THE ONLY SERIOUS THING
The gate clashed open again just as Janice's weakened grasp slipped from
Mrs. Scattergood's arm and she staggered away from the excited, panting
old woman. The girl would have fallen, save that the young man who
rushed in at the gate, having seen the danger in season, caught her in
his arms.
The girl's eyelids fluttered; her lips remained open; the pallor of her
face was terrifying.
"What's happened?" demanded the newcomer. "What have you done to her,
Mrs. Scattergood?"
"Me? I ain't done nothing--not a thing!" denied the woman shrilly.
"You said something to her, then?"
"Wal! What if I did? She'd oughter hev been told before."
"_You told her?_"
"Daddy! Oh, Daddy!" moaned Janice.
"You mind your own business, Frank Bowman! You're one o' them foolish
folk, too, that's allus tryin' ter hide the trewth 'cause it's bitter.
Sure 'tis bitter; 'twas meant ter be. An' these namby-pamby people in
this world that can't stand the trewth to be told to 'em----"
Mrs. Scattergood overlooked the plain fact that the reason she had lost
her temper and told this secret to Janice Day was because the girl had
told her a few truths. But Frank Bowman was not listening to the old
woman's tirade. Janice had not lost consciousness. Only for a moment did
she sag helplessly on the young civil engineer's arm.
Then he led her out at the gate and to her car. He aided Janice into the
seat, but slipped behind the steering wheel himself and touched the
self-starter.
Mrs. Scattergood stared after them, slowly retreating the while toward
the house. Her face did not display its customary smirk of complacency.
That bit of gossip that had trembled on the tip of her tongue for days,
and which she had been begged not to reveal to Janice, had at length
been spoken. Her mind should have been relieved; but Mrs. Scattergood
was not satisfied. There was something wrong. All she could see as she
stumbled into the house was the stricken face of the young girl who had
so often done her a friendly kindness, whose smile had been, after all,
a cheering sight to her aging vision, whose whole existence here in
Polktown seemed to be for the express purpose of making other people
happy. It was with a sort of mental shock that Mrs. Scattergood suddenly
discovered she, too, had been blessed and comforted by the spirit of
Janice Day.
The car swept up the hill and over its crown, as the old woman retired
into her cottage. Frank Bowman had not said a word. He twisted the
steering wheel a trifle and they shot around the Town House front and
into the Upper Middletown road.
"Oh, Frank! Is it true? It _is_ true!" the girl finally faltered.
"Yes. Your father is wounded. We do not know how badly. No news has come
out of the district since the first report. He is a prisoner of the
insurrectos at the mine."
"There has been another battle?"
"Yes. Another uprising against the government. It's an awful thing----"
"Is there no hope? Oh, Frank! there must be!"
"Of course there is hope," he cried. "He's no worse off than he has been
several times before."
"But you say he is shot!"
"Well--yes. That is the report."
"If one part of the report is true, why not the other?" said the girl,
her keenness of wit thus displayed.
"But the wound may not be bad. We don't know that it is. Oh! hang that
old woman, anyway! Why did she tell you?"
"Because she was angry with me," sighed Janice.
"Well----"
"And you must all think father very badly hurt or you would not have hid
it from me--for how long?"
He told her. "But we don't really know anything about it. Nelson is
raising heaven and earth for news. There is a good deal of excitement
along the Border, they say----"
"Yes. I read that. Oh! how have you all managed to hide it from me for
so long? I felt--Oh, you had no right!"
"We did what we hoped was for the best," Frank said gently.
"Oh, I suppose you did. But daddy wounded! I must go to him, Frank."
"Oh no, my dear girl. That would not be possible. Nobody can get beyond
San Cristoval, and no American is allowed to cross the Border. It is not
safe to enter Mexico now on any pretext. Those greasers hate us worse
than poison."
Janice tried to control herself. She had not wept; this dry-eyed
suffering was a deal worse for the girl, however, than would have been a
passion of tears.
"Where--where are you taking me?" she asked suddenly, laying her hand on
Frank's arm.
"Why, weren't you on your way to the seminary?"
"But I can't go there now," she said. "Not to-day."
"Here's Elder Concannon's place, right ahead. We can turn there if you
like."
At the moment the elder himself appeared from one of the barns, and
seeing the car and recognizing its occupants he came out to the great
gate to hail them.
"Aren't going right by without stopping, are ye?" he said genially.
Frank Bowman quite involuntarily brought the car to a stop. The moment
he did so the elder saw Janice's face.
"What's the matter?" he asked quickly. "Has she been told? Does she
know?"
Frank nodded and the old man quickly came around to the girl's side.
"My dear," he said huskily. "My dear, brave girl! You've got something
to trouble you now for a fac'. It's the waiting to hear news--to get the
exact fac's--that is going to be hardest. Your friends have saved you
some of that."
"Oh, I know! I know they thought they were doing it for the best,"
wailed Janice. "But daddy! He needs me!"
"It may not be anywhere near so bad as it might be, or as you think it
is," Frank put in.
"Quite true--quite true," said the elder very gently for him. "I know
just how hard 'tis to wait, Janice. I calculate those that wait at home
suffer more than those that actually see battle, murder, and sudden
death. But your father, Janice, may be already on his way home. You
can't tell. You got to have patience."
"But I ought to go to him, Elder Concannon," she said.
"Not to be thought of! Not to be thought of!" he repeated. "What? A gal
like you going clear down there to Mexico? Preposterous!"
That is what Uncle Jason said later, when his niece broached the subject
to him. Indeed, Janice found nobody would listen to her or agree to such
a project. A girl to go down to the Border, especially in these
uncertain times? They scoffed at her!
It was said that the parties of rebels and commandoes of the Mexican
army were hovering along the Rio Grande, ready to swoop like hawks upon
unprotected Americans. The thin line of United States soldiers was
strung along the desert country, watchfully waiting, policing the
district as best they could. But they could not protect Americans who
went over the line.
That evening an informal council of war was held in the Day sitting
room. Frank Bowman was there as well as Nelson Haley. Frank was a very
busy young man, for the branch railroad was completed, and, having built
it, he was to act as supervisor of the branch until the directors
decided upon another incumbent for the office. Besides, Frank had a
deep interest in the pretty daughter of Vice President Harrison of the
V. C. Road, and therefore he was not seen about Polktown so often in his
free hours as formerly. He had come this evening, however, with Nelson,
and the two young men, as well as the older heads, were unalterably
opposed to Janice Day's desire to attempt going to the Border.
"Why, you couldn't get across the Rio Grande," Frank said decisively.
"Trains are not running with any degree of regularity on any road in
Northern Mexico. The International is at a standstill, I am told--tracks
torn up in places and the American engineers chased out. And this San
Cristoval place is on a branch of the International."
Nelson asked a question about the best route to be followed in getting
to that point on the Border opposite to San Cristoval, and Frank told
them, clearly and concisely.
"But even then you are several hundred miles from the Companos
District," he pursued. "Chihuahua is a big state. Texas itself is only
to be compared to it for size. A ranching country, slopes up to the
Sierras. It is in the foothills of the Sierras that the Alderdice Mine
is situated. Why, Janice! you are actually just as near to your
father--at least news of him--here in Polktown as you would be down
there on the Border, for there all wires and other lines of
communication are cut. There is no safe way of getting beyond the Rio
Grande at the present time."
"Jefers-pelters!" ejaculated Walky Dexter, who was present at the
conference. "Broxton Day might's well be in Chiny."
"You are right, Walky, for once," declared Uncle Jason. "I wish he'd
never gone down to that heathenish country."
Aunt 'Mira was in tears--had been so since Janice had driven home in her
car with the civil engineer that morning. She had controlled herself
after a fashion, these several days for Janice's sake; now she was
making up for lost time, so Marty declared, and wept with abandon.
"Why, she _can't_ go down there inter Mexico," wailed the woman. "No gal
like her can't. 'Tain't _fit_. Why, them women down there don't even
wear decent clo'es! I've seen pitchers of 'em with nothin' on but
basket-work stuff around their waists an' anklets. It's disgraceful!"
"Oh, cricky, Ma!" chortled Marty. "You are gittin' things mixed for
sure. That's the Hawaiian Islands you're thinkin' of. Hula-hula girls.
Oh my!"
"Wal, 'tis jest as bad in Mexico, I haven't a doubt," said the fleshy
woman, tossing her head. "'Tis no place for a decent gal like our
Janice."
"Ye air jest as right as rain, Miz' Day," agreed Walky.
"Hi tunket!" said the boy, the only person who did not attempt to
discourage Janice in her thought of starting at once for the Border. "Hi
tunket! wouldn't it be _dandy_ to go down there among those greasers and
bring Uncle Brocky home? I'd go with you, Janice, in a minute!"
"Huh!" gruffly said his father, "you'd be a lot of use, you would."
"I bet I would be, so now!" said the boy. "If Janice goes, _I'm_ going.
Ain't I got some interest in Uncle Brocky, I'd like to know?"
"You show your int'rest in this sittin' room fire, son," observed Mr.
Day. "Go out and get an armful of chunks. Fire's goin' out on us."
"That's all right," growled Marty. "If Janice goes, _I'm_ goin'--that's
all there is about it."
But nobody considered for a moment that Janice could, should, or would
go! It seemed positively ridiculous to the minds of all her friends that
the girl should even contemplate such a thing.
"But what _shall_ I do?" she cried.
"Wait. That's all any of us can do, Janice," Nelson said tenderly. "It
is terrible to be inactive at such a time, I know. But you could do
nothing down there on the Border that you cannot do here in Polktown."
"I'd be nearer to daddy," she said, with a sob.
"Ye don't know _that_," put in Uncle Jason. "We don't none of us know
where Broxton Day is right now. Why! he might open that door yonder and
walk in here any moment. How d'we know?"
But Janice found little comfort in the thought. Indeed, she scarcely
heard what her uncle said. She could think of little but her father's
perilous situation, wounded and a prisoner among people whom she
believed to be as bloodthirsty as savages.
Uncle Jason's financial difficulties were nothing to compare to this.
Little Lottie Drugg's state of mind slipped entirely out of Janice Day's
memory.
The only serious thing in the world to her now was her father's peril
and her inability to get to him to lend him the comfort of her
presence.