wheat lay in yellow heaps on the granary floor, and the hay, stacked
high, stood along the north side of the low, sod barn in a sheltering
crescent. There was little left to do on the farm before the winter set
in, and the cold mornings found the family astir very late. So one raw
day, when the fields and prairie without lay white in a covering of
thick frost, it was after sun-up before the little girl's mother entered
the kitchen.
It had been so long since the milk had been disturbed that she had
neglected for a week or more to cover the crocks, and did not even give
the shelf a glance as she hurriedly lighted a twist of hay; but as she
stooped to poke it into the stove, a quavering, plaintive, raspy voice
above her made her start back and stare upward.
There on the edge stood the cowbird, his head drooping and his wings
half spread. But he was no longer black. From his crown to his legs he
was covered with a coating of frozen milk that, hiding his glossy
plumage, turned him into a woefully bedraggled white bird; while from
the ends of his once glistening tail feathers hung little icicles that
formed an icy fringe.
"Look-see! look-see!" he mourned, closing his eyes and lifting one stiff
leg from his perch. "Look-see! look-see!"
A moment later, hearing the sound of loud laughter in the kitchen, the
little girl got out of bed and ran to find out what was the matter. But
when she caught sight of the cowbird on the shelf before the row of big
brothers, she did not join in the merriment. Instead, she turned very
white and crept back to bed again without a word, taking the cowbird
with her, cuddled under her arm.
* * * * *
WHEN the sun stood over the farm-house and the frost was gone from the
plains, the little girl climbed upon her pony's back and, with the
cowbird perched on her shoulder, started northward up the river. Her
face was whiter than it had been that morning, and she had no happy
chatter with which to answer him as he chirruped to her gaily and leaned
forward from time to time to peck at her teeth. Her ears were still
ringing with her big brothers' laughter, and with the pitiless command
that had driven the cowbird forth to the prairies again--a wing-clipped
tramp and an outcast! Straight on she rode to the river meadows where
the cowbird colonies lived.
Once there, she got down carefully from her horse and, after placing her
pet gently upon a stone, took from her pockets a crust, part of a
shriveled apple, a chunk of gingerbread, and a cold boiled potato. These
she placed in front of him on the ground. Then she took him up, parted
her lips to let him peck her teeth once more, held him against her
breast for a long, bitterly sad moment, and mounting, rode away.
When she was only a rod or so from him, the cowbird tried to follow. But
his maimed wings would not obey, and he fell back to the ground again
and again. Then he walked a few steps after the retreating pony, and,
finding that the little girl was getting farther and farther away every
moment, hopped upon a big rock beside the road, and called after her
pleadingly.
"Look-see! look-see!" he cried, rolling his eyes and swelling his
shining throat; "look-see! look-see!"
But the little girl rode straight on, and never looked back to see.
V
THE MISFIT SCHOLAR
IT was only a little way to the school-house in the winter-time because
the big brothers could cross the chain of sloughs to it on their skates;
but, in the autumn, before the ice was thick, the path led snake-like
beside the eastern border of the water, just skirting the frill of green
bulrushes and tall marsh-grass, and it was a long distance.
The school-house stood in a wide glade that was the favorite
grazing-spot of a band of antelope. It was narrow and unpainted, with
two windows on each side and a door in one end. And from its roof, which
was not too high for a game of "anti-I-over," protruded a joint of rusty
stovepipe. During spring and summer the building stood empty, with the
whole sloping green place to itself and the pronghorns, and in every
high wind it toppled over, with its pipe pointing to the east, until it
was pried into place again. But, after school "took up" in the fall, the
glade rang with the laughter and shouts of the scholars, and the
antelope crossed the Vermillion and traveled to the rugged country
farther west, where, when the snow fell and hid the dried grass, they
could browse off the bushes; and the school-house did not topple any
more, for its deep coal-bins, which were built against the wall by the
door, were full to the brim.
Often on warm summer afternoons, the little girl rode down to the glade
beyond the sloughs and, sitting her horse quietly, induced a tawny doe
and her twin kids to approach by exciting their curiosity with her
bright red flannel petticoat. But if she took the herd along, she did
not dare display her skirt, for Napoleon did not like it and had, on one
occasion, viciously gored the Indian pony in the ribs when the little
girl was busy coaxing the deer. After a wind-storm she liked to climb
from her pony to the overturned school-house and walk about on it. Once,
she slipped on a window-pane, when she was peering in, and fell through;
and would have had to remain there a long time (for the door was
locked), if she had not thought to pull the joint of stovepipe out of
the roof and crawl through the hole to freedom.
But she had never been near the building when the teacher was in charge.
She did not want to go to school, because she meant to learn her lessons
at home the way her mother had,--and her mother had been taught by
_her_ mother, and, after that, by a governess. The little girl had never
talked the matter over at the farm-house, however, for she never doubted
that the governess, whatever that was, would come all in good time.
So her surprise and grief were great when she heard one day that she was
to learn her lessons from the lanky Yankton man who presided over the
school, and along with the other little girls who lived near enough to
attend. She held one tearful argument after another with the eldest
brother, declaring that she could read and study at home. But he said
that a young one nearly six years old ought to know something more than
stories--something about the world and arithmetic.
Secretly the little girl did not think it was of any use going to
school, for she believed the teacher did not know much. She had even
heard the biggest brother say so. And she knew that _she_ knew a great
deal. As soon as she could eat with a spoon, she had begun to hold the
almanac up in front of her; and she had spoken her first word at
fourteen months. It was "Man," and her mother often related how it
happened.
She was rocking the little girl to sleep, she said, and singing,
"There was a little man,
And he had a little gun,"
when there sounded a small voice from the cradle. "Man," it said, and
the little girl's mother, peeking over the side, saw two wide-open blue
eyes. After that, when she was being rocked to sleep, the little girl
always said, "Man." Three months later, she had begun to talk in whole
sentences. At three years she had been able to make all her letters and
read several words, having been taught secretly by the biggest brother.
At four, she knew the youngest brother's reading lessons by heart, and
could spell every word in the First Reader. At this stage of her
education, she put aside such baby things as the "Mother Goose Rhymes,"
and was deeply interested in the doings of the "Swiss Family Robinson."
Winter nights, she had listened to an ever increasing number of stories
that were read aloud by her mother. And now she was occupied with
"Gulliver." But she did not know one of her multiplication tables, and
the neighbor woman, for one, was greatly disgusted with her, and
declared that she did not know whatever would become of the child.
The morning the little girl started to school, with her Second Reader
under one arm, it was so cold that her breath looked like puffs of white
steam. Her mother thought she had better walk instead of ride, and
bundled her up warmly in a big plaid shawl, her beaver cap, and her
thick mittens. When she set off, she was accompanied by the youngest
brother, who was going to be a visitor during the morning session. The
dogs, with the exception of Luffree (who could not be found), had been
chained up along the sunny side of the house to keep them from following
her. And as they saw her disappearing across the reservation road, they
jumped back and forth, pulling at their collars and howling dismally.
The little girl did not look around at them. Her heart was heavy. All
the unhappiness that had been visited upon her that autumn weighed it
down. Every day, before sunrise, she had had to get up and eat a raw
carrot, because the neighbor woman had prescribed it as a cure for a
certain livid spot that had made its appearance on the little girl's
cheek, and was thought to be a cancer. The little girl knew that the
carrot-eating was useless, since the spot was only the mark of an
unsuccessful attempt at tattooing; but she did not care to explain.
Then, the cowbird had been sent away; and, as a last blow, she had been
told to go to school.
There was no doubt in her mind that her misfortunes were due wholly to
the fact that she had precisely thirteen freckles on her pink nose. She
had never been able to count them because, when she had covered ten of
the tiny brown spots with as many fingers, so much of her nose was
hidden that she could count no further. But the biggest brother had
assured her that she had them, and that was enough.
She was very tired when they came in sight of the school-house, and the
youngest brother had to tug her along by the hand. Luffree, who had come
in sight over a hillock ahead of them when they were part way, trotted
at her heels and looked up wistfully at her as she half walked, half
ran, complaining at every step. Now and then he jumped up and tried to
lick her face sympathetically. But she would not let him, for she knew
he had warts on his muzzle that he had caught the summer before while
teasing a toad.
The school-room was full of smoke and noise when they entered. The
scholars were laughing and talking as they crowded about the tall, round
stove; and it was sending black, sooty breath into their faces from
every crevice of its loosely hung doors. But shortly afterward the noise
was silenced by the teacher, who brought his hands together with a
resounding clap.
All the pupils in the room, except the little girl, had been to school
to him the year before and knew what the signal meant. So she suddenly
found herself the only one left standing in the middle of the floor, the
girls having preempted the row of benches on the right, and the boys
that on the left. But she was not abashed, and her corkscrew curls
danced on her shoulders as she looked about.
"Sit down, sit down!" came in whispers from both sides. She took no
notice of them, and the teacher, busily preparing the roll-call at his
table, did not hear. But soon a ripple of laughter from the school, and
a voice from the stove, interrupted his work, and brought him scowling
to his feet.
The little girl was standing with one arm extended and one small
forefinger pointing past him at the globe, which, for want of a better,
was but a fat pumpkin ingeniously impaled on a stick, and peeled over
part of its surface in such a manner that the five oceans were
represented, while the portion yet unpeeled showed the rude outlines of
the six continents.
"We've got lots of pumpkins bigger 'n that at our house," she was
saying, her face turned toward "Frenchy," an up-river trapper who
studied geography and English spelling between his rounds of the
sloughs. "Why, the cellar's _full_ of 'em."
The teacher rapped briskly on the table with his pencil, to call her to
order. "Look here," he said, a little crossly, "you mustn't talk out
like that. Sit down."
"No seat," she faltered, lowering her voice.
He looked up and down the girls' row; there were only four seats in it,
and they were full. The boys' benches were not; but, loath to lessen
the terrors of a favorite punishment, he hesitated to put her there.
"Come up to the rostrum, then," he said.
The little girl walked slowly forward, and a flush stole up her throat
and mounted to her temples. But when she was once seated, her sailor-hat
on one side and her Second Reader on the other, she felt less demeaned;
for the rostrum commanded a view of the whole room, and from it she
could see Luffree, fast asleep under the youngest brother's bench.
The teacher went back to the roll-call, and the pupils droned the time
away till recess. Then the boys rummaged through their willow baskets
for something to eat and went out to play "prisoner's base." But the
girls--the neighbor woman's daughter, and the seven belonging to the
Dutchman who lived at the Vermillion's forks--stayed in, gathered in a
silent circle about the rostrum, fingered the big gold brooch that the
little girl's mother had let her wear as a reward for attending, and
looked her up and down, from the scarlet bow on her hair to her fringed
leggings. And she, never having seen the Dutchman's children before,
forgot to be polite, and stared back at their denim dresses, pigtails,
and wooden shoes.
When school took up again, the Swede boy was told to put his sums on a
bit of tar-papered wall near him, and a mixed class in reading lined up
in front of the teacher's table. Soon, however, the room was again
quiet. The Swede boy and the class sat down, and the whole school, made
sleepy by the warmth from the stove, lounged on their benches and
drowsed on their books, and even the little girl, sitting idly on the
rostrum, nodded wearily. But right in the midst of the silence, and just
before the pupils were dismissed for noon, something so startling
happened that the little girl's curls fairly stiffened in alarm.
The teacher clapped his hands, the children followed with a hurried
banging of their books and slates, and, instantly, before the little
girl had time to think what it all meant, the scholars, with one accord,
began to roar at the top of their lungs.
"Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning!"
they cried, rapping their knuckles upon their desks in the rhythm of
galloping horses,--
"More water! More water!
Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!
More water! More water!"
The little girl straightened herself and a gray light crept up to where
the flush had been, so that every freckle of the hateful thirteen stood
out clearly. Near her, the teacher was standing, with his feet planted
wide apart and his eyes raised to the ceiling. And before him, shouting
and pounding and staring with crimson faces into his, were the pupils.
"Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!"
they yelled. It brought back to the little girl that terrible moment
when the farm-house, with a dripping-pan full of hog-fat flaming in the
oven, was threatened with destruction.
"Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning!"
sounded the warning again. No one moved. But, not knowing just how near
Scotland might be, and fearful for her safety with danger so imminent,
she did not wait longer. Clutching her hat and book, with a bound she
cleared the distance to the youngest brother, and, with a stifled cry,
leaped into his arms.
But in her excitement she had forgotten Luffree, lying asleep under the
bench, and had jumped squarely upon one soft, outstretched paw. The dog
sprang up with a howl of pain, the school stopped its singing, and the
angry teacher left the rostrum and advanced toward the little girl. The
next moment he dragged the dog from under the bench by the scruff of the
neck and hurled him out of the door; the next, he shook an admonishing
finger in the very face of the thirteen unlucky freckles.
* * * * *
LATE that afternoon, the eldest brother paddled across the sloughs in
the bull-boat, and had a talk with the teacher. The teacher lived in the
Irishman's shack, which was made of cottonwood logs laid one upon
another and covered with a roof of sticks and dirt, and "bached" by
himself through the term, because the little girl's mother had refused
to board him. So, when the eldest brother had finished his visit and
rowed back, he recited such an ill-natured version of that day's
happenings at the school-house, that the family, until then divided by
the contradictory stories of the youngest brother and the little girl,
united in heaping reproaches upon her.
Next morning she again traveled the winding path that skirted the
marsh-grass and bulrushes, this time on the pinto. Luffree, who had been
tied up at breakfast, but had mysteriously slipped his collar, followed,
as before. When she arrived within a short distance of the school-house,
she climbed down and, without taking any notice of the giggling, waiting
crowd by the door, carefully picketed the mare out of reach of the other
ponies. Then she pulled off the bridle, put it beside the picket-pin,
and, after bidding Luffree watch beside it, went in quietly to take her
seat. She had not unblanketed her horse because, underneath the soft
sheepskin saddle and well out of sight, was tucked one of her mother's
latest magazines that had pictures scattered through it.
When school was called, she was not allowed to keep the seat on the
rostrum. One of the Dutchman's seven being absent, she was told to share
the rear bench with the neighbor woman's daughter, and spent a happy
hour in the seclusion of the high seat, watching "Frenchy," who had no
slate, write his spelling on the smooth, round stove, and smiling at the
Swede boy when he looked slyly across at her.
Then she heard some one call her name. It was the teacher. "Come forward
to the chart," he said, and his voice seemed to shake the very floor.
She took up her Second Reader, edged herself off her seat, and stood
beside it, her eyes fixed questioningly upon him.
"Come forward to the chart, I say," he said again. "Can't you hear!"
"Yes," answered the little girl, starting up the room. But she walked so
slowly that, when she came near his table, he put out one lean hand,
grabbed her by the arm, and hurried her. She resented his touch by
twisting about until she was free. Then she took her place in front of
the chart, feeling as if every eye in the room were looking up and down
the row of blue crockery buttons on the back of her apron.
The teacher began to turn forward sheet after sheet of the chart, until
the first page was before him. It depicted a figure in silk hat, long
coat, and light trousers, promenading with a cane in his hand and a dog
at his heels. Underneath were two lines of simple words, and two
inquiring sentences. The teacher picked up a long cottonwood stick and
pointed it first at the man and then at the dog.
"What is that?" he said.
"A man," answered the little girl.
"And that?"
"A dog."
"Now read after me," he went on, indicating a word, "'M-a-n, man.'"
She paused a moment, her lips pressed tightly together.
"Read, read, read!" commanded the teacher, whacking the chart with a
pointer.
"'M-a-n, man,'" repeated the little girl, her eyes on his face.
"Don't look at me," he scolded; "look at the chart."
"I don't haf' to," said the little girl, earnestly; "I--I--"
Something unpleasant would certainly have happened at that moment, had
not "Frenchy," deep in his geography lesson, piped up at the teacher
from the rear of the room.
"T-a-n-g-a-n-y-i-k-a," he spelled, snapping his fingers and waving his
arm. "Wot eez dat?"
For a moment the teacher was silent, scowling down at the little girl.
Then he came back to the chart with another whack of the pointer. "Call
it Moses," he growled.
"Mozez," repeated "Frenchy," resignedly, but with a shake of his head
over the intricacies of the English language.
The little girl had twisted half around to look at a Dutch child, and
the teacher, angry because he had neglected to look over the geography
lesson, jerked her into place again by her sleeve. "Now, you read," he
said; "look at the end of my pointer and read."
"I can read them words 'thout looking at 'em," she protested, pointing
at an inquiring line, "'cause I can read everyfing in this." And she
held up the Second Reader.
"Huh!" grunted the teacher, taking the book from her and tossing it upon
his table. "Have you ever been to school before?"
"No," answered the little girl.
"Then you'll start right in where everybody else does," he said. "Read
this line. 'Do you see a man?'"
"'Doyouseeaman?'" she repeated, still watching him.
"Look at the chart and read it," he commanded furiously.
An unfriendly light suddenly shone in the little girl's eyes. She
stepped back and summoned all her pride to resent the indignity that he
was putting upon her before the whole school.
"Oh, I don't want to read that baby talk," she cried, "and--and--I
_won't_, and I 'm going home to my mother."
The teacher swayed in his wrath like a tall cottonwood. "You don't, eh?
You won't, eh?" he bellowed, and, stooping down, plucked the little girl
by the ear.
This time it was the Swede boy who interrupted the course of events in
front. He leaned forward and whispered something into the ear of the boy
ahead, and then, with an inarticulate shout, threw himself upon the boy
and began to maul him. Instantly the teacher, yearning to use his hands
upon some one, descended upon them and wrested them apart. But they
clinched again and, continuing to fight, managed so to misdirect their
kicks that they reached, not each other, but his lanky, interfering
person.
And, while the battle raged, the little girl fled out of the
school-house toward the pinto and pulled up the picket-pin. The teacher
did not see her go, but, in retreating from an unusually vicious blow of
the Swede boy's fist, caught sight of her just as she was leading her
horse to an ant-hill to mount. With a hoarse call for her to return, he
started after her, bearing in his train the two boys, who, still
struggling, impeded his progress.
He shook them off at the door-step and broke into a run. The little girl
was vainly striving to climb to the pinto's back; but she was so
frightened that each time she made a jump for the saddle she came short
of it and fell back. And, seeing the teacher coming, her efforts were
more ineffectual than ever. But when he was scarcely a rod away, and
when escape seemed impossible, a new figure joined in the affair.
Luffree had been lying quietly beside the picket-pin until the little
girl ran out, when he got up, ready to follow her, and joyfully leaped
about the mare. Then he saw the teacher advancing, and remembered the
rough handling of the day before. So, as the Yankton man came close,
swinging his arms about like the fans of the Dutchman's windmill, the
dog went forward to meet him, his hair on end, his eyes shifting
treacherously, his teeth showing in an ugly white seam, all the wolf
blood in him roused.
The teacher halted when he saw him and called back to the scholars, now
crowding about the door. "Bring my pointer," he cried.
Not a pupil moved. The teacher, noting that no one was obeying his
order, and not daring to go forward unarmed, ran back at the top of his
speed for the stick. But he was too late; for, by the time he had gained
the school-room and grabbed both the pointer and the stove poker, the
little girl had scrambled upon her pinto and galloped off toward the
farm-house.
The teacher did not give chase, but, sputtering revenge under his
breath, called the school to order. Then, not forgetting what severity
is due insubordination where the sons of salary-supplying fathers are
concerned, he gave the boys who had fought, but who were now docile and
smiling, a mighty tongue-lashing.
When the little girl was beyond hailing distance or possibility of
capture, she brought the pinto to a standstill and looked back. Once she
opened her lips as if to say something, but closed them again, and,
after waiting until the scholars had all gone in, rode on. She did not
go home; instead, when she came in sight of the reservation road, she
turned east and cantered across the prairie until only the top of the
farm-house was visible to her as she sat upon her horse. Then she
dismounted, tethered the pinto, made Luffree lie down, and, having taken
the magazine from under the saddle-blankets, cuddled against the dog.
She was still trembling, her throat ached with unspoken anger, and,
underneath her apron, her heart bounded so that the checks moved in
regular time.