A night owl hooted in Tessibel's ear as she ran. A bat whirled into her
face--then took himself off. Over the shadowy rocks which cut and
bruised her feet, Tessibel flew.
Daddy was home in the shanty; he was in his bed tired from hauling his
nets. She remembered Ezra had grinned at her as with one hasty look she
had fixed his face in her mind. He had lied to her. Daddy was in the
hut, and if he were up waiting for her--there passed through Tessibel's
small mind the thought of how joyfully she would hop to the bowed
shoulders, and she longed for the kisses she knew would be hers. She
halted before the dark hut and waited. Insects whizzed about her ears as
though they little feared her. The long branches of the weeping willow
dragged themselves across the tin roof with a ghostly sound. This was
Tessibel's night of heart experiences--her first day and her first
night. Oh! to go back to yesterday, with the hidden fear of the student
sleeping soundly in her breast and a Daddy, a dear stooping old Daddy.
She slipped open the shanty door, lighted a candle and looked around.
The frying pan lay bottom up on the floor where she had dropped it. The
tea pail was on the table; a cut loaf of bread lay beside it, covered
with a host of small red ants. All this was familiar to Tess. She kicked
the pan from her path with her bare foot, and sat down on the three
legged stool which her father used at his meals. Portions of fish and
plenty of bones were spread about upon the floor, but the littered
shanty did not distress her newly found notions of cleanliness.
Daddy might go away to the black place where they had taken the Canadian
Indian, who had killed his squaw. Tess remembered hearing how he had
been carried to prison, twelve men had found him guilty of the crime and
at last--Tessibel started up with a groan--the Canadian Indian had been
carried to the place where the rope was.
Daddy Skinner and the Canadian Indian. Tess dared think no longer. She
caught a glimpse of herself in the cracked mirror which Skinner used
when he plied the pinchers to his beard--and her wild eyed bronzeness
caused her to give a startled ejaculation. Daddy was gone; and Frederick
the toad, was her all. The thought of the reptile she loved brought her
quickly to her feet. Frederick should sleep in the shanty while Daddy
was away. Tessibel halted apprehensively in the open doorway.
From the shore willows, hoot owls pierced the inky night with their
sonorous cries--while in throaty discord, a million marsh frogs bellowed
farewell to summer. The lake shores caught the unceasing waves in
eternal laps, the rhythm soothing the ears of the squatter girl as her
unfathomable gaze pierced the midnight gloom. But the weight of sorrow
and longing on the strong nature, untried by emotion, strangled the
rising fear, and Tessibel advanced a step to the pebbly path. Once
outside in the darkness, she lifted her voice and repeated as of yore,
"Rescue the perishin'
Care for the dyin'."
Never before had the words roused her as now--Daddy Skinner needed that
refrain.
She darted around the corner of the mud cellar, and shoving her hand
into the familiar hole in the log, Tessibel drew Frederick quickly out.
She dropped him into her blouse and retraced her steps to the shanty.
She could never be lonely and quite without hope if Frederick were with
her. Hadn't she loved him for four long months, and daily fed him his
portion of flies? She took him from her bosom, where many times he had
sunk into toad dream-land, and without looking at him placed him on the
floor.
"It air a bad night for us, Frederick," she said out loud, "it air. But
you'll not sleep in the log to-night, but in Daddy's bed. And I'll just
pretend ye air Daddy, and when ye croak with the daylight ye can have
all the flies lightin' on the sugar, and then we air goin' after Daddy
and bring him home to the shanty, Frederick."
Tessibel turned her head and glanced at Frederick. Generally when she
spoke he would give an answering grunt. She gazed at him but dared not
venture closer. Had she lost her mind like Jake Brewer's sister, when
they brought home the body of her drowned husband? Tessibel lighted
another candle and then the third--the match burned low between her
fingers as she touched it to the fourth. Once more she looked upon the
horrid sight--terror striving and struggling for some outlet in her torn
young soul. Frederick blinked a pair of beady eyes, filmed with
death,--he moved a mutilated body with painful jerks, but there was
nothing to show the girl that he felt her presence. The silent awful
pulsating of the toad manifested its dumb suffering. A candle flickered
as she sought to solve the problem. The night wind flapped the dirty
curtain and Tessibel turned her head slowly toward it. A bird's cry from
somewhere in the weeping willow, came in through the window. With silent
intensity, she dragged her body slowly across the floor toward the
flattened reptile--above him she squatted--the gorgeous hair sweeping
the filth strewn floor. Tess could mark the places where the beloved
warts had been--she knew how many there were even to the tiny ones. With
the halting precision of the ignorant, she had counted them singly every
day. But the severest heart wrench of all was to come to Tess. The great
squat hind legs, which had been her pride, when Frederick jumped through
her rounded arms--curled to make a hoop--were gone, and the movements of
Frederick's body left a tiny trail of dark blood upon the shanty floor.
She couldn't touch that dying thing. In her vehement desire to relieve
him of his pain, she burst into song which went upward and outward,
ringing over the lake, returning again, only to be sent further and
further into the heavens.
"Rescue the perishin'
Care for the dyin'."
This was all Tessibel knew of the hymn--over and over she sang it,
fearfully watching the toad move grotesquely in the candlelight. Time
after time the blinking eyes closed and flew open--again and again
Tessibel sent her importunate prayer into the heart of the Great
Unknown.
Frederick gave a great deep sob, his fat sides lifted and fell twice,
and as the petitionate lips of the girl sent the song once more into the
night, he flopped over on his back, straightened out the little wounded
stumps, and died.
Daddy Skinner, the Canadian Indian, and Frederick! Tess couldn't
separate the three--the prayerful mood died with the toad. She opened
her lips and uttered two great piercing shrieks, which sounded and
resounded through the rafters of the shanty, out into the darkness and
up to the ragged rocks. It was the cry of a wounded human thing,
amounting to but little in the great whirling universe. The dying of the
scream brought words from her lips.
"Daddy Skinner, Daddy Skinner."
Then twice in equally shrill longing, resounded the name of her dead
friend.
"Frederick, aw, aw Frederick!"
Both cries followed the prayer, echoing their agony out through the
window--the flapping curtain with its tatters offering no impediment for
its outgoing.
Suddenly Tessibel staggered to her feet, for back to her through the
window, from somewhere near the mud cellar, came an answering voice,
deep-toned and vibrant--
"What? What?"
Frederick, the student, stood in the door of the dirty shanty, looking
upon an unkempt, copper-eyed girl, and a great squat, dead, wartless
toad.