Little Sister was Col. Rutherford’s only grandchild. She was also
Capt. John Rutherford’s only niece. I mention the last-named gentleman
because he had a great deal to do with the making of this story. He was
quite original himself, and a braver, bigger-hearted friend no man ever
had.
The Rutherford home was in the Middle Basin of Tennessee. The house
was built in 1812 by John Rutherford the first, who had eaten, slept,
fought, and finally died, with his old friend, Andrew Jackson. No
truer, better, braver people than the Rutherfords lived. No black sheep
ever came out of the flock. I have always maintained that a family’s
ability to refrain from throwing scrubs is the truest test of its
purity. The prepotency that produced dead-game, honest and true men and
women every time, is a long way ahead of “Norman blood.” “That’s the
genuine stuff,” as little three-year-old Sister once naively remarked
after looking over Uncle John’s pacing filly. However, that’s a story I
will tell later.
When I first knew Little Sister she was only two years old, for just
two years before a terrible gloom had settled over the Rutherford home
when Little Sister’s mother, the Colonel’s daughter, had died. Death
is a terrible, bitter, hollow mockery to those who live. Some day, in
another world, we shall see things differently. In this, “cabined,
cribbed, confined” in our puny environments, we see only “through a
glass darkly,” and so God help us.
As I said, she was the old Colonel’s only daughter--the fairest,
frailest, most lovely and most intellectual--a bride one year, and we
buried her the next. That’s all, except Little Sister, a fair, frail,
hot-tempered, sensitive--all brain and nerve--little tot who came to
take her mother’s place. Her bright blue eyes, pale-pink face and
red-flaxen hair kept one thinking of perpetual sunsets and twilights.
She was a _fac simile_ of her mother--intellect, impulsiveness,
loveliness, all except one thing--temper. She was fire and powder
there. A flash, an explosion--then she was sobbing for forgiveness in
your arms. That was Little Sister.
“I can’t see where in the world she gets her temper from,” Grandmother
Rutherford said when two-year-old Little Sister slapped her squarely in
the face one day and then hung sobbing around the old lady’s neck as if
the blow had broken her own heart.
“Col. Rutherford,” she would add impressively, “this child ought to be
spanked till she is conquered.”
“Don’t do it, mother,” said Uncle John, while Little Sister gave him
a grateful look through her tears; “don’t do it; that is not the way
to train race colts. A conquering, your way, would spoil her. She will
need all of that temper, if it is brought under control, to get through
life with, and land anywhere near the wire first. Besides, with her
sensitiveness, don’t you see she is suffering now more than if we had
punished her? If she were a plug, now, she would slap you and never
be sorry till you made her sorry with a switch. But conscience beats
hickory, and gentleness is away ahead of blows.”
And Uncle John would catch the two-year-old up and take her out to
see the colts. At sight of these she would forget all other trouble.
Her love for horses was as deep in her as the Rutherford blood. When
she saw the colts it was comical to see the great burst of sunshiny
laughter that spread all over her conscience-stricken face, while two
big tears--such big ones as only little heart-broken two-year-olds can
originate--were rolling slowly down her nose.
“Oh, Uncle John,” she would say gleefully, “now, ain’t they just too
sweet for anything? Do let me get down and hug them, every one.” And
Uncle John would let her if he had to catch every one himself.
The clear-cut way she talked English reminds me that there were two
things about Little Sister that always astonished me--her intellect and
her great sense of motherhood. I could readily see how she inherited
the first, but could never understand how so tiny a thing had such a
great big mother-heart. She loved everything little--everything born on
the farm. The fact that anything in hair, hide or feathers had arrived
was an occasion of jollification to her.
“Oh, do let me see the dear little thing,” would be the first thing
from Little Sister that greeted the announcement. And she generally
saw it; at least, if Uncle John was around. It is scarcely necessary
to add that during the spring of the year, on a farm as large as
the Rutherford place, she was kept in one continual state of happy
excitement.
One day they missed her from the house, and Uncle John quickly
“tracked” her to the cow barn, for it occurred to him he had only
the day before shown her the Short-horn’s latest edition--a big,
double-jointed, ugly, hungry male calf, who slept all day in the bedded
stall like a young Hercules, and only waked up long enough to wrinkle
his huge nose around and mentally make the remark the Governor of
North Carolina is said to have made to the Governor of South Carolina.
But Little Sister had declared he was “perfectly lovely.” That is
where Uncle John found her. She had climbed over the high stall gate,
unaided, and, after becoming acquainted, she had given young Hercules,
as a propitiary offering, her own beautiful string of beads and placed
them around his tawny neck.
“Come out of there, you little rascal,” laughed Uncle John. “What do
you see pretty about that big, ugly calf?”
“Oh, Uncle John,” sighed Little Sister, “I’m so sorry for him--he isn’t
pretty, to be sure--and so I have given him my beads. But he has a
lovely curly head,” she added encouragingly, “and he seems to be such a
healthy child.”
On another occasion they missed Little Sister about night. Everybody
started out in alarm. Grandma found her first, coming from the
brood-sow’s lot.
“Where in the world have you been, darling?” asked Grandma, as she
picked her up.
“Playing with the little yesterday pigs,” she said. “And, Grandma, I
ought to have come home sooner, but I kissed one of the cunningest of
the little pigs good-night, and all the others looked so hurt, and
squealed so because I didn’t kiss them, too, I just had to catch every
one of them and kiss them before they would go to sleep. Indeed, I did.”
Inheritance had played a Hamlet’s part in Little Sister’s make-up.
Most children crow, and babble, and lisp, and talk in divers and
different languages before they learn to talk English, while some never
learn at all. But not so with Little Sister. The first word she ever
attempted was perfectly pronounced. The first sentence she put together
was grammatically correct. The correctness of her language, for one
so small, made it sound so quaint that I often had to laugh at its
quaintness, while her deep earnestness and intensity but added to its
originality.
And she picked up so many things from Uncle John. Else where did she
get this: Pete was a little darkey on the farm whose chief business
was to entertain Little Sister when everything else failed. Pete’s
repertoire consisted of all the funny things a monkey ever did, but his
two star performances were “racking” like Deacon Jones’ old claybank
pacer, and “playin’ possum.” Little Sister never tired of having
Pete do these two. And it was comical. Everybody knew Deacon Jones,
with his angular, sedate, solemn way of riding, and the unearthly,
double-shuffling, twisting, cork-screw gait of his old pacer. The
ludicrous gait of the old pacer struck Pete early in life, and he soon
learned to get down on his all-fours and make Deacon Jones’ old horse
ashamed of himself any day. The imitation was so perfect that Uncle
John used to call in his friends to see the show, which consisted of
Pete doing the racking act, while Little Sister, astraddle of his back,
with one hand in his shirt collar and the other wielding a hickory
switch, played the Deacon. One evening, as the company was taking
in the performance, and Pete, now thoroughly leg-weary, had paced
around for the twentieth time, Little Sister was seen to whack him in
the flanks very vigorously and exclaim: “Come, pace along there, you
son-of-a-gun, or I’ll put a head on you!”
Uncle John nearly fell out of his chair. Only a week before he had made
that same remark to Pete for being a little slow about bringing in his
shaving water. But he didn’t know that Little Sister had heard him.
The spring Little Sister was three years old the Colonel came in
to breakfast one morning with a cloud on his brow. It was a great
disappointment to him--old Betty, his saddle mare, the mare he had
ridden for fifteen years, “the best bred mare in Tennessee,” had
brought into the world a most unpromising offspring. “It is weak, puny
and no ’count, John,” he said to his son; “deformed, or something, in
its front legs, knuckles over and can’t stand up, the most infernally
curby-legged thing I ever saw.”
“That’s too bad,” remarked Uncle John, as he helped himself to another
battercake. “I’ll go out after breakfast and look at the poor little
thing.”
“No use,” remarked the Colonel gravely, “it’s deformed--can’t stand up;
and out of compassion for it I’ve ordered Jim to knock it in the head.
It’ll be better dead than alive.”
Little Sister, with her big, inquisitive eyes, had been taking it all
in, as she gravely ate her oatmeal and cream. But the last remark of
Grandpa stopped the spoon half way to her mouth. The next instant,
unobserved, she had slipped out of her high-chair and flown to the barn.
“I tell you, John,” remarked the old Colonel, “I sometimes think this
breeding horses is pure lottery. To think of old Betty, the gamest,
speediest mare I ever rode, having such a colt as that; and by Brown
Hal, too--the best young pacing horse I ever saw. It makes me feel bad
to think of it. Now, take old Betty’s pedigree----”
But the old Colonel never got any further, for piercing screams from
Little Sister came from the barn. Uncle John glanced at her empty
chair, turned pale with fright, kicked over the two chairs which stood
in his way, then his favorite setter dog that blockaded the door,
and rushed hatless to the barn. There a pathetic sight met his eyes.
A negro stood in old Betty’s stall door with an axe in his hand. In
a far corner, on some straw, lay a sorry-looking, helpless colt. But
it was not alone, for a three-year-old tot knelt beside it, and held
the colt’s head in her lap while she shook her tiny fist at the black
executioner, and screamed with grief and anger:
“You shan’t kill this baby colt--you shan’t--you shan’t! Don’t you come
in here--don’t you come! How dare you?” And, child though she was, the
flash of her keen, blue Rutherford eyes, like the bright sights of the
muzzle of two derringers, had awed the negro in the doorway and stopped
him in hesitancy and confusion.
“Go away, Jim,” said Uncle John, as he took in the situation. “Come,
Little Sister,” he said, “let’s go back to Grandma.”
But for once in her life Uncle John had no influence over the little
girl. She was indignant, shocked, grieved. She fairly blazed through
her tears and sobs. She would never speak to Grandpa again as long as
she lived. She intended her very self to kill Jim just as soon as she
“got big enough,” and as for Uncle John, she would never even love him
again if he did not promise her the baby colt should not be killed.
“Poor little thing,” she said, as she put her arm around its neck and
her tears fell over its big, soft eyes; “God just sent you last night,
and they want to kill you to-day.”
Uncle John brushed a tear away himself, and stooped over and
critically examined the little filly--for such it was. Little Sister
watched him intently for, in her opinion Uncle John knew everything and
could do anything. The tears were still rolling down her cheeks, as
Uncle John looked up quickly and said in his boyish, jolly way: “Hello,
Little Sister, this little filly is all right! Deformed be hanged!
She’s as sound as a hound’s tooth--just weak in her front tendons. I’ll
soon fix that. No sir, they don’t kill her, Mousey”--Uncle John called
her Mousey when he wanted her to laugh.
The tears gave way to a crackling little laugh. “Well, ain’t that just
too sweet for anything; and Oh, Uncle John, ain’t she just sweet enough
to eat?” And Little Sister danced about, the happiest child in the
world.
And what fun it was to help Uncle John “fix her up,” as he called it.
She brought him the cotton-batting herself and watched him gravely as
he made stays for the weak forelegs, and straightened out the crooked
little ankles. Finally, when he called Jim, and made him take the
little filly up in his arms and carry her into another stall where old
Betty stood and held her up to get her first breakfast, the little
girl could hardly contain herself. In a burst of generosity she begged
Jim’s pardon, and told her Uncle John confidentially that she didn’t
intend to kill Jim at all, now; but was going to give him a pair of her
Grandpa’s old boots instead.
In return for this, Jim promptly named the filly “Little Sister,” a
compliment which tickled the original Little Sister very much.
But having said the little filly was no-’count, the old Colonel stuck
to it--refused to notice it or take any stock in it.
“Po’ little thing,” he would say a month after it was able to pace
around without help from its stays--“po’ little thing; what a pity they
didn’t kill it!”
But Uncle John and Little Sister nursed it, petted it, and helped old
Betty raise it; and the next spring they were rewarded by seeing it
develop into a delicate-looking, but exceedingly blood-like, nervous,
highstrung little miss. Grandpa would surely relent now, but not so.
Prejudice, next to ignorance, is our greatest enemy, and the old
Colonel looked at the yearling and remarked:
“Po’ little thing--that old Betty should have played off on me like
that!” And he turned indifferently on his heel and walked away,
whereupon both the filly and the little girl turned up their noses
behind the old man’s back.
In the fall that the little filly was three years old the county pacing
stakes came off. A thousand dollars were hung up at the end of that
race, but greater still, the county’s reputation was at the feet of the
conqueror. The old Colonel had entered a big pacing fellow in the race,
named Princewood, and it looked like nothing could beat him. The big
fellow had been carefully trained for two seasons by a local driver,
and had already cost his owner more than he was worth. “But it’s the
reputation I am after, sir,” the Colonel would say to the driver--“the
honor of the thing. My farm has already taken it twice; I want to take
it again.”
Now, Uncle John was quite a whip himself, and the old Colonel had
failed to notice how all the fall he had been giving Betty’s filly
extra attention, with a hot brush on the road now and then. The old
man, wrapped up as he was in Princewood’s wonderful speed, had even
failed to notice that Uncle John had frequently called for his light
road wagon, and he and Little Sister, now six years old, had taken
delightful spins down the shady places in the by-ways, where nobody
could see them, behind the high-strung little filly, and that often, at
supper, when Grandpa would begin to brag about Princewood’s wonderful
speed, Uncle John would wink at Little Sister, and that little miss
would have to cram her mouth full of peach preserves to keep from
laughing out at the table and being sent supperless to bed.
There was a big crowd on the day of the race--it looked like all the
county was there. The field was a large one, for the purse was rich
and the honor richer--“and Princewood is a prime favorite,” chuckled
the old Colonel, as he stood holding a little girl’s hand near the
grandstand.
But the little girl was very quiet. For once in her life “the cat had
her tongue.” Now, anybody half educated in child ways would have seen
this tot clearly expected something to happen. If the old Colonel
hadn’t been so busy talking about Princewood he might have seen it, too.
The bell had already rung twice, and all the drivers and horses were
thought to be in, and were preparing to score down, when a newcomer
arrived, who attracted a good deal of attention. Instead of a sulky, he
sat in a spider-framed, four-wheeled gentleman’s road cart, at least
four seconds slow for a race like that. Instead of a cap he wore a soft
felt hat, and in lieu of a jacket, a cutaway business suit. He nodded
familiarly to the starting judge and paced his nervous-looking little
filly up the stretch.
“Who is that coming into this race in that kind of a thing?” asked the
old Colonel of a farmer near by--for the old man’s eyesight was failing
him.
“Why, Colonel, don’t you know your own son? That’s Cap’n John
Rutherford,” said the farmer.
“The devil you say!” shouted the excitable old gentleman. “Why, damn
it, has John gone crazy?” and he jumped over a bench and rushed
excitedly up the stretch to head off the driver of the little filly.
“In the name of heaven, John,” he shouted, “are you really going to
drive in this race?”
Captain John nodded and smiled.
“And what’s that po’ little thing you’ve got there?”
“It’s Little Sister, father,” said Captain John good naturedly. “I’m
just driving her to please the little girl. I want to see how she’ll
act in company, anyway.”
The old Colonel was thunderstruck. “Why, you’re a fool,” he blurted
out. “They’ll lose you both in this race. For heaven’s sake, John, get
off the track and don’t disgrace old Betty and the farm this way. Po’
little no-’count thing,” he added, sympathetically, “it’ll kill ’er to
go round there once!”
The Captain laughed. “It’s just for a little fun, father--all to please
the baby. It’s her pet, you know. I’ll just trail them the first heat,
and if she’s too soft I’ll pull out. But she’s better than you think,”
he added indifferently. “I’ve been driving her a good bit of late.”
The old Colonel expostulated--he even threatened--but Captain John
only laughed and drove off. Then the old Colonel repented, and it was
comically pathetic to hear him call out in his earnest way: “John! Oh,
John! Don’t tell anybody it’s old Betty’s colt, will you?”
Captain John laughed. “I’ll bet ten to one,” he chuckled to himself,
“he’ll be telling it before I do.”
And the little filly--when she got into company she seemed to be
positively gay. She forgot all about herself, threw off all her nervous
ways, and went away with a rush that almost took Captain John’s breath.
He pulled her quickly back. “Ho, ho! little miss,” he said, “if you
do that again you’ll give us dead away,” and he looked slyly around
to see if anybody had seen it. But they were all too busy chasing
Princewood. That horse clearly had the speed of the crowd. And so Uncle
John trailed behind, the very last of the long procession, with the
little filly fighting for her head all the way. Nobody seemed to notice
them at all--nobody but a little girl, who clung to her grandpa’s
middle finger and wondered, in her childish faith, if the mighty Uncle
John--the Uncle John who knew everything and could do everything, and
who never missed his mark in all his life, was going, really going, to
tumble now from his lofty throne in her childish mind? And with him
Little Sister, too.
She got behind Grandpa. Princewood paced in way ahead. She stuck her
fingers in her ears so she couldn’t hear the shouts, but took them out
in time to hear Grandpa say, “Well, I thought John had more sense,” as
that gentleman, after satisfying himself that he was not distanced,
paced slowly in.
This made Little Sister think it was all up with Uncle John. She went
after a glass of lemonade, but really to cry in the dark hall behind
the grandstand and wipe her eyes on the frills of the pretty little
petticoat Grandma had made her just to wear to the fair. It was too bad.
When she got back Grandpa was gone. He was over in the cooling stable,
talking to Uncle John.
“John,” he said solemnly, “don’t disgrace old Betty any more. I’m
downright sorry for the po’ little thing. I’m afraid she’ll fall dead
in her tracks,” he added.
Captain John flushed, “Well, let her drop,” he said, “but if I’m not
mistaken you’ll hear something drop yourself.”
The old Colonel turned on his heels in disgust.
But Uncle John meant business this time. He changed his cart for a
sulky, and again they got the word. Gradually, carefully, he gave the
little filly her head. Steadily, gracefully, she went by them one by
one, until at the half she was just behind Princewood, who seemed to
be claiming all the grandstand’s attention. The field left behind! If
Princewood wins this heat the race is over!
“Princewood’s got ’em, Colonel!” exclaimed a countryman to the old man.
“They’s nothin’ that kin head ’im!” and “Princewood wins! Princewood
wins!” as they headed into the stretch.
And then something dropped. Little Sister felt the reins relax, and a
kindly chirrup came from Uncle John. In a twinkling she was up with the
big fellow, half frightened at her own speed, half doubting, like a
prima donna when her sweet voice first fills a great hall, that it was
really she who had done it.
“Princewood! Princewood!” shouted the crowd around their idol, the
Colonel. “Princewood will break the record!” from partisans who knew
more about plow horses than race horses.
The old Colonel arose in happy anticipation--and then, as his trained
eye really took in the situation, his jaw dropped. What was that little
bay streak that had collared so gamely his big horse? Who was the
quiet-looking gentleman in the soft felt hat, handling the reins like a
veteran driver? His son John was in a cart--this driver was in a sulky.
“Who the devil--” he started to say, when somebody clinging to his
finger cried out: “Look! Look! Grandpa! It’s Little Sister. Ain’t she
just too sweet for anything?”
And the next instant the little filly laughed in the big pacer’s face,
as much as to say, “You big duffer, have you quit already?” And then,
like a homing pigeon loosed for the first time, she sailed away from
the field.
“Princewood! Princewood will break the record!” shouted a man who
hadn’t caught on and was yelling for Princewood while looking at the
champion pumpkin in the window of the agricultural hall.
And then the old Colonel lost his head and, I am sorry to say, the most
of his religion, for he jumped up on a bench and shouted so loud the
town crier heard him in the court-house window, a mile away: “_Damn
Princewood! Damn the record! It’s Little Sister! Little Sister! Old
Betty’s filly--my old mare’s colt!_”
And then Uncle John laughed till he nearly fell out of the sulky. “I
said he’d be telling all about her first,” he said, while a little
innocent-looking tot plucked the old man by the coat-tail long enough
to get him to stop telling the crowd all about the marvelous breeding
of the wonderful filly, as she naively remarked: “And the little thing
did play off on you sure enough, didn’t she, Grandpa?”
The crowd laughed, and Grandma picked her up, kissed her, and shouted:
“And here’s the girl that saved her, gentlemen--the smartest girl in
Tennessee--and she’s got more horse sense than her old granddaddy!”
There was one more heat, of course; but it was only a procession, and
those behind cannot swear to this day which way Little Sister went.