He is the dumbest kind of a dumb fool that ain't king in some
little corner.--_Sayings of Si Sylvanne_
The man who has wronged you will never forgive you, and he who has
helped you will be forever grateful. Yes, there is nothing that draws
you to a man so much as the knowledge that you have helped him.
Quonab helped Rolf, and so was more drawn to him than to many of the
neighbours that he had known cor years; he was ready to like him. Their
coming together ffas accidental, but it was soon very clear that a
friendship was springing up between them. Rolf was too much of a child
to think about the remote future; and so was Quonab. Most Indians are
merely tall children.
But there was one thing that Rolf did think of--he had no right to live
in Quonab's lodge without contributing a fair share of the things
needful. Quonab got his living partly by hunting, partly by fishing,
partly by selling baskets, and partly by doing odd jobs for the
neighbours. Rolf's training as a loafer had been wholly neglected, and
when he realized that he might be all summer with Quonab he said
bluntly:
“You let me stay here a couple of months. I'll work out odd days, and
buy enough stuff to keep myself any way.” Quonab said nothing, but
their eyes met, and the boy knew it was agreed to.
Rolf went that very day to the farm of Obadiah Timpany, and offered to
work by the day, hoeing corn and root crops. What farmer is not glad of
help in planting time 01 in harvest? It was only a question of what did
he know and how much did he want? The first was soon made clear; two
dollars a week was the usual thing for boys in those times, and when he
offered to take it half in trade, he was really getting three dollars a
week and his board. Food was as low as wages, and at the end of a week,
Rolf brought back to camp a sack of oatmeal, a sack of cornmeal, a
bushel of potatoes, a lot of apples, and one dollar cash. The dollar
went for tea and sugar, and the total product was enough to last them
both a month; so Rolf could share the wigwam with a good conscience.
Of course, it was impossible to keep the gossipy little town of Myanos
from knowing, first, that the Indian had a white boy for partner; and,
later, that that boy was Rolf. This gave rise to great diversity of
opinion in the neighbourhood. Some thought it should not be allowed,
but Horton, who owned the land on which Quonab was camped, could not
see any reason for interfering.
Ketchura Peck, spinster, however, did see many most excellent reasons.
She was a maid with a mission, and maintained it to be an outrage that
a Christian boy should be brought up by a godless pagan. She worried
over it almost as much as she did over the heathen in Central Africa,
where there are no Sunday schools, and clothes are as scarce as
churches. Failing to move Parson Peck and Elder Knapp in the matter,
and despairing of an early answer to her personal prayers, she resolved
on a bold move, “An' it was only after many a sleepless, prayerful
night,” namely, to carry the Bible into the heathen's stronghold.
Thus it was that one bright morning in June she might have been seen,
prim and proper--almost glorified, she felt, as she set her lips just
right in the mirror--making for the Pipestave Pond, Bible in hand and
spectacles clear wiped, ready to read appropriate selections to the
unregenerate.
She was full of the missionary spirit when she left Myanos, and partly
full when she reached the Orchard Street Trail; but the spirit was
leaking badly, and the woods did appear so wild and lonely that she
wondered if women had any right to be missionaries. When she came in
sight of the pond, the place seemed unpleasantly different from Myanos
and where was the Indian camp? She did not dare to shout; indeed, she
began to wish she were home again, but the sense of duty carried her
fully fifty yards along the pond, and then she came to an impassable
rock, a sheer bank that plainly said, “Stop!” Now she must go back or
up the bank. Her Yankee pertinacity said, “Try first up the bank,” and
she began a long, toilsome ascent, that did not end until she came out
on a high, open rock which, on its farther side, had a sheer drop and
gave a view of the village and of the sea.
Whatever joy she had on again seeing her home was speedily quelled in
the fearsome discovery that she was right over the Indian camp, and the
two inmates looked so utterly, dreadfully savage that she was thankful
they had not seen her. At once she shrank back; but on recovering
sufficiently to again peer down, she saw something roasting before the
fire--“a tiny arm with a hand that bore five fingers,” as she afterward
said, and “a sickening horror came over her.” Yes, she had heard of
such things. If she could only get home in safety! Why had she tempted
Providence thus? She backed softly and prayed only to escape. What, and
never even deliver the Bible? “It would be wicked to return with it!”
In a cleft of the rock she placed it, and then, to prevent the wind
blowing off loose leaves, she placed a stone on top, and fled from the
dreadful place.
That night, when Quonab and Rolf had finished theic meal of corn and
roasted coon, the old man climbed the rock to look at the sky. The book
caught his eye at once, evidently hidden there carefully, and therefore
in cache. A cache is a sacred thing to an Indian. He disturbed it not,
but later asked Rolf, “That yours?”
“No.”
It was doubtless the property of some one who meant to return for it,
so they left it untouched. It rested there for many months, till the
winter storms came down, dismantling the covers, dissolving the pages,
but leaving such traces as, in the long afterward, served to identify
the book and give the rock the other name, the one it bears
to-day--“Bible Rock, where Quonab, the son of Cos Cob, used to live.”