THE-ONE-WHO-WAS-LEFT-ALIVE
The traditional Thanksgiving dinner was a ceremony never omitted at the
Spellman homestead, even though there had been years when Miss Sophia had
eaten it quite alone, with a determination rather grim than grateful.
This year, there were the two elderly sisters, alone in their generation,
yet with little in common save their family history and childhood
memories, and the little maid from sun-steeped plains of far-off Dakota
who sat sedately between them, plying her knife and fork with a decorum
that even Miss Sophia could not gainsay. Now and again her black eyes
darted keenly from one subdued face to the other, as if in search of
something; a “trick,” Miss Sophia said, that made her “as nervous as a
witch!”
The long, heavy, and, to tell the truth, rather silent and oppressive
meal had come to an end at last, with pumpkin pie and Indian pudding
made punctiliously after the old family recipes, and a mold of “quaking
jelly,” that had been a favorite of Lucy’s from childhood. After the
black coffee was brought in, Stella slid her nuts and raisins into her
pocket, and rose at a nod from her foster-mother.
“Mrs. Maloney will wash the dishes to-day, dear,” she said. “You may go
out now, or do anything you like for the rest of the day. And I think I
hear Cynthia’s whistle,” she added, indulgently.
Miss Sophia sighed aggressively. That clear, boyish whistle was a fresh
offense in her ears.
“Go out by the side door, Stella; and, whatever you do, don’t let in
that dog with his great, muddy feet!” she commanded; sure that, if
Cynthia were coming, Scotty could not be far off.
“Come on down to Doris’ house,” burst out Sin, before the door was fairly
open. “It’s always lots of fun down there; her mother lets us crack nuts
and pop corn and everything. Mother has a headache again and I mustn’t
make any noise around home, and of course it’s solemn as a church here—’t
always is. Can’t you come, Jibby?” she begged, anxiously.
(The new name was short for “Ojibway,” invented to tease the little Sioux
girl, but Yellow Star accepted it, as she did most things, with quite
stoical composure.)
“Yes, I can, Sin; I can do anything I want all the rest of to-day,” she
answered, gravely. “But oh! do let’s go to the woods!”
“All right; put on your things quick, and come along! (Down, Scotty!
down, sir!) We must stop for Doris, though; and I think Miss Morrison’s
there to dinner to-day.”
Stella’s night-black eyes glowed at this, for she silently worshiped her
sympathetic teacher.
Arrived at the Doctor’s, they found a large and merry party gathered
around the air-tight stove in the shabby parlor, listening with
enthusiasm to the warbling of operatic stars on the new phonograph,
followed by a “piece” on the piano by demure Doris. There were Grandpa
and Grandma Brown, a brisk and well-preserved old couple, with cheeks
like rosy winter apples; Uncle Si Wolcott, Mrs. Brown’s eccentric
bachelor brother, who lived all alone in a white farmhouse on the “Bay
road,” Doris and her father and mother, and, finally, two guests who
were not “kin” to any one else present.
One was Miss Morrison, whose home was in an up-to-date little city in a
neighboring State, and who must otherwise have eaten her Thanksgiving
dinner rather forlornly in a boarding-house; the other, a lanky boy of
sixteen or so, who wore glasses and a thoughtful air, had created some
amusement for the giggling girls at the academy by his name, which was
Honey. When thus appealed to in the velvet tones of some “lady teacher,”
the girls seemed to think it funny. His “front name” was Ethan, and he
was an orphan with his own way to make, his nearest relative a none too
loving “aunt by marriage,” which explains his appearance on the day of
family reunions at Mother Brown’s hospitable table.
The present was not, as Grandpa Brown had more than once remarked
with apparently a distinct sense of personal injury, a “genoowine
old-fashioned Thanksgivin’.” Far from affording the excellent sleighing
which had been expected to facilitate family gatherings in Grandpa’s day,
and the coasting that had undoubtedly sharpened the youngsters’ appetites
for “turkey an’ fixin’s,” an unseasonable Indian summer warmth pervaded
this particular twenty-seventh of November. When the young people set out
on their walk, Ethan Honey and Miss Morrison being included, they found
the country roads soft underfoot, rusty green leaves yet clinging to the
wide-spreading apple boughs, with here and there a frost-bitten apple,
and even the yellow of ripe corn still nestling in some of the brown
stooks that dotted the fields like tattered and smoke-stained wigwams.
Red alder berries and gray clematis fringes and the “ghosts of the
goldenrod” adorned the wayside, while the purple-brown woodlands melted
into a nameless haze upon the lonely horizon line.
“I’m fond of cross-country hikes, aren’t you?” Ethan observed, as he
turned to offer Stella an informal lift over the low stone wall that lay
between them and a short cut to “Wolcott’s Woods.”
“I do not know that word ‘hikes,’” she answered, in her slow, careful
English, “but if it is anything like to-day, I am sure I shall like it
very much. I never really knew about Thanksgiving before.”
“Oh, didn’t you?” asked the boy, trying not to stare at his
self-possessed little companion, whose cadenced voice and quaint ways,
as well as her unusual appearance, might have given him some excuse.
“I suppose of course your people don’t keep Thanksgiving,” he added,
awkwardly.
“Father and Mother Waring always had the good dinner and the church
service,” Stella answered, “but somehow I never understood about the
family part. I suppose because I was only a little girl then; or else
because they don’t have families out in Dakota! I mean, there are so many
lonely ones whose families are back east, with the old houses and the old
names and all the old things,” the girl persisted, greatly to Ethan’s
secret amusement at her unexpected point of view.
“But, Stella—that _is_ your name, isn’t it?” he began.
“It is one of my names,” she replied with dignity. But just then Scotty
dashed between them, nearly upsetting both, while Sin followed with
scarcely less of abandon, shrieking “A woodchuck! A woodchuck!” at the
top of her voice.
“I wouldn’t go any nearer if I were you, Cynthia,” advised Ethan gravely,
while Doris and her teacher, calling out futile appeals to “be careful,”
lagged breathless in the rear.
“It’s nothing but a horrid old skunk,” Cynthia presently complained,
coming back quite crestfallen. “Will you never learn anything, you old
dunderhead?” This to the sheepish Sir Walter, whom she had by his collar
and the hair of his head.
“When you’ve skinned as many as I have, you won’t be liable to make any
mistake,” the boy observed; whereat Doris shuddered visibly.
“You know,” she informed the others, “Ethan skins everything he can
get hold of—and cuts them up, too, as often as not—cats and dogs and
rabbits and frogs—ugh! He calls it ‘studying biology,’—isn’t it perfectly
dreadful?”
“Ethan will probably be a great scientist, some day,” suggested Miss
Morrison.
“He’s going to be a doctor, he says,” Cynthia bluntly objected, causing
the boy to blush uncomfortably, while Stella regarded him with new
respect.
To change the subject, he said something about prairie-dogs, and the
girl from Dakota was called upon for an offhand description of these
interesting animals, which she gave soberly enough, though making the
others laugh with her quaint characterizations and clever mimicry.
Having crossed several fields and followed a farm lane to its end, Ethan
let down a “pair o’ bars,” and the company climbed a rocky pasture knoll,
where Yellow Star’s quick eye caught something gleaming like dull fire
among the dead brown of the bare bushes.
“What is that? It is like a sunset!” she exclaimed, and Cynthia echoed
her.
“Oh, what is it? Oh, how beautiful!”
“Bitter-sweet, and the finest I ever saw!” declared Miss Morrison, with
enthusiasm. “Oh, oh! was there ever such a mass of it before? Have you a
knife about you, Ethan? I simply must have some for my school-room; it
will make a dream of a decoration, and last all winter.”
Cynthia and Doris ran about and exclaimed and unwound the most splendid
branches, but the Indian girl stood quite still and let the beauty of it
all sink deep into her heart. Years later, the sight of a red-gold spray,
or even the very name of “bitter-sweet,” brought up that riot of color
on the rocky knoll, and the wordless sadness of those veiled and lonely
hills.
“Now, girls, we simply must get on, or it will be dark before we can
walk to Wolcott’s Woods and back again,” declared Ethan resolutely,
shutting his knife with a snap. The whole party followed his lead past a
fringe of hemlock, maple, hornbeam and white birch, on to a wild and deep
glen that suddenly opened at their very feet, with a foaming brook in
its heart. Scrambling down the steep sides of the miniature canyon, they
followed the stream to its outlet in a tiny pond, which is flanked on one
side by the finest grove of pine in Laurel township.
“This is Uncle Si’s ice-pond,” announced Doris, proudly, “and _these_ are
Wolcott’s Woods!”
It was so mild that Ethan insisted upon taking off his coat, cushioning
a giant log where the girls might sit and rest after their three-mile
tramp, while the sun already glowed red through the autumn haze, near to
the western horizon.
“Aren’t you glad we came, Jibby?” urged Sin, ecstatically.
“Jibby … another of those names of yours, I suppose,” teased Ethan,
gently.
“No, not my name at all,” she told him, holding her head the least bit
higher. “My school name is Stella, because it is the Latin for Star. I
was called Yellow Star before that, because it is the English of my own
name.”
“And that is?”
“I do think you could not pronounce it, but I will say it very slowly.
Wee-chah´-pee-zee´-wee—like that. No, the second syllable is rough—in the
throat—so!”
“Aspirate,” suggested Miss Morrison; and each in turn tried to pronounce
the queer name, with varying success.
“I chose that name for myself when I was four years old,” Stella went on,
quite seriously. “I was looking up through the teepee door at the bright
yellow stars overhead. I did not like the name the old women gave me; it
is a sad name; Ish-na´-nee-un´-lah—The-One-who-was-left-Alive!”
Everybody was listening eagerly, for the brave little exile seldom spoke
of herself unless in answer to a direct question, and a curious sort of
dignity that she had about her forbade too close questioning. Now it
seemed that the unspoken comradeship of the hour had unloosed her tongue,
and something, too, of the softness and quiet pathos of the late November
afternoon had crept into her expressive voice.
She raised her eyes to the four sympathetic faces that were gazing
straight into her own, and the color rose under her clear, dark skin as
she asked:
“Shall I tell you how they came to give me that sad name?”
“Oh, do!” “Tell us, tell us!” chorused the girls; but Ethan sat a little
apart, and seemed absorbed in whittling a stick that he had picked up
under the great pine.
“You have all heard of the fight at Wounded Knee?” began Yellow Star.
“Perhaps you know how they fought—troops in uniform with big guns,
against women and children and men whose guns had been taken from them?”
(They nodded gravely.) “Well, it was three days after the fight that a
party went out from the agency, eighteen miles away, to bury the dead
Indians. The agency doctor went with them, and it was he who found
wrapped in blankets, in her dead mother’s arms, and lying partly covered
with snow—for there had been a snow-storm on the day before—a little
baby, alive and crying.
“They threw the mother’s body into the great pit with more than a hundred
others; but a kind woman of the camp took the baby home and fed and took
care of it. That baby was me!
“That is why I do not know who my father and mother were, or whether I
have a single relation in this world. There is no way to find out, for
nearly all my father’s band were killed by the soldiers on that day, and
there were many babies who died, and no one knows who I am. And that is
why the old women called me The-One-who-was-left-Alive!”
That was all. A very simple little story, very quietly told; but somehow
no one who heard it had much to say. With one accord they all got up from
the mossy log and set out for home. Presently they began to talk again
about other things, and even to laugh as lightly as before. Just as they
parted, Ethan slipped into Yellow Star’s hand the thing he had shaped
with his knife from a splinter of pine while she told her story. It was a
little, five-pointed star.