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DIXIE MARTIN
THE GIRL OF WOODFORD’S CAÑON
BY
GRACE MAY NORTH
ILLUSTRATED BY ELISABETH B. WARREN
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Copyright, 1924,
By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
_Norward Press_
BERWICK & SMITH CO.
NORWOOD, MASS.
Dedicated to
IVERS ASHLEY
My long-ago school-mate who was so like little Dixie Martin
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Dixie 11
II. New Teacher 21
III. Neighborhood Gossip 27
IV. Getting Acquainted 38
V. The Woodford Schoolhouse 46
VI. Ken’s Secret Sorrow 56
VII. The Blessing Undisguised 66
VIII. A Queer Bank 72
IX. The “Charity Barrel” 76
X. Carol’s Choice 86
XI. Planning a Way Out 91
XII. Carol’s New Home 96
XIII. Carol in Disgrace 103
XIV. The Little Runaway 109
XV. A Happy Reunion 119
XVI. A Joyous Dixie 124
XVII. A Defiant Teacher 133
XVIII. The Sheep-King Dictates 140
XIX. Dixie Goes Shopping 146
XX. Dixie Buys a Silk Dress 157
XXI. Dixie Visits a Friend 162
XXII. Teacher Revolutionizes 166
XXIII. The Return of Topsy 175
XXIV. Dixie’s Lesson in Dressmaking 180
XXV. Where the Trail Led 191
XXVI. Ken’s Quest 196
XXVII. Celebrating 205
XXVIII. On the Trail of a “Bandit” 209
XXIX. Ken’s Old Friend 222
XXX. “Rattlesnake Sam” 232
XXXI. An Unwelcome Guest 238
XXXII. A Hard Game 248
XXXIII. Rude Little Sylvia 256
XXXIV. The Young Engineer Dreams 263
XXXV. The Pretend Game 269
XXXVI. Ken’s Talk With Teacher 283
XXXVII. Carol’s Birthday S’prise 288
XXXVIII. The Expected Blizzard 302
XXXIX. A Happy Father 312
XL. A Mystery Solved 319
XLI. A Resolution Broken 328
XLII. An Eventful Spring 337
XLIII. The Unexpected Guest 347
XLIV. Clearing Up Mysteries 353
ILLUSTRATIONS
A queer-looking group they made (Page 40) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“I’m going to tell you all about us, Miss Bayley” 136
“It’s a birthday present from me” 298
The young engineer slowly opened his eyes 310
DIXIE MARTIN
CHAPTER ONE
DIXIE
“Carolina Martin, you get up this instant. Do you hear me? I’ve called
you sixteen times already, if ’tisn’t twenty, and _this_ the morning the
new teacher starts at the old log schoolhouse over at Woodford’s. You
don’t want us all to be late, do you, and have her think we’re
shiftless, like the poor white folks our mother used to tell about, in
the mountains down in Tennessee. We, with the bluest blood in our veins
that flows in the whole South! Carolina, _are you up_?”
This conversation was carried on in a high-pitched voice by a thin,
homely, freckled-faced little girl whose straight brick-red hair had not
a wave in it, and whose long, skinny legs, showing beneath the gingham
dress two years too short for her, made her appear as ungainly as a
colt.
There was no one else present in the big living-room of the log cabin,
but the voice carried well, and was heard in the loft above, where, in a
large four-posted bed, another small girl sleepily replied, “Oh, Dixie,
I wish folks never did have to get up, nor go to school, nor—” The voice
trailed off drowsily, and Carolina had just turned over for another
little nap when she heard her sister climbing the ladder which led from
the room below to the loft where the two girls slept.
Instantly the culprit leaped to the floor. When the red head of Dixie
appeared at the square opening of the trap-door, the small girl was
making great haste to don her one piece of all-over underwear.
She smiled her sweetest at her irate sister, whose wrath softened, for
little Carolina was so like their beautiful mother. Even at eight years
of age she had the languid manner of the South, and spoke with a musical
drawl.
But there was no envy in the heart of the older girl. She was
passionately glad that one of them was so like that adored mother who
had died soon after the birth of her youngest child, who now was four
years old.
The father, an honest, hardy Nevada mountaineer, had been killed in a
raid two years later, and since then Dixie, aged twelve, had been little
mother and home-maker for the other three children.
Before Dixie could rebuke the younger sister, a door below opened and a
baby voice called shrilly, “Oh, Dix, do come quick! Suthin’s a-runnin’
over on the stove.”
“It’s the porridge.” The older girl sniffed the air, which conveyed to
her the scent of something burning. Down the ladder she scrambled.
“Well, lucky stars!” she exclaimed a moment later as she removed the
kettle and gave the contents a vigorous stirring.
“’Tisn’t stuck to the bottom, that’s one comfort.” Then, whirling about,
she caught the little four-year-old boy in her arms as she exclaimed,
“And so our Jimmikins is going to school to-day for the very first
time.”
The small head, covered with sunny curls, nodded, and his eyes twinkled
as he proudly prattled: “I’ll stan’ up front and I’ll spell c-a-t, and
ever’thin’, won’t I, Dixie?”
“Of course you will, pet lamb, and maybe the teacher will ask you to
recite, and won’t she be surprised to find that you know seven speaking
pieces?”
While Dixie talked she was dishing up the porridge. She glanced at the
ladder and sighed. Would she have to climb it again? What _could_ be
keeping Carolina? But just then a foot appeared and slowly there
descended the member of the family who was always late. She had been
brushing her soft golden-brown curls in front of their one mirror. A
pretty circling comb held them in place.
Carol wore a faded gingham dress which was buttoned in the front, that
she might fasten it herself.
There was a discontented expression in her violet eyes.
“I just hate this ol’ dress,” she began fretfully. “Jessica Archer
doesn’t believe we have any blue blood at all, or we’d want to dress
like the Southern ladies do in the pictures.”
Dixie sighed, and the younger girl, who thought only of herself,
continued, “If my beautiful mother had lived, she wouldn’t have let me
wear shabby dresses that button down the front and make everybody laugh
at me.”
There was much truth in this. Their beautiful mother would have been
quite willing to mortgage the ranch if only she and her children could
be dressed in silk and furbelows.
Before Dixie could reply, the cabin-door again opened, and in came a boy
who was at least a head taller than Dixie. His frank, freckled face was
smiling. He was carrying a pail. “Dix,” he said gleefully, “we’re going
to have a real crop of apples this year. I’ve been down to the
creek-bottom to see how the trees are doing. Maybe they’ll fetch in
money enough so that you can buy that new stove you’ve been needing so
long.”
Carolina tossed her curly head as she thought, “Stove, indeed, when I
need a new dress.” But she said nothing. The apples weren’t ripe yet,
and she could bide her time.
They were soon seated around the table, chattering eagerly about the new
teacher who had arrived at Woodford’s the day before, but whom, as yet,
they had not seen.
“What you ’spose she’ll be like?” Ken asked as he helped himself to the
rich creamy goat’s milk, and then turned to pour more of it into the big
bowl for his little brother, who had been hungrily clamoring for
porridge.
Carol sniffed. “I don’t like new teachers,” she informed them in a
manner much older than her years. “They’re always startin’ somethin’
different.”
“You mean that new teachers don’t like _you_,” Ken put in with brotherly
frankness. “They would, though, if you’d ever study, which I reckon you
_never_ will.”
“You’d ought to learn all you can, Caroly. We all ought to,” the little
mother modified, “’cause as soon as we’re old enough, we’ll want to be
earning our own living so we won’t always be poor and scrimping like we
are now.”
Carolina tossed her curls.
“’Twon’t be needful for _me_ to earn my livin’,” she said proudly. “Mrs.
Piggins says I’m the kind that always marries young, and I’m goin’ to
marry rich, too.”
Ken exploded with amused laughter.
“Hear the baby prattle!” he teased. “You’d better be thinkin’ about your
dolls, seems like to me.”
The all-too-easily-aroused temper of the younger girl flared.
“Ken Martin, you know I haven’t played with dolls, not since I was seven
years old, and now I’m eight.”
The violet eyes flashed and the pretty lips quivered.
The heart of Ken always melted when he saw tears.
“Oh, I say, Caroly,” he begged. “Don’t get a mad on. Honest Injun, cross
my heart, I won’t tease you any more——er——that is, not again this
morning, anyhow,” he added, wishing to be truthful.
Then, knowing from past experience that the best way to dry up tears was
to interest the doleful one in something different, he exclaimed as
though he had suddenly thought of it: “Girls, what’ll we give as a
present for new teacher? The fellows were all sayin’ yesterday what
they’re goin’ to give.”
The ruse worked like a charm. Carol looked across the table at her
brother with eager interest.
“That horrid Jessica Archer says there’s nobody in the school as is
going to give new teacher as handsome a present as she is. Her mother
took her over to Reno to pick it out. Jessica says as all the other
pupils will give country presents, but hers’ll be _city_.”
“Huh!” grunted the older brother. “What’s that little minx goin’ to give
teacher that’s so fine? That’s what I’d like to know.”
The curls were shaken as the owner of them replied: “She won’t tell.
It’s a secret, but she’s boastin’ as it cost more’n all the other
presents put together’ll cost.”
“Well, dearie, like as not she’s right,” the older girl said soothingly.
“Jessica Archer’s father’s the richest man anywhere in these mountains.
You know how folks call him a sheep-king.”
Then, as Dixie was always trying to have her charges see things in the
right way, she continued: “Anyhow, it isn’t the money a present costs
that counts. It’s the love that goes with it.”
Selfish Carol was not convinced. “I’d rather have a blue silk dress
_without_ love than I would another ol’ gingham like this one with—”
She was interrupted by Ken, who burst in with: “Oh, I say, Dix, I’ve
just thought of the peachiest present. You know that little
black-and-white kid that came a while ago.”
The girls had stopped eating, and were listening with eyes as well as
ears.
“Yeah, I know, b-but what of it?” Dixie inquired.
The boy’s words fairly tumbled out in his excitement.
“I bet teacher’d like _him_ for a present. I bet she would. Like as not,
comin’ from New York City the way she does, she’s never had a goat for a
pet, and this one’s awful pretty, with that white star on his black
forehead.”
Dixie looked uncertain. “It _would_ be different, but—” she started to
protest, when noting her brother’s crestfallen expression, she hastened
to add, “Come to think of it, now, a little goat might be lots of
company for new teacher, she being so strange and all.
“You go get the goat, Ken, and saddle Pegasus while I tidy up the
kitchen and dress Jimmikins. Then we’ll all be ready to start for
school.”
“I’ve got an ol’ red ribbon that’ll look handsome on that little goat’s
neck,” Carol told them. “That’ll make it look more presentish, seems
like.”
“Of course it will, dear. Go get it and give it to Ken, though I guess
maybe you’d better tie the bow. You’ve got a real knack at making them
pretty.”
The little mother always tried to show appreciation of any talent that
might appear, however faintly, in one of her precious brood.
A moment later all was hurry and scurry in the homey kitchen of that old
log house, for this was a red-letter morning in the lives of the four
little Martins.
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.”
As she talked, the woman led the way through a door, and the girl,
advancing, uttered an exclamation of delight, for she found herself on a
porch so open that she was hardly conscious that there were walls. “Oh,”
she thought, “blessings on the head of my predecessor, outlandish though
she may have seemed to mine hostess!”
Mrs. Twiggly was eyeing her curiously. “You like it?” she inquired,
rather hoping that she would not. She decided that all teaching folk
were hopeless, when Josephine Bayley turned around with eyes that
glowed, and, clasping her hands, exclaimed, “I never had such a
perfectly wonderful place to sleep in all my whole life!”
Mrs. Twiggly’s sniff was not audible. “What poor folks she must come
from!” she was thinking. Aloud she remarked: “Miss Bayley, I’ll fetch
over your breakfast to-morrow, bein’ as it’s your first mornin’, and if
you’re scared, fire off the gun twice, but mind you aim it in the air.
Well, good-night.”
“Good-night, and thank you for your kindness.” Then Josephine Bayley was
left alone with the stars and the silence, but somehow her desire to
laugh was gone. She felt awed by the bigness and stillness of things,
and standing in the darkness in her out-of-doors bedroom, she reached
her arms toward the star-crowned peaks and prayed, “God of the
mountains, give me _here_ some work to do for You.”
CHAPTER THREE
NEIGHBORHOOD GOSSIP
Josephine Bayley awakened, as all do in entirely new surroundings, with
the question, “Why, where am I?” Then, upon hearing a chattering of
animal life without, she sat up in bed and saw a fir tree festooned with
webs that sparkled with quivering dewdrops, saw two bushy-tailed
squirrels gathering cones, and heard a meadow-lark singing its joyous
morning-song. The new teacher arose, surprised to find that all that
night she had not awakened. She glanced in the corner where stood the
sentinel gun. She was sure that she should never have need of its
services.
Just as she was dressed she heard a rapping on her outer door. Skipping,
with a heart as light as her feet, she opened it, and beheld Mrs.
Enterprise Twiggly standing there with a tray. She looked exactly as she
had the night before, only more so, in the full light of all-revealing
day.
“Good-mornin’, Miss Bayley,” the woman remarked, as she entered the
sun-flooded living-room of the log cabin and placed the tray on the
rustic center-table.
“I didn’t hear any firin’ in the night, so I take it you slept through.”
“I did, indeed,” was the enthusiastic reply. “No longer shall I need a
pine pillow to woo slumber. I don’t know when I have awakened so
refreshed.”
Then the girl added with a happy laugh: “The truth is, I didn’t know
what I was supposed to be afraid of, and so, of course, I couldn’t be
afraid of it.”
This remark sounded a little unbalanced to the wife of the innkeeper.
She had never heard that one had to know what to be afraid of before he
could be afraid. She drew herself up very straight as she enumerated:
“Well, there’s plenty that usually scares tenderfoot school-teachers.
There’s the coyotes howlin’ at night, though they mostly never touches
human bein’s; an’ now and then there’s a bear, but worst, I guess, is
the parcel of Indians over Tahoe way. They don’t do much but thievin’. I
guess that’s all, unless ’tis now and then a bandit passin’ this way to
hold up a train over beyond Reno.”
Scandalized, indeed, was the wife of the innkeeper when she heard the
new school-teacher laugh. “Oh, Mrs. Twiggly,” the girl exclaimed
merrily, “I do hope some one of those skeery things will happen soon.
I’m just longing for adventure.”
This time the sniff of her listener was entirely audible. “Well, I
reckon you’ll get all the adventure you’re wantin’ before the term’s up,
Miss Bayley, if you’re kept, and I sort o’ feel it my duty to tell you
that the board of eddication hereabouts is particular and persnifity.”
“Which means?” was what Miss Bayley thought. But aloud she demurely
asked, “Mrs. Twiggly, just what are the requirements that I shall have
to meet?”
The wife of the innkeeper bristled, as she always did when this subject
was discussed. “If you mean what you ought to do to please the board, I
must say it seems like there’s nothin’ needed but just to flatter and
pamper the board’s only child, that forward little Jessica Archer.”
Miss Bayley’s dark eyes were wide. “Is there only _one_ man on the local
board of education?” she inquired.
Mrs. Twiggly nodded. “Ye-ah, and, for that matter, there’s only _one_
important man in these here parts, and that’s Mr. Sethibald Archer. He
owns all the sheep-grazin’ country round about, and if he don’t own it
_honest_, he’s got it somehow.”
“Sethibald?” Miss Bayley repeated. “I never heard such a Christian name
as that before.”
Mrs. Twiggly was scornful.
“Well, ’twa’n’t that in the beginnin’,” she said. “It was jest plain
Seth, but when they got so rich, his wife, who’d allus been Maria, went
to visit folks in the city, and when she came back she had her name
printed on bits of pasteboard, visitin’-cards, she called ’em, though
land knows who she’s goin’ to visit in these parts, and she said Mrs.
Seth didn’t look stylish enough, so she tacked on the endin’. Mrs.
Sethibald Archer, that’s what’s on the card.”
Again the new teacher had an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh, but,
instead, she seated herself at the table and ate the really good
breakfast, and found that she was unusually hungry. The mountain-air
surely was a tonic.
As her guest seemed in no hurry to depart, Miss Bayley said, “Won’t you
be seated, Mrs. Twiggly, and tell me some more about my duties as
school-teacher?”
“Well, I dunno but I can set a spell,” was the reply of the garrulous
woman, who had “talked herself thin,” as Mrs. Sethibald Archer had been
known to declare, and which may have been true.
“Please tell me about my other pupils,” Miss Bayley continued.
There was a visible stiffening of the form of Mrs. Twiggly. “I’ll tell
you first about the four children who live down in Woodford’s Cañon,
them as had a shiftless, do-nothin’-useful actress for a mother.”
And so it was that Miss Josephine Bayley first heard of brave little
Dixie Martin and her three young charges.
“’Twas the year of the big blizzard,” Mrs. Twiggly began, sitting so
stiff and straight that her listener found herself wondering if she had
a poker for a backbone. “I declare to it, there never had been such a
winter. Too, that was the year they struck silver over beyond the cañon.
It got out that the mountains hereabouts were all chock-full of payin’
ore, and over-night, it seemed like, a minin’-camp sprung up and grew in
a fortnight to be a reg’lar town with houses and stores and even a
the-_a_-ter built. You can see the ruins of it now when you’re over that
way, and, havin’ a the-_a_-ter brought play-actin’ folks to Silver City,
and mighty big money they took in.
“It came easy, and was spent easy, but all of a sudden there was no more
silver; the veins had petered out, and the gay life of that town blew
out like the flame on a candle, and then it was that some little
one-horse show, havin’ heard how rich other actors had struck it there,
came trailin’ along, but they was too late.
“They gave their show,—‘Shakespeare,’ they called it,—but they gave it
to empty benches. They’d come over from Reno on the stage all dressed up
in their hifalutin’ costumes, so’s not to have to fetch over their
trunks, but they didn’t have any money to pay their way back, and so
they started to walk.
“Well, one of ’em was a pretty, frail-lookin’ young girl, with big round
eyes and soft curly hair. She wore a long, trailin’ white dress.
Ophelia, they called her, but she wa’n’t strong, and them paper shoes
she had on got cut to pieces as soon as she began to walk along the
mountain roads. When they got to Woodford’s Cañon the man dressed up as
king saw as she couldn’t walk any farther, so he said she’d have to stop
at some ranch-house and rest till the stage-coach came along.
“The only house anywhere near belonged to Pine Tree Martin. Folks
hereabouts called him that because he was always sayin’, ‘Neighbors,
don’t cut down the pine trees.’ Queer, how that man did love pine trees.
He had two of the finest ones you ever saw growin’ in front of his log
cabin, and they’re still there. Well, Pine Tree Martin was nigh forty
years old, and he’d been livin’ alone since his ol’ mother died. The
king and another fellow they called Hamlet went to the cabin and knocked
on the door. Nobody was at home, so they pushed open the door and found
a fire burning in the stove and supper set for one on the table. They
carried Ophelia, who had fainted by that time, into the cabin and put
her on the bed, then the rest of them made tracks for Reno.”
The sniff was very audible now.
Then she went on: “That shows how much morals play-actin’ folks have,
but I can tell you Pine Tree Martin wa’n’t made of no such ne’er-do-well
stuff. When he found that done-up girl with her big round eyes and soft
curly hair in his house, and heerd how she didn’t have a home that she
could go to, he up and loved her, as only the Pine Tree Martin kind of
people can love.
“He married her and took the tenderest sort o’ care of her as long as
she lived. Nothin’ he could get was too good for her, and she as useless
as a—well, a butterfly, I guess. An’ what’s more, she was allus talkin’
about what blue-blooded folks her relations was. It seems their name was
Haddington-Allen, and they was rich and proud. They had disowned her
because she wanted to go on the stage and be a star. When Dixie was
born, she wrote letters to the aunt that had fetched her up in the
South, but they allus came back, and on ’em was written, ‘Unopened by
Mrs. Haddington-Allen.’
“This Mrs. Pine Tree Martin never took to Western ways. Her heart was
allus in the South, an’ as her children were born she named them Dixie,
Carolina, and Kentucky, till the baby came, and she named him after the
uncle that had fetched her up, James Haddington-Allen Martin.
“In one way it turned out good for Dixie to have such a shiftless
mother, for as soon as that girl could hold a saucepan she began to cook
for the family. The only thing the mother would do was sew, and she made
fancy dresses for herself and for the other girl, Carolina, to wear. She
never took much pride in the two older children. The boy, Ken, was the
livin’ image of his homely, raw-boned pa, and Dixie was a great
disappointment, for she was a Martin clear through, but Carolina was the
picture of her ma, and still is, and just like her.
“Well, when James Haddington-Allen Martin was three months old, the
mother died, and the father was left with four children, which was bad
enough, but two years later Pine Tree Martin was killed in a raid, and
since then Dixie, who’s just come twelve, has kept house and been mother
to the other three,” Mrs. Twiggly concluded.
Then, before Josephine Bayley could comment on the sad story that she
had just heard, Mrs. Twiggly arose. “I declare to it,” she exclaimed,
“if ’tisn’t eight o’clock and you’ll want to be startin’ to school
early. Follow the road right down toward the cañon, then turn toward the
mountains a bit, and there you are. You’d better not step off the road
to-day. There’s adders and rattlers hereabouts. You’ll get so you can
tell a coiled snake from a stone arter you’ve been here a spell, but
just at first you’d better be keerful.”
Then when she reached the door with the tray she turned to say
condescendingly: “I’m real glad you’ve come, Miss Bayley. It’s mighty
nice to have folks as interesting as you are to talk to, an’ I do hope
the board will like you.”
She was out of the door when she stepped back to add: “Miss Bayley, if
it don’t come too hard, I’d sort of let it seem like you think Jessica
Archer is prettier than Carolina Martin and smarter than Dixie. It’ll be
stretchin’ the truth mighty hard, but it’s policy. Good mornin’, Miss
Bayley.”
The new teacher, at last alone, put her hands to her head as though she
felt dizzy. How rasping was Mrs. Twiggly’s voice! But a moment later she
was thinking of the poor little children of that stranded Ophelia, and
looked eagerly forward to her first meeting with them.
CHAPTER FOUR
GETTING ACQUAINTED
It was a perfect autumn day, and he who has not been in the Sierra
Nevada mountains on a golden October morning has not as yet known the
full joy of living.
Josephine Bayley had been advised to lock her door in order to keep out
“snoopin’ Indians.” She had been shown through a field-glass a group of
most dilapidated dwellings about a mile to the south and down in the
creek-bottom. These dwellings could not be called wigwams; indeed, they
were too nondescript really to be called anything. Some had a rough
framework of saplings, with pine branches for a roof and walls; others
were made of stones held together with mud, while still others were but
shiftlessly erected tents, even discarded clothing having been used, and
all were surrounded by rubbish and squalor. Thus the one-time
picturesqueness of the Washoe Indian has degenerated.
“They’re curious and snoopin’, those Indians are, but harmless,” Mrs.
Enterprise Twiggly had said, when advising Miss Bayley to keep her door
locked while she was away.
The new teacher, lithe, dark, athletic, stepped springily down the
mountain road, feeling as though she must sing with a lark that was
somewhere over in a clump of murmuring pines. But the first note of the
song died on her lips as she suddenly stopped and gazed ahead of her.
Had that stone in the road moved, or was it her imagination? She gazed
fascinated. Was it about to uncoil and raise a protesting head?
Gracious! What was it she had heard about rattlers? When they coiled,
they could spring—how far—was it twice the length of their own bodies?
Did one have to measure them to know how far away one could stand in
safety? If they were straight out, one always had time to escape, for
they had to coil to strike. But the large round stone that did look
strangely like a coiled snake did not stir, not even when a smaller rock
was thrown at it.
Miss Bayley, laughing at her own fears, looked down the cañon road ahead
of her, where she beheld a little procession approaching. A light of
recognition brightened her dark eyes. “Oh, I am so glad!” she thought.
“Here come the children of Ophelia.”
A queer-looking group they made. There was a soft mouse-colored burro,
and on it sat a truly beautiful little girl of eight years, holding in
front of her a chubby four-year-old boy, who was beaming with delight. A
tall, lank lad, with a staff in one hand, was guiding the beast of
burden, while on the other side, with pride shining in her eyes, that
were a warm golden-brown, walked the little mother of them all, Dixie
Martin. She was carrying a basket that held their lunch and leading a
very small, long-legged goat that had a red ribbon tied about its neck.
As they emerged from the dark cañon road into the full sunlight beyond
the great old pines they beheld for the first time their new teacher.
They knew at once that it must be she, and Ken snatched off his cap,
while little Carolina, slipping from the back of the burro, made a
graceful curtsy, just as her mother had trained her to do from babyhood.
Dixie, too, had been trained, but she was a Martin, and did not take to
polishing as readily as did Carol.
The new teacher hurried forward with hands outstretched. She actually
forgot to examine the stones in the road that might be coiled snakes.
“Oh, you dear little pupils of mine!” she exclaimed. “You are the four
Martins, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am, we are,” was the chorused reply; and then it was that Miss
Bayley recalled that even the best people in the South say “ma’am.”
Carolina, wishing to shine, stepped forward and said: “I’ll introduce
us, shall I? This is my big sister, Dixie Martin, and our baby brother,
Jimmy-Boy.” Then the small girl held herself proudly, as the mother had
done, as she added, “His real name is James Haddington-Allen Martin,
after our aunt who is blue-blooded in the South.”
There was a sudden flush in the freckled face of the older girl, and she
hastened to say apologetically: “Miss Bayley, please pardon my little
sister for saying that. I’ve told her time and again that when folks are
truly blue-blooded it shows without their telling it.” Then she added,
as she nodded toward the boy who stood waiting his turn, “This is our
big brother, Ken, and I guess that’s all the introducing, unless Pegasus
ought to be mentioned.”
“Pegasus?” the new teacher repeated as she gazed at the stolid little
burro and marveled. “Pray, what do you kiddies know about Pegasus?” Even
as she spoke she realized that much that was unusual might be expected
from the children of Ophelia.
It was Dixie who said eagerly, “Oh, our beautiful mother wrote the
loveliest poetry, and she used to say that the wonderful winged horse,
Pegasus, carried her to the Land of Inspiration.”
Miss Bayley noticed that the small goat had not been introduced. Ken,
believing that the moment for the presentation was at hand, took the
leading-rope from his sister, and, stepping forward, he said, almost
shyly: “Miss Bayley, teacher, we fetched along Star-White as your
present. We thought maybe you’d like him for a pet.”
It had been said of Miss Josephine Bayley that she could rise to any
occasion without evidencing surprise or dismay, and she surely did at
this moment. Luckily, her practice-work on the East Side in New York had
taught her to expect the most extraordinary gifts from her pupils.
The four pairs of eyes watched anxiously for a moment. _Would “new
teacher” like their present?_
Their doubts were quickly put to flight, for Miss Josephine Bayley
stooped and caressed the long-legged, rather startled kid as she said
with a ring of real enthusiasm in her voice: “You dear Star-White,
you’re as nice as you can be. I just know that I’m going to love you.”
Then, rising, she held out a hand to the two who were nearest, but the
others were included in her smiling glance as she said: “Thank you so
much, dears. It was ever so kind of you to want to make me happy.” Then,
a little helplessly, she appealed to the older boy as she asked, “What
shall we do with Star-White now?”
“I’ll tie him up in the shed back o’ your cabin, Miss Bayley. He’ll be
all right in there.”
The lad skipped ahead, the kid in his arms, but returned in an
incredibly short time.
The procession had continued on its way, and Ken soon remarked, “There’s
the schoolhouse, teacher, down the piney lane, and I think there’s folks
waiting to see you.”
Miss Bayley turned and saw, back from the road and on a short lane, a
log schoolhouse half hidden by great old pines. In front of it stood a
very fine carriage drawn by two milk-white horses. At their heads a
stocky man with a stubby red beard and a keen, alert, red-brown eye
awaited her. He was the “board of education,” of that Miss Bayley was
sure, while on the back seat of the vehicle, with her bonneted head held
high, sat no less a personage than Mrs. Sethibald Archer, and at her
side, also with her head held high, was a much-beruffled young girl,
aged eight years, who was of course the prettiest and smartest child in
the school. Miss Bayley assured herself that she mustn’t forget that,
not for one moment, if she wanted to stay, and, oh, how she did want to
stay and get acquainted with the wonderful mountains, and the Martins,
and maybe even with the Indians who lived down in the creek-bottom!
All this she thought as she walked up the little lane toward the old log
schoolhouse.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE WOODFORD SCHOOLHOUSE
Mr. Sethibald Martin advanced with what he believed to be a dignified
stride. Without removing his hat, he said, “This here is Miss Josephine
Bayley, I take it—her as has credentials to teach correct speakin’ and
figurin’.”
A voice from the vehicle was heard. “You’d better look at ’em,
Sethibald, to make sure. I don’t want no teacher that can’t learn my
Jessica correct speakin’, such as will fit her for the high sphere she
is to fill as the daughter of a sheep-king.” The speech had been
planned, that the new teacher might at once be impressed with the
importance of the Archers in that mountain community.
The stubby gentleman seemed actually to puff up a bit, “as a toad
might,” the newcomer found herself thinking, but, remembering his
present mission, he explained the duties and requirements of the
position, then added, as he glanced almost scornfully at the silent,
listening group of four children and a burro, “It sure is onfortunate.
Miss Bayley, that the pupils from these here parts are so no-account, my
own Jessica bein’ exceptionated.”
His glance turned with pride to the snub-nosed child in the buggy. Then,
in a whispered aside: “It’s lucky for you that you’ve got one promisin’
pupil like my daughter, Miss Bayley. ’Twould be dull work teachin’ if
you didn’t have nothin’ but dumb young ’uns like those Pine Tree
Martins.” He paused, seeming to expect comment. This, then, was Miss
Bayley’s moment for being diplomatic.
“I am sure that I shall find your little daughter a very receptive
pupil, Mr. Archer,” she said graciously. This time it was certain that
Mr. Sethibald had puffed. He had never heard the word “receptive”
before, but it had a most complimentary sound.
“Yes, ma’am, Miss Bayley, you’ll find the little sheep-princess all that
an’ more, much more, ma’am.” He was unctuously rubbing his hands as he
spoke. Then going to the side of the vehicle and holding out a
bediamonded hand, he added, “Come now, Jessica, darlin’, and meet the
new teacher, her as is goin’ to teach you lots of nice things.”
He lifted the small girl to the ground, and Miss Bayley advanced, her
hand held out, but the little “sheep-princess” drew back and clung to
her father.
The teacher found herself comparing this lack of manners with the
natural graciousness of Carolina, but the father evidently considered
his daughter’s behavior as being praiseworthy.
“Shy little thing,” he commented in another of his quite audible asides.
“Not bold like that Carry Martin.”
Then the unexpected happened. The little girl referred to darted forward
with catlike swiftness. “My name is _not_ Carry Martin,” she cried.
“It’s Carolina, and my folks are—” She was drawn back and quieted by
poor Dixie, who looked her misery. Teacher, quite at a loss what to say,
glanced at the shy and model Jessica at that moment and saw her sticking
out her tongue and tilting her nose at the Martins.
Miss Bayley sighed. There were evidently snags ahead, but Mrs. Archer
was speaking. “Sethibald,” she said, with a desire to impress the new
teacher with her own great importance, “it’s time now that you were
a-drivin’ me over to Genoa, where I have to speak in front of a mothers’
meetin’ on how to bring up the young.” Then, turning to Miss Bayley, she
added condescendingly, “Me and you’ll be great friends, I’m sure, bein’
as we’re both sot on upliftin’ folks in this here neighborhood from
shiftlessness and ignorance.”
Before the astonished young teacher could reply, the stubby, reddish
gentleman had climbed up on the front seat, and the restive white horses
had started off down the pine-edged lane at a brisk speed, and Josephine
Bayley, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, led the way into the large
bare room of the old schoolhouse, where she was to spend many a day
finding new problems and new pleasures. There were ten pupils in all.
Two of them, Mercedes and Franciscito Guadalupe, had but recently come
to that mountain country from Mexico.
Their father was the new overseer at the Archer ranch, and as yet they
had not learned one word of English.
They were brightly dressed, dark-skinned little creatures, and each time
that the new teacher spoke to them, their reply was the same, “_Muchas
gracias, Senorita_,” which sounded very polite, but how was Josephine
Bayley to teach them reading and spelling if neither knew the language
of the other?
Two of the remaining pupils were equally hopeless, being the most
forlorn little mites, children of a trapper who lived somewhere over
toward Lake Tahoe, but, as Miss Bayley was to find, these pupils only
came now and then, when their trapper-father could spare time to bring
them, one in front and one back of him, on his horse.
Maggie and Millie Mullet were twins, aged six years, and Miss Bayley
found as the weeks went by that although, after an hour of earnest
effort, she might teach them to spell such words as “cat,” “bat,” “rat,”
“mat,” when questioned the next day their minds were as blank as though
they had never heard the words.
The tenth pupil was a very large boy, sixteen years of age, who was the
only son of the burly blacksmith over at Woodford’s. He studied
diligently, and when he once learned a thing he seemed never to forget
it, and so of him Miss Bayley had a little more hope. However, his
father, the powerful Ira Jenkins, Senior, thought “larnin’” unnecessary,
but the mother, having learned to read, pored over novels, even when
preparing meals, and she had decided that her overgrown son should be a
preacher like the one who came once a month from Genoa and held
“meetin’s” in the parlor at the inn.
As Miss Josephine Bayley looked over her little class that first
morning, she felt desperately at a loss to know how to begin. Each
child, it seemed, was studying something different from all the others,
and, to add to her discomfort, the new teacher realized that the eyes of
Jessica Archer, which were like her father’s, were watching her every
move as though she had been admonished by her elders to observe and
report all that happened.
The one bright spot was the corner where the wide-awake, intelligent
young Martins sat, and Josephine Bayley found herself actually glad that
they were “blue-blooded.”
Just as the new teacher was becoming almost panicky at the newness of
everything, the slim, freckled hand of Dixie Martin appeared on high,
and when Miss Bayley nodded, that small maiden arose, and, going to the
desk on the platform, she said softly, “Please, teacher, we usually
begin with singing. We all know the ‘Good-Morning’ song. I’ll lead if
you want me to; I often do.”
“Oh, I’d be ever so grateful if you would.”
And so Dixie turned around and began to sing, in a clear, bird-like
voice, a simple little melody that the older pupils knew and sang with
her. There were four stanzas, and when the song was finished, the hand
of Jessica Archer went up, and, rising, she said that as she was the
smartest pupil in the school, she was always asked to read first.
“Very well, Jessica. My pupils, I am sure, will all be glad to help
their new teacher to-day by making suggestions. Now, if you will read
where you left off last term, I shall better understand how to class
you.”
“Oh, I am class A,” the small girl said proudly, “and Dixie Martin and
Ken and Ira Jenkins are class B, and the rest are class C.”
“Indeed!” was all the new teacher said, but she was thinking that her
predecessor had evidently succeeded in fulfilling all the requirements
of the board. But why, then, had she left? Oh, she did recall that Mrs.
Enterprise Twiggly had said that the last teacher had married a
prospector, who, for a time, had been in the mountains near Woodfords.
Romance was something that interested Josephine Bayley, aged twenty
years, not at all. She had never been in love and never would be, she
was sure of that. She was going to be wedded to her profession. She had
never even met a lad who could interest her, and surely if she had
failed to find one in the city of New York, where she had many
delightful friends, she would not find him in this wild, rugged mountain
country.
And all the while these thoughts were idly passing through the brain of
Josephine Bayley, her “smartest” pupil was stumbling and stuttering
through a short story in the Fourth Reader. It was not until the little
girl sat down and was casting a triumphant glance over toward the Martin
corner that the new teacher, with a start, awakened from her reverie.
Dixie Martin read next, and with so much expression that Miss Bayley was
both amused and interested. She believed, and truly, that the mother’s
yearning to be an actress had descended as real talent to at least this
one of her children.
“Dixie,” the new teacher said, “I wish you would remain in at recess. I
want to speak to you.”
If there was a jealous tilt to the curly head of Jessica, Miss Bayley
did not notice it. When the others had filed out, for fifteen minutes of
freedom, the new teacher took the hand of Dixie and said earnestly:
“Dear, why are you reading in a Third Reader? Here is a Sixth Reader.
See if you couldn’t read that.”
The gold-brown eyes were glowing. “Oh, yes, ma’am, Miss Bayley, I could.
I love reading. After supper every night I read to the children
‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ and ‘Oliver Twist’ and the Almanac. That’s all the
books we have.”
There was a firmer line about the mouth of Josephine Bayley. She had in
that moment decided that she would tutor at least this one of the
Martins, out of school-hours. Over her free time, surely, the board
would have no jurisdiction.
CHAPTER SIX
KEN’S SECRET SORROW
It was Saturday, which was the busiest of the whole week in Woodford’s
Cañon, for it was house-cleaning day in the old log cabin which was
guarded by two spreading pine trees, but this Saturday was especially
busy.
“Carol, please do stop frittering,” Dixie called as she turned from the
stove which she was polishing with as much care as though it had been a
piano. “Don’t you know who is coming to call this very afternoon, and
I’d feel just terrible, I certainly would, if Miss Bayley sat on dust,
and that’s what she’s likely to do if you skip places at dusting, as you
usually do, and I haven’t time to-day to rub them over and see.”
The younger girl, who had been leaning far out the window, supposedly to
shake a duster, but who had continued to linger there, watching two
squirrels playing tag among the dry pine needles, returned reluctantly
to the task she so disliked.
“O dear! it’s just mean-hateful being poor folks the way we are,” she
complained, “and having to do our own work with our own hands. I’ve
heard my beautiful mother say so time and again. When she was a girl she
had two little darkies to wait on her. She never had to pick up
anything, if she dropped it. She didn’t have to even lift a finger.”
Dixie straightened up to rest her tired shoulders, for polishing a stove
was hard work at best, and almost unconsciously she glanced down at her
own fingers that were jet-black just then, and for a bit of a moment she
sighed, and was half tempted to think that, maybe after all, it would be
nice to have nothing to do but sing and read, or live in the
out-of-doors that she so loved. But a second later she was her own
optimistic, practical self. “Carol Martin,” she announced, “just for
that, now, we’re going to count our blessings. You begin! One?”
“O dear!” the other little maid sighed as she knelt to dust the rungs of
an old grandfather’s chair. “I ’spose I ought to be thankful that I’m
beautiful, like my mother.”
Dixie laughed as she whirled about, her expressive freckled face at that
moment being far more attractive than that of her prettier, younger
sister.
“Of course you should,” she declared good-naturedly, “and I’m thankful
that I have Jimmy-Boy, and here he comes this minute to ask me to give
him some bread and molasses.”
The door burst open and the small boy ran straight to his little mother,
but it was not of bread and molasses that he spoke. “Dixie, dear,” he
said, and his brown eyes were wide with wonder, “Buddy Ken is in the old
barn an’ he won’t speak to me or nuffin’. I fink he is crying.”
“Mercy, no, not that! A big brave boy like Ken never cries.” However, in
the heart of the girl who was far too young to be carrying so much
burden, there was a sudden anxiety. She had noticed, for several days,
that Ken had acted preoccupied, almost troubled. She had not mentioned
it, for perhaps he was just figuring how he could sell the apple-crop to
the best advantage. Yes, surely that must be all that was the matter.
Dixie went on with the polishing. There was just one lid to do and then
the task would be finished.
“Run away, Jimmy-Boy,” she said in her singing voice. “Play until Dixie
is through, and then you shall have your nice bread and molasses.”
“Don’t want bread; want Buddy Ken to fix my wagon and he won’t speak to
me. He’s crying inside of him, Ken is.” At this the small boy burst into
tears.
The last rub had been given to the stove, so Dixie washed her hands,
and, kneeling, she kissed the small boy as she said: “James
Haddington-Allen Martin, I guess it’s time to ask you to count your
blessings. Now, sir, begin. Blessing one is—” She paused, but she didn’t
have long to wait. The clouded face brightened and throwing his arms
about his “little mother,” he cried, “_You!_”