VI.
Camp Chaparral, July 13, 188–.
Studio Raphael.
Dear Little Sis,—The enclosed sketches speak for themselves, or at least I hope they do. Keep them in your private portfolio, and when I am famous you can produce them to show the public at what an early age my genius began to sprout.
At first I thought I’d make them real “William Henry” pictures, but concluded to give you a variety.
Can’t stop to write another line; and if you missed your regular letter this week you must not growl, for the sketches took an awful lot of time, and I’m just rushed to death here anyway.
Love to mother and father.
Your loving brother.
Jack
P.S.—Polly says you need not expect to recognise that deer by his portrait, should you ever meet him, as no one could expect to get a striking likeness at a distance of a half-mile. But, honestly, we have been closer than that to several deer.
CHAPTER V
THE FOREST OF ARDEN—GOOD NEWS
“From the East to western Ind,
No jewel is like Rosalind;
Her worth, being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind;
All the pictures, fairest lined,
Are but black to Rosalind;
Let no face be kept in mind,
But the fair of Rosalind.”
The grand performance of “As You Like It” must have a more extended notice than it has yet received, inasmuch as its double was never seen on any stage.
The reason of this somewhat ambitious selection lay in the fact that our young people had studied it in Dr. Winship’s Shakespeare class the preceding winter, but they were actually dumb with astonishment when Bell proposed it for the opening performance in the new theatre.
“I tell you,” she argued, “there are not many pieces which would be effective when played out of doors by dim candle-light, but this will be just as romantic and lovely as can be. You see it can be played just ‘as you like it.’”
Philip and Aunt Truth wanted a matinée performance, but the girls resisted this plan very strongly, feeling that the garish light of day would be bad for the makeshift costumes, and would be likely to rob them of what little courage they possessed.
“We give the decoration of the theatre entirely into your hands, boys,” Polly had said on the day before the performance. “You have some of the hardest work done already, and can just devote yourselves to the ornamental part; but don’t expect any more ideas from us, for you will certainly be disappointed.”
“I should think not, indeed!” cried Bell, energetically. “Here we have the wall decorations for the first scene, and all the costumes besides; and the trouble is, that three or four of them will have to be made to-morrow, after Laura comes with the trappings of war. I hope she will get here for dinner to-night; then we can decide on our finery, and have a rough rehearsal.”
“Well, girls!” shouted Jack, from the theatre, “come and have one consultation, and then we’ll let you off. Phil wants to change the location altogether.”
“Oh, nonsense!” cried Madge, as the three girls ran towards the scene of action. “It’s the only suitable place within a mile of the camp.”
“I think it will be simply perfect, when you have done a little more cutting,” said Bell. “Just see our advantages: First, we have that rising knoll opposite the stage, which is exactly the thing for audience seats; then we have a semicircular background of trees and a flat place for the stage, which is perfectly invaluable; last of all, just gaze upon that madroño-tree in the centre, and the oak on the left; why, they are worth a thousand dollars for scenery.”
“Especially in the first scene—ducal interior, or whatever it is,” said Phil, disconsolately.
“Jingo! that is a little embarrassing,” groaned Jack.
“Not at all,” said Polly, briskly. “There is plenty of room to set the interior in front of those trees. It can be all fixed beforehand, and just whisked away for good at the end of the first act.”
“That’s true,” said Geoff, thoughtfully. “But we can’t have any Adam’s cottage. We talked it over last night, and decided it ‘couldn’t be did.’”
“Did you indeed!” exclaimed Bell, sarcastically. “Then allow me to remark that you three boys represent a very obtuse triangle.”
“Thanks, most acid Rosalind!” murmured Geoff, meekly. “Could you deign, as spokesman of the very acute triangle, to suggest something?”
“Certainly. There is the rear of the brush kitchen in plain sight, to convey the idea of a rustic hut. To be sure, it’s a good distance to the left, but let the audience screw round in their seats when they hear the voices, and Adam, Oliver, and Orlando can walk out carelessly, and go through their scene right there.”
“Admirable!” quoth Geoff. “We bow to your superior judgment.”
“What an inspiration that was to bring those Chinese lanterns for the Fourth of July; they have just saved us from utter ruin,” said Margery, who was quietly making leaf-trimming.
“Yes, the effect is going to be perfectly gorgeous!” exclaimed Polly, clasping her hands in anticipation. “How many have we? Ten? Oh, that’s splendid; and how many candles?”
“As many as we care to use,” Phil answered, from the top of the ladder where he was at work. “And look at my arrangement for holding them to these trees. Aren’t they immense?”
“By the way,” said Bell, “don’t forget the mossy banks under those trees, for stage seats; and make me some kind of a thing on the left side, to swoon on when I sniff Orlando’s gory handkerchief.”
“A couple of rocks,” suggested Jack.
“Not exactly,” replied the critical Rosalind, with great dignity. “I am black and blue already from practising my faint, and I expect to shriek with pain when I fall to-morrow night.”
“St. Jacob’s Oil relieves stiffened joints, smooths the wrinkles from the brow of care, soothes lacerated feelings, and ’ushes the ’owl of hinfancy,” remarked Geoffrey serenely, as he prepared to build the required mossy banks.
“My dear cousin (there are times when I am glad it is only second cousin), have you a secret contract to advertise a vulgar patent medicine? or why this eloquence?” laughed Bell.
“And, Jack,” suggested Polly, “you don’t seem to be doing anything; fix a stump for me to sit on while Orlando and Rosalind are making love.”
“All right, countess. I’d like to see you stumped once in my life. Shall we have the canvases brought for stage carpets?”
“We say no,” cried Rosalind, firmly. “We shall be a thousand times more awkward stumbling over stiff billows of carpet. Let’s sweep the ground as clean and smooth as possible, and let it go for all the scenes.”
“Yes, we shall then be well grounded in our parts,” remarked Phil, hiding his head behind a bunch of candles.
“Take care, young man,” laughed Polly, “or you may be ‘run to earth’ instead.”
“Or be requested by the audience to get up and dust,” cried the irrepressible Jack, whose wit was very apt to be of a slangy character. “Now let us settle the interior, or I shall go mad.”
“Bell and I have it all settled,” said Geoffrey, promptly. “The background is to be made of three sheets hung over a line, and the two sides will be formed of canvas carpets; the walls will have Japanese fans, parasols, and—”
“Jupiter!” exclaimed Jack, who, as knight of the brush, felt compelled to be artistic. “Imagine a ducal palace, in the year so many hundred and something, decorated with Japanese bric-a-brac! I blush for you.”
“Now, Jack, we might as well drop the whole play as begin to think of the “nakkeronisms,” or whatever the word is. I have got to wear an old white wrapper to the wrestling-match, but I don’t complain,” said Polly.
Just here Bell ran back from the kitchen, exclaiming:
“I have secured Pancho for Charles the Wrestler. Oh, he was fearfully obstinate! but when I told him he would only be on the stage two minutes, and would not have to speak a word, but just let Geoff throw him, he consented. Isn’t that good? Did you decide about the decorations?”
“It will have to be just as we suggested,” answered Margery. “Fans, parasols, flowers, and leaves, with the madroño-wood furniture scattered about, sheep-skins, etc.”
“A few venison rugs, I presume you mean,” said Geoffrey, slyly. “Say, Polly, omit the cold cream for once, will you? You don’t want to outshine everybody.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “I will endeavour to take care of my own complexion, if you will allow me. As for yours, you look more like Othello than Orlando.”
“Come, come, girls,” said industrious Margery, “let us go to the tent and sew. It is nothing but nonsense here, and we are not accomplishing anything.”
So they wisely left the boys to themselves for the entire day, and transformed their tent into a mammoth dressmaking establishment, with clever Aunt Truth as chief designer.
The intervening hours had slipped quickly away, and now the fatal moment had arrived, and everything was ready for the play.
The would-be actresses were a trifle excited when the Professor and his eight students were brought up and introduced by Jack and Scott Burton; and, as if that were not enough, who should drive up at the last moment but the family from the neighbouring milk ranch, and beg to be allowed the pleasure of witnessing the performance. Mr. Sandford was the gentleman who had sold Dr. Winship his land, and so they were cordially invited to remain.
All the cushions and shawls belonging to the camp were arranged carefully on the knoll, for audience seats; it was a brilliant moonlight night, and the stage assumed a very festive appearance with its four pounds of candles and twelve Chinese lanterns.
Meanwhile the actors were dressing in their respective tents. Bell’s first dress was a long pink muslin wrapper of Mrs. Burton’s, which had been belted in and artistically pasted over with bouquets from the cretonne trunk covers, in imitation of flowered satin; under this she wore a short blue lawn skirt of her own, catching up the pink muslin on the left side with a bouquet of wild roses, and producing what she called a “positively Neilson effect.”
Her bright hair was tossed up into a fluffy knot on the top of her head; and with a flat coronet of wild roses and another great bunch at her belt, one might have gone far and not have found a prettier Rosalind.
“I declare, you are just too lovely—isn’t she, Laura?” asked Margery.
“Yes, she looks quite well,” answered Laura, abstractedly, being much occupied in making herself absurdly beautiful as Audrey. “Of course the dress fits horridly, but perhaps it won’t show in the dim light.”
“Oh, is it very bad?” sighed Bell, plaintively; “I can’t see it in this glass. Well, the next one fits better, and I have to wear that the longest. Shall I do your hair, Laura?”
“No—thanks; Margery has such a capital knack at hair-dressing, and she doesn’t come on yet.”
During this conversation Polly was struggling with Aunt Truth’s trained white wrapper. It was rather difficult to make it look like a court dress; but she looked as fresh and radiant as a rose in it, for the candle-light obliterated every freckle, and one could see nothing but a pair of dancing eyes, the pinkest of cheeks, and a head running over with curls of ruddy gold.
“Now, Bell, criticise me!” she cried, taking a position in the middle of the tent, and turning round like a wax figure. “I have torn out my hair by the roots to give it a ‘done up’ look, and have I succeeded? and shall I wear any flowers with this lace surplice? and what on earth shall I do with my hands? they’re so black they will cast a gloom over the stage. Perhaps I can wrap my handkerchief carelessly round one, and I’ll keep the other round your waist, considerable, tucked under your Watteau pleat. Will I do?”
“Do? I should think so!” and Bell eyed her with manifest approval. “Your hair is very nice, and your neck looks lovely with that lace handkerchief. As for flowers, why don’t you wear a great mass of yellow and white daisies? You’ll be as gorgeous as—”
“As a sunset by Turner,” said Laura, with a glance at Polly’s auburn locks. “Seems to me this is a mutual admiration society, isn’t it?” and she sank languidly into a chair to have her hair dressed.
“Yes, it is,” cried Polly, boldly; “and it’s going to ‘continner.’ Meg, you’re a darling in that blue print and pretty hat. I’ll fill my fern-basket with flowers, and you can take it, so as to have something in your hand to play with. You look nicer than any Phœbe I ever saw, that’s a fact. And now, hurrah! we’re all ready, and there’s the boys’ bell, so let us assemble out in the kitchen. Oh dear! I believe I’m frightened, in spite of every promise to the contrary.”
When the young people saw each other for the first time in their stage costumes there was a good deal of merriment and some honest admiration. Geoff looked very odd without his eyeglasses and with the yellow wig that was the one property belonging to this star dramatic organisation.
The girls had not succeeded in producing a great effect with the masculine costumes, because of insufficient material. But the boys had determined not to wear their ordinary clothes, no matter what happened; so Jack had donned one of Hop Yet’s blue blouses for his Sylvius dress, and had ready a plaid shawl to throw gracefully over one shoulder whenever he changed to the Banished Duke.
His Sylvius attire was open to criticism, but no one could fail to admire his appearance as the Duke, on account of a magnificent ducal head-gear, from which soared a bunch of tall peacock feathers.
“Oh, Jack, what a head-dress for a Duke!” laughed Margery; “no wonder they banished you. Did you offend the court hatter?”
Phil said that at all events nobody could mistake him for anything but a fool, in his “Touchstone” costume, and so he was jest-er going to be contented.
Scott Burton was arranging Pancho’s toilette for the wrestling-match, and meanwhile trying to raise his drooping spirits; and Rosalind was vainly endeavouring to make Adam’s beard of grey moss stay on.
While these antics were going on behind the scenes, the audience was seated on the knoll, making merry over the written programmes, which had been a surprise of Geoff’s, and read as follows:—
THE PRINCESS’ THEATRE.
July 10th, 188–.
Appearance of the Greatest Dramatic Company
on Earth (fact).
The Coolest Theatre in the World.
A Royal Galaxy and Boyaxy of Artists in the play of
AS YOU LIKE IT,
By William Shakespeare, or Lord Bacon.
Cast.
“Alas! unmindful of their doom, the little victims play;
No sense have they of ills to come, or cares beyond to-day.”
Rosalind | The Lady Bell-Pepper. (Her greatestcreation.) | |
Celia | The Countess Paulina. | |
Phœbe | The Duchess of Sweet Marjoram. | |
Audrey | A talented Incognita of the Court. | |
Orlando | Hennery Irving Salvini Strong. (Latefrom the Blank Theatre, Oil City.) | |
Adam | Dr. Paul Winship. (By kind permission ofhis manager, Mrs. T. W.) | |
Banished Duke / Sylvius | Lord John Howard | Lightning Change Artist. |
Touchstone / Jacque | Duke of Noble |
|
(N.B.—The Duke of Noble has played the“fool” five million times.) | ||
Oliver | Mr. Scott Burton. (Speciallyengaged.) | |
Charles the Wrestler | Pancho Muldoon Sullivan. (His firstappearance.) | |
The Comb Orchestra will play the Music of the Future.
The Usher will pass pop-corn between the Acts. Beds may be ordered at 10.30.
The scene between Adam and Orlando went off with good effect; and when Celia and Rosalind came through the trees in an affectionate attitude, and Celia’s blithe voice broke the stillness with, “I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry,” there was a hearty burst of applause which almost frightened them into silence.
At the end of the first act everybody was delighted; the stage-manager, carpenter, scene-shifter, costumier, and all the stars were called successively before the curtain.
Hop Yet declared it was “all the same good as China theatre”; and every one agreed to that criticism without a dissenting voice.
To be sure, there was an utter absence of stage-management, and all the “traditions” were remarkable for their absence; but I fancy that the spirits of Siddons and Kemble, Macready and Garrick, looked down with kind approval upon these earnest young actors as they recited the matchless old words, moving to and fro in the quaint setting of trees and moonlight, with an orchestra of cooing doves and murmuring zephyrs.
The forest scenes were intended to be the features of the evening, and in these the young people fairly surpassed themselves. Any one who had seen Neilson in her doublet and hose of silver-grey, Modjeska in her shades of blue, and Ada Cavendish in her lovely suit of green, might have thought Bell’s patched-up dress a sorry mixture; yet these three brilliant stars in the theatrical firmament might have envied this little Rosalind the dewy youth and freshness that so triumphed over all deficiencies of costume.
Margery’s camping-dress of grey, shortened to the knee, served for its basis. Round the skirt and belt and sleeves were broad bands of laurel-leaf trimming. She wore a pair of Margery’s long grey stockings and Laura’s dainty bronze Newport ties. A soft grey chudda shawl of Aunt Truth’s was folded into a mantle to swing from the shoulder, its fringes being caught up out of sight, and a laurel-leaf trimming added. On her bright wavy hair was perched a cunning flat cap of leaves, and, as she entered with Polly, leaning on her manzanita staff, and sighing, “Oh Jupiter, how weary are my spirits!” one could not wish a lovelier stage picture.
And so the play went on, with varying fortunes. Margery was frightened to death, and persisted in taking Touchstone’s speeches right out of his mouth, much to his discomfiture. Adam’s beard refused to stay on; so did the moustache of the Banished Duke, and the clothes of Sylvius. But nothing could dampen the dramatic fire of the players, nor destroy the enthusiasm of the sympathetic audience.
Dicky sat in the dress-circle, wrapped in blankets, and laughed himself nearly into convulsions over Touchstone’s jokes, and the stage business of the Banished Duke; for it is unnecessary to state that Jack was not strictly Shakespearean in his treatment of the part.
As for Polly, she enjoyed being Celia with all her might, and declared her intention of going immediately on the “regular” stage; but Jack somewhat destroyed her hopes by affirming that her nose and hair wouldn’t be just the thing on the metropolitan boards, although they might pass muster in a backwoods theatre.
“Hello! What’s this?” exclaimed Philip, one morning. “A visitor? Yes—no! Why, it’s Señor Don Manuel Felipe Hilario Noriega coming up the cañon! He’s got a loaded team, too! I wonder if Uncle Doc is expecting anything.”
The swarthy gentleman with the long name emerged from one cloud of dust and disappeared in another, until he neared the gate where Philip and Polly were standing.
Philip opened the gate, and received a bow of thanks which would have made Manuel’s reputation at a Spanish court.
“Going up to camp?”
“Si, señor.”
“Those things for us?”
“Si, señor.”
“What are they?”
“Si, señor.”
“Exactly! Well, are there any letters?”
“Si, señor.” Whereupon he drew one from his gorgeously-decorated leather belt.
Philip reached for it, and Polly leaned over his shoulder, devoured with curiosity.
“It’s for Aunt Truth,” she said; “and—yes, I am sure it is Mrs. Howard’s writing; and if it is—”
Hereupon, as Manuel spoke no English, and neither Philip nor Polly could make inquiries in Spanish, Polly darted to the cart in her usual meteoric style, put one foot on the hub of a wheel and climbed to the top like a squirrel, snatched off a corner of the canvas cover, and cried triumphantly, “I knew it! Elsie is coming! Here’s a tent, and some mattresses and pillows. Hurry! Help me down, quick! Oh, slow-coach! Keep out of the way and I’ll jump! Give me the letter. I can run faster than you can.” And before the vestige of an idea had penetrated Philip’s head, nothing could be seen of Polly but a pair of twinkling heels and the gleam of a curly head that caught every ray of the sun and turned it into ruddier gold.
It was a dusty, rocky path, and up-hill at that; but Polly, who was nothing if not ardent, never slackened her pace, but dashed along until she came in sight of the camp, where she expended her last breath in one shrill shriek for Aunt Truth.
It was responded to promptly. Indeed, it was the sort of shriek that always commands instantaneous attention; and Aunt Truth came out of her tent prepared to receive tragic news. Bell followed; and the entire family would have done the same had they been in camp.
Polly thrust the letter into Mrs. Winship’s hand, and sank down exhausted, exclaiming, breathlessly, “There’s a mattress—and a tent—coming up the cañon. It’s Elsie’s, I know. Philip is down at the gate—with the cart—but I came ahead. Phew! but it’s warm!”
“What!” cried Bell, joyfully. “Elsie at the gate! It can’t be true!” And she darted like an arrow through the trees.
“Come back! come back!” screamed Polly.
“Elsie is not at the gate. Don S. D. M. F. H. N. is there with a team loaded down with things. Isn’t it from Mrs. Howard, Aunt Truth?”
“Yes, it is. Written this morning from Tacitas Rancho. Why, how is this? Let me see!”
Tacitas Rancho, Monday morning.
Dear Truth,—You will be surprised to receive a letter from me, written from Tacitas. But here we are, Elsie and I; and, what is better, we are on our way to you.
(“I knew it!” exclaimed the girls.)
Elsie has been growing steadily better for three weeks. The fever seems to have disappeared entirely, and the troublesome cough is so much lessened that she sleeps all night without waking. The doctor says that the camp-life will be the very best thing for her now, and will probably complete her recovery.
(“Oh, joy, joy!” cried the girls.)
I need not say how gladly we followed this special prescription of our kind doctor’s, nor add that we started at once.
(“Oh, Aunt Truth, there is nobody within a mile of the camp; can’t I, please can’t I turn one little hand-spring, just one little lady-like one?” pleaded Polly, dancing on one foot and chewing her sun-bonnet string.
“No, dear, you can’t! Keep quiet and let me read.”)
Elsie would not let me tell you our plans any sooner, lest the old story of a sudden ill turn would keep us at home; and I think very likely that she longed to give the dear boys and girls a surprise.
We arrived at the Burtons’ yesterday. Elsie bore the journey exceedingly well, but I would not take any risks, and so we shall not drive over until day after to-morrow morning.
(“You needn’t have hurried quite so fast, Polly dear.”)
I venture to send the tent and its belongings ahead to-day, so that Jack may get everything to rights before we arrive.
The mattress is just the size the girls ordered; and of course I’ve told Elsie nothing about the proposed furnishing of her tent.
I am bringing my little China boy with me, for I happen to think that, with the Burtons, we shall be fourteen at table. Gin is not quite a success as a cook, but he can at least wash dishes, wait at table, and help Hop Yet in various ways; while I shall be only too glad to share all your housekeeping cares, if you have not escaped them even in the wilderness.
I shall be so glad to see you again; and oh, Truth, I am so happy, so happy, that, please God, I can keep my child after all! The weary burden of dread is lifted off my heart, and I feel young again. Just think of it! My Elsie will be well and strong once more! It seems too good to be true.
Always your attached friend,
Janet Howard.
Mrs. Winship’s voice quivered as she read the last few words, and Polly and Bell threw themselves into each other’s arms and cried for sheer gladness.
“Come, come, dears! I suppose you will make grand preparations, and there is no time to lose. One of you must find somebody to help Philip unload the team. Papa and the boys have gone fishing, and Laura and Margery went with them, I think.” And Mrs. Winship bustled about, literally on hospitable thoughts in-tent.
Polly tied on her sun-bonnet with determination, turned up her sleeves as if washing were the thing to be done, and placed her arms akimbo.
“First and foremost,” said she, her eyes sparkling with excitement, “first and foremost, I am going to blow the horn.”
“Certainly not,” said Aunt Truth. “Are you crazy, Polly? It is scarcely ten o’clock, and everybody would think it was dinnertime, and come home at once.”
“No, they’d think something had happened to Dicky,” said Bell, “and that would bring them in still sooner.”
“Of course! I forgot. But can’t I blow it earlier than usual? Can’t I blow it at half-past eleven instead of twelve? We can’t do a thing without the boys, and they may not come home until midnight unless we do something desperate. Oh, delight! There’s Don S. D. M. F. H. N., and Phil has found Pancho to help unload.”
“Isn’t it lucky that we decided on the place for Elsie’s tent, and saved it in case she should ever come?” said Bell. “Now Philip and Pancho can set it up whenever they choose. And isn’t it fortunate that we three stayed at home to-day, and refused to fish? now we can plan everything, and then all work together when they come back.”
Meanwhile Polly was tugging at an immense bundle, literally tooth and nail, as she alternated trembling clutches of the fingers with frantic bites at the offending knot.
Like many of her performances, the physical strength expended was out of all proportion to the result produced, and one stroke of Philip’s knife accomplished more than all her ill-directed effort. At length the bundle of awning cloth stood revealed. “Oh, isn’t it beautiful?” she cried, “it will be the very prettiest tent in camp; can’t I blow the horn?”
“Look, mamma,” exclaimed Bell, “it is green and grey, in those pretty broken stripes, and the edge is cut in lovely scollops and bound with green braid. Won’t it look pretty among the trees?”
Aunt Truth came out to join the admiring group.
“O-o-o-h!” screamed Polly. “There comes a piece of the floor. They’ve sent it all made, in three pieces. What fun! We’ll have it all up and ready to sleep in before we blow the horn!”
“And here’s a roll of straw matting,” said Phil, depositing a huge bundle on the ground near the girls. “I’ll cut the rope to save your teeth!”
“Green and white plaid!” exclaimed Bell. “Well! Mrs. Howard did have her wits about her!”
“Oh, do let me blow the horn!” teased the irrepressible Polly.
“Here are a looking-glass and a towel-rack and a Shaker rocking-chair,” called Philip; “guess they’re going to stay the rest of the summer.”
“Yes, of course they wouldn’t want a looking-glass if they were only going to stay a month or two,” laughed Bell.
“Dear Aunt Truth, if you won’t let me turn a single decorous little hand-spring, or blow the horn, or do anything nice, will you let us use all that new white mosquito-netting? Bell says that it has been in the storehouse for two years, and it would be just the thing for decorating Elsie’s tent.”
“Why, of course you may have it, Polly, and anything else that you can find. There! I hear Dicky’s voice in the distance; perhaps the girls are coming.”
Bell and Polly darted through the swarm of tents, and looked up the narrow path that led to the brook.
Sure enough, Margery and Laura were strolling towards home with little Anne and Dick dangling behind, after the manner of children. Margery carried a small string of trout, and Dick the inevitable tin pail in which he always kept an unfortunate frog or two. The girls had discovered that he was in the habit of crowding the cover tightly over the pail and keeping his victims shut up for twenty-four hours, after which, he said, they were nice and tame—so very tame, as it transpired, that they generally gave up the ghost in a few hours after their release. Margery had with difficulty persuaded him of his cruelty, and the cover had been pierced with a certain number of air-holes.
“Guess the loveliest thing that could possibly happen!” called Bell at the top of her voice.
“Elsie has come,” answered Margery in a second, nobody knew why; “let me hug her this minute!”
“With those fish?” laughed Polly. “No! you’ll have to wait until day after to-morrow, and then your guess will be right. Isn’t it almost too good to be true?”
“And she is almost well,” added Bell, joyfully, slipping her arm through Margery’s and squeezing it in sheer delight. “Mrs. Howard says she is really and truly better. Oh, if Elsie Howard in bed is the loveliest, dearest thing in the world, what will it be like to have her out of it and with us in all our good times!”
“Has she always been ill since you knew her?” asked Laura.
“Yes; a terrible cold left her with weakness of the lungs, and the doctors feared consumption, but thought that she might possibly outgrow it entirely if she lived in a milder climate; so Mrs. Howard left home and everybody she cared for, and brought Elsie to Santa Barbara. Papa has taken an interest in her from the first, and as far as we girls are concerned, it was love at first sight. You never knew anybody like Elsie!”
“Is she pretty?”
“Pretty!” cried Polly, “she is like an angel in a picture-book!”
“Interesting?”
“Interesting!” said Bell, in a tone that showed the word to be too feeble for the subject; “Elsie is more interesting than all the other girls in the other world put together!”
“Popular?”
“Popular!” exclaimed Margery, taking her turn in the oral examination, “I don’t know whether anybody can be popular who is always in bed; but if it’s popular to be adored by every man, woman, child, and animal that comes anywhere near her, why then Elsie is popular.”
“And is she a favourite with boys as well as girls?”
“Favourite!” said Bell. “Why, they think that she is simply perfect! Of course she has scarcely been able to sit up a week at a time for a year, and naturally she has not seen many people; but, if you want a boy’s opinion, just ask Philip or Geoffrey. I assure you, Laura, after you have known Elsie a while, and have seen the impression she makes upon everybody, you will want to go to bed and see if you can do likewise.”
“It isn’t just the going to bed,” remarked Margery, sagely.
“And it isn’t the prettiness either,” added Polly; “though if you saw Elsie asleep, a flower in one hand, the other under her cheek, her hair straying over the pillow (O for hair that would stray anywhere!), you would expect every moment to see a halo above her head.”
“I don’t believe it is because she is good that everybody admires her so,” said Laura, “I don’t think goodness in itself is always so very interesting; if Elsie had freckles and a snub nose”—(“Don’t mind me!” murmured Polly)—“you would find that people would say less about her wonderful character.”
“There are things that puzzle me,” said Polly, thoughtfully. “It seems to me that if I could contrive to be ever so good, nobody ever would look for a halo round my head. Now, is it my turned-up nose and red hair that make me what I am, or did what I am make my nose and hair what they are—which?”
“We’ll have to ask Aunt Truth,” said Margery; “that is too difficult a thing for us to answer.”
“Wasn’t it nice I catched that big bull-frog, Margie?” cried Dick, his eyes shining with anticipation. “Now I’ll have as many as seven or ’leven frogs and lots of horned toads when Elsie comes, and she can help me play with ’em.”
When the girls reached the tents again, the last article had been taken from the team and Manuel had driven away. The sound of Phil’s hammer could be heard from the carpenter-shop, and Pancho was already laying the tent floor in a small, open, sunny place, where the low boughs of a single sycamore hung so as to protect one of its corners, leaving the rest to the full warmth of the sunshine that was to make Elsie entirely well again.
“I am tired to death,” sighed Laura, throwing herself down in a bamboo lounging-chair. “Such a tramp as we had! and after all, the boys insisted on going where Dr. Winship wouldn’t allow us to follow, so that we had to stay behind and fish with the children; I wish I had stayed at home and read The Colonel’s Daughter.”
“Oh, Laura!” remonstrated Margery, “think of that lovely pool with the forests of maiden-hair growing all about it!”
“And poison-oak,” grumbled Laura. “I know I walked into some of it and shall look like a perfect fright for a week. I shall never make a country girl—it’s no use for me to try.”
“It’s no use for you to try walking four miles in high-heeled shoes, my dear,” said Polly, bluntly.
“They are not high,” retorted Laura, “and if they are, I don’t care to look like a—a—cow-boy, even in the backwoods.”
“I’m an awful example,” sighed Polly, seating herself on a stump in front of the tent, and elevating a very dusty little common-sense boot. “Sir Walter Raleigh would never have allowed me to walk on his velvet cloak with that boot, would he, girls? Oh, wasn’t that romantic, though? and don’t I wish that I had been Queen Elizabeth!”
“You’ve got the hair,” said Laura.
“Thank you! I had forgotten Elizabeth’s hair was red; so it was. This is my court train,” snatching a tablecloth that hung on a bush near by, and pinning it to her waist in the twinkling of an eye,—“this my farthingale,” dangling her sun-bonnet from her belt,—“this my sceptre,” seizing a Japanese umbrella,—“this my crown,” inverting a bright tin plate upon her curly head. “She is just alighting from her chariot, thus; the courtiers turn pale, thus; (why don’t you do it?) what shall be done? The Royal Feet must not be wet. ‘Go round the puddle? Prit, me Lud, ’Od’s body! Forsooth! Certainly not! Remove the puddle!’ she says haughtily to her subjects. They are just about to do so, when out from behind a neighbouring chaparral bush stalks a beautiful young prince with coal-black hair and rose-red cheeks. He wears a rich velvet cloak, glittering with embroidery. He sees not her crown, her hair outshines it; he sees not her sceptre, her tiny hand conceals it; he sees naught save the loathly mud. He strips off his cloak and floats it on the puddle. With a haughty but gracious bend of her head the Queen accepts the courtesy; crosses the puddle, thus, waves her sceptre, thus, and saying, ‘You shall hear from me by return mail, me Lud,’ she vanishes within the castle. The next morning she makes Sir Walter British Minister to Florida. He departs at once with a cargo of tobacco, which he exchanges for sweet potatoes, and everybody is happy ever after.”
The girls were convulsed with mirth at this historical romance, and, as Mrs. Winship wiped the tears of merriment from her eyes, Polly seized the golden opportunity and dropped on her knees beside her.
“Please, Aunt Truth, we can’t get the white mosquito-netting because Dr. Winship has the key of the storehouse in his pocket, and so—may—I—blow the horn?”
Mrs. Winship gave her consent in despair, and Polly went to the oak-tree where the horn hung and blew all the strength of her lungs into blast after blast for five minutes.
“That’s all I needed,” she said, on returning; “that was an escape-valve, and I shall be lady-like and well-behaved the rest of the day.”
CHAPTER VI
QUEEN ELSIE VISITS THE COURT
“An hour and friend with friend will meet,
Lip cling to lip and hand clasp hand.”
“Now, Laura,” asked Bell, when quiet was restored, “advise us about Elsie’s tent. We want it to be perfectly lovely; and you have such good taste!”
“Let me think,” said Laura. “Oh, if she were only a brunette instead of a blonde, we could festoon the tent with that yellow tarlatan I brought for the play!”
“What difference does it make whether she is dark or light?” asked Bell, obtusely.
“Why, a room ought to be as becoming as a dress—so Mrs. Pinkerton says. You know I saw a great deal of her at the hotel; and oh, girls! her bedroom was the most exquisite thing you ever saw! She had a French toilet-table, covered with pale blue silk and white marquise lace,—perfectly lovely,—with yards and yards of robin’s-egg blue watered ribbon in bows; and on it she kept all her toilet articles, everything in hammered silver from Tiffany’s with monograms on the back,—three or four sizes of brushes, and combs, and mirrors, and a full manicure set. It used to take her two hours to dress; but it was worth it. Oh, such gorgeous tea-gowns as she had! One of old rose and lettuce was a perfect dream! She always had her breakfast in bed, you know. I think it’s delightful to have your breakfast before you get up, and dress as slowly as you like. I wish mamma would let me do it.”
“What does she do after she gets dressed in her rows of old lettuce—I mean her old rows of lettuce?” asked Polly.
“Do? Why really, Polly, you are too stupid! What do you suppose she did? What everybody else does, of course.”
“Oh!” said Polly, apologetically.
“How old is Mrs. Pinkerton?” asked Margery.
“Between nineteen and twenty. There is not three years’ difference in our ages, though she has been married nearly two years. It seems so funny.”
“Only nineteen!” cried Bell. “Why, I always thought that she was old as the hills—twenty-five or thirty at the very least. She always seemed tired of things.”
“Well,” said Laura, in a whisper intended to be too low to reach Mrs. Winship’s tent, “I don’t know whether I ought to repeat what was told me in confidence, but the fact is—well—she doesn’t like Mr. Pinkerton very well!”
The other girls, who had not enjoyed the advantages of city life and travel, looked as dazed as any scandalmonger could have desired.
“Don’t like him!” gasped Polly, nearly falling off the stump. “Why, she’s married to him!”
“Where on earth were you brought up?” snapped Laura. “What difference does that make? She can’t help it if she doesn’t happen to like her husband, can she? You can’t make yourself like anybody, can you?”
“Well, did she ever like him?” asked Margery; “for she’s only been married a year or two, and it seems to me it might have lasted that long if there was anything to begin on.”
“But,” whispered Laura, mysteriously, “you see Mr. Pinkerton was very rich and the Dentons very poor. Mr. Denton had just died, leaving them nothing at all to live on, and poor Jessie would have had to teach school, or some dreadful thing like that. The thought of it almost killed her, she is so sensitive and so refined. She never told me so in so many words, but I am sure she married Mr. Pinkerton to save her mother from poverty; and I pity her from the bottom of my heart.”
“I suppose it was noble,” said Bell, in a puzzled tone, “if she couldn’t think of any other way, but—”
“Well, did she try very hard to think of other ways?” asked Polly. “She never looked especially noble to me. I thought she seemed like a die-away, frizzlygig kind of a girl.”
“I wish, Miss Oliver, that you would be kind enough to remember that Mrs. Pinkerton is one of my most intimate friends,” said Laura, sharply. “And I do wish, also, that you wouldn’t talk loud enough to be heard all through the cañon.”
The colour came into Polly’s cheeks, but before she could answer, Mrs. Winship walked in, stocking-basket in hand, and seated herself in the little wicker rocking-chair. Polly’s clarion tones had given her a clue to the subject, and she thought the discussion needed guidance.
“You were talking about Mrs. Pinkerton, girls,” she said, serenely. “You say you are fond of her, Laura, dear, and it seems very ungracious for me to criticise your friend; that is a thing which most of us fail to bear patiently. But I cannot let you hold her up as an ideal to be worshipped, or ask the girls to admire as a piece of self-denial what I fear was nothing but indolence and self-gratification. You are too young to talk of these things very much; but you are not too young to make up your mind that when you agree to live all your life long with a person, you must have some other feeling than a determination not to teach school. Jessie Denton’s mother, my dear Laura, would never have asked the sacrifice of her daughter’s whole life; and Jessie herself would never have made it had she been less vain, proud, and luxurious in her tastes, and a little braver, more self-forgetting and industrious. These are hard words, dear, and I am sorry to use them. She has gained the riches she wanted,—the carriages and servants, and tea-gowns, and hammered silver from Tiffany’s, but she looks tired and disappointed, as Bell says; and I’ve no doubt she is, poor girl.”
“I don’t think you do her justice, Mrs. Winship; I don’t, indeed,” said Laura.
“If you are really attached to her, Laura, don’t make the mistake of admiring her faults of character, but try to find her better qualities, and help her to develop them. It is a fatal thing when girls of your age set up these false standards, and order their lives by them. There are worse things than school-teaching, yes, or even floor-scrubbing or window-washing. Lovely tea-gowns and silver-backed brushes are all very pretty and nice to have, if they are not gained at the sacrifice of something better. I should have said to my daughter, had I been Mrs. Denton, ‘We will work for each other, my darling, and try to do whatever God gives us to do; but, no matter how hard life is, your heart is the most precious thing in the world, and you must never sell that, if we part with everything else.’ Oh, my girls, my girls, if I could only make you believe that ‘poor and content is rich, and rich enough.’ I cannot bear to think of your growing year by year into the conviction that these pretty glittering things of wealth are the true gold of life which everybody seeks. Forgive me, Laura, if I have hurt your feelings.”
“I know you would never hurt anybody’s feelings, if you could help it, Mrs. Winship,” Laura answered, with a hint of coldness in her voice, “though I can’t help thinking that you are a little hard on poor Jessie; but, even then, one can surely like a person without wishing to do the very same things she does.”
“Yes, that is true,” said Mrs. Winship, gravely. “But one cannot constantly justify a wrong action in another without having one’s own standard unconsciously lowered. What we continually excuse in other people we should be inclined by and by to excuse in ourselves. Let us choose our friends as wisely as possible, and love them dearly, helping them to grow worthier of our love at the same time we are trying to grow worthier of theirs; because ‘we live by admiration, hope, and love,’ you know, but not by admiring and loving the wrong things.
“But there is the horn, and I hear the boys. Let us come to luncheon, and tell our good news of Elsie.”
Long before the boys appeared in sight, their voices rang through the cañon in a chorus that woke the echoes, and presently they came into view, bearing two quarters and a saddle of freshly killed mutton, hanging from a leafy branch swung between Jack’s sturdy shoulder and Geoff’s.
“A splendid ‘still hunt’ this morning, Aunt Truth!” exclaimed Jack. “Game plenty and not too shy, dogs in prime condition, hunters ditto. Behold the result!”
The girls could scarcely tell whether or no Laura was offended at Aunt Truth’s unexpected little lecture. She did not appear quite as unrestrained as usual, but as everybody was engaged in the preparations for Elsie’s welcome there was a general atmosphere of hilarity and confusion, so that no awkwardness was possible.
The tool-shop resounded with blows of hammer and steel. Dicky was under everybody’s feet, and his “seven or ten frogs,” together with his unrivalled collection of horned toads, were continually escaping from their tin pails and boxes in the various tents, and everybody was obliged to join in the search to recover and re-incarcerate them, in order to keep the peace.
Hop Yet was making a gold and silver cake, with “Elsie” in pink letters on chocolate frosting. Philip had pitched the new tent so that in one corner there was a slender manzanita-tree which had been cropped for some purpose or other. He had nailed a cross-piece on this, so that it resembled the letter T, and was now laboriously boring holes and fitting in pegs, that Elsie might have a sort of closet behind her bed.
As for the rustic furniture, the girls and boys declared it to be too beautiful for words. They stood in circles about it and admired it without reserve, each claiming that his own special piece of work was the gem of the collection. The sunlight shining through the grey and green tints of the tent was voted perfection, Philip’s closet a miracle of ingenuity, the green and white straw matting an inspiration.
The looking-glass had been mounted on a packing-box, and converted by Laura into a dressing-table that rivalled Mrs. Pinkerton’s; for green tarlatan and white mosquito-netting had been so skilfully combined that the traditional mermaid might have been glad to make her toilet there “with a comb and a glass in her hand.” The rest of the green and white gauzy stuff had been looped from the corners of the tent to the centre of the roof-piece, and delicate tendrils of wild clematis climbed here and there as if it were growing, its roots plunged in cunningly hidden bottles of water. Bell had gone about with pieces of awning cloth and green braid, and stitched an elaborate system of pockets on the inside of the tent wherever they would not be too prominent. There were tiny pockets for needle-work, thimbles, and scissors, medium-sized pockets for soap and combs and brushes, bigger pockets for shoes and slippers and stockings, and mammoth pockets for anything else that Elsie might ordain to put in a pocket.
By four o’clock in the afternoon Margery had used her clever fingers to such purpose that a white silesia flag, worked with the camp name, floated from the tip top of the front entrance to the tent. The ceremony of raising the flag was attended with much enthusiasm, and its accomplishment greeted by a deafening cheer from the entire party.
“Unless one wants Paradise,” sighed Margery, “who wouldn’t be contented with dear Camp Chaparral?”
“Who would live in a house, any way?” exclaimed Philip. “Sniff this air, and look up at that sky!”
“And this is what they call ‘roughing it,’ in Santa Barbara,” quoth Dr. Winship. “Why, you youngsters have made that tent fit for the occupancy of a society belle.”
“Now, let’s organise for reception!” cried Geoffrey. “Assemble, good people! Come over here, Aunt Truth! I will take the chair myself, since I don’t happen to see anybody who would fill it with more dignity.”
“I am going to mount my broncho and go out on the road to meet my beloved family,” said Jack, sauntering up to the impromptu council-chamber.
“How can you tell when they will arrive?” asked Mrs. Winship.
“I can make a pretty good guess. They’ll probably start from Tacitas as early as eight or nine o’clock, if Elsie is well. Let’s see: it’s about twenty-five miles, isn’t it, Uncle Doc? Say twenty-three to the place where they turn off the main road. Well, I’ll take a bit of lunch, ride out ten or twelve miles, hitch my horse in the shade, and wait.”
“Very well,” said Geoffrey. “It is not usual for committees to appoint themselves, but as you are a near relative of our distinguished guests we will grant you special consideration and order you to the front. Ladies and gentlemen, passing over the slight informality of the nomination, all in favour of appointing Mr. John Howard Envoy Extraordinary please manifest it by the usual sign.”
Six persons yelled “Ay,” four raised the right hand, and one stood up.
“There seems to be a slight difference of opinion as to the usual sign. All right.—Contrary minded!”
“No!” shouted Polly, at the top of her lungs.
“It is a unanimous vote,” said Geoffrey, crushingly, bringing down his fist as an imaginary gavel with incredible force and dignity. “Dr. and Mrs. Winship, will you oblige the Chair by acting as a special Reception Committee?”
“Certainly,” responded the doctor, smilingly. “Will the Chair kindly outline the general policy of the committee?”
“Hm-m-m! Yes, certainly—of course. The Chair suggests that the Reception Committee—well, that they stay at home and—receive the guests,—yes, that will do very nicely. All-in-favour-and-so-forth-it-is-a-vote-and-so-ordered. Secretary will please spread a copy on the minutes.” Gavel.
“I rise to a point of order,” said Jack, sagely. “There is no secretary and there are no minutes.”
“Mere form,” said the Chair; “sit down; there will be minutes in a minute,—got to do some more things first; that will do, sit down. Will the Misses Burton and Messrs. Burton and Noble kindly act as Committee on Decoration?”
“Where’s the Committee on Music, and Refreshments, and Olympian Games, and all that sort of thing?” interrupted Polly, who had not the slightest conception of parliamentary etiquette; “and why don’t you hurry up and put me on something?”
“If Miss Oliver refuses to bridle her tongue, and persists in interrupting the business of the meeting, the Chair will be obliged to remove her,” said Geoffrey, with chilling emphasis.
Polly rose again, undaunted. “I would respectfully ask the Chair, who put him in the chair, any way?”
“Question!” roared Philip.
“Second the motion!” shrieked Bell, that being the only parliamentary expression she knew.
“Order!” cried Geoffrey in stentorian accents. “I will adjourn the meeting and clear the court-room unless there is order.”
“Do!” remarked Polly, encouragingly. “I will rise again, like Phœbus, from my ashes, to say that—”
Here Jack sprang to his feet. “I would suggest to the Chair that the last speaker amend her motion by substituting the word ‘Phœnix’ for ‘Phœbus.’”
“Accept the amendment,” said Polly, serenely, amidst the general hilarity.
“Question!” called Bell, with another mighty projection of memory into a missionary meeting that she had once attended.
“I am not aware that there is any motion before the house,” said Geoffrey, cuttingly.
“Second the motion!”
“Second the amendment!” shouted the girls.
“Ladies, there is no motion. Will you oblige the Chair by remaining quiet until speech is requested?”
“Move that the meeting be adjourned and another one called, with a new Chair!” remarked Margery, who felt that the honour of her sex was at stake.
“Move that this motion be so ordered and spread upon the minutes, and a copy of it be presented to the Chairman,” suggested Philip.
“Move that the copy be appropriately bound in calf,” said Jack, dodging an imaginary blow.
“Move that the other committees be elected by ballot,” concluded Scott Burton.
“This is simply disgraceful!” exclaimed the Chair. “Order! order! I appoint Miss Oliver Committee on Entertainment, with a view of keeping her still.”
This was received with particular as well as general satisfaction.
“Miss Winship, we appoint you Committee on Music.”
“All right. Do you wish it to be original?”
“Certainly not; we wish it to be good.”
“But we only know one chorus, and that’s ‘My Witching Dinah Snow.’”
“Never mind; either write new words to that tune or sing tra-la-la to it. Mr. Richard Winship, the Chair appoints you Committee on Menagerie, and suggests that as we have proclaimed a legal holiday, you give your animals the freedom of the city.”
“Don’t know what freedom of er city means,” said Dicky, who feared that he was being made the butt of ridicule.
“Why, we want you to allow the captives to parade in the evening, with torch-lights and mottoes.”
“All right!” cried Dicky, kindling in an instant; “’n’ Luby, ’n’ the doat, ’n’ my horn’ toads, all e’cept the one that just gotted away in Laura’s bed; but may be she’ll find him to-night, so they’ll be all there.”
This was too much for the various committees, and Laura’s wild shriek was the signal for a hasty adjournment. A common danger restored peace to the assembly, and they sought the runaway in perfect harmony.
“Well,” said Jack, when quiet was restored, “I am going a little distance up the Pico Negro trail; there are some magnificent Spanish bayonets growing there, and if you’ll let me have Pancho, Uncle Doc, we can bring down four of them and lash them to each of the corners of Elsie’s tent,—they’ll keep fresh several days in water, you know.”
“Take him, certainly,” said Dr. Winship.
“Do let me go with you!” pleaded Laura, with enthusiasm. “I should like the walk so much.”
“It’s pretty rough, Laura,” objected Margery. “If you couldn’t endure our walk this morning, you would never get home alive from Pico Negro.”
“Oh, that was in the heat of the day,” she answered. “I feel equal to any amount of walking now, if Jack doesn’t mind taking me.”
“Delighted, of course, Miss Laura. You’ll be willing to carry home one of the trees, I suppose, in return for the pleasure of my society?”
“Snub him severely, Laura,” cried Bell; “we never allow him to say such things unreproved.”
“I think he is snubbed too much already,” replied Laura, with a charming smile, “and I shall see how a course of encouragement will affect his behaviour.”
“That will be what I long have sought,
And mourned because I found it not,”
sang Jack, nonchalantly.
“Oh, Laura,” remonstrated Bell, “think twice before you encourage him in his dreadful ways. We have studied him very carefully, and we know that the only way to live with him is to keep him in a sort of ‘pint pot’ where we can hold the lid open just a little, and clap it down suddenly whenever he tries to spring out.”
“Do not mind that young person, Miss Laura, but form your own impressions of my charming character. Excuse me, please, while I put on a celluloid collar, and make some few changes in my toilet necessary to a proper appearance in your distinguished company.”
“I prefer you as you are,” answered Laura, laughingly. “Let us start at once.”
“Do you hear that, young person? She prefers me as I are! Now see what magic power her generosity has upon me!” And he darted into the tent, from which he issued in a moment with his Derby hat, a manzanita cane, a pocket-handkerchief tied about his throat, and a flower pinned on his flannel camping-shirt—a most ridiculous figure, since nothing seems so out of place in the woods as any suggestion of city costumes or customs. Laura was in high good-humour, and looked exceedingly brilliant and pretty, as she always did when she was the central figure of any group or the bright particular star of any occasion.
“Be home before dark,” said Dr. Winship. “Pancho, keep a look-out for the pack-mule. Truth, one of the pack-mules has disappeared.”
“So? Dumpling or Ditto?”
“Ditto, curiously enough. His name should have led him not to set an example, but to follow one.”
Elsie came.
Perhaps you thought that this was going to be an exciting story, and that something would happen to keep her at the Tacitas ranch; but nothing did. Everything came to pass exactly as it was arranged, and Jack met his mother and sister at twelve o’clock some four miles from the camp, and escorted them to the gates.
“Welcome” had been painted on twenty different boards or bits of white cloth and paper, and nailed here and there on the trees that lined the rough wood-road; the strains of an orchestra, formed of a guitar, banjo, castanets, Chinese fiddle, and tin cans, greeted them from a distance, but were properly allowed to die away in silence when the guest neared the tents. Everything wore a new and smiling face, and Elsie never came more dangerously near being squeezed to death.
Elsie, in the prettiest of gingham dresses, and her cloud of golden hair braided in two funny little pugs to keep it out of the dust; Elsie, with a wide hat that shaded her face, already a little tanned and burned, no longer colourless; Elsie, with no lines of pain in her pretty forehead, and the hollow ring gone from her voice; Elsie, who jumped over the wheel of the wagon, and hugged her huggers with the strength of a young bear! It was too good to believe, and nobody did quite believe it for days.
At three o’clock the happiest party in the world assembled at the rough dining-table under the sycamore-trees.
Elsie beamed upon the feast from the high-backed manzanita chair, a faint colour in her cheeks, and starry prisms of light in a pair of eyes that had not sparkled for many a weary month. Hop Yet smiled a trifle himself, wore his cap with a red button on the top to wait upon the table, and ministered to the hungry people with more interest and alacrity than he had shown since he had been dragged from Santa Barbara, his Joss, and his nightly game of fantan. And such a dinner as he had prepared in honour of the occasion!—longer by four courses than usual, and each person was allowed two plates in the course of the meal.
BILL OF FARE FOR HER MAJESTY’S DINNER
Quail Soup. | Crackers. |
Chili Colorado. | |
(Mutton stew, inSpanish style, with Chili peppers, tomatoes, and onions.) | |
Cold Boiled Ham. | Fried Potatoes. |
Apples and Onionsstewed together. | |
Ginger-snaps. | Pickles. |
Peaches, Apricots,and Nectarines. | |
California Nuts andRaisins. | Coffee. |
And last of all, a surprise of Bell’s, flapjacks, long teased for by the boys, and prepared and fried by her own hands while the merry party waited at table, to get them smoking hot.
She came in flushed with heat and pride, the prettiest cook anybody ever saw, with her hair bobbed up out of the way and doing its best to escape, a high-necked white apron, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and an insinuating spot of batter in the dimple of her left cheek.
“There!” she cried, joyfully, as she deposited a heaping plate in front of her mother, and set the tin can of maple syrup by its side. “Begin on those, and I’ll fry like lightning on two griddles to keep up with you,” and she rushed to the brush kitchen to turn her next instalments that had been left to brown. Hop Yet had retired to a distant spot by the brook, and was washing dish-towels. All Chinese cooks are alike in their horror of a woman in the kitchen; but some of them will unbend so far as to allow her to amuse herself so long as they are not required to witness the disagreeable spectacle.
Bell delicately inserted the cake-turner under the curled edges of the flapjacks and turned them over deftly, using a little too much force, perhaps, in the downward stroke when she flung them back on the griddle.
“Seems to me they come down with considerable of a thud,” she said, reflectively. “I hope they’re not tough, for I should never hear the last of it. Guess I’ll punch one with the handle of this tin shovel, and see how it acts. Goodness! it’s sort of—elastic. That’s funny. Well, perhaps it’s the way they ought to look.” Here she transferred the smoking mysteries to her plate, passed a bit of pork over the griddles, and, after ladling out eight more, flew off to the group at the table.
“Are they good?” she was beginning to ask, when the words were frozen on her lips by the sight of a significant tableau.
The four boys were standing on the bench that served instead of dining-chairs, each with a plate and a pancake on the table in front of them. Jack held a hammer and spike, Scott Burton a hatchet, Geoffrey a saw, and Philip a rifle. Bell was nothing if not intuitive. No elaborate explanations ever were needed to show her a fact. Without a word she flung the plate of flapjacks she held as far into a thicket as she had force to fling it, and then dropped on her knees.
‘“Shoot, if you must, this old grey head,
But spare my flapjacks, sirs,’ she said!
“What’s the matter with them? Tough? I refuse to believe it. Your tools are too dull,—that’s all. Use more energy! Nothing in this world can be accomplished without effort.”
“They’re a lovely brown,” began Mrs. Winship, sympathetically.
“And they have a very good flavour,” added Elsie.
“Don’t touch them, dearest!” cried Bell, snatching the plate from under Elsie’s very nose. “I won’t have you made ill by my failures. But as for the boys, I don’t care a fig for them. Let them make flapjacks more to their taste, the odious things! Polly Oliver, did you put in that baking powder, as I told you, while I went for the pork?”
Polly blanched. “Baking powder?” she faltered.
“Yes, baking powder! B-A-K-I-N-G P-O-W-D-E-R! Do I make myself plain?”
“Oh, baking powder, to be sure. Well, now that you mention the matter, I do remember that Dicky called me away just as I was getting it; and now that I think of it, Elsie came just afterwards, and—and—”
“And that’s the whole of my story, O,” sang Jack. “I recommend the criminal to the mercy of the court.”
“A case of too many cooks,” laughed Dr. Winship. “Cheer up, girls; better fortune next time.”
“There are eight more of them burning on the griddles this moment, Polly,” said Bell, scathingly; “and as they are yours, not mine, I advise you to throw them in the brook, with the rest of the batter, so that Hop Yet won’t know that there has been a failure.”
“Some people blight everything they touch,” sighed Polly, gloomily, as she departed for the kitchen.
“But when I lie in the green kirkyard—
“Oh, Polly, dear,” interrupted Margery, “that apology will not serve any longer; you’ve used it too often.”
“This is going to be entirely different,” continued Polly, tragically.
“But when I lie in the green kirkyard,
With the mould upon my breast,
Say not that she made flapjacks well,
Only, she did her best.”
“We promise!” cried Bell.
CHAPTER VII
POLLY’S BIRTHDAY: FIRST HALF IN WHICH SHE REJOICES AT THE MERE FACT OF HER EXISTENCE
“‘O frabjous day! Calooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.”
Polly’s birthday dawned auspiciously. At six o’clock she was kissed out of a sound sleep by Bell and Margery, and the three girls slipped on their wrappers, and prepared to run through the trees for a morning plunge in Mirror Pool. Although it was August there was still water enough in Minnehaha Brook to give one a refreshing dip. Mirror Pool was a quarter of a mile distant and well guarded with rocks and deep hidden in trees; but a little pathway had been made to the water’s edge, and thus the girls had easy access to what they called The Mermaid’s Bath. A bay-tree was adorned with a little redwood sign, which bore a picture of a mermaid, drawn by Margery, and below the name these lines in rustic letters:—
“A hidden brook,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.”
Laura had not lived long enough in the woods to enjoy these cold plunges; and, as her ideal was a marble tub, with scented water, and a French maid to apply the same with a velvet sponge, it is not much wonder. She insisted that, though it was doubtless a very romantic proceeding, the bottom and sides of the natural tub were quite too rocky and rough for her taste, and that she should be in constant terror of snakes curling round her toes.
“I’ve a great mind to wake Laura, just for once,” said Bell, opening the tent door. “There never was such a morning! (I believe I’ve said that regularly every day; but I simply never can get used to it.) There must have been a wonderful sunrise, dears, for the glow hasn’t faded yet. Not a bit of morning fog—that’s good for Elsie. And what a lovely day for a birthday! Did they use to give you anything like this in Vermont, Polly?”
“Hardly,” said Polly, peering over Bell’s shoulder. “Let’s see. What did they give us in Vermont this month? Why, I can’t think of anything but dog-days, hot nights, and hay fever; but that sounds ungrateful. Why, Geoff’s up already! There’s Elsie’s bunch of vines, and twigs, and pretty things hanging on her tent-door. He’s been off on horseback. Just my luck to have him get up first. Jack always does, you know; and last night I sewed up the tent-opening with carpet-thread, good and tight, overhand—stitches I wouldn’t be ashamed of at a sewing-school.”
“Oh you naughty girl!” laughed Bell. “The boys could rip it open with a knife in half the time it took you to sew it.”
“Certainly. I didn’t mean to keep them sewed up all day; but I thought I’d like Jack to remember me the first thing this morning.”
“Girls,” whispered Margery, excitedly, “don’t stand there mooning—or sunning—for ever! I thought there was a gopher in this tent last night. I heard something scratching, and I thought it was the dog outside; but just look at these two holes almost under Laura’s pillow!”
“Let’s fill them up, cover them over—anything!” gasped Bell. “Laura will never sleep here another night if she sees them.”
“Nobody insured Laura against gophers,” said Polly. “She must take the fortunes of war.”
“I wouldn’t wake her,” said Margery. “She didn’t sleep well, and her face is flushed. Come, or we shall be late for breakfast.”
When they returned, fresh and rosy, from their bath, there was a stir of life in all the tents. Pancho had come from the stage-station with mail; an odour of breakfast issued from the kitchen, where Hop Yet was humming a fragment of Chinese song, that ran something like this,—not loud, but unearthly enough, as Bell used to say, to spoil almost any cooking:—
Dicky was abroad, radiant in a new suit of clothes, and Elsie pushed her golden head out between the curtains, and proclaimed herself strong enough for a wrestling-match with any boy or man about the camp.
But they found Laura sitting on the edge of her straw bed, directly over the concealed gopher-holes, a mirror in her hand and an expression of abject misery on her countenance.
“What’s the matter?” cried the girls in one breath. But they needed no answer, as she turned her face towards the light, for it was plainly a case of poison-oak—one eye almost closed, and the cheek scarlet and swollen.
“Where do you suppose you got it?” asked Bell.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s everywhere; so I don’t see how I ever hoped to escape it. Yet I’ve worn gloves every minute. I think I must have touched it when I went up the mountain trail with Jack. I’m a perfect fright already, and I suppose it has only begun.”
“Is it very painful?” asked Polly, sympathetically. “Oh, you do look so funny, I can hardly help laughing, but I’m as sorry as I can be.”
“I should expect you to laugh—you generally do,” retorted Laura. “No, it’s not painful yet; but I don’t care about that—it’s looking so ridiculous. I wonder if Dr. Winship could send me home. I wish now that I had gone with Scott, for I can’t be penned up in this tent a week.”
“Oh, it won’t hurt you to go out,” said Bell, “and you can lie in the sitting-room. Just wait, and let mamma try and cure you. She’s a famous doctor.” And Bell finished dressing hurriedly, and went to her mother’s tent, while Polly and Margery smoothed the bed with a furtive kick of straw over the offending gopher-holes, and hung a dark shawl so as to shield Laura’s eyes.
Aunt Truth entered speedily, with a family medical guide under one arm, and a box of remedies under the other.
“The doctor has told me just what to do, and he will see you after breakfast himself. It doesn’t look so very bad a case, dear; don’t run about in the sun for a day or two, and we’ll bring you out all right. The doctor has had us all under treatment at some time or other, because of that troublesome little plant.”
“I don’t want to get up to breakfast,” moaned Laura.
“Just as you like. But it is Polly’s birthday, you know (many happy returns, my sweet Pollykins), and there are great preparations going on.”
“I can’t help it, Mrs. Winship. The boys would make fun of my looks; and I shouldn’t blame them.”
“Appear as the Veiled Lady,” suggested Margery, as Mrs. Winship went out.
“I won’t come, and that’s the end of it,” said Laura. “Perhaps if I bathe my face all the morning I can come to dinner.”
After breakfast was cleared away, Hop Yet and Mrs. Howard’s little China boy Gin were given a half-holiday, and allowed to go to a—neighbouring ranch to see a “flend” of Hop Yet’s; for it was a part of the birthday scheme that Bell and Geoffrey should cook the festival dinner.
Jack was so delighted at the failure of Polly’s scheme to sew him in his tent, that he simply radiated amiability, and spent the whole morning helping Elsie and Margery with a set of elaborate dinner-cards, executed on half-sheets of note-paper.
The dinner itself was a grand success. Half of the cards bore a caricature of Polly in the shape of a parrot, with the inscription “Polly want a cracker?” The rest were adorned with pretty sketches of her in her camping-dress, a kettle in one hand, and underneath,
“Polly, put the kettle on,
We’ll all have tea.”
This was the bill of fare arranged by Bell and Geoffrey, and written on the reverse side of the dinner-cards
DINNER À LA MOTHER GOOSE.
Camp Chaparral.
August 15, 18—.
“Come with a whoop, come with a call;
Come with a good will, or not at all.”
“VICTUALS AND DRINK.”
Bean Soup.
“She gave them some broth, she gave them some bread.”
Salt Codfish.
“You shall have a fishy
In a little dishy.”
Roast Mutton à la Venison.
“Dear sensibility, O la!
I heard a little lamb cry ba-a!”
Potatoes in Jackets.
“The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker,
All jumped out of a roasted potato.”
Stewed Beans.
“You, nor I, nor nobody knows,
Where oats, peas, beans, and barley grows.”
Chicken and Beef Sandwiches.
“Hickety, pickety, my pretty hen
Laid good eggs for gentlemen.”
“Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief,
Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef.”
Lemon Pie.
“A pie sat on a pear-tree.”
Plum Tarts.
“The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
All on a summer’s day.”
Fruit, Nuts, and Raisins.
“You shall have an apple,
You shall have a plum.”
“I had a little nut-tree, nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear.”
Bread and Cheese.
“When I was a bachelor I lived by myself,
And all the bread and cheese I got I put upon the shelf.”
Coffee and Lemonade.
“One, two, three, how good you be!
I love coffee and Billy loves tea.”
“Oranges and lemons,
Says the bell of St. Clemen’s.”
“What they ate I can’t tell,
But ’tis known very well
That none of the party grew fat.”
Bell and Geoff took turns at “dishing up” in the kitchen, and sat down at the table between whiles; and they barely escaped being mobbed when they omitted one or two dishes on the programme, and confessed that they had been put on principally for the “style” of the thing,—a very poor excuse to a company of people who have made up their mouths for all the delicacies of the season.
Jack was head waiter, and having donned a clean white blouse of Hop Yet’s and his best cap with the red button, from which dangled a hastily improvised queue of black worsted, he proceeded to convulse everybody with his Mongolian antics. These consisted of most informal remarks in clever pigeon English, and snatches of Chinese melody, rendered from time to time as he carried dishes into the kitchen. Elsie laughed until she cried, and Laura sat in the shadiest corner, her head artistically swathed in white tarlatan.
Polly occupied the seat of honour at the end of the table opposite Dr. Winship, and was happier than a queen. She wore her new green cambric, with a bunch of leaves at her belt. She was sun-burned, but the freckles seemed to have disappeared mysteriously from her nose, and almost any one would have admired the rosy skin, the dancing eyes, and the graceful little auburn head, “sunning over with curls.”
When the last bit of dessert had been disposed of, and Dicky had gone to sleep in his mother’s lap, like an infant boa-constrictor after a hearty meal, the presentation of gifts and reading of poems took place; and Polly had to be on the alert to answer all the nonsensical jokes that were aimed at her.
Finally, Bell crowned the occasion by producing a song of Miss Mulock’s, which had come in the morning mail from some girl friend of Polly’s in the East, who had discovered that Polly’s name had appeared in poetry and song without her knowledge, and who thought she might be interested to hear the composition. With the aid of Bell’s guitar and Jack’s banjo the girls and boys soon caught the pretty air, and sung it in chorus.
At the end, Dr. Winship raised his glass of lemonade, and proposed to drink Miss Oliver’s health. This was done with enthusiasm, and Geoffrey immediately cried, “Speech, speech!”
“I can’t,” said Polly, blushing furiously.
“Speech!” sung Jack and Philip vociferously, pounding on the table with knife-handles to increase the furore.
“Speech!” demanded the genial doctor, going over to the majority, and smiling encouragingly at Polly, who was pushed to her feet before she knew very well what she was doing. “Oh, if Laura were not looking at me,” she thought, “I’d just like to speak right out, and tell them a little bit of what is in my heart. I don’t care—I will!”
“I know you are all in fun,” she said, looking bravely into the good doctor’s eyes, “and of course no one could make a proper speech with Jack grinning like a Cheshire cat, but I can’t help telling you that this is the happiest summer and the happiest birthday of my whole life, and that I scarcely remember nowadays that I have no father and no brothers and sisters, for I have never been alone or unhappy since you took me in among you and Bell chose me for her friend; and I think that if you knew how grateful I am for my beautiful summer, dear Dr. Paul and Aunt Truth, you would be glad that you gave it to me, and I love you all, dearly, dearly, dearly!” Whereupon the impulsive little creature finished her maiden speech by dashing round the table and giving Mrs. Winship one of her “bear hugs,” at which everybody laughed and rose from the table.
Laura Burton, who was thoroughly out of conceit with the world, and who was never quite happy when other people seemed for the moment to be preferred to herself, thought this burst of affection decidedly theatrical, but she did not know of any one to whom she could confine her opinions just then; indeed, she felt too depressed and out of sorts to join in the general hilarity.
Dinner being over, Dr. Paul and the boys took the children and sauntered up the cañon for a lazy afternoon with their books. Elsie went to sleep in the new hammock that the doctor had hung in the sycamores back of the girls’ sleeping-tent, and Mrs. Winship lay down for her afternoon nap. Pancho saddled the horses for Bell and Margery, who went for a gallop. Polly climbed into the sky-parlour to write a long letter to her mother, and Laura was left to solitude in the sleeping-tent. Now everybody knows that a tent at midday is not a particularly pleasant spot, and after many a groan at the glare of the sun, which could not be tempered by any system of shawls, and moans at the gopher-holes which she discovered while searching for her ear-ring, and repeated consultations with the hand-glass at brief intervals, during which she convinced herself that she looked worse every minute,—she finally discovered a series of alarming new spots on her neck and chin. She felt then that camping out was a complete failure, and that she would be taken home forthwith if it could be managed, since she saw nothing before her but day after day of close confinement and unattractive personal appearance. “It’s just my luck!” she grumbled, as she twisted up her hair and made herself as presentable as possible under the trying circumstances. “I don’t think I ever had a becoming or an interesting illness. The chicken-pox, mumps, and sties on my eyes—that’s the sort of thing I have!”
“I feel much worse, Mrs. Winship,” she said, going into the sitting-room tent and waking Aunt Truth from a peaceful snooze. “If you can spare Pancho over night, I really think I must trouble you to send Anne and me home at once. I feel as if I wanted to go to bed in a dark room, and I shall only be a bother if I stay.”
“Why, my child, I’m sorry to have you go off with your visit unfinished. You know we don’t mind any amount of trouble, if we can make you comfortable.”
“You are very kind, but indeed I’d rather go.”
“I hardly dare let you start in the hot sun—without consulting the doctor, and everybody is away except Polly; they will feel badly not to say good-bye.”
“It is nearly three o’clock now, so the worst of the sun is over, and we shall be at the ranch by eight this evening. I feel too ill to say good-bye, any way, and we shall meet Bell and Margery somewhere on the road, for they were going to the milk ranch.”
“Very well, my dear, if you’ve made up your mind I must yield,” replied Mrs. Winship, getting up and smoothing her hair. “I don’t dare wake Elsie, she has had such an exciting day; but I’ll call Polly to help you pack, and then tell Pancho to find Anne and harness the team. While he is doing that, I’ll get you a little lunch to take with you and write a note to your mother. Perhaps you can come again before we break camp, but I’m sorry to send you home in such a sad plight.”
CHAPTER VIII
POLLY’S BIRTHDAY: SECOND HALF
IN WHICH SHE WISHES SHE HAD NEVER BEEN BORN.
“From Hebrew wit the maxim sprung,
Though feet should slip, ne’er let the tongue.”
Polly came at once to the tent, where she found Laura getting her belongings together.
“Why, Laura, it seems too bad you should go off so suddenly. What can I do to help you?”
The very spirit of evil entered Laura’s heart as she looked at Polly, so fresh and pretty and radiant, with her dimples dancing in and out, her hair ruffled with the effort of literary composition, and the glow of the day’s happiness still shining in her eyes. She felt as if Polly was “glad inside” that she was poisoned; she felt sure she was internally jumping for joy at her departure; and, above all, she felt that Polly was entirely too conceited over the attention she had received that day, and needed to be “taken down a peg or two.”
“Red-haired, stuck-up, saucy thing,” she thought, “how I should like to give her a piece of my mind before I leave this place, if I only dared!”
“I don’t need any help, thank you,” she said aloud, in her iciest manner.
“But it will only make your head ache to bend over and tug away at that valise, and I’ll be only too glad to do it.”
“I’ve no doubt of that,” responded Laura, meaningly. “It is useless for you to make any show of regret over my going, for I know perfectly well that you are glad to get me out of the way.”
“Why, Laura, what do you mean?” exclaimed Polly, completely dazed at this bombshell of candour.
“I mean what I say; and I should have said it before if I could ever have found a chance. Because I didn’t mention it at the time, you needn’t suppose I’ve forgotten your getting me into trouble with Mrs. Winship, the day before the Howards came.”
“That was not my fault,” said Polly, hotly. “I didn’t speak any louder than the other girls, and I didn’t know Aunt Truth objected to Mrs. Pinkerton, and I didn’t know she was anywhere near.”
“You roared like the bull of Bashan—that’s what you did. Perhaps you can’t help your voice, but anybody in the cañon could have heard you; and Mrs. Winship hasn’t been the same to me since, and the boys don’t take the slightest notice of me lately.”
“You are entirely mistaken, Laura. Dr. and Mrs. Winship are just as lovely and cordial to you as they are to everybody else, and the boys do not feel well enough acquainted with you to ‘frolic’ with you as they do with us.”
“It isn’t so, but you are not sensitive enough to see it; and I should never have been poisoned if it hadn’t been for you!”
“Oh, go on, do!” said Polly, beginning to lose her self-control, which was never very great. “I didn’t know I was a Lucrezia Borgia in disguise. How did I poison you, pray?”
“I didn’t say you poisoned me; but you made me so uncomfortable that day, bringing down Mrs. Winship’s lecture on my head and getting my best friend abused, that I was glad to get away from the camp, and went out with Jack for that reason when I was too tired and warm; and you are always trying to cut me out with Bell and the boys.”
“That’s a perfectly—jet black—fib!” cried Polly, who was now thoroughly angry; “and I don’t think it is very polite of you to attack the whole party, and say they haven’t been nice to you, when they’ve done everything in the world!”
“It isn’t your party any more than mine, is it? And if I don’t know how to be polite, I certainly shan’t ask you for instruction; for I must know as much about the manners of good society as you do, inasmuch as I have certainly seen more of it!”
Polly sank into a camp-chair, too stunned for a moment to reply, while Laura, who had gone quite beyond the point where she knew or cared what she said, went on with a rush of words: “I mean to tell you, now that I am started, that anybody who isn’t blind can see why you toady to the Winships, who have money and social position, and why you are so anxious to keep everybody else from getting into their good graces; but they are so partial to you that they have given you an entirely false idea of yourself; and you might as well know that unless you keep yourself a little more in the background, and grow a little less bold and affected and independent, other people will not be quite as ready as the Winships to make a pet of a girl whose mother keeps a boarding-house.”
Poor Laura! It was no sooner said than she regretted it—a little, not much. But poor Polly! Where was her good angel then? Why could she not have treated this thrust with the silence and contempt it deserved? But how could Laura have detected and probed the most sensitive spot in the girl’s nature? She lost all command of herself. Her rage absolutely frightened her, for it made her deaf and blind to all considerations of propriety and self-respect, and for a moment she was only conscious of the wild desire to strike—yes, even to kill—the person who had so insulted all that was dearest to her.
“Don’t dare to say another word!” she panted, with such flaming cheeks and such flashing eyes that Laura involuntarily retreated towards the door, half afraid of the tempest her words had evoked. “Don’t dare to say another word, or I don’t know what I may do! Yes, I am glad you are going, and everybody will be glad, and the sooner you go the better! You’ve made everybody miserable ever since you came, with your jealousy and your gossip and your fine-lady airs; and if Aunt Truth hadn’t loved your mother, and if we were mean enough to tell tales, we would have repeated some of your disagreeable speeches long ago. How can you dare to say I love the Winships for anything but themselves? And if you had ever seen my darling mother, you never could have called her a boarding-house keeper, you cruel—”
Oh, but the dashing torrent of angry words stopped at the mere mention of her mother. The word recalled her to herself, but too late. It woke in her memory the clasp of her mother’s arms, the sound of the sweet, tired voice: “Only two of us against the big world, Polly—you and I. Be brave, little daughter, brave and patient.” Oh, how impatient and cowardly she had been! Would she never learn to be good? The better impulses rushed back into her heart, and crowded out the bad ones so quickly that in another moment she would have flung herself at Laura’s feet, and implored her forgiveness merely to gain again her own self-respect and her mother’s approval; but there was no time for repentance (there isn’t sometimes), for the clatter of wheels announced Pancho’s approach with the team, and Mrs. Winship and Anne Burton came into view, walking rapidly towards the tent.
Laura was a good deal disconcerted at their ill-timed appearance, but reflected rapidly that if Mrs. Winship had overheard anything, it was probably Polly’s last speech, in which case that young person would seem to be more in fault than herself, so stepping out of the tent she met Mrs. Winship and kissed her good-bye.
Little Anne ran on and jumped into the wagon, with all a child’s joy at the prospect of going anywhere. Polly’s back was turned, but she could not disappear entirely within the tent without causing Mrs. Winship surprise; and she went through a lifetime of misery and self-reproach in that minute of shame and fear, when she dared neither to advance nor retreat.
“I don’t quite like to let you go alone, Laura, without consulting the doctor, and I can’t find him,” said Mrs. Winship. “Why, you are nervous and trembling! Hadn’t you better wait until to-morrow?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Winship. I am all ready now, and would prefer to go. I think perhaps I have stayed quite long enough, as Polly has just told me that everybody is glad to see the last of me, and that I’ve made you all miserable since I came.”
This was the climax to Polly’s misery; for she was already so overcome by the thought of her rudeness that she was on the point of begging Laura’s pardon for that particular speech then and there, and she had only to hear her exact words repeated to feel how they would sound in Mrs. Winship’s ears.
Mrs. Winship was so entirely taken aback by Laura’s remark, that she could only ejaculate, “Polly—said—that! What do you mean?”
“Oh, I am quite ready to think she said more than she intended, but those were her words.”
“Polly!”
Polly turned. Alas! it was plain enough that this was no false accusation. Her downcast eyes, flushed, tear-stained cheeks, quivering lips, and the silent shame of her whole figure, spoke too clearly.
“Can it be possible, Polly, that you spoke in such a way to a guest who was about to leave my house?”
“Yes.”
The word was wrung from Polly’s trembling lips. What could she say but “Yes,”—it was true,—and how could she repeat the taunts that had provoked her to retort? They were not a sufficient excuse; and for that matter, nothing could be a sufficient excuse for her language. Now that she was confronted with her own fault, Laura’s seemed so small beside it that she would have been ashamed to offer it as any justification.
Mrs. Winship grew pale, and for a moment was quite at a loss as to the treatment of such a situation.
“Don’t say any more about it, Mrs. Winship,” said Laura; “we were both angry, or we should never have forgotten ourselves, and I shall think no more of it.” Laura spoke with such an air of modest virtue, and seemed so ready to forgive and forget, that Polly in her silence and confusion appeared worse than ever.
“But I want you to remember that you are my guest, not Pauline’s; that I asked you to come and ask you to remain. I cannot allow you to go simply because you do not chance to be a favourite with another of my guests.” (Oh! the pang these words gave Polly’s faulty, tender little heart!)
“I am only going because I feel so ill,—not a bit because of what Polly said; I was in the wrong, too, perhaps, but I promise not to let anybody nor anything make me quarrel when I visit you again. Good-bye!” and Laura stepped into the wagon.
“I trust you will not mention this to your mother, since I hope it is the only unpleasant incident of your visit; and it is no fault of mine that you go away with an unhappy impression of our hospitality.” Here Mrs. Winship reached up and kissed little Anne, and as the horses were restive, and no one seemed to have anything further to say, Pancho drove off.
“I don’t care to talk with you any more at present, Polly,” said Mrs. Winship. “I am too hurt and too indignant to speak of your conduct quietly. I know the struggles you have with your temper, and I am quite willing to sympathise with you even when you do not come off victorious; but this is something quite different. I can’t conceive how any amount of provocation or dislike could have led you into such disloyalty to me”; and with this she walked away.
Polly staggered into a little play-room tent of Dicky’s, where she knew that she could be alone, pinned the curtains together so that no one could peep in, and threw herself down upon the long cushioned seat where Dicky was wont to take his afternoon nap. There, in grief and despair, she sobbed the afternoon through, dreading to be disturbed and dreading to be questioned.
“My beautiful birthday spoiled,” she moaned, “and all my own fault! I was so happy this morning, but now was ever anybody so miserable as I? And even if I tell Aunt Truth what Laura said, she will think it no excuse, and it isn’t!”
As it neared supper-time she made an opening in the back of the tent, and after long watching caught sight of Gin on his way to the brook for water, signalled him, and gave him this despairing little note for Mrs. Winship:—
Dear Aunt Truth,—I don’t ask you to forgive me—I don’t deserve to be forgiven—but I ask you to do me just one more of your dear little kindnesses. Let me stay alone in Dicky’s tent till morning, and please don’t let any one come near me. You can tell everybody the whole story to-night, if you think best, though I should be glad if only Dr. Paul and Bell need know; but I do not mind anything after displeasing you—nothing can be so bad as that. Perhaps you think I ought to come out and confess it to them myself, as a punishment; but oh, Aunt Truth, I am punishing myself in here alone worse than any one else can do it. I will go back to Santa Barbara any time that you can send me to the stage station, and I will never ask you to love me again until I have learned how to control my temper.
Your wretched, wretched
Polly.
P.S.—I remember that it is my birthday, and all that you have done for me, to-day and all the other days. It looks as if I were ungrateful, but in spite of what I did I am not. The words just blazed out, and I never knew that they were going to be said till I heard them falling from my mouth. It seems to me that if I ever atone for this I will have a slate and pencil hanging to my belt, and only write what I have to say.
Polly.
The moisture came to Mrs. Winship’s eyes as she read this tear-stained little note. “There’s something here I don’t quite understand,” she thought; “and yet Polly confessed that Laura told the truth. Poor child!—but she has got to learn patience and self-control through suffering. However, I’ll keep the matter a secret from everybody at present, and stand between her and my inquisitive brood of youngsters,” and she slipped the note into her pocket.
At six o’clock the members of the family came into camp from various directions, and gathered about the supper-table. All were surprised at Laura’s sudden departure, but no one seemed especially grief-stricken. Dicky announced confidentially to Philip that Laura was a “norful ’fraid-cat of frogs,” and Jack ventured the opinion that Miss Laura hadn’t “boy” enough in her for camp-life.
“But where is Polly?” asked Bell, looking round the table, as she pinned up her riding-skirt and sat down in her usual seat.
“She has a bad headache, and is lying down,” said Mrs. Winship, quietly; “she’ll be all right in the morning.”
“Headache!” ejaculated four or five people at once, dropping their napkins and looking at each other in dismay.
“I’ll go and rub her head with cologne,” said Margery.
“Let me go and sit with her,” said Elsie.
“Have you been teasing her, Jack?” asked Mrs. Howard.
“Too much birthday?” asked Dr. Paul. “Tell her we can spare almost anybody else better.”
“Bless the child, she wants me if she is sick. Go on with your suppers, I’ll see to her,” and Bell rose from the table.
“No, my dear, I want you all to leave her alone at present,” said Mrs. Winship, decidedly. “I’ve put her to bed in Dicky’s play-tent, and I want her to be quiet. Gin has taken her some supper, and she needs rest.”
Polly Oliver in need of rest! What an incomprehensible statement! Nobody was satisfied, but there was nothing more to be said, though Bell and Philip exchanged glances as much as to say, “Something is wrong.”
Supper ended, and they gathered round the camp-fire, but nothing was quite as usual. It was all very well to crack jokes, but where was a certain merry laugh that was wont to ring out, at the smallest provocation, in such an infectious way that everybody else followed suit? And who was there, when Polly had the headache, to make a saucy speech and look down into the fire innocently, while her dimples did everything that was required in order to point the shaft? And pray what was the use of singing when there was no alto to Bell’s treble, or of giving conundrums, since it was always Polly who thought of nonsensical answers better than the real ones? And as for Jack, why, it was folly to shoot arrows of wit into the air when there was no target. He simply stretched himself out beside Elsie, who was particularly quiet and snoozed peacefully, without taking any part in the conversation, avowing his intention to “turn in” early. “Turn in” early, forsooth! What was the matter with the boy?
“It’s no use,” said Bell, plaintively; “we can’t be anything but happy, now that we have Elsie here; but it needs only one small headache to show that Polly fills a long-felt want in this camp. You think of her as a modest spoke in the wheel till she disappears, and then you find she was the hub.”
“Yes,” said Margery, “I think every one round this fire is simply angelic, unless I except Jack; but the fact is that Polly is—well, she is—Polly, and I dare any one to contradict me.”
“The judgment of the court is confirmed,” said Philip.
“And the shark said, ‘If you
Don’t believe it is true,
Just look at my wisdom tooth!’”
sang Geoffrey.
“And if any one ever tells me again that she has red hair and hasn’t good features, I should just like to show them a picture of her as she was to-day at the dinner-table!” exclaimed Bell.
“As if anybody needed features with those dimples,” added Elsie, “or would mind red hair when it was such pretty hair!”
“I think a report of this conversation would go far towards curing Polly,” said Dr. Winship, with a smile.
“And you say we can’t go in there before we go to bed, mamacita?” whispered Bell in her mother’s ear, as the boys said good-night—and went towards their tent.
“My dear,” she answered decidedly, with a fond kiss for each of the girls, “Polly herself asked me to keep everybody away.”
Polly herself wanted to be alone! Would wonders never cease?
Meanwhile Dicky, who had disappeared for a moment, came back to the fire, his bosom heaving with grief and rage.
“I went to my play-tent,” he sobbed, “and putted my hand underneath the curtain and gave Polly a piece of my supper cake I saved for her—not the frosted part, but the burnt part I couldn’t eat—and she liked it and kissed my hand—and then I fought she was lonesome, and would like to see my littlest frog, and I told her to put out her hand again for a s’prise, and I squeezed him into it tight, so ’t he wouldn’t jump—and she fought it was more cake, and when she found it wasn’t she frew my littlest frog clear away, and it got losted!”
This brought a howl of mirth from everybody, and Dicky was instructed, while being put to bed, not to squeeze little frogs into people’s hands in the dark, as it sometimes affected them unpleasantly.
All this time Polly was lying in the tent, quite exhausted with crying, and made more wretched by every sound of voices wafted towards her. Presently Gin appeared with her night-wrapper and various things for comfort sent her by the girls; and as she wearily undressed herself and prepared for the night, she found three little messages of comfort pinned on the neck and sleeves of her flannel gown, written in such colossal letters that she could easily read them by the moonlight.
On the right sleeve:—
Cheer up! “I will never desert Mr. Micawber!”
Bell.
On the left sleeve:—
Darling Polly,—Get well soon, or we shall all be sick in order to stay with you. Lovingly,
Meg.
P.S.—Jack said you were the life of the camp! What do you think of that??
M.
On the neck:—
Dearest,—You have always called me the Fairy Godmother, and pretended I could see things that other people couldn’t.
The boys (great stupids!) think you have the headache. We girls can all see that you are in trouble, but only the Fairy Godmother knows why; and though she can’t make a beautiful gold coach out of this pumpkin, because there’s something wrong about the pumpkin, yet she will do her best for Cinderella, and pull her out of the ashes somehow.
Elsie.
Polly’s tears fell fast on the dear little notes, which she kissed again and again, and tucked under her pillow to bring her sleep. “Elsie knows something,” she thought, “but how? she knows that I’m in trouble and that I’ve done wrong, or she wouldn’t have said that about not being able to turn a bad pumpkin into a beautiful gold coach; but perhaps she can get Aunt Truth to forgive me and try me again. Unless she can do it, it will never come to pass, for I haven’t the courage to ask her. I would rather run away early in the morning and go home than have her look at me again as she did to-day. Oh! what shall I do?” and Polly went down on her knees beside the rough couch, and sobbed her heart out in a childish prayer for help and comfort. It was just the prayer of a little child telling a sorrowful story; because it is when we are alone and in trouble that the unknown and mysterious God seems to us most like a Father, and we throw ourselves into the arms of His love like helpless children, and tell Him our secret thoughts and griefs.
“Dear Father in heaven,” she sobbed, “don’t forgive me if I ought not to be forgiven, but please make Aunt Truth feel how sorry I am, and show me whether I ought to tell what made me so angry, though it’s no excuse. Bless and keep my darling patient little mother, and help me to grow more like her, and braver and stronger too, so that I can take care of her soon, and she needn’t work hard any longer. Please forgive me for hating some things in my life as much as I do, and I will try and like them better; but I think—yes, I know—that I am full of wicked pride; and oh, it seems as if I could never, never get over wanting to live in a pretty house, and wear pretty dresses, and have my mother live like Bell’s and Margery’s. And oh, if Thou canst only forgive me for hating boarders so dreadfully, and being ashamed of them every minute, I will try and like them better and tell everybody that we take them—I will indeed; and if I can only once make Aunt Truth love and trust me again, I will make the boarders’ beds and dust their rooms for ever without grumbling. Please, dear Father in heaven, remember that I haven’t any father to love me or to teach me to be good; and though mamma does her best, please help her to make something out of me if it can be done. Amen.”
“Truth,” said Mrs. Howard, when all was quiet about the camp, “Elsie wants to see you a moment before she goes to sleep. Will you go to her tent, while I play a game of cribbage with Dr. Paul?”
Elsie looked like a blossom in all the beautiful greenness of her tent, with her yellow head coming out from above the greens and browns of the cretonne bed-cover for all the world like a daffodil pushing its way up through the mould towards the spring sunshine.
“Aunt Truth,” she said softly, as Mrs. Winship sat down beside her, “you remember that Dr. Paul hung my hammock in a new place to-day, just behind the girls’ sleeping-tent. Now I know that Polly is in trouble, and that you are displeased with her. What I want to ask, if I may, is, how much you know; for I overheard a great deal myself—enough to feel that Polly deserves a hearing.”
“I overheard nothing,” replied Mrs. Winship. “All that I know Polly herself confessed in Laura’s presence. Polly told Laura, just as she was going away, that everybody would be glad to see the last of her, and that she had made everybody miserable from the beginning of her visit. It was quite inexcusable, you know, dear, for one of my guests to waylay another, just as she was leaving, and make such a cruel speech. I would rather anything else had happened. I know how impetuous Polly is, and I can forgive the child almost anything, her heart is so full of love and generosity; but I cannot overlook such a breach of propriety as that. Of course I have seen that Laura is not a favourite with any of you. I confess she is not a very lovable person, and I think she has led a very unwholesome life lately and is sadly spoiled by it; still that is no excuse for Polly’s conduct.”
“No, of course it isn’t,” sighed Elsie, with a little quiver of the lip. “I thought I could plead a better case for Polly, but I see exactly how thoughtless and impolite she was; yet, if you knew everything, auntie, dear, you would feel a little different. Do you think it was nice of Laura to repeat what Polly said right before her, and just as she was going away, when she knew it would make you uncomfortable and that you were not to blame for it?”
“No, hardly. It didn’t show much tact; but girls of fifteen or sixteen are not always remarkable for social tact. I excused her partly because she was half-sick and nervous.”
“Well,” Elsie went on, “I didn’t hear the whole quarrel, so that I do not know how long it lasted nor who began it. I can’t help thinking it was Laura, though, for she’s been trying her best to provoke Polly for the last fortnight, and until to-day she has never really succeeded. I was half asleep, and heard at first only the faint murmur of voices, but when I was fully awake, Laura was telling Polly that she doted on you simply because you had money and position, while she had not; that you were all so partial to her that she had lost sight of her own deficiencies. Then she called her bold and affected, and I don’t know what else, and finally wound up by saying that nobody but the Winships would be likely to make a pet of the daughter of a boarding-house keeper.”
“Elsie!” ejaculated Mrs. Winship; “this grows worse and worse! Is it possible that Laura Burton could be guilty of such a thought?”
“I can’t be mistaken. I was too excited not to hear very clearly; and the moment the words were spoken I knew my poor dear’s fiery temper would never endure that. And it didn’t; it blazed out in a second, but it didn’t last long, for before I could get to the tent she had stopped herself right in the middle of a sentence; and in another minute I heard your voice, and crept back to the hammock, thinking that everything would be settled by Laura’s going away. I’d no idea that she would pounce on Polly and get her in disgrace, the very last thing, when she knew that she was responsible for the whole matter. You see, auntie, that, impolite as Polly was, she only told Laura that we girls were glad she was going. She didn’t bring you in, after all; and Laura knew perfectly well that she was a welcome visitor, and we all treated her with the greatest politeness, though it’s no use to say we liked her much.”
“I am very sorry for the whole affair,” sighed Mrs. Winship, “there is so much wrong on both sides. Laura’s remark, it is true, would have angered almost anybody who was not old and wise enough to see that it deserved only contempt; but both the girls should have had too much respect for themselves and for me to descend to such an unladylike quarrel. However, I am only too glad to hear anything which makes Polly’s fault less, for I love her too dearly not to suffer when I have to be severe with her.”
“She wouldn’t ask you to overlook her fault,” continued Elsie, with tears in her eyes. “I know just how wretched and penitent she must be—Polly is always so fierce against her own faults—but what must be making her suffer most is the thought that she has entirely lost your confidence and good opinion. Oh, I can’t help thinking that God feels sorrier this very minute for Polly, who fights and fights against her temper, like a dear sunbeam trying to shine again and again when a cloud keeps covering it up, than He does for Laura, who has everything made smooth for her, and who is unhappy when her feathers are ruffled the least bit.”
“You are right, dear, in so far that a fiery little soul like Polly’s can, if it finds the right channels, do God’s work in the world better than a character like Laura’s, which is not courageous, nor strong, nor sweet enough for great service, unless it grows into better things through bitter or rich experiences. Now, good-night, my blessed little peacemaker; sleep sweetly, for I am going into Polly’s tent to have a good talk with her.”
As Mrs. Winship dropped the curtains of Elsie’s tent behind her, and made her way quietly through the trees, the tinkling sound of a banjo fell upon the still night air; and presently, as she neared Polly’s retreat, this facetious serenade, sung by Jack’s well-known voice, was wafted to her ears:
“Prithee, Polly Oliver, why bide ye so still?
Pretty Polly Oliver, we fear you are ill.
I’m singing ’neath thy window, when night dews are chill,
For, pretty Polly Oliver, we hear you are ill.”
She was about to despatch Master Jack to his tent with a round scolding, when the last words of the song were frozen on his lips by the sound of a smothered sob, in place of the saucy retort he hoped to provoke. The unexpected sob frightened him more than any fusilade of hot words, and he stole away in the darkness more crestfallen than he had been for many a year.
Mrs. Winship, more troubled than ever, pulled apart the canvas curtains, and stood in the opening, silently. The sight of the forlorn little figure, huddled together on the straw bed, touched her heart, and, when Polly started up with an eloquent cry and flew into her extended arms, she granted willing forgiveness, and the history of the afternoon was sobbed out upon her motherly shoulder.
The next morning Mrs. Winship announced that Polly was better, sent breakfast to her tent, and by skilful generalship drove everybody away from the camp but Elsie, who brought Polly to the sitting-room, made her comfortable on the lounge, and, administering much good advice to Margery and Bell concerning topics to be avoided, admitted them one by one into her presence, so that she gradually regained her self-control. And at the dinner-table a very pale Polly was present again, with such a white face and heavy eyes that no one could doubt there had been a headache, while two people, at least, knew that there had been a heartache as well. The next day’s mail carried the following letter to Laura Burton:
Camp Chaparral, August 16, 188—.
My dear Laura,—As I told you when you were leaving, I cannot well say how sorry I am that anything should have occurred to mar your pleasant remembrance of your stay with us. That your dear mother’s daughter should have been treated with discourtesy while she was my guest was very disagreeable to me; but I have learned that you were yourself somewhat to blame in the affair, and therefore you should have borne the harsh treatment you received with considerable patience, and perhaps have kept it quite to yourself. (“That little cat told her, after all,” said Laura, when she read this. “I didn’t think she was that kind.”) Polly would never have confessed the cause of the quarrel, because she knew nothing could justify her language; but Elsie was lying in the hammock behind the tent and overheard the remark which so roused Polly’s anger. You were not aware, of course, how sore a spot you touched upon, or you could never have spoken as you did, though I well know that you were both too angry to reflect. Polly is a peculiarly proud and high-spirited girl—proud, I confess, to a fault; but she comes, on her mother’s side, from a long line of people who have had much to be proud of in the way of unblemished honesty, nobility, fine attainments, and splendid achievements. Of her father’s honourable services to his country, and his sad and untimely death, you may have heard; but you may not know that Mrs. Oliver’s misfortunes have been very many and very bitter, and that the only possibility of supporting and educating Polly lies at present in her taking boarders, for her health will not admit just now of her living anywhere save in Southern California. I fail to see why this is not thoroughly praiseworthy and respectable; but if you do not consider it quite an elegant occupation, I can only say that Mrs. Oliver presides over the table at which her “boarders” sit with a high-bred dignity and grace of manner that the highest lady in the land might imitate; and that, when health and circumstances permit her to diminish the distance between herself and the great world, she and her daughter Polly, by reason of their birth and their culture, will find doors swinging wide to admit them where you and I would find it difficult to enter. Polly apologises sincerely for her rudeness, and will write you to that effect, as of course she does not know of this letter.
Sincerely your friend,
Truth Winship.
CHAPTER IX
ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE
“The time before the fire they sat,
And shortened the delay by pleasing chat.”
The August days had slipped away one after another, and September was at hand. There was no perceptible change of weather to mark the advent of the new month. The hills were a little browner, the dust a little deeper, the fleas a little nimbler, and the water in the brook a trifle lower, but otherwise Dame Nature did not concern herself with the change of seasons, inasmuch as she had no old dresses to get rid of, and no new ones to put on for a long time yet; indeed, she is never very fashionable in this locality, and wears very much the same garments throughout the year.
Elsie seemed almost as strong as any of the other girls now, and could enter with zest into all their amusements. The appetite of a young bear, the sound, dreamless sleep of a baby, and the constant breathing in of the pure, life-giving air had made her a new creature. Mrs. Howard and Jack felt, day by day, that a burden of dread was being lifted from their hearts; and Mrs. Howard especially felt that she loved every rock and tree in the cañon.
It was a charming morning, and Polly was seated at the dining-room table, deep in the preparation of a lesson in reading and pronunciation for Hop Yet. Her forehead was creased with many wrinkles of thought, and she bit the end of her lead-pencil as if she were engaged in solving some difficult problem; but, if that were so, why did the dimples chase each other in and out of her cheeks in such a suspicious fashion? She was a very gentle, a very sedate Polly, these latter days, and not only astonished her friends, but surprised herself, by her good behaviour, her elegant reserve of manner, her patience with Jack, and her abject devotion to Dicky.
“I’m afraid it won’t last,” she sighed to herself occasionally. “I’m almost too good. That’s always the way with me—I must either be so bad that everybody is discouraged, or else so good that I frighten them. Now I catch Bell and Elsie exchanging glances every day, as much as to say, ‘Poor Polly, she will never hold out at this rate; do you notice that nothing ruffles her—that she is simply angelic?’ As if I couldn’t be angelic for a fortnight! Why I have often done it for four weeks at a stretch!”
Margery was in the habit of giving Hop Yet an English lesson every other day, as he had been very loath to leave his evening school in Santa Barbara and bury himself in a cañon, away from all educational influences; but she had deserted her post for once and gone to ride with Elsie, so that Polly had taken her place and was evolving an exercise that Hop Yet would remember to the latest day of his life. It looked simple enough:—
1. The grass is dry.
2. The fruit is ripe.
3: The chaparral is green.
4. The new road is all right.
5. The bay-“rum” tree is fresh and pretty.
But as no Chinaman can pronounce the letter “r,” it was laboriously rendered thus, when the unhappy time of the lesson came:
1. The-glass-is-dly.
2. The-fluit-is-lipe.
3. The-chap-lal-is-gleen.
4. The-new-load-is-all-light-ee.
5. The bay-lum-tlee-is-flesh-and-plitty.
Finally, when she attempted to introduce the sentence, “Around the rough and rugged rock the ragged rascal ran,” Hop Yet rose hurriedly, remarking, “All lightee; I go no more school jus’ now. I lun get lunchee.”
Bell came running down the path just then, and linking her arm in Polly’s said, “Papa has the nicest plan. You know the boys are so disappointed that Colonel Jackson didn’t ask them over to that rodeo at his cattle ranch—though a summer rodeo is only to sort out fat cattle to sell, and it is not very exciting; but papa promised to tell them all about the old-fashioned kind some night, and he has just remembered that to-morrow is Admission Day, September 9, so he proposes a real celebration round the camp-fire to amuse Elsie. She doesn’t know anything about California even as it is now, and none of us know what it was in the old days. Don’t you think it will be fun?”
“Perfectly splendid!”
“And papa wants us each to contribute something.”
“A picnic!—but I don’t know anything.”
“That’s just what I’m coming to. I have such a bright idea. He said that we might look in any of his books, but Geoff and Jack are at them already, and I’d like a surprise. Now Juan Capistrano, an old vaquero of Colonel Jackson’s, is over here. He is a wonderful rider; papa says that he could ride on a comet, if he could get a chance to mount. It was he who told the boys that the rodeo was over. Now I propose that we go and interview Pancho and Juan, and get them to tell us some old California stories. They are both as stupid as they can be, but they must have had some adventures, I suppose, somewhere, sometime. I’ll translate and write the things down, for my part, and you and Margery can tell them.”
“Lovely! Oh, if we can only get an exciting grizzly story, so that
Every one’s blood upon end it will stand,
And the hair run cold in their veins!
And was Dr. Paul out here when California was admitted into the Union—1850, wasn’t it?”
“Of course; why, my child, he was one of the delegates called by General Riley, the military governor, to meet in convention at Monterey and make a State constitution. That was September, too—the first day of September 1849. He went back to the East some time afterwards, and stayed ten or fifteen years; but he was a real pioneer and ‘forty-niner’ all the same.
The next night, September 9th, was so cool that the camp-fire was more than ordinarily delightful; accordingly they piled on more wood than usual, and prepared for a grand blaze. It was always built directly in front of the sitting-room tent, so that Mrs. Howard and Mrs. Winship could sit there if they liked; but the young people preferred to lie lazily on their cushions and saddles under the oak-tree, a little distance from the blaze. The clear, red firelight danced and flickered, and the sparks rose into the sombre darkness fantastically, while the ruddy glow made the great oak an enchanted palace, into whose hollow dome they never tired of gazing. When the light streamed highest, the bronze green of the foliage was turned into crimson, and, as it died now and then, the stars winked brightly through the thousand tiny windows formed by the interlacing branches.
“Well,” said the doctor, bringing his Chinese lounging-chair into the circle, and lighting his pipe so as to be thoroughly happy and comfortable, “will you banish distinctions of age and allow me to sit among you this evening?”
“Certainly,” Margery said; “that’s the very point of the celebration. This is Admission Day, you know, and why shouldn’t we admit you?”
“True; and having put myself into a holiday humour by dining off Pancho’s dish of guisado (I suppose to-night of all nights we must call beef and onion stew by its local name), I will proceed to business, and we will talk about California. By the way, I shall only conduct the exercises, for I feel rather embarrassed by the fact that I’ve never killed, or been killed by, a bear, never been bitten by a tarantula, poisoned by a rattlesnake, assaulted by a stage-robber, nor anything of that sort. You have all read my story of crossing the plains. I even did that in a comparatively easy and unheroic fashion. I only wish, my dear girls and boys, that we had with us some one of the brave and energetic men and women who made that terrible journey at the risk of their lives. The history of the California Crusaders, the thirty thousand or more emigrants who crossed the plains in ’48, more than equals the great military expeditions of the Middle Ages, in magnitude, peril, and adventure. Some went by way of Santa Fé and along the hills of the Gila; others, starting from Red River, traversed the Great Stake Desert and went from El Paso del Norte to Sonora; others went through Mexico, and, after spending over a hundred days at sea, ran into San Diego and gave up their vessels; others landed exhausted with their seven months’ passage round the Horn; and some reached the spot on foot after walking the whole length of the California peninsula.”
“What privations they must have suffered!” said Mrs. Howard. “I never quite realised it.”
“Why, the amount of suffering that was endured in those mountain passes and deserts can never be told in words. Those who went by the Great Desert west of the Colorado found a stretch of burning salt plains, of shifting hills of sand, with bones of animals and men scattered along the trails; of terrible and ghastly odours rising in the hot air from the bodies of hundreds of mules, and human creatures too, that lay half-buried in the glaring white sand. A terrible journey indeed; but if any State in the Union could be fair enough, fertile enough, and rich enough to repay such a lavish expenditure of energy and suffering, California certainly was and is the one. Now who can tell us something of the name ‘California’? You, Geoffrey?”
“Geoffrey has crammed!” exclaimed Bell, maliciously. “I believe he’s been reading up all day and told papa what question to ask him!”
“I’ll pass it on to you if you like,” laughed Geoffrey.
“No—you’d never get another that you could answer! Go on!”
“In 1534, one Hernando de Grijalva was sent by Hernando Cortez to discover something or other, and it was probably he who then saw the peninsula of California; but a quarter of a century before this a romance called Esplandian had appeared in Spain, narrating the adventures of an Amazonian queen who brought allies from ‘the right hand of the Indies’ to assist the infidels in their attack upon Constantinople—by the way I forgot to say that she was a pagan. This queen of the Amazons was called Calafia, and her kingdom, rich in gold and precious stones, was named California. The writer of the romance derived this name, perhaps, from Calif, a successor of Mohammed. He says: ‘Know that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island named California, very close to the Terrestial Paradise, and it was peopled by black women without any man among them, for they lived in the fashion of the Amazonia. They were of strong and hardy bodies, of ardent courage, and of great force. Their island was the strongest in all the world, with its steep cliffs and rocky shore. Their arms were all of gold, and so was the harness of the wild beasts which they tamed and rode. For in the whole island there was no metal but gold. They lived in caves wrought out of the rocks with much labour, and they had many ships with which they sailed out to other countries to obtain booty.’ Cortez and Grijalva believed that they were near the coast of Asia, for they had no conception of the size of the world nor of the vastness of the Pacific Ocean; and as the newly-discovered land corresponded with the country described in the romance, they named the peninsula California.”
“My book,” said Philip, “declared that the derivation of the name was very uncertain, and that it was first bestowed on one of the coast bays by Bernal Diaz.”
“Now, Philip!” exclaimed Margery, “do you suppose we are going to believe that, after Geoff’s lovely story?”
“Certainly not; I only thought I’d permit you to hear both sides. I knew of course that you would believe the prettier story of the two—girls always do!”
“That isn’t a ‘pretty story’—your remark, I mean, so we won’t believe it; will we, girls?” asked Bell.
“Now, Polly, your eyes sparkle as if you couldn’t wait another minute; your turn next,” said Dr. Winship.
“I am only afraid that I can’t remember my contribution, which is really Bell’s and still more really Pancho’s, for he told it to us, and Bell translated it and made it into a story. We call it ‘Valerio; or, The Mysterious Mountain Cave.’”
“Begins well!” exclaimed Jack.
“Now, Jack, you must be nice. Remember this is Bell’s story, and she is letting me tell it so that I can bear my share in the entertainment.”
“Pancho believes every word of it,” added Bell, “and says that his father told it to him; but as I had to change it from bad Spanish into good English, I don’t know whether I’ve caught the idea exactly.”
“Oh, it will do quite nicely, I’ve no doubt,” said Jack, encouragingly. “We’ve often heard you do good English into bad Spanish, and turn and turn about is only fair play. Don’t mind me, Polly; I will be gentle!”
“Jack, if you don’t behave yourself I’ll send you to bed,” said Elsie; and he ducked his head obediently into her lap, as Polly, with her hands clasping her knees, and with the firelight dancing over her bright face, leaned forward and told the Legend of
VALERIO; OR, THE MYSTERIOUS MOUNTAIN CAVE.
“A long time ago, before the settlement of Santa Barbara by the whites, the Mission padres had a great many Indians under their control, who were known as peons, or serfs. They were given enough to eat, were not molested by the outside Indians, and were entirely peaceable. There were so few mountain passes by which to enter Santa Barbara that they were easily held, and of course the padres were anxious to keep their Indians from running away, lest they should show the wilder tribes the way to get in and commit depredations. These peaceable Indians paid tribute to intermediary tribes to hold the passes and do their fighting. Those about the Mission gave corn and cereals and hides and the products of the sea, and got in exchange piñones (pine nuts). One of these Indians, named Valerio, was a strong, brave, handsome youth, whose haughty spirit revolted at his servitude, and, after seeking an opportunity for many weeks he finally escaped to the Santa Ynez mountains, where he found a cave in which he hid himself, drawing himself up by a rope and taking it in after him. The Indians had unlimited belief in Valerio’s mysterious and wonderful powers. Pancho says that he could make himself invisible at will, that locks and keys were powerless against him; and that no one could hinder his taking money, horses, or food. All sorts of things disappeared mysteriously by day and by night, and the robberies were one and all laid to the door of Valerio. But after a while Valerio grew lonely in his mountain retreat. He longed for human companionship, and at length, becoming desperate, he descended on the Mission settlement and kidnapped a young Indian boy named Chito, took him to his cave, and admitted him into his wild and lawless life. But Chito was not contented. He liked home and comfortable slavery better than the new, strange life; so he seized the first opportunity, and being a bright, daring little lad, and fleet of foot, he escaped and made his way to the Mission. Arriving there he told wonderful stories of Valerio and his life; how his marvellous white mare seemed to fly, rather than gallop, and leaped from rock to rock like a chamois; and how they lived upon wheat-bread, cheeses, wine, and other delicacies instead of the coarse fare of the Indians. He told them the location of the cave and described the way thither; so the Alcalde (he was the mayor or judge, you know, Elsie), got out the troops with their muskets, and the padres gathered the Mission Indians with their bows and arrows, and they all started in pursuit of the outlaw. Among the troops were two hechiceros (wizards or medicine-men), whose bowed shoulders and grizzled beards showed them to be men of many years and much wisdom. When asked to give their advice, they declared that Valerio could not be killed by any ordinary weapons, but that special means must be used to be of any avail against his supernatural powers. Accordingly, one of the hechiceros broke off the head of his arrow, cast a charm over it, and predicted that this would deal the fatal blow. The party started out with Chito as a guide, and, after many miles of wearisome travel up rugged mountain sides and over steep and almost impassable mountain trails, they paused at the base of a cliff, and saw, far up the height, the mouth of Valerio’s cave, and, what was more, Valerio himself sitting in the doorway fast asleep. Alas! he had been drinking too heavily of his stolen wine, or he would never have so exposed himself to the enemy. They fired a volley at him. One shot only took effect, and even this would not have been possible save that the spell was not upon him because of his sleep; but the one shot woke him and, half rising, he staggered and fell from the mouth of the cave to a ledge of rocks beneath. He sprang to his feet in a second and ran like a deer towards a tree where his white mare was fastened. They fired another volley, but, though the shots flew in every direction, Valerio passed on unharmed; but just as he was disappearing from view the hechicero raised his bow and the headless arrow whizzed through space and pierced him through the heart. They clambered up the cliffs with shouts of triumph and surrounded him on every side, but poor Valerio had surrendered to a more powerful enemy than they! Wonderful to relate, he still breathed, though the wound should have been instantly fatal. They lifted him from the ground and tied him on his snow-white mare, his long hair reaching almost to the ground, his handsome face as pale as death, the blood trickling from his wound; but the mysterious power that he possessed seemed to keep him alive in spite of his suffering. Finally one of the hechiceros decided that the spell lay in the buckskin cord that he wore about his throat—a rough sort of necklace hung with bears’ claws and snake rattles—and that he never would die until the magic cord was cut. This, after some consultation, was done. Valerio drew his last breath as it parted asunder, and they bore his dead body home in triumph to the Mission.
“But he is not forgotten. Stories are still told of his wonderful deeds, and people still go in search of money that he is supposed to have hidden in his cave. The Mexican women who tell suertes, or fortunes, describe the location of the money; but, as soon as any one reaches the cave, he is warned away by a little old man who stands in the door and protects the buried treasure. An Indian lad, who was riding over the hills one day with his horse and his dogs, dismounted to search for his moccasin, when he suddenly noticed that the dogs had chased something into a cave in the rocks. He followed, and, peering into the darkness, saw two gleaming eyes. He thrust his knife between them, but struck the air; and, though he had been standing directly in front of the opening, so that nothing could have passed him, yet he heard the clatter of hoofs and the tinkle of spurs, and, turning, saw a mysterious horseman, whose pale face and streaming hair melted into the mountain mist, as it floated down from the purple Santa Ynez peaks into the lap of the vine-covered foot-hills below.”
CHAPTER X
MORE CAMP-FIRE STORIES
“And still they watched the flickering of the blaze,
And talked together of the good old days.”
“Brava!” “Bravissima!” “Splendid, Polly!” exclaimed the boys. “Bell, you’re a great author!”
“Couldn’t have done better myself—give you my word!” cried Jack, bowing profoundly to Bell and Polly in turn, and presenting them with bouquets of faded leaves hastily gathered from the ground.
“Polly covered herself with glory,” said the doctor; “and I am very proud of your part in it, too, my little daughter. I have some knowledge of Pancho’s capabilities as a narrator, and I think the ‘Story of Valerio’ owes a good deal to you. Now, who comes next? Margery?”
“No, please,” said Margery, “for I have another story. Take one of the boys, and let’s have more facts.”
“Yes, something historic and profound, out of the encyclopædia, from Jack,” said Polly, saucily.
“Thanks, Miss Oliver. With you for an audience any man might be inspired; but—”
“But not a boy?”
“Mother, dear, remove that child from my sight, or I shall certainly shake her! Phil, go on, just to keep Polly quiet.”
“Very well. Being the oldest Californian present, I—”
“What about Dr. Paul?” asked the irrepressible Polly.
“He wasn’t born here,” responded Philip, dryly, “and I was.”
“I think that’s a quibble,” interrupted Bell. “Papa was here twenty years before you were.”
“It’s not my fault that he came first,” answered Philip. “Margery and I are not only the oldest Californians present, but the only ones. Isn’t that so, sir?”
“Quite correct.”
“Oh, if you mean that way, I suppose you are; but still papa helped frame the Constitution, and was here on the first Admission Day, and was one of the Vigilantes—and I think that makes him more of a real Californian than you. You’ve just ‘grown up with the country.’”
“Bless my soul! What else could I do? I would have been glad to frame the Constitution, admit the State, and serve on the Vigilance Committee, if they had only waited for me; but they went straight ahead with the business, and when I was born there was nothing to do but stand round and criticise what they had done, or, as you express it, ‘grow up with the country.’ Well, as I was saying when I was interrupted—”
“Beg pardon.”
“Don’t mention it. Uncle Doc has asked me to tell Mrs. Howard and Elsie how they carried on the rodeos ten or fifteen years ago. Of course I was only a little chap”—(“Very little,” murmured his sister)—“but never too small to stick on a horse, and my father used often to take me along. The rodeos nowadays are neither as great occasions, nor as exciting ones, as they used to be; but this is the way a rodeo is managed. When the spring rains are mostly over, and the grass is fine,—say in April—the ranchero of a certain ranch sends word to all his neighbours that he will hold a rodeo on a certain day or days. Of course the cattle used to stray all over the country, and get badly mixed, as there were no fences; so the rodeo was held for the purpose of separating the cattle and branding the calves that had never been marked.
“The owners of the various ranches assemble the night before, bringing their vaqueros with them. They start out very early in the morning, having had a cup of coffee, and ride to the ‘rodeo-ground,’ which is any flat, convenient place where cañons converge. Many of the cattle on the hills round about know the place, having been there before, and the vaqueros start after them and drive them to the spot.”
“How many vaqueros would there be?” asked Elsie.
“Oh, nine or ten, perhaps; and often from one thousand to three thousand cattle—it depends on the number of ranches and cattle represented. Some of the vaqueros form a circle round the cattle that they have driven to the rodeo-ground, and hold them there while others go back to the ranch for breakfast and fresh horses.”
“Fresh horses so soon?” said Mrs. Howard. “I thought the mustangs were tough, hardy little beasts, that would go all day without dropping.”
“Yes, so they are; but you always have to begin to ‘part out’ the cattle with the freshest and best-trained horses you have. The owners and their best vaqueros now go into the immense band of cattle, and try to get the cows and the unbranded calves separated from the rest. You can imagine what skilful engineering this takes, even though you never saw it. Two work together; they start a certain cow and calf and work them through the band of cattle until they near the outside, and then ‘rush’ them to a place three or four hundred yards beyond, where other vaqueros are stationed to receive and hold them. Of course the cattle don’t want to leave the band, and of course they don’t want to stay in the spot to which they are driven.”
“I don’t blame them!” cried Bell impetuously. “Probably the cows remember the time when they were branded themselves, and they don’t want their dear little bossies put through the same operation.”
“Very likely. Then more cows and calves are started in the same way; the greatest difficulty being had with the first lot, for the cattle always stay more contentedly together as the group grows larger. Occasionally one ‘breaks’ and runs off on the hills, and a vaquero starts after him, throws the reata and lassos him, or ‘lass’s’ him, as the California boys say.”
“There must be frightful accidents,” said Mrs. Winship.
“Yes; but not so many as you would suppose, for the horsemanship, in its particular way, is something wonderful. When an ugly steer is lassoed and he feels the reata or lariat round his neck, he sometimes turns and ‘makes’ for the horse, and unless the vaquero is particularly skilful he will be gored and his horse too; but he gives a dexterous turn to the lariat, the animal steps over it, gets tangled and thrown. Frequently an animal breaks a horn or a leg. Sometimes one fall is not enough; the steer jumps up and pursues the horse. Then the vaquero keeps a little ahead of him and leads him back to the rodeo-ground, where another vaquero lassos him by the hind legs and throws him, while the reata is taken off his neck.”
“There is another danger, too,” added Dr. Winship. “The vaquero winds the reata very tightly round the pommel of his saddle to hold the steer, and he is likely to have his finger caught in the hair-rope and cut off.”
“Yes, I forgot that. Two or three of the famous old vaqueros about Santa Barbara—José María, José Antonio, and old Clemente—have each lost a finger. Well, the vaqueros at length form in a circle round the band of selected cattle. The ranch owner who gives the rodeo takes his own cattle that he has found—the ones bearing his brand, you know—and drives them in with the ones to be branded, leaving in the rodeo-ground the cattle bearing the brands of all the other rancheros. There has been much drinking of aguardiente (brandy) and everybody by this time is pretty reckless. Then they drive this selected band to the home corral, the vaqueros yelling, the cattle ‘calling,’ and the reatas whizzing and whistling through the air. If any unfortunate tries to escape his fate he is pursued, ‘lass’d,’ and brought back. By this time the cattle are pretty well heated and angry, and when they get into the crowded corral they horn each other and try to gore the horses. A fire is then built in one corner of the corral and the branding-irons are heated.”
“Oh! hold my hand, Polly, if the branding is going to begin, I hate it so,” exclaimed Elsie.
“I won’t say much about it, but it’s no worse than a thousand things that people have to bear every year of their lives. Animals never have to have teeth filled, for instance, nor limbs amputated—”
“Oh, just think of a calf with a wooden leg, or a cow with false teeth! Wouldn’t it be funny?” laughed Bell.
“They don’t have a thousand ills that human flesh is heir to, so they must be thankful they get off so easy. Well! the branding-irons are heated, as I say—each cattle-owner having his special brand, which is properly recorded, and which may be any device not previously used. Two men now catch the calves; one lassoing them by the head, the other by the legs. A third man takes the iron from the fire and brands the chosen letter or hieroglyphic on the animal’s hind quarter.”
“Sometimes on the fore quarter, don’t they?” asked Bell. “I’ve seen brands there,—your horse has two, and our cow has one also.”
“Yes, a brand on the fore quarter shows that the animal has been sold, but it always has the original brand on the hind quarter. When a sale is effected, the new brand is put anywhere in front of the fifth rib, and this constitutes what they call a venta, or sale. If you notice some of the little ‘plugs’ ridden by Santa Barbara boys, you’ll see that they bear half a dozen brands. By the way, if the rodeo has been a very large one, they are several days branding the cattle, so they are turned out to pastorear a little while each day.”
“The brand was absolute sign of ownership, you know, girls,” said Dr. Winship; “and though there was the greatest care exercised in choosing and recording the brands, there was plenty of opportunity for cheating. For instance, a man would often see unbranded cattle when riding about, and there was nothing to prevent his dismounting, building a fire, heating his iron, and putting his own brand on them. Then, at the next rodeo, they were simply turned over to him, for, as I say, the brand was absolute ownership.”
“Whene’er I take my rides abroad,
How many calves I see;
And, as I brand them properly,
They all belong to me,”
said Bell.
“How I should like to see a rodeo!” sighed Elsie. “I can’t imagine how the vaqueros can fling the reata while they are riding at full speed.”
“It isn’t so very wonderful,” said Polly, nonchalantly; “the most ordinary people can learn it; why! your brother Jack can lasso almost as well as a Mexican.”
“And I can ‘lass’ any stationary object myself,” cried Bell; “a hitching-post, or even a door-knob; I can do it two or three times out of ten.”
“That shows immense skill,” answered Jack, “but, as the thing you want to ‘lass’ never does stay still, and as it is absolutely necessary to catch it more than three times out of ten, you probably wouldn’t make a name and fortune as a vaquero. Juan Capistrano, by the way, used to be famous with the lariat. I had heard of his adventure with a bull on the island of Santa Rosa, and I asked him about it to-day; but he had so exhausted himself telling stories to Bell that he had very few words for me. You see there was a bull, on Santa Rosa island, so wild that they wanted to kill him; but nobody could do it, though he was a terror to any one who ventured on the island. They called him ‘Antiguelo,’ because of his long horns and long tail. He was such a terrible fighter that all the vaqueros were afraid to lass’ him, for he always broke away with the lariat. You see a horse throws a bull by skill and not by strength, of course. You can choke almost any bull; but this one was too smart! he would crouch on his haunches and pull back until the rope nearly choked him and then suddenly ‘make’ for the horse. Juan Capistrano had a splendid horse—you see as much depends on the horse as the man in such a case—and he came upon Antiguelo on the Cerro Negro and lass’d him. Well, did he fight? I asked. ‘Si, Señor.’ Well, what happened? ‘Yo lo maté’ (I killed him), he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, and that’s all I could get out of Juan regarding his adventure.”
“But you haven’t done your share, you lazy boy,” objected Bell. “You must tell us more.”
“What do you want to hear? I am up on all the animal and vegetable life of Southern California, full of interesting information concerning its old customs, can give you Spanish names for all the things that come up in ordinary conversation, and am the only man present who can make a raw-hide reata,” said Jack, modestly.
“Go on and tell us how, O great and wise reatero,” said Bell.
“I’ll tell you that myself,” said Elsie, “for I’ve seen him do it dozens of times, when he should have been studying his little lessons. He takes a big piece of raw hide, cuts a circle right out of the middle, and then cuts round and round this until he has one long continuous string, half an inch wide. He then stretches it and scrapes the hair off with a knife or a piece of glass, gets it into four strands, and braids it ‘round.’”
“Perhaps you think braiding ‘round’ is easy to do,” retorted Jack, in an injured tone; “but I know it took me six months to learn to do it well.”
“I fail to see,” said his mother, “how a knowledge of ‘braiding round’ and lassoing of wild cattle is going to serve you in your university life and future career.”
“Oh yes, it will. I shall be the Buffalo Bill of Harvard, and I shall give charming little entertainments in my rooms, or in some little garden-plot suitable to the purpose.”
“Shall you make a point of keeping up with your class?” asked Mrs. Winship.
“Oh yes, unless they go too fast. My sports won’t take any more time than rowing or baseball. They’ll be a little more expensive, because I’ll have to keep some wild cattle constantly on hand, and perhaps a vaquero or two; but a vaquero won’t cost any more than a valet.”
“I didn’t intend furnishing you with a valet,” remarked his mother.
“But I shall be self-supporting, mother dear. I shall give exhibitions on the campus, and the gate-money will keep me in luxury.”
“This is all very interesting,” said Polly, cuttingly; “but what has it to do with California, I’d like to know?”
“Poor dear! Your brain is so weak. Can’t you see that when I am the fashion in Cambridge, it will be noised about that I gained my marvellous skill in California? This will increase emigration. I don’t pretend to say it will swell the population like the discovery of gold in ’48, but it will have a perceptible effect.”
“You are more modest than a whole mossy bank of violets,” laughed Dr. Paul. “Now, Margery, will you give us your legend?”
“Mine is the story of Juan de Dios (literally, Juan of God), and I’m sorry to say that it has a horse in it, like Polly’s; only hers was a snow-white mare, and mine is a coal-black charger. But they wouldn’t tell us any romantic love-stories; they were all about horses.”
STORY OF JUAN DE DIOS.
“In early days, when Americans were coming in to Santa Barbara, there were many cattle-buyers among them; and there were large bands of robbers all over the country who were ready to pounce on these travellers on their way to the great cattle ranchos, kill them, and steal their money and clothes, as well as their horses and trappings. No one could understand how the robbers got such accurate information of the movements of the travellers, unless they had a spy somewhere near the Mission, where they often stopped for rest and refreshment.
“Now, there was a certain young Indian vaquero in the employ of the padres at La Mission de la Purísima. He was a wonderful horseman, and greatly looked up to by his brother vaqueros, because he was so strong, alert, and handsome, and because he was always dressed elegantly in rich old Spanish embroideries and velvets, given to him, he said, by men for whom he had done great services.
“One day a certain traveller, a Spanish official of high degree, came from Monterey to wed his sweetheart, the daughter of the richest cattle-owner in all the country round. His spurs and bit and bridle were of solid silver; his jaquima (halter) was made of a hair rope whose strands had been dyed in brilliant colours; his tapaderos (front of the stirrups), mochilas (large leather saddle flaps), and sudaderos (thin bits of leather to protect the legs from sweat), were all beautifully stamped in the fashion used by the Mexicans; his saddle blankets and his housings were all superb, and he wore a broad sombrero encircled with a silver snake and trimmed with silver lace.
“The traveller stayed at La Purísima all night, and set out early in the morning to ride the last forty miles that separated him from his bride. But Juan and two other robbers were lying in wait for him behind a great rock that stood at the entrance of a lonely cañon. They appeared on horseback, one behind the unfortunate man and two in front, so that he could escape neither way. They finally succeeded in lassoing the horse and throwing him to the ground with his rider, who defended himself bravely with his knife, but was finally killed and robbed, Juan taking his clothes and trappings, and the other two dividing the contents of his purse. They could not have buried their victim as successfully as usual, or else they were surprised, and had to escape, for the body was found; and Juan, whom the padres had begun to view with suspicion, was nowhere to be found about the Mission. Troops were sent out in pursuit of him, for this particular traveller was a high official, and it was necessary that his death should be avenged. They at last heard that Juan had been seen going towards Santa Ynez Mission, and, pursuing him thither, they came upon him as he was driving a band of horses into a corral, and just in the act of catching his own horse, a noble and powerful animal, called Azabache, because of his jet-black colour. The men surrounded the corral, and ordered him to surrender. He begged them to wait until he had saddled Azabache, and then they might shoot them both down together. He asked permission to call three times (pegar tres gritos), and after the third call they were to shoot. His last wish was granted. He saddled and mounted his splendid horse, called once—twice—thrice,—but when the last shout faded in the air, and the troops raised their muskets to fire, behold, there was no Juan de Dios to be seen. They had been surrounding the corral so that no one could have ridden out; they looked among the horses, but Asabache was nowhere to be found.
“Just then a joyous shout was heard, so ringing and triumphant that every man turned in the direction from which it came. There, galloping up the hillside, nearly half a mile distant, was Juan de Dios, mounted on his coal-black Azabache! But it was no common sunshine that deepened the gorgeous colours of his trappings and danced upon his silver spurs till they glistened like two great stars! It was a broad, glittering stream of light such as no mortal had ever seen before and which almost blinded the eyes; and over this radiant path of golden sunbeams galloped Juan de Dios, until he disappeared over the crest of the mountain. Then the light faded; the padres crossed themselves in silence and went home to their Mission! and Juan de Dios never was heard of more.”
Modest little Margery was hailed with such cheers that you could not have seen her cheeks for the blushes; and, just as the party began to think of forsaking the fascinating camp-fire for bed, Bell jumped up impetuously and cried, “Here, Philip, give me the castanets, please. Polly and Jack, you play ‘Las Palomas’ for me, and I’ll sing and show you the dance of that pretty Mexican girl whom I saw at the ball given under the Big Grape Vine. Wait till I take off my hair ribbon. Lend me your scarf, mamma. Now begin!”
LAS PALOMAS. [[266a]]
(THE DOVES.)
It is barely possible, but not likely, that anything prettier than Bell’s Mexican danza was to be seen under the light of the September stars that night; although they were doubtless shining down upon a thousand lovely things. With all the brightness of her loosened hair rising and falling with the motion of her swaying figure—with her twinkling feet, her crimson cheeks and parted lips, she looked the very spirit of the dance, and her enraptured audience only allowed her to stop when she was absolutely breathless.
“Oh what a beautiful evening!” exclaimed Elsie, when the celebration was finally over. “Was there ever such a dear, dear cañon with such dear people in it! If it only wouldn’t rain and we could live here for ever!”
“Rain, rain, stay away!
Come again another day,
Little Elsie wants to play,”
recited Polly, and then everybody went to their straw beds.
CHAPTER XI
BREAKING CAMP
“The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks and gapes for drink again;
The plants suck in the earth and are,
With constant drinking, fresh and fair.”
But it did rain; and it didn’t wait until they were out of the cañon either. It began long before the proper time, and it by no means confined itself to a shower, but opened the winter season fully a month before there was any need of it, and behaved altogether in a most heartless and inconsiderate manner, like a very spoil-sport of a rain.
It began after dark, so as to be just as disagreeable as possible, and under the too slight cover of their tents the campers could hear the rush and the roar of it like the tramping of myriad feet on the leaves. Pancho and the two Chinamen huddled under the broad sycamores in their rubber blankets, and were dry and comfortable; but all the waterproof tents leaked, save Elsie’s.
But when it was dawn, the Sun, having heard nothing apparently of any projected change in the weather, rose at the usual time in the most resplendent fashion—brighter, rosier, and more gloriously, if you will believe me, than he had risen that whole long sunshiny summer! And he really must have felt paid for getting up at such an unearthly hour in the morning, when, after he had clambered over the grey mountain peaks, he looked down upon Las Flores Cañon, bathed in the light of his own golden beams.
If he knew anything about Ancient History and Biblical Geography—and if he didn’t I don’t know who should, inasmuch as he had been present from the beginning of time—he must have thought it as fair as the Garden of Eden; for Nature’s face simply shone with cleanliness, like that of a smiling child just fresh from its bath, and every leaf of every tree glistened as he beamed upon it, and shook off its crystal drops that he might turn them into diamonds.
“It was only a shower,” said Dr. Winship, as he seated himself on a damp board and partook of a moist breakfast, “and with this sun the tents will be dry before night; Elsie has caught no cold, the dust will be laid, and we can stay another week with safety.”
Everybody was hilarious over this decision save the men-of-all-work, who longed unspeakably for a less poetic existence—Hop Yet particularly, who thought camping out “not muchee good.”
Dicky was more pleased than anybody, perhaps, as every day in the cañon was one day less in school; not that he had ever been to school, but he knew in advance, instinctively, that it wouldn’t suit him. Accordingly, he sought the wettest possible places and played all day with superhuman energy. He finally found Hop Yet’s box of blueing under a tree, in a very moist and attractive state of fluidity, and just before dinner improved the last shining hour by painting himself a brilliant hue and appearing at dinner in such a fiendish guise that he frightened the family into fits.
Now Dr. Winship was one of the most weather-wise men in California, and his predictions were always quite safe and sensible; but somehow or other it did rain again in two or three days, and it poured harder than ever, too. To be sure, it cleared promptly, but the doctor was afraid to trust so fickle a person as the Clerk of the Weather had become, and marching orders were issued.
The boys tramped over all their favourite bits of country, and the girls visited all their best beloved haunts, every one of them dear from a thousand charming associations. They looked for the last time in Mirror Pool, and saw the reflection of their faces—rather grave faces just then, over the leave-taking.
The water-mirror might have been glad to keep the picture for ever on its surface—Margery with her sleek braids and serene forehead; Polly, with saucy nose and mischievous eyes, laughing at you like a merry water-sprite; Bell, with her brilliant cheeks glowing like two roses just fallen in the brook; and Gold Elsie, who, if you had put a frame of green leaves about her delicate face and yellow locks, would have looked up at you like a water-lily.
They wafted a farewell to Pico Negro, and having got rid of the boys, privately embraced a certain Whispering Tree under whose singing branches they had been wont to lie and listen to all the murmuring that went on in the forest.
Then they clambered into the great thorough-brace wagon, where they all sat in gloomy silence for ten minutes, while Dicky’s tan terrier was found for the fourth time that morning; and the long train, with its baggage-carts, its saddle-horses and its dogged little pack-mules, moved down the rocky steeps that led to civilisation. The gate that shut them in from the county road and the outer world was opened for the last time, and shut with a clang, and it was all over—their summer in a cañon!
