THE RIGHT STUFF
When September came round, Stella entered the old academy with Doris and
Cynthia and the rest, and found a new and absorbing world opening before
her. Laurel academy was an endowed school, and a really good one, with
better-paid teachers and more up-to-date equipment than the little town
could have provided out of its own slender resources.
Ethan had been duly graduated and was going away to college, where for
two or three momentous years the girls were seldom to see him, since he
was “working his way through,” and found it necessary to devote the long
vacations to more paying, though not half so pleasant things as doing
“chores” for kind old Uncle Si.
The girls had now fairly entered upon a period of life in which boys
cease to be “horrid things,” and girls are no longer considered “too
silly for anything,” and it soon became evident that, of the three
friends, Doris was by far the most mature socially. She was undoubtedly a
pretty girl, with big blue eyes, fascinating hair of an amber tint, and a
skin like a rose-leaf—a belle and a flirt in her demure, village fashion
long before her sixteenth birthday.
Cynthia, to her languid mother’s discontent, but her father’s secret
satisfaction, was at the same age a long-limbed, lanky, boyish-looking
girl, with decidedly boyish manners, and only the frankest and least
flattering interest in the ruder sex. As for Stella, the country youths
admired her from a distance, while she, for her part, had no time for
them.
“I do despise long skirts; they get in your way so!” Sin complained, as
the three were scaling a friendly stone wall on a pleasant Saturday in
the following spring, taking their favorite “short cut” to Wolcott’s
Woods.
The others laughed. “You do act just like a boy in petticoats,” reproved
Doris. “You don’t seem to know how to manage them a bit. There—you’re
caught again!” as Cynthia sprang recklessly from the top of the wall, to
the accompaniment of a sharp sound of rending cloth.
“I don’t care!” Sin was bent on braving the matter out, and, to her
friends’ horror, she calmly tore off a long strip of blue serge and threw
it away. “Nonsense; I never mend. Daddy’ll give me a new skirt out of the
store any time I ask him. I hate clothes, and I hate sewing. I’m sure I
don’t know why I was born a girl.”
“What shall you wear to the dance?” asked Doris of Stella, as they
strolled lovingly side by side. Cynthia, her friends thought, was in a
mood that would best be ignored.
“My dotted swiss, I suppose; do you think it will do?”
“Mother is making me a new silk muslin—pale blue; and I’ve got a sash
to match and new slippers. It’s two inches longer than my last.” Doris’
voice was full of innocent satisfaction. “You look perfectly stunning in
white, Stella,” she added, generously. “And you’re the best dancer of
anybody in our set. Isn’t she, Sin?”
Mrs. Waring had insisted upon giving Stella two terms of dancing lessons,
with the others, much to her sister’s disgust; and here the native grace
of the Indian girl stood her in good stead. It must be admitted that,
if she did not particularly care for boys, she did love dancing; it was
almost like flying, she thought.
“Um, h’m,” assented Sin, who was born without a sense of rhythm, and
never seemed to know what to do with her arms and legs. “I don’t see what
either of you want to dance for, though; I hate it, myself. Catch me
going to their old party! Give me a warm corner and an interesting story,
when it’s too dark to go out. Scotty! Come here at once—here, sir!”
But, as usual, the obstreperous Sir Walter declined to budge, and his
mistress found it necessary to follow up and forcibly detach him from a
promising burrow.
“What a tom-boy she is! I don’t believe Sin will _ever_ grow up,” Doris
lamented. “Are you looking for anything in particular to-day, Jibby,
dear?”
“Trailing arbutus for Miss Sophia. I believe she’d rather have it than
anything; and you know that little warm nook in the pines, south of our
House in the Woods? It _ought_ to be out, just there,” answered Yellow
Star, eagerly, looking as if she would coax the pale buds open with the
warm shining of her dusky face.
“Too early; and besides, I don’t see why you’re always wanting to do
something special for that cross old maid, Jibby,” objected Sin, who had
come back within ear-shot. “_She_ never does anything for _you_, does
she? I’m going to get some flowers for Doris’ mother, if there are any.
Her cookies are awfully good.”
“I shall take mine to Miss Morrison,” observed Doris. “But I’ve got to go
round by Uncle Si’s first; mother said he wasn’t feeling very well the
last she heard, and she told me to be sure and stop. Will you come too,
girls, or would you rather go on?”
“I will come,” agreed Stella, at once.
“I won’t, then,” remarked Sin, who was unusually contrary to-day, the
others thought. “I can’t bear sick people, and he may be awfully sick for
all we know! And then, you never can tell what Uncle Si is going to say
next.”
It was quite true. You never could tell; and his first words to-day made
both girls jump, coming unexpectedly, as they did, in Uncle’s small,
squeaky voice, through the open window of the “kitchen chamber,” where he
always slept.
“Look out for the bull, gals! Dunno ’zactly where he is, but he’s certain
on the rampage, ’n’ _I_ can’t do a thing. Been under the weather these
two days. No, no breakfast, nor supper neither; didn’t want it bad
enough to git up ’n’ git it. What’s that, Doris? Wa’al, the door ain’t
locked, if ye _will_ come in.”
In five minutes Stella had a brisk fire going in the kitchen stove, and
in ten more the tea-kettle was singing cheerily, toast made, tea put to
draw, and two fresh eggs from the hay-mow “coddled” to perfection. She
had been well trained in waiting upon a fussy would-be invalid.
Doris had found her uncle lying, fully dressed, upon the bed, covered
with a gay patchwork quilt, and looking worried and feverish. She
succeeded in arranging his pillows and putting the room to rights before
the arrival of the tray; and while Stella deftly helped the old man to
take some nourishment, Doris prudently closed both doors and telephoned
to her mother.
“There! she’ll see that he’s taken care of properly, if he _is_ ‘queer
as Dick’s hat-band,’ as Grandma says,” observed his niece. “She’s always
saying that ‘for a man to live alone as he does and cook his own vittles
is flyin’ in the face of Providence,’ and she ‘hasn’t no manner of doubt
that Silas’ll be found dead in his bed, some fine morning.’ Well, I hope
not, I’m sure! Now we must go right away and find Cynthia; no telling
what mischief _she’s_ up to, by this time.”
“Or the bull, either,” thought Yellow Star; but she said nothing, for she
knew her friend’s weakness. In the excitement of taking care of Uncle
Si, his niece had forgotten all about the bull. If not, Stella knew well
that poor Cynthia would be left to her fate, so far as timid Doris was
concerned. Why, even the most harmless cow that ever lowed would send her
flying from the huckleberry pasture, and folks said the Wolcott bull was
dangerous.
So only one of the girls kept a sharp lookout as they passed the open
barn-yard gate and crossed the pasture toward Wolcott’s Woods. On its
distant verge, a fleck of scarlet showed plainly—Cynthia’s old red cape.
And—yes! A lumbering, dark shape had already started leisurely in pursuit
of the scarlet fleck.
Stella saw the bull first, and walked on faster. Then Doris saw, grew
white as a sheet and instantly turned to run, oblivious of the fact that
Taurus had his back toward them, and his eye too evidently upon Cynthia.
“Help! help!” she screamed, as she fled; but there was neither house nor
man within half a mile.
Stella resolutely advanced, keeping close to the wire fence that
separated the big pasture from their much-loved woods. Cynthia had
discovered her danger and was running gallantly, but had not thought to
drop her red cape. And she had been caught in the open field, far from
fence or tree. Sir Walter had left her side, and was barking hoarsely
and making little ineffectual dashes at the bull, that, together with
her headlong flight, merely served to provoke his curiosity into wrath.
Giving a terrifying bellow, he set off at full speed.
Yellow Star had seen much of wild Texas cattle at the agency, where
they are issued to the Indians “on the hoof,” as a monthly ration.
Furthermore, Sir Walter had long since learned to obey the girl from
Dakota as he never dreamed of obeying his impetuous little mistress.
Her flute-like whistle was enough to bring him galloping to her side.
Cynthia, too, turned half-way toward her at the sound, stumbled and fell
at full length.
The bull was still plunging heavily along, and Stella, who had hoped to
draw him off in her direction and then slip through the wire fence out of
reach, found scant time for any such maneuver. Desperately she sent Sir
Walter flying back to bark and snap at his heels, while she herself stood
still and uttered a long ringing cry.
He stumbled, half turned—and hark! the strange, challenging cry was
repeated again and again, until it actually brought him to a halt but a
few paces from poor Sin, who had struggled to her feet and was sobbing
aloud as she tried to run with a twisted ankle. And now the bewildered
animal stood pawing the sod and bellowing in hoarse response, until both
girls had reached a place of safety.
* * * * *
“Well, that _was_ a close call, and no mistake!” Cynthia had quite
recovered her spirits in the course of an hour or so, and was obviously
enjoying her own importance as the heroine of so rare an adventure, while
she nursed her sprained ankle on the shabby cushions of Doctor Brown’s
top-buggy. Poor Doris, still pale and tearful, was squeezed in between
Cynthia and the Doctor, while Mrs. Brown remained in temporary charge of
her protesting brother, and Stella, who had insisted upon walking, was
already far ahead.
The gruff Doctor assented, with an appraising eye, meanwhile, upon the
solitary girlish figure moving so rapidly before them, along the hilly
country road. The Doctor was not a man of unnecessary words; but if he
had spoken out his thought just then, it would have sounded something
like this:
“There’s the right stuff in that girl—no question about it! I wonder—”