A VAGABOND FAMILY
Jerry assisted Mary up onto the front seat without question, then slipped
in under the wheel. Dora climbed nimbly to her customary place in the
rumble. Dick leaped in beside her. His frank, friendly smile told his
pleasure in her companionship.
Dora’s happy smile, equally frank and friendly, preceded her eager
question, “Where are we going, Dick? I’m bursting with curiosity. Of
course I know it’s some sort of a picnic.” She nodded toward the covered
hamper at their feet. “But, surely there’s more to it than just a lark.
You boys wouldn’t have worked all night, if you really did, that you
might just play today, would you?”
Dick leaned toward his companion and said in a low voice, “Shh! It’s a
dire secret! We are on a mysterious mission bent.”
Dora laughed at his caution. “This car of Jerry’s makes so many rattling
noises, we could shout and not be heard. But do stop ‘nonsensing,’ as my
grandfather used to say, and reveal all.”
Dick sobered at once. “Well,” he began, “it’s this way. Last night, after
we left you girls, Jerry was telling me about a family of poor squatters,
as we’d call them back East. Some months ago they came from no one knows
where, in an old rattletrap wagon drawn by a bony white horse. Jerry was
riding fences near the highway when they passed. He said he never had
seen such a forlorn looking outfit. The wagon was hung all over with pots
and pans, a washtub, and, oh, you know, the absolute necessities of life.
In the wagon, on the front seat, was a woman so thin and pale Jerry knew
she must be almost dead with the white plague. She had a baby girl in her
lap. The father, Jerry said, had a look in his eyes that would haunt the
hardest-hearted criminal. It was a gentle-desperate expression, if you
get what I mean. Two boys about ten sat in the back of the wagon,
hollow-eyed skeletons, covered with sickly yellow skin, while seated on a
low chair in the wagon was an older girl staring straight ahead of her in
a wild sort of a way.”
“The poor things!” Dora exclaimed when Dick paused. “What became of
them?”
“Well, the outfit stopped near where Jerry was riding and the man hailed
him. ‘Friend,’ he called, ‘is there anywhere we could get water for our
horse? It’s most petered out.’
“Jerry told them that about a mile, straight ahead, they would find a
side road leading toward the mountains. If they would turn there, they
would come to a rushing stream. They could have all the water they
wished. And then, Jerry said, feeling so terribly sorry for them, he
added on an impulse, ‘There’s a herder’s shack close by. Stay all night
in it if you want. It’s my father’s land and you’re welcome.’”
Dora turned an eager face toward the speaker. “Dick,” she said, “I
believe I can tell you what happened next. That poor family stayed all
night in that herder’s shack and they _never left_.”
Dick nodded. “Are you a mind reader?” he asked, his big, dark eyes
smiling at her through the shell-rimmed glasses.
“No-o. I don’t believe that I am.” Then eagerly, “But _do_ tell me what
_possible_ connection that poor family can have with this expedition of
ours.”
“Isn’t that like a girl?” Dick teased. “You want to hear the last
chapter, before you know what happened to lead up to it. I’ll return to
the morning after. Jerry said he had thought of the family all the
afternoon, and that night when he got home, he told his mother, who, as
you know, has a heart of gold.”
“Oh, Dick!” Dora interrupted. “Gold may be precious, but it isn’t as
tender and kind, always, as the heart of Jerry’s mother.”
“Be that as it may,” the boy continued, “Mrs. Newcomb packed a
hamper—this very one now reposing at our feet, I suppose—with all manner
of good things and she had Jerry harness up as soon as he’d eaten and
take her to call on their unexpected guests. They found the woman lying
on the one mattress, coughing pitifully, and the others gazing at her,
the little ones frightened, and huddled, the older girl on her knees
rubbing her mother’s hands. The father stood looking down with such
despair in his eyes, Mrs. Newcomb said, as she had never before seen.
“‘There’d ought to be a doctor here,’ she said at once, but the woman on
the mattress smiled up at her feebly and shook her head. ‘I’m going on
now,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and I’d go on gladly,—I’m _so_ tired—if I
knew my children had a roof over their heads and—and—,’ then a fit of
coughing came. When it passed, the woman lay looking up at Jerry’s
mother, her dim eyes pleading, and Mrs. Newcomb knelt beside her and took
her almost lifeless hand and said, ‘Do not worry, dear friend, your
children shall have a roof over their heads and food.’ Then the mother
smiled at her loved ones, closed her eyes and went on.”
There were tears in Dora’s eyes, and she frankly wiped them away with her
handkerchief. Unashamed, Dick said, “That’s just how I felt when Jerry
told me about the Dooleys. That’s their name. Of course, Mrs. Newcomb
kept her word. That little shack is in a lovely spot near the stream with
big cottonwood trees around it. After the funeral, Mr. Newcomb told the
father that he and the boys could cut down some of the small cottonwoods
upstream, leaving every third one, and build another room, so they put up
a lean-to. Then he gave them a cow to milk and the boys started a
vegetable garden. Mr. Dooley does odd jobs on the ranch, though he isn’t
strong enough for hard riding, and the girl Etta mothers the baby and the
little boys.”
“Have we reached that last chapter?” Dora asked. “The one I was trying to
hear before we got to it? In other words, may I now know how this
terribly tragic story links up with our today’s adventuring?”
“You sure may,” Dick said. “It’s this way. The Newcombs, generous as they
have been, can’t afford to keep those children clothed and fed. Moreover
they ought to go to school next fall and between now and then, some money
_must_ be found and so—”
“Oh! Oh! I see!” Dora glowed at him. “Jerry thinks that it is a cruel
shame to have this poor family in desperate need when Mr. Lucky Loon has
a tomb full of gold helping no one.”
Dick smiled. “Now I’m _sure_ you’re a mind reader. Although,” he
corrected, “Jerry didn’t just put it that way. But what he _did_ say was
that if we could find out definitely that Bodil Pedersen is dead and that
there is no one else to claim that buried treasure, perhaps the old
storekeeper, Mr. Silas Harvey, _might_ give us the letter he has, telling
where it is hidden.”
“Did Jerry think the money might be used for that poor family?” Dora
asked.
Dick nodded. “He did, if Mr. Harvey consented. Jerry feels, and so do I,
that if Bodil Pedersen hasn’t turned up in thirty years, she probably
never will. Of course it would be by the merest chance that she would
drift into this isolated mountain town, anyway, even if she _is_ alive,
which Jerry thinks is very doubtful.”
Dora was thoughtful for a moment. “Did Mr. Pedersen advertise in the
papers for his lost sister?”
“We wondered about that and this morning we asked Mr. Newcomb. He said he
distinctly remembered the story in the Douglas paper, and that afterwards
it was copied all over the state.”
“Goodness!” Dora suddenly ejaculated as she glanced about her. “I’ve been
so terribly interested in that poor family, I hardly noticed where we
were going. We’ve crossed the desert road and here we are right at the
mountains.”
“How bleak and grim this range is,” Dick said, then, turning to look back
across the desert valley to a low wooded range in the purple distance, he
added, “_Those_ mountains across there, where the Newcomb ranch is, are
lots more friendly and likeable, aren’t they? They seem to have pleasant
things to tell about their past, but these mountains—” the boy paused.
“Oh, I know.” Dora actually shuddered. “These seem cruel as though they
_wanted_ people who tried to cross over them to die of thirst, or to be
hurled over their precipices, or—” suddenly her tone became one of alarm.
“Dick, did _you_ know we were going up into these _awful_ mountains?”
Her companion nodded, his expression serious. “Yes, I knew it,” he
confessed, “but I also know that Jerry wouldn’t take us up here if he
weren’t sure that we’d be safe.”
“Of course,” Dora agreed, “but wow! isn’t the road narrow and rutty, and
_are_ we going straight up?”
Dick laughed, for the girl, unconsciously, had clutched his khaki-covered
arm. “If those are questions needing answers,” he replied, “I’ll say,
_Believe me_, yes. Ha, here’s a place wide enough for a car to pass.
Jerry’s stopping.”
When the rattling of the little old car was stilled, Jerry and Mary
turned and smiled back at the other two. “Don’t be scared, Dora,” Mary
called. “Jerry says that no one ever crosses this old road now. It’s been
abandoned since the valley highway was built.”
“That’s right!” The cowboy’s cheerful voice assured the two in back that
he was in no way alarmed. “I reckoned we’d let our ‘tin Cayuse’ rest a
bit and get his breath before we do the cliff-climbing stunt that’s
waitin’ us just around this curve.”
Dora thought, “Mary’s just as scared as I am. I _know_ she is. She’s
white as a ghost, but she doesn’t want Jerry to think she doesn’t trust
him to take care of her.”
Dick broke in with, “Say, when does this outfit eat?”
“Fine idea!” Jerry agreed heartily. “Dora, open up the grub box and hand
it around, will you? I reckon we’ll need fortifyin’ for what’s going to
happen next.”