FRIEDA AND THE OTHER GIRL.
THE apparition drew near enough for Frieda to see that it was a stranger
with straight black hair. She was barefoot and wore a short, ragged
skirt, a bright red jacket, and a red scarf twisted around her throat.
In her startled glance at the girl, Frieda beheld a pair of immense
black eyes, set in a thin, pointed face, with cheeks flushed crimson,
perhaps from the swiftness of her flight. Her breath came in short
gasps. Frieda thought of a fawn she had once seen pursued by some
hunters, with its great soft eyes transformed into staring pools of
terror and its soft sides quivering as though its heart were breaking in
its final effort to evade its pursuers.
"Oh, what is it?" Frieda cried, with quick sympathy.
The girl looked at her hopelessly and ran on. But Frieda now understood.
An old Indian woman armed with a stick, trotted out of the screen of the
trees. She was running more slowly but her face was terrifying. Her
small black eyes were red with anger and she waved a long arm at the
girl.
[Illustration: FRIEDA FLUNG HERSELF VALIANTLY IN THE PATH OF THE INDIAN
WOMAN.]
Frieda wanted to help, but what could she do? "Jean! Jack!" she called
again. She could see that the hunted girl had no chance of escaping. She
was nearly dropping with exhaustion. There was no place for her to hide,
for the plain stretched on, covered only with grass and low sage brush.
Frieda flung herself valiantly in the path of the Indian woman. She was
used to the Indians. Ever since she could remember she had been making
trips to their villages, and a number of half-breed Indian boys had
worked on their ranch. But the girl had never seen one of them so
furiously angry as this old squaw. She was frightened and at the same
time wanted to laugh. The woman was so fat and in such a temper, "that
she shook when she ran, like a bowlful of jelly," Frieda thought to
herself.
The squaw did not lift her beady, black eyes until she was within a few
feet of Frieda.
"Ugh," she grunted. "Git out."
She tried to push Frieda away with her stick, but Frieda stretched
out both arms and danced up and down in front of the old woman, until
she did not know which way to turn.
Old Laska had not run all this distance and gotten out of breath to be
stopped by a pale-face chit of a child. She struck Frieda with her
staff. Frieda gave a sudden, sharp cry and looked quickly around. She
saw that the Indian girl had fallen only a short distance beyond them
and was vainly struggling to get on her feet again. Frieda shut her
eyes; in another moment she knew that she would hear cruel blows being
rained down on the defenseless girl by the furious old woman.
At this moment, a golden brown head, wearing a soft, round Mexican hat,
appeared above an opening in the gorge. "Frieda, what's the matter?
Didn't we hear you call?" Jack's voice rang out unexpectedly. She jumped
lightly from the rocks to the ground and ran toward her sister, guessing
at once that the Indian woman had frightened Frieda.
"Stop," Jack ordered imperiously.
The woman hesitated. Something in Jack's commanding tone impressed her
and at the same instant Jean crawled slowly into sight above the
ravine, swinging a string of trout over her shoulder.
The Giant's Canyon seemed suddenly alive with girls.
Jean gazed at the scene in bewilderment. Jack's hands were clasped
behind her and her head was thrown back in a fashion she had when she
was angry. Frieda was in tears and between the two sisters stood a fat
squaw.
Jack and Jean looked so ready to do battle at a moment's notice, that
the Indian's manner changed.
"I want not to hurt the little Missie," she mumbled. "I try to catch my
own girl. She run away from her good home. She ver' bad." The old
woman's head with its straight black hair, plaited in small braids,
bobbed fiercely up and down and she shook her stick threateningly ahead
of her.
During the whole scene Jack and Jean had had their backs turned to the
hunted girl. Jack was blocking the way of the Indian woman. Only Frieda
had been able to see and through her tears she had discovered that the
girl, who had been lying helpless on the level ground only a few seconds
before, had now vanished completely.
Frieda smiled at Jack's and Jean's puzzled expressions. "Indian girl!
What did the old woman mean?" The two girls looked about. There was no
one in sight. Evidently the squaw had not intended to hurt Frieda and
Jack and Jean were anxious to get rid of her. The next instant the
Indian waddled on, though she, too, had lost sight of the fragile figure
she was pursuing.
Frieda walked over to the fire and stirred it into a blaze without a
word. She winked mysteriously at Jean and Jack, but neither of them had
the faintest idea of what she meant.
"Let's fry the fish, before we go down into the cave," Frieda whispered.
"I don't want the Indian to come along this way and find out where it
is."
Jean and Jack knew that Frieda wished to keep her playhouse a secret
from all the world, so they thought nothing of her odd manner.
Frieda was bending over the glowing ashes, humming softly, with her
cheeks rosy and her two long blonde plaits fairly trembling with
excitement when she noticed the Indian woman coming back toward them.
She was alone. Evidently she had gone on for half a mile or more before
she decided it was useless to hunt any longer.
Frieda never looked up. The woman sidled up to Jean and Jack with a
wheedling expression on her broad, stupid face.
Jack and Jean paid no attention to her. They were making a pile of shiny
fish scales into a silver hill at their feet, as it was their part to
clean the trout, while Frieda did the cooking.
The Indian eyed the two girls doubtfully. She firmly believed that one
of them had helped the truant to escape, yet they had not stirred from
before her eyes, in the time when the runaway girl threw her off the
scent.
"You know where my girl is, you hide her from me," the woman said
accusingly.
Jean glanced at her in a bored fashion. "Will you please go away?" she
demanded. "We are busy. We do not want to talk to you. I told you that
we had never seen any Indian girl."
Frieda did not move, but her rosy cheeks burned a deeper red from the
heat of the flames.
The squaw waddled slowly out of sight. What did it matter if she had
not caught Olilie? The girl would soon have to return to the hut. She
could not live long alone out on the plains and when she came back she
should be taught her place. Olilie was only a squaw in spite of the
nonsense she had learned at the white people's school. She should do the
work and be the slave of the man chief, like all Indian girls had from
the beginning.
"Jean, Jack," Frieda hissed softly. She came over toward her cousin and
sister with the fish still sizzling and popping in her frying pan.
"Oh, do be careful, Frieda," Jean begged. Some of the hot fat sputtered
out of the pan into Jean's lap and she slid backwards off the rock where
she was seated.
But Jack saw that something unusual was the matter with Frieda.
"What in the world has happened to you, child? Your eyes are as big as
saucers!" she exclaimed.
Frieda set down her pan and though the Indian woman was now well out of
sight, she whispered a few words that made both girls jump to their
feet.
"Then there was an Indian girl all the time?" Jean murmured.
Frieda nodded. "We must find her," she argued quietly. "She slipped over
the side of the gorge not far from here, when no one was looking at her
except me. She can't be very far away for she was too tired to have gone
much further."
"All right, Frieda," Jack agreed. "We will look for the Indian princess
as soon as we have had our lunch. We must eat the fish first, it is so
brown and delicious. Really we will have more strength to search if we
have some food," Jack pleaded, seeing Frieda's injured expression.
"She will get away, Jack," Frieda answered. "Then she may be lost on the
plains and starve and nobody will ever find her. She was so pretty and
so frightened that I am sure you would have been interested if you had
only seen her."
Jack heaved a deep sigh. "Come along, Jean," she insisted. "Frieda wants
us to look for the will-o-the-wisp, so look we must."
Frieda was not tempestuous like Jack and Jean, but, just the same, like
a great many other gentle people, she always had her way. "Little
Chinook," Jim used to call her, because "Chinook" is the Indian name for
a soft, west wind, that blows so quietly, so persistently, that it
carries everything before it. It even wafts all one's troubles away.
Jack, Jean and Frieda crawled down into the great canyon, among the giant
rocks, poking their noses into every opening, where they thought it
possible that anybody could be concealed. There was no sign of any one,
though Frieda called and called, assuring the runaway that the Indian
woman had gone back home.
"I am afraid she must have fallen and gotten hurt somehow, Jack," Frieda
suggested, when the three girls had explored for half an hour.
Jean turned resolutely upon the two sisters. "I am very sorry, Frieda
Ralston," she announced firmly, "but I decline to look for that tiresome
girl another minute. I will be fed. I don't see for the life of me, why
you are so worried over the fate of an unknown Indian maiden, when your
own devoted cousin is perishing before your eyes."
Frieda's cave was soon spread with the luncheon dishes and the girls sat
down Turkish fashion, with their long-delayed feast in front of them.
Frieda's face was half buried in a ham sandwich when Jean gave a sudden
exclamation of surprise. "Look, girls, there must have been an
earthquake or something around here. There is a hole in the rocks back
of Frieda's cave, nearly as large as this one. Funny we never noticed it
this morning!"
"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Frieda remarked indifferently. "I was
banging away there, trying to make my pantry larger, when a huge stone
fell out and rolled into the gorge. Lo and behold, there was another
cavern! I found some queer Indian relics in it. Come see."
Frieda led the way over to the new pit and dropped down on her knees in
front of it, with Jack and Jean on either side of her. "I was afraid to
go inside until you came," she said, "but it is quite empty,--look!"
Frieda's breath gave out. She stared and stared, clutching at her cousin
and her sister. The three girls were spellbound!
Gazing at them from out the black darkness, was what Frieda had feared
at the first moment of her discovery of the mysterious cavity, a pair of
burning, glowing eyes. They might belong to some wild animal, though
they were not fierce, only timid and pleading.
The ranch girls were not cowards, but not one of them wished to enter
the obscurity of that strange hiding place.
The figure stirred. The girls were now more used to the darkness.
"Why it's the Indian girl!" Frieda cried. "Do come out, please. We won't
hurt you and the Indian woman has been gone a long time."
But the girl seemed to be afraid to move. Frieda crawled fearlessly into
the hole and gave her little, white hand into the girl's thin, dark one.
As the Indian maid came out into the bright, invigorating air, she tried
to stand up, but she swayed in the wind, like a scarlet poppy that is
trying to oppose its frail strength to the blast of a storm.
Before Jack and Jean could get to her and in spite of Frieda's efforts,
the girl took a step forward, staggered and fell at their feet.
As they picked her up, they discovered that she was flushed with fever.
But while Jean washed her face with cool water and Jack held her in her
arms, she opened her mournful black eyes. "I am sorry to have troubled
you," she said, without a trace of an Indian accent. "I have run away
and I am tired. If you will please give me some water and let me stay
here for a few minutes I am sure I will be all right."
But she was not all right, even though the ranch girls persuaded her to
eat something, as well as to drink a cup of hot tea. She did not seem to
be able to move, but sat perfectly still with her lovely dark head
resting between her slender hands. She did not try to explain to them
why she had run away from home or when she expected to return.
Jack glanced anxiously upward. They had solemnly promised Jim to be back
at the ranch house before dark and the ranch girls could tell the time
of day from the position of the sun in the sky. This was one of the
things they knew instead of French or drawing. Unless they left the
canyon pretty soon, Jack knew they would never get home in time; yet what
could they do with Frieda's Indian girl? They could not leave her in the
gorge alone, and yet she did not seem to have the strength or the desire
to go.
Jack once had seen a copy of a wonderful picture of Ishmael in the
desert, whom Abraham had cast out with his mother, Hagar. Hagar had gone
to find some fuel and the child is alone. Around him is a great, grey
plain, with nothing else alive on it. There was something in this Indian
girl's position, her fragile grace, and dreadful loneliness, that
recalled this picture to Jacqueline Ralston's mind. She put her arm
gently over the other girl's shoulder.
The Indian maid looked up. Perhaps it was the difference in her
appearance and in Jacqueline's that made her eyes fill with tears.
Jack's proud, high-bred face was softened to pity. Her grey eyes were
tender and the usual proud curve to her lips was changed to an
expression that she seldom showed to any one but Frieda or Jean since
her father's death.
"We must go back to our home now," Jack explained kindly, "but we can't
leave you here alone. Tell us why you ran away? Don't you think you
could return; or is there anything we could do for you?"
The girl shook her head. She was as tall as Jean, but so thin that she
might be only an overgrown child. She seemed very young to Jacqueline;
almost as young as Frieda and as much in need of some one to take care
of her.
The three ranch girls were gazing intently at the stranger.
She flung her hands up over her face again. "I can't go back, I can't,"
she insisted. "You are to go away. I am not afraid. Only let me stay in
this ravine, until I can find some place that is further away, where no
one can find me. I shall not be hungry, I can hunt and fish. Only to-day
I am tired." She shook, as though she were having a chill.
Jacqueline dropped down on the ground by her side. Frieda and Jean were
trying not to cry.
"You poor little thing, you know we can't leave you here," Jack
declared. "Won't you? Can't you?" Jack looked appealingly at Jean and
Frieda. She was the oldest of the ranch girls, but she never decided
anything without their advice. Both of them nodded. "Don't you think you
could come home to the ranch with us, until you feel better and can tell
us what troubles you? You are ill now and worn out. Why you might even
die if you stayed here alone."
Jack did not wait for an answer. She almost lifted the Indian girl to
her feet and brought her out of Frieda's cave. She helped her upon her
own pony, and getting up behind Frieda, she led Hotspur and his new
rider to the beloved Rainbow Ranch house, whose doors opened to admit
not three girls, but four.