The long, lank, overgrown son of the burly blacksmith flushed to the roots of his hair, but he managed to uncurl his ungainly length from the much-carved desk that was too small for him, and say stutteringly: “Yes’m, Miss Bayley. Seems like ’tis to me. I should say ’twas fair enough.”
“Do any of you, except Jessica Archer, object to being regraded according to your ability to read?” There was no dissenting voice, and so the first book was handed to Dixie Martin, who, with an amused smile, read the tiny story that told the adventures of a pussy-cat. When the book had been passed from pupil to pupil, it was found that even those simple words had been too difficult for the two little children of Mr. Archer’s Mexican overseer, and so Franciscito and Mercedes were classed as “first readers.”
The six-year-old twins of the trapper, Sage Brush Mullet, poor, forlorn little Maggie and Millie, stopped at the second.
Jessica Archer did well enough in the third, but could not read many of the words in the new fourth, and was so graded. With her was Carol Martin, but to the very evident indignation of the little daughter of Mr. Sethibald Archer, Dixie, Ken, and Ira Jenkins were placed above her.
Each was asked to read one of the last three stories in the fifth book. Ken and Dixie hesitated not at all, but Ira did stumble over the longer words, and the first story in the sixth proved quite beyond him, and so he was placed there.
Ken, although two years older than his sister, had a more mathematical mind, and found the seventh reader rather difficult, but Dixie reached the last, and was declared by the teacher to be in the eighth grade.
Miss Bayley purposely avoided looking in the direction of the irate little girl in the much-be-ruffled dress as she said: “You are now each placed in the grade where you should be, and I am sure that we shall in the future make real progress.” Then, glancing at the clock, she smilingly added: “Ten already, and time for recess. Dixie, you may collect the new books please, and Ken, will you lead the line to the playground?”
But Jessica Archer did not wait to go out with the others. Catching her hat from its hook on the wall, she darted out, and when, fifteen minutes later, Miss Bayley rang the bell, recalling the pupils to their lessons, she was not at all surprised to find that the rebellious little “sheep-princess” was not among them.
Miss Bayley was not long kept in doubt as to what the absence of Jessica Archer meant. Having decided to carry her new method of grading through all the subjects,—reading, writing, and arithmetic,—the teacher had sent Ira Jenkins and Ken to the board to work out rather advanced sums, when the sound of hurrying wheels was heard without, and a moment later the short, stocky Mr. Sethibald Archer burst into the room, his face flushed, his small gimlet-like eyes blinking very fast.
“Say, Miss Bayley,” he blurted out, waiving the formality of a greeting, “what’s this here my gal’s been tellin’ me ’bout you upsettin’ methods which I started and makin’ out she’s a numskull alongside of those—those no-account Martins? I’ll not have it, I tell you,” he blustered. “I’m governin’ board of this here school, and things have got to be done as I say, or you can pack and leave this here locality on to-morrow mornin’s stage. D’ye hear?”
Miss Bayley did not take advantage of his pause to defend her action, and, still further angered by her calm, he went on, his high-pitched voice growing louder, if that were possible. “I’d like to know where from you got your authority,—you, an upstart teacher we don’t know nothin’ about. Who was it told you to spend money that’s not yours buying new books that we don’t need for this here school?”
So indignant had been the self-important little man, and so loud his voice, that he had not heard the arrival of a horse and buggy without, nor was he aware that another listener had stopped in the doorway to await the end of the tirade. When the speaker paused to take a breath, the newcomer stepped into the school-room, saying in a voice, the calm, even tones of which did not betray the just anger that he felt: “Mr. Archer, may I answer the question you have just put to Miss Bayley? I, Samuel Clayburn, head of the governing board of education in this district, gave our teacher full authority to purchase whatever she believed was needed to further the interests of this little district school, and I am indeed glad to find that she is now introducing progressive methods.” Then he added, in a pleasanter tone, for it was hard for the portly banker to be unkindly severe: “Mr. Archer, I regret that the delivery of mail in the mountain sections is so dilatory, otherwise you would have known by now that I have decided to devote more of my time to the schools in the outlying districts, and so will no longer require your aid. I will bid you good-morning.”
The stocky, florid man was clenching and unclenching his hands, and almost bursting with indignation. When the quiet voice ceased speaking, he blurted out with: “It’s an outrage, that’s what it is! A cooked-up scheme of this here new teacher’s to oust me from a place that’s rightfully mine. But I’ll get even. I’ll take my darter out of this here school. Come along, Jessie, I won’t have you pizened by no such corruptin’ influence.”
With a toss of her curls, the little girl flounced out of the door, closely following her irate father, and they were soon heard to drive away.
“Miss Bayley,” the banker said, “I regret this most unfortunate incident. Last Saturday, immediately after your departure from the bank, I wrote Mr. Archer that I would no longer need his services, but the stage probably has not as yet passed his place. Realizing that something of this very nature might occur when he did receive the letter, I decided to drive over, knowing that otherwise you would have to bear alone the brunt of his wrath.”
“Thank you,” Josephine Bayley said simply. “I am indeed sorry to have been the cause of this unpleasantness, but really, Mr. Clayburn, I do believe that the other pupils can now have a much better chance.”
The banker nodded, “I am sure of it,” he said, as he smiled about at the solemn faces.
“My pupils,” Miss Bayley said to them, “this gentleman is Mr. Samuel Clayburn, of the board of education, and he it is who made us a gift of those attractive new readers that have pleased you all so much.”
Carol and Dixie arose at once, and the others shyly and stragglingly followed. Then curtsying, as Miss Bayley had taught them to do when she introduced a visitor, in a faltering chorus they piped, “Good-morning, Mr. Clayburn.” But it was Dixie who thought to add, “And thank you for the books.”
“You are very welcome, and I’m sure you’ll make good use of them,” was the genial reply. Then, turning again to the girl-teacher, he added: “I hope no further unpleasantness will result from this, Miss Bayley, but if there does, report to me at once. You can telephone to me from the inn.”
Later, as he was driving down the pine-shaded cañon road, the good man was thinking, “How I do wish my Sylvia could attend this mountain school. She seems to be making very little headway with her French governess. If only she could live awhile the simple, healthful life that the little Martins are living, how much good it would do her.”
“Dixie Martin, come quick if you want to see something. Oh-ee! It’s something you’ve been wanting for weeks and weeks.”
It was Carol who called. The small curly-headed girl was hanging out clothes in the sunny yard, back of the log cabin, while the older sister stood on a box beside a washtub in the shade of a spreading pine tree.
Hearing the excited voice of her little sister calling to her, Dixie hastily wrung out the pair of patched blue rompers that she was washing, and, with soapy suds glistening on her hands, she ran around the house, wondering what she was to see.
To her great joy, coming across the garden toward them was no less a creature than her long-strayed and much-loved cat, Topsy.
With a cry of delight, Dixie wiped the suds from her hands on her blue all-over apron, and rushing at the rather thin and rusty-looking cat, she caught it up in her arms and kissed it on the nose, eyes, and even on the paws.
“Oh, you dearest, darlingest, belovedest!” she exclaimed. “Wherever have you been? You look like a reg’lar tramp cat, and no wonder,—your coat hasn’t been sleeked for three weeks if it’s a day. Didn’t you love your Dixie any more, that you ran away and wouldn’t come back? You don’t know how lonesome I’ve been.”
The little girl’s face was burrowed in the soft black hair. The pussy-cat purred its contentment when its little mistress sat on a stump near by to cuddle it in her lap, but suddenly Topsy flipped up an ear and sat erect, as though she had just thought of something. Then, before the astonished girls could guess what it was all about, away the cat darted toward an old abandoned shed down near the apple-orchard, soon reappearing with a very small something in its mouth.
The older girl had turned back to the washtub, but another exclamation as excited as the first brought her whirling about.
“Dix Martin, Topsy’s done gone and had kittens. Oh-ee, do look! Isn’t it a little beauty? It’s black, like its mamma, but its spots are white.”
Topsy, holding her tail proudly erect, placed the wee pussy at Dixie’s feet, then looked up in a manner that seemed to say, “There now, what do you think of that for a baby?”
Dixie lifted the soft cuddly little thing, and was about to tell the happy mother that it was indeed a darling, when, with a queer little short meow, the cat again turned and trotted off toward the shed, to soon reappear with another wee pussy, but this one was as white as the driven snow.
“Oh-h!” the two girls breathed a long sigh of admiration, for never had there been a lovelier pussy, they were sure. Just then Ken, with an ax over his shoulder, appeared from the mountain-trail, whither he had been to cut wood for their winter fires.
“What you-all got there?” he called. And when he saw that they were beckoning excitedly, he threw his axe to the ground and ran toward them.
“Gee whiz! Aren’t they beauts?” the boy exclaimed with genuine admiration. “They’re ’most as handsome as my little pig,” he added teasingly.
“Why, Ken Martin, little pigs aren’t warm and soft and cuddly, nor baby goats, either,” Carol began, when Dixie interrupted, the light of inspiration in her thin, freckled face.
“Oh, Caroly, you’ve always wished you had a white pussy, and so you may have this one all for your very own, and Ken can have the other.”
“Me?” the boy exclaimed wide-eyed. “I don’t want a cat. They’re pets for girls.”
“Well, maybe that’s so. Girls like cuddly things.” Then, to the mother puss, Dixie said: “Well, Topsy-cat, we’re ever so glad that you have such nice babies, and won’t Jimmy-Boy be pleased when he wakes up, but now I must get back to my work, for this is wash-day. I want to get through as soon as ever I can, for something—oh, so interesting!—is going to happen this very afternoon. I am to go up to teacher’s to have a lesson.”
Dixie did not say what the lesson was to be, but she glanced at her sister and thought, “If Carol only knew that I am to have a lesson in making her a blue-silk dress, wouldn’t she be the happiest girl that ever was?”
The younger girl had no desire to accompany Dixie to Miss Bayley’s cabin. The very word “lesson” did not appeal to her on a glorious Saturday. After taking the kittens back to the shed and making them a softer bed, the girls finished the washing; then at two o’clock they donned their best gingham dresses and started out together, but soon parted, as Carol was going to the Valley Ranch to visit Sue Piggins, to hear what had happened during the week at the girls’ boarding-school over in Reno, which Sue attended.
Miss Josephine Bayley was anticipating with real pleasure the coming of the little girl who was to have her first lesson in dressmaking.
The door of the small cabin stood welcomingly open, for it was one of those wonderful, balmy days known as Indian summer, and in Nevada they seem lovelier than elsewhere.
“See these beautiful ruddy leaves that I found this morning, Dixie, dear,” said the young teacher, who stood at the center-table arranging them, as the small girl appeared in the doorway. “I climbed a little lost trail, or, it was almost lost, it was so overgrown with tangled vines and scraggly dwarf pines.”
The great bowl of flaming-leaved branches was placed in one corner of the room, the table swept clear of books and magazines, and then the paper pattern was opened while Josephine Bayley continued, smiling across at her little visitor: “Dixie, how I wish that trails could talk. I’d love to know whose feet trod it so many times that a path was beaten there. Perhaps you have heard, have you, dear?”
Dixie shook her red-gold head. “Not ’zactly heard, Miss Bayley,” she replied, “but most likely ’twas the year of the big strike over at Silver City. My dad said that over-night, almost, these lonely, silent mountains were swarmed with men from everywhere, and they climbed all about with their pickaxes, hunting for other veins, but they didn’t find them. Maybe it’s selfish, but I’m glad, glad they didn’t.”
“So am I, Dixie,” the girl-teacher agreed, “for they would have dug ugly holes in these mountains and cut down the wonderful old pines. I would rather have nature at its wildest for my home than a castle of glistening white marble surrounded with artificial parks, however beautiful.”
“Oh, teacher, so would I.” The small girl had drawn close to the table, and her gold-brown eyes looked as though they were seeing a vision. “Miss Bayley,” she said, “I keep remembering. I can’t forget it. That violin music, I mean. And this morning, early, when I was up before the others, out under the pines, getting ready to do the washing, the sun came up over old Piney Peak, and it was just like a fairy shower of gold. Then a lark sang, and a little breeze stirred in the pine trees. Teacher, Miss Bayley, I think I could play it on a violin, if I had one.”
“Little Dixie Martin, you shall have one! You shall have a violin!” the young woman said, deeply touched. Then she added: “I only wish that I knew how to give you lessons, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. That is a true saying, dear, and you and I will keep watching for the way. Now, little ladykins, if you will stand up very straight and tall, I’d like to see if this pattern hangs well. I’m going to pin it on you, if you don’t mind, to get an idea of what kind of dress it will make.”
Miss Bayley did not tell that her real reason for wishing to pin on the pattern was to discover how much larger she would have to cut one before making a certain piece of shimmery green silk into a dress for Dixie.
When the pattern was on, the girl-teacher made many penciled notes on a bit of brown paper. “There, now,” she exclaimed, “we’ll cut out the material.”
Dixie, watching, suddenly put one hand on her heart, as though to still its too-rapid beating. “Oh, teacher,” she said in a little awed voice, “this is a wonderful minute, when we’re really going to begin to make a blue-silk dress for Carol.” Then she added almost wistfully: “How I do hope that dear old Grandmother Piggins knows that you are helping us. Before she died she sent for me and she said, ‘Dixie, dear, I’m glad to go, but I’m praying that somebody will be sent to take my place with you.’”
Then impulsively the child cuddled close to the girl-teacher and looked up with love shining in her eyes. “Miss Bayley, you are the answer to Grandmother Piggins’s prayer.”
Kneeling, the young woman held the little girl in a close embrace, as she said in a voice that trembled: “Dixie, I have wandered far, and have lost the simple faith, but, oh, what it means to me to know that I, even I, have been found worthy to be used as an answer to prayer!”
Then rising, she merrily added, “Now thread a needle, little Miss Seamstress, and sew these two edges together.”
Sitting in a low rocker, by a sunny open window, Dixie took painstaking little stitches, almost measuring each one, but when her girl-teacher noticed that, she laughingly said: “You needn’t be so careful, dear. The big thing in basting is to have the notches match and keep the edges together.”
For a moment the machine, which had been borrowed from the inn, hummed a merry song, then teacher looked up to see Dixie sitting very still, her sewing in her lap, while her eyes were gazing between fluttering white curtains and out toward the mountains.
“A penny for your dreams,” Miss Bayley called gayly, as she paused to snap a thread.
Dixie turned, smiling radiantly. “Oh,” she laughed, “I was ’magining ahead, I guess. I was wondering what lovely things would happen to Carol in this pretty blue silk dress.” Then, a little anxiously, she added, “There’d ought to be a party, shouldn’t you think, Miss Bayley?”
“Of course there should be a party, and, what is more, there shall be one, too. When is Carol to have a birthday?”
“November sixth, and that comes on Saturday,” the little girl replied. “I was meaning to make a cake, and there’d ought to be one more candle. Grandma Piggins gave Carol eight little candles last year, but now we need nine.”
Miss Bayley was again treading the machine and making it hum. Then, when she paused to adjust the ruffler, she glanced up brightly to find that the gold-brown eyes were still watching, apparently waiting. “We’ll have that party, dear,” the girl-teacher declared, “and the one more candle, I’ll promise that, but I’m going to keep it for a surprise for all of you little Martins.”
“Oh, Miss Bayley,” said the small girl, clapping her hands gleefully, “won’t that be the nicest? It’ll be a ’sprise for Baby Jim and for Ken and me, too, as well as for Carol.”
Teacher nodded, though at that particular moment she had not the vaguest idea what the surprise-party was to be. Then she added “When is your birthday, Dixie, dear?”
“Mine? Oh, I came in February, on the snowiest, coldest, blustriest day, dad said. Brother Ken was born in April, but Baby Jim,” the girl’s voice softened to a tone of infinite tenderness when she spoke that name, “our little treasure-baby was born on Christmas day.” Then she added with that far-away expression which was so often in her eyes, “Grandmother Piggins said when little souls are sent to our earth on Christ’s birthday, they have been specially chosen to be His disciples.”
“It may be true, dear.” Miss Bayley had thought so little of these things. She had been brought up in boarding-schools without loved ones to guide. Then she added, as she adjusted a long, straight piece of blue silk that was soon to be a ruffle. “Of one thing I am sure, and that is that the influence of a beautiful life lives here on earth long after the form of the loved one has passed from our sight. Grandmother Piggins must have been a dear, dear old lady.”
“She was,” the child said simply. “Everybody loved her.”
“What epitaph could one more desire?” was what the girl-teacher thought. Then the machine began to hum, and Dixie bent over to watch the spindle fly, and to see the strip of silk that was straight on one side come out in the prettiest ruffle on the other.
“I’m glad it’s near the end of October now,” the small girl said with a little sigh, “for I just couldn’t wait more’n two weeks to give that dress to Carol.”
Then, as there was no more basting that she could do, Dixie wandered about the pleasant, home-like room, reading the titles on the books that were everywhere in evidence. Suddenly she paused before a photograph. “Why, Miss Bayley,” she exclaimed, “the boy in this picture looks almost ’zactly like you.”
“He is my brother, dear, two years younger than I am,” the girl-teacher replied, looking up with a smile.
“Oh, I remember now, you did tell me you had a brother Tim. Is he coming West some time to see you, Miss Bayley?”
There was a sudden shadow on the lovely face that bent over the blue silk. “I’m afraid Tim doesn’t care to find me,” she said. “I haven’t heard from him in over a year. I don’t even know where he is. Brother and I were left orphans when I was eight and he six. That was just twelve years ago. Although he is but eighteen, he is a giant of a chap, and would pass for twenty-one. Our guardian put me in a fashionable boarding-school in New York, and placed Tim in a military academy in the South. After that we saw very little of each other, but we did write, that is, I wrote every week and my brother replied now and then, but over a year ago his letters ceased coming, and so, when I graduated and was ready to do what I liked, I went South and visited the academy, only to find that my brother was not there. He had found military discipline too severe, his room-mate told me, and had disappeared. No one knew where he went, but his pal believed that he had gone to sea. Tim had said to him, ‘Tell Sis that I’ll turn up in three years, if not sooner.’ With Tim gone, I had no one in all the world, Dixie, for whom I really cared, and no one cared for me. I was so weary of the noise and artificial life of New York City, and I didn’t want to open up our father’s home on Riverside Drive without Tim, so I left it all and came West to seek—to seek— Oh, Dixie, dear, I don’t know what I came to seek, but I do know what I found.” With a little half-sob, the girl-teacher held out both arms, and Dixie went to her.
“I found some one to love, and some one to love me.” Then, hastily wiping her eyes, Miss Bayley smilingly declared, “It never would do to get a little salty spot on this lovely blue silk.” Then, springing up, she added gayly, “Come now, Miss Midget, you and I are going to have four-o’clock chocolate.”
During the next hour Dixie thought she had never known her beloved teacher to be so light-hearted and merry, but when the small girl had gone down the cañon trail Josephine Bayley went to her screened-in porch bedroom, and, stretching out her arms toward the sky that was such a deep blue over the mountains, she said, “O Thou who holdest the lands and the seas, take care of my brother, Tim.” Then, remembering the child’s faith in prayer, she added, “And bring him to me soon.”
There was peace in the heart of the girl-teacher as she turned back into the little log cabin, for, once again, she had faith in prayer.
“And a little child shall lead them,” she thought as she prepared her evening meal.
The little lost, almost hidden, trail haunted Josephine Bayley. She thought of it the next morning when she first awoke. It was still hardly daylight when she sprang from bed. “I’m going to climb it to the very top,” she thought, “for where others have been, I, too, can go, and maybe I’ll be there in time to see the sun rise.”
She quickly donned her khaki hiking-clothes, with the short skirt and bloomers; then, taking a stout, knobbed club that Mr. Enterprise Twiggly had given her for a weapon, should she meet a snake or wildcat, away she started, climbing with eager feet, and singing as soon as she was out of hearing, for the very joy of living.
When a tangle of brush impeded her progress, she thrust the stick ahead and beat the vines and bushes, and then fearlessly pushed through.
“All properly brought-up snakes are hibernating now,” she remarked to an overhanging branch that she had to stoop to pass under. “Poor little snakes,” she ruminated, “in the hearts of them they probably are as kindly-intentioned as any of us. They love to live in their wild mountain homes, and they would far rather slip away from us than hurt us, but even the truly harmless ones are always battered to death as soon as they are seen, although in gardens they are of great value, if only gardeners knew.”
A bird from somewhere sang to her, just, a joyous morning-song. “Which means that the sun is coming up and I have not reached the top of this little lost trail, and, what is more, I’m not likely to until the day is well advanced,” said the girl to herself. This because of a dense growth of pine that arose just ahead of her. Then it was that Josephine Bayley noticed that the old trail had evidently been abandoned, for crossing it was a newer one that had been recently used. With a little skip of delight, the girl-teacher turned into the new trail that led through the pine clump, and, ascending easily, to her great joy she saw one of the lower peaks just above her.
“Oh! oh!” she thought happily. “How I have longed to know what lay beyond this mountain that is in my dooryard, so to speak. I do hope it is not merely another and higher range. Well, I soon shall know.”
With feet that seemed tireless, the girl-teacher climbed the short steep bit of trail that was left, and stood at the very summit. Then, with arms outflung, she cried aloud: “Oh, the wonder of it! Now I know how Balboa must have felt when he first beheld the Pacific.”
Lake Tahoe, a great sheet of glistening blue, framed in the gray of jagged cliffs and the dark green of encircling pines, lay not many miles beyond. The sun, still near the horizon, was pouring its molten gold over the water, sky, and mountains, transforming them to celestial loveliness. With clasped hands the girl-teacher stood, gazing with her very soul in her eyes. Her hat had been thrown on a rock near by, and the breeze from the lake was tossing her curling locks back from her forehead.
Little did she dream how beautiful she looked, and still less did she dream that she was being observed by some one who thought her the loveliest creature he had ever seen.
Fifteen minutes passed before the girl became conscious of her surroundings. Not far from the summit, and near a clump of sheltering pines, she saw a camp-fire, and the coals were smoldering. Some one must be near, she thought. For one panicky moment she realized how unprotected, how very much alone, she was on that high peak, but, as no one appeared, she decided that the camper had gone his way, and she, too, turned, and, after one more glance back at the water, retraced her steps to her cabin home.
But the camper had not gone. He had been lying very still behind a great gray boulder. He knew that this maiden had climbed the trail, wishing to be alone, and, too, he had reasons of his own for not desiring to make his presence known.
As Josephine Bayley descended the trail, her fancy followed the mysterious camper, wondering what he might look like,—a hoary-bearded prospector, perhaps, still hunting for that elusive vein of silver. Had she seen the young man who stood erect soon after her departure, had she noted his square chin, his gray, far-seeing eyes, his keen, kind face, tanned by the beating of sun and wind, sleet and rain, she would have been more interested and curious than ever.
When the pupils gathered on Monday morning, Miss Bayley soon realized that the little Martins had something to tell her that they believed was of great interest. It was indeed astonishing and most acceptable news. Carol, who had spent Saturday afternoon on the Valley Ranch, had been informed by Sue Piggins that little Jessica Archer was to return with her to the boarding-school in Reno. Mrs. Sethibald, the mother, had let it be known that a common log-cabin school was not good enough for a “sheep-princess,” and that from then on she was to have the best “iddication” that could be obtained, for, like as not, when she was grown, she’d be one of the first ladies of Nevada, if not of the whole land.
“The girls over there won’t like her, not the least little mite,” Sue had prophesied, “that is, not unless she changes a lot. Their fathers are all more educated, and just as rich as Mr. Archer is or ever will be.”
Miss Bayley said little when this news was told, but secretly she rejoiced. She had feared that she would be obliged by the law to report Jessica as a truant if she did not attend school anywhere, but it surely was not pleasant to anticipate her return to the little log school in Woodford’s Cañon.
So happy, indeed, did the girl-teacher feel that she wished that it were within her power to declare a half-holiday, but, since it was not, she decided to close half an hour early and take all her little pupils, Mexicans, blacksmith’s son, and the trapper’s two little girls, who always looked hungry, with the four Martins, over to her cabin to celebrate. Even while she was giving out sums in mathematics her thoughts were straying. “I’m so glad I made a mountain of a chocolate cake,” she was thinking; “and I’ll make more chocolate to drink, and for once Milly and Maggy Mullett, at least, shall have all the cake they wish.”
Mrs. Sethibald Archer would indeed have been indignant if she had known her daughter’s withdrawal from the log-cabin school was being considered an occasion for especial rejoicing.
Often during the morning Dixie glanced at Miss Bayley and thought that she never before had noticed how very young-looking she was, and, too, the girl-teacher looked as though she might begin to sing at any minute. Indeed, so real was Miss Bayley’s desire to do so that she quite upset the usual plan of study by saying: “Don’t let’s do mathematics any more this morning. Let’s each choose a song to sing.” Which they did, and how the little old schoolhouse rang, for each chose a song that they all knew well, and although little Dixie, who led them, had not the vaguest idea why teacher was so happy, the spirit of rejoicing was contagious, and her birdlike soprano voice trilled sweeter and higher, encouraging those who faltered.
When at last the solemn-faced clock, which perhaps had been watching all this unusual procedure with dignified surprise, slowly tolled the hour of ten, Miss Bayley said: “And now we will have recess. Dixie, dear, will you lead the games to-day, and Ken, will you remain with me? I wish to speak to you.”
The heart of loyal little Ken was filled with pride. It was a great honor, the pupils of Josephine Bayley thought, to be asked to remain in at recess and be talked to by teacher. Sometimes she actually asked their opinions about things, for, strange as it may seem, it was her theory that if the children would rather have red geraniums blossoming on the window-sill, instead of white, red they should be.
“It’s your schoolroom,” she had told her pupils, “and here you spend the heart of every day. I want it to be beautiful in your eyes, and then I know it will be in mine.”
Was there ever another teacher so understanding as their beloved Miss Bayley?
Ken’s intelligent freckled face glowed with eagerness when at last the little line of pupils had filed out to the playground, and he was to hear why Miss Bayley had asked him to stay in at recess.
The young teacher left her desk and stepped down by his side. “Laddie,” she began, “yesterday morning early I climbed the trail that starts back of the inn, and I found a wonderful view of Lake Tahoe, but I found more than that. Guess what?”
She had placed a hand on each of his shoulders, and was looking into the wondering eyes that were so like Dixie’s, though not so dreamy, for Ken was a doer of deeds, as Pine Tree Martin had been.
“Oh, Miss Bayley, teacher, what? A bear, like ’twas. Now and then they do come down from the high Nevadas, but usually not till the snows set in.”
“Gracious, me, no, not that. If I had met a bear, I don’t suppose I should be here to-day to tell about it.”
The girl-teacher looked her consternation at the mere possibility of such a meeting, but the boy shook his head, with its unruly mop of hair that was redder than Dixie’s, as he answered, “Bears don’t touch people unless they’re cornered or come upon sudden-like.”
Then, remembering that the mystery had not been explained, he asked eagerly, “Miss Bayley, what did you see?”
“A camp-fire, Ken, and although no one at all was in sight, the coals were still smoldering. Now, who do you suppose would be breakfasting on that high peak? It isn’t a trail that leads anywhere in particular, is it?”
“The Washoe Indians go over that way to Lake Tahoe fishing, but it doesn’t sound like Indians,” the boy said. Then his eyes lighted with hope. “Do you ’spose maybe ’twas a train-robber hiding?”
“Goodness, I hope not!” Miss Bayley shuddered. “I’d heaps rather have met your bear.” Then she added, “Have there been any trains robbed lately?”
The boy had to confess that he hadn’t heard of any. “There used to be lots of train and stage hold-ups when my dad was a boy,” he said, “but nowdays nothing much happens.” There was real regret in the tone of the lad, as though life in the Sierra Nevadas had become too tame to be of real interest. Then his eyes again brightened. “Well, anyhow, it might have been a sheep-rustler. How I’d like to trail him, if ’twas. There’s a State bounty for cornering one, Miss Bayley.”
The girl-teacher laughed at the boy’s eagerness. “Well, Ken,” she confessed, “all I saw was a smoldering camp-fire, and since a bear, a coyote, or a mountain lion cannot make a fire, we shall have to believe that a man had breakfasted there at sunrise, but I heard no one and saw no one.”
“Oh, Miss Bayley, teacher, how I’d like to ’vestigate. I’d like to, awful well, if I could get ’scused a little early. It gets dusky so soon now, and I’d need to have two hours of daylight, certain.”
This was an unusual and unexpected request, but the holiday spirit was in the heart of the girl-teacher, and so, to the great joy of the lad, she granted it. Then she added, as a new thought suggested itself: “I don’t know, dear boy, that I ought to let you go, if you think it might be a bandit in hiding, or anything like that. Would you be safe?”
The boy’s expression was hard for Miss Bayley to interpret. “Oh, teacher! Boys aren’t scared of bandits. They like ’em! You know that Robin Hood fellow in the book you and Dixie bought me in Reno. Now, he was a bandit, wasn’t he? A reg’lar bandit.”
The girl-teacher had to agree. “But, Ken,” she protested feebly, “he was a story-book bandit. They are different in real life, aren’t they?”
“I dunno,” the boy had to acknowledge. “I haven’t met one yet, but I’d like to. Gee whiz, Miss Bayley, I wish I could start right now. I sure do! Maybe he’s goin’ on somewhere else this afternoon. Maybe I’d catch him if I went this very minute.”
Miss Bayley laughed. She knew that it was her fault, for she had filled the boy’s mind with longing for adventure, and she also knew that he would be unable to study that day, and so she said, “But you haven’t had your lunch.”
“I’ve got my share in my pocket this minute. Could I go, Miss Bayley? Could I go now?”
What was there to do but agree, and, with a little half-suppressed whoop of joy, the boy leaped to the row of hats, snatched his own from a hook, waved it in farewell, and was gone. A wild gazelle could hardly have been more fleet of foot.
No stick did he carry to beat ahead for snakes. This little lad, born and reared in the mountains, had no fear of the other creatures dwelling there. With understanding sympathy and comradeship he made them all his friends.
The holiday spirit continued to pervade the little log schoolhouse, and Dixie marveled, for was not this Monday, the day of the week when lessons were usually the hardest? Then, at two o’clock, and right in the middle of the spelling recitation, Miss Bayley closed the book, and, placing it in her desk, made an unprecedented announcement, “Suppose we speak pieces for a while, and then I have a surprise planned for you.”
Unable longer to keep from expressing her curiosity, the slim, freckled hand of Dixie went up. The beaming teacher nodded, and the little maid rose and inquired, “Miss Bayley, is it your birthday to-day?”
The girl-teacher laughed aloud. “I feel as though it were,” she confessed. “I am almost sure it is, somehow. We might call it an extra make-believe birthday, for my real one comes in January when it’s blustery and cold.”
Then, following up the idea suggested by the pupil she so loved, she asked, “How many of you would like to come to my extra-birthday party?”
How the hands flew up! The suggestion of it was beyond the understanding of some of them, but “party” was a word known to all except the little Mexicans. However, even their small brown hands went up, and their smiles were as bright as the smiles of those who fully comprehended the meaning of the magical word.
“Very well, but first we will have an hour of reading and recitation. Now, Jimmy-Boy, will you begin by speaking one of your seven pieces?”
The curly-headed little fellow who sat at the big double desk with Dixie, dangling feet that were too short to reach the floor, slipped down and went very willingly up to the platform, where he made his little bow and began to recite, but instead of speaking one of his seven pieces, he kept right on saying them all, for they were but Mother Goose rhymes, and none of them long.
He was so irresistibly cunning that every one clapped, even Mercedes and Franciscito. Miss Bayley, noting their dark, beaming faces, choosing words that she had taught them, asked if they could not do something.
To her surprise, the little black-eyed girl arose and replied in her soft, musical voice, “Si, senorita.” Then, taking her brother by the hand, she led him to the rostrum, and together they sang a Spanish serenade, and so beautifully that Miss Bayley and Dixie were indeed delighted.
Then the solemn-faced grandfather’s clock, which perhaps was still shocked at such unusual levity on a workaday Monday in the schoolroom over which it presided, very slowly announced that the hour was three.
“Good!” Miss Bayley cried, seeming very like a girl herself in the mood of the day. “Now we’ll have that extra-birthday party.”
Out of the little log schoolhouse they trooped, half an hour early, that none might be later than usual reaching their homes. Over to “dear teacher’s” they went, and were served with very large slices of that wonderful mountain chocolate cake, with more chocolate to drink. Then, with a loving pat for each little one, Miss Bayley dismissed them, holding fast all the time to the hand of the pupil she loved the best. When the others had gone on ahead, Josephine Bayley stooped, and kissing Dixie on the forehead, she said softly, “Come over early next Saturday afternoon, dear, and we will finish the blue-silk dress.”
When she was alone the girl-teacher wondered if her joyous mood was altogether because of the departure of the troublesome pupil. Was it not rather a premonition of some new and wonderful interest that was to come into her life? If troubles cast their shadows ahead, even more does joy illumine the way it treads.
Up through the old trail the boy had broken his way, and into the newer, more open path he leaped, his feet winged with eagerness, and it was a very breathless lad who at last reached the trail’s end and found the cold gray ashes that had been a camp-fire.
“He’s gone!” he said aloud. “Whoever ’twas has gone on farther.” Then, as he glanced among the near pines, he thought, “I might have known he’d be gone by this time. A sheep-rustler, or a bandit, either, wouldn’t just stay on a mountain-peak.”
Truly disappointed, the boy climbed to the highest point, and, shading his eyes, looked in every direction.