All things come to him who waits.” The origin of the fire was no longer a mystery, but there were other things. We had suffered nearly five years of petty, relentless persecution, and had never,never by any chance, been able to produce any direct evidence against our enemy. The wind sweeping through the pine boughs on the hillside above had, to my fancy, the sound that a great fire makes; a great fire that, rioting unchecked, leaves suffering and death in its wake. “Much harm would have been done to others besides us if I had not been here to put the fire out,” I thought, gravely regarding the thing in my hand. “Much harm; and the law punishes any one convicted of setting a fire, here in the mountains in a dry time, very severely.” Then I went into the house to put the glittering trifle safely out of sight.
I had not looked for Jessie and Ralph to return before night, but the article that I had found was scarcely hidden when, chancing to glance down the road, I saw Mr. Horton’s team, with the light wagon attached, trotting briskly toward the house.
Only Jessie, Ralph, and Mrs. Horton were in the wagon, and it startled me at first to observe that Ralph was driving. My astonishment changed to amusement as they drew nearer, and I saw that Mrs. Horton’s capable hands held a firm grip of the lines, just far enough behind Ralph’s not to deprive him of the glory of the idea that he was doing all the driving.
“’Oo! ’oo, dere!” he called imperiously, bringing the horses—with Mrs. Horton’s help—to a standstill before the gate. Jessie sprang out and turned to lift the little driver to the ground,while we all began talking at once. But our mutual torrent of questions was abruptly checked by the contumacious conduct of that same small driver, who deeply resented Jessie’s invitation to him to come off his perch. “Me is doin’ tek care of ’e ’orses,” he declared, scowling defiance at his sister. “Mis ’Orton, ’oo dit out if ’oo p’ease!”
No better description of Mrs. Horton could be given than to say that she was all that her husband was not—the dearest soul. She laughed as she surveyed the conceited little fellow and then said seriously: “How in the world am I to get out if you don’t get out first and help me down?”
Ralph was unprepared for this emergency, but the objection appeared to him reasonable; he slid slowly off the seat—he was so short that it seemed a long time before his tiny toes touched the bottom of the wagon-box—and began climbing laboriously down, over the wheel. When he had at length reached the ground Mrs. Horton stood up and with the reins held securely inone hand she gained the hub of the near wheel. From that vantage she reached down to meet Ralph’s upstretched mite of a hand, and so was gallantly assisted to alight.
To my delight Mrs. Horton announced that she had come to spend the day with us. She led the team to the barn and we proceeded to unharness them without assistance from their late driver, who had already forgotten his intention and his dignity in a romp with his friend and playmate, the cat.
“I suppose your tooth stopped aching and you decided not to have it out,” I said to Jessie, as we were helping Mrs. Horton.
“No,” Mrs. Horton explained, cheerfully; “by the best of luck, Dr. Green chanced to be passing our house last night, soon after Jake brought Jessie. We called him in, and as he had his forceps—toothers, my little brother used to call them—with him, he had that aching tooth out in no time.”
“I’m afraid it hurt you dreadfully, didn’t it, Jessie?” I inquired, sympathetically.
“Not so much as I thought it would; not so much as the aching did,” Jessie replied. “People are so cowardly about such things!” she added, and the sly look that Mrs. Horton bestowed on Jessie’s sister behind her back, awoke a suspicion in my mind that, perhaps, Jessie herself had betrayed some shrinking dread before the operation took place.
“How glad I am that you didn’t have to go clear over to Antonito,” I said. “You wouldn’t have been home for hours yet, and Mrs. Horton wouldn’t have been making us a visit.”
“And Mrs. Horton would a good deal rather be making you a visit than driving these horses to Antonito, I can tell you!” said that lady. “They’re quiet as lambs until it comes to cars and engines, and the sight of them scares them both nigh to death, and the railway track runs along right beside the highway for a mile before you get into Antonito. I’d have been obliged to drive Jessie over, for the hired man is gone, and Mr. Horton met with an accident to one of his hands last night, and couldn’t have driven.”
“An accident! How did it happen?” I inquired, with feigned carelessness.
“Why, I declare, I can hardly make out how it did happen!” exclaimed Mr. Horton’s wife, with a troubled look. “There, Jessie, that’s hay enough to last them a week, and I don’t expect to stay that long. You see,” she went on, slipping the harness deftly off the nigh horse, and tossing it down on the pile of hay, “nothing would do Jake last night but he must go up to the north pasture to salt the cattle. I told him there was no need—they were salted only last Sunday—but go he would, and go he did. It got to be so late before he came back that I got real uneasy about him. It’s a good bit to the north pasture, but I knew it ought not to keep him out so very late. Why, it was after twelve o’clock when he came in at last, with his clothes torn, and his hand done up in his handkerchief and just dripping with blood! Jessie and Ralph had gone to bed, hours before, and I was thankful that she wasn’t up to see it, for it fairly scared me, and I’m not a mite nervous, generally.I expect I was the more scared because of Jake’s way of taking it. He’s as steady as iron, most times, but last night he was all kind of trembly and excited. He tried to explain to me how the accident took place, but I couldn’t make out hardly what he did mean. It appears, though, that he was coming home along the ravine—where it’s always dark, no matter how bright the moonlight—and he jabbed his hand, as he was walking fast, up against a sharp jack oak stub—at least, he thought it must have been some such thing—and he got an awful cut. You wouldn’t believe, if you didn’t see it with your own eyes, that a stub of any kind could make such a wound! There’s a long, slanting cut clean through the palm of his hand. I wanted him to let me look in it for splinters, but he’s real touchy about it; wouldn’t even let me bathe it,” she concluded sadly.
Everybody liked Mrs. Horton, and a good many things that her husband did would have been less easily condoned by their neighbors if she had been as little of a favorite ashe, and one of the things that people liked best, while finding it most incomprehensible, was that she believed in him and his good intentions most implicitly.
“I don’t see how he could possibly have run against an oak stub in a ravine,” observed Jessie, musingly. “Oaks, and especially jack oaks, grow only on the dry hillsides.” Jessie is very observing when it comes to a question of the flora of a country, and what she said was true, as Mrs. Horton hastened to admit.
“I never thought of it before, but I believe that’s so,” she said. “It might have been something else, but Jake himself said that there wasn’t any other kind of wood that he knew of, tough enough and hard enough to make such a cut as that.”
Having cared for the horses we three started for the house. “Did you have a good bed at Mrs. Riley’s?” Jessie now asked, bestowing direct attention on me for the first time. We were just entering the house, and before I could reply Jessie cried out in surprise at the unfamiliar aspectof the bed-room, where the heavy quilt still excluded the daylight from the window.
“Why, what is that for?” she asked, perceiving the cause of the semi-darkness.
I had purposely refrained from telling my story until now. Now I told it, to the consternation of my auditors. Jessie could scarcely credit the evidence of her senses, and Mrs. Horton said feelingly:
“Thank God that you have a brave heart and good sense, Leslie! If you hadn’t thought of that clause in the homestead law in time, and had gone away last night, I tell you this settlement would have been in mourning this morning! Seems to me that I just couldn’t bear for you children to lose this place now—this place that your poor pa had set his heart on! And to think that such an accident should take place so near the time of your proving up makes it so much the worse, for, if the house had gone, I don’t believe you could have got your title. No, not if you had taken down a dozen witnesses to testify to the burning. The law is strict. Idoubt if the agent would have the power to give you a deed unless there was a house standing on the land at the moment that the deed was issued, no matter if he wanted to ever so badly.”
She was full of sympathy and kindness, poor soul, and, listening to her exclamations and condolences, I was sorry for her. Jessie was right: there were no jack oaks in the ravine down which Mr. Horton must have passed on the way from the north pasture to his home.
Mrs. Horton and Jessie walked around the house to the bed-room window, and stood surveying the pile of rubbish beneath it, wondering greatly why a fire should break out in that place.
“The only way I can account for it is that a spark from the chimney must have fallen into this pile and set it afire,” Mrs. Horton observed, turning bits of the pile in question over with the toe of her shoe. “I’m not blaming you, Leslie, but it is true that young folks can’t be too careful with fire. I wouldn’t be a mite surprised now, if you just filled the kitchen stove full of dry stuff and set it off when you built a fire to get your supper.”
“Leslie always does use lots of kindling,” interposed Jessie, who was, it must be admitted, more careful about small savings than I.
“You may depend on it, then, that that’s just how it happened,” Mrs. Horton went on, while I remained silent. “You see, when you start a fire like that, lots of live sparks are carried up the chimney, and it’s just a mercy that there are not more houses burned than there are on account of it. I say it for your good, Leslie, when I say that I hope this will be a lesson to you; you’ve had a narrow escape. My! but it makes me shudder to think of it!”
As she stopped talking to shudder more effectively I ventured to make an observation that, it was strange, had occurred to neither Jessie nor herself:
“It took that spark—supposing the fire was started by a spark from the chimney—a long time to fall, didn’t it? It was after twelve when the fire broke out, and I had supper at six, besides—” but there I checked myself. The more I thought the matter over, the more desirable it seemed that I should keep to myself the dreadful certainty that I felt in regard to the origin of the fire. If people liked to believethat it was caused by some negligence or carelessness of mine, it would only complicate matters, beside robbing them of a comfortable conviction, for me to tell that I had had no fire on the previous evening. Yet such was the case. I had made my solitary meal of bread and milk.
“What a girl you are, to be sure!” Mrs. Horton exclaimed, in genuine admiration, as we turned back into the house. “Now, why couldn’t Jessie or I think of that! Twelve hours to fall! No, it would have been six hours falling, wouldn’t it? You said the fire broke out about midnight. Well, you can think of more things and keep more quiet about them than any ten men that ever I saw. When I think of anything I like to tell of it, and I expect likely that’s the reason that I never think of real smart things; I don’t hold on to them long enough; I pick them before they’re ripe.”
Jessie went to the stove and lifted a lid to peep inquiringly into the fire-box. “I’m not so sure that the fire wasn’t started as Mrs. Horton says,” she declared. “This stove holds firefor a long time, you know, Leslie. A gust of wind might have come up and made such a draft that the embers started to burning again.”
“If all the world were apple-pie, and all the sea were ink, and all the trees were bread and cheese, what should we have to drink?” was my not irrelevant thought. In strict accordance, however, with the character for sagacity that Mrs. Horton had just given me, I said nothing; but Mrs. Horton assented to the proposition with energy enough for both. Ralph was giving unmistakable signs of sleepiness. Mrs. Horton sat down and took him on her lap; the small head drooped on her shoulder while she went on to the creaking accompaniment of the old rocking chair. “I’ve just thought of another way in which that fire might have been started”—she evidently had it upon her conscience to furnish a satisfactory solution of the mystery—“I have been noticing that you keep matches in that china saucer over the mantel-piece, and it’s right alongside the window-sill. Now, girls, I don’t want to seem to find fault with any ofyour arrangements; but I do like an iron match safe, with a heavy lid, better myself; then there’s no danger of their getting out, and you can’t be too careful about such things. Suppose, now, that one of those mountain rats that are always prying around, getting into every crack and crevice that they can wedge themselves into—suppose one of them had come into the house, and crept out again with a lot of matches—they’ll eat anything—and suppose that rat went through the rubbish pile and rubbed against—”
But this line of reasoning proved too much for Jessie, who, with good cause, prided herself upon her housekeeping.
“There isn’t a hole big enough for a rat to crawl through in the house!” she declared, with some warmth.
The rooms were all lathed and plastered. Mrs. Horton looked around. “One might come in at a window,” she suggested, with less confidence.
Knowing the truth, and having in my possessionthe means of proving it, if need be, I took a somewhat wicked pleasure in this game of wild conjecture. It was, at all events, a satisfaction to be able to veto this last proposition.
“There were only two windows open, Mrs. Horton, and they were open only a few inches at the top,” I said.
“A rat might climb up the side of the window, and come in that way,” was the reply to this. “But”—her face suddenly brightening as a new solution of the mystery flashed upon her mind—“I don’t think it was a rat, after all, and I’ll warrant I know now just how it happened. Last night was Wednesday night, you know, and they always have those dancing-parties out at Morley’s tavern, beyond the Eastern Slope, of a Wednesday night. Lots of those Crusoe miners go to them, and they all smoke. Now what’ll you chance that as one of them was coming home—they have to go right past here—he didn’t light a match for his cigar, and when he was through with it, fling the match right downagainst the house, or, maybe, he threw the stub of a cigar down?”
“It might be, I suppose,” Jessie admitted, rather reluctantly. She was evidently disposed to abide by her own theory of reviving embers and falling sparks.
“Oh, I’m well-nigh sure, now that I think of it, that that was the way it happened,” Mrs. Horton insisted, pausing to brush Ralph’s damp curls back from his forehead. “You see, I wouldn’t feel so positive that it was done in just that way if it wasn’t for an experience that we had, here in the valley a long spell ago.”
“You refer to the time when the great forest was burned?” Jessie inquired rather absently. She had seated herself at the sewing machine and was busily running up the seams of Ralph’s new kilt.
“Yes; that’s the time. It was before you came here. And the fire was set in the way I spoke of. A couple of young men—they weren’t much more than boys—came up from town, and they were just at that age whenthey thought it a smart thing to be able to smoke a cigar without turning sick after it. They were staying at the hotel, and one day they went with a party from there up to see the marble quarries. There’d been an awful dry spell; it had lasted for weeks, and everything was just as dry as touch-wood. There were notices posted all along the roads and trails, forbidding folks building camp-fires, or anything of that kind. The boys, after they had been to the quarries, started home ahead of the others, and on foot. I don’t reckon that they’d got above a quarter of a mile from the quarries when they pulled out some cigars and matches, intending, of course, to have a smoke. Well, they had it, but it wasn’t just the kind they’d expected. First one, then the other, threw down their lighted matches, after they’d got their cigars to going. The wind was blowing hard in their faces and toward the quarry, as it happened, and the next thing they knew they heard a great roaring, and as they said afterward, two pillars of flame seemed to springright out of the ground, one on either side of the trail, and to reach so high that they almost touched the tree-tops. In less time than I’m taking in telling of it they had reached the tree-tops, and then the two little pillars of fire became a great blazing ocean of fire up in mid-air. You know how ’tis with pine needles and cones; they make a blaze as if the end of the world had come. No wonder the poor boys were scared! It was right in the thickest part of the woods, and what with the fire roaring away before the wind on either side of them, and the clouds of smoke and sparks roaring away above the burning tree-tops, it must have been an awful sight. They were in no particular danger themselves, because the fire was going away from them, but as they stood there, blistering in the heat, they thought of their parents—their parents, who were right in the path of the flames, and in the way they acted up to that thought, you may see the difference in folks. One of them—Dick Adams, his name was—pulled his hat down over his eyes, shook out hishandkerchief and tied it over his mouth to save his lungs, and said to the other, ‘If anything happens to our folks we are the ones to blame for it; come on and help;’ and with that he gave a leap down the trail as if he would overtake the fire itself. But the other boy, he wasn’t made of that kind of stuff. He just turned and ran the other way, and folks did say that he never stopped running until he reached town, twenty miles away. When poor Dick, blackened with grime and smoke, with his hair singed and his burnt shoes dropping off his feet, staggered into the open space about the quarry, there were the folks, and even the horses, all safe. They hadn’t started when they saw the fire coming, and so, knowing that they were safe where they were, they stayed. The fire swept past them on either side, and all they had to do was to wait till the trail got cool enough to travel over. There was no great damage done after all, though a great many trees were destroyed, but so were acres and acres of underbrush, and that was a big help tostockmen. Dick was pretty well done up, but he didn’t care for any more cigars, and his father paid the fine that the township’s trustees assessed against him, cheerful on that account, though he said he was sorry he couldn’t save the timber. Now, Leslie,” she concluded her story, abruptly, “if you’ll just move those hats a little I’ll lay the baby on the bed.”
After I had complied, and Ralph’s head was on a pillow instead of her arm, she came to Jessie’s side and stood regarding her work thoughtfully.
“You’re real spry on the machine, aren’t you?” she at length remarked, admiringly. “Now me, I’m as slow!” She looked around the room and continued, with seeming irrelevance: “I s’pose the furnishings must have cost you a good deal?” Her tone was very gentle.
“Yes,” Jessie returned, comprehending her meaning with the quick intuition that grief gives. “Yes; they did.”
“Well, he’s at rest. You can visit his grave. They’re worth all they cost and more, but I wasthinking now if you felt like taking in a little sewing to help along until—”
“Why, I’d like to do it, dear Mrs. Horton!” Jessie interrupted, looking up with sparkling eyes. “I’ve never thought of it before, but if I could get it to do I would be so glad! Every little toward the proving up is just so much gained.”
“That is what I was thinking. I can let you have quite a little work myself, and I know there are others who will be glad of a chance to get sewing done. I declare, I’m glad I thought of it! It will be so nice for you to do something to help out right here at home. And,” she went on, her kind eyes shining, “maybe you can learn to be a dressmaker—”
“No, no!” interposed Jessie, who had her future comfortably mapped out in her mind. “I mean to be a teacher.”
“Do you? That’s a good, respectable trade, too, and a teacher you shall be if I can do anything to help you get a school.”
Jessie smiled up at her gratefully. Mrs.Horton might not, perhaps, have great influence in educational circles, but the highest authority among them could not have had a kinder heart. But something that Mrs. Horton had said set me thinking of quite another matter.
“If you were here so long ago,” I observed, suspending my task of shelling peas, and looking earnestly at our visitor, “why didn’t Mr. Horton take up some land? He could have taken anything, almost then, and I—we—I have sometimes thought that he kind of wanted this place,” I concluded, weakly.
Mrs. Horton’s gentle face flushed; she was really fond of her husband, who, to be sure, was very careful not to let any knowledge of his underhanded doings come to her ears.
“To tell the truth, Leslie,” she said, “I’ve thought now and again myself that Jake was looking after this place. It’s a beautiful place; there isn’t another as pretty in the valley, but when we first came here folks were not thinking of taking up land—no, indeed. Cattle rangeswere what they were after, and they couldn’t abide the settler that put up fences. No; Jake let his chance of taking the place slip, and your father took it up; and that was right; he wasn’t a cattleman, and he needed the land to work. Don’t you fret about Jake’s wanting it. He don’t need it, for one thing, for we’re real well to do, if I do say it, and it would be a pretty unneighborly thing for him to grudge the place to you now. You see, Jake’s ways are different. He makes folks think, often, I make no doubt, that he’s set on getting things when he isn’t, really. I expect he’d feel quite hurt if you were to lose this place.”
“Unless he got it himself,” was my silent amendment.
“We could buy the ranch where we are,” Mrs. Horton went on, “and I wish Jake was willing to do it; I’m like your father was; I want a home of my own, but Jake says he doesn’t like that place as well as he does another that he has in mind.”
“What place is that?” asked Jessie.
“I don’t know, really, Jake’s no hand to talk over business matters with me; no hand at all, and so I don’t worry him. I just let him take his own gait.” And a very bad gait it was, if she had but known it, poor woman!
No more was said about the land, the remainder of the day passed pleasantly, and it was nearly night-fall when Mrs. Horton again climbed into the wagon-seat and headed the horses toward home. Good-bys had been exchanged when, suddenly, she drew in the restless horses to say: “You tell old Joe, when he comes back, how that fire got started; tell him that he must be more careful, these dry times, how he lets such a lot of dry stuff get lodged against the house.” And, with that admonition, she was gone.
Joe came home the next day, and his indignation, when Jessie told him of the fire, and of the manner—presumably—in which it originated, was nearly as scorching as the fire itself. Nothing in the whole affair seemed to rouse his wrath to such a pitch as did her recital of the theories that she and Mrs. Horton had evolved to account for the threatened disaster.
“W’at sort of fool talk dat?” he inquired, contemptuously, when Jessie had concluded.
“Why, Joe, the fire must have started in some such way!” Jessie insisted.
“Honey, yo’s done got a forgibbin’ sperrit; yo’ not only forgibs yo’ inimy, like what de Bible say fur ter do, but yo’ eben furgits dat yo’ has one!”
“Oh, Joe! Surely you cannot think that it was the work of an incendiary?”
“Ob a ’cindery? No, hit ain’ dat.”
“What do you think, then, Joe?”
“W’at I t’ink? Some low-down sneak sot hit afire. Dat’s w’at I t’ink. An’ I wouldn’ hab ter hunt long afore I done laid my han’s on him, neider.” Jessie looked so shocked, and so cast down, that, chancing to catch the old man’s eye, I shook my head at him warningly. Joe understood. His beloved master Ralph’s tactics had been those of silence and Joe was willing to follow them to the end. But he muttered scornfully: “’Cindery? Dat a likely idee; w’en I nebber lef’ a heap o’ stuff like dat ag’in’ nobody’s house en all my life! Look like I’d go fur ter doin’ hit now, w’en dish yer house hole my own fambly!”
He seated himself in the corner with a bit of harness that he had brought up to the house to mend, in his hand, but presently he began searching anxiously for some mislaid tool.
“What have you lost, Joe?” I asked.
“W’y I ain’ right shore as I done los’ anyt’ing, chile, but de needle an’ t’read w’at I putin dis cheer, ag’in’ I wanted ’em, ’pear to hab crope away some’ers; likewise dat ar leetle case knife w’at I cuts leather wiv’. Dey’s gone, an’ I doan see dat chile Ralph ’round’ nowhere’s.”
Just at this point the door was pushed a little farther open and a cheerful voice proclaimed: “Here me is, Doe!”
The voice was followed by its owner, little Ralph, but such a curious spectacle the boy presented that the occupants of the room stared at him a moment in amazed silence. Jessie was the first to recover her power of speech and remonstrance:
“Ralph! Oh, what have you been doing, you naughty, naughty boy!”
It was evident that the little trespasser had not realized that his recent occupation had been in any way objectionable. His lips began to quiver, but he stood his ground manfully.
“Me isn’t a notty, notty b’y, Jeppie. Me is a yittle ’orse, an’ ’ese are ’e yittle ’orse’s ley bells.”
“Sleigh bells! Didn’t you know any betterthan to pull up all of Joe’s cantaloupes and string them on to threads—how you could do it I can’t imagine—to hang around your shoulders?”
“Dey isn’t ’antelopes, Jeppie; dey’s ley bells.”
“How did you do it? Oh, you naughty—”
“Me did it wiv Doe’s little knife an’ Doe’s needle an’ t’read; an’ me hurted me’s han’s, me did.”
The recollection gave him the excuse that he was longing for. The string to one of his odd sets of sleigh-bells broke as he started across the room, with outstretched arms, for Joe, and he left a trail of small, hard, green melons as he ran. “Doe!” he cried, as the old man lifted him tenderly to his breast, “me hurted me han’s!” The howl of anguish with which he repeated the statement was partially smothered by reason of the sufferer’s face being buried in Joe’s neck. “Jeppie say me is notty, notty b’y!” he continued, sobbing.
“Miss Jessie,” the old man said, with dignity, looking disapprovingly at his young mistress over the boy’s shaking shoulders, “yo’ meanswell, honey; I ain’ a doubtin’ ob dat, but yo’ done got er heap ter learn ’bout managin’ chillen. Yo’s done hurted pore little Ralph’s feelin’s mighty bad!”
“His feelings ought to be hurt!” Jessie persisted, indignantly. “A boy who is old enough to do such a piece of mischief as that is old enough to know better. And, Joe, it isn’t right for you to encourage him in it.”
“Honey, hit ain’ likely, now, is hit, dat any one has dish yer pore little feller’s good more at heart dan I has, now is hit?”
“No, Joe, it isn’t.”
“Berry well, den; now yo’ listen at me. Ef I had a t’ought ob hit w’en I was a plantin’ dem dere little yeller seeds I’d put out a patch on purpose for dis chile ter ’a’ had fur a marble quarry, or fur sleigh-bells, or w’atebber he tuck a notion fur. But I didn’t t’ink of hit, an’ de chile did. Dat’s all!”
It was utterly useless to argue against such self-abnegation as this, but Jessie could not forbear saying: “Think of the trouble you havetaken with that melon patch. You’ve scoured the whole valley, high and low, for tin cans to cover the vines when a frost was threatened, and you’ve spent days in hoeing and weeding them.”
“And dere ain’ a purtier patch ob melons, er a more promisin’ one, in de whole State, ef I does say hit!” Joe declared with pride.
“Don’t be too sure of that, Joe. You haven’t seen it since Ralph has been over it.”
Joe shifted the child’s position, so that the tear-stained little white face rested against his own, to which it formed a wonderful and beautiful contrast. “W’at melons dese yer little han’s been a-pullin’ up ain’ no loss t’ nobody,” he said; “an’ I wants de chile t’ ’joy hisself.”
A subsequent examination of the melon patch established the truth of Joe’s words. At the moment, however, the idea that Ralph gathered was that he had done a rather commendable thing than otherwise. “Shall me pull up ’e rest of ’em?” he asked hopefully, snuggling closer to the black face. Joe stole a sheepishlook at Jessie, whose eyes were dancing with amusement.
“Not jess yit, wouldn’t go fur t’ pull ’em, honey, chile. Wait twell dey’s growed ’bout as big as er coffee-cup, an’ den jess bring yo’ little toofies tergedder on de inside o’ one of ’em. Yo’s et oranges, an’ yo’s squalled hard w’en dey was gone, ’cause dere wan’t no mo’ of ’em. But yo’ won’t look at a orange when yo’ kin git a cantaloupe.”
“Den me lets ’em drow,” Ralph declared magnanimously, and it is but fair to the child to say that he kept his word.
“Come and gather up all your sleigh-bells, then, Ralph,” Jessie admonished him.
Climbing down from Joe’s lap he set about the clearance, awkwardly enough. The abbreviated skirt of his little dress was about half filled—he had made a kind of bag of it by gathering the folds tightly in one hand while he picked up melons with the other—when there came a knock at the door. Dropping the spoil that he had already secured, Ralph ran acrossthe room to admit the caller, the melons rolling in every direction. Joe glanced at them apprehensively, and then gave his undivided attention to the harness mending.
The visitor who entered the room on Ralph’s hospitable invitation was our near neighbor, Caleb Wilson. Mr. Wilson glanced at the array of hard little spheres on the floor and laughed.
“I’ll bet a cent you’ve been up to mischief, youngster,” he said, nodding to me as I handed him a chair.
He looked smilingly at Ralph, who retreated to Joe’s side, and made no answer.
“Ralph, do you hear Mr. Wilson?” Jessie sternly inquired.
“’Ess; me hears him.”
“Why don’t you answer him, then?”
“’Tause he didn’t ask me nuffin’.”
Joe’s sombre face lighted up; his white ivories gleamed out suddenly like a flash of sunlight through a storm cloud. To Joe’s mind few people had a right to question the doings ofa Gordon, of any age or degree, and Mr. Wilson was not one of the favored few. Our genial neighbor laughed.
“That’s right, my little man; I didn’t. I made a statement, and you seem to be sharp enough already to see the difference.”
He had been carrying a covered tin pail in his hand. He now set it on the floor beside his chair, while Jessie, who had it much at heart that her little brother must be properly trained, remarked:
“Ralph has been very naughty.”
“He’ll come out all right; don’t you go to worrying about him, Miss Jessie,” Mr. Wilson admonished her, cheerfully. “He’s nothing but a baby, anyway,” he continued, “but what even a baby can want of all those little green knobs of cantaloupes is more’n I can tell, but seeing ’em calls to my mind a fruit speculation of mine, last summer.”
“I thought you were a cattleman?” I interrupted, involuntarily.
Mr. Wilson glanced down at the pail besidehis chair. “Well, I am, Leslie, but a cattleman doesn’t have to be sensible all the time. I had a kind of spell last summer when I wasn’t sensible, and while it was at its height I got hold of a pile of young tomato plants and set ’em out. You see, as everybody else, pretty nigh, is in the cattle business, too, there ain’t much fruit raised around here, and so I ’lowed I’d be able to dispose of my tomato crop to good advantage. Along in August the crop was ready to market, and it was a hummer, no mistake. The construction gang and the engineers were working on the big storage reservoirs out beyond Turtle Shell Buttes then, just as they are now. There’s a lot of men employed there and I knew that there was the place to go with my tomatoes.”
“What, away out on the plains, beyond the valley? That must be twenty miles away,” Jessie remarked, as Mr. Wilson paused to chuckle over some amusing reminiscence.
“It’s all of that; maybe more. But you must remember that driving over the plains islike driving over a level floor. Distance doesn’t count for much when the roads are always smooth and even. Well; one afternoon Tom and I filled the bottom of the wagon-box with a soft bed of fresh alfalfa hay and then we piled tomatoes in on top of it till they came clean up to the edge of the top bed. Of course if the roads had been rough it ain’t likely that even a cattleman would ’a’ thought of taking such a load in that way; as it was, I reckon there wasn’t a tomato smashed in transit. I didn’t get quite as early a start as I’d ’lowed to, so it was just noon when I reached the camp.”
“I should have thought that you would lose the way,” I said. My mind had conjured up a vivid picture of the far stretches of unfenced plains that lay between our mountain-walled valley and the great water storage system where a single lake already sparkled like a white jewel on the gray waste of plains. “There are wolves, too,” I added, suddenly.
“Yes; there are wolves, but they don’t eat tomatoes. And, as for losing the road, all thatI had to do was to follow it; it stretches out, plain as a white ribbon on a black dress. As I said, it was noon when I reached camp. All hands had struck work and gone to dinner, so I thought I’d wait till they got through before I sprung the subject of tomatoes on them.
“There ain’t a tree nor a shrub bigger than a soap weed within a mile of the reservoirs, and as I didn’t want to set and hold the horses all the time, I unhitched ’em and tied ’em to the wagon-box; one on each side. I knew that they wouldn’t eat the tomatoes, and, as there was plenty of horse feed in camp, I ’lowed to buy their dinner when I run on to some one to buy it of. It turned out, though, that the horses didn’t understand about that; they had a scheme of their own, and they worked it to good advantage.
“I strolled off, and pretty soon I got mighty interested in lookin’ at the works; it’s a big enterprise, I tell you! I was gone from the wagon a good deal longer than I’d laid out to be, and I don’t know as I’d ’a’ woke up for an hour or two, but I heard a fellow laughin’ overthat way and so I went over to see what was goin’ on. Well, I found out.” Mr. Wilson paused impressively and glanced around at us. Joe was listening with such absorbed attention that his work had slipped unheeded from his hands and Ralph had again secured the harness needle and was awkwardly re-stringing his imitation sleigh bells. “What was it?” I asked.
“Why, you see, I’d plumb forgot about the alfalfa hay, but the horses had remembered, and they nosed through the fruit until they come to it, and they hadn’t lost a minute’s time, either. When the hay’d given out in one place they’d worked through at another until they struck bed rock again. The whole load was just a mass of tomato jam; the juice was running out of the box in a stream, and the horses were red with it from hoof to forelock. There wasn’t a bushel of whole fruit left. I jerked out the tailboard and dumped the mess on the ground, while about forty men stood around just yellin’ and hootin’ with delight. They got more pleasure out of it than they could possibly ’a’got from eatin’ the tomatoes. The cook came out of his little tent alongside the big dining tent, to see what the racket was about, and when he got his eyes on the fruit he was powerful mad. He said he’d ’a’ given a dollar and a half a bushel for the load. He wanted me to promise to come with another load the next day, but I’d had enough of fruit raisin’—’specially when the horses did the heft of the raisin’—I wouldn’t ’a’ faced that yellin’ crowd again for a hundred dollars. No, sir! I come right straight home, and I sent word ’round among the neighbors to come and help themselves to all the tomatoes they could lug home; what they didn’t take the frost did, and that was the end of my experiment in fruit raising.”
“It was just too bad!” I exclaimed, feeling that I ought to say something sympathetic.
“Oh, I don’t know,” returned our neighbor, in his comfortable way. “It was all my fault. A man’s got to keep his wits about him, no matter what he undertakes to do, and I left mine at home that day. My wife’ll think I’mlost, wits and all, if I stay much longer, that’s a fact.”
He rose to his feet, and, after bidding us a cordial farewell, started for the door. Then the pail on the floor caught his eye to remind him that his intractable wits had again strayed. “Well, I declare for it! I come nigh forgetting what I stopped for. Seems like a good way to come for milk, doesn’t it? We had company come unexpected, and nothing would do Sarah but I must ride over here and ask you for some milk. Condensed milk is good enough for us, but Sarah says it ain’t good enough for company.”
Jessie had already taken the pail and started for the pantry; when she re-appeared with it filled, she said, demurely:
“I thought that you said you were a cattleman, Mr. Wilson.”
“Oh, bless you! Don’t you know the old saying about a shoemaker’s wife? Lots of folks that can count their cattle by the thousand head would be glad if they could be sure of as muchnice milk and butter as you girls get off your two cows, Miss Jessie. It’s management, you see.”
“You mean want of management, don’t you?” returned Jessie, smiling.
Mr. Wilson’s jolly laugh floated back to us as he went down the walk toward the horse that was waiting for him at the gate, and then I roused myself to observe that Joe was again hunting for his tools. He presently rescued them from Ralph’s destructive little hands, and set to work, only pausing the while to remark:
“I reckons dat ar watah sto’age camp gwine be a ’mighty good place fur to sell we all’s melon crap at.”
The Hortons’ place was some five miles below ours, if one followed the main road, but they were often passing the house on their way to and from the little country store and post-office. So it was not surprising that Mrs. Horton should reappear in a few days with a large bundle of sewing of her own for Jessie to do, and the intelligence that she had interviewed several of the neighbors, some of whom had said that they would gladly employ Jessie.
“You are so good, Mrs. Horton,” Jessie exclaimed gratefully. “It will be a real help to us if we are able to earn a little in this way.”
“Maybe you won’t feel so anxious to do it when you see what I’ve brought,” the good woman said, as she proceeded to untie her bulky bundle. “You see,” she explained, “Jake nearly tore the coat from his back when hewent up to salt those cattle the other night. He seems, from what I can make out, to have had a regular circus with himself, and I’m so busy, what with the housework and being obliged to do all the trading—for Jake never will go to the store if he can get out of it—I’ve had no time to mend it. I put it right in here with the other things, hoping that you or Leslie wouldn’t mind mending it for me.”
My very spine seemed to stiffen at the idea of mending the clothing that had been torn while its wearer was making a futile attempt to burn our house, but Jessie, knowing nothing of all this, and naturally trustful, replied tranquilly:
“Certainly, we will, Mrs. Horton, if you think we can do it well enough.”
“Oh! anybody can do it well enough. If I had my way with it I’d put it into the stove and have done with it,” she announced frankly. “It’s seen its best days. But it appears to me that the longer Jake wears a thing the better he likes it. What a figure he would have made in the days of Methuselah, to be sure!”
She shook the coat out and laid it on the table. Jessie turned it over, examining some gaping rents, evidently of recent make. Finally,
“Here’s a button gone,” she said. I felt my face grow white, while Mrs. Horton explained placidly:
“Yes; and that’s a pity, for the buttons are worth more than the coat. They’re quite curious, if you’ll notice. I never saw any like them before he got that coat. I think myself that that little brass leaf stuck on to the front of them looks fussy on a man’s coat buttons, but Jake thinks they’re so tasty. He was wonderfully put out when he found that he’d lost one of them. The land sake, Leslie!” she broke off suddenly as her glance fell on me. “Are you sick, child? Why, you are as pale as a sheet! Isn’t she, Jessie?”
Jessie, glancing up from the tattered coat, in alarm, confirmed this statement, and they were both anxiously inquiring if I felt sick, and how long since the attack came on, and if I hadn’tbetter go right to bed, when a diversion was created by the entrance of Joe. Joe had the weekly county paper open in his hand; he could read a little in a halting and uncertain fashion, but did not often trouble himself to do it. “There must have been something of special interest to him in this issue,” I thought, and was not left long in doubt as to what it was.
“Heah we is!” he exclaimed, gleefully, extending the paper toward Jessie; “heah’s our third and las’ notice ob provin’ up!”
“Oh, is it there?” cried Jessie, seizing the paper, and running her eye quickly over the item indicated by Joe’s stubby black finger. Mrs. Horton, brushing her husband’s cherished coat from the chair where Jessie had dropped it to the floor, seated herself, leaning forward in anxious attention, and even Ralph, abandoning a furtive attempt to put the cat in the water-pail, came and leaned against her knees, while Jessie read aloud: