watching the show, and they all took their hats off respectful--following
the lead Santa Fé give 'em--as Hart started away up the track, to where
his store was, with his aunt on his arm. The town looked like some place
East keeping Sunday: the Committee having talked strong as to what
they'd do if things wasn't quiet, and having rounded up--and coralled in a
back room Denver Jones lent the use of--the few who'd got drunk as
usual because they had to, and so had to be took care of that way. It
was a June evening, and the sun about setting; and somehow it all was
so sort of peaceful and uncommon--with everybody in sight sober, and no
fighting anywhere, and that little old lady going along, believing
Palomitas was like that always, instead of the hell on earth it
was--some of us more'n half believed we'd gone to sleep and got stuck in
a dream.
Things was made dreamier by the looks and doings of the Sage-Brush
Hen. She was the only lady of the town, the Hen was, who took part in
the ceremonies--and likely it was just about as well, for the sake of
keeping clear of surprises, the rest of 'em laid low. As Hart and his
aunt went off together up the track, the Hen showed up coming along
down it; and she was dressed that pretty and quiet--in the plainest
sort of a white frock, and wearing a white sun-bonnet--and was looking
so demure, like she could when she'd a mind to, nobody knowed at first
who she was.
"Being the minister's wife, I've been taking the liberty, Mr. Hart,"
she said, smiling pleasant, when the three of 'em come together on the
track, "of looking around a little up at your place to see that
everything has been fixed for your company the way it should be." (She
hadn't been nowheres near Hart's place, it turned out--but Gospel
truth wasn't just what there was most of that day in Palomitas.) She
went right on down the track without stopping, passing on Hart's side,
and saying to him: "My husband expects you as usual at the Friendly
Aid meeting to-morrow evening, Mr. Hart. We never seem half to get
along, you know, when you're not there."
Hart's aunt give a little jump, and said: "Why, William, that must be
Mrs. Charles, the minister's wife. What a pleasant-spoken lady she is!
We met her husband just as we were driving into town."
Hart said he come pretty near saying back to her, "The hell you
did!"--Hart talked that careless way, sometimes--but he said he pulled
up before it got out, and all he did say was, "Oh!"
"She must be at the head of the Dorcas Society that Mr. Hill was
telling me about," Hart's aunt went on; "and like enough she manages
the kindergarten, too. I suppose, William, it's not surprising you
haven't said anything in your letters about the Dorcas Society--for
all you were so liberal in helping it--but I do think you might have
told me about the kindergarten, knowing what a hobby of mine
kindergartens are. I want to go and see it to-morrow morning, the
first thing."
"It's--it's not in running order just now," Hart said. "Most of the
children was took sick with the influenza last week, and there's
whooping-cough and measles about, and so the school committee closed
it down. And they had to stop, anyway, because they're going to put a
new roof on. I guess it won't blow in again for about a month--or
maybe more. In fact, I don't know--you see, it wasn't managed well,
and got real down unpopular--if it'll blow in again at all. I'm sorry
you won't be able to get to it, Aunt Maria. Maybe it'll be running if
you happen to come out again next year."
"Why, how queer that is, William!" Hart's aunt said. "Mr. Hill told me
it was the best kindergarten in New Mexico. But of course you know.
Anyhow, I can see the schoolroom and the school fixtures, and Mrs.
Charles can tell me about it when I go to the Dorcas Society--and
that'll do most as well. Of course I must get to the Dorcas Society.
Mrs. Charles will take me, I'm sure. It meets, Mr. Hill says, every
Thursday afternoon."
"Did he say where it was meeting now?" Hart asked. He was getting
about desperate, he told Cherry afterwards; and what he wanted most
was a chance to mash Hill's fool head for putting him in such a lot of
holes.
"Of course he did, William," said Hart's aunt; "and I'm surprised you
have to ask--seeing what an interest you take in the Society, and how
you've helped it along. It was just lovely of you to give them all
those goods out of your store to make up into clothes."
"That--that wasn't anything to do," Hart said. "What's in the store
comes with a big discount--same as melodeons. Sometimes I feel as if I
was saving money giving things away."
"You can talk about your generosity just as you please, William," she
went on. "_I_ think it's noble of you. And Mr. Hill said that Mrs.
Major Rogers--who keeps the Forest Queen Hotel, he said, and lets the
Society have a room to meet in for nothing--said it was noble of you,
too. I want to get to know Mrs. Major Rogers right off. She must be a
very fine woman. She's an officer's widow, Mr. Hill says, and a real
lady, for all she makes her living keeping a hotel out here on the
frontier. If she's a bit like that sweet-looking Mrs. Charles I know
we'll get along. I'm surprised, William, you've never told me what
pleasant ladies live here. It must make all the difference in the
world. Don't you think it would do for me not to be formal, but just
to go to Mrs. Major Rogers' hotel to-morrow and call?"
"I guess--well, I guess you hadn't better go right off the first thing
in the morning, Aunt Maria," Hart said. Thinking of his aunt going
calling at the Forest Queen and running up against Tenderfoot Sal, he
said, gave him the regular cold shakes. "And come to think of it," he
said, "it's no use your going to-morrow at all. Mrs.--Mrs. Major
Rogers, as I happen to know, went up to Denver yesterday; and she
won't be back, she told me, before some time on in the end of next
week--likely as not, she said, she wouldn't come then."
By that time they'd got along to Hart's store, and Hart said: "Here's
where I live, Aunt Maria. You see what sort of a place it is. But I've
done my best to fix things for you as well as I know how. Come right
along in--and when we've had supper we've got to have a talk."
* * * * *
Along about ten o'clock that night Hart come down to the Forest Queen
looking pale and haggard, and he was that broke up he had to get three
drinks in him before he could say a word. Everybody was so interested,
wanting to hear what he had to tell 'em, he didn't need to ask to have
the game stopped--it just stopped of its own accord.
When he'd had his third drink, and was beginning to feel better, he
said he couldn't thank everybody enough for the way they'd behaved;
and that his aunt had gone to bed tired out; and he'd been talking
with her steady for two hours getting things settled; and she'd ended
by agreeing she'd start back East with him the next night--he having
made out he'd smash in his business if he waited a minute longer--and
they was going by the Denver train. And he'd got her fixed he said, so
she'd keep quiet through the morning--as she was going right at
mending his stockings and things the first thing when she got up; and
after that she was full of getting to work with canned peaches and
making him a pie.
"But what's going to happen in the afternoon," he said, "the Lord only
knows! That blasted fool of a Ben Hill"--Hart spoke just that bitter
way about it--"hasn't had no more sense 'n to go and tell her this
town's full of kindergartens, and she's so worked up there's no
holding her, as kindergartens happens to be the fullest hand she
holds. I've allowed we have one--things being as they was, I had
to--but I've told her it's out of order, and the children laid up with
whooping-cough, and the teacher sick a-bed, and the outfit damaged by
a fire we had, and--and the Lord knows what I haven't told her about
the damn thing." (Hart was that nervous he couldn't help speaking that
way.) "But all I've said hasn't made no difference. She's just dead
set on getting to what's left of that kindergarten, and I can't budge
her. See it she will, she says; and I guess the upshot of Hill's
chuckle-headed talk'll be to waste all the trouble we've took by
landing us in the biggest give-away that ever was!" And Hart called
for another drink, and had to set down to take it--looking pale.
All the boys felt terrible bad about the hole Hart was in; and they
felt worse because none of 'em hadn't no notion what a kindergarten
did--when it did anything--and that made 'em more ashamed Palomitas
hadn't one to show. Only Becker--Becker'd happened to come over from
Santa Cruz that night--sized it up right; and Becker shook his head
sort of dismal and said there wasn't no use even thinking about
it--and that looked like a settler, because Becker seemed to know.
Nobody didn't say nothing for a minute or two; and then Ike Williams
spoke up--he was the boss carpenter on the freight-house job, Ike
was--and said if what was wanted could be made out of boards, and made
in a hurry, he'd lay off the freight-house gang the next morning and
engage to have one ready by noon.
Santa Fé Charley'd been sitting still thinking, not saying a word.
He let out a big cuss--and Charley wasn't given to cussing--when Ike
made his offer; and then he banged his hand down on the table so hard
he set the chips to flying, and he said: "Mr. Hart, don't you
worry--we're going to put this job through!"
Everybody jumped up at that--some of 'em scrambling for the dropped
chips--asking Santa Fé what he meant to do. But Charley wouldn't
answer 'em. "Just you trust to Ike and me, Bill," he said. "We'll fix
your kindergarten all right--only you keep on telling your aunt it
ain't a good one, and how most of it got burned up in the fire. It's
luck you let on to her there'd been a fire--that makes it as easy as
rolling off a log. All you've got to do is to bring her down here at
four o'clock to-morrow afternoon--you'd better till then keep her in
the house, mending you up and making you all the pies she has a mind
to--and when she gets here the kindergarten'll be here, too!"
"Bring her here--to the Forest Queen?" Hart said, speaking doubtful.
"Bring her here--right here to the Forest Queen," Santa Fé said back
to him. "You know pretty well I do things when I say I'll do 'em--and
this thing'll be done! Come to think of it," he said, "maybe it'll be
better if I go to your place and fetch her along myself. It'll help if
I do a little talking to her on the way down. Yes, we'll fix it that
way. You and she be ready at four o'clock, and I'll come for you.
That'll give her an hour here, and an hour to go home and eat her
supper--and that'll get us to train-time, and then the circus'll close
down. Now you go home and go to bed, Bill. You're all beat out. Just
you leave things to Ike and me and go right home."
Charley wouldn't say another word--so Hart had one more drink, for
luck, and then he went home. He looked real relieved.
When Santa Fé went to Hart's place, next afternoon, he had on his best
black clothes, with a clean shirt and a fresh white tie; and he was
that serious-looking you'd have sized him up for a sure-enough
fire-escape anywhere on sight. Hart hadn't had no trouble, it turned
out, keeping his aunt to home--she'd been working double tides ever
since she got up, he said, making him things to eat and fussing over
his clothes. They was all ready when Santa Fé come along, and the
three of 'em stepped off down the track together--Hart having his aunt
on his arm, and Santa Fé walking on ahead over the ties. Most of the
boys was standing about watching the procession; but the girls--the
Hen, likely, having told 'em to--was keeping on keeping quiet, and got
what they could of it peeping through chinks in the windows and
doors.
"Why, where _are_ all the ladies, Mr. Charles?" Hart's aunt asked.
"Except that sweet young wife of yours, it's just the mortal truth I
haven't seen a single lady since I came into this town!"
"They usually keep in-doors at this time of day, madam," Charley said.
"They're attending to their domestic duties--and--and most of them,
about now, are wont to be enjoying the tenderest happiness of
motherhood in nursing their little babes."
"It's very creditable they're such good housewives, I'm sure," said
Hart's aunt; "only I do wish I could have met some of 'em and had a
good dish of talk. But we'll be finding your wife at the kindergarten,
I s'pose, and I'll have the pleasure of a talk with her. I've been
looking forward all day to meeting her, Mr. Charles. She has one of
the very sweetest faces I ever saw."
"I deeply regret to tell you, madam," said Santa Fé, "that my wife was
called away suddenly last evening by a telegram. She had no choice in
the matter. Her call was to minister to a sick relative in Denver, and
of course she left immediately on the night train. Her disappointment
at not meeting you was great. She had set her heart on showing you
over our poor, half-ruined kindergarten--the fire did fearful
damage--but her duty was too manifest to be ignored, and she had to
leave that pleasant task to me."
"Now that is just too bad!" said Hart's aunt. "At least, Mr. Charles,
I don't mean that exactly. It's very kind of you to take her place,
and I'm delighted to have you. But I did so like your wife's looks,
and I've been hoping she and I really'd have a chance to get to be
friends."
That brought 'em to the Forest Queen, and Charley was more'n glad he
was let out from making more excuses why his wife had shook her
kindergarten job so sudden. "Here we are," he said. "But I must warn
you again, madam, that our little kindergarten is only the ghost of
what it was before the fire. We are hoping to get a new outfit
shortly. On the very morning after the disaster a subscription was
started--your nephew, as always, leading in the good work--and that
afternoon we telegraphed East our order for fresh supplies. By the
time that the epidemic of whooping-cough has abated--I am glad to say
that all the children are doing well--we trust that our flock of
little ones again can troop gladly to receive the elementary
instruction that they delight in, and that my wife delights to
impart."
"Why," said Hart's aunt, "the kindergarten's in Mrs. Major Rogers'
hotel--the Forest Queen!"
"After the fire, Mrs. Major Rogers most kindly gave us the free use of
one of her largest rooms," Santa Fé said; "and we are installed here
until our own building can be repaired. I have spared you the sight,
madam, of that melancholy ruin. I confess that when I look at it the
tears come into my eyes."
"I don't wonder, I'm sure," said Hart's aunt. "I think I'd cry over it
myself. But what a real down good woman Mrs. Major Rogers must be! Mr.
Hill told me she gives the Dorcas Society the use of a room, too."
"She is a noble, high-toned lady, madam," Santa Fé said. "Since her
cruel bereavement she has devoted to good works all the time that she
can spare from the arduous duties by which she wins her livelihood.
Words fail me to say enough in her praise! Come right in, madam--but
be prepared for a sad surprise!"
Hart said he didn't know how much surprised his aunt was--but he said
when he got inside the Forest Queen, into the bar-room where Charley's
faro layout usually was, he was so surprised himself he felt as if
he'd been kicked by a mule!
There was the little tables for drinks, right enough; and out of the
way in a corner with a cloth over it, same as usual, was the wheel.
(It was used so little, the wheel was--nobody but Mexicans, now and
then, caring for it--Santa Fé owned up afterwards he'd forgot it
clean!) That much of the place was just as it always was; and the big
table, taking up half the room, looked so natural--with the chairs up
to it, and layouts of chips at all the places--that Hart was beginning
to think Santa Fé was setting up a rig on him: 'till he seen what a
lot of queer things besides chips there was on the table--and knowed
they wasn't no game layout, and so sized 'em up to be what Charley'd
scrambled together when he set out to play his kindergarten hand. And
when he noticed the bar was curtained off by sheets he said he stopped
worrying--feeling dead certain Charley'd dealt himself all the aces he
needed to take him through.
"You don't need to be told, madam, being such an authority on
kindergartens," said Santa Fé, "how inadequate is our little outfit
for educational purposes. But you must remember that the fire
destroyed almost everything, and that we have merely improvised what
will serve our purposes until the new supply arrives. We succeeded in
saving from the conflagration our large table, and our chairs, and
most of the small tables--used by individual children having backward
intellects and needing especial care. But nearly all of the other
appliances of the school were lost to us, and damage was done to much
of what we saved. Here, you see, is a little table with only three
legs left, the fourth having been burned." And, sure enough, Hart
said, Santa Fé turned up one of the little tables for drinks and one
of its legs _was_ burnt off! "All of our slates," he went ahead,
"similarly were destroyed--and how much depends on slates in a
kindergarten you know, madam, better than I do. Here is all that is
left of one of them"--and he showed Hart's aunt a bit of burnt wood
that looked like it had been part of a slate-frame afore it got
afire.
"Dear me! Dear me!" said Hart's aunt. "It's just pitiful, Mr. Charles!
I wonder how you can get along at all."
"It is not easy getting along, madam," Santa Fé said. "But we have
managed to supply ourselves with a layout--I--that is--I mean we have
provided ourselves with some of the simpler articles of most
importance; and with these, for the time being, we keep our little
pupils' hands and minds not unprofitably employed. For instance, the
ivory disks of various colors--which you see arranged upon the table
as the pupils have left them--serve very successfully to elucidate the
arithmetical processes of numeration, addition, and subtraction; and
the more intelligent children are taught to observe that the disks of
varying colors are varyingly numbered--white, 1; red, 5, and blue,
10--and so are encouraged to identify a concrete arbitrary figure with
an abstract thought."
"That's something new in kindergartening, Mr. Charles," said Hart's
aunt; "and it's as good as it can be. I mean to put it right into use
in our kindergarten at home. Do you get the disks at the places where
they sell kindergarten supplies?"
"Really, madam, I cannot tell you," Santa Fé said. "You see, we
ordered what would be needed through an agent East, and these came
along. I must warn you, however, that they are expensive," Hart said,
remembering what them chips had cost him, one time and another, he
allowed to himself Charley was right and they was about as expensive
as they could be!
"Our other little appliances, madam," Santa Fé went on, "are just our
own makeshift imitations of what you are familiar with--building-blocks,
and alphabet-blocks, and dissected pictures, and that sort of thing.
Our local carpenter made the blocks for us, and we put on the lettering
ourselves--as, indeed, its poor quality shows. The dissected pictures I
am rather proud of, because Mrs. Charles may be said to have invented
them." (It really was the Hen who'd made 'em, it turned out.) "The
method is simple enough when you have thought of it, of course--and no
doubt I value my wife's work unduly because I take so much pride in
all that she does. You see, she just pasted pictures from the
illustrated papers on boards; and then Mr. Williams--our carpenter, you
know--sawed the boards into little pieces. And there you are!"
"Now that _was_ bright of her!" said Hart's aunt. "If you don't mind,
I'll put one of the pictures together myself right now. I want to see
how it looks, made that home-fashioned way."
"I fear that our time is getting a little short, madam," said Santa
Fé, in a hurry. "I've got my sermon to finish this afternoon, and I
must be going in a few minutes now." The fact of the matter was he had
to call her off quick. It seems the Hen hadn't had anything but
_Police Gazettes_ to work on--and while the bits looked all right
jumbled up, being put together they wouldn't have suited nohow at
all.
"Of course I mustn't keep you," said Hart's aunt. "You've been more
than kind, Mr. Charles, to give me so much of your valuable time as it
is. I'm just like a child myself, wanting to play with dissected
pictures that way! But I must say that her making them is a thing for
your wife to be proud of--and I hope you'll tell her so for me."
"I guess we'd better be going now, Aunt Maria," Hart said. "Mr.
Charles has his sermon to write, you know, and I want you to have time
to eat your supper comfortable before we start down to the train."
"I do suppose we must go," said Hart's aunt. "But I hate to, William,
and that's a fact! Just because it's so make-shifty, this is the most
interesting kindergarten I've ever been in. When I get home I shall
really and truly enjoy telling the folks about it. And I know how
pleased they'll be, the same as I am, by finding what earnest-working
men and women can do--out here in this rough country--with so little
to go on but their wits and their own good hearts!"
And then she faced round sudden on Santa Fé and said: "I see you have
your table covered with green, Mr. Charles. What's that for? You've so
many good notions about kindergartens that I'd like to know."
"Well, you see, madam, that green cover is a--it's a sort of--"
Charley went slow for a minute, and then got a-hold of the card he
wanted and put it down as smooth as you please. "That is an invention,
madam," he said, "of my good wife's, too. Out here, where the sun is
so violent, she said we must have a green cover on the table or the
glare would be ruining all our dear little innocent children's eyes.
And it has worked, madam, to a charm! Some of the children who had bad
eyes to start with actually have got well!"
"Well, I do declare!" said Hart's aunt.
"That wife of yours thinks so sensible she just beats all!"
Santa Fé give Hart a look as much as to say he'd got to get his aunt
away somehow--seeing she was liable to break out a'most anywheres, and
he'd stood about all he could stand. Hart allowed what Charley wanted
was reasonable, and he just grabbed her by the arm and begun to lug
her to the door. But she managed to give Santa Fé one more jolt, and a
bad one, before she was gone.
"I haven't seen what this is," she said; and she broke off from Hart
and went to where the wheel was standing covered up in the corner. "I
s'pose I may look at it, Mr. Charles?" she said--and before either of
'em could get a-hold of her to stop her she had off the cloth. "For
the land's sake!" she said. "Whatever part of a kindergarten have you
got here?"
Hart said afterwards his heart went down into his boots, being sure
they'd got to a give-away of the worst sort. Santa Fé said he felt
that way for a minute himself; then he said he ciphered on it that
Hart's aunt likely wouldn't know what she'd struck--and he braced up
and went ahead on that chance.
"Ah," he said--speaking just as cool as if he was calling the deal
right among friends at his own table--"that is one of the new German
kindergarten appliances that even you, madam, may not have seen. We
received it as a present from a rich German merchant in Pueblo, who
was grieved by our pitiable plight and wanted to do what he could to
help us after the fire."
"But what in the name of common-sense," said Hart's aunt, "do you do
with it--with all those numbers around in circles, and that little
ball?"
[Illustration: "'ONE OF THE NEW GERMAN KINDERGARTEN APPLIANCES'"]