SAFE CONVOY
Polly did not tell the girls that she had learned what the secret
trouble was between the two sisters. Someway, she could not. It seemed
such a personal, tender secret that, after all, concerned only the two,
and Sandy himself. Dear, stalwart, dauntless Chief Sandy! Polly wondered
whether Miss Honoria knew him well. It did not seem as if any one who
had met him, and come under the spell of that genial, generous spirit,
could fail to sense its charm and worth. She could almost shut her eyes,
and imagine him going up the broad stone steps at the Hall, and bowing
over Miss Honoria’s hand. No, come to think of it, he wouldn’t bow, not
the Chief. He was no courtly Southerner like the Admiral. More likely he
would smile that broad sunny smile of his that seemed to take in all
creation, and gripping Honoria’s hand in his, he would probably kiss her
willy-nilly, in brotherly fashion, and say:
“Well, sister, how goes the world?”
Then what would the mistress of the Hall do? Polly smiled to herself.
Would she faint, or would she gasp and laugh, or would she order the
Northern invader from the sacred precincts of Calvert Hall? What would
she do? Polly could hardly wait to find out. Someway, she decided,
someway, it must be arranged for the meeting to happen.
“Does any one feel like taking a camping trip next week?” asked Mr.
Murray, Monday night. “I won’t have the time to spare now girls, but if
mother says so, we’ll start out a week from to-day, with a good team,
and go camping.”
“Why, father, you’ll have to take more than one team, won’t you?” said
Mrs. Murray. “I’ll leave Sally to cook for the boys, and go too.”
“Couldn’t we ride horseback?” Polly put in.
“I was figuring on a grub wagon that would take the tents too, and then
fix up that old sheep wagon, for the girls to ride in. We can put four
cross seats in that, mother, and the boxes and cupboards would come in
handy. I’m afraid they’d get tired out riding.”
“If we did, we could hitch the ponies on behind, and get into the wagon,
the way the pack-trains do. We’d love to ride, wouldn’t we, girls?”
“Listen to them,” exclaimed Jean. “Wouldn’t you think, to hear them
talk, that they’d been in a saddle since they could walk. I’d let them
ride, father. We’ll have the fun of teasing them after a good
twenty-mile jolt over the mountain roads.”
“Monday then, and an early start. Archie and Neil will look after
things, and it will do us good too, won’t it, mother?”
“The biggest lad of the lot,” said Mrs. Murray, tenderly, as she watched
the tall, angular figure start off down towards the sheds. “He’ll enjoy
it vastly.”
“It seems too wonderful to be true,” said Isabel, in her fervent way.
“Will we be right in the mountains, then, Miss Jean?”
“‘In the heart of the ancient woods,’” quoted Jean, blithely. “Have you
ever slept out of doors on a bed of spruce boughs, with nothing around
you but the mountains and the sky? Mother says it comes the nearest to
feeling the everlasting arms around one of anything in this life that
she’s found.”
“You’re rocked in Mother Nature’s cradle, bairnies, then,” smiled Mrs.
Murray. “Just like all her younglings of the wilds. And good it is for
you, too. I feel the summer’s missed its best reward when we fail to
have our little camp outing after the haying.”
“I used to think they never bothered over hay on ranches,” said Ted,
suddenly. “I thought they just let all the cattle out to range.”
“So they did in the old range days, when it was free. But we small
ranchers have to take care of ourselves a good deal.”
“I don’t understand this,” exclaimed Polly, who had been reading over
her last letter from the Admiral. “Grandfather says here that he did
think he might get out this way, but business keeps him near Washington
all summer, so he is sending the Doctor under safe convoy. What is that,
‘safe convoy’?”
“Special delivery, receipt guaranteed,” spoke up Don, who was making a
cage for a couple of ’coons he had caught.
“That letter was mailed a week ago, Polly,” Ruth said. “And you know the
Doctor will be here by Wednesday.”
“But under ‘safe convoy,’” repeated Polly. “Grandfather never uses too
many words. What does he mean by that ‘convoy.’ A convoy is a ship that
conducts another ship, isn’t it?”
“Right-O,” sang out Ted, teasingly. “I think he will come straight
through by express. And you told Jimmie to be on the watch for him
around Deercroft, to make him feel at home, and the Chief is to meet him
Wednesday.”
“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but I ‘s’pects it strongly,’” Polly
replied, using Aunty Welcome’s favorite phrase of incredulity. “I don’t
believe he is coming alone, but whom could he bring way out here?”
“Let’s ride down and meet him too,” Jean said. “I’m very anxious to meet
this wonderful Doctor of yours, anyway. We could take the surrey, and
Peggie or I will drive. Then he will have a double surprise to find you
girls waiting as well as the Chief.”
“Oh, could we?” cried the girls together.
So it happened that unconsciously they planned a participation in the
Doctor’s surprise. Wednesday morning they all packed into the surrey,
and drove away over the mountain road to Deercroft. They were early, and
Jean put the horses up at the local livery stable, while they walked
around and saw what they could of the town.
“It isn’t one bit like what I expected to see,” Ruth declared. “Here are
electric lights, paved streets, and everything orderly and shipshape.”
“Well, what did you expect?” asked Peggie, wonderingly.
“I don’t know exactly. A Western town always seems to mean just a row of
frame houses, and a lot of saloons—”
“We haven’t any,” said Peggie, simply. “The women voted no license.”
“I told you this was the girl State, didn’t I?” Jean added, merrily. “We
keep it swept clean.”
“Grandfather always says that girls don’t have to consider such things,”
said Polly, thoughtfully.
“He wouldn’t if he lived out here. Our girls study their political
economy and civil government, and it trains them for the issues they
will meet later. Hark, that’s the express. I hear it whistle. Let’s
hurry.”
“There’s the Chief, and Mrs. Sandy too, at the station,” said Sue, who
was ahead. “They are waving to us.”
“How are you, chickens?” called Mrs. Sandy cheerily to them, as they
came to the platform. “I had to do some town shopping, so we killed two
birds with one stone. Looks like we might have a thunder shower, doesn’t
it?”
“That’s blowing to the north, Di,” the Chief put in, placidly. “You can
see its shiny lining now.”
The express came swinging down the track, and stopped. Few passengers
got off at Deercroft, so it was not hard to find the Doctor. Third coach
to the last, they saw him, as the porter put the stool down for him to
alight. He turned at their quick call, and waved his hand, but all his
attention was centered on some one who was coming down the steps, some
one rather tall, and dressed in silver gray, even to the long gray veil
that was draped about her hat.
And suddenly, in one flash of recognition, the girls knew the Doctor’s
surprise.
But Mrs. Sandy did not. There she stood, smiling happily at the pleasure
of the girls, supremely unconscious and unprepared. She saw the tall,
slender, stately old lady behind the figure of the Doctor, but did not
associate her with him, not until the girls surrounded both, and were
kissed and shaken by the hand. It was Polly who put her arm around the
figure in gray, and led her where Mrs. Sandy stood, her Chief beside
her.
“Here she is, Miss Honoria,” Polly said, with shining eyes that filled
with quick tears as the two faced each other after more than thirty-five
years. Honoria held out both hands. Her voice trembled with emotion.
“Sister,” was all she could say, “sister, I had to come, too.”
Mrs. Sandy opened her arms, and took the stately figure close to her
heart, sobbing happily.
“Let’s get the horses,” said Ted in an inspired moment, and deftly she
diverted attention from the main group, leading the way over to the
stable with the Doctor, the girls all following.
The Doctor looked like a boy who had achieved some long-cherished
ambition. He kept taking off his traveling cap, and smiling around from
face to face, then putting the cap on again and adjusting his
eyeglasses.
“God bless my heart, but this is a glorious reunion, isn’t it, girls?”
he said.
“Wait until you see the skeleton, the—the bones, the fossil remains,”
said Polly.
“Polly, I think that was all hatched up by you, as a wise and clever
scheme to drag me into this part of Wyoming,” he replied.
“But I sent you a specimen—”
“I’ll wait until I see where you took the specimen from.”
“Wasn’t it a good specimen?”
“Fine, undoubtedly. So was the surrounding rock.” The Doctor laughed
heartily at the puzzled expression on Polly’s face. “If it is exactly as
represented, we’ll give you a degree, Polly, an honorary degree, if we
have to invent one to fit the occasion. We can’t call you a Fellow
Geologist, can we? This will necessitate Congress striking off a special
bronze medal for a new sisterhood of geologists. How would that do?”
“It is a very large skeleton, I think,” Polly answered. “And truly,
Doctor, we girls have nothing to do with it. Peggie Murray found it long
ago. We are only the—the—”
“Promoters of the science,” finished the Doctor. “I see. Dear, dear,
what a tanned lot of young Indians you are. Isn’t it a splendid country?
I felt several inches taller as soon as I breathed the air of this
altitude.”
Jean said the team was ready to start now, so they all climbed in, and
drove back to the station.
“This is my first experience with a three-seated surrey behind a pair of
bronchos,” exclaimed the Doctor. “They use them on the tourist
expeditions through the National Park, though, come to think of it. Have
you been over there yet?”
“Not this time,” said Ruth, frankly. “We haven’t money enough. But we’re
having a perfectly splendid time at the ranch, and next week we’re going
camping.”
“Just for a few days to give them a taste of it,” Jean added over her
shoulder. “We start back for Virginia on our fourth week.”
“You, too, Miss Jean?” asked Polly. She had not expected that Miss
Murray would go back with them.
“Isn’t this a personally-conducted tour?” asked Jean, smiling. “Of
course, I shall see you safe and sound at home.”
When they drove up to the station, there sat Mrs. Sandy and Miss Calvert
holding each other’s hands, and talking in low tones, making up for the
silence of all the years.
Sandy had a quiet, comprehensive, half-humorous smile on his face, and
as he shook hands with the Doctor, he said in an undertone:
“Lee has surrendered.”
The Doctor nodded his head in quick appreciation.
“It’s high time,” he answered. But the girls held bravely to the
traditions of Calvert Hall. Never by smile or look or word did they show
that they knew of the reconciliation. Not then. Not until the drive home
was finished, and they had waved a temporary good-bye to the MacDowells
and the Doctor and Miss Calvert at the creek crossing, did they dare to
give vent to their feelings, but when they finally reached their own
private quarters, Ted tossed her cap high in the air, and Polly began to
dance a Virginia reel with Sue.
“Well, they’ve made it up, that’s sure,” said Ruth, meditatively, “but
what puzzles me is, what the trouble was in the first place.”
“I know,” cried Polly, pausing to take breath. “I’ve known for days. And
I couldn’t tell. But as long as it’s all over, I will. Let’s sit down in
front of the fire, and comb our hair and talk.”
The nights had been cool ever since their arrival, and a few blazing
spruce knots just took the shiver off, as Sue said, so they sat around
its blaze now, clad in kimonos, combing out their hair, as girls love to
do, and talking. And the old love-tale of Diantha Calvert and her
Northern sweetheart gained a fresh tenderness and charm, told there in
the dancing firelight. When Polly had finished, there was a long
silence, while blue eyes and gray eyes and brown stared dreamily at the
fire. Then Ruth said softly:
“‘Many waters cannot quench love.’”
“Did you hear what Mrs. Sandy said, when I asked her if she was
surprised?” Polly reached over and gave a big log a friendly poke so
that it rolled over and became a blazing ledge. “She said, with _such_ a
look, you know, all glad and proud and kind of relieved too: ‘No, honey,
not very much. I always knew it would happen some day. Love will bring
to us that which is ours if we trust.’ Isn’t that beautiful to remember?
Love will bring to us that which is ours, if we trust.”
“Well, I’m trusting that those bones will turn out to be a perfect and
well-preserved dinosaur,” proclaimed Sue, rising, “and it’s getting
late.”
They left the cabin-door open now, with the screen door fastened, and
long after the rest were asleep, Ruth lay wide awake thinking. A head
raised cautiously from Polly’s pillow.
“Ruth, are you asleep?”
“No,” came back a whisper.
“Aren’t you glad for poor dear old Honoria?”
“So glad I can’t sleep. Think of them to-night, talking and making up
for thirty-five years of lonesomeness.”
“Bet a cookie she’d never have thought of coming out here if we hadn’t
blazed the way. Good-night.”
Ruth’s whisper came back softly, and there was silence in the
guest-cabin.