BERRYING
The next morning Amanda helped her mother with the Saturday baking
while Millie and Uncle Amos tended market.
"This hot weather the pies get soft till Sunday if we bake them a'ready
on Friday," Mrs. Reist said to Millie, "so Amanda and I can do the
bakin' while you go to market. I guess we'll have a lot of company
again this Sunday, with church near here."
"All right, let 'em come," said the hired girl composedly. "I don't
care if you don't. It's a good thing we all like company pretty good,
for I think sometimes people take this place for a regular boarding-
house, the way they drop in at any time, just as like when we're ready
to set down for a meal as at any other hour. Philip said last week,
when that Sallie Snyder dropped in just at dinner, that he's goin' to
paint a sign, 'Mad Dog,' and hang it on the gate. But I think we might
as well put one up, 'Meals served at all hours,' but ach, that's
Lancaster County for you!"
Mrs. Reist liked to do her baking early in the day. So it happened that
when Martin Landis stopped in to see Amanda before he went to his work
in the city he saw on the kitchen table a long row of pies ready for
the oven and Amanda deftly rolling the edge of another.
"Whew!" he whistled. "Mrs. Reist, is that your work or Amanda's so
early in the morning?"
"Amanda's! My granny used to say still that no girl was ready to get
married till she could roll out a thin pie dough. I guess my girl is
almost ready, for she got hers nice and thin this morning. Ach," she
thought in dismay as she saw the girl's face flush, "now why did I say
that? I didn't think how it would sound. But Amanda needn't mind
Martin!"
Merry little twinkles played around Martin's gray eyes as he answered,
"I see. Looks as if Amanda's ready for a husband--if she's going to
feed him on pies!"
"On pies--Martin Landis!" scorned the girl. "I'd have a dyspeptic on my
hands after a few days of pie diet."
"Well, you'd make a pretty good nurse, I believe."
"Nurse--not me! The only thing I know how to nurse is hurt birds and
lame bunnies and such things. You just lay them in a box and feed them,
and if they get well you clap your hands, and if they die you put some
leaves and flowers on them and bury them out in the woods--remember how
we used to do that?"
"Do I? I should say I do! The time we had the fence hackey that Lyman
Mertzheimer hurt with a stone--"
"Oh, and I nursed him and fed him, and when I let him go he bit my
finger! I remember that! I was so cross at him I cried."
"Wretch that he was," said Martin. "But if we begin talking about those
days I won't get to work. I stopped in to ask you to go berrying with
us this afternoon. I get out of the bank early. We can go up to the
woods back of the schoolhouse. The youngsters are anxious to go, and
Mother won't let them go alone, since that copperhead was killed near
here. I promised to take them, and we'd all like to have you come."
"I'd love to go. I'll be all ready. I haven't gone for blackberries all
season."
"That's true, we've been missing lots of fun." He looked at her as
though he were seeing her after a long absence. Somehow, he had missed
something worth while from his life during the time his head had been
turned by Isabel, and he had passed Amanda with a smile and a greeting
and had no hours of companionship with her. Why, he didn't remember
that her eyes were so bright, that her red hair waved so becomingly,
that--
"I'll bring a kettle," she said. "I'm going to pick till I fill it,
too, just as we did when we were youngsters."
"All right. We'll meet you at the schoolhouse."
The spur of mountains near Crow Hill was a favorite berrying range for
the people of that section of Lancaster County. In July and August
huckleberries, elders and blackberries grew there in fragrant
luxuriance.
When Amanda, in an old dress of cool green, a wide-brimmed hat on her
head, came in sight of the schoolhouse, she saw the Landis party
approaching it from the other direction. She swung her tin pail in
greeting.
"Oh, there's Amanda!" the children shouted and ran to meet her, tin
pails clanging and dust flying.
Martin, too, wore old clothes that would be none the worse for meeting
with briars or crushed berries. A wide straw hat perched on his head
made Amanda think, "He looks like a grown-up edition of Whittier's
Barefoot Boy."
"Here we are, all ready," said the leader, as they started off to the
crude rail fence. Martin would have helped Amanda over the fence, but
she ran from him, put up one foot, and was over it in a trice.
"Still a nimble-toes," he said, laughing. "Mary, can you do as well?"
"Pooh, yes! Who can't climb a fence?" The little girl was over it in a
minute. The smaller children lay flat on the ground and squirmed
through under the lower rail, while one of the boys climbed up,
balanced himself on the top rail, then leaped into the grass.
"I see some berries!" cried Katie, and began to pick them.
"We'll go in farther," said Martin. "The bushes near the road have been
almost stripped. Come on, keep on the path and watch out for snakes."
There was a well-defined, narrow trail through the timbered land.
Though the weeds had been trodden down along each side of it there were
dense portions where snakes might have found an ideal home. After a
long walk the little party was in the heart of the woods and blackberry
bushes, dark with clusters, waited for their hands. Berries soon
rattled in the tin pails, though at first many a handful was eaten and
lips were stained red by the sweet juice. They wandered from bush to
bush, picking busily, with many exclamations--"Oh, look what a big
bunch!" "My pail's almost full!" Little Katie and Charlie soon grew
tired of the picking and wandered around the path in search of
treasures. They found them--three pretty blue feathers, dropped, no
doubt, by some screaming blue jay, a handful of green acorns in their
little cups, a few pebbles that appealed to them, one lone, belated
anemone, blooming months after its season.
The pails were almost filled and the party was moving up the woods to
another patch of berries when little Mary turned to Amanda and said,
"Ach, Amanda, tell us that story about the Bear Charm Song."
"Yes, do!" seconded Charlie. "The one you told us once in school last
winter."
Amanda smiled, and as the little party walked along close together
through the woods, she began:
"Once the Indians lived where we are living now---"
"Oh, did they?" interrupted Charlie. "Real Indians, with bows and
arrows and all?"
"Yes, real Indians, bows and arrows and all! They owned all the land
before the white man came and drove them off. But now the Indians are
far away from here and they are different from the ones we read about
in the history books. The Indians now are more like the poor birds
people put in cages---" Her eyes gleamed and her face grew eloquent
with expression as she thought of the gross injustice meted out to some
of the red men in this land of the free.
"Go on, Manda, go on with the story," cried the children. Only Martin
had seen the look in her eyes, that mother-look of compassion.
"Very well, I'll go on."
"And, Charlie," said Mary, "you keep quiet now and don't break in when
Manda talks."
"Well," the story-teller resumed, "the Indians who lived out in the
woods, far from towns or cities, had to find all their own food. They
caught fish, shot animals and birds, planted corn and gathered berries.
Some of them they ate at once, but many of them they dried and stored
away for winter use. While the older Indians did harder work, the
little Indian children ran off to the woods and gathered the berries.
But one thing they had to look out for--bears! Great big bears lived in
the woods and they are very fond of sweet things. The bears would amble
along, peel great handfuls of ripe berries from the bushes with their
big clawed paws and eat them. So all good Indian mothers taught their
children a Bear Charm Song to sing as they gathered berries. Whenever
the bears heard the Bear Charm Song they went to some other part of the
woods and left the children to pick their berries unharmed. But once
there was a little Indian boy who wouldn't mind his mother. He went to
the woods one day to gather berries, but he wouldn't sing the Bear
Charm Song, not he! So he picked berries and picked berries, and all of
a sudden a great big bear stood by him. Then the little Indian boy, who
wouldn't mind his mother, began to sing the Bear Charm Song. But it was
too late. The great big bear put his big paws around the little boy and
squeezed him, squeezed him, tighter and tighter and tighter--till the
little boy who wouldn't mind his mother was changed into a tiny black
bat. Then he flew back to his mother, but she didn't know him, and so
she chased him and said, 'Go away! Little black bird of the night, go
away!' And that is where the bats first came from."
"Ain't that a good story?" said Charlie as Amanda ended. "Tell us
another."
"Not now. Perhaps after a while," she promised. "Here's another patch
of berries. Shall we pick here?"
"Yes, fill the pails," said Martin, "then we'll be ready for the next
number on the program. It seems Amanda's the committee of one to
entertain us."
But the next number on the program was furnished by an unexpected
participant. The berrying party was busy picking when a crash was heard
as if some heavy body were running wild through the leaves and sticks
of the woods near by.
"Oh," cried Charlie, "I bet that's a bear! Manda, sing a Bear Charm
Song!"
"Oh," echoed Katie in alarm, and ran to the side of Amanda, while
Martin lifted his head and stood, alert, looking into the woods in the
direction of the noise. The crashing drew nearer, and then the figure
of a man came running wildly through the bushes, waving his hands
frantically in the air, then pressing them to his face.
"It's Lyman Mertzheimer!" Amanda exclaimed.
"With hornets after him," added Martin.
The children, reassured, ran to the newcomer.
It was Lyman Mertzheimer, his face distorted and swollen, his necktie
streaming from one shoulder, where he had torn it in a mad effort to
beat off the angry hornets whose nest he had disturbed out of sheer joy
in the destruction and an audacious idea that no insect could scare him
away or worst him in a fight. He had underestimated the fiery temper of
the hornets and their concentrated and persistent methods of defending
their home. After he had run wildly through the woods for fifteen
minutes and struck out repeatedly the insects left him, just as he
reached the berrying party. But the hornets had wreaked their anger
upon him; face, hands and neck bore evidence of the battle they had
waged.
"First time hornets got me!" he said crossly as he neared the little
party. "Oh, you needn't laugh!" he cried in angry tones as Charlie
snickered.
"But you look funny--all blotchy."
The stung man allowed his anger to burst out in oaths. "Guess you think
it's funny, too," he said to Amanda.
"No. I'm sure it hurts," she said, though she knew he deserved no pity
from her.
"We all know that it hurts," said Martin. But there was scant sympathy
in his voice.
"Smear mud on," suggested Mary. "Once I got stung by a bumblebee when
he went in a hollyhock and I held the flower shut so he couldn't get
out, and he stung me through the flower. Mom put mud on and it helped."
"Mud!" stormed Lyman, stepping about in the bush and twisting his head
in pain. "There isn't any mud in Lancaster County now. The whole place
is dry as punk!"
"If you had some of the mud you slung at me recently it would come in
handy now," Martin could not refrain from saying.
Another oath greeted his words. Then the stung young man started off
down the road to find relief from his smarts, ignoring the fling.
"Well," said Amanda, "well, of all things! For him to tackle a hornets'
nest! Just for the fun of it!"
"But he got his come-uppance for once! Got it from the hornets," said
Martin. "Serves him right."
"But that hurts," said Mary sympathetically. "Hornets hurt awful bad!"
"Yes," said Martin as they turned homeward. "But he's getting paid for
all the mean tricks he's played on other people."
"Mebbe God made the hornets sting him if he's a bad man," said Charlie.
"We all get what we give out," agreed Martin. "Lyman Mertzheimer will
feel those hornet stings for a few days. While I've always been taught
not to rejoice at the misfortunes of others I'm not sorry I saw him.
I'll call our account square now. You pitied him, didn't you?" he asked
Amanda suddenly. "I saw it in your eyes. So did Mary and Katie."
"Of course I pitied him," she confessed. "I'd feel sorry for anything
or anybody who suffers. I know it serves him right, that he's earned
worse than that, and yet I would have relieved him if I could have done
so. Nature meant that we should be decent, I suppose."
The man was thoughtful for a moment. "Yes, I suppose so. It is a
woman's nature."
"Would you have us different?"
"No--no--we wouldn't have you different. Many of the best men would be
mere brutes if women's pity and tenderness and forgiveness were taken
out of their lives--we wouldn't have you different."