would behold either his aunt or the dreaded Marlita Arden. It was with
an audible sigh of relief that he beheld the vision of his dreams.
Miss Bayley was the more startled of the two. “Oh!” she exclaimed, as
she backed toward the door again. “I—I didn’t know that the Martin
children had company. I am so sorry—if—if I—” she hesitated.
The young man was the first to recover his presence of mind. “You
haven’t, Miss Bayley,” he said with the smile that won friends for him
among rich or poor, young or old. “I assure you that you have done the
very nicest thing that you possibly could have done. I’m mighty glad to
see you again. I—”
“Again?” The girl-teacher was indeed surprised, and at once began to
search her memory for the time of their former meeting. Surely she could
not have forgotten the good-looking young man, who bronzed face, with
its clear-cut features, plainly told that his life-work kept him
out-of-doors.
“Pardon me for not rising, Miss Bayley, and please do slip off your
cloak and stay a while,” he begged. “Dixie and the others have gone to
the Valley Ranch on an errand, but they will soon return.”
Then, as he saw the puzzled expression in her eyes, the young man
answered her unspoken query. “Miss Bayley, you have never met me before,
but I have heard my little friends speak of you so often that I feel
well acquainted with you.”
Relieved, Josephine slipped off her fur-lined cloak and seated herself.
For a moment she sat looking thoughtfully out of the window toward a
snow-covered range that formed the other side of the wide cañon.
“May I hear about it?” the young engineer asked.
The girl smiled. “I was thinking of a queer old man who is camping up in
the mountains, and wondering how he has weathered the storm.”
“Oh, indeed!” Mr. Edrington sat up as though interested. “Is this—er—old
man of whom you speak a particular friend of yours?”
The girl nodded, then laughed. “Well, at least I do feel friendly toward
him because he likes books. He has had two of mine, one on snakes and
the other a history.”
Then, turning she asked a direct question: “Won’t you tell me your name?
It’s hard to talk to a person and not call him anything.”
The young engineer flushed. “I say, Miss Bayley,” he apologized, “you’ll
think I’m a regular boor, won’t you? I—er—my name is—Rattlesnake Sam.”
The girl’s amused laughter rang out, and though the listener was
relieved, he was certainly puzzled.
“I was sure of it!” she said triumphantly. “You see what an excellent
detective I am.”
“But, I say, Miss Bayley, this isn’t very complimentary. I do know that
I need shaving, but Ken led me to believe that you thought Rattlesnake
Sam was an old, dry-as-dust professor, a sort of ‘fossil,’ and I—er—”
Then the young engineer laughed in his hearty, boyish way. “Honestly,
Miss Bayley, I didn’t suppose I looked quite that old and fogyish.” Then
the query: “Do I?”
The girl shook her head, but her eyes still twinkled. “No-o!” she
confessed almost reluctantly, “and I’m dreadfully disappointed in you. I
was actually looking forward to meeting the snake professor who looked
like—well, like Thoreau or Burroughs, as I fancied, and now—” Pausing,
the girl tilted her head sideways and gazed at him critically and yet
merrily.
His good-looking bronzed face was expressive as he watched her, and his
eyes were telling how much he admired her. He wondered what she would
say.
“I believe I am disappointed in you,” the girl declared, and yet in a
tone that did not quite carry conviction. “You’re much too modern to be
real interesting.”
The young man looked disconsolate. “Alas!” said he. “Fate seems to be
against me.” He glanced up hopefully. “I might grow a very long beard,
Miss Bayley, if that would help to make me less modern and more
interesting.” Then, as she only laughed her reply, the young engineer
continued. “But you haven’t told me what clues you possessed that led
you to discover my supposed well-hidden identity.”
Josephine looked at him searchingly. “Can men keep a secret?” she
inquired.
“Much better than boys can, or so I’m beginning to think,” was the
reply.
“No, you are wrong,” Miss Bayley defended. “Ken didn’t really tell. In
fact, he doesn’t know that he told at all. As I look back now upon our
conversations concerning the old man in the mountains, I realize that
Ken did his very best to keep your secret, but he said such strange
things sometimes. He hasn’t told,—not one word,—but one day when I
offered him a penny for his thoughts, he said he was wishing somebody
would get married, and he seemed so doleful about it that my curiosity
was aroused.
“Then, when I told him that I thought he was rather young to be a
match-maker, he confessed that what he was really wishing was that there
would be a blizzard, so that his friend Rattlesnake Sam would have to
leave the mountains and come down and stay at their cabin.
“Well, the storm did come and so, too, did you. Wasn’t the inference a
natural one?”
The young man nodded. “It wouldn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to unravel
that mystery,” he began, and then paused, for he was sure the little
ripple of laughter that he heard was prefacing a merry remark. Nor was
he wrong, for Josephine continued: “There is one part, however, that I
cannot understand. Whom do you suppose Ken wants to have married? If he
hadn’t mentioned it right in the very same breath with the blizzard, I
wouldn’t be so curious.”
“Your curiosity is quite natural, Miss Bayley, and it’s going to be
completely satisfied,” the young man said seriously. “I may need your
help almost any day now, and so you, too, may share the secret with
Dixie and Ken.” Then he told the whole story, beginning with the making
of the mountain road, two years previous, and ending with his recent
flight from the South and his reason for hiding.
To his surprise, his listener exclaimed: “Mr. Edrington, you are indeed
to be congratulated upon your narrow escape. If you know Marlita Arden
as well as I do, you are then aware that what she needs most is variety
and admiration. I doubt if she would be the comrade sort of wife that I
believe you would want.” Then, more seriously, “I do not dislike
Marlita, understand, but I would be sorry to have my brother Tim marry
her.”
The girl knew, by the listener’s expression that she was amazing him.
Nor was she wrong. Marlita Arden was a snob. She would not speak civilly
to a woman who earned her own living, and yet this young school-teacher
spoke as though she knew the Southern heiress well.
He could not ask how well, and no further information was volunteered.
Miss Bayley had risen and was donning her cloak. “I must be going,” she
said, smiling at him, “for the dusk comes early these winter days.”
The young man implored, “Miss Bayley, won’t you come often? Have pity on
a poor old fossil who’s a shut-in.”
“Perhaps! Good-by.” The teacher looked radiantly young and beautiful as
she paused in the open door and smiled back at him.
“She’s a princess of a girl,” he thought; then he recalled his decision
to never fall in love, and he tried to harden his heart.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
A RESOLUTION BROKEN
A never-to-be-forgotten winter followed that first blizzard. Never to be
forgotten, at least, by the girl-teacher of the Woodford’s Cañon
log-cabin school, by the young civil engineer, or by Dixie and Ken
Martin. The other children were almost too young to know how portentous
those months were.
After the storm there was a spell of clear, cold weather, when the
snow-covered valley and mountains sparkled in the pale sunshine,
inviting frolic.
For a time Mr. Edrington remained in the cabin, climbing hastily to the
loft if sleigh-bells were heard without, but, as the days passed and the
wrathful aunt, from whom he was hiding that he need not marry the girl
of her choice, did not appear, he became more daring and ventured forth
in the full light of day.
He it was who made, with Ken’s help, a wonderful slide down a steep
trail which ended at the frozen stream in the valley. Then a marvelous
toboggan was constructed, one long and strong enough to take them all on
a wild ride from the highway to the valley-bottom.
The young engineer sat in front to steer, and Jimmy-Boy sat just behind
and clung to him, and then came, Dixie and Carol, Ken and Miss Bayley.
Once, just for mischief, Mr. Edrington steered into a drift, and they
were all half-buried, but they took the ducking good-naturedly.
The young engineer also spent long hours reading in the cabin of his
good friend, Josephine Bayley. One of the Martin children accompanied
him on these occasions, usually Dixie, who was old enough to enjoy the
books that her two older friends liked to read aloud to each other.
While school was in session the young engineer was not idle, for he had
with him his instruments, and many a chart he made as he studied the way
to bridge chasms or to tunnel mountains.
February the first was Dixie’s birthday. Knowing that her sister and
brother could not give her presents, that thoughtful little mother did
not remind them of the coming event, and, childlike, they had quite
forgotten, for all winter days seemed alike to them. But there was one
who had not forgotten, and that one was Miss Bayley. She took Frederick
Edrington into her confidence, and a surprise-party was planned and
carried out.
The girl-teacher’s present to her favorite pupil was in a box, the shape
of which aroused much curiosity, but when Dixie saw the gift it
contained, her plain face was transfigured.
“Why, that girl is beautiful!” the young engineer said softly to the
teacher who stood at his side, watching while the slender maid lifted a
bow and violin.
“Miss Bayley!” How starlike were the eyes that turned toward the beloved
friend and benefactress. “Do you really think that some day I shall be
able to play?”
There was conviction in the tone of the young woman as she said, “I know
it! Some day we shall all listen in rapture, I’ll prophesy, and then
we’ll say proudly, one to another, ‘That is _our_ Dixie.’”
Going to the girl, Miss Bayley kissed her. “May I take your violin,
dear? I studied several musical instruments in school, but cannot play
any of them well.”
Taking the violin and adjusting it, she played a sweet, simple melody,
then explained to the girl, who listened with rapt eagerness, a few of
the things that a beginner should know. “Suppose you try to play.” The
young teacher smiled at the maid, little dreaming that she would comply,
but Dixie did not hesitate. She lifted the violin, and, after listening
to the strings for a moment, she began to play the same melody that Miss
Bayley had but finished. It was imperfectly done, but the young teacher
knew that she had been right in believing that the girl was rarely
talented.
“I will teach you all that I know, which isn’t much,” Miss Bayley said.
“Then, when the snow is gone and spring has come, you shall have lessons
from some one who is a real musician.”
Dixie’s cup of happiness seemed full those wintry days, for Carol grew
in gentleness and unselfishness, and was ever more loved and more
lovable.
“How pleased our father would be!” Dixie said that night as she and Ken
were alone in the kitchen after the party. Mr. Edrington had gone with
Miss Bayley, to escort her home up the cañon trail, and the younger
children were asleep. “Pleased, because we have two such wonderful
friends. Three,” the girl added brightly, “for surely Mr. Clayburn has
been a true friend.”
“We have managed to get along quite nicely without our aunt,” the boy
said as he wound the old grandfather’s clock. “I’m just as well pleased
that she never did look us up. I’m almost sure we shouldn’t like her.”
“I don’t believe she knows that we even exist,” Dixie declared. “Since
she never opened any of the letters that were sent to her, how could she
know?”
“That’s right,” Ken agreed. “I wonder what set me to thinking about her?
Well, I won’t waste any more thought on her. Good-night, Dix.”
The girl had started to ascend the ladder to the loft where she slept,
but she turned back and kissed the lad as she said: “Ken, you’ve been a
wonderful brother. On birthdays one thinks of those things. Good-night.”
The moon arose above old Piney Peak as Miss Bayley and Mr. Edrington
left the sheltered cañon trail and turned into the highway.
“I’m going to put out the light in the lantern,” the young man said. “We
don’t need it now, do we?” he smilingly asked after having blown out the
flickering flame.
“Where has it gone,” she asked, “the light that was there but a moment
ago?”
The young man shook his head. “I can’t tell you,” he declared; “and,
Josephine, please don’t ask me to think about abstract things just now.
I want to tell you something.”
The young engineer spoke seriously, almost pleadingly. He did not seem
to idealize that he had called his companion by her first name, but Miss
Bayley knew it, and she was glad to have him. What had he to tell her?
How she hoped—but—even to herself, she would not admit that desire.
For a few moments they walked on in silence. The road was slippery. He
held her arm, but still said nothing. At last Miss Bayley peered into
his face, trying to get him to lift his eyes from the ground. “I’ll not
say ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ that is too trite,” she began, “but I
do feel sort of left out and lonely. I’m just sure you are trying to
figure out how to tunnel through Old Piney and make your walk home with
me a quarter of a mile shorter.”
He looked up then, his fine eyes laughing, but in them there was an
expression which assured the girl that he had not been thinking of
tunnels, but of her. Taking her warmly-gloved hand, he said, “Lady of
the Sunrise Peak, I’m going away.”
She stopped, and her eyes told her surprised disappointment.
“Oh, Mr. Edrington, why? May I ask? I thought you were going to stay
here until spring or until you had heard that Marlita Arden had
married.” She paused questioningly.
“I did intend to, but I’m running away from—something else—myself,” he
hastened to add. “You see, Miss Bayley, I once made a resolution, and if
I stay here I’m afraid I’ll break it.”
“Indeed? May I know what the resolution was?” They had reached the small
cabin beyond the inn, and the girl-teacher paused on the doorstep
waiting. What could he say? The liquid-brown eyes that were so
expressive were searching his. She knew his answer before it was given.
“I have fallen in love, and I vowed I never would,” he said quietly.
“And is that why you are going away?” she inquired.
“No—o,” he confessed. “It isn’t. I’m going away for one month,
Josephine. Not because I want to test my love for you,—I’m sure of
that,—but I want you to have time to think—and to be sure.” Then he
added, “Am I presuming too much when I infer that perhaps you would want
to consider caring for me?”
The girl-teacher answered frankly. “Until to-night I have thought of you
merely as a comrade, a pal whom I enjoy more than I ever did any one
else. But perhaps you are right. If you go away, we can tell better
whether it is merely propinquity or love. Good-night.”
Frederick Edrington walked slowly back to the cabin, which was dark
except for a dim light burning in the room that he now shared with Ken.
He would go to Colorado and inspect some work that was going on there,
he decided. He had promised to send in a report of it before spring, and
this would afford him that opportunity.
The little Martins were surprised and sorry to hear that their guest was
leaving them. “I’ll be back in the spring,” he told them.
“That’s only a month away,” Dixie replied at the hour of parting.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
AN EVENTFUL SPRING
Spring came, and every mountain cañon held a rushing torrent. The sky
was gloriously blue after the long months that it had been leaden-gray,
and flowers began to appear in the crevices soon after the snow was
gone.
Joy in the heart of the young school-teacher sang with the returning
birds. Even the small Martin children seemed to be eagerly expectant.
“I feel as though something ever so nice is going to happen, Miss
Bayley, don’t you?” Dixie looked up glowingly from the slate on which
she was trying to solve a difficult sum.
Her beloved friend and teacher stood at her side. These two had remained
after school, that the older Martin girl might catch up with Ken in
mathematics.
“I’d heaps rather write rhymes or sing songs or play on my violin,”
Dixie confided when at last the slate had been washed clean and replaced
in the desk.
“I’m glad,” Miss Bayley said as she pinned on her hat, preparing to
depart. “You will derive much more joy from the poetry and the music,
but arithmetic, too, must be mastered, if you are to go to college.”
The girl looked brightly up at her teacher. “I’d have to be living in a
fairy-tale to have that happen,” she declared. Then laughingly she
confessed, “There are only six pennies in the sock under my mattress,
and you can’t think how hard I have tried to save all winter. However, I
might call them a nest-egg toward the future education of the four
Martins.”
The gold-brown eyes of the girl glowed from beneath the wide brim of her
rather shabby hat, but the young teacher saw not the hat but only the
radiant young face.
“Dixie,” she exclaimed suddenly, “this is the hour that the stage
arrives. Let’s walk down the cañon road a little way and see if it is
coming. Shall we?”
“I’d love to!” was the glad reply. “And maybe we’ll find some wild
flowers.” Then, when they had started swinging along together, the
younger girl asked, looking up at her taller companion, “Miss Bayley,
are you expecting some one in particular to come to-day?”
The rosy flush in the teacher’s face puzzled Dixie. She had not thought
that a romance might exist between Ken’s old friend and the young woman
whom she so loved.
“No, dear, no one in particular,” was the quiet reply, and it was true,
for although Miss Bayley had received a letter stating that Frederick
Edrington would soon be through with his work of inspection, he had not
said when he would revisit the cañon.
They had reached a high point, and Dixie had clambered up on a peak of
rocks, that she might have a wider vision. Shading her eyes from the
glare of the sun, she looked down into the valley.
“Surely there is something coming,” she called gleefully to the waiting
teacher. “I can see it moving among the pine trees.” Then, clapping her
hands, she added joyfully: “It _is_ the stage! It’s out in the clearing,
and now it’s beginning to climb. I do believe it will pass here in half
an hour or so.”
Miss Bayley pressed her hand on her heart to try to still its rapid
beating. “I can’t understand it at all,” she thought, “but I seem to
feel sure that some one _is_ coming on the stage, some one whom I shall
be glad to see.” Never before had a half hour seemed so long to the two
who spent the time searching for flowers among the rocks. Only a few,
blue as the sky, had been found, when Dixie stood suddenly alert,
listening. “Hear that rumble?” she sang out. “It’s the stage just around
Old Indian Rock.” She pointed to an outjutting boulder below them at the
turn in the cañon road. Breathlessly they waited. There were four
passengers in the coach, and one was an elderly woman, who, handsomely
dressed, sat very erect, and the expression on her proud, aristocratic
face assured the two by the roadside that, whoever she might be, the
errand that had brought her to the mountains was most displeasing to
her.
The elderly stage-driver waved the hand that held the whip, and beamed
down good-naturedly. The young teacher and Dixie smiled and nodded, but
although the occupants of the coach must have seen them, they were not
at all interested.
The girl heard Miss Bayley sigh. “Dear teacher,” she said softly, “won’t
you come on down to our cabin for supper? There is to be cottage cheese
that you like so much, with nice yellow cream on it.”
Dixie was convinced that her companion had been expecting some one who
had not come.
Josephine Bayley laughed merrily. “You dear little tempter,” she said,
“of course I’ll go.” And so hand in hand they descended the trail that
led under the great old pines and down to the picturesque log cabin.
Although it was but five o’clock, the little mother at once began to
prepare the evening meal. Ken and Jimmy-Boy were out milking the goat,
and Carol was over at the Valley Ranch.
“May I set the table?” the teacher inquired.
Dixie nodded. “Let’s use the kept-for-company dishes to-night,” she
suggested.
“But you promised long ago that you wouldn’t call me company,” Miss
Bayley protested.
“I know I did,” Dixie smiled over the big yellow bowl which held the
foamy cheese, and into which she was pouring rich cream. “I don’t
understand the least bit why, but somehow I feel as if to-day were an
extra occasion, sort of a party.”
“Perhaps because it’s the first real spring day that we’ve had,” Miss
Bayley announced, as she opened the old walnut sideboard and brought
forth the best china. “Your mother liked beautiful things, didn’t she,
Dixie? This pattern is lovely.”
The girl looked up brightly. “I like it,” she replied; then added
simply, “I suppose it was hard for Mother to live in a cabin, for all
her life had been spent in an old colonial mansion in the South. Our
great-aunt, Mrs. James Haddington-Allen, lives there, or, at least, I
guess she does. She’s never answered any of our letters, but she always
writes something on the envelopes before she returns them, so of course
she does receive them.”
“Have you written to her lately?” Miss Bayley was setting the table as
she asked the question. She was surprised at the decided tone in which
the small girl replied: “No, I haven’t. I never wrote her but once, and
that was after we children were left all alone. Our mother had often
written, but her letters were always returned unopened.”
“Mrs. James Haddington-Allen must be a hard-hearted old dragoness,” the
girl-teacher thought; but aloud she commented, “If your great-aunt could
but see you four children, I am sure she would love you all.”
“She might love Carol because she is beautiful, like our mother, and
she’d like Jimmy-Boy too, but Ken and I are regular Martins, so probably
our great-aunt wouldn’t like us much.” To the surprise of the listener,
there was a sob in the girl’s voice as she continued, “I’d heaps rather
our great-aunt would never come, for probably she’d want to take Carol
and Jimmy-Boy to her fine Southern home, but she wouldn’t want Ken or
me. I—I just couldn’t live without Carol and Jimmy-Boy. I couldn’t. I
couldn’t!”
Miss Bayley went toward the girl and took her in her arms. “My dear
child,” she said tenderly, “before I’d let that happen, I would open up
my old home in New York on the Hudson and adopt all four of you.”
Dixie smiled through her tears. “Goodness!” she said, springing away and
wiping her eyes on the towel by the kitchen pump, “the cheese is salty
enough as ’tis. I mustn’t spill any tears in it.”
Dixie had not grasped the meaning of the words she had heard. To her,
Miss Bayley was just a poor young woman who had to teach school for a
living, and a home in New York on the Hudson presented no picture to the
girl who had always lived in the mountains, and who had never been
farther away than Genoa. But to Miss Bayley those words had meant much.
Why had she never thought of it before, she wondered. If Frederick
Edrington never came back to her, if he had found, while away from her,
that he had been mistaken, that he did not really care, still her life
need not be empty.
She would go back to New York and take these four children with her. The
great old salon that had been in darkness since the death of her parents
would ring once again with laughter and song. Then when her brother Tim
came back from his three years at sea, there would be a happy home
waiting for him. The picture delighted the girl-teacher, and she began
to sing as she placed the supper dishes on the best table-cloth.
Carol came in, bringing a bunch of early flowers from a sunny, sheltered
garden on the Valley Ranch.
“Oh, how pretty!” Miss Bayley exclaimed. “They are just what we need for
the middle of the table.”
The younger girl looked mystified. “Is there going to be a party? Is
somebody extra coming?”
“No, dear, just we five,” Miss Bayley began, but the small girl
interrupted with, “But, teacher, you’ve put out six plates and
everything.”