GLIMPSES OF OLD AMERICA
When Uncle Si, getting “so’s to be ’round” again, heard all about Stella
and the Wolcott bull, the immediate results were two.
First, the bull was promptly sold—a surprising occurrence to those who
best knew Silas Wolcott and his deep-rooted objection to disposing of any
“critter” whatsoever that had been raised on the home place. No fowl was
too old or too tough for home consumption, and indeed Uncle had developed
no mean skill in softening gallinaceous tissues and imparting a delicious
flavor by braising for twelve hours or thereabouts, with peppercorns and
sweet herbs, in an old-fashioned bean-pot. But superfluous calves and
superannuated horses were said to owe their immunity from sale to the
fact that they had been “born on the old farm,” a fact which to his mind
appeared to constitute a lifelong claim upon its hospitality.
Consequence number two, our heroine was actually adopted, to the extent
of being formally requested to call the old man “Uncle,” which she shyly
but joyfully proceeded to do. It was one more milestone on her long and
often lonely road to “some really true relations.”
Now among the strictly home-bred stock on the Wolcott acres was a small
herd of deer, as jealously guarded and almost as tame as if they had
adorned the stately park of some English earl. Stella heard with intense,
though undemonstrative, interest of this unexpected renaissance of wild
life among the New England hills.
“Why, Mother Waring,” she confided, “you know they’re almost gone from
our Dakota prairies, where there used to be so many. Think how hard it is
for the women to get any deerskin for moccasins! And how _can_ there be
deer here where white people have lived for hundreds of years?”
“There weren’t any when I was a little girl,” Mrs. Waring observed. “I
believe they have come back because for many years now they have been
protected; that means, you know, that nobody is allowed to kill them.
Seems to me I’ve heard that there are supposed to be several thousand in
this State; and now a law has been passed that for one week this fall
they may be shot,” she added, doubtfully.
“Uncle Si won’t have his shot,” insisted Stella. “He has printed signs
up all over his woods, with something about ‘the penalty of the law.’
Mother, I do so want to see a deer! and he says there are three that
come to drink at the Cold Spring almost every evening. We’ve seen their
tracks—a buck, a doe, and a dear little fawn,” the sweet voice pleaded.
“But we always have to come home early so’s to be in time for tea.”
“So you do, darling,” assented her foster-mother, her gentle, puzzled
gaze upon Stella’s earnest face. She knew by instinct that the child had
a special favor to ask—she who had always found it hard to ask favors.
Out it came at last. “Cynthia is just as wild about the deer as I am;
and—and—Mother dear—Uncle Si says we can come some Saturday and he’ll
show them to us if we can keep quiet enough; and Dr. Brown has promised
to drive us out there and back—Doris too, though Doris is a teeny bit
afraid of the old buck’s horns—if you’re willing, and don’t mind my
being out after dark just this once.” She was quite breathless, now.
“Why, yes, I think so—if the Doctor is kind enough to take charge of
you—” Mrs. Waring got no further, for the sentence was interrupted at
this point with a strangling hug.
After Stella had actually seen the deer, which happened before many
weeks, the four friends had an earnest discussion upon the subject of the
coming week of slaughter.
Ethan had lately become quite an adept with bow and arrows, which
suggested to him the bright idea of going into the merry greenwood with
the romantic equipment of a Robin Hood or a Hiawatha. He rather looked
for the admiration of the girls, and especially of Yellow Star, and had
even gone so far as to picture himself triumphantly bringing in the
deer on his shoulders, and gallantly throwing it down at Mrs. Waring’s
kitchen door. Rather to the boy’s resentment, however, she proved most
unsympathetic.
“How can you think of such a thing?” she protested, “and after we have
all watched the darling things drinking out of Uncle’s spring! I don’t
call it hunting to go out and kill them when they are so tame, almost
like pets.”
“I hope you don’t think I propose to shoot on posted land,” remarked
Ethan With some dignity. “I know just where I shall go; on the south
side of the mountain there’s a regular deer path; and it isn’t like
gunning, let me tell you, with the buckshot scattering every which way;
and beside, the farmers down that way are glad enough to have the deer
killed—they do no end of damage to the young fruit trees.”
“I should say so; why, those very deer that Uncle Si thinks so much of
got into the garden one night, and ruined all his early peas,” chimed in
sensible Doris. “If it had been his next-door neighbor’s calves, wouldn’t
there have been a row, or even a lawsuit, may be.”
“Well, rather,” observed Ethan, glad of a champion. “That’s just why the
law was passed providing for one week’s open season; the deer are getting
to be regular nuisances all over this part of the state. Pretty soon
the farmers will have to build high fences to keep them off the growing
crops.”
“It’s letting them think no one is going to hunt them, till they forget
to be afraid, and then turning an army of men and boys loose on the
poor things all of a sudden, that _I_ don’t like,” broke in Cynthia
impulsively. “It’s all very well talking about the law, but what do the
deer know about your old law? It isn’t fair, and I hate anything that’s
not fair.”
“And it has seemed so like home, ever since I knew for certain there were
Wild deer in these woods,” breathed Stella. “Girls, I keep fancying we’ll
come upon some wigwams, some time, of those old Indians who lived here
two hundred years ago. I suppose there aren’t any bounties offered for
their scalps nowadays; and just suppose _they_ should come back, like the
deer!”
The young folks were picnicking, as usual, in the edge of that bit of
first-growth pine that Uncle was so proud of, and at Stella’s words
all glanced furtively about, as if half expecting to glimpse a ragged
birch-bark dwelling, or even one of the soft-footed braves revisiting his
native haunts in these venerable woods. After all, it was they who were
the intruders. Ethan looked decidedly shaken, but matter-of-fact Doris
remarked bluntly:
“If they did come back, they wouldn’t kill the deer for one week, but
every day in the year. I thought Indians were always hunting, when they
weren’t on the war-path killing people; and _you_ needn’t say anything,
Stella Waring, so there!”
However, when the open season actually came round with November, Ethan
decided that he was “too busy” to take a day off in the woods, which
Stella’s fancy had peopled for him with stealthy shadows, and friendly
wreaths of blue smoke from well-hidden wigwams. It was Thanksgiving
before they all met again at Uncle Si’s place, and found him “as mad as a
hatter.”
“Spent more’n half o’ that week patrolin’ the woods with a shotgun, and
givin’ fools that couldn’t read plain English a piece o’ my mind,” he
explained, grimly. “Howsomever, the blamed racket scared my deer so’t
I’ve never seen ’em since, and most likely I sha’n’t agin.”
“What a shame!” cried Sin, and poor Stella looked too much distressed
to speak. She had tried not to think of the timid creatures harried and
wounded, of antlered heads laid low, of the blood-drops on the leaves.
“Have you ever noticed this big rock in the middle of the
pasture?—noticed it very specially, I mean,” she suggested, as they made
their way around the giant boulder, towering high above their heads like
a rude altar. “I always think, what if it was right here the Indians
used to make their prayers and offerings! Great-grandfather Inyan—that’s
what we Dakotas call a rock like that. And there must have been
water-spirits—what you call fairies—about uncle’s ever-flowing spring.
Oh, Cynthia and Doris! I should think you girls would care more about the
_old_ America. You’re proud of being Americans; and there may be prettier
stories belonging to these very hills than those we read in school about
the Roman nymphs and the old Norse thunder-gods.”
“But where would we find them?” asked Doris, much impressed.
“Try the Historical Society,” Ethan suggested.
“I’m going straight to the library,” proclaimed Cynthia, “and next time
we come for a day in the woods, we’ll each of us tell an ‘Old America’
story. What do you say, girls?”
* * * * *
An hour later, they had scattered in search of princess-pine and
Christmas ferns, squaw-berries and moss, and Stella, at some little
distance from the others, was carefully lifting a clump of hepaticas
for Miss Sophia’s fernery, when she suddenly thought she heard a faint,
whimpering noise.
The blood fairly crinkled in her veins. Dropping basket and trowel,
she set herself to follow up the cry which came again and yet again,
a plaintive, muffled, half-human sound that was almost like a baby’s
smothered wail. At last her quick eye detected a misplaced leaf. The
faint trail led straight to a dense thicket of laurel where a small
creature lay motionless, so near the color of the dead leaves in which it
nestled that to most eyes it would have been invisible.
With one quick spring she was upon it, and had flung both arms around the
neck of a half-grown fawn, which had been wounded in the side, and was
too weak to struggle much. Then she raised her voice in a loud cry.
“Ethan! Cynthia! Oh, E—E—than!”
* * * * *
“It’s Stella’s fawn, now,” piped Uncle Si Wolcott. They were all in the
big farmhouse kitchen; Stella on the floor with the fawn’s head on her
lap, and a saucer of milk beside her; Cynthia swinging her long limbs
from her favorite perch on the edge of the table, and the others standing
around in admiring attitudes. “Doctor Ethan” had carefully washed the
wound, and pronounced it not serious.
“Th’ game warden’s a pretty good friend o’ mine,” he went on, with a
twinkle, “and I don’t guess there’ll be any trouble about her keepin’ it
for a pet if she wants to.”
The three girls exploded in a simultaneous “Oh!” of delight, but next
instant a look of almost laughable bewilderment overspread their faces.
The same thought had occurred to them all at the same time. Miss Sophia!
“_Do_ you suppose she’ll let you?” queried Sin in awestruck tones, while
the others held their breath. No one but Cynthia would dare to say things
right out like that.
“You might have a little house for him, down by the chicken-coop,”
quavered Doris.
Stella was thinking hard. No one knew how she wanted the waif for her
own; and she felt sure that dear Mother Waring would not—could not refuse
her. The question was, did Stella want her to pay the price?
They were all waiting for her to speak, and at last her clear voice broke
the silence.
“The fawn is something like me,” it began, pitifully. “You see, don’t
you? It’s wild; it hasn’t any relations. I know just how a wild
orphan feels, and I’m afraid it wouldn’t want to live in Miss Sophia’s
chicken-coop and have her all the time wishing it wasn’t there. Uncle
Si, if you would only be willing to let the fawn stay in the barn-yard
with the calves, and if I could just _call_ it mine, and come and feed it
sometimes?”
There was a soft brightness in the black eyes, as if tears were not far
off, and everybody began talking at once, trying to drown the thought of
the two “wild orphans” clinging together, and the utter hopelessness of
an appeal to Miss Sophia.
“Think the critter’d be most as unpop’lar as Ethan’s rattlesnakes, hey?”
chuckled Uncle Si.
“_What?_” screamed Doris and Cynthia, together, and the boy blushed to
the roots of his hair.
“Well, you know, that was a long time ago,” he muttered, but Uncle
mercilessly continued:
“Said they wa’n’t dangerous at all, _if ye knew how to handle ’em_—pick
’em up by the scruff o’ the neck, like blind kittens; wa’n’t that it,
Ethan? Studied a heap on the subjick, he had. ‘Uncle,’ says he, ‘they
don’t need to eat a thing fer six months to a year;’ an’ I says, ‘There
orter be a good bit o’ profit in boarding ’em,’ says I. But Ethan, he
says as how he can get five dollars apiece from a _mu_seum; and he has a
pair o’ boots made to come up to his waist, pretty nigh; an’ he tramps
over to Rattlesnake Gulch one mornin’ afore daylight, so as to ketch ’em
crawlin’ out o’ their holes, most likely.”
Every eye was fixed upon the speaker, except that of his victim, who
wriggled uneasily and vainly tried to break into the conversation.
“Ethan allers did go in fer makin’ money, ye know,” pursued Uncle,
enjoying his success. “Wouldn’t take along any whisky fer bites, though
I offered him all I had left, sayin’ as how it was a wuss pizen than
the snake’s an’ not accordin’ to modern methods. Wal, along about dark
Ethan comes back pretty well tuckered out, carryin’ a gunny-sack over his
shoulder on the end of a stick. Didn’t need to tell me there was a live
rattler in that there gunny-sack! I could hear his tail a-goin’ like an
alarm-clock, an’ every now an’ then he’d strike out kinder vicious an’
set the thing to wavin’ back an’ forth.”
“How did you ever get him into the sack, Ethan?” begged Cynthia, much
excited. Doris shuddered, and hid her face in her hands, while Stella
sat quite silent, with the fawn’s head in her arms.
“Mischief of it was to git him out agin,” remarked Uncle. “Ef Ethan ever
got that five dollars, I will say he arned it. Just tell ’em what your
aunt by marriage said when she stumbled over that gunny-sack in the
woodshed an’ found out what was in it, Ethan.” But Ethan had slipped out
to the barn, and was fixing up an unused box-stall for Stella’s fawn.
“Gone, is he? Wal, all I can say is, Miss Sophia Russell ain’t a
circumstance to Mis’ Honey on that occasion. Don’t know as I blame her,
neither. That pet o’ yourn’ll be safe enough with your old uncle, Stella,
an’ you’ll be out to tend to it every Sat’day, or I’ll know the reason
why.”