“You misguided boy, don’t I know it? Ain’t I clean druv out my wits a-thinkin’ ever’thing over, and where in the name of natur’ am I goin’ to do it all, with them horrid gasoline stoves no bigger’n an old maid’s thimble, and Pasqually gone off s’archin’ with the rest, and no’count the heft of the time and my sins!”
“Had to take breath, or bust, hadn’t you?” cried her disrespectful son, catching the portly matron about the spot where her waist should have been and hilariously whirling her about in a waltz which his own lameness rendered the more grotesque. “And where can you cook ’em? Why, right square in them old ovens at the mission. Full now of saddles and truck, but Samson and me’ll clear ’em out lively. I’ll make you a fire in ’em, and they’ll see cookin’ like they haven’t since the padres put out their own last fires. They weren’t any fools, them fellers. They knew a good thing when they saw it, and if they tackled a job they did it square. The ovens they built, just out of baked mud and a few stones, are as tight to-day as they were a hundred years ago; and, whew! won’t old Pedro, that found her, relish his meat cooked in ’em?”
Nor was Benton to be outdone in suggestion on the matter of providing. Some of the searchers had brought back a quantity of game, with which the country teemed, and which it had delayed them but little to shoot. This was levied upon without ado, and in the preparation of the great feast Aunt Sally’s helpers forgot their fatigue, and were as deftly efficient as women would have been.
Indeed, between sleep and labor, the hours of Jessica’s unbroken rest passed quickly, after all; and the good news having spread almost as swiftly as the ill, the grounds were full of people when, at last, she awoke. But, even yet, Mrs. Trent’s consideration for others refused a prior or full hearing of the story to which her faithful helpers had as good a right as she, if not as intense an interest in it. She made the child eat and drink, and went with her to her favorite rostrum when addressing her “company” of soldierly “boys”––the horse block. Here the girl stood up and told her simple tale.
“You see, dear folks, it was just this way: Aunt Sally and I were on the porch, and we found Elsa’s ring, all crooked. We couldn’t guess how it came there, and I’d just been made pretty angry about the way you felt toward ‘Forty-niner.’ Oh! it was dreadful, dreadful of you all, and I never was so ashamed of my ‘boys,’ not in all my life.”
“Go on with the story, captain. Never mind us,” cried somebody.
“And a little way farther I found a piece of Elsa’s knitted bag. That made me think a lot. Then the tackers came, all paint, and with Mr. Hale’s horse, that had been on the mesa ever since he was here. That made me think some more, and I told auntie 55 if she wouldn’t scold the little ones I’d try to find their clothes. I didn’t find them, though, Aunt Sally.”
“Go on! Go on! What next?” demanded an impatient listener.
“Then I saw Ferd. Oh, mother! If I tell I’m afraid they’ll hurt him.”