A MAIDEN IN DISTRESS
"FELLERS," Skinny had told us, when we were getting ready to start on
the hike, "you always ought to carry a rope. Something happens every
time when you don't have a rope along."
"It happens when you do," Benny said. "Anyhow, a rope is too much
bother. A blanket and a frying pan and things like that are all I want
to carry."
"A rope is the thing, just the same. Didn't I lasso the robber last
summer out on Illinois River, at Starved Rock? How could I lasso
anything without a rope? And didn't we let you down into Horseshoe
Canyon with a rope and pull Alice What's-her-name up again?"
"Bet your life we did," Bill put in. "You need a rope when you are
camping out or are in a boat on the river, but what good is it in
walking seven miles?"
"Maybe it is and maybe it isn't; but, just the same, you'll be sorry if
you don't take one along."
He was right, too, for Bill told us afterward that he would have given a
good deal for a rope when he was sitting on top of Greylock. He didn't
need it for anything, only, he said, it would have been sort of company
for him.
Skinny was bound to carry a rope. When he marched down Center Street
with it coiled around his shoulders, over his blanket, and with his
tomahawk in his belt, people ran out of the stores to look at him.
The road that he took is uphill a good part of the way. It goes up
through the foothills of the east mountain and isn't easy walking. We
slide down that road sometimes in winter. When the coasting is good we
can slide nearly a mile, clear into the village; then hitch on to a bob
and ride back again for another.
There were no bobs for Skinny. It was warm in the sun and he loafed
along, taking it easy and looking for somebody to rescue. Once he
stopped to help a man in a field. Along about ten or eleven o'clock he
began to get hungry and tired. No matter where he looked there didn't
anything happen, so he made up his mind to take a long rest the next
time he came to some good shade, and maybe to cook his dinner.
A half-mile farther on he came to a real shady spot by the roadside,
under a tree which stood in a corner of a pasture on the other side of a
fence. A tiny stream crossed the road, and ran down through the pasture.
This was the place he had been looking for and, after drinking, he threw
himself down on the ground and went to sleep.
He didn't know how long he slept but he felt first rate when he woke up,
only hungrier than ever. Over in the pasture stood a cow with her back
to him, looking at something and growing real excited about it.
"I wonder what ails the critter," said Skinny to himself. "She looks mad
about something, snorting and shaking her head that way."
Just then he heard a girl's voice singing. She sang real loud, like boys
whistle sometimes to keep up their courage, when they are half scared.
Then in a few minutes she came in sight, walking across the pasture and
keeping one eye on the cow.
Skinny hadn't seen her before because the cow had stood in the way.
"Jerusalem!" said he. "Here's luck. She's got a fire-red sunbonnet and
cows don't like red sunbonnets a little bit."
On came the girl, singing louder than ever, trying to edge off away from
the cow but not daring to run.
Skinny could see that the cow was getting madder all the time. He knew
that something was going to happen at last, and he began to uncoil his
rope.
"Run, you little fool," said he. "Run."
He meant the girl and not the cow. He said it under his breath so she
wouldn't hear, for he didn't want to lose the chance to do the rescue
act and have something to tell us boys about afterward.
The girl was scared. Any one with half an eye could have seen that. The
cow hadn't quite made up its mind what to do, and Skinny was beginning
to be afraid that the girl would get across without giving him a chance
to get in his work. Then what did she do but take off her sunbonnet and
swing it around by one string, just to let the cow know that she wasn't
afraid of any animal that walked on four legs.
She hadn't seen Skinny yet, on account of his being back of the cow. The
cow didn't know he was there, either, until about four seconds
afterward. It knew then, all right.
Maybe the cow wasn't mad when she saw that red sunbonnet whirling around
in the air. She tore up the sod with her horns, gave a big snort, and
started, head down.
Say, it was Skinny's busy day about that time. Before the cow could get
fairly going he had crawled under the fence and run up behind, whirling
his lasso around his head. Then he gave a yell like a wild Indian and
threw it.
I think the yell scared the girl worse than the cow did. Anyhow, between
the cow and the Indian she was scared stiff; just stood there
paralyzed. And she didn't do any more singing.
If that lasso had caught there would have been a paralyzed cow all
right. Skinny threw it in great shape. It went straight for her horns,
but when he yelled she lifted her head suddenly. The loop struck against
one of the horns, instead of going over it, and then fell off to the
ground.
"Gee!" groaned Skinny. "Missed!"
There wasn't time to say anything more, and he knew that he would have
to get mighty busy or there wouldn't be any rescuing done.
When something happens that way and you have to do something first and
think about it afterward, the mind seems to work like chain lightning.
There was only one thing to do and it didn't take Skinny long to do
that. He dropped the rope, grabbed hold of the cow's tail with both
hands, and dug his feet into the ground.
"Run!" he yelled. "Run for the fence! I've got her."
When Bill heard about it he said that it seemed to him as if the cow had
Skinny. Anyhow, she was surprised some and she was mad. She will think
twice next time before she does any chasing, when anybody from Raven
Patrol is around, I guess.
Skinny had a good hold and she couldn't get away. First she stopped
running and tried to get at whatever it was back of her, with her horns,
chasing herself around in a circle.
Skinny hung on like a good fellow. He had to. If he had let go once it
would have been all up with him. She never touched him. Every time the
cow stopped, there was a hundred pounds of boy hanging to the end of her
tail.
It was like playing crack the whip, he told us afterward, "and being the
littlest fellow on the tail end."
Then for a few moments it was hard to tell which was the cow and which
was Skinny, for she started on a run for the other side of the pasture,
Skinny sliding and bumping behind, and both of them scared half to
death. Skinny was so excited he couldn't think to let go of the tail.
Hank said that he would have given a quarter if he could have taken a
picture of it with his camera.
All this didn't take so long as it does to tell about it. The girl had
reached the fence, crawled under, and was yelling for help.
Just then it seemed to Skinny as if the tail had come off in his hands,
for he went tumbling along, heels over head, until he struck with a jar
that almost loosened his teeth.
What really happened was that he stumbled on a stone and his hands were
jerked loose. In another minute the cow was out of sight in a hollow.
Skinny scrambled to his feet and went back after the rope, trying not to
limp because he could see the girl looking at him through the fence.
He felt pretty chesty to think that he had rescued a maiden, only he
didn't know what to do with her, now that he had saved her.
She spoke first, as he stood there sort of brushing his clothes off.
"Are you hurt, boy?"
"What, me?" said Skinny. "Me hurt? Say, didn't you see the critter run
when I got after her?"
"I should say I did, only I was scared. Wasn't you scared?"
"I don't scare worth a cent," he told her. "I ain't afraid of any cow
a-livin'. You don't suppose I'd 'a' chased her all over the pasture, if
I'd been scared, do you?"
"N-no, but----"
"Say, if my lasso hadn't slipped, there would have been something doing.
It's lucky for you that I got hold of her tail. That's the way to do it.
When you twist a cow's tail, it scares 'em."
It's just as Hank says, you never can tell what a girl will do. That
girl tried to say something; then choked up and went off into a fit of
laughing that made the tears roll down her cheeks and left her so weak
that she had to hang on to the fence.
Skinny grinned a little to be polite, but he didn't like it very well.
"Oh," said she, as soon as she could speak, "it was too--too funny for
anything to see you sailing along behind the cow."
"It wouldn't have been so funny if the cow had been running toward you,
instead of away from you. You would have laughed out of the other side
of your mouth, I guess."
She saw that he was mad about it.
"You mustn't mind my laughing," said she, stuffing her handkerchief into
her mouth. "I can't help it. It's a disease."
"A disease?"
"Yes, it's high strikes. When folks have them they can't stop laughing.
They laugh when they ought to cry, maybe."
"Sounds like a ball game," said Skinny.
"It's something like that," she told him. "Maybe that isn't it exactly
but it's something. I'm better now."
"Oh, well, if it's something that ails you, I suppose it's all right.
I'd laugh, too, only I am all out of breath from chasing the cow."
When he said that the girl burst out laughing again, and Skinny laughed
with her. That made them feel acquainted.
"I guess I've got 'em, too," said he. "They must be catching. Well, I
must be going now."
"My name is Mary Richmond," she told him, "I live in Holyoke and I am
visiting over where you see that red barn."
"Mine is Gabriel Miller. I don't like the name very well. Gabe isn't so
bad. The boys call me Skinny. I live down in the village and I am on a
hike. I guess I'd better be going now."
"I don't see any."
"Any what?"
"What you said you were on, a hike."
"You will see one in about a minute. I am out for a long walk. I belong
to the Boy Scouts and I've got to walk seven miles, camp out to-night,
and come back to-morrow."
"My," said she, "you must be hungry--all that walking and--and--chasing
the cow, too."
"I am," said Skinny, bracing up. "I believe I'll eat my lunch right here
in the shade. Wish you'd stay and eat with me. I can cook some bacon."
Wasn't that a nervy thing to say? Skinny is brave when he gets started.
"It would be fine," she told him, "only Ma is expecting me at the house.
She is visiting, too. Wouldn't it be nicer for you to come with me?
They will be glad to see you because you saved me from the cow. I am
awfully hungry and Grandma is the best cook. We're going to have
lemonade. She told me so. Come on, do."
"Lemonade would taste good," he said, "if I only dast."
"Huh!" said she, tossing her head. "I thought that you were not afraid
of anything."
"I ain't of a cow. This is different. Say, that was a swell song you
were singing. I wish I knew it."
"I'll teach it to you after dinner, if you will come. If you don't
you're a 'fraid cat."
"All right. I'll go if it kills me."
Skinny says that he never ate a dinner that tasted any better than that
one did. Mrs. Richmond was scared when she heard about the cow and she
couldn't say enough about how he had saved her little girl from a
terrible death.
"That wasn't anything," he told her. "Scouts are always doing those
things. I'm going to try to save somebody from drowning when I come back
along the river to-morrow."
"I'll tell you a better stunt than that," said Mary's grandfather,
winking one eye at the rest of the folks. "Why don't you go up to Savoy
on the east mountain. That would make a walk of about seven miles from
the village. You won't find anybody drowning up there, but several deer
have been seen around there lately."
"Gee!" said Skinny, his eyes sticking out when he thought of the deer.
"If I only had a gun!"
"It's against Massachusetts law to shoot deer. That's why they are
getting so common. You have your rope. Maybe you can lasso one. There is
no law against that, I guess."
"I'll do it," Skinny told him. "Bet your life the boys will be surprised
when they see me bringing home a deer. Maybe I'll get two or three. Mr.
Norton didn't give me a message to anybody, so it won't make any
difference which way I go."
"Don't get too many. We'd like to save a few. And be careful that some
bear doesn't get you," went on Mr. Richmond, laughing to see how excited
Skinny was. "They are not very common, but once in a while one is seen
on the mountain."
"How do you get up there?"
"Go back to Pumpkin Hook. It isn't far, and then follow the road which
turns east. It will take you right to Savoy. You will find a pretty good
road all the way, and you won't have any more trouble than you would
going to Cheshire--unless," he added in a fierce voice that made Skinny
jump, "unless A BEAR GETS YOU!"
"Now, father, don't scare the boy to death," said Mary's mother. "You
know well enough there are no bears and the road to Savoy is a
well-traveled one."
"Of course it is, or I shouldn't have suggested his going there. But
there have been bears seen on the Savoy Mountain. I saw one myself, last
year."
"Huh! I ain't afraid of no bear," put in Skinny, drawing himself up and
looking fierce. "I tracked one once on Bob's Hill. It went up to Peck's
Falls and hid in our cave. We smoked it out. I didn't have a gun or
knife or anything, but I hit it with a snowball."
You could have hung a hat on Mary's eyes when Skinny told them that.
"Was it a really and truly bear?" she asked. "And did it stand on its
hind legs like in the circus pictures over at the Hook?"
"It stood on its hind legs, all right," he told her, "but it wasn't
really a bear. We thought it was. It made tracks in the snow just like
bear's tracks, but when we had smoked it out we found that it wasn't
anything but a man."
"It was Jake Yost, a foolish feller," he explained, turning to Mr.
Richmond. "He had his boots on the wrong feet and wouldn't change them
back for fear of changing his luck. That was what made his tracks look
like bear's tracks."
It tickled them to hear about that, but it didn't tickle us boys much
when it happened. It was too scary.
"If you will stop here on your way back to-morrow," said Mary's grandma,
"we'll give you a nice dinner. I think you will be wanting one about
that time. Mary may walk with you as far as the Hook, if you like, and
show you the road."
"I think maybe I'd better go along, too, with my gun," said Mr.
Richmond, "on account of the bears."
"Don't you mind his nonsense," she said. "You run along."
So off they went together, Skinny with his rope and tomahawk and Mary
with her red sunbonnet, but they kept away from the pasture.
From Pumpkin Hook Skinny went on alone, up the mountain road, whirling
his tomahawk around his head and every little while pretending to lasso
the enemy, because he knew that Mary was watching him from below.
Then pretty soon he came to a bend in the road. He turned and waved to
her, and in a minute was out of sight.