WESTWARD HO!
"Pike's Peak or Bust!" was the chosen motto of those early pilgrims
who, thirty-odd years ago, crossed the continent in a "prairie
schooner," escorted by a cavalry guard to keep Indian marauders at a
respectful distance; and "Pike's Peak or Bust!" was the motto chosen
by Polly and Dan, our two young modern pilgrims, as they journeyed
with greater ease, but with no less courage and venturesomeness,
across the two thousand miles intervening between quiet Fieldham and
their goal.
"Pike's Peak or Bust!" No one looking into the bright young faces
turned so bravely westward ho! could have had any doubt as to which of
the two alternatives hinted at in that picturesque motto would be
fulfilled for them. On they journeyed, on and on, past populous
cities, across great rivers, over vast plains brown with last year's
stubble or white with newly fallen snow, till at last there came a
morning when they awoke in the tingling dawn, and, looking forth
across miles of shadowy prairie, beheld a great white dome cut clear
against a sapphire sky. On the train rushed, on and on, straight
toward that snowy dome, and, as they drew nearer, other mountains
began to define themselves on either side the central peak, and
presently a town revealed itself, and they knew that it could be no
other than Colorado Springs, sleeping there at the foot of the great
range, all unconscious of the two young pilgrims, coming so
confidingly to seek their fortunes within its borders.
Their first spring and summer were a very happy time, of which Polly
and Dan could relate a hundred noteworthy incidents. They rented a
tiny cottage of three rooms in the unfashionable part of the town
where rents were low. Here was a bit of ground all about, and a
narrow porch that looked straight into the face of the splendid old
Peak; and here they lived the merriest of lives on the smallest and
most precarious of incomes; for they were determined to infringe as
little as possible upon the slender capital, snugly stowed away in a
Colorado bank.
Dan soon found employment in a livery-stable at fifty cents a day. His
chief business was the agreeable one of delivering "teams" and
saddle-horses to pleasure-seekers at the north end of the town, riding
back to the stable again on a "led horse" provided for the purpose. If
not a very ambitious calling, it was, at least, exceedingly good fun,
and it also had the merit of conforming to the doctor's directions.
"Don't let him get behind a counter or into any stuffy back-office,"
the doctor had said to Polly. "Whatever he does, let it keep him in
the open air as much as possible." Had the very obvious wisdom of this
advice required demonstration, Dan's rapid improvement would have been
sufficient.
They did not shock the sensibilities of the sewing-circle by writing
home exactly what the employment was that Dan had found, while, for
themselves, Polly had her own little ways of embellishing the somewhat
prosaic situation. She dubbed the young stable-boy Hercules, and
always spoke of the establishment he served as "The Augæans." Nor did
her invention fail when, a month or two later, Dan got a place at
somewhat higher wages as druggist's messenger; for then he was
promptly informed that his name was Mercury, and that there were wings
on his heels, though he could not himself see them, by reason of their
being turned back, and visible only when his feet were in rapid
motion!
Meanwhile, Polly, too, was doing her part, though it had not yet
proved very lucrative. When they first took the house, Dan painted a
sign for her, bearing the following announcement:
FINE NEEDLEWORK AND EMBROIDERY TO ORDER.
But the spring and summer went by, and autumn came, and still the sign
which had ornamented their house-front for so many months had as yet
attracted the notice of only the impecunious class of customers their
immediate neighbourhood afforded. Polly had gratefully taken coarse
work at low prices, but she still hoped for better things. The street
where their tiny cottage stood, though at the wrong end of the town,
was a thoroughfare for pleasure parties driving to the great cañons,
and Polly never saw the approach of a pretty turnout without a thrill
of hope that the occupants might be attracted by her sign. She knew
herself to be a quick and skilful needlewoman, and she thought that if
only she might once get started in well-paid work, Dan, who was
growing stronger every day, might go on with his education at the
Colorado College Preparatory School. She had found out all about the
college, of which she had formed a very high opinion, and she told
herself proudly that Dan had such a good mind that he would not need
to study too hard.
One evening in September they were clearing the supper table,
preparatory to washing up the dishes, which ceremony was one of the
numerous "larks" by which brother and sister found life diversified
and enlivened.
"Mercury, I have an idea!" Polly suddenly cried.
"Never saw the time you hadn't, Polly."
"But this is a great idea, a really great one, because it includes all
the little ones, like Milton's universe in the crescent moon; don't
you remember?"
"My goody, Polly! But it must be a corker!"--and Dan was all
attention.
Now Polly, it is needless to repeat, was a young person of ideas; that
was her strong point, and Dan at least considered her a marvel of
ingenuity and invention. Their tiny sitting-room, where Dan slept, was
a witness to her taste and originality. There were picturesque shelves
which Dan had made in accordance with her directions; there were
cheesecloth window-curtains, with rustic boughs in place of poles;
there were barrels standing bottom upward for tables, draped with
ancient "duds"--a changeable-silk skirt of her mother's over one, a
moth-eaten camel's-hair shawl over another. The crack in the only
mirror which a munificent landlord had provided was concealed by a
kinikinick vine; a piece of Turkey-red at five cents a yard, their one
bit of extravagance, converted Dan's cot-bed into a canopy of state.
And having heard Dan chant the praises of her "ideas" with gratifying
persistence for a month past, Polly had begun to wonder whether they
might not be turned to account.
"What's the latest idea, Polly?" Dan asked, seizing a dripping handful
of what they were pleased to call their "family plate."
"Well, Dan, I want you to paint something more on my sign. Only two
words; it won't take you long."
"What two words?"
"_Also Ideas!_"
Dan reflected a moment, and then he proceeded to dance a jig of
delight, wildly waving his dish-cloth about Polly's head.
"Polly, you beat the world!" he cried.
A house-painter lived next door, from whom Dan borrowed paint and
brushes, and before they slept the old sign was further decorated with
two magic words done in brilliant scarlet. The inscription now read:
FINE NEEDLEWORK AND EMBROIDERY TO ORDER.
ALSO IDEAS
There was something positively dazzling about those two words in
flaming scarlet, and Polly and Dan stepped out twice in the course of
their early breakfast to have a look at them.
"Don't you feel scared, Polly?" asked Dan, as he left her at her
dish-washing.
"Scared? Not I!" and she walked down the path with him, drying her
hands on a dish-towel.
It was a delicious morning in late September; the air dry and
sparkling as a jewel, the mountains baring their shoulders to the
morning sun. The Peak had already a dash of winter on his crown, but
the barren slope of rock below looked like an impregnable fortress.
Polly and Dan were never tired of wondering at the changing moods that
played so gloriously upon that steadfast front.
"Seems as if they must almost see him from Fieldham this morning, he's
so bright," said Polly.
"That's so," Dan agreed. "I say, Polly, isn't he enjoying himself,
though?"
"Course he is!" Polly answered. "Isn't everybody?"
Then Polly went back to her splashing water and flopping dish-towels,
and was busy for an hour about the house. By and bye she sat herself
down in the little porch and proceeded to put good honest stitches
into a child's frock, for the making of which she was to receive
twenty-five cents. Not very good pay for a day's work, but
"twenty-five-hundred-million per cent. better than nothing," as she
had assured the doubtful Dan.
Life looked very different to her since those two bright words had
been added to the sign. Not that it had looked otherwise than pleasant
before; but there was so little originality in the idea of doing
needlework that it had scarcely merited success, while this,--of
course it must succeed!
In truth, she had sat there hardly an hour, when she distinctly heard
the occupant of a yellow buckboard read the sign, and then turn to her
companion with a word of comment. Polly had always had an idea that
one of those yellow buckboards would be the making of her fortune yet.
The one in question was drawn by a pretty pair of ponies, and two
young girls were in possession of it.
"I have an idea they'll notice it again, when they come back this
way," Polly surmised. "But if they're going up the cañon they won't
come back till just as I'm getting dinner."
And, sure enough, the mutton stew was just beginning to simmer, when
there came a rap at the door.
The front door opened directly into the little sitting-room, and was
never closed in pleasant weather. As Polly emerged from the kitchen,
her face very red from hobnobbing with the stove, she found one of
the girls of the yellow buckboard standing in the doorway.
"Good morning, Miss----"
"Fitch. My name is Polly Fitch."
"What a jolly name!" the visitor exclaimed. "I think you must be the
one with ideas."
"Yes," said Polly, "Do you want one? Come in and take a seat."
"I do want an idea most dreadfully," the young lady rejoined, taking
the proffered chair. "I want something for a booby prize for a
backgammon tournament. I don't suppose anybody ever heard of a
backgammon tournament before, but it's going to be great fun. We are
doing it to take the conceit out of a young man we know, who declares
that there's nothing in backgammon that he didn't learn the first time
he played it with his grandfather."
"And you want a booby prize?" Polly looked thoughtful for the space of
sixteen seconds. Then she cried; "Oh, I have an idea! Get somebody to
whittle you a couple of wooden dice; then paint them white and mark
them with black sixes on each of the six sides of each die. You could
call it '_a booby pair-o'-dice_' if you don't object to puns!"
"What a good idea! It's simply perfect! I wonder whom I could get to
do it for me?"
"Why, Dan could do it with his jackknife, just as well as not. If
you'll come to-morrow morning you shall have them."
Accordingly, the next morning, the young lady appeared, and was
enchanted with her prize.
"And how much will they be?" she asked.
"Well, I had thought of charging twenty-five cents for an idea, and
the dice didn't cost us anything and only took a few minutes to
make."
"Supposing we call it a dollar. Would that be fair?"
"I don't believe they are worth a dollar."
"Yes, they are; I should be ashamed to take them for less. What a
splendid idea that was of yours, to put out that sign!"
"I should think it was, if I could get any more customers like you!"
"I'll send them to you,--never you fear!"
Miss Beatrice Compton returned to her buckboard a captive to Polly.
"She's the sweetest thing," she told her mother, who chanced to be her
passenger on this occasion. "She's got eyes and hair exactly of a
colour, a sort of reddish brown, and her eyes twinkle at you in the
dearest way, and she wears her hair in the quaintest pug, just in the
right place on her head, sort of up in the air; and she's a lady, too;
anybody can see that. I wonder who 'Dan' is; you don't suppose she's
married, do you?"
"You can't tell," Mrs. Compton replied. "Persons in that walk of life
marry very young."
"But, Mamma, she isn't a 'person,' and she doesn't belong to 'that
walk of life.' She's a lady."
Miss Beatrice was as good as her word, and three days had not passed
when a horseman stopped before the little cottage, sprang from his
horse, and looked about for a place to tie; there was no hitching-post
near by. Polly was sitting in the porch making buttonholes.
"If you were coming in here, you'd better lead him right up the walk,"
she said, "and tie him to the porch-post."
"That's a good idea!" the young man replied, promptly acting upon the
advice. "You are Miss Polly Fitch, are you not?"
"Yes."
"I knew you the minute I saw you, because Miss Compton described you
to me." This was meant to be very flattering, but Polly, who seldom
missed a point, was quite unconscious that one had been made.
"Have you come for an idea?" she asked, quite innocently, and Mr.
Reginald Axton, who was rather sensitive, wondered whether she "meant
anything." On second thoughts he concluded that she did not, and he
began again:
"I got that booby prize you made."
"Did you?" cried Polly, with animation. "Oh, I wonder whether you
were the one--" she paused.
"The one that what?" he asked hastily.
"The one that thought there wasn't anything in the game."
"Well, yes, I was. And the others had all the luck, and so of course I
got beaten."
"Of course!" said Polly, with a twinkle of delight.
"I see you're on their side, but all the same I want you to help me to
pay them back. You see I wanted to do something about it, and I
thought of sending Miss Compton some flowers with a verse, and I
thought perhaps you could do the verse."
"Did you expect me to furnish the idea, too?"
"Why, of course! That's why I came to you. I thought, if you were so
awfully bright, perhaps you could make verses."
Polly looked thoughtful.
"I should charge you quite a lot for it," she said,--"much as a dollar
perhaps; for you know writing verses is quite an accomplishment."
"I'll pay a dollar a line for it! I know a fellow that gets more than
that from the magazines. And I'm sure that it will be good if you do
it."
"My gracious! that's great pay!" cried Polly, with sparkling eyes,
ignoring the compliment, but enchanted to hear what a price verses
brought. "I'll send it to you by mail."
"No, I guess I'll look in every once in a while and see how you're
getting on!"
"Dear me!" said Polly, "you don't expect me to spend a week over it,
do you? That isn't why you offered such high pay?"
"Oh, no; the quicker you got it done the more I should be willing to
pay for it." He paused a moment. "And, Miss Fitch," he went on, "I
don't care if you make it a little,--well,--a little soft. She
deserves it, she's such a tease! Her name's Beatrice," he added. "We
call her Trix, if that'll help you any."
Polly understood Mr. Reginald perfectly, and she dismissed him with a
twinkle which promised well. Then Polly proceeded to cudgel her
brain, while the needle went in and out, and a buttonhole formed
itself in the firm, narrow line that makes of a buttonhole a work of
art.
"I wish I could rhyme words as well as I can stitches," Polly thought
to herself, as she held up a completed buttonhole, with the honest
pride of a good workman. "Sixes,--Trixes! that heart were Trix's! That
ought to be made to go. A double rhyme, too! I don't believe he
expects a double rhyme." And in and out and in and out her thoughts
plied themselves round and about the two words, and her cheeks got
quite hot with the pleasurable excitement of this new mental
exercise.
At last she tossed down her work, and, fetching a piece of brown
wrapping-paper, proceeded, with many erasures and tinkerings, to
inscribe upon it the following verse:
Were hearts the dice and love the game,
Of no avail were double sixes;
On every heart is but one name,
We nought could throw but _double-Trixes!_
"Rather neat," said Polly to herself, "rather neat! Now if he were to
send it with two bunches of roses of six each, I think it could not
fail to make an impression. I should rather hate to pay another person
to make love for me, though," she went on, with a little toss of the
head; and then she picked up her work and began again to "rhyme
buttonholes."
When Dan came home to supper he had much to learn. He was lost in
wonder over the rhyme which Polly repeated to him, but still more
impressed by the four great silver dollars she had to show; for her
impatient customer had already called for the verses.
"Jiminy!" cried Dan; "that's most a week's earnings for some of us!"
"Yes," Polly replied, demurely; "that's what Mrs. O'Toole would have
paid me for sixteen baby-dresses. Things even themselves out in the
long run, don't they, Dan?" As though Polly knew anything about the
long run, by the way!
Before Christmas Polly was driving a pretty trade, not only in ideas
but in sewing. She had in all ten dozen pocket handkerchiefs to mark
for Christmas customers, besides towels and table-linen, sheets and
pillow-cases. People had found her out, and she had to refuse more
than one good order for lack of time. But needlework alone, quick as
she was in doing it, would have given her but a meagre income, had she
not been able to furnish "also ideas."
One lady, for instance, came to ask her for an "idea" for a
Thanksgiving dinner, and Polly not only suggested the idea, but
carried it out for her. She went about with a big basket to all the
markets and collected perfect specimens of vegetables with which to
make a centrepiece for the dinner table. The dinner was given in a
house where the round dining table would seat twenty-four guests. In
this ample centre she erected a pyramid of fruits of the earth. There
were crimson beets, pale yellow squashes, scarlet tomatoes, and the
long, thin fingers of the string-bean; potatoes furnished a
comfortable brown, which, together with the soft bronze of the onion,
harmonized discordant colours; and, crowning all, the silken tassel of
the red-eared corn raised its graceful crest.
The hostess was delighted with her table, and more delighted still
with the pretty decorator. Polly's fame flew from one to another
throughout that kindly and prosperous community, and she found herself
accumulating a goodly hoard. As Christmas drew near, many a perplexed
shopper came to her for "ideas," and all went away content. She had
long since discovered that the Colorado shops were treasure-houses of
pretty things. She never passed a jeweller's window without taking
note of his latest novelties; she kept an eye upon Mexican and Indian
bazaars, and Chinese bric-à-brac collections; she made a study of
Colorado gems, and knew where the prizes lay hidden; she ran through
the books in the bookstores; she was alert for new inventions in
harness decoration and bridle trimmings; she gave hints for fancy-work
of divers kinds.
Mercury, meanwhile, sped about the town, dispensing healing, as Polly
often reminded him, and "getting more than I dispense, Polly," he
would declare in return. "I feel so well that everything is a regular
lark!"
And so Dan made a "lark" of his work, and trotted all day in his
capacity of Mercury, little dreaming of the wealth that was
accumulating for his use; while Polly went on with her hoarding, of
which she made a great secret, and thought of a still better time
coming.