"What do you mean by conquering--Belle?"
We sat down.
"My name is Alethea-Belle, a double name. Father wanted to call me
Alethea; but mother fancied Belle. Father, you know, was a
Massachusetts minister; mother came from way down south. She died when
I was a child. She--she was not very strong, poor mother, but father,"
she spoke proudly, "father was the best man that ever lived."
All her self-consciousness had vanished. Somehow we felt that the
daughter of the New England parson was speaking, not the child of the
invertebrate Southerner.
"I had to take to selling books," she continued, speaking more to
herself than to us, "because of Belle. That miserable girl got into
debt. Father left her a little money. Belle squandered it sinfully on
clothes and pleasure. She'd a rose silk dress----"
"A rose silk dress?" repeated Ajax.
"It was just too lovely--that dress," said the little schoolmarm,
reflectively.
"Even Alethea could not resist it," said I.
She blushed, and her shyness, her awkwardness, returned.
"Alethea had to pay for it," she replied primly. "I ask your pardon
for speaking so foolishly and improperly of--myself."
After this, behind her back, Ajax and I invariably called her Alethea-
Belle.
* * * * *
School began at nine sharp the next morning. We expected a large
attendance, and were not disappointed. Some of the boys grinned
broadly when Alethea-Belle appeared carrying books and maps. She
looked absurdly small, very nervous, and painfully frail. The fathers
present exchanged significant glances; the mothers sniffed. Alethea-
Belle entered the names of her scholars in a neat ledger, and shook
hands with each. Then she made a short speech.
"Friends," she said, "I'm glad to make your acquaintance. I shall
expect my big boys and girls to set an example to the little ones by
being punctual, clean, and obedient. We will now begin our exercises
with prayer and a hymn. After that the parents will please retire."
That evening Alethea-Belle went early to bed with a raging headache.
Next morning she appeared whiter than ever, but her eyelids were red.
However, she seemed self-possessed and even cheerful. Riding together
across the range, Ajax said to me: "Alethea-Belle is scared out of her
life."
"You mean Belle. Alethea is as brave as her father was before her."
"You're right. Poor little Belle! Perhaps we'd better find some job or
other round the _adobe_ this afternoon. There'll be ructions."
But the ructions did not take place that day. It seems that Alethea-
Belle told her scholars she was suffering severely from headache. She
begged them politely to be as quiet as possible. Perhaps amazement
constrained obedience.
"These foothill imps will kill her," said Ajax.
Within a week we knew that the big boys were becoming unmanageable,
but no such information leaked from Alethea-Belle's lips. Each evening
at supper we asked how she had fared during the day. Always she
replied primly: "I thank you; I'm getting along nicely, better than I
expected."
Mrs. Spafford, a peeper through doors and keyholes, explained the
schoolmarm's methods.
"I jest happened to be passin' by," she told me, "and I peeked in
through--through the winder. That great big hoodlum of a George Spragg
was a-sassin' Miss Buchanan an' makin' faces at her. The crowd was a-
whoopin' him up. In the middle o' the uproar she kneels down. 'O
Lord,' says she, 'I pray Thee to soften the heart of pore George
Spragg, and give me, a weak woman, the strength to prevail against his
everlastin' ignorance and foolishness!' George got the colour of a
beet, but he quit his foolin'. Yes sir, she prays for 'em, and she
coaxes 'em, an' she never knows when she's beat; but they'll be too
much for her. She's losin' her appetite, an' she don't sleep good. We
won't be boardin' her much longer."
But that night, as usual, when I asked Alethea-Belle how she did, she
replied, in her prim, formal accents: "I'm doing real well, I thank
you; much, much better than I expected."
Two days later I detected a bruise upon her forehead. With great
difficulty I extracted the truth. Tom Eubanks had thrown an apple at
the schoolmarm.
"And what did you do?"
Her grey eyes were unruffled, her delicately cut lips never smiled, as
she replied austerely: "I told Thomas that I was sure he meant well,
but that if a boy wished to give an apple to a lady he'd ought to hand
it politely, and not throw it. Then I ate the apple. It was a Newtown
pippin, and real good. After recess Thomas apologised."
"What did the brute say?"
"He is not a brute. He said he was sorry he'd thrown the pippin so
hard."
Next day I happened to meet Tom Eubanks. He had a basket of Newtown
pippins for the schoolmarm. He was very red when he told me that Miss
Buchanan liked--apples. Apples at that time did not grow in the brush-
hills. Tom had bought them at the village store.
* * * * *
But Alethea-Belle grew thinner and whiter.
Just before the end of the term the climax came. I happened to find
the little schoolmarm crying bitterly in a clump of sage-brush near
the water-troughs.
"It's like this," she confessed presently: "I can't rid myself of that
weak, hateful Belle. She's going to lie down soon, and let the boys
trample on her; then she'll have to quit. And Alethea sees the
Promised Land. Oh, oh! I do despise the worst half of myself!"
"The sooner you leave these young devils the better."
"What do you say?"
She confronted me with flashing eyes. I swear that she looked
beautiful. The angularities, the lack of colour, the thin chest, the
stooping back were effaced. I could not see them, because--well,
because I was looking through them, far beyond them, at something
else.
"I love my boys, my foothill boys; and if they are rough, brutal at
times, they're strong." Her emphasis on the word was pathetic.
"They're strong, and they're young, and they're poised for flight--
now. To me, me, has been given the opportunity to direct that flight--
upward, and if I fail them, if I quit----" She trembled violently.
"You won't quit," said I, with conviction.
"To-morrow," said she, "they've fixed things for a real battle."
She refused obstinately to tell me more, and obtained a solemn promise
from me that I would not interfere.
* * * * *
Afterwards I got most of the facts out of George Spragg. Three of the
biggest boys had planned rank mutiny. Doubtless they resented a
compulsory attendance at school, and with short-sighted policy made
certain that if they got rid of Alethea-Belle the schoolhouse would be
closed for ever. And what chance could she have--one frail girl
against three burly young giants?
A full attendance warned her that her scholars expected something
interesting to happen. Boys and girls filed into the schoolroom
quietly enough, and the proceedings opened with prayer, but not the
usual prayer. Alethea-Belle prayed fervently that right might prevail
against might, now, and for ever. Amen.
Within a minute the three mutineers had marched into the middle of the
room. In loud, ear-piercing notes they began to sing "Pull for the
Shore." The girls giggled nervously; the boys grinned; several opened
their mouths to sing, but closed them again as Alethea-Belle descended
from the rostrum and approached the rebels. The smallest child knew
that a fight to a finish had begun.
The schoolmarm raised her thin hand and her thin voice. No attention
was paid to either. Then she walked swiftly to the door and locked it.
The old _adobe_ had been built at a time when Indian raids were
common in Southern California. The door was of oak, very massive; the
windows, narrow openings in the thick walls, were heavily barred. The
children wondered what was about to happen. The three rebels sang with
a louder, more defiant note as Alethea-Belle walked past them and on
to the rostrum. Upon her desk stood a covered basket. Taking this in
her hand, she came back to the middle of the room. The boys eyed her
movements curiously. She carried, besides the basket, a cane. Then she
bent down and placed the basket between herself and the boys. They
still sang "Pull for the Shore," but faintly, feebly. They stared hard
at the basket and the cane. Alethea-Belle stood back, with a curious
expression upon her white face; very swiftly she flicked open the lid
of the basket. Silence fell on the scholars.
Out of the basket, quite slowly and stealthily, came the head of a
snake, a snake well known to the smallest child--known and dreaded.
The flat head, the lidless, baleful eyes, the grey-green, diamond-
barred skin of the neck were unmistakable.
"It's a rattler!" shrieked one of the rebels.
They sprang back; the other children rose, panic-stricken. The
schoolmarm spoke very quietly--
"Don't move! The snake will not hurt any of you."
As she spoke she flicked again the lid of the basket. It fell on the
head of the serpent. Alethea-Belle touched the horror, which withdrew.
Then she picked up the basket, secured the lid, and spoke to the
huddled-up, terrified crowd--
"You tried to scare me, didn't you, and I have scared you." She
laughed pleasantly, but with a faint inflection of derision, as if she
knew, as she did, that the uncivilised children of the foothills, like
their fathers, fear nothing on earth so much as rattlers and--
ridicule. After a moment she continued: "I brought this here to-day as
an object-lesson. You loathe and fear the serpent in this basket, as I
loathe and fear the serpent which is in you." She caught the eyes of
the mutineers and held them. "And," her eyes shone, "I believe that I
have been sent to kill the evil in you, as I am going to kill this
venomous beast. Stand back!"
They shrank back against the walls, open-eyed, open-mouthed,
trembling. Alethea-Belle unfastened for the second time the lid of the
basket; once more the flat head protruded, hissing. Alethea-Belle
struck sharply.
"It is harmless now," she said quietly; "its back is broken."
But the snake still writhed. Alethea-Belle shuddered; then she set her
heel firmly upon the head.
"And now"--her voice was weak and quavering, but a note of triumph, of
mastery, informed it--"and now I am going to cane you three boys; I am
going to try to break your stubborn wills; but you are big and strong,
and you must let me do it. If you don't let me do it, you will break
my heart, for if I am too weak to command here, I must resign. Oh, I
wish that I were strong!"
The mutineers stared at each other, at the small white face
confronting them, at the boys and girls about them. It was a great
moment in their lives, an imperishable experience. The biggest spoke
first, sheepishly, roughly, almost defiantly--
"Come on up, boys; we'll hev to take a lickin' this time."
Alethea-Belle went back to the rostrum, trembling. She had never caned
a boy before, and she loathed violence. And yet she gave those three
lads a sound thrashing. When the last stroke was given, she tottered
and fell back upon her chair--senseless.
* * * * *
Later, I asked her how she had caught the snake.
"After you left me," she said, "I sat down to think. I knew that the
boys wanted to scare me, and it struck me what a splendid thing
'twould be to scare them. Just then I saw the snake asleep on the
rocks; and I remembered what one o' the cowboys had said about their
being stupid and sluggish at this time o' year. But my! when it came
to catching it alive--I--nearly had a fit, I'd chills and fever before
I was able to brace up. Well, sir, I got me a long stick, and I fixed
a noose at the end of it; and somehow--with the Lord's help--I got the
creature into my work-basket; and I carried it home, and put it under
my bed, with a big stone atop o' the lid. But I never slept a wink.
I'm teetotal, but I know now what it is to have the--the--"
"Jim-jams," said I.
"I believe that's what they call it in California. Yes, I saw snakes,
rattlers, everywhere!"
"You're the pluckiest little woman in the world," said I.
"Oh no! I'm a miserable coward, and always will be. Now it's over I
kind of wish I hadn't scared the little children quite so bad."
About a month later, when Alethea-Belle was leaving us and about to
take up new quarters in Paradise, near the just finished village
schoolhouse, Mrs. Spafford came to me. The schoolmarm, it seemed, had
stepped off our scales. She had gained nearly ten pounds since the day
of the great victory.
"Your good cooking, Mrs. Spafford--" Mrs. Spafford smiled scornfully.
"Did my good cooking help her any afore she whacked them boys? Not
much. No, sir, her scholars hev put the flesh on to her pore bones;
and I give them the credit. They air tryin' to pay for what their
schoolmarm's put into their heads and hearts."
"Miss Buchanan has taught us a thing or two," I suggested.
"Yes," Mrs. Spafford replied solemnly, "she hev."