Laddie: A True Blue Story

by Gene Stratton-Porter

"That ram!" I said. "Ever since Leon made it cross so it would chase Polly Martin, it's got me oftener than her. I can't go anywhere for it, and to-day it made me lose a big fish, and mother is waiting. She thought maybe she could eat some."

Then I roared; bet I sounded like Bashan's bull.

"Dear Lord!" said Laddie dropping the sheep and taking me in his wet arms. "Tell me, Biddy! Tell me how it is."

Then I forgot I was a Crusader, and told him all about it as well as I could for choking, and when I finished he bathed my hot face, and helped me from the roots. Then he went and looked down the hole I showed him and he cried out quicklike, and threw himself on the grass, and in a second up came the fish. Some one had rolled a big stone in the hole, so the fish was all right, not even dead yet, and Laddie said it was the biggest one he ever had seen taken from the creek. Then he said if I'd forgive him and all our family, for spoiling the kind of a life I had a perfect right to lead, and if I'd run to the house and get a big bottle from the medicine case quick, he would see to it that some place was fixed for that sheep where it would never bother me again. So I took the fish and ran as fast as I could, but I sent May back with the bottle, and did the scaling myself. No one at our house could do it better, for Laddie taught me the right way long ago, when I was small, and I'd done it hundreds of times.

Then I went to Candace and she put a little bit of butter and a speck of lard in a skillet, and cooked the fish brown. She made a slice of toast and boiled a cup of water and carried it to the door; then she went in and set the table beside the bed, and I took in the tray, and didn't spill a drop. Mother never said a word; she just reached out and broke off a tiny speck and nibbled it, and it stayed; she tried a little bigger piece, and another, and she said: "Take out the bones, Candace!" She ate every scrap of that fish like the hungriest traveller who ever came to our door, and the toast, and drank the hot water. Then she went into a long sleep and all of us walked tiptoe, and when she waked up she was better, and in a few days she could sit in her chair again, and she began getting Shelley ready to go to music school.

I have to tell you the rest, too. Laddie made the ram come alive, and father sold it the next day for more than he paid for it. He said he hoped I'd forgive him for not having seen how it had been bothering me, and that he never would have had it on the place a day if he'd known. The next time he went to town he bought me a truly little cane rod, a real fishing line, several hooks, and a red bobber too lovely to put into the water. I thought I was a great person from the fuss all of them made over me, until I noticed Laddie shrug his shoulders, and reach back and rub one, and then I remembered.

I went flying, and thank goodness! he held out his arms.

"Oh Laddie! I never did it!" I cried. "I never, never did! I couldn't! Laddie, I love you best of any one; you know I do!"

"Of course you didn't!" said Laddie. "My Little Sister wasn't anywhere around when that happened. That was a poor little girl I never saw before, and she was in such trouble she didn't know WHAT she was doing. And I hope I'll never see her again," he ended, twisting his shoulder. But he kissed me and made it all right, and really I didn't do that; I just simply couldn't have struck Laddie.

Marrying off Sally was little worse than getting Shelley ready for school. She had to have three suits of everything, and a new dress of each kind, and three hats; her trunk wouldn't hold all there was to put in it; and father said he never could pay the bills. He had promised her to go, and he didn't know what in this world to do; because he never had borrowed money in his life, and he couldn't begin; for if he died suddenly, that would leave mother in debt, and they might take the land from her. That meant he'd spent what he had in the bank on Sally's wedding, and all that was in the Underground Station, or maybe the Station money wasn't his.