Ethel Morton at Rose House

by Mabell S. C. Smith

CHAPTER XIII

HUNTING ARROW HEADS

The week after the home-coming from the Massachusetts trolley trip was a time of busyness for the Ethels and Dorothy. Helen and Roger and the grown-ups who had stayed at home had to be made familiar with every step of the way, and the whole long history lesson that they had had was reviewed especially for Helen's benefit. She looked up battle after battle in large histories in the library and was so full of questions as to how this place and that looked that the girls regretted that they had not taken a kodak so that they might have gratified her curiosity by showing her pictures of all the historical spots in their modern garb.

Affairs at Rose House had to be brought up to date. Mr. Emerson undertook the management of Mrs. Tsanoff's affairs and went into town the very day after his return to call on Mr. Watkins and find out where Tsanoff was working. He found that he had been discharged from his position but a few days before. He had become so downcast as a consequence that he had not sent word to his wife of this fresh disappointment, and he was unspeakably grateful to Mr. Emerson for the chance that he opened to him. A kodak of his dark, sensible face was easily obtained to send to Massachusetts and Mr. Emerson went home feeling that the first step had been well taken.

Making Mrs. Tsanoff understand the new proposition was not easy, but Mrs. Schuler and Moya had learned something of her language as she had learned more English during the summer and, when Mr. Emerson showed her a photograph of the Deerfield farm and told her of its advantages for her husband and the children she was eager to go to it at once.

"The fields, the cows," she kept saying over and over again, and the girls realized how strong within her was her love for the country for which she had made the poor exchange of the city, and they sympathized keenly.

The result of the correspondence between Mr. Emerson and the Deerfield people was that the Bulgarians were put on the train for Springfield within ten days, each one of them, even the twin babies, wearing a small American flag so that they might be recognized by their new employer who was to meet them at Springfield and convoy them home. Mrs. Tsanoff left Rose House in tears, kissing the hands of all the girls and murmuring her gratitude to all of them over and over again as she wept and smiled by turns.

The other women had started the embroidery class, teaching each other and Mrs. Morton, Mrs. Smith and the Miss Clarks. The plan was working out very well, Mrs. Schuler thought, especially with Mrs. Paterno, who evidently loved the work and in it was already losing something of her fear and anxiety.

Roger had made a sideboard for the Rose House dining room assisted by the members of the Club who were "not off gallivanting," as he expressed it.

"It's mighty good looking," commented Dorothy as she examined it. "Was it hard to make? It looks so."

"No worse than that seat we made for Mrs. Schuler's room. We made two cupboard arrangements for the ends just like those, only we put a door over each one of them. Instead of a big box between them to be used as a seat we put a shelf resting on the cleats that went across the backs of the bookshelves. Then we connected the two cupboards with a long plank."

"You put a back behind the shelf."

"We put on thin boards for a back, but we haven't decided yet whether we made a mistake in putting doors in front or not. I like them with doors the way we have it, but Margaret thinks it would have been rather good without any doors. What do you think?"

"I think Mrs. Schuler will like it better with doors. The linen or whatever she keeps in there will be cleaner if it isn't exposed to the air on open shelves and the doors will serve as a protection against dust."

They all agreed that it was one of the best pieces of furniture that they had yet made for the house, and the travellers were sorry that they had not had a hand in its construction on account of the experience the progress of the work would have afforded them.

A few days later the Ethels planned an excursion for the benefit of the younger children which was to be somewhat in the nature of a picnic, but it was arranged to have everyone attend who could do so.

There was intense excitement among the smaller children when the announcement was made that the picnic would be held early the following week, providing the weather proved clear enough not to interfere with their plans.

Dicky's share in the excitement of the journey was the stirring up of a deep interest in Indians. When the Ethels told him that they were going over to the field that Grandfather Emerson was having cleared he insisted on going with them to hunt for arrow heads. They waited until a day after a rain had left the small stones washed free of earth, and they made an afternoon of it, all the Club and all the Rose House women and children going too. The boys carried hampers with the wherewithal for afternoon tea, and the expedition assumed serious proportions in the minds of those arranging it when Dicky asked if they would need one of Grandfather's wagons to bring home the arrow heads in.

As a matter of fact they did not find many arrow heads. Whether the earth had not yet been turned over to a sufficient depth or whether the Indians who had lived about Rosemont had been of a peaceful temper or whether the field happened not to be near any of their villages, no one knew, though every one made one guess or another.

They planned the search methodically.

"I saw a lot of Boy Scouts one day clear up the field in Central Park in which they had been drilling," said Tom Watkins. "They stretched in a long line across the whole field and then they walked slowly along looking for anything that might have been dropped in the course of their evolutions."

"Did they find much?"

"You'd be surprised to know how much!"

"Let's do the same thing here. If we stretch across the field then every one is responsible for just a small section under his eyes--"

"--and feet."

"--and feet. I wish we had an arrow head to show the women so they'd know exactly what to look for."

"Father had one in the cabinet," said Roger, "and I put it in my pocket for just this purpose. I don't know where he got it, and it may not be of exactly the kind of stone these New Jersey Indians used, but it will show the shape all right."

"They always used flint, didn't they?" asked Margaret.

"Flint or obsidian or the hardest stone they could find, whatever it was." "Bone?"

"Sometimes. I saw quite large bone heads at the Natural History Museum."

"I've seen life-size boneheads frequently," announced James solemnly, not smiling until Roger and Tom pelted him with bits of sod.

The arrow head was passed from hand to hand and every one studied it carefully. Then they stretched across the field and began their search. The result was not very satisfactory from Dicky's point of view, for he concluded that he need not have worried as to how the load was to be carried home. There were only seven found. Of these, however, Dicky found two, one by his unaided efforts and the other through Ethel Blue's taking pains not to see one that lay between him and her. Nobody else found more than one and several of them found none at all, so Dicky, after all, was hilarious.

In a corner of the field they built a fire and heated water for the tea in a kettle thrust among the coals. Ears of corn still in the husk were roasted between heated stones, bits of bacon sizzled appetizingly from forked sticks and dripped on to the flames with a hissing sound, and biscuits, fresh from Moya's oven, were reheated near the blaze.

It was while they were sitting around the fire that Dicky's mind turned to the remainder of the Indian's equipment.

"What did he do with thith arrowhead?" he inquired.

"He tied it on to the end of an arrow, and shot bears with it."

"What'th an arrow?"

"A long, slender stick."

"Do you throw it?"

"You shoot it from a bow."

"What'th a bow?"

"A curved piece of wood with a string connecting the ends."

"How doeth it work?"

Roger heaved a sigh and then gave it up..

"Me for the bushes," he cried. "Language fails me; I'll have to make a bow and arrow."

"It's the easiest way," nodded Tom. "Bring me a switch and I'll make the arrow while you make the bow."

"Who's got a piece of string?" inquired Roger a few minutes later as he held up his handiwork for the admiration of his friends,

James produced the necessary string and Roger strung the bow.

"Now, then, let's see what it will do," he said.

Adjusting the arrow he drew the cord and sent the simple shaft whizzing through the air against a tree where it stuck in the bark for an instant before it fell to the ground.

"Do you think it's safe for Dicky to have an arrow as sharp as that?" inquired Helen.

"That's not sharp enough to do any damage. It didn't hold in the tree."

Dicky was delighted with his new toy and went off to test its power, followed by Elisabeth of Belgium, Sheila, Luigi and Pietro Paterno, Olga Peterson and Vasili and Vladimir Vereshchagin. The romper-clad band stirred the amused smiles of the elders watching them.

"They certainly are the cunningest little dinks that ever happened!" cried Ethel Brown, establishing herself comfortably to help make small bows and arrows for the rest of the flock.

The girls as well as the boys of the United Service Club knew how to use a jacknife and the diminutive weapons of the chase were soon ready.

The Ethels were hunting through the luncheon basket for string when a howl from the other side of the field made them drop what was in their hands and rush toward the trees where the children were playing. The mothers followed them, Mrs. Paterno and Mrs. Vereshchagin in the lead.

"I certainly hope it's not the little Paterno," said Ethel Blue breathlessly to Ethel Brown as they ran. "Mrs. Paterno never will forgive Dicky if he's got him into trouble again."

They concluded when they came in sight of the group of children that the Italian woman had run from nervousness and the Russian because she recognized the voice of her offspring, for it was Vladimir whose yells were resounding through the air. Dicky was bending over him and the other children were standing around so that the runners as they approached could not see what was the matter.

Mrs. Vereshchagin increased her speed, uttering sounds that fell strangely on her listeners' ears. The group of children fell away as their elders came near, and the Ethels, who were in front, saw that Vladimir was pinned to a tree by Dicky's arrow which had pierced the fullness of his rompers. He could not be hurt in the least, but the strangeness of his position had startled and angered him and was causing the shrieks that had frightened them all.

Fortunately for Dicky, Mrs. Vereshchagin, unlike Mrs. Paterno, had a sense of humor, and as soon as she saw that her child was neither injured nor in danger she burst into laughter as loud as his cries of rage and terror. Roger quickly unfastened him from the tree to which he was bound and handed him over to his mother, none the worse for his experience except that his rompers were torn. Turning to Dicky, Roger decreed that the head must be taken from his arrow.

"It's not your fault, old man," he said; "but Helen was right--this thing is too sharp."

"I'll tell you what to do, Roger, get some of those rubber tips that slip on the ends of lead pencils. The English stationer must have some. If you put them on all these arrows they can't do any harm."

"Meanwhile the kiddies had better not have them," Mrs. Schuler decided, so they were put aside with the basket, to be finished later when the needed tips should be procured in Rosemont.

"You got off pretty well, that time, sir," laughed Roger. "What were you trying to do?"

"I wath an Indian thooting bearth. Vladimir wath a bear."

"A Russian bear. You got him all right; but let me tell you, young man; you must be mighty careful what you aim at, for international complications may follow."

"What'th that?"

"That means it's dangerous to aim at anybody. I'll make you a target and when you get so you can hit the bull's eye three times out of five at a distance of fifteen feet I'll give you a better bow. Is it a bargain?"

Dicky shook hands on it solemnly.

"Remember now, no shooting at any living thing."

"Not a cat?"

"Not a cat or a bird, a dog or any other animal on two legs or four."

"All right," nodded Dicky, and Roger knew that he would keep his word, for that is a part of the training of a soldier's son.

The experiences of the afternoon were not yet ended. The arrow episode over the children looked about for other amusement. They drifted away from the group still gathered about the embers of the dying fire and made their way among the bushes standing uncut on the edge of the new clearing. Once in a while their laughter was borne on the breeze. It was a long time before any one thought of seeing what they were doing. Then Ethel Brown rose and sauntered in the direction whence the sounds came.

"With Dicky in the lead," she thought, "it's just as well to keep an eye on them."

As she approached the woods she saw the little army of rompered youngsters, each armed with a switch, and each doing his best to strike something high over his head. They all stood with their eager faces looking upward and their arms working busily with what muscle the summer had given them. Leaves were falling from the bushes and the lower branches of the saplings that were struck by their rods, and it was evident that they were causing great destruction to the foliage, whatever the real object of their attack.

Ethel's wonderment increased.

"Children do get the greatest amount of fun out of the smallest things," she thought. "What can they be doing?"

When quite near the thicket, however, her slow steps quickened into a run. Her sharp eyes discovered hanging from one of the trees over the heads of the children one of the large wasps' nests which seem to be made of gray paper. It had caught Dicky's attention and he had coveted it for purpose of investigation. Summoning his cohorts he had pointed it out to them and had urged them to bring it down. Each one had broken a stick; some had stripped off the leaves entirely; others had left a tuft at the end. In both cases the weapons looked dangerously destructive to Ethel, as she ran toward them and saw one pole after another swish past the home of the paper wasps and expected the colony to rush forth to defend their abode. With a cry of warning she bore down on them and with a sweep of her arms turned them all back into the open field. Dicky was indignant.

"What you doing that for?" he demanded angrily. "One more thwat and I'd a had it."

"You don't know what it is," cried Ethel breathlessly. "You'd all be stung if there were any wasps at home. That's their house and they get awfully mad."

The children looked back fearfully at the object of their attack.

"You've had a narrow escape," insisted Ethel, and then to divert their minds from what had happened she made them stretch themselves in a line and hunt for arrow heads all the way back to their mothers.

"Thith ith a funny thtone," exclaimed Dicky, picking up a rather large oblong stone that had a groove all around its middle.

"It looks like Lake Chautauqua. doesn't it? You know they say that 'Chautauqua' means 'the bag tied in the middle'."

"Did the Indianth uthe it?" Dicky asked as he laid his trophy in Roger's hand.

"I rather think they did," returned Roger excitedly. "It looks to me as if this was a hammer or a hatchet. See--" and he held it out for the girls and James and Tom to see, "they must have lashed this head on to a stout stick by a cord tied where this crease is."

"It would make a first-rate hammer," commended James.

"The Indians didn't manufacture as many of these as they did arrow heads, because, of course, they didn't need as many. I rather guess you've made the big find of the afternoon," and Dicky swelled with pride as his brother patted him on the shoulder.

When it became time to go home the Ethels offered to take the short cut to Rosemont and get the rubber tips for the children's arrows.

"If we go across the field and the West Woods we come out not far from the stationer's, and we can leave the tips up at Rose House on the way back so they'll be ready for you to put on to-morrow and the youngsters can have the bows and arrows to play with right off."

"Let me go," begged Dicky.

"All right," agreed Roger. "Be careful when you go over the railroad track, girls. Mother isn't very keen on having Dicky learn that road, you know."

They promised to be careful and set forth in the opposite direction from the rest of the party whom they left putting together the remnants of the feast and packing away the plates.

It was an interesting walk. They played Indian all the way. Ethel Blue's imagination had been greatly stimulated by the tale of the attack on Deerfield and she pretended to see an Indian behind every tree. Ethel Brown pretended to shoot them all with unerring arrow, and Dicky charged the bushes in handsome style and routed the enemy with awful slaughter.

"This is just the kind of game we ought not to play if we want to make Dicky think of peace and not of war," declared Ethel Blue at last when she had become breathless from the excitement of their countless adventures.

"That's so. It's funny how you forget. It's just as Delia says--we don't realize how fighting and soldiers and thinking about military things is put into our minds even in games when we're little."

"I'm really sorry we've done this," confessed. Ethel Brown as they fell behind their charge. "Dicky's 'pretending' works over time anyway, and he may dream about Indians, or get scared to go to bed, and it will be our fault."

"It's rather late to think about it--but let's try not to do it again. Isn't there something we can call his attention to now to take his mind off Indians?"

Dicky was marching ahead of them drawing an imaginary bow and bringing down a large bag of imaginary birds, while from the difficulty with which he occasionally dragged an imaginary something behind him it seemed that he had at least slain an imaginary deer.

Naturally, with his hunting blood up, the Ethels found him not responsive to appeals to "see what a pretty flower this is" or to examine the hole of a chipmunk. He was after more thrilling adventures. Still, by the time they reached the railroad track, everyday matters were beginning to command his attention. This short cut across the track was one that he had seldom been allowed to take, and the mere fact of doing it was exciting. He stopped in the middle and looked up and down the line while the girls tugged at him. It was only when he saw a bit or two of shining metal which, according to his arrow head game of the afternoon, he picked up and tucked away in the pocket of his rompers, that his attention was once more turned to the gathering of the wonders that seemed to be under his feet all the time if only he looked for them hard enough.

The errand to the stationery shop was successful. The stationer said that most pencils now were made with erasers built into them, but that he thought he had a box of old tips left over. He hunted for them very obligingly, and set so small a price on them that the Ethels took the whole box so that they might have a liberal supply in case any were lost off the arrow heads. Dicky put one in his pocket so that he could place it on his arrow as soon as he got it into his hands once more, and he begged the Ethels to go home by way of Rose House so that he could fix it up that very night.

"Is it early enough?" asked Ethel Blue.

Ethel Brown thought it was.

"But we'll have to hurry," she warned; "there's an awfully black cloud over there. It looks like a thunder storm."

They scampered as fast as their legs would carry them and reached the farm in the increasing darkness, but before any rain had fallen. They found all the bows and arrows standing in a trash basket which Roger had made for the dining room.

"Mr. Roger stood them up in that so the children wouldn't be apt to touch 'em," explained Moya.

Dicky sat down on the hearth and set to work on the arrow which he recognized as his because of its greater length.

"You'll have to hurry or we'll get caught," warned his sister.

"We ought to start right off," urged Ethel Blue. "We'll have to run for it even if we go now."

Mrs. Schuler brought in the cape of her storm coat.

"Take this for Dicky," she said. "If it does break before you get home it will rain hard and his rompers won't be any protection at all."

"Put it on now, Dicky," commanded Ethel Brown. "Stand up."

Dicky rose reluctantly.

"Why do you fill up your pocket with such stuff," inquired Ethel impatiently. "There, throw it into the fireplace--gravel, toadstools, old brass," she catalogued contemptuously, and Dicky, swept on by her eagerness, obediently cast his treasures among the soft pine boughs that filled the wide, old fireplace.

"I'll clear them away," promised Mrs. Schuler. "Hurry," and she fairly turned them out of the house.

"You made me throw away my shiny things," complained Dicky as they ran down the lane as fast as they could go.

"Never mind; you'd have jounced them out of your pocket anyway, running like this," and Dicky, taking giant strides as his sister and his cousin held a hand on each side, was inclined to think that he would be lucky if he were not jounced put of his clothes before he got home.