GRANNY LUKE’S COURAGE.
BY M. E. W. S.
“COME, Tim, hurry up and be courageous.”
Tim didn’t hurry up, nor was he in a hurry to be courageous.
“Can’t you shoot the creature?”
“No, grandma, I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Well, grandma, I’m afraid of hurting it,” said Tim.
“But that’s what shooting was meant for!” said Granny Luke, indignant at the weak-minded grandson.
“You shoot it, grandma!”
“I don’t know how to shoot—and, well—I am afraid of a gun, because I am a woman!” said Mrs. Luke, who was known in all the mining region as “Granny Luke”—more because she called herself so, than because anybody else gave her that title.
She was an “old country” woman who, having lost her children, was left with a number of young grandchildren to bring up. Fate had wafted her to the lead mines in Iowa, down by one of which she had settled in a log cabin, and had picked up a living by boarding the miners, attending to them in sickness, and by sending her eldest, Tim, down the shaft with the miners’ dinners. A lead mine is worked far under ground, from a shaft which is sunk like a bucket in a well. Tim was not afraid to go down this bucket, nor to crawl on his hands and knees far into Yorkshire Tom’s lead, with a tallow candle in his cap, to carry the miner his dinner; nor did he dread an occasional rattlesnake, who, coiled at the mouth of the cave, would often ring his deadly rattle at the boy. No, Tim was inured to danger, and he knew how to give the rattlesnake a good tap over his ugly head with a stick, and silence his hiss forever; and he knew how to measure and guard against the equally poisonous air, in some parts of the mine, by the uncertain flame of his candle.
But he could not “shoot the creature.” Love made him a coward.
For the “creature” was a beautiful fawn, the loveliest, soft eyed, tender pet that ever lived, whom Tim had trained and fed and educated, and brought in from the prairie when the fawn was a baby. Some hunters had shot the pretty doe, the fawn’s mother, and Tim had educated the orphan.
Granny Luke had a little garden where she raised with her own hands a few vegetables, highly prized by the miners. The fawn had shown a great appreciation of early cabbage sprouts, green peas, beet tops and other succulent green things. No bars could keep him out, and no ropes could tie this gentle robber. He would jump over everything, and he nibbled so neatly and judiciously that Granny Luke’s garden had been ruined several times, and now her really long-suffering patience was at an end.
“No early peas and no late peas, no corn, no squash, no lettuce, no anything,” said Granny, in despair. “The creature shall be shot.”
TIM’S COURAGE FAILS.
She loved Primrose, too—as Tim had named the pretty fawn, whom he found deserted, lying on a bed of those yellow flowers which grow in tufts on the prairie. Primrose had tears in his big eyes, and was crying for his mother just like a human baby, when Tim found him and brought him home in his arms. Granny Luke had fed him with warm milk then, and had tended him as carefully as she did Tim, at a similar tender age; but those days were past, and Primrose was growing every day to be a buck of promise; and although he was tame enough to them, his moral nature could not be cultivated to know that while it was proper to eat green boughs and the coarse grass of the prairie, it was a sin to eat the fine things behind the fence.
Granny Luke gardened like a German woman, and sowed her water-cresses and spinach every day, hoping for continuous crops. But Primrose allowed them to nearly reach perfection, and then down they went, under his even, strong, white teeth.
If Granny Luke threw a stone at him he would give her one tender, loving look out of his beautiful eyes, and run away over the prairie for fifty miles, perhaps, glad of the exercise; always back, however, to greet Tim, when he crawled up out of the well-like bucket and from the cold, dark mine into the sun, and ready to offer him the warm friendship of his own well-furred neck, as the poor boy threw an arm around his four-footed friend, and the twain sat down, to an out door supper.
And now his grandma wished him to shoot this intimate, dear, beautiful friend!
No wonder that Tim’s courage failed.
“I have invited the General to a venison dinner day after to-morrow,” said Granny Luke; “and Primrose must be shot. I shall roast his saddle.”
Poor Tim shuddered. Granny Luke’s sensibilities had been blunted by time, and hard work and poverty. She had been doing very well in her affairs—thanks to the friendship of the General Superintendent of the mines, an old-country friend of her’s; and as he appreciated her excellent cooking, and fresh vegetables, she occasionally gave him and his fellow officers a good dinner. Primrose was to be offered up to two passions—revenge and avarice—for as he ate her spinach, he must therefore be eaten.
The group was standing outside the cabin door, Tim leaning irresolutely on his gun; Granny Luke, her arms akimbo, looking at him; and Primrose, as beautiful as only a fawn can be, was calmly nibbling the lower branches of a tree. Animals are better off than we are; they never suffer from anxiety. So Primrose had no possible idea that those branches might be the last which he would ever munch. He looked up at Mrs. Luke and her grandson and gave a friendly “neigh!”
This upset Tim, and he burst out a-crying: “I can’t shoot him! Granny—and I won’t!”
There came round the corner of the house a slow, massive tread. It was Yorkshire Tom, with his pick-axe on his shoulder.
“What’s all this! what’s all this!” said the man, catching Mrs. Luke’s arm as it was descending on Tim’s back.
“The boy is disobedient, and refuses to shoot Primrose,” said the stern old woman.
Yorkshire Tom was a patient man, and he staid a half hour to listen to the ins and outs of this curious case. He liked Tim and had felt his heart warm many a time as the little pale fellow, with the candle in his cap, came creeping through the dark alleys bringing him a dinner, and staying to chat awhile of the bright upper earth.
“Now, Dame, thee’s a little hard on the young un! ain’t thee!” said Tom, in broad Yorkshire brogue. “Come lad, take the beast, and come along o’ me. I’ll shoot him for thee.”
So Tim, with his arm around the neck of dear Primrose, walked off to Yorkshire Tom’s, far out of sight and hearing of Granny Luke.
It was ten o’clock, of a moonlight night, when Tim came wearily home, with a saddle of venison on his back. Although he was weary, he looked bright, and his cheeks very red—perhaps from the exercise.
“A large, plump saddle!” said his grandmother, “I had no idea Primrose was so fat—that comes from eating my spinach! A nice roast this for the General—why, boy, you look feverish. I must give you some peppermint tea! So Yorkshire Tom did it, did he? Well, Tim, you tell him to keep the rest of the meat to pay himself for the trouble—all but two steaks from the hind leg, remember.”
“Yes, Granny; I’ll remember,” said Tim, whose eyes were sparkling.
That was a good dinner that Granny Luke cooked for the General. The saddle was done to a turn, and she had some wild currant jelly, some fried potatoes, and a few vegetables which Primrose had not eaten. As she waited on the gentlemen, she enjoyed hearing them commend her cooking, and did not hesitate to utter a few words of praise over her departed Primrose! We often think of virtues in our friends after they have gone, which did not occur to us while they were living.
Alas, for human constancy! Tim ate a large plateful of roast Primrose; and what was more, he liked him.
“Well! I was right,” said his grandma; “he has forgotten all about his lost pet, and I am glad I have had Primrose shot!”
But Granny Luke missed the fawn more and more, and she saw her spinach and water-cresses and lettuces grow unmolested without that supreme pleasure which she had thought would be hers! Her days were lonely, as her grandchildren left her for their tasks, and no Primrose came to give her trouble.
She awoke one day feeling rather unwell, and as she was tying her cap over her gray hairs, which were her crown of glory, she saw a little black snake wiggling its way through the logs of her cabin.
It frightened her; not because she cared for the little snake, but because the miners believe it an evil omen if a snake crawls into a house. She was superstitious, the poor old ignorant woman; and although she had plenty of courage in every other way, she was afraid of a “bad sign.”
However, she drove the snake away, and went about her household tasks. Tim was sent off with the miners’ breakfast—her other grandchildren were fed and sent out to pick out the shining bits of metal from a heap of stones, and the strong old woman bent over a wash-tub to do her week’s washing. She had got about half through when she, fairly tired, let the soap fall, rubbed her arms dry, and thought she would look at her spinach and see how it was growing.
“Oh! gracious goodness!” what did she see?
Who was there nibbling the spinach, eating off the young water cresses, and taking an occasional shy glance at the beet tops, and shaking his pretty furry ears? Who but Primrose!
“I knew it! I knew it!” said Granny Luke. “I knew when I saw that black snake that I was going to have bad luck! That is an evil spirit—and he has come after me! Oh, hou! ough! hou! Tim!”
Granny Luke’s courage was all gone. Primrose was dead—and she had eaten him; yes, two steaks out of his hind legs. But there he was, with little horns growing out of his forehead!
But Primrose—for it was he, and no other—hearing her familiar voice, had leaped the paling and ran to lick the kind hand that had fed his infant deership.
GRANNY LUKE LOSES HER COURAGE.
This was too much, and Granny Luke fainted dead away; and when Tim came home he found her on the ground in front of the cabin, and Primrose was licking her forehead with his cool, rough tongue.
“You see, grandma,” said he, in explanation, “Yorkshire Tom goes a-hunting sometimes, and he had just shot a fine buck when you wanted me to shoot Primrose. So he took us both over to his cabin and we tied Primrose up, and he sent you some venison from his buck, and he kept Primrose at his house. I went over to see him every day; and Yorkshire Tom said it was not wicked, so that I didn’t have to tell a lie; and you never asked me anything about Primrose, and so I didn’t have to say anything. And we meant to keep him always tied up, and he has got away to-day and I’m sorry, grandma; but I hope you won’t make me shoot him now, because he’s so big; and all I’m afraid of is that somebody else will shoot him—”
And Tim skipped off as lightly as Primrose himself to caress and fondle the creature who was now no longer a fawn.
It took Granny Luke some time to believe that Primrose was not a spirit! He had to eat a whole crop of lettuces before she believed in him, but she was secretly so glad to see him that she forgave Tim, and only asked of Yorkshire Tom that he would build a more secure paling for Mr. Primrose, and also to make her a higher fence for her vegetables; all of which he did, and she forgave him, particularly as he sent her another saddle of venison, and “two steaks from the hind leg,” of another deer which he had shot, assuring her that Primrose was still too young to make good venison.