“JORDAN STORMY BANKS”
“All well as common, Liza?” inquired Abram, knocking the mud off his
feet at the kitchen door.
“Yes,” she replied, but with a shade of anxiety. “The doctor hasn’t got
home yet. Come in, Abram. Have you been over the run?”
“I guess I won’t come in,” said the farmer. He was large-framed,
stooping, and clothed in homespun wool of an indescribable dull color.
His wamus was belted in; his broad, slouching hat showed several holes.
He placed a hand on each side of the doorway and leaned in while he
talked. “Yes. I’ve been over there. Liza-Robert came nigh to losin’ her
milk-house last night. The milk-lids was afloat and the spring is clear
under water.”
“Tuh! tuh!” ejaculated Liza. “And I expect the Rocky Fork is clear out
of its banks.”
“I should say it was,” imparted Abram deliberately. “It’s half-way up
the Narrows and all over the meadow t’other side. Table Rock came down
in that blow yesterday!”
Liza uttered a cry. Table Rock had overhung the Narrows ever since her
memory began.
“Hall’s mill has been carried off and lodged in the bottom-lands. The
stone’s sunk and the frame’s split in two or three pieces.”
“Why, Abram!”
“Yes, it’s consider’ble high waters. The Ridenours was out in a canoe
over their corn-field this mornin’.”
“How’s Eli?”
“Doin’ well, as far as I know.”
“The doctor said he’d maybe have to stay by him a while last night.
Seems like he was threatened with inflammation.”
“If Doc’s t’other side of the Fork he’ll not ford it for a while. It’s
all ’round the school-house. Willey told me this mornin’ Mr. Pitzer
couldn’t take up school till the water went down again. That g’ography
man’ll have to put off his doin’s, too. There’s a sight of timber down
on the hill. I don’t know when we’ve had such a storm.”
“Did it do you any damage?”
“Well, no. Uprooted a few apple trees. That’s about all. Any chores
you’d like done outdoors?”
“I’m much obliged to you, Abram, but there isn’t anything. The cows
always come up to the bars. I s’pose Samantha’s well?”
“So’s to be around. The children’s folks have come to see ye, have
they?”
“Yes, it’s a kind of an adopted aunt of their mother’s.”
“Well,” said Abram, taking his hands off the sides of the door, “I must
get on toward home.”
He came back after going a few steps.
“I’ll look in again before night, Liza.”
“I’d be obliged if you would, Abram.”
Neither spoke of feeling anxious about the young doctor. Still Liza
girded herself more cheerfully to go out and gather her demoralized
poultry. A primrose-colored west brightened the whole landscape. The
beaten-down grass had already begun to lift itself, and a pleasant,
drying breeze was flowing down the valley. The broken clouds drifted
to all parts of the sky. Liza gathered drenched and gaping chickens
into her apron, where they trod upon each other with cold pink feet,
and piped shrilly for food and comfort. She had a special basket behind
the stove for these weather-orphans, where their down would curl once
more, and all of them subside into a buttercup-colored mass, too sleepy
to peep. There was one chicken that ran persistently through the
weeds away from her, yet calling with all his might for aid from some
quarter. He stretched his thin neck here and there and disconsolately
shook his pin-feather wings. Now lost in a forest of rag-weed, he made
the tops quiver over him as he ran; and now slipping through the garden
palings, he scampered dismayed up and down the bank of a deep canal,
the channel whereof he had known before the deluge as a neat garden
path between beds of vegetables. Liza reached through and gathered him
to the asylum in her apron just as she observed Bluebell picking her
way to the lower bars. The run was roaring through the meadow, and she
rose up apprehensively.
“Don’t go down to the water, Bluebell. You can’t cross now.”
“But Tildy’s on the other side and beckoned to me: I just want to talk
across to her.”
“I’m afraid you’ll fall in if you go too near. Remember the run’s up.”
“I’ll be careful. Tildy can’t come over, and she does want to see me so
bad!”
“You’ve both been weather-bound,” said Liza smiling. “Well, you be
careful. Where’s the baby?”
“She’s talking to Aunt Melissa. I gave her my new doll to hold.”
Precious as little sisters may be, there are times when the mature
girl of nine or ten feels that she cannot have them “tagging” after
her; when she gives them a sop in the shape of her best plaything, or
engages them in conversation with some elderly and charming relative,
while she slips out to gallop where heedless baby shoes would have to
be carried.
Tildy had been signaling at the other side of the run for some time.
Bluebell ran down the wet meadow, feeling joyful at being out of doors
once more. The hills were half-smiling. She could not help noticing how
the trees tossed. In the south-west was a cushion of foliage so large,
so green, so apt to dimple with the wind, that the little girl never
could help wishing to sit and tumble about on it.
The run showed wide and turbid from the back door, but on near approach
it seemed a ranting young river. Sticks and even rails were being
eddied away by what was day before yesterday a few strands of clear
water.
How wide was the separation between Bluebell and Tildy!
Resentment of the Perintha Pancost truce had been swept from Tildy’s
face by later occurrences.
“We can’t go to school any more,” she called.
“Oh, yes, we can when the waters go down.”
“The’ won’t be any school-house. The Rocky Fork’s all around it. Our
spring-house pretty near went, and if the run rises much higher it’ll
carry off our house and your house, too.”
Bluebell looked back at the weather-beaten homestead.
“It would look like Noey’s Ark. But it says there isn’t to be another
flood, Tildy, ’cause the rainbow’s put in the sky for a sign that the
waters shall no more cover the face of the earth!”
“Hain’t been any rainbow this wet spell,” said Tildy impressively.
Bluebell searched the whole sky, and brought her eyes down again
clouded with apprehension. There had been no rainbow this wet spell.
“I don’t believe it will rise to the roofs of the houses and the tops
of the mountains,” she cried, with an upward inflection of appeal.
“I wish’t it would. Then you could sit on your roof and I could sit on
mine, and sail sticks and boats across to each other. I’ve been havin’
lots of fun with mother’s old bread-bowl. Why didn’t you come down soon
as it quit rainin’? I beckoned to you.”
“I didn’t see you. Where’s Teeny?”
“She’s helpin’ mother with her weavin’. Why don’t you take off your
shoes and stockin’s?”
“I don’t know,” replied Bluebell looking down at her low shoes and then
at the lush, soft grass. She always had envied Tildy her untrammelled
toes, but her father had a prejudice against bare feet in all weathers.
Tildy, that fortunate creature, could walk sidewise in the dusty summer
road, dragging one foot and thus making a beautiful broad mark, with
stopping posts indicated, like the picture of a fence. But if Bluebell
attempted it she filled her stockings with dust and rendered her shoes
a dismal sight.
Tildy now came down to the brink and made her impression in the
yielding soil.
“Look there,” said she, displaying two fine black slippers of glossy
mud. “Take yours off, too, and maybe we can wade some.”
Bluebell found a dry stone, sat down upon it, and peeled her feet pink
and bare.
“Come along up the run,” called Tildy. “I’ve got my boat up here.”
So they scampered along on each side, the ooze coming between
Bluebell’s toes with a delicious rush.
The bread-bowl beached on Tildy’s side, was ready for service. She had
a pole to steer it with, and setting it afloat, ran along turning and
guiding it as anxiously as if it were a bulrush basket with another
little baby in it. Bluebell ran by her side of the stream, and begged
that the vessel might make a voyage to her. With a push of the pole,
Tildy turned its prow, but it got caught against a snag, and she
labored long to free it. Finally, the cracked and rather unseaworthy
vessel came triumphantly in, and Bluebell caught it with joy.
The two girls felt as if they had shaken hands across the separating
stream. Bluebell had some of the baby’s seed cookies in her pocket. She
wiped the bowl very dry with bunches of grass, and made a nest of fresh
grass in the centre, on which a handful of thimble cakes were then
carefully deposited, and the gallant craft started on its return trip.
It moved down stream, and both girls accompanied it. Tildy poled with
care lest the cargo might get slopped. Now, there was a rail coming
down stream in the centre of the current, pointing like a long black
finger to the fact that that bowl must be got out of the way, or there
would be a collision on the high seas.
Bluebell danced and exclaimed while Tildy poled in set determination.
Alas for the noble bread-bowl! In despair she stuck the pole into it,
brought it with a swish to land with its grass and seed-cakes scattered
to the stream, and losing her balance fell partly in herself.
“Oh, Tildy!” screamed Bluebell, when Tildy scrambled on the bank,
dripping to her waist.
“This makes the second time this week I’ve got wet,” said she solemnly.
“I don’t b’lieve I want to wade now.” She sat down on the grass and
wrung her clothes. Her mood was very sombre indeed.
“I expect I’ll take sick and die,” she said. “Father used to get wet to
his hide before he took bed-fast. And I’m a good deal his build.”
“Just as soon as my father comes home,” cried Bluebell, “I’ll ask him
to ride Ballie over the run and give you some medicine.”
“You needn’t throw it up to me that you’ve got a father when I ain’t
got any,” said Tildy, dismally.
“Why, Tildy! I _never_!”
“You did, too. But mebbe you ain’t got any either, now.”
“My father’s comin’ home to-night!”
“Mebbe he is.”
“He’s just gone to see his patients, and he’s comin’ right straight
home!”
“Table Rock fell down over the Narrows yesterday.”
“I don’t care if it did!” warded off Bluebell, with quivering lip.
“My Uncle Abram says it could ’a’ hit your father just as easy as not!”
“But it didn’t!”
“But somethin’ may have happened to him. If he tries to cross the Rocky
Fork now, he’s sure to get drownded! Uncle Abram says he feels uneasy.
Looky there, now! Mebbe that’s his hat comin’ down the run!”
Bluebell suspended a great sob and watched the black object
approaching. It reeled nearer and nearer--it looked _so_ much like
father’s black hat: she saw the band: she saw the brim dip--
“Ho!” cried Doctor Garde’s little girl triumphantly, “that’s just a
chunk o’ burnt wood, Miss Tildy Banks, and my father ain’t any more
drowned than you are!”
Tildy, who felt herself more drowned than she wished to be, and
decidedly uncomfortable--for there is a difference between sky-water
and run-water--merely responded, “Huh, Madam!”
Bluebell started back to pick up her stockings and shoes. She heard a
long ringing neigh from the lane.
“There!” she cried, shaking a shoe at Tildy, “there’s my own father
come home to my house this very minute! I’m going right to the bars,”
she added, thrusting her tender feet into the shoes after wiping them
on her stockings, “and I’ll tell him all the mean things you said. And
I won’t ask him to give you the medicine, so I won’t.”
“I don’t want it,” responded Tildy: “he hain’t got any but nasty stuff.”
Doctor Garde’s little girl did not stay to argue. She scampered to
the lower bars, flung over them, and splashed across the puddles to
the upper bars. Ballie’s glossy, tossing head appeared around the
barn-corner. But her saddle was empty and turned to one side, the
pill-bags dangling, her bridle hung loose, and as soon as she saw the
little girl, she uttered a neighing scream.