CHAPTER TWO
NEW TEACHER
And the new teacher, what of her? She had arrived by stage the night before, after a long journey across the country to Reno by train, and from there over rough roads of the wonderful Sierra Nevada mountains, and, just at nightfall, she had been deposited, bag and baggage, in front of a rambling old road-house known as Woodford’s Inn. It had been too dark for her really to see anything but the deep abyss of blackness below, that was the cañon through which she had just ridden, and the peaks of the rugged range towering above her, the dazzling stars that seemed so much nearer than they had in the East, and the lights of the comfortable and welcoming inn toward which the stage-driver was leading her.
Mrs. Enterprise Twiggly, the innkeeper’s wife, a thin, angular woman, whose reddish-gray hair was drawn tightly back, and whose dress was economical in the extreme, as it boasted neither pleat nor fullness, appeared in the open door, and her greenish-blue eyes appraised the guest at a glance. Long training had taught Mrs. Enterprise Twiggly to know at once whether to offer a new arrival the best bedroom or the slant-walled one over the kitchen.
The sharp, business-like expression changed to one of real pleasure when the innkeeper’s wife beheld the newcomer. She advanced, with a bony work-hardened hand outstretched. “Well! I declare to it, if I’m not mistaken, and I never am, this here is the new teacher. I am Mrs. Enterprise Twiggly of the Woodford’s Inn. Like as not you’ve heard of me. I’m that glad you’ve come, Miss Bayley. Do you want to go right to your shack, or would you rather stay at the inn, where there’s folks, until you get used to the strange night noises?”
Miss Josephine Bayley, late of the city of New York, marveled at the remark, for never before had she been conscious of such intense stillness.
“I have indeed heard of you, Mrs. Twiggly,” the girl declared, and truly, for the letter she had received from the board had mentioned that she would live near the inn. “I’m sure that I am going to just adore your wonderful mountain country.” Then, realizing that she had not replied to the query of her hostess, she added, “I am perfectly willing to sleep in my own apartment, that is—shack, did you call it?”
The tall angular woman nodded. “Enterprise!” she then called to a short, apologetic-looking man who was serving sandwiches and coffee to the stage-driver in the dining-room of the inn. “Fetch the key that’s hangin’ by the stove, and maybe you’d better fetch along some matches and a candle, too.”
“Ye-ah, I’ll be there directly.” Which he was. Taking a large suit-case in one hand, and a lighted lantern in the other, he led the way, and his wife followed with another suit-case. The stage-driver, at the end of the procession, had a steamer-trunk over his shoulder. Mr. Twiggly opened the door and stepped back to permit his wife to enter first. This she was about to do, when, remembering her manners, she, too, stepped back to permit the school-teacher to go first, and so it was that Josephine Bayley entered the log cabin that was to be her home for she knew not how long.
How she wanted to sink down on the nearest rocker and laugh, for the mirth within seemed determined to bubble over, but when she glanced at the angular, business-like Mrs. Enterprise Twiggly, the new school-teacher knew that laughter would be greatly misunderstood, and so she managed to remark meekly, “I am sure that this will be a very pleasant apartment,—that is, I mean, shack.”
She looked about the large square room, wondering where she was to sleep. Mrs. Twiggly surmised as much, and, as soon as the men were gone, she said rather disparagingly: “The last teacher we had was the new-fangled kind from down Los Angeles way, and nothing would do but she had to have what she called a screen-porch bedroom built, and bein’ as she paid for it herself, the board couldn’t keep her from doin’ it. Too, she was set on havin’ it on the offside from the inn, which seemed queer to me. You’d have thought she’d built it next to where folks was, but she said she liked to feel that she was ’way off by herself in the mountains. Howsomever, she always kept a loaded six-shooter handy in the corner.”