The Little Fig-tree Stories

by Mary Hallock Foote

Mrs. O’Dowd was whacked into her place in the line between Billy and the lady’s animal, and kept her feet, if not her temper. And so, in due time, they arrived at the home ford and the ferry.

Brown and Mr. Gillespie took the animals across the ford, but the others were glad to exchange the saddle for the boat. Polly, in a fresh, white frock, with her hair blown over her cheeks, was watching from the hilltop, and came flying down the trail to meet them. Every one said how Polly had grown, and how fair she looked—and the house, which they called a camp for its rudeness, looked quite splendid with its lamps and books and curtains, to the sunburnt, dusty, real campers; and as Jack said, it did seem good to sit in a chair again. It was noticeable, however, that Jack sat lightly in chairs for several days after the ride home; but he had not flinched nor whined, and everybody acknowledged that he had won his single spur fairly well for an eight-year-old.

[1] Poisoned meat was laid near the chicken-house one night after the coyotes had carried off some fine young Plymouth Rocks (with a baleful instinct they always picked out the best of the fowls), and was eaten by them. Two of the robbers were found next day, dead, by the irrigation ditch, where they had crept to quench their thirst, and one was afterward seen, from time to time, in the sage-brush, a hairless spectre. The coyote mothers no doubt told their babies of this gruesome outcast as a warning, not against chicken-stealing, which must be one of the coyote virtues, but against poison and other desperate arts of man.

A VISIT TO JOHN’S CAMP

John Brown had concluded to “quit work and go to mining.” Not that mining is not work; but a man doesn’t get so tired working for himself, choosing his own hours and resting when he pleases, as he does working in another man’s time. It is like picking tame blackberries inside the garden fence for the family table, and picking wild blackberries in the fields and hedgerows and eating as one goes. Every boy knows how that is; and some of these good-natured, wandering, Western men are very like big boys.

John was still the teamster at the engineers’ camp in the cañon. He had been a sailor in his native Northern seas. He had been a fisherman of the Skager Rack; and more than once, by his own story, he had been driven out to sea, when drifting from his trawls, and picked up by one of the numerous vessels of the fishing-fleet that is always lying off or on the entrance to the strait. He had been a teamster on the plains where the Indians were “bad.” Once, when crossing the great Snake River plains, he had picked up a curious stone shaped by the Indians which he recognized as a “sinker,” such as he himself had made and used on the fishing-grounds of the far North. John had a little ranch of his own, and he owned half a house. The other half of the house was on the land of the adjoining settler. The two men had taken up preëmption claims, side by side, and to save expense had built a joint-dwelling on the boundary line between the two claims. Each man lived in his own side of the house—the half that rested on his land. John had lived six months on his claim, as the law requires before a settler can secure a title to his land. He was now working to get the money to improve it into a farm. He was a bit of a carpenter; and in many odd ways he was clever with his hands, as fishermen and sailors almost always are. Jack Gilmour possessed a riding-whip, such as the cowboys call a “quirt,” which John had braided for him, with skill and economy, out of leather thongs cut from scraps of waste leather, old boot-legs, or saddle-straps, discarded by the camps.

Such a companion as this, so experienced and variously gifted, and so uniformly gentle, was sure to be missed. Jack found the cañon a much duller place without his friend. He and Charley Moy, the Chinese cook, used to discourse about John, and recount his virtues, much as we linger over praises of the dead—although John’s camp was but five miles away, and he himself in good health, for all any one knew to the contrary.

After a while, Jack got permission to ride up the river to John’s camp and pay him a visit; and he was to be allowed to make the trip alone. Jack had been promoted, since his fishing expedition of two summers before, from a donkey and one spur to a pony of his own, a proper boy’s saddle, and two spurs, all in consequence of his advancing years and the increasing length of his legs. The pony was called “Lollo,” for just when he came the children had been reading “Jackanapes,” and the new pony, like the pony in the story, was “red-haired.” He had belonged, not to the gypsies, but to the Indians, who had broken and branded him. One of his ears was clipped, and the brand on his flank was a circle with a bar through the centre. He had the usual thick mane and tail of a “cayuse,” a white nose, and four white feet.

Now, there is an ancient rhyme which says:

“One white foot, buy him;
Two white feet, try him;
Three white feet, deny him;
Four white feet and a white nose,
Take off his hide and give him to the crows!”