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[Illustration: THE DUCK HUNT
(_See page 168_)]
The Little Colonel in Arizona
By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
Author of "The Little Colonel Series," "Big Brother,"
"Ole Mammy's Torment," "Joel: A Boy of Galilee,"
"Asa Holmes," etc.
Illustrated by ETHELDRED B. BARRY
[Illustration]
BOSTON * L. C. PAGE
& COMPANY * PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1904_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
Published September, 1904
_Ninth Impression, March, 1908_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MARY TELLS ALL SHE KNOWS 1
II. A ROBINSON CRUSOE OF THE DESERT 19
III. A DAY AT SCHOOL 38
IV. WARE'S WIGWAM 56
V. WHAT A LETTER BROUGHT ABOUT 78
VI. WASH-DAY AND WASHINGTON 94
VII. A SURPRISE 116
VIII. IN THE DESERT OF WAITING 137
IX. LLOYD'S DUCK HUNT 162
X. THE SCHOOL OF THE BEES 179
XI. THE NEW BOARDER AT LEE'S RANCH 193
XII. PHIL HAS A FINGER IN THE PIE 212
XIII. A CHANGE OF FORTUNE 231
XIV. THE LOST TURQUOISES 253
XV. LOST ON THE DESERT 272
XVI. BACK TO DIXIE 293
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE DUCK HUNT (_See page 168_) _Frontispiece_
"SHE PROCEEDED WITH A JOYFUL HEART TO PAINT THE AFRICAN LION" 51
"'WE ALLEE SAMEE LAK CHINAMEN,' HE SAID" 94
"'I THOUGHT WE'D NEVAH, NEVAH GET HEAH!'" 128
"ENJOYING EVERY MOMENT OF THE SUNNY AFTERNOON" 162
"SHE LEANED OVER TO OFFER HIM THE LITTLE BASKET" 209
"HE WAS HOLDING OUT BOTH FOREFINGERS" 244
"CLATTERING DOWN THE ROAD AS FAST AS HIS FEET COULD CARRY
HIM" 279
THE LITTLE COLONEL IN ARIZONA
CHAPTER I.
MARY TELLS ALL SHE KNOWS
"JOYCE," said Jack Ware, stopping beside his sister's seat in the long,
Western-bound train, "I wish you'd go back into the observation-car, and
make Mary stop talking. She's telling all she knows to a couple of
strangers."
"Why don't you do it?" asked Joyce, looking up from her magazine with a
teasing smile. "That dignified scowl of yours ought to frighten anything
into silence."
"I did try it," confessed Jack. "I frowned and shook my head at her as I
passed, but all the good it did was to start her to talking about _me_.
'That's my brother Jack,' I heard her say, and her voice went through
the car like a fine-pointed needle. 'Isn't he big for fourteen? He's
been wearing long trousers for nearly a year.' They both turned to look
at me, and everybody smiled, and I was so embarrassed that I fell all
over myself getting out of sight. And it was a girl she said it to," he
continued, wrathfully. "A real pretty girl, about my age. The fellow
with her is her brother, I reckon. They look enough alike. He's a cadet
from some military school. You can tell by his uniform. They laugh at
everything that Mary says, and that makes her go on all the worse. So if
you don't want them to know all our family history, past, present, and
to come, you'd better go back and shut up that chatterbox. You know what
Mary's like when she gets started."
"Yes, I know," sighed Joyce, "but I don't dare move now. Norman has just
fallen asleep, and he's been so restless all day that I don't want him
to waken until mamma has had her nap." She glanced down at the little
six-year-old brother stretched out on the seat beside her with his head
in her lap, and then across the aisle at her mother, lying with her
white face hidden among the shawls and pillows.
"If I send for Mary to come back here, she'll flop around until she
wakes them both. Can't you get her out on to the rear platform for
awhile? I should think she would enjoy riding out there on one of those
little camp-stools. Slip one of those oranges into your pocket, and
whisper to her to follow you out and guess what you have for her."
"Well, I'll try," said Jack, dubiously, "but I'm almost sure she won't
budge. It isn't every day she gets an audience like that. It flatters
her to have them laugh at everything she says, and as sure as I stop and
speak to her she'll say something that I don't want to hear."
"Oh, never mind, then," said Joyce. "They are strangers, and probably
we'll never see them again, so it won't make any difference. Sit down
here and forget about them. You can have this magazine in a minute, just
as soon as I finish reading this half-page."
But Jack did mind. He could not forget the amused glances that the
pretty girl had exchanged with her big brother, and after standing
irresolutely in the aisle a moment, he strolled back to the
observation-car. Slipping into a wicker chair near the door, he sat
waiting for Mary to look in his direction, so that he could beckon her
to come to him.
Half the passengers had gone to sleep and forgotten that they were being
whirled across the great American Desert as fast as the limited
express-train could carry them. Some were reading, and some gazing out
of the windows at the monotonous wastes of sand. The only ones who
really seemed to be enjoying the journey were his small sister and her
audience of two. She sat on a footstool in the aisle, just in front of
them, a box of candy in her lap, and a look of supreme satisfaction on
her face. Two little braids of blond hair, tied with big bows of blue
ribbon, bobbed over her shoulders as she talked. Jack was too far away
to hear what she said, but his scowl deepened whenever the girl
exchanged amused glances with her brother.
"This candy is almost as good as the fudge we used to make at home every
Saturday afternoon," said Mary, putting a chocolate-covered marshmallow
in her mouth, and gravely running her tongue around her lips. "But we'll
never again make any more fudge in that house."
"Why not, dear?" asked the girl, with encouraging interest. This child
was the most diverting thing she had found on the long journey.
"Oh, everything has come to an end now. Joyce says you can never go back
when you've burned your bridges behind you. It was certainly burning our
bridges when we sold the little brown house, for of course we could
never go back with strangers living in it. It was almost like a funeral
when we started to the train, and looked back for the last time. I
cried, because there was the Christmas-tree standing on the porch, with
the strings of popcorn and cranberries on it. We put it out for the
birds, you know, when we were done with it. When I saw how lonesome it
looked, standing out in the snow, and remembered that it was the last
Christmas-tree we'd ever have there, and that we didn't have a home any
more, why I guess _anybody_ would have cried."
"Why did you sell the little home if you loved it so?" asked the girl.
It was not from any desire to pry into a stranger's affairs that she
asked, but merely to keep the child talking.
"Oh, mamma was so ill. She had pneumonia, and there are so many
blizzards in Kansas, you know, that the doctor said she'd never get rid
of her cough if she stayed in Plainsville, and that maybe if we didn't
go to a warm place she wouldn't live till spring. So Mr. Link bought the
house the very next day, so that we could have enough money to go. He's
a lawyer. It used to be Link and Ware on the office door before papa
died. He's always been good to us because he was papa's partner, and he
gave Jack a perfectly grand gun when he found we were coming out among
the Indians.
"Then the neighbours came in and helped us pack, and we left in a hurry.
To-morrow we'll be to the place where we are going, and we'll begin to
live in tents on New Year's Day. You'd never think this was the last day
of the old year, would you, it's so warm. I 'spose we'll be mixed up all
the time now about the calendar, coming to such a different climate."
There was a pause while another marshmallow disappeared, then she
prattled on again. "It's to Lee's Ranch we are going, out in Arizona.
It's a sort of boarding-camp for sick people. Mrs. Lee keeps it. She's
our minister's sister, and he wrote to her, and she's going to take us
cheaper than she does most people, because there's so many of us. Joyce
and Jack and Holland and Norman and mamma and me makes an even
half-dozen. But we're going to keep house as soon as our things come and
we can get a place, and then I'll be glad that Jack has his gun. He
can't shoot very well yet, unless it's at something big like a stable
door, but you always feel safer, when there's Indians around, if you've
got something to bang at them."
Here she lowered her voice confidentially. "Holland scared Norman and
me most to death one night. We were sitting on the rug in front of the
fire, before the lamp was lighted, saying what would we do s'posen an
Indian should come to the camp sometime, and try to scalp us, and just
when we were so scared we didn't dare look around behind us, he rolled
out from under the bed where he'd been hiding, and grabbed us by the
hair, with the awfullest whoop, that made us feel as if we'd been dipped
in ice-water. Why, we didn't stop yelling for half an hour. Norman had
the nightmare that night. We never did find out how Joyce punished
Holland, but what she did to him was plenty, for he hasn't scared us
since, not yet, though you never know when he's going to.
"Joyce isn't afraid of anything on earth. You ought to hear about the
way she played ghost once, when she was in France. And she just talked
right up to the old monsieur who owned the Gate of the Giant Scissors,
and told him what she thought of him."
"How old is this Joyce?" asked the tall young fellow whom his sister
called Phil. "She sounds interesting, don't you think, Elsie?" he said,
leaning over to help himself to a handful of candy.
Elsie nodded with a smile, and Mary hastened to give the desired
information. "Oh, she's fifteen, going on sixteen, and she _is_
interesting. She can paint the loveliest pictures you ever saw. She was
going to be an artist until all this happened, and she had to leave
school. Nobody but me knows how bad it made her feel to do that. I found
her crying in the stable-loft when I went up to say good-bye to the
black kitten, and she made me cross my heart and body I'd never tell, so
mamma thinks that she doesn't mind it at all.
"Things have gone wrong at our house ever since I had the mumps," she
began again, when she had slowly crunched two burnt almonds. "Holland
sprained his wrist and mamma nearly died with pneumonia and Norman upset
the clothes-horse on the stove and burnt up a whole week's ironing. And
after that Jack had both ears frosted in a blizzard, and Bob, our
darling little fox-terrier that Joyce brought from Kentucky, was
poisoned."
"That _was_ a list of misfortunes," exclaimed Phil, sympathetically,
"enough to discourage anybody."
"Oh, at our house we never get discouraged to _stay_," answered Mary.
"Of course we feel that way at first, but Joyce always says 'Remember
the Vicar,' and then we stiffen."
"The vicar," echoed Phil, much puzzled.
"Yes, the Vicar of Wakefield, you know. Don't you remember what bad luck
they all had, about the green spectacles and everything, and he said,
'_Let us be inflexible, and fortune will at last change in our
favour!_'"
"Was there ever anything funnier!" exclaimed Phil, in an aside, as this
bit of wisdom was rolled out with such a dramatic toss of the head, that
the big blue bows on the little blond braids bobbed wildly. "The idea of
a child like that reading the 'Vicar of Wakefield.'"
"Oh, I didn't read him myself," answered Mary, eager to be entirely
truthful. "Joyce read it aloud to all the family last winter, and since
then we've all tried to do as the Vicar did, be inflexible when troubles
come. Even Norman knows that if you'll swallow your sobs and _stiffen_
when you bump your head, or anything, that it doesn't hurt half so bad
as when you just let loose and howl."
Jack started to his feet when he heard the laugh that followed, sure
that Mary was saying something that ought to be left unsaid. He reached
her just in time to hear her remark, "We're going to eat in the
dining-car to-night. Our lunch has all given out, and I'm glad of it,
for I never did eat in a dining-car, and I've always wanted to. We're
going to have ice-cream, if it doesn't cost too much."
Jack's face was crimson as he bent down and whispered in Mary's ear, and
it grew several shades redder as she calmly answered aloud, "No, I don't
want to go out on the platform. It's blowing so hard, I'll get my eyes
full of sand."
He bent again to whisper, this time savagely, and then turned back
toward the other car, not waiting for her answer. But it followed him
shrilly in an indignant tone: "It's no such a thing, Jack Ware! I'm not
telling all I know."
A few minutes later a freckle-faced boy of twelve appeared in the door,
looking up and down the car with keen gray eyes. The moment his glance
fell on Mary, he started down the aisle toward her with such an air of
determination that she started up in dismay.
"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed. "There's Holland beckoning for me. Now I've
got to go."
"Why should you go for him rather than Jack?" asked Phil. "He isn't
nearly so big."
"You don't know Holland," said Mary, taking a step forward. "He doesn't
mind making a scene anywhere we happen to be. If he was told to bring
me, he'd do it, if he had to drag me down the aisle by my hair.
Good-bye. I've had a mighty nice time, and I'm much obliged for the
candy."
The Ware family were already seated in the dining-room when Phil and
Elsie went in to dinner a little later. Mary, over her soup, was giving
an enthusiastic account of her new acquaintances. "They're going to
their grandfather's in California," she said. "It's the most beautiful
place you ever heard of, with goldfish in the fountain, and Gold of
Ophir roses in the garden, and Dago, their old pet monkey, is there.
They had to send him away from home because he got into so much
mischief. And Miss Elsie Tremont, that's her name, is all in black
because her Great-Aunt Patricia is dead. Her Aunt Patricia kept house
for them, but now they live at their grandfather's. Mr. Phil is only
seventeen, but he's six feet tall, and looks so old that I thought maybe
he was thirty."
"Gracious, Mary, how did you find out so much?" asked Joyce, with a
warning shake of the head at Norman, who was crumbling his bread into
his soup.
"Oh, I asked him if he was married, and he laughed, and said he was only
seventeen, just a schoolboy, a cadet in a military academy out in
California. There they are now!" she added, excitedly, as the waiter
pulled out two chairs at the little table across the aisle.
Both the newcomers smiled at Mary, who beamed broadly in response. Then
they gave a quick side-glance at the rest of the family. "What a
sweet-looking woman the little mother is," said Elsie, in a low tone,
"and Joyce _is_ interesting, but I wouldn't say she is exactly pretty,
would you?"
"Um, I don't know," answered Phil, after another politely careless
glance in her direction. "She has a face you like to keep looking at.
It's so bright and pleasant, and her eyes are lovely. She'd be jolly
good company, I imagine, a sort of a surprise-party, always doing and
saying unusual things."
In the same casual way, Joyce was taking note of them. She felt strongly
drawn toward the pretty girl in black, and wished that they were going
to the same place, so that she might make her acquaintance. Once when
they were all laughing at something Norman said, she looked up and
caught her eye, and they both smiled. Then Phil looked across with such
an understanding gleam of humour in his eyes that she almost smiled at
him, but checked herself, and looked down in her plate, remembering that
the handsome cadet was a stranger.
The train stopped at a junction just as Mary finished her ice-cream,
which she had been eating as slowly as possible, in order to prolong the
pleasure. Finding that there would be a wait of nearly half an hour,
Joyce persuaded her mother to go back to the rear platform of the
observation-car, and sit out awhile, in the fresh air. Although the sun
was down, it was so warm that Mrs. Ware scarcely needed the shawl Joyce
drew around her shoulders.
"I can't believe that this is the last day of December," she said to
Mary, as Joyce hurried into the station to make some inquiry of the
ticket-agent. "The last day of the old year," she added. "These
electric-lights and the band playing over there in the park, and all the
passengers promenading up and down in front of the station, bareheaded,
make it seem like a summer resort."
Mary peered after the promenading passengers wistfully. The boys had
disappeared to watch the engine take water, and there was no one for her
to walk with. Just then, Phil and Elsie Tremont, sauntering along,
caught sight of her wistful little face.
"Don't you want to come too?" asked Elsie, pausing. "You'll sleep better
for a little exercise."
"Oh, yes!" was the delighted reply. "May I, mamma? It's Miss Elsie
Tremont, that I told you about, that ran away with a monkey and a
music-box when she was a little bit of a girl."
"I'm afraid that with such an introduction you'll think I'm not a proper
person to trust your daughter with, Mrs. Ware," said Elsie, laughing,
"but I assure you I'll never run away again. That experience quite cured
me."
"Probably Mary has given you just as alarming an impression of us,"
answered Mrs. Ware. "She has never learned to regard any one as a
stranger, and all the world is her friend to confide in."
"Wouldn't you like to walk a little while, too?" asked Elsie, stirred by
some faint memory of a delicate white face like this one, that years ago
used to smile out at her from a hammock in the Gold of Ophir rose
garden. She was only five years old the last time she saw her mother,
but the dim memory was a very sweet one.
"Yes, come! It will do you good," urged Phil, cordially, influenced
partly by the same memory, and partly by the thought that here was a
chance to make the acquaintance of Joyce as well. According to her
little sister she was an unusually interesting girl, and the glimpse he
had had of her himself confirmed that opinion.
So it happened to Joyce's great astonishment, as she hurried back to the
train, she met her mother walking slowly along beside Elsie. Phil, with
Mary chattering to him like an amusing little magpie, was just behind
them. Almost before she knew how it came about, she was walking with
them, listening first to Elsie, then to Phil, as they told of the
boarding-school she was going back to in California, and the Military
Academy in which he was a cadet. They had been back home to spend the
Christmas vacation with their father, whom they did not expect to see
again for a long time. He was a physician, and now on his way to Berlin,
where he expected to spend a year or two in scientific research.
At the warning call of all aboard, they hurried back to the car just as
the boys came scrambling up the steps. Acquaintances grow almost as
rapidly on these long overland journeys across the continent as they do
on shipboard. The girls regretted the fact that they had not found each
other earlier, but Jack and Phil soon made up for lost time. Phil, who
had hunted wild goats among the rocks of Catalina Island, and Jack, who
expected unlimited shooting of quail and ducks at Lee's Ranch, were not
long in exchanging invitations for future hunting together, if either
should happen to stray into the other's vicinity.
"I feel as if I had known you always," said Elsie to Joyce, as they
separated, regretfully, at bedtime, wondering if they ever would meet
again. "I wish you were going to the boarding-school with me."
"I wish you were going to stop in Arizona," answered Joyce. "Maybe you
can come out to the ranch sometime, when you are on your way back East."
"I think that we ought to all sit up together to see the old year out
and the new year in," protested Mary, indignant at being hurried off to
bed at half-past seven.
"You'll see the change all right," remarked Jack, "and you'll have a
chance to make a night of it. We have to get off at Maricopa a little
after midnight, and there's no telling when that train for Phoenix will
come along. They say it's always behind time."
Late that night, Elsie, wakened by the stopping of the train, looked at
her watch. The new year had just dawned. A brakeman went through the car
with a lantern. There were strange voices outside, a confusion of calls,
and the curtains of her berth swayed and shook as a number of people
hurried down the aisle, laden with baggage. Somebody tripped over a pair
of shoes, left too far out in the aisle, and somebody muttered a
complaint about always being wakened at Maricopa by people who had no
more consideration for the travelling public than to make their changes
in the dead of night.
"Maricopa," she thought, starting up on her elbow. "That is where the
Wares are to get off." Raising the window-shade, she peered out into the
night. Yes, there they were, just going into the station. Jack and
Holland weighted down with baggage, Joyce helping the sweet-faced little
mother with one hand, and dragging the drowsy Norman after her with the
other, Mary sleepily bringing up the rear with her hat tipped over one
eye, and her shoe-strings tripping her at every step.
"Bless her little soul, she's the funniest, fattest little chatterbox of
a girl I ever saw," thought Elsie, as she watched her stumble into the
station. "Good-bye, little vicar," she whispered, waving her hand. "May
you always keep inflexible. I wonder if I'll ever see any of them again.
I wish I were in a big family like that. They do have such good times
together."
As the train pulled slowly out and went thundering on into the
darkness, she tried to go to sleep again, but for a long time, whenever
she closed her eyes, she saw the little house in Kansas that Mary had
described so vividly. There it stood, empty and deserted in the snow,
with the pathetic little Christmas-tree, left for the birds. And far
away, the family who loved it so dearly were facing blithely and bravely
the untried New Year, in which they were to make for themselves another
home, somewhere out on the lonely desert.
"Oh, I do hope they'll keep 'inflexible,'" was Elsie's last waking
thought. "I do hope they'll have a happy New Year."