WE HAVE AN ADVENTURE
ABOUT this time I began to hear strange stories in the village of
a silver-tip bear that was committing grave depredations in the
community. I recounted exploits of grizzlies to Haidee and Wanza as we
sat in the Dingle now and then, smiling at Haidee’s delicate shiver of
horror, and glorying in Wanza’s bravado which led her into all sorts of
bombastic declarations as to what her line of conduct would be should
she meet Mr. Silvertip face to face.
“Of course,” she was fond of repeating, “if I was carrying a gun I
would shoot him.”
Joey kept me awake long after we both should have been soundly sleeping
to tell me how he would meet the bear in the woods some fine day when
alone, and summarily dispose of him with the twenty-two calibre rifle
he called his own, but which needless to say, he had never been allowed
to use much. We were all pleasantly excited anent the grizzly.
“I feel sure that it will be my happy fortune to fire the shot that
will bring to an inglorious end old big foot’s career,” I said
dramatically one morning.
We had foregathered in the Dingle--Haidee’s mare, Buttons, and
Wanza’s Rosebud were neighing just beyond in the pine thicket--for we
were going to ride. Some days since we had taken our first jaunt on
horseback, and Haidee had found that the excursion wearied her not at
all. The crutches were infrequently used now. Haidee explained that
her continued use of them was simply a manifestation of fear-thought.
I little meant the words I said, but when we rode away I carried my
thirty-thirty slung on my shoulder.
As we went through the village we met Captain Grif Lyttle mounted on
his piebald broncho. It required no little urging to induce him to join
our expedition. But eventually he was won over.
“If it was goin’ to ride only, I’d be for it. But I see you’re toting
your dinner. I don’t hold with picnics. This carryin’ grub a few
miles--an’ there be _nothin’_ heavier than grub--settin’ down and
eatin’ it, and beatin’ it back home, is all tomfoolishness, ’pears to
me. But you young folks sees things different; and if so be I’ll be
any acquisition whatsoever to your party, I stand ready to go along.”
He looked hard at Haidee as he spoke, and I was half prepared for the
remark he addressed to her: “’Pears to me, young lady, you ain’t got up
for a picnic, exactly. That there gauzy waist’ll snag on the bushes,
and your arms’ll burn to a blister--there’s no protection in such
sleazy stuff. Look at Wanza now--she’s rigged up proper!--stout skirt
and high shoes and a right thick waist.”
We had gone some distance before I noticed that Wanza was carrying my
twenty-two. I was not over civil when I saw it in her hands.
“I like to shoot things,” she explained, with a deprecatory glance.
Captain Grif chuckled.
“Wanza do be the beatenest gal with a gun, if I do say it,” he remarked.
The glance he leveled at his daughter was pleased and proud; and there
was a depth of affection in it that was touching.
“Well,” Wanza repeated lightly, “I sure do like to shoot things.”
“Things!--squirrels, rabbits, birds--what?” I winked at Captain Grif.
“You know me better than that!” she stormed.
“What then?”
“Well--the bear, if I meet him alone.”
“With a twenty-two!”
[Illustration: A SUDDEN YEARNING SPRANG UP]
I turned my back on her and spurred forward to Haidee’s side. Haidee
sat her mount superbly. She wore the blue riding skirt and white blouse
she had worn on the occasion of her first visit to Cedar Dale. She
was hatless. Her hair was loosely braided. She swayed lightly in her
saddle. There was something bonny, almost insouciant in her bearing
this morning. Wanza rode beside her father with Joey on the saddle
before her, and they lagged behind Haidee and me persistently, stopping
so often that once or twice we lost sight of them completely when
the road curved or we dipped down into a hollow. Whenever I glanced
around at Wanza I saw her riding with her face upturned to the trees,
a detached look on her face. Once I heard her whistle to a bluebird
and once I heard her sing. The pathos of her song clutched me by the
throat. In the midst of a speech to Haidee I stopped short. In my
heart a sudden yearning sprang up, a yearning only half understood; I
longed to help, to lift Wanza--to make her more like the woman at my
side--more finished, less elemental. In spite of my wonder and worship
of Haidee the pathos of Wanza’s simple, ignorant life stirred me--yes,
and hurt me!
Nevertheless I was still facetious to Wanza when we dismounted beneath
the shade of some giant pines at noon. She winced as she unslung the
rifle from her shoulder, and I said teasingly:
“I thought you’d feel the weight of that by noon.”
Haidee murmured: “You poor thing! Why did you insist on bringing it?”
I looked across at her sharply. Something in her manner of speaking
caused me to say chivalrously: “Wanza is welcome to the rifle--it isn’t
that.”
With a quick glance from one to the other Wanza turned to the saddle
bags and began with Joey’s help, to unpack mysterious looking bundles.
I gathered dry twigs, built a fire between two flat rocks, and went to
a distant spring for water. Then, a half hour later, the blue smoke
from our fire drifted away among the pines, and the wind bore the
mingled odors of coffee and sizzling bacon. We sat in a group around
the red tablecloth Wanza spread on the ground. Captain Grif ate but
little, but he discoursed at large.
We finished our meal, and lay back on the grass, and saw the sky, blue
above the dark tapestry of the forest. From reclining I dropped flat
on my back and lay staring up through the chinks in the green roof,
while Haidee read Omar aloud, Wanza threw pine cones at the chipmunks,
Captain Grif snoozed, and Joey took his bow-gun and went off on a still
hunt for Indians.
An hour passed. When Haidee ceased reading Wanza sighed and said:
“Why didn’t we eat our lunch closer to the spring, I’d like to know.
I’ll need more water to wash the forks and spoons before we go.”
I rose with a resigned air. “I will go to the spring,” I said, taking
the small tin pail that had been used as a coffee boiler. “But
understand we are to have another hour of Omar before we go--this is an
intermission merely.”
The captain opened one eye, and half closing his big hand made an
ineffectual attempt to scoop a fly into his palm.
“I ’low I don’t understand that fellow Omar--he don’t sound lucid to
me,” he complained. “I don’t know as I relish bein’ called a Bubble,
exactly, either.” He settled back more comfortably. “But he was a
philosopher, and I’m a philosopher, so I admire him, and I’ll stand
by him. All them old chaps was all right ’ceptin’ the lubber that
poured treacle on himself to attract the ants--he was sure peculiar!
Get away there, you fly! Golly, s-ship-mate, _flies_ is bad enough, but
_ants_!--”
I made quick work of reaching the spring in spite of the dense
underbrush that impeded my steps. But once there I became enamored
of a reddish-yellow butterfly--Laura, of the genus Argynnis--and I
followed it into a hawthorn thicket, through the thicket to a tangle
of moss-festooned birches, and eventually lost the specimen in a
dense growth of bramble. I went back to the spring, filled my pail
and was stooping to drink when I thought I heard a shot. I could not
be certain, as the noise of the water running over a rock bed filled
my ears. But I had gone only a few yards from the spring and out into
a clearing when I heard unmistakably a shot from my thirty-thirty. I
dropped the pail and ran.
When I came to the pine grove where I had left Haidee and Wanza and
the captain, I saw a strange sight. Wanza, white-faced and apparently
unconscious, lay in a huddled heap on the ground, the twenty-two at
her side; Haidee bent over her; the captain stood, wild-eyed, holding
my thirty-thirty in his hand; and near them a silver-tip lay bleeding
from a wound in his heart. Even as I went forward to ascertain that the
bear had received his quietus, I spoke to the captain.
“Good work, Captain Grif.”
When I saw that the bear had been dispatched, I ran back to Wanza’s
side. The captain had lifted her in his arms, her head was against his
breast. The color was coming back to her face.
“Don’t try to shoot a bear again with a twenty-two, Wanza,” I said, as
she unclosed her eyes. She looked at me strangely and shuddered. “Some
one had to shoot quick, and I had the twenty-two in my hand.” I would
have said more, but Joey crept out of the bushes, looked at the bear,
then at me, and said:
“Let’s go home, Mr. David.”
When I was preparing Joey for bed that night, he piped out suddenly: “I
saw Wanza shoot the bear.”
“Wanza?” I turned on him.
“Yep! Sure. I was in the bushes playing Indian. The bear came out
of the huckleberry bushes in the draw, rolling his head awful. Bell
Brandon she screamed. Whew, she grabbed Wanza, she did! Captain Grif
woke up, and got only on to his knees--he wobbled so!--and then Wanza
up with the twenty-two and shot--just like that! And then she grabbed
the big gun and shot again. Then her father he took the gun away from
her, and Wanza just fell down on the ground. And then you came.”
That same evening I said to Wanza:
“I was very stupid not to understand that you shot first with the
twenty-two, and then dispatched the bear with the thirty-thirty. I
thought your father killed the bear. Why did you not tell me?”
“It didn’t make any difference as I could see who killed the bear. The
main thing was to kill it,” was the reply I received.
The next day Wanza informed me that Mrs. Olds’ patient was able to sit
up in bed. “I’ve been talking to him,” she added, with a flirt of her
head. “If I was a good reader, now, I’d be glad to read to him a bit.”
“I think you are doing very well as you are, Wanza,” I replied.
There surged through me the instinctive dislike, almost aversion, I had
felt on the night of his coming to Cedar Dale, and my tone was stern.
“He wants me to talk to him though, he says. He says he needs perking
up. My, he knows a lot, don’t he, Mr. Dale? Seems like he knows
everything, ’most. And I do think he’s handsome. He’s got the finest
eyes! Though there’s something odd about them, too, if you stop to
think. The worst with handsome eyes is that you _don’t_ stop to think!
I’m going out now to get some hardhack for him. He says he don’t
remember ever seeing the pink kind. What do you call it, Mr. Dale?”
“Spiraea tomentosa. Wait a bit, Wanza,” I said, “I’ll go with you.”
We went to the woods. It was morning, and the freshness of the hour
was incomparable. The birds were singing with a sort of rapture. And
our way through the silent greenwood aisles was wholesome and sweet
with the breath of pine and balm o’ Gilead. The vistas were rosy with
pink hardhack; on either side feathery white clusters of wild clematis
festooned the thickets, and here and there the bright faces of roses
peeped out at us from tangles of undergrowth.
I know not what spirit of willfulness possessed Wanza. I think she had
it in her mind to arouse my jealousy by praise of the big man. Her talk
was all of him. Finally I had my say.
“I know nothing of him, Wanza. He may be a splendid chap, of course,
and he may be a rascal. Frankly, I do not like him. Admire him, if you
want to. But I would rather you did not chat with him unless Mrs. Olds
is present.”
“Dear me! How can a little friendly chat hurt any one.”
Wanza tucked a wild rose into her curls, and it hung pendent, nodding
at me saucily, as she tossed her head and laughed in my face. Her
cheeks matched the flower in color. I looked at her admiringly, but my
voice was still firm as I said: “I hope you will be careful to give
very little of your time to Mrs. Olds’ patient.”
“Ha, ha,” laughed Wanza, crinkling her eyelids and giving me an elfish
glance from beneath tawny lashes.
“In a measure,” I continued, “you are in my care, and I feel
responsible for your associates while you are with me.”
“Well,” drawled Wanza, “if I’m with an angel ’most all day and all the
night--meaning Mrs. Batterly--it sure won’t hurt me to talk some to
a sinner like the big man. Besides, it’ll help out a lot. It’ll keep
me from getting glum, Mr. Dale.” She favored me with another roguish
glance. “You wouldn’t have me getting glum, would you?”
“I wish the big man were well, and on his way, so that we might use
the front room again. Mrs. Batterly has only her room and the Dingle
as it is, and she must grow tired of having her meals in her room,” I
complained.
“I carried her breakfast to her this morning in the Dingle.” There was
something defiant in the girl’s tone.
“Famous!” I cried.
After a short silence Wanza said provokingly:
“If I want to talk to the big man and Mrs. Olds is out of ear shot I
don’t see as it can matter.”
“Please, Wanza,” I insisted, “talk with him as little as possible.”
Her eyes were laughing, and teasing and pacifying all at one and the
same time. I held out my hand.
“Say you will do as I ask, and give me your hand on it,” I implored.
Her eyes were only teasing now. She shook her head, and I dropped my
hand and turned away. I heard a rustling among the grasses and thought
she had gone. But when after taking a few steps I looked around, there
she was, perched on a boulder, her feet drawn up beneath her pink
gingham skirt, her arms crossed on her breast, her eyes surveying me
steadfastly. I did not smile as I faced her. I merely glanced and swung
on my heel.
“Come here,” she called.
When I was close beside her again she shook her head more vehemently
than before, until all her tiny tight curls bobbed up and down
distractingly.
“It won’t do,” she said.
“What won’t do?” I asked.
“Your trying to boss me won’t do, my trying to pretend won’t do.”
“What are you trying to pretend, Wanza?”
“That I’m crazy about the big man. I ain’t.”
“Oh? Well, I really would have no right to object if you found him
attractive. I dare say I have seemed rather dictatorial,” I answered
chivalrously.
“And something else won’t do.”
“Pray tell me what it is.”
“It won’t do for you to pretend, either.”
“I? What do I pretend?”
She eyed me gravely, pulled a blade of grass, blew on it, and cast it
aside.
“Lot of things,” she said then.
“Do I, Wanza?”
“But I can stand anything--anything,” she threw out both hands, “except
being bossed. I can’t stand that.”
“No one could,” I agreed.
“And you mustn’t try it on, because if you do!--me and you will part
company.”
I was surprised at the hard glint in her eyes, the inflexible tone of
her voice. Her face was quite unlovely at that moment.
“Child, child,” I began impulsively, but I hesitated and said nothing
more, for her eyes with their strange hardness seemed the eyes of a
stranger.
The crisp, blue morning paved the way to a hot, still day. I drove to
the village for supplies in the afternoon, and after supper I was glad
to rest on the river bank, with Joey sprawling on the grass at my side.
The moon rose early and climbed into the purple pavilion above us,
spraying the world with a wash of gold. The night became serene, almost
solemn; one big, bright star burst upon our sight from the top of a
low ridge of hills opposite, and threw a linked, sliding silver bridge
from one plush river bank to the other. It looked like some strange
aerial craft fired with unearthly splendor, and propelled by unguessed
sorcery. I was glad to forget the tawdry, painted day that was slipping
into the arms of night. It had been a fretting day in many particulars.
My morning with Wanza had irked me, I had had almost no conversation
with Haidee, and Mrs. Olds had been exceedingly arbitrary during the
evening meal in the hot, stuffy little kitchen. The calm evening hour
was like a benediction to me, and Joey’s tender little hand stroking
mine soothed me inexpressibly.
I was hoping to escape without the usual sleep-time story, but one
glance at the eager face showed me that the lad was eagerly expecting
its spinning. And his first words were evidently meant to act as an
impetus.
“If you was to tell me a story, Mr. David, would it be a fairy one, do
you think? Or would it be about a bear, do you ’spose, or a--a tiger?”
I am afraid I spoke rather impatiently.
“Aren’t you tired of bears and tigers yet, Joey?”
A wistful voice replied:
“Did you get tired of ’em when you was little, Mr. David?”
“No, no,” I answered hastily, “of course, I did not.”
The lad rolled over until his brown head rested against my knee.
“To-night I’d liever hear about fairies.”
“Honestly, Joey?”
“Yep! Criss cross my heart and hope to die. I like to hear about
Dwainies.”
“Who calls them Dwainies?”
“Her--Bell Brandon.”
The dear homey name! I smiled down into the boy’s brown eyes. Suddenly
it seemed to me that I should enjoy a talk about Dwainies.
“Well,” I began, “I shall tell you a story of a Dwainie called
Arethusa. Say it after me, Joey. Arethusa.”
“Arethusa,” he repeated painstakingly.
“Arethusa was a nymph. She lived in a place called Arcadia. And
she slept on a couch of snow in the Acroceraunian mountains. Don’t
interrupt, please, Joey!--”
“I was only trying to say that big word--it’s hard enough to say the
name of our own mountains--but Ac--Acro--”
“Never mind. It is not necessary for you to remember all the names in
my stories, only the names I ask you to remember.”
“Bell Brandon says you’re teaching me funny that way. She says you’re
teaching me stories of the old world before you teach me to speak good
English. What’s good English, Mr. David?”
“Never mind, lad,” I murmured confusedly. My wonder woman was quite
right, Joey’s English was reprehensible; but I confess I secretly
enjoyed it--there was something eminently Joeyish about it--a
quaintness that I found irresistible. I smiled, and sighed, and
continued, “Arethusa’s hair was rainbow colored, and her eyes were
sky blue, and her cheeks coral. Gliding and springing she went, ever
singing; you see, she was not only beautiful, but light hearted and
pure. The Earth loved her, and the Heaven smiled above her. Now Alpheus
was a river-god. He sat very often on a glacier--a cold, cold glacier,
and whenever he struck the mountains with his trident great chasms
would open, and the whole world about would shake. He saw the Dwainie
Arethusa, one day, and as she ran he followed the fleet nymph’s flight
to the brink of the Dorian sea.”
“Oh, oh,” breathed my listener, eyes distended, and lips apart. “Did he
catch her?”
“He followed her to the brink--the edge, Joey--of the sea. Arethusa
cried: ‘Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And bid the deep hide me, for he
grasps me now by the hair--’”
“Her rainbow hair?”
“Yes, yes,--don’t interrupt.”
“Who did she yell to?”
“The loud Ocean heard. It stirred, and divided--parted, boy--and ‘under
the water the Earth’s white daughter fled like a sunny beam.’”
“Hm! What did the river-god do then?”
“He pursued her. He descended after her. ‘Like a gloomy stain on the
emerald main.’”
“But did he get her, Mr. David?”
“Well, Arethusa was changed into a stream by Diana, and the stream
was turned into a fountain in the island of Ortygia, and Alpheus
the river-god still pursuing her, finally won her, and they dwelt
single-hearted in the fountains of Enna’s mountains.”
There was a burst of roguish laughter behind me.
“What a classic tale for a child mind,” a light voice cried.
Haidee stood among the shadows of the cottonwoods, swaying between her
crutches.
“Mrs. Olds has sent me in search of you. The canteen you soldered for
her patient’s use has come unsoldered, the tin lining of the fireless
cooker has sprung a leak, the big man has to be lifted while his bed
is being changed, and she wants to know if you forgot to purchase the
malted milk this afternoon--she can’t find it anywhere. She said, too,
that you had signified your intention of rubbing soap on the doors to
prevent their squeaking. She also said something about procrastination,
but it sounded hackneyed--quite as if I had heard it somewhere
before--so I left rather precipitately.”
All the while I was soldering the canteen for the big man’s feet, I
could hear Wanza chattering blithely with the patient in the front
room. She came out to me after awhile, and stood at my elbow as I
examined the cooker. I frowned at her, and received a moue in return.
“I’ve been telling the big man about my peddler’s cart,” she ventured
finally. “He’s so set on seeing it, soon as he’s well enough! Seems he
never saw one. He can’t talk much, he’s that weak yet--like a baby! But
I can talk to him.”
“I shall not ask you not to talk with him, again, Wanza,” I announced.
“It’s just as well, seeing as I know what I’m about. Land! the poor
man! He needs some one to talk to him. I don’t notice you hurting
yourself seeing after him, Mr. David Dale!”
I felt very weary and intolerably disgusted with everything, and I
answered sharply, “That’s my own affair.” The next minute I saw the
blood spurt from my palm, and realized even as Wanza cried out that I
had cut myself rather badly on the tin lining of the cooker. I turned
faint and dizzy, and opening the door I plunged out into the night air
followed closely by Wanza.
“It’s nothing,” I kept saying, keeping my hand behind me as she would
have examined it.
“Please--please, Mr. Dale, let me look at it.”
She pressed forward to my side and reached around behind me for my
hand. I could feel her quivering in every limb.
“It’s nothing,” I maintained, though the pain was intense, and the
rapid flow of blood was weakening me.
“It is something. Oh, if only to be kind to me, Mr. Dale, let me have
your hand!”
We struggled, my other arm went around her, and I attempted to draw
her back and sweep her around to my uninjured side. I was obstinate
and angry, and she was persistent and tearful, and we wrestled like
two foolish children. “Please, please,” she kept repeating, and I
reiterated, “No.” It must have looked uncommonly like a love scene to a
casual onlooker, and Haidee’s voice speaking through the dusk gave me
an odd thrill.
“I have called and called you, Wanza,” she was saying. “Will you go
to Mrs. Olds, please? I think she wants water from the spring, or the
malted milk prepared, or--or something equally trivial.”
I released my prisoner and she sped away. I was left to peer through
the darkness at Haidee and vainly conjure my mind for something to say.
The drip, drip of the blood from my cut on to the maple leaves at my
feet, gave me a disagreeable sensation. I felt weakened, and slow in
every pulse. I thought of words, but had no will to voice them, and
so I stood staring stupidly at the vision before me. She spoke with a
strange little gasp in her voice at last.
“I think I have been mistaken in you, Mr. Dale.”
“You are making a mistake now,” I replied hoarsely. There was a
peculiar singing in my ears, and a buzzing in my brain where small
wheels seemed to be grinding round, so that my tone was not convincing,
and as I spoke I leaned my shoulder against a tree from sheer weakness.
In my own ears my words sounded shallow and ineffectual. I tried to
speak again but succeeded in making only a clicking sound in my throat.
I felt myself slipping weakly lower and lower, though I dug my feet
into the turf and braced my knees heroically. Faster and faster the
wheels went round. I felt that Haidee was moving toward the cabin away
from me. I tried to call her name. But I was floundering in a quagmire
of unreality; I groped in a dubious morass darkly, straining toward
the light. My knees felt like pulp, they yielded completely and I slid
ignominiously to the ground, rolled over, and lay inert, waves of
darkness washing over me.
It was Joey who found me, whose tears on my face aroused me. His grief
was wild. His lamentations echoed around me. He was moaning forth: “Mr.
David, Mr. David,” in a frenzy, laying his face on mine, patting my
cheeks, lifting my eyelids with trembling fingers. “Are you killed? Are
you killed?” I heard him wail. “Oh dear, dear, my own Mr. David, please
open your eyes and speak to Joey!”
A light from a lantern struck blindingly into my eyes as I unclosed
them and I quickly lowered my lids. But my lad had seen the sign of
life and I heard him call: “Wanza, Wanza, come quick! Mr. David is
laying here all bloody and hurted.”
I struggled to a sitting posture as Wanza came forward at a run,
swinging her lantern. A few minutes later I sat on a bench in the
workshop while Wanza bathed and dressed my hand and gave me a sip
of brandy from a bottle she found in the cupboard over one of the
small windows. I was ashamed of my weakness and I apologized for it,
explaining that I had never been able to endure the sight of blood with
fortitude, and admitting that the tin had cut rather deep.
“Now you just crawl into bed and go to sleep and forget all about it,”
she crooned, mothering me, with a gentle hand on my hair. She went
to my bunk in the corner, shook up the pillows and straightened the
blankets, and catching up the pail of water filled the basin on the
wash-bench. “Wash your face and hands, you Joe,” she ordered. “Then
come outside and I’ll hear you say your prayers.”
I was lying in my bunk half asleep, though tortured by the remembrance
of Haidee’s words, when I heard the following oddly disjointed prayer
from the river bank.
“Now I lay me--Oh, God, thank you for not letting Mr. David bleed to
death--I pray the Lord--’Cause if he had bled to death I’d want to die
too--my soul to keep--he’s all I got, and I want to thank you for him,
God-- Wait, Wanza, this is a new prayer I’m saying! I am going to ask
God to bless you, too. Bless Wanza, please, God,--but bless Mr. David
the most,--oh, the most of anybody in the whole world! Amen.”
Soon Joey came pattering in to the shop and very gingerly crawled in
beside me. He was asleep, and I was lying miserably brooding, when
Wanza called softly just outside the window: “Mr. Dale--hoo-hoo!”
“Yes, Wanza?” I answered.
“I’ve been to the cabin--in the cedar room--talking with Mrs. Batterly.
I told her all about your cutting your hand, and--and how you would not
let me look at it--and how silly I was, trying to make you--when she
come up. I told her how I found you on the ground--and--and everything.
Go to sleep now.”
“I shall, Wanza. Thank you,” I cried gratefully.