MAMMY JUNE IN PERIL
From the big house on the Meiggs Plantation, standing on a knoll--which
means a small hill,--one could see for a long distance all about, in
spite of the shade trees, and especially when looking from the third
floor windows. Russ Bunker was looking right out over the quarters where
the hands lived, and could see far down the slope of the land and to the
forest beyond the cultivated fields.
It was a lovely starlit night, but of course the stars did not reveal
everything. The strong red light that sprang up beyond the cabins where
the colored people lived, revealed a great deal, however.
"It's a house afire!" declared Phillis Armatage.
"Where can there be a house in that direction?" Rose Bunker asked.
"Isn't that fire beyond the cabins, Russ?"
Russ suddenly sprang to action. He wheeled from the window and ran along
the hall to the stairway.
"Russ! Russ! Where are you going?" demanded his sister.
"Tell Daddy and Mr. Armatage. I know what house is afire. It's Mammy
June's cabin!" shouted Russ.
He had previously located the direction of the old woman's cabin by the
stream, and Russ was sure that he was right now. He left the girls
screaming after him; he had no time to tell them how he was so sure of
his statement.
Down the two flights of stairs he plunged until he landed with a bang on
the hall rug at the foot of the lower flight. He almost fell against Mr.
Armatage himself when he landed. And Daddy Bunker was not far away.
"Well, well, young man, what's this?" demanded Mr. Armatage, for a
moment quite as stern with Russ as he was with his own children.
Daddy, too, looked upon Russ with amazement. "Why, Russ," he said, "what
does this mean? What are you doing down here?"
"There's a fire!" gasped out Russ, his breath almost gone. "There's a
fire!"
"Upstairs?" demanded Mr. Armatage, whirling toward the stairway.
"Oh, no, sir! No, sir!" cried Russ, stopping him. "It's down the hill. I
saw it from the window."
"The quarters?" demanded the planter.
"No, sir. It looks like Mammy June's. It's a great red flame shooting
right up about where her cabin is."
"And the old woman has gone home. She's lame. Like enough she won't get
out in time--if it is her shack. Come on, boys!" The planter's shout
rang through the lower rooms and startled both the guests and the
servants. "There's a fire down by the branch. May be a cabin and
somebody in it. Come on in your cars and follow me. Get all the buckets
you can find."
He dashed out of the house, hatless as he was, shouting to the colored
folks who were gathered outside watching the dancing through the long
windows. Daddy Bunker followed right behind him. And what do you suppose
Russ did? Why, he could have touched Daddy Bunker's coat-tails he kept
so close to him! Nobody forbade him, so Russ went too.
Mr. Armatage and Mr. Bunker got into one of the first cars to start, and
Russ, with a water pail in each hand, got in too. There was a great
noise of shouting and the starting of the motor-cars. Men ran hither and
thither, and all the time the light of the fire down by the stream
increased.
When they were under way, Mr. Armatage's car leading, they found many of
the plantation hands running down the grassy road in advance. The cars
passed these men, Mr. Armatage shouting orders as the car flew by. In
two minutes they came to the clearing in which Mammy June's cabin stood.
One end of the little house was all ablaze.
"The poor soul hasn't got out," cried Mr. Armatage, and with Mr. Bunker
he charged for the door, burst it in, and dashed into the smoke which
filled the interior.
Russ thought that Daddy Bunker was very brave indeed to do this. It
looked to the boy as though both men would be burned by the raging fire.
But he was brave himself. He fought back his tears and ran to the
stream to fill with water both the pails he carried.
When he came staggering back with the filled pails, the water slopping
over his shoes, the first of the hands arrived. One man grabbed Russ's
pails and threw the water upon the burning logs. Such a small amount of
water only made the flames hiss and the logs steam. But soon other
filled pails were brought. More of the cars with guests from the party
arrived, and a chain of men to the stream was formed.
Almost at once Mr. Armatage and Daddy Bunker fought their way out of the
burning cabin through the smoke, and they bore between them the
screaming old woman. Mammy June was badly frightened.
"You're all right now, Mammy," declared Mr. Armatage, when he and Mr.
Bunker put her into the tonneau of the car. "Here, boy!" he added to
Russ, "you stay with her."
"I got to lose all! I got to lose ma home!" wailed Mammy June. "If my
Ebenezer had been yere, dat chimbley wouldn't have cotched fire."
"Can't be helped now," said Daddy Bunker soothingly. "We'll try to save
your home, Mammy."
But although their intentions were of the best, this could not be done.
The cabin--as dry as a stack of straw--could not be saved. The pails
were passed from hand to hand as rapidly as possible, but the fire had
gained such headway that it was impossible to quench it until the cabin
was in complete ruins.
"You be mighty glad, Mammy June," said Mr. Armatage, finally giving up
the unequal battle, "that you are saved yourself. And you wouldn't have
been if this little Bunker hadn't seen the fire when he did."
"Bless him!" groaned the old woman, hugging Russ to her side in the car.
"If my Ebenezer had been home it wouldn't never have happened, Mistah
Armatage."
She harped upon this belief incessantly as they finally drove back to
the big house. The fright and exposure quite turned Mammy June's brain
for the time. She was somewhat delirious.
"S'pose my Ebenezer come home and find de cabin in ruins. He mebbe will
think Mammy June burned up, and go right off again. And he might come
any time!"
The old woman talked of this even after they put her to bed and a doctor
who chanced to be at Mrs. Armatage's party had attended her. The fire,
and her bodily illness, had prostrated the old woman.
The end of that Christmas party was not as pleasant as the beginning. It
was long after midnight before even the children were in their beds and
composed for sleep. The party broke up at an earlier hour than might
have been expected.
Rose slept in the room with Phillis and Alice Armatage. Just as she was
dropping to sleep and after her companions were already in dreamland
Rose saw the door of the room pushed open. The moon had risen, and Rose
recognized Russ's tousled head poked in the open door.
"What do you want?" she demanded in a whisper. "Oh, Russ! there isn't
another fire, is there?"
"No! Hush! I just thought of something."
"What is it?" asked Rose in the same low tone that Russ used.
"We can do something for Mammy June."
"We can't cure her rheumatism, Russ," said Rose. "Even the doctor can't
do that in a hurry. He said so."
"No. She's worrying about her boy. That boy with the funny name.
Sneezer."
"Yes, I know," said Rose.
"She is afraid he will come back and find the cabin burned and go away
again without her knowing it," said Russ gravely, tiptoeing to his
sister's bedside.
"Yes. Mother says it's real pitiful the way she takes on," sighed the
little girl.
"Well, Rose, you and I can help about that," said Russ confidently.
"How can we?" she asked, in surprise.
"We can write a sign and stick it up on a pole down there by the burned
cabin. We'll make a sign saying that Mammy June is up here at the big
house and for Sneezer to come and see her."
"Oh, goody!" cried Rose, but still under her breath. "That's a fine
idea, Russ."
"Don't say anything about it to anybody," warned her brother, eager to
make a secret of the plan that had popped into his head. "We'll write
that sign early in the morning and go down there and stick it up. Want
to?"
"Of course I do," said Rose, with a glad little jump in her bed. "I
think you're just the smartest boy, Russ, to think of it. I won't say a
word about it, not even to Philly and Alice."
With this plan dancing in her head Rose soon fell asleep while Russ
stole back to the room where he slept with the smaller boys. After that
the big house on the Meiggs Plantation became quiet for the rest of the
long night.