A VISIT FROM MRS. HORTON
I had not looked for Jessie and Ralph to return before night, but the
article that I had found was scarcely hidden when, chancing to glance
down the road, I saw Mr. Horton's team, with the light wagon attached,
trotting briskly toward the house.
Only Jessie, Ralph, and Mrs. Horton were in the wagon, and it startled
me at first to observe that Ralph was driving. My astonishment changed
to amusement as they drew nearer, and I saw that Mrs. Horton's capable
hands held a firm grip of the lines, just far enough behind Ralph's
not to deprive him of the glory of the idea that he was doing all the
driving.
"'Oo! 'oo, dere!" he called imperiously, bringing the horses--with
Mrs. Horton's help--to a standstill before the gate. Jessie sprang
out and turned to lift the little driver to the ground, while we
all began talking at once. But our mutual torrent of questions was
abruptly checked by the contumacious conduct of that same small
driver, who deeply resented Jessie's invitation to him to come off his
perch. "Me is doin' tek care of 'e 'orses," he declared, scowling
defiance at his sister. "Mis 'Orton, 'oo dit out if 'oo p'ease!"
No better description of Mrs. Horton could be given than to say that
she was all that her husband was not--the dearest soul. She laughed as
she surveyed the conceited little fellow and then said seriously: "How
in the world am I to get out if you don't get out first and help me
down?"
Ralph was unprepared for this emergency, but the objection appeared to
him reasonable; he slid slowly off the seat--he was so short that it
seemed a long time before his tiny toes touched the bottom of the
wagon-box--and began climbing laboriously down, over the wheel. When
he had at length reached the ground Mrs. Horton stood up and with the
reins held securely in one hand she gained the hub of the near wheel.
From that vantage she reached down to meet Ralph's upstretched mite of
a hand, and so was gallantly assisted to alight.
To my delight Mrs. Horton announced that she had come to spend the day
with us. She led the team to the barn and we proceeded to unharness
them without assistance from their late driver, who had already
forgotten his intention and his dignity in a romp with his friend and
playmate, the cat.
"I suppose your tooth stopped aching and you decided not to have it
out," I said to Jessie, as we were helping Mrs. Horton.
"No," Mrs. Horton explained, cheerfully; "by the best of luck, Dr.
Green chanced to be passing our house last night, soon after Jake
brought Jessie. We called him in, and as he had his forceps--toothers,
my little brother used to call them--with him, he had that aching
tooth out in no time."
"I'm afraid it hurt you dreadfully, didn't it, Jessie?" I inquired,
sympathetically.
"Not so much as I thought it would; not so much as the aching did,"
Jessie replied. "People are so cowardly about such things!" she added,
and the sly look that Mrs. Horton bestowed on Jessie's sister behind
her back, awoke a suspicion in my mind that, perhaps, Jessie herself
had betrayed some shrinking dread before the operation took place.
"How glad I am that you didn't have to go clear over to Antonito," I
said. "You wouldn't have been home for hours yet, and Mrs. Horton
wouldn't have been making us a visit."
"And Mrs. Horton would a good deal rather be making you a visit than
driving these horses to Antonito, I can tell you!" said that lady.
"They're quiet as lambs until it comes to cars and engines, and the
sight of them scares them both nigh to death, and the railway track
runs along right beside the highway for a mile before you get into
Antonito. I'd have been obliged to drive Jessie over, for the hired
man is gone, and Mr. Horton met with an accident to one of his hands
last night, and couldn't have driven."
"An accident! How did it happen?" I inquired, with feigned
carelessness.
"Why, I declare, I can hardly make out how it did happen!" exclaimed
Mr. Horton's wife, with a troubled look. "There, Jessie, that's hay
enough to last them a week, and I don't expect to stay that long. You
see," she went on, slipping the harness deftly off the nigh horse, and
tossing it down on the pile of hay, "nothing would do Jake last night
but he must go up to the north pasture to salt the cattle. I told him
there was no need--they were salted only last Sunday--but go he would,
and go he did. It got to be so late before he came back that I got
real uneasy about him. It's a good bit to the north pasture, but I
knew it ought not to keep him out so very late. Why, it was after
twelve o'clock when he came in at last, with his clothes torn, and his
hand done up in his handkerchief and just dripping with blood! Jessie
and Ralph had gone to bed, hours before, and I was thankful that she
wasn't up to see it, for it fairly scared me, and I'm not a mite
nervous, generally. I expect I was the more scared because of Jake's
way of taking it. He's as steady as iron, most times, but last night
he was all kind of trembly and excited. He tried to explain to
me how the accident took place, but I couldn't make out hardly
what he did mean. It appears, though, that he was coming home
along the ravine--where it's always dark, no matter how bright the
moonlight--and he jabbed his hand, as he was walking fast, up against
a sharp jack oak stub--at least, he thought it must have been some
such thing--and he got an awful cut. You wouldn't believe, if you
didn't see it with your own eyes, that a stub of any kind could make
such a wound! There's a long, slanting cut clean through the palm of
his hand. I wanted him to let me look in it for splinters, but he's
real touchy about it; wouldn't even let me bathe it," she concluded
sadly.
Everybody liked Mrs. Horton, and a good many things that her husband
did would have been less easily condoned by their neighbors if she had
been as little of a favorite as he, and one of the things that people
liked best, while finding it most incomprehensible, was that she
believed in him and his good intentions most implicitly.
"I don't see how he could possibly have run against an oak stub in a
ravine," observed Jessie, musingly. "Oaks, and especially jack oaks,
grow only on the dry hillsides." Jessie is very observing when it
comes to a question of the flora of a country, and what she said was
true, as Mrs. Horton hastened to admit.
"I never thought of it before, but I believe that's so," she said. "It
might have been something else, but Jake himself said that there
wasn't any other kind of wood that he knew of, tough enough and hard
enough to make such a cut as that."
Having cared for the horses we three started for the house. "Did you
have a good bed at Mrs. Riley's?" Jessie now asked, bestowing direct
attention on me for the first time. We were just entering the house,
and before I could reply Jessie cried out in surprise at the
unfamiliar aspect of the bed-room, where the heavy quilt still
excluded the daylight from the window.
"Why, what is that for?" she asked, perceiving the cause of the
semi-darkness.
I had purposely refrained from telling my story until now. Now I told
it, to the consternation of my auditors. Jessie could scarcely credit
the evidence of her senses, and Mrs. Horton said feelingly:
"Thank God that you have a brave heart and good sense, Leslie! If you
hadn't thought of that clause in the homestead law in time, and had
gone away last night, I tell you this settlement would have been in
mourning this morning! Seems to me that I just couldn't bear for you
children to lose this place now--this place that your poor pa had set
his heart on! And to think that such an accident should take place so
near the time of your proving up makes it so much the worse, for, if
the house had gone, I don't believe you could have got your title. No,
not if you had taken down a dozen witnesses to testify to the burning.
The law is strict. I doubt if the agent would have the power to give
you a deed unless there was a house standing on the land at the moment
that the deed was issued, no matter if he wanted to ever so badly."
She was full of sympathy and kindness, poor soul, and, listening to
her exclamations and condolences, I was sorry for her. Jessie was
right: there were no jack oaks in the ravine down which Mr. Horton
must have passed on the way from the north pasture to his home.