BLUEBELL HAS NO THEORY
When Doctor Garde’s little girl started down the unfenced lane, she
acted on an impulse given by terror. She ran with all her might at
the side of the lane, tangling her feet in fragrant pennyroyal, and
bounding over bunches of ground-cherries, so that it seemed a whole
year before she reached the place where it joined its mud to that of
the main road. This was a steep, stumpy place: young saplings had been
ridden down, and bent their bruised backs to draggle torn tops on the
ground. On the black hill above, all those pines were whistling softly
between their teeth, as father did. Hundreds of odd thoughts rushed
pell-mell through the little girl’s mind.
Ballie’s track here melted into others; but as Bluebell had not
thought of tracing Ballie’s course, she did not pause on account of
losing the clew. She stood still an instant and looked back toward the
house. She was so little. Grown-up folks would know better what to do.
The house was almost out of sight among trees. She had no distinct
idea except that father was certainly in danger somewhere and must be
found. The primrose light was fading out in the west. If she went on
and nobody knew where she was, she might slip over the Narrows and be
killed, and against this her sound flesh and wholesome blood rebelled
utterly. Still, her pause was only an instant long: she laced up
the leather strings of her shoes and tied them firmly, waded around
mud-holes, and ran on toward the entrance of the Narrows.
Just here the Rocky Fork burst upon her sight. Bluebell held to the
flint wall feeling giddy. She had never seen such an expanse of water.
It covered nearly the whole of a wide meadow, and on the side next the
Narrows licked at the earthen cliff, crumbling it by slow handfuls. She
felt it was climbing step by step to grab her as she started on.
There was a current like a mill-race over the hidden bed of the Rocky
Fork. Logs, brush, rails, whole trees, skated along on it. The child
could not keep her fascinated gaze off this current, and it made her so
dizzy she was obliged every few moments to stop, reeling against the
hill-wall and hugging its stones with her hands. She was going in the
direction of the current. Just as Bluebell entered on this narrow track
she heard violent galloping begin of a sudden behind her. She thought
of Billy Bowl, and seizing a root above her head, made herself as flat
as possible against the wall. She thought also of the loose horse which
met father and her upon the Narrows, and turned desperately to frighten
it back. But this horse was a lean gray one and had a rider, and both
were dripping from head to foot; the rider looked wildly toward the
Narrows and wheeled his horse away from them. Then he flew away as fast
as the animal could gallop on a sled road, arching by through the pine
woods which led to the road past Abram’s, but was seldom used except by
wood-cutters. He had not noticed Bluebell.
“It’s the g’ography-teacher,” said she hurrying on. “And _he’s_ fell in
the water and wet all his nice clothes, and he looked _just like Billy
Bowl_!”
Nothing else happened in her dizzy, long journey around the Narrows.
Midway she could not look at the waters, but their sound filled all the
country silence. Bluebell’s road remained in light after the shadows
settled on them. A huge hole was left over the gutter where Table Rock
had hung: the earth was broken all around. Bluebell got by it as well
as she could. When she reached the Furnace the day-workmen were about
to start to their homes.
All the way around, though Doctor Garde’s little girl had been showing
as much Irish pluck as she could muster, her chin had shaken with sobs
and her heart felt bursting with a mighty homesickness for father. She
looked into the Furnace now, unreasonably expecting to see him on a
bunch of coats or wamuses, tended as they had tended Eli Ridenour.
She saw glittering eyes and smutted faces, and heard a line of song
roared out.
“Where’s my father?” she cried to the nearest Furnace-man.
Several came to her at once.
“It’s Doc. Garde’s little girl.”
“What’s the matter, sissy?”
“Is my father here?”
“No. He hasn’t been past the Furnace since night before last. What’s
the matter?”
“He’s got hurt someway,” wailed Bluebell, the tears dropping to her
breast. “The horse came home with her saddle all turned, and I can’t
find him.”
The Furnace-men looked at each other, and the alarm flashed around.
“Which way was he ridin’?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe he fell over like Eli Ridenour and you’d
brought him here. Oh, if you don’t find my father, I can’t stand it at
all!”
“He must have been trying to ford the Fork,” exclaimed the biggest of
all the Furnace-men. “We’ll go down there.”
They swarmed around each other in what appeared a scarlet confusion of
unbelted wamuses, then trooped in a hurry to the Narrows. They forgot
the child. She stood crying beside a brick pillar, too overwhelmed with
trouble to think of anything but its pain. Where _was_ father? And was
he badly hurt?