silk. “I’m afraid Tim doesn’t care to find me,” she said. “I haven’t
heard from him in over a year. I don’t even know where he is. Brother
and I were left orphans when I was eight and he six. That was just
twelve years ago. Although he is but eighteen, he is a giant of a chap,
and would pass for twenty-one. Our guardian put me in a fashionable
boarding-school in New York, and placed Tim in a military academy in the
South. After that we saw very little of each other, but we did write,
that is, I wrote every week and my brother replied now and then, but
over a year ago his letters ceased coming, and so, when I graduated and
was ready to do what I liked, I went South and visited the academy, only
to find that my brother was not there. He had found military discipline
too severe, his room-mate told me, and had disappeared. No one knew
where he went, but his pal believed that he had gone to sea. Tim had
said to him, ‘Tell Sis that I’ll turn up in three years, if not sooner.’
With Tim gone, I had no one in all the world, Dixie, for whom I really
cared, and no one cared for me. I was so weary of the noise and
artificial life of New York City, and I didn’t want to open up our
father’s home on Riverside Drive without Tim, so I left it all and came
West to seek—to seek— Oh, Dixie, dear, I don’t know what I came to seek,
but I do know what I found.” With a little half-sob, the girl-teacher
held out both arms, and Dixie went to her.
“I found some one to love, and some one to love me.” Then, hastily
wiping her eyes, Miss Bayley smilingly declared, “It never would do to
get a little salty spot on this lovely blue silk.” Then, springing up,
she added gayly, “Come now, Miss Midget, you and I are going to have
four-o’clock chocolate.”
During the next hour Dixie thought she had never known her beloved
teacher to be so light-hearted and merry, but when the small girl had
gone down the cañon trail Josephine Bayley went to her screened-in porch
bedroom, and, stretching out her arms toward the sky that was such a
deep blue over the mountains, she said, “O Thou who holdest the lands
and the seas, take care of my brother, Tim.” Then, remembering the
child’s faith in prayer, she added, “And bring him to me soon.”
There was peace in the heart of the girl-teacher as she turned back into
the little log cabin, for, once again, she had faith in prayer.
“And a little child shall lead them,” she thought as she prepared her
evening meal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
WHERE THE TRAIL LED
The little lost, almost hidden, trail haunted Josephine Bayley. She
thought of it the next morning when she first awoke. It was still hardly
daylight when she sprang from bed. “I’m going to climb it to the very
top,” she thought, “for where others have been, I, too, can go, and
maybe I’ll be there in time to see the sun rise.”
She quickly donned her khaki hiking-clothes, with the short skirt and
bloomers; then, taking a stout, knobbed club that Mr. Enterprise Twiggly
had given her for a weapon, should she meet a snake or wildcat, away she
started, climbing with eager feet, and singing as soon as she was out of
hearing, for the very joy of living.
When a tangle of brush impeded her progress, she thrust the stick ahead
and beat the vines and bushes, and then fearlessly pushed through.
“All properly brought-up snakes are hibernating now,” she remarked to an
overhanging branch that she had to stoop to pass under. “Poor little
snakes,” she ruminated, “in the hearts of them they probably are as
kindly-intentioned as any of us. They love to live in their wild
mountain homes, and they would far rather slip away from us than hurt
us, but even the truly harmless ones are always battered to death as
soon as they are seen, although in gardens they are of great value, if
only gardeners knew.”
A bird from somewhere sang to her, just, a joyous morning-song. “Which
means that the sun is coming up and I have not reached the top of this
little lost trail, and, what is more, I’m not likely to until the day is
well advanced,” said the girl to herself. This because of a dense growth
of pine that arose just ahead of her. Then it was that Josephine Bayley
noticed that the old trail had evidently been abandoned, for crossing it
was a newer one that had been recently used. With a little skip of
delight, the girl-teacher turned into the new trail that led through the
pine clump, and, ascending easily, to her great joy she saw one of the
lower peaks just above her.
“Oh! oh!” she thought happily. “How I have longed to know what lay
beyond this mountain that is in my dooryard, so to speak. I do hope it
is not merely another and higher range. Well, I soon shall know.”
With feet that seemed tireless, the girl-teacher climbed the short steep
bit of trail that was left, and stood at the very summit. Then, with
arms outflung, she cried aloud: “Oh, the wonder of it! Now I know how
Balboa must have felt when he first beheld the Pacific.”
Lake Tahoe, a great sheet of glistening blue, framed in the gray of
jagged cliffs and the dark green of encircling pines, lay not many miles
beyond. The sun, still near the horizon, was pouring its molten gold
over the water, sky, and mountains, transforming them to celestial
loveliness. With clasped hands the girl-teacher stood, gazing with her
very soul in her eyes. Her hat had been thrown on a rock near by, and
the breeze from the lake was tossing her curling locks back from her
forehead.
Little did she dream how beautiful she looked, and still less did she
dream that she was being observed by some one who thought her the
loveliest creature he had ever seen.
Fifteen minutes passed before the girl became conscious of her
surroundings. Not far from the summit, and near a clump of sheltering
pines, she saw a camp-fire, and the coals were smoldering. Some one must
be near, she thought. For one panicky moment she realized how
unprotected, how very much alone, she was on that high peak, but, as no
one appeared, she decided that the camper had gone his way, and she,
too, turned, and, after one more glance back at the water, retraced her
steps to her cabin home.
But the camper had not gone. He had been lying very still behind a great
gray boulder. He knew that this maiden had climbed the trail, wishing to
be alone, and, too, he had reasons of his own for not desiring to make
his presence known.
As Josephine Bayley descended the trail, her fancy followed the
mysterious camper, wondering what he might look like,—a hoary-bearded
prospector, perhaps, still hunting for that elusive vein of silver. Had
she seen the young man who stood erect soon after her departure, had she
noted his square chin, his gray, far-seeing eyes, his keen, kind face,
tanned by the beating of sun and wind, sleet and rain, she would have
been more interested and curious than ever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
KEN’S QUEST
When the pupils gathered on Monday morning, Miss Bayley soon realized
that the little Martins had something to tell her that they believed was
of great interest. It was indeed astonishing and most acceptable news.
Carol, who had spent Saturday afternoon on the Valley Ranch, had been
informed by Sue Piggins that little Jessica Archer was to return with
her to the boarding-school in Reno. Mrs. Sethibald, the mother, had let
it be known that a common log-cabin school was not good enough for a
“sheep-princess,” and that from then on she was to have the best
“iddication” that could be obtained, for, like as not, when she was
grown, she’d be one of the first ladies of Nevada, if not of the whole
land.
“The girls over there won’t like her, not the least little mite,” Sue
had prophesied, “that is, not unless she changes a lot. Their fathers
are all more educated, and just as rich as Mr. Archer is or ever will
be.”
Miss Bayley said little when this news was told, but secretly she
rejoiced. She had feared that she would be obliged by the law to report
Jessica as a truant if she did not attend school anywhere, but it surely
was not pleasant to anticipate her return to the little log school in
Woodford’s Cañon.
So happy, indeed, did the girl-teacher feel that she wished that it were
within her power to declare a half-holiday, but, since it was not, she
decided to close half an hour early and take all her little pupils,
Mexicans, blacksmith’s son, and the trapper’s two little girls, who
always looked hungry, with the four Martins, over to her cabin to
celebrate. Even while she was giving out sums in mathematics her
thoughts were straying. “I’m so glad I made a mountain of a chocolate
cake,” she was thinking; “and I’ll make more chocolate to drink, and for
once Milly and Maggy Mullett, at least, shall have all the cake they
wish.”
Mrs. Sethibald Archer would indeed have been indignant if she had known
her daughter’s withdrawal from the log-cabin school was being considered
an occasion for especial rejoicing.
Often during the morning Dixie glanced at Miss Bayley and thought that
she never before had noticed how very young-looking she was, and, too,
the girl-teacher looked as though she might begin to sing at any minute.
Indeed, so real was Miss Bayley’s desire to do so that she quite upset
the usual plan of study by saying: “Don’t let’s do mathematics any more
this morning. Let’s each choose a song to sing.” Which they did, and how
the little old schoolhouse rang, for each chose a song that they all
knew well, and although little Dixie, who led them, had not the vaguest
idea why teacher was so happy, the spirit of rejoicing was contagious,
and her birdlike soprano voice trilled sweeter and higher, encouraging
those who faltered.
When at last the solemn-faced clock, which perhaps had been watching all
this unusual procedure with dignified surprise, slowly tolled the hour
of ten, Miss Bayley said: “And now we will have recess. Dixie, dear,
will you lead the games to-day, and Ken, will you remain with me? I wish
to speak to you.”
The heart of loyal little Ken was filled with pride. It was a great
honor, the pupils of Josephine Bayley thought, to be asked to remain in
at recess and be talked to by teacher. Sometimes she actually asked
their opinions about things, for, strange as it may seem, it was her
theory that if the children would rather have red geraniums blossoming
on the window-sill, instead of white, red they should be.
“It’s _your_ schoolroom,” she had told her pupils, “and here you spend
the heart of every day. I want it to be beautiful in your eyes, and then
I know it will be in mine.”
Was there ever another teacher so understanding as their beloved Miss
Bayley?
Ken’s intelligent freckled face glowed with eagerness when at last the
little line of pupils had filed out to the playground, and he was to
hear why Miss Bayley had asked him to stay in at recess.
The young teacher left her desk and stepped down by his side. “Laddie,”
she began, “yesterday morning early I climbed the trail that starts back
of the inn, and I found a wonderful view of Lake Tahoe, but I found more
than that. Guess what?”
She had placed a hand on each of his shoulders, and was looking into the
wondering eyes that were so like Dixie’s, though not so dreamy, for Ken
was a doer of deeds, as Pine Tree Martin had been.
“Oh, Miss Bayley, teacher, what? A bear, like ’twas. Now and then they
do come down from the high Nevadas, but usually not till the snows set
in.”
“Gracious, me, no, not that. If I had met a bear, I don’t suppose I
should be here to-day to tell about it.”
The girl-teacher looked her consternation at the mere possibility of
such a meeting, but the boy shook his head, with its unruly mop of hair
that was redder than Dixie’s, as he answered, “Bears don’t touch people
unless they’re cornered or come upon sudden-like.”
Then, remembering that the mystery had not been explained, he asked
eagerly, “Miss Bayley, what _did_ you see?”
“A camp-fire, Ken, and although no one at all was in sight, the coals
were still smoldering. Now, who do you suppose would be breakfasting on
that high peak? It isn’t a trail that leads anywhere in particular, is
it?”
“The Washoe Indians go over that way to Lake Tahoe fishing, but it
doesn’t sound like Indians,” the boy said. Then his eyes lighted with
hope. “Do you ’spose maybe ’twas a train-robber hiding?”
“Goodness, I hope not!” Miss Bayley shuddered. “I’d heaps rather have
met your bear.” Then she added, “Have there been any trains robbed
lately?”
The boy had to confess that he hadn’t heard of any. “There used to be
lots of train and stage hold-ups when my dad was a boy,” he said, “but
nowdays nothing much happens.” There was real regret in the tone of the
lad, as though life in the Sierra Nevadas had become too tame to be of
real interest. Then his eyes again brightened. “Well, anyhow, it might
have been a sheep-rustler. How I’d like to trail him, if ’twas. There’s
a State bounty for cornering one, Miss Bayley.”
The girl-teacher laughed at the boy’s eagerness. “Well, Ken,” she
confessed, “all I saw was a smoldering camp-fire, and since a bear, a
coyote, or a mountain lion cannot make a fire, we shall have to believe
that a man had breakfasted there at sunrise, but I heard no one and saw
no one.”
“Oh, Miss Bayley, teacher, how I’d like to ’vestigate. I’d like to,
_awful well_, if I could get ’scused a little early. It gets dusky so
soon now, and I’d need to have two hours of daylight, certain.”
This was an unusual and unexpected request, but the holiday spirit was
in the heart of the girl-teacher, and so, to the great joy of the lad,
she granted it. Then she added, as a new thought suggested itself: “I
don’t know, dear boy, that I _ought_ to let you go, if you think it
_might_ be a bandit in hiding, or anything like that. Would you be
safe?”
The boy’s expression was hard for Miss Bayley to interpret. “Oh,
teacher! Boys aren’t scared of bandits. They like ’em! You know that
Robin Hood fellow in the book you and Dixie bought me in Reno. Now, he
was a bandit, wasn’t he? A reg’lar bandit.”
The girl-teacher had to agree. “But, Ken,” she protested feebly, “he was
a story-book bandit. They are different in real life, aren’t they?”
“I dunno,” the boy had to acknowledge. “I haven’t met one yet, but I’d
like to. Gee whiz, Miss Bayley, I wish I could start right now. I sure
do! Maybe he’s goin’ on somewhere else this afternoon. Maybe I’d catch
him if I went this very minute.”
Miss Bayley laughed. She knew that it was her fault, for she had filled
the boy’s mind with longing for adventure, and she also knew that he
would be unable to study that day, and so she said, “But you haven’t had
your lunch.”
“I’ve got my share in my pocket this minute. Could I go, Miss Bayley?
Could I go now?”
What was there to do but agree, and, with a little half-suppressed whoop
of joy, the boy leaped to the row of hats, snatched his own from a hook,
waved it in farewell, and was gone. A wild gazelle could hardly have
been more fleet of foot.
No stick did he carry to beat ahead for snakes. This little lad, born
and reared in the mountains, had no fear of the other creatures dwelling
there. With understanding sympathy and comradeship he made them all his
friends.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CELEBRATING
The holiday spirit continued to pervade the little log schoolhouse, and
Dixie marveled, for was not this Monday, the day of the week when
lessons were usually the hardest? Then, at two o’clock, and right in the
middle of the spelling recitation, Miss Bayley closed the book, and,
placing it in her desk, made an unprecedented announcement, “Suppose we
speak pieces for a while, and then I have a surprise planned for you.”
Unable longer to keep from expressing her curiosity, the slim, freckled
hand of Dixie went up. The beaming teacher nodded, and the little maid
rose and inquired, “Miss Bayley, is it your birthday to-day?”
The girl-teacher laughed aloud. “I feel as though it were,” she
confessed. “I am almost sure it is, somehow. We might call it an extra
make-believe birthday, for my real one comes in January when it’s
blustery and cold.”
Then, following up the idea suggested by the pupil she so loved, she
asked, “How many of you would like to come to my extra-birthday party?”
How the hands flew up! The suggestion of it was beyond the understanding
of some of them, but “party” was a word known to all except the little
Mexicans. However, even their small brown hands went up, and their
smiles were as bright as the smiles of those who fully comprehended the
meaning of the magical word.
“Very well, but first we will have an hour of reading and recitation.
Now, Jimmy-Boy, will you begin by speaking one of your seven pieces?”
The curly-headed little fellow who sat at the big double desk with
Dixie, dangling feet that were too short to reach the floor, slipped
down and went very willingly up to the platform, where he made his
little bow and began to recite, but instead of speaking one of his seven
pieces, he kept right on saying them all, for they were but Mother Goose
rhymes, and none of them long.
He was so irresistibly cunning that every one clapped, even Mercedes and
Franciscito. Miss Bayley, noting their dark, beaming faces, choosing
words that she had taught them, asked if they could not do something.
To her surprise, the little black-eyed girl arose and replied in her
soft, musical voice, “_Si, senorita._” Then, taking her brother by the
hand, she led him to the rostrum, and together they sang a Spanish
serenade, and so beautifully that Miss Bayley and Dixie were indeed
delighted.
Then the solemn-faced grandfather’s clock, which perhaps was still
shocked at such unusual levity on a workaday Monday in the schoolroom
over which it presided, very slowly announced that the hour was three.
“Good!” Miss Bayley cried, seeming very like a girl herself in the mood
of the day. “Now we’ll have that extra-birthday party.”
Out of the little log schoolhouse they trooped, half an hour early, that
none might be later than usual reaching their homes. Over to “dear
teacher’s” they went, and were served with very large slices of that
wonderful mountain chocolate cake, with more chocolate to drink. Then,
with a loving pat for each little one, Miss Bayley dismissed them,
holding fast all the time to the hand of the pupil she loved the best.
When the others had gone on ahead, Josephine Bayley stooped, and kissing
Dixie on the forehead, she said softly, “Come over early next Saturday
afternoon, dear, and we will finish the blue-silk dress.”
When she was alone the girl-teacher wondered if her joyous mood was
altogether because of the departure of the troublesome pupil. Was it not
rather a premonition of some new and wonderful interest that was to come
into her life? If troubles cast their shadows ahead, even more does joy
illumine the way it treads.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ON THE TRAIL OF A “BANDIT”
Up through the old trail the boy had broken his way, and into the newer,
more open path he leaped, his feet winged with eagerness, and it was a
very breathless lad who at last reached the trail’s end and found the
cold gray ashes that had been a camp-fire.
“He’s gone!” he said aloud. “Whoever ’twas has gone on farther.” Then,
as he glanced among the near pines, he thought, “I might have known he’d
be gone by this time. A sheep-rustler, or a bandit, either, wouldn’t
just stay on a mountain-peak.”
Truly disappointed, the boy climbed to the highest point, and, shading
his eyes, looked in every direction.
The sun was high, the lake a deep emerald hue, with here and there the
reflection of a fleecy white cloud slowly drifting across its
mirror-like surface, for not a breath of air was stirring. Then the
lad’s gaze swept the mountain-ranges beyond.
“Guess I’m not much good at catching sheep-rustlers,” he commented, “but
then, I wouldn’t think much of one, or a bandit either, who’d sit here
and wait to be caught.”
The lad suddenly realized that he was very hungry. He sat on a rock
near, and looked meditatively about as he munched on the sandwich which
he had taken from his pocket.
Suddenly he leaped to his feet, ran a little way toward the burned-out
camp-fire, and, kneeling, examined the ground. A footprint! It hadn’t
been made by the soft leather shoe that Washoe Indians often wore.
Rising, and still munching his bread and meat, he placed his own smaller
foot in the print.
“Whoever he is, he’s a big fellow!” he said admiringly. “A reg’lar
giant.” Then, having finished the bread, he drew a rosy apple from the
depth of another pocket where it had been bulging. The boy walked about,
poking in the ashes; then suddenly, with a whoop of delight, he knelt
down, jammed the remaining piece of apple in his mouth to dispose of it
speedily, and with his freed hands drew forth a sheet of partly burned,
much-blackened paper that had writing on it.
“Whizzle!” he ejaculated. “How I hope it’s a clue.”
He spread the paper on a flat boulder, and knelt to examine it closely.
The fire and the smoke had done their best to make it hard for him to
decipher the finely written words. It seemed to be the fragment of a
personal letter written to a relative, but not one reference was made to
holding up a train or rustling sheep. At the very bottom, in a scorched
place, the boy found something which caused him to leap to his feet and
prance about as a wild Indian would, when celebrating a joyous occasion.
“Hurray! Hurray!” he fairly shouted, and the near peak echoed back the
cry. Then, climbing again to the highest boulder, the lad once more
shaded his eyes, this time with an even greater eagerness to discover
some sign of a camp. At last, over on the next mountain which was so
perilously steep that few attempted to scale it, and up near the top,
the boy’s eyes found what he sought—a camp-fire.
“Ginger!” he thought. “I don’t know how he ever got there, whoever he
is. Climbing that mountain is like trying to shin up the wall of a barn,
but if he can do it, so can I, but ’twould take me a day, and it’s too
late now.”
The boy looked toward the west, and saw the sun was low in the horizon.
“I’d go to-morrow, but Dixie wouldn’t like it if I cut school, and I’d
ought to stick at arithmetic if I’m going to be a civil engineer. But
I’ll come up here Saturday before sun-up, and if that camp’s over there
then, I’m going to head for it, and if it’s who I think maybe ’tis—
Aw—but, gee, it couldn’t be. Well, it’s somebody, and who it is I want
to find out.”
“There wasn’t anybody there,” was the report he gave Miss Bayley the
next day. “Whoever it was made the fire had moved on.” He said nothing
of his plans, but it was very hard for the boy, yearning for adventure,
to keep his mind on mathematics that week, and Saturday was a long time
coming.
But come it did, and hours before the sun was up Ken was on the trail,
eager, expectant.
Again on the top of the trail where the burnt-out camp-fire had been
discovered, Ken scrambled to the peak of the highest boulder, and, with
a heart beating like a trip-hammer, he pulled his wide-brimmed hat over
his eyes to shade them from the glare of the sun that was rising in a
cloudless sky.
Would there be any sign of the camp on the mountains beyond, he
wondered. Even as he looked he decided that whether there was or not, he
would not return to Woodford’s without having further investigated.
At first the lad saw nothing but the dazzling golden light of the sun
that was slowly rising higher, driving the gloom from the cañons, but,
as he continued to gaze, faint and far he saw a thin column of smoke
wavering uncertainly, and then suddenly drop down, to rise again a
moment later, as though invigorated when fresh and more inflammable fuel
had been added to the fire.
The lad scrambled down from his peak of observation and danced about as
he shouted aloud, to the very evident astonishment of a squirrel near
by: “He’s there! That is, somebody’s there, and, oh, if it should be—
But I mustn’t get my heart set on that.”
Then he looked again to make sure that he had not been imagining. It
might be mist or haze, but there it was, unmistakably rising in a
straight, unwavering dark line against the gleaming blue of the sky.
Then, as the boy watched, a breeze, wafting across the lake, waved the
column of smoke.
“I feel sort o’ like an Indian trying to read smoke-signals,” he thought
gleefully; “only, whoever made that fire isn’t trying to send messages
to me. If it’s a bandit hiding there, he wouldn’t want any one to know
where he is even. Gee, he might be a dangerous character! Maybe I’d
better steal up soft-like so that I can make a good getaway without his
knowin’ I’m about, if—”
Then he chuckled as he started down the trail on the other side of the
low peak. “Dixie’s the one in our family who is supposed to have
’magination,” he thought; “but this morning my head seems to be full of
queer notions.”