DOROTHY DECIDES
Joe and Roger Dale did not feel that they were exactly neglected during
these winter holidays. It is true they found their cousins, the “big
fellows,” not so much fun as they were wont to be, and even Dorothy
failed them at times.
But because of these very facts the lads had more freedom of action
than ever before. They were learning to think for themselves,
especially Joe. Nor was it always mischief they thought of, though
frequently managing to get into trouble—for what live and healthy boys
of their age do not?
Many of their narrow escapes even Dorothy knew nothing about. None of
the family, for instance, knew about Joe and the lame pigeon until
the North Birchland Fire Department was on the grounds with all their
apparatus.
This moving incident (Tavia declared it should have been a movie
incident) happened between Christmas and the new year. Although there
had been a good fall of snow before Kris Kringle’s day, it had all gone
now and the roads were firmly frozen again, so the Fire Department got
to The Cedars in record time.
To begin with Joe and Roger were breeders of pigeons, as Ned and Nat
had been several years before. On pleasant days in the winter they let
their flock into the big flying cage, and occasionally allowed the
carriers to take a flight in the open.
On one of these occasions when the flock returned there was a stray
with them. Roger’s sharp eyes spied this bird which alighted on the
ridgepole of the stable.
“Oh, lookut! lookut!” exclaimed the youngest Dale. “What a pretty one,
Joe!”
“We’ll coax it down. It’s a stray,” his brother said eagerly, “and all
strays are fair game.”
“But it’s lame, Joe,” Roger declared. “See! it can scarcely hop. And it
acts as if all tired out.”
“It’s a carrier, all right,” Joe said. “I bet it’s come a long way.”
The bird, however, would not be coaxed to the ground or into the big
cage. It really did appear exhausted.
“I bet if I could get up there on the stable roof, I could pick it
right up in my hand,” cried Joe. “I’m—I’m a-going—to try it!”
“Oh!” murmured Roger, both his eyes and mouth very round.
Joe was no “blowhard,” as the boys say. When he said he’d do a thing he
did his best to accomplish it. He threw off his thick jacket that would
have hampered him, and kicked aside his overshoes that made his feet
clumsy, and started to go aloft in the stable.
“You go outside and watch, Roger,” he commanded. “There’s no skylight
in this old barn roof—only the cupola, and I can’t get out through
that.”
“How are you going to do it then?” gasped Roger.
“You’ll see,” his brother said with assurance, and began to climb the
hay ladder into the top loft of the building.
Roger ran out just in time to see Joe open the small door up in the
peak of the stable roof. There were water-troughs all around the roof,
for the cattle were supplied with drinking water from cisterns built
under the ground.
A leader ran down each corner of the stable, and one of these was
within reach of Joe Dale’s hands when he swung himself out upon the
door he had opened.
Nobody, except the boys, were about the stable, and this end of
the building could not be seen from the house. Joe had once before
performed a similar trick. He had swung from the door to the
leader-pipe and swarmed down to the ground.
“Look out you don’t tumble, Joe,” advised the eager Roger. But he had
no idea that Joe would do so. The elder brother was a hero in the sight
of the younger lad.
Joe’s skill and strength did not fail him now. He caught the leader,
then the water-trough itself, and so scrambled upon the roof. But at
his last kick some fastening holding the leader-pipe gave way and the
top of it swung out from the corner of the stable.
“Oh, cricky!” yelled Roger. “Lucky you got up there, Joe. That pipe’s
busted. How’ll you get down?”
“Never mind that,” grunted Joe, somewhat breathless, scrambling up the
roof to the ridgepole. “We’ll see about that later.”
The boy reached the ridge and straddled it. There he got his breath and
then hitched along toward the cooing pigeon. It was not frightened by
him, but it certainly was lame and exhausted. Joe picked it up in his
hand and snuggled it into the breast of his sweater.
“But how are you ever going to get down, Joe Dale?” shrilled Roger,
from the ground.
The question was a poser, as Joe very soon found out. That particular
leader had been the only one on the stable that he could reach with any
measure of safety; and now it hung out a couple of feet from the side
of the building and Joe would not have dared trust his weight upon it,
even could he have reached it.
“What are you going to do?” again wailed the smaller lad.
“Aw, cheese it, Roger! don’t be bawling,” advised Joe from the roof.
“Go and get a ladder.”
“There isn’t any long enough to reach up there—you know that,” said
Roger.
Neither he nor Joe observed the fact that, even had there been a
ladder, the smaller boy could not have raised it into place so that Joe
could have descended upon it.
None of the men working on the place was at hand. Ned and Nat were
off on some errand in their car. Secretly, Roger was panic stricken
and might have run for Dorothy, for she was still his refuge in all
troubles.
But Joe was older—and thought himself wiser. “We’ve just got to find a
ladder—_you’ve_ got to find it, Roger. I can’t sit up here a-straddle
of this old roof all day. It’s co-o-old!”
Roger started off blindly. He could not remember whether any of the
neighbors possessed long ladders or not. But as he came down to the
street corner of the White property he saw a red box affixed to a
telegraph pole on the edge of the sidewalk.
“Oh, bully!” gasped Roger, and immediately scrambled over the fence.
He knew what that red box was for. It had been explained to him, and he
had longed for a good reason for experimenting with it. You broke the
little square of glass and pulled down the hook inside—-
That is how Ned and Nat, whizzing homeward in their car, came to join
the procession of the Fire Department racing out of town toward The
Cedars.
“Where’s the fire, Cal?” yelled Nat, seeing a man he knew riding on the
ladder truck.
“Right near your house, Mr. White. At any rate, that was the number
pulled—that box by the corner of your mother’s place.”
“Did you hear that, Ned?” shouted his brother, and Ned, who was at
the wheel, “let her out,” breaking every speed law of the country to
flinders.
The Fire Chief in his red racing car was only a few rods ahead of the
Whites, therefore, when Ned whirled the automobile into the driveway.
They saw a small boy, greatly excited, dancing up and down on the
gravel beside the chief’s car.
“Yep—he’s up on the stable roof, I tell you. We’ve got to use your
extension ladders to get him down,” Roger was saying eagerly. “I didn’t
mean for all of the things to come—the engine, and hose cart, and all.
Just the ladders we wanted,” and Roger seemed amazed that his pulling
the hook of the fire-alarm box had not explained all this at fire
headquarters down town.
There was some excitement, as may well be believed in and about The
Cedars. The Fire Chief was at first enraged; then he, as well as his
men, laughed. They got Joe, still clinging to the stray pigeon, down
from the roof, and then the firemen drilled back to town, reporting a
“false alarm.”
Major Dale, however, sent in a check to the Firemen’s Benefit Fund, and
Joe and Roger were sent to bed at noon and were obliged to remain there
until the next morning—a punishment that was likely long to be engraved
upon their minds.
The incident, however, had broken in upon a very serious conference
between Dorothy Dale and her father. And nowadays their conferences
were very likely to be for the discussion of but one subject:
Garry Knapp and his affairs.
Aunt Winnie, too, had been taken into Dorothy Dale’s confidence. “I
want you both,” the girl said, bravely, “to meet Garry Knapp and decide
for yourselves if he is not all I say he is. And to do that we must get
him to come here.”
“How will you accomplish it, Dorothy?” asked her aunt, still more than
a little confused because of this entirely new departure upon the part
of her heretofore demure niece.
Dorothy explained. Another—a third—letter had come from Lance Petterby.
He had identified Garry Knapp as the Dimples Knapp he had previously
known upon the range. Knapp was about to sell a rundown ranch north of
Desert City and adjoining the rough end of the great Hardin Estate,
that now belonged to Major Dale, to some speculators in wheat lands.
The speculators, Lance said, were “sure enough sharks.”
“First of all have our lawyers out there make Mr. Knapp a much better
offer for his land—quick, before Stiffbold and Lightly close with him,”
Dorothy suggested. “Oh! I’ve thought it all out. Those land speculators
will allow that option they took on Garry’s ranch to lapse. What is a
hundred dollars to them? Then they will play a waiting game until they
make him come to new terms—a much lower price even than they offered
him in New York. He must not sell his land to them, and for a song.”
“And then?” asked the major, his eyes bright with pride in his
daughter’s forcefulness of character, as well as with amusement.
“Have our lawyers bind the bargain with Mr. Knapp and ask him to come
East to close the transaction with their principal. That’s _you_,
Major. Meanwhile, have the lawyers send an expert to Mr. Knapp’s ranch
to see if it is really promising wheat land if properly developed.”
“And then?” repeated her father.
“If it _is_,” said Dorothy, laughing blithely, “when Garry shows up
and you and Aunt Winnie approve of him, as I know you both will, offer
to advance the money necessary to develop the wheat ranch instead of
buying the land.
“That,” Dorothy Dale said earnestly, “will give him the start in
business life he needs. I know he has it in him to make good. He can
expect no fortune from his uncle in Alaska, who is angry with him; he
will _never_ hear to using any of my money to help bring success; but
in this way he will have his chance. I believe he will be independent
in a few years.”
“And, meanwhile, what of you?” cried her aunt.
“I shall be waiting for him,” replied Dorothy with a smile that Tavia,
had she seen it, would have pronounced “seraphic.”
“Major! did you ever hear of such talk from a girl?” gasped Aunt Winnie.
“No,” said her brother, with immense satisfaction, and thumping
approval on the floor with his cane. “Because there never was just such
a girl since the world began as my little captain.
“I want to see this wonderful Garry Knapp—don’t you, Sister? I’m sure
he must be a perfectly wonderful young man to so stir our Dorothy.”
“No,” Dorothy said slowly shaking her head. “I know he is only
wonderful in my eyes. But I am quite sure you and Aunt Winnie will
commend my choice when you have met him—if we can only get him here!”