The sun was high, the lake a deep emerald hue, with here and there the reflection of a fleecy white cloud slowly drifting across its mirror-like surface, for not a breath of air was stirring. Then the lad’s gaze swept the mountain-ranges beyond.
“Guess I’m not much good at catching sheep-rustlers,” he commented, “but then, I wouldn’t think much of one, or a bandit either, who’d sit here and wait to be caught.”
The lad suddenly realized that he was very hungry. He sat on a rock near, and looked meditatively about as he munched on the sandwich which he had taken from his pocket.
Suddenly he leaped to his feet, ran a little way toward the burned-out camp-fire, and, kneeling, examined the ground. A footprint! It hadn’t been made by the soft leather shoe that Washoe Indians often wore. Rising, and still munching his bread and meat, he placed his own smaller foot in the print.
“Whoever he is, he’s a big fellow!” he said admiringly. “A reg’lar giant.” Then, having finished the bread, he drew a rosy apple from the depth of another pocket where it had been bulging. The boy walked about, poking in the ashes; then suddenly, with a whoop of delight, he knelt down, jammed the remaining piece of apple in his mouth to dispose of it speedily, and with his freed hands drew forth a sheet of partly burned, much-blackened paper that had writing on it.
“Whizzle!” he ejaculated. “How I hope it’s a clue.”
He spread the paper on a flat boulder, and knelt to examine it closely. The fire and the smoke had done their best to make it hard for him to decipher the finely written words. It seemed to be the fragment of a personal letter written to a relative, but not one reference was made to holding up a train or rustling sheep. At the very bottom, in a scorched place, the boy found something which caused him to leap to his feet and prance about as a wild Indian would, when celebrating a joyous occasion.
“Hurray! Hurray!” he fairly shouted, and the near peak echoed back the cry. Then, climbing again to the highest boulder, the lad once more shaded his eyes, this time with an even greater eagerness to discover some sign of a camp. At last, over on the next mountain which was so perilously steep that few attempted to scale it, and up near the top, the boy’s eyes found what he sought—a camp-fire.
“Ginger!” he thought. “I don’t know how he ever got there, whoever he is. Climbing that mountain is like trying to shin up the wall of a barn, but if he can do it, so can I, but ’twould take me a day, and it’s too late now.”
The boy looked toward the west, and saw the sun was low in the horizon. “I’d go to-morrow, but Dixie wouldn’t like it if I cut school, and I’d ought to stick at arithmetic if I’m going to be a civil engineer. But I’ll come up here Saturday before sun-up, and if that camp’s over there then, I’m going to head for it, and if it’s who I think maybe ’tis— Aw—but, gee, it couldn’t be. Well, it’s somebody, and who it is I want to find out.”
“There wasn’t anybody there,” was the report he gave Miss Bayley the next day. “Whoever it was made the fire had moved on.” He said nothing of his plans, but it was very hard for the boy, yearning for adventure, to keep his mind on mathematics that week, and Saturday was a long time coming.
But come it did, and hours before the sun was up Ken was on the trail, eager, expectant.
Again on the top of the trail where the burnt-out camp-fire had been discovered, Ken scrambled to the peak of the highest boulder, and, with a heart beating like a trip-hammer, he pulled his wide-brimmed hat over his eyes to shade them from the glare of the sun that was rising in a cloudless sky.
Would there be any sign of the camp on the mountains beyond, he wondered. Even as he looked he decided that whether there was or not, he would not return to Woodford’s without having further investigated.
At first the lad saw nothing but the dazzling golden light of the sun that was slowly rising higher, driving the gloom from the cañons, but, as he continued to gaze, faint and far he saw a thin column of smoke wavering uncertainly, and then suddenly drop down, to rise again a moment later, as though invigorated when fresh and more inflammable fuel had been added to the fire.
The lad scrambled down from his peak of observation and danced about as he shouted aloud, to the very evident astonishment of a squirrel near by: “He’s there! That is, somebody’s there, and, oh, if it should be— But I mustn’t get my heart set on that.”
Then he looked again to make sure that he had not been imagining. It might be mist or haze, but there it was, unmistakably rising in a straight, unwavering dark line against the gleaming blue of the sky. Then, as the boy watched, a breeze, wafting across the lake, waved the column of smoke.
“I feel sort o’ like an Indian trying to read smoke-signals,” he thought gleefully; “only, whoever made that fire isn’t trying to send messages to me. If it’s a bandit hiding there, he wouldn’t want any one to know where he is even. Gee, he might be a dangerous character! Maybe I’d better steal up soft-like so that I can make a good getaway without his knowin’ I’m about, if—”
Then he chuckled as he started down the trail on the other side of the low peak. “Dixie’s the one in our family who is supposed to have ’magination,” he thought; “but this morning my head seems to be full of queer notions.”
At first he started to sing, a glad shouting kind of song without words or meaning except that he was eager, excited, and happy. But suddenly he stopped as though fearing that some wanton wind would carry his voice to the lone man who was probably then breakfasting.
Ken was following the trail that had been made by the Washoe Indians from the cañon, when they went over to Lake Tahoe to fish, but at last the boy left it and broke through the sagebrush and other tangled growths and began climbing a trailless way toward the highest mountain near Woodford’s, which rose bare, gray, grim, lonely, forbidding.
There were times in the ascent when Ken came to a sheer wall, higher than his head, and, to scale it, he took off his shoes, knotted the strings, flung them over his shoulder, and then went up, clinging to crevices with his toes and finger-tips.
It was lucky that Dixie, the little mother of them all, could not see just then, the brother she so loved, for he was often in most perilous positions, where a single slip would have sent him hurtling on the jagged rocks far below. But his desire to reach the goal of his dreams gave him strength and skill, it would seem, and soon he reached the first small plateau and there he sat, the sun at its zenith assuring him that it was noon. Taking the inevitable sandwich from his pocket, he ate it hungrily. Then he stretched out on the flat rock, conscious of strained muscles and glad of a moment’s rest. But it wasn’t long before he had leaped to his feet and rejoiced to find that, around the outjutting rocks, there was a belt of scraggly low-growing pines. To these he could cling and make greater progress. How near was he to the camp, he wondered. Suddenly he paused and listened intently.
A gunshot rang out so close to the boy that instinctively he dropped to the ground, pressing close behind a boulder. What could it mean? Was he nearer the camp than he had supposed? Had the bandit, or whoever was in hiding, seen him or heard him? This was possible, as but a moment before he had slipped, displacing some loose stones that had rattled noisily down the mountain-side.
Or, if he had caused a motion among the dwarf pines to which he was clinging, as he made the ascent, he might have been taken for a skulking coyote or a mountain-lion.
Almost breathlessly the lad waited, listening, watching, but he heard nothing and no one came. Fifteen minutes passed before he dared to go on, and even then he did not stand erect, but crouched, keeping hidden by the stunted growths about him.
This was the big adventure that his boyish heart had yearned for, and the real element of danger but enhanced his joy in it.
He was wondering how much farther he would have to go before he saw signs of a camp, when suddenly he rounded a denser and higher clump of trees and found himself looking directly into a clearing on a small plateau, which was protected on three sides, the fourth opening toward the lake. Darting back under cover of the low-growing pines, Ken peered out and beheld a rude structure that was neither cabin nor wigwam, but a shelter made of green branches. The campfire in front of it was still smoldering, proving that either the man was not far away, or that he had not long been gone. Then a terrible fear smote the heart of the lad. What if that had been the camper’s last meal on the mountain! What if he had now departed, not to return!
Just at that moment another shot rang out, the sound reverberating from the cañon below. The camper was evidently hunting for game. Indeed he probably had nothing else to eat, though lower down and near the lake there were rushing streams in which the little mountain trout could be caught in abundance.
The lad hardly knew what to do. He feared it would not be wise for him to go boldly into this unknown man’s camp while he was away, for if it should be one of the “dangerous characters” occasionally described by the Genoa “Crier,” who sought a hiding-place in the high Nevadas, the lad would want to slip away unobserved.
He decided to remain under cover until the camper had returned. Luckily, Ken had not long to wait, for a nearer shot told that the hunter was approaching, and in another moment a tall, sinewy, broad-shouldered young man swung into view, a small deer flung over his shoulder.
His brown hair was long and his face nearly covered with a beard. Indeed, at first glance, he looked as though he might be a very dangerous character, but just as Ken had made this decision, the young man, little knowing that he was being so closely observed, began to sing in a tenor voice that carried to the heart of the listener the conviction that, whatever might be the reason for his hiding, it was not because of an evil record.
However, he did not leave his place of observation at once. He watched as the young giant dropped the small deer upon the ground, stretched his arms out as though to rest them, and then disappeared in his pine shelter. A moment later he reappeared without the gun, and carrying a long sharp knife. Kneeling by the deer, he prepared to skin it.
Silently the lad drew nearer, but so intent was the camper upon his occupation that he did not hear a footfall nor a sound of any kind until the boy spoke hesitatingly, “I say, mister, I’m awful good at skinning creatures. Couldn’t I help?”
The young man, who had believed himself to be alone near the top of an almost unscaleable mountain, leaped to his feet, amazed. His keen gray eyes swept over the very small figure of the barefooted boy, and then, to the unutterable joy of the lad, his hands were seized and a voice he knew and loved was fairly shouting: “Ken Martin, old pal; I’ve been wondering how in time I could get word to you that I was—well, sort of a neighbor of yours. I fully intended to drop down into Woodford’s soon and hunt you up, but I’m mighty glad you called first, so to speak. Sit down, old man. But wait; I’ll get you a drink of aqua pura from my near-by sparkling fount. You look petered out, as though you had climbed to near the end of your strength.”
The boy drank long of the water which was given him in a folding cup, and then, as he sank down on the ground in a truly weary heap, he gasped, “I say, Mr. Edrington, what-all are you doing up here?”
“Ken, you’ve been doing some growing since we put the highway through your cañon two years ago.” The young man, with folded arms, stood smiling down at the boy, who grinned back as he replied with enthusiasm, “If I can keep right on till I’m big as you are, I’ll like it mighty well.”
“I believe you’ll make it,” Frederick Edrington declared as he seated himself upon a boulder near and continued to look approvingly at the lad. “You remember what I used to tell you about getting what you want?”
The boy nodded his red-brown mop of hair. “Yeah,” he said, lapsing unconsciously into the speech of the mountaineers. “First fix a definite goal, it doesn’t matter how far ahead or how rough the road in between, and then keep going toward it.”
“Even if you slip back two steps for every one that you forge ahead,” his companion put in.
Ken laughed. “Gee, I hope it won’t be as hard as all that for me to get to be a civil engineer.”
The eyes of the older man lighted. “Still holding that for a goal, boy?” he asked, his voice showing his real pleasure.
Ken nodded. “Bet I am,” he replied.
“Worked hard at math?” was the next query. “Pretty quick at doing sums?”
Ken flushed. “I don’t know as I’m a crackerjack at it, but I told Miss Bayley all about how I want to grow up to be just like you, and when she found I wanted to get along faster in arithmetic, she stayed after school to help me whenever the sums were extra hard. I say, Mr. Edrington, our new teacher, she’s a trump!”
The young civil engineer, who had been leaning back, hands locked behind his head, sat up with sudden interest.
“Kind of a thin, skinny, old-maid sort of a person, is she?” he asked with a smile lurking away back in his gray eyes.
“Indeed she is not!” Ken retorted loyally. “Miss Bayley, next to my mother, is the most beautiful woman that ever lived at Woodford’s or anywhere in all the world I guess. Even queens couldn’t be nicer, and she isn’t thin or homely, though I guess she is pretty old.” Then he dug his bare toes in the dry pine-needles as he added, looking at his friend speculatively, “I guess she’s nearly as old as you are.”
Mr. Edrington’s amused laughter rang out. “Poor girl, if she’s that ancient, she’d better be saving her pennies, for she’ll soon be ready for the Old Ladies’ Home.”
Ken, solemn-eyed, watched the speaker. “She isn’t that old,” he said. “I know, for there’s an old folks’ home over toward Genoa, but the people are bent and sort of hobble and lean on sticks when they walk. I guess, come to think of it, maybe Miss Bayley isn’t what you’d call real old yet.” Then his face lighted with admiration. “Gee, but she’s a good sport, though! She held the pig for me the first day she came to our house while I made the pen, and she didn’t squeal at all.”
“Lucky pig!” the young man commented.
This went over the head of the boy, who remarked laughingly, “The pig didn’t think so. He wriggled so hard, trying to get away, and you just should have heard him squeal. But, gee, didn’t that prove teacher is a brick? Most girls, except Dixie, would have said they wouldn’t even touch a little pig. They aren’t much good, girls aren’t, except Dixie and—well, Carol, she’s doin’ better.”
Mr. Edrington steered the conversation into channels in which he was interested.
“Any newcomers down at the inn?” he inquired, looking closely at the lad. The boy shook his head. “Don’t think so,” he said, “none that I’ve heard of. Why?”
“Well, I was hoping that there were none,” was the non-committal reply. Then he added, “Open an ear, old pal, for if you swear to secrecy, I’m going to tell you why I’m here.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die if I ever do tell,” the boy promised so solemnly that the young man wanted to smile, but thought best to accept the oath as seriously as it had been made.
“Well, it sounds foolish, I know, but I’m hiding from an aunt of mine who wants me to marry an heiress, and since the girl herself agrees with my aunt, I knew my only safety lay in flight. Everywhere I went I was pursued by this elderly relative, who, having brought me up since my parents died, thinks that she owns me body and soul. I do feel a sincere depth of gratitude toward her, but prefer to pay it in some other way than by marrying the girl of her choice, an alliance with whom, I have been assured every day for the past year, would greatly add to my fame and fortune.”
As he paused the boy looked up sympathetically. “Gee, I don’t wonder you hid,” he commented. “You wouldn’t catch me getting married. I’d heaps rather go to sea, maybe to China, or do something exciting.”
“H-m! A very sensible decision, my lad, and yet the sea of matrimony, I’ve been told, is not without its exciting adventures.” Then the civil engineer laughed. “Romance is a little beyond your comprehension, and I’m glad it is. It will be a relief to hear about something else for a time. I’m not in love, never was in love, and don’t believe I ever shall be in love.”
Why was it, at that very moment, and quite without will of his own, Frederick Edrington saw in his memory a slim young girl standing silhouetted against a gleaming morning sky, with arms outflung and curling brown hair blown about a face so lovely that it had haunted him every hour, waking or sleeping, that had passed since he had first beheld the vision?
“I say, Ken,” he suddenly remarked, “that new teacher of yours, has she soft curly, brown hair, and does she wear a khaki hiking-suit—short skirt and bloomers?”
The boy nodded, then exclaimed as he suddenly recalled something: “Gee whiz! Mr. Edrington, I clean forgot it was teacher who started me out on this hunt for you. ’Course she didn’t know it was you, but the other morning, when she climbed to the top of the Little Peak trail to see the sun rise, she saw a camp-fire, and she asked me if I could guess who might have made it. I sort of hoped it was a sheep-rustler, and Miss Bayley—gee, but she’s a sport, all right—let me out of school early that day so I could go up and see who was there, and then it was I saw smoke over here, and thought I’d climb up and see who it might be. I found a piece of a letter in the ashes that day, and one word was ‘engineering.’ It made me hope,—how I did hope,—maybe it was you,” then, triumphantly, “and it was.”
“Rather is, son,” was the reply. Then the young man rose as he remarked. “Wish you could stay till the snow falls.”
The boy’s eyes opened wide. “Mr. Edrington,” he exclaimed, “you aren’t going to stay up here all winter, are you? Why, you’ll be frozen stiff.”
The young man laughed as he knelt to skin the small deer. But he spoke with decision. “I shall stay in this impenetrable fastness until I hear that the lovely Marlita Arden has married a certain Lord Dunsbury, who really wants her, or wants her millions, I don’t know which, nor do I care. Marlita thinks that she loves me, but nevertheless she will soon decide that it is better to have a titled spouse than a humble engineer, and until she does reach that decision the name of Frederick Edrington will be found among those reported missing; missing, anyway, from fashionable Washington society, where he has had to be more or less active for the past two years.”
“Well,” Ken said rather wistfully, “if you’re going to stay, I kind o’ wish I could stay, too, but I don’t know how Dixie could get on without me to bring the wood and make the fires, and—” The boy’s face suddenly brightened, and, leaping up, he did his wild Indian dance. Then, landing in front of the astonished onlooker, he concluded with a whoop: “I say, Mr. Edrington, if you want to hide, I know where’s the best place, and you could be right with me, with us, I mean.”
“Where?” the young man was curious.
“In our loft bedroom. Dixie and Carol’d just as soon sleep down-stairs, and you could sleep up there and have a rope-ladder that you could draw up, and no aunts could ever find you. Then, between stages, you’d be safe enough and could go where you’d like. Oh, I say, Mr. Edrington, will you come?”
The young man held out his big hand and grasped the smaller freckled one. “Maybe later I’ll take you up on that,” he said, “but at present I’m using this location as a problem in mining engineering—just for practice-work, old man.” Then he smiled speculatively. “But I’ll promise this: If the lovely Marlita has not wed this Lord Dunsbury by the time the first snow comes, I’ll drop down to Woodford’s, and take up my abode in your loft room, and thanks, old pal, for wanting me.”
Then, as it was mid-afternoon, the boy thought he’d better be starting back, and the engineer pointed out a much easier way of descent, which he had discovered. “I’ll come next Saturday again, Mr. Edrington. Is there anything I can pack up for you?”
“Yes, son. Bring me a Reno paper if you can get hold of one, and a book to read, history preferred; and, by the way, kid, remember your hope-to-die promise. You might tell your teacher that a hairy old hermit named Rattlesnake Sam lives on the mountain, and that he it was who built the fire that she saw.”
The boy grinned his appreciation. “All right,” he said, “I’m game.” Then he started away, looking back with a longing to stay, but his loyal little heart knew that Dixie would have need of his services, and so he hurried down the trail and reached Woodford’s in half the time it had taken to make the ascent.
“Teacher, Miss Bayley.” The boy who spoke was standing on the doorstep of the small cabin near the inn.
“Why, Ken, good-morning. You are up very early, aren’t you,” the young woman who had opened the door exclaimed in surprise. Then, with sudden anxiety, “Is anything wrong at your home? Are Dixie, Carol, and the baby all right?”
The boy’s freckled face was beaming, and about his manner there was something suggestive of suppressed excitement. “Oh, yes’m, thank you, teacher. ’Tisn’t about the girls I have come.” Then, almost with embarrassment, he twisted one bare foot over the other and looked down. He had sworn an oath to Frederick Edrington that he wouldn’t tell any one who the camper on the peak had been, and it was hard, very hard for the son of Pine Tree Martin to tell anything but the square and honest truth.
Miss Bayley, watching the boy, was indeed puzzled. “Dear,” she said kindly, placing a hand on his shoulder, “come in, won’t you? I’m sure you haven’t had breakfast yet. Please stay and share mine with me.”
The boy’s red-brown eyes lifted quickly. “Oh, no’m, teacher, thanks; I couldn’t do that. I told Dixie I’d be back, and she’ll be waiting, but I—I wanted to tell you that I found the—the man who had made the campfire that you saw.”
Miss Bayley was interested at once. “Oh, Ken,” she said, drawing the lad within and closing the door. “Surely you can spare a minute to tell me about him. Was he a sheep-rustler or a train-robber or a bandit, or whatever it was you hoped he would be?”
The boy shook his mop of red-brown hair and looked away to hide the joy that was in his eyes when he remembered who it had been that he had found. “No’m, Miss Bayley! He said that he was a hermit, and that his name was—er—Rattlesnake Sam.”
“Oh, how interesting, Ken,” the girl-teacher exclaimed. “I’ve always loved to read stories about the West; perhaps that was why I was so eager to come when I was free to do as I pleased; and one of the things that fascinated me was the way the men changed their names. I often wondered what had happened in their lives to cause their comrades to call them the strange things they did. Of course Dick Sureshot, Broncho Bill, and names like that are easy to understand, and ‘Rattlesnake Sam’ merely means, I suppose, that this old hermit has killed a great many rattlers. He is a very, very old man, isn’t he?”
“Yes’m, Miss Bayley. That is, no’m, I mean. I guess he isn’t a hundred yet.”
The girl-teacher laughed. “Ken,” she said, “it’s plain to see that you were terribly disappointed to find merely a hermit when you had hoped to trail a sheep-rustler. Confess now, you are disappointed, aren’t you?”
Miss Bayley insisted that the boy look at her, and when he did, she found herself puzzled at the glow that his eager eyes held. But, before she could question him further, the lad was saying, “Miss Bayley, teacher, the old hermit said he wished he had something to read, and that’s why I came over this morning. After school this afternoon he’s coming halfway down the trail, and I’m going half-way up, and I said I’d ask you to loan me a book for him.”
“Oho, so your old hermit can read! Well, I’m glad to hear that.” Then the girl-teacher turned toward the book-shelves as she said meditatively, “I wonder what kind of books old hermits like best. One about snakes, do you suppose? I sent for one after Mrs. Enterprise Twiggly told me that it was hard for a tenderfoot to tell a stick from a snake just at first. Now, whenever I go out, I take along the book, but as yet I haven’t met a snake.”
“No’m, you’re not likely to,” Ken said; “not till spring comes again.”
While he spoke the boy’s eyes roved about, and suddenly he saw a large volume lying on the window-seat. In it was a mark, for indeed, it was the book Josephine Bayley had been reading but the evening before.
Seizing it, he read the title, then lifted an eager face. “Oh, teacher, this one will be just right if you can spare it.”
The tone of the young woman expressed her mingled surprise and doubt. “Why, no, Ken, an old hermit would not care for Wells.”
But the boy persisted, “Yes’m, teacher, he would. Rattlesnake Sam said he liked history best.”
“Very well, dear,” Miss Bayley replied meekly. Then she added, “Suppose you take along this new current-events magazine that just came yesterday. Perhaps your old hermit would like that, too.”
“Oh, thank you, teacher, Miss Bayley!” How the red-brown eyes were glowing! “An’ I’ll tell him that you sent ’em, and he’ll be just ever so careful of them.”
“I’m sure that he will. Good-by, my boy.” Then for a moment the girl stood in the open doorway, watching the bare brown legs that fairly flew down the trail. Turning back to complete the preparation of her breakfast, she found herself trying to picture what the old hermit looked like. “Perhaps he is some dry-as-dust professor, who is studying fossils and rocks. He probably had a long gray beard, a leathery, wrinkled face, and kindly blue eyes that are near-sighted.” Then she sighed. Perhaps even Miss Bayley was a little disappointed that the builder of the campfire that had so interested her had proved to be so old and fogyish. “Well, what does it matter? I probably shall never see him,” she thought.
As Ken descended the trail leading to his log-cabin home, he was surprised to see a horse and buggy just leaving the drive. In it was no other than the banker from Genoa, who was so loved by the Martin children. He did not seem to see the boy, who hurried on down the trail, his heart filled with dread lest the keeper of their income had been there to report that once again it had diminished.
This fear was confirmed, or so he believed, when he saw Dixie run out of the house and toward him, an expression on her face which plainly told her brother that her heart was perplexed or dismayed.
“Dix, what’s the matter? Is the money all gone? I say, Sis, if it’s that, don’t take it hard. I can go to work driving sheep over to the Valley Ranch any day! Mr. Piggins said so last week.”
“’Tisn’t money,” the girl replied, smiling almost tremulously, “It’s something different.” Then she glanced toward the open door of the cabin and drew her brother farther away, but he paused and looked back. “Is that Carol crying in there? Why don’t you tell me what’s happened? I can’t understand at all.”
As soon as they were out of hearing, the small girl told the story of recent events. “Just after you had gone up to see teacher,” she began, “I was cooking the porridge when Carol called that Mr. Clayburn was driving in, and that that horrid Sylvia was with him. Carol hadn’t finished dressing yet, and so she was up in the loft, looking out the little window.
“I ran to the door, and, sure enough, that was who it was. Mr. Clayburn seemed to be terribly worried about something, and that peaked little girl of his looked as though she’d ’most cried her eyes out.
“When the buggy stopped, he left little Sylvia on the seat, and he came in and said: ‘Dixie Martin, I’ve come to ask you to do me a great favor. I’m in deep trouble, and no one at this hour can help me as much as you can.’ Of course I said, ‘Mr. Clayburn, I’ll do just anything I can’; and he said, ‘I knew you would, Dixie.’ Then he told me that his wife had been taken suddenly and very seriously ill, and that she was in a Reno hospital, and that he would have to stay there for a time to be near her, and that he wanted to leave Sylvia with us. Oh, Ken, I just had to say that of course we would take her, even though I knew how Carol feels about her, and so that’s what happened. It’s Sylvia in there crying, and Carol’s up in the loft. I climbed up to tell her ’bout everything, and she said I needn’t expect her to come down-stairs as long as that horrid snippy Sylvia Clayburn is in the house. She declared she’d stay up there and starve unless I’d take her breakfast up to her. Oh, Ken, what shall we do? You can’t blame Carol, ’cause you know Sylvia was mean and horrid when our little sister was in her home.”
The older brother was indeed puzzled.
He did not blame Carol, for she had been most unkindly treated by the mother and daughter. “I guess we’ll have to just do what we can, Dix,” he said. “Mr. Clayburn’s one of the best friends we’ve got, and for his sake we’ll have to put up with that—that little minx of his.”
Dixie had been looking thoughtfully down into the sunlit valley. She could see a group of white buildings partly hidden by cottonwood trees. In her gold-brown eyes was the far-away expression which often suggested to Miss Bayley that the soul of the girl was beholding a vision. The boy’s gaze followed hers. Then he turned toward his sister as he said gently: “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to remember if Grandmother Piggins ever said anything that would help us. Aren’t you, Dix?”
The girl nodded; then, her eyes alight, she suddenly exclaimed as she caught his free hand,—the other still held the history: “Ken Martin, I have it! I just knew I’d remember something. Once when Sue came home from boarding-school she said that she just hated her room-mate. She was going to be as mean as she could, hoping that the new pupil would ask to have her room changed. But Grandma Piggins said: ‘Sue, just to please me, will you try my way for one week? If it doesn’t work, then you may try your own.’ Of course Sue would do anything to please her dear old grandmother. Then she asked what she was to do.
“Grandma Piggins said: ‘It’s a game of make-believe. First, pretend, in your own heart, that you like the new pupil, and that you are glad she is your room-mate, and then treat her just as you would if you thought she was the nicest girl you knew, and, by the end of the week, you may find that the pretend has come true.’”
“How did it turn out?” the boy inquired.
“They’re still room-mates,” Dixie told him. Then she added: “But come on, Ken, we’d better go in. Nobody’s had any breakfast, and it’s almost school-time.” The little mother sighed. “I don’t see how I can go to school this morning,” she said. “I can’t leave Carol up in the loft and Sylvia down-stairs crying her heart out, and neither of them speaking to each other.”
“I’ll go to school and take Baby Jim and tell teacher that maybe you three girls will be along in the afternoon.” Then he added, in a low voice, as they walked toward the cabin, “If I were you, Dix, I’d ask Carol to play Grandma Piggins’s game, but if Sylvia’s as horrid as I guess she is, it’ll take a lot of ’magination to play it.”
“Maybe Carol will. Anyway, I’ll ask her,” and, with a new hope in her heart, the little mother of them all entered the kitchen and began to dish up the porridge for the long-delayed breakfast.
But, try as the little mother might to be cheerful, the meal was a dismal one.
Baby Jim, usually so sunny, seemed to be affected by the doleful atmosphere, and suddenly began to sob as though his little heart would break.
“Dear me! Dear me!” poor Dixie sighed as she glanced across the room to where Sylvia sat in a miserable heap, her head hidden on her arms, silent now, except for an occasional sob that shook her frail body.
Up-stairs in the loft there was no sound, and Dixie wondered if Carol had covered her head with the quilt and was softly crying. How she longed to go up and comfort her, but she was needed just then in the kitchen.
Taking the small boy out of his high-chair, Dixie looked helplessly across the table at Ken, who was gulping down the porridge as though it were hard to swallow.
“Gee, Sis,” he said, “what can be the matter with Jim? He’s too little to understand. I don’t see why he’s crying so hard. Is there a pin pricking him, maybe?”
“No-o, that’s one thing that couldn’t happen,” the girl answered with justifiable pride. “When he pulls a button off, I stop right that minute and sew it back on, so I never have to use pins.” Then she added, “Once, when young Mrs. Jenkins spanked her baby just ’cause he was crying, Grandma Piggins said the best way to quiet a little fellow was to give him something pleasant to think about.”
Then Ken had an inspiration. “I say, Jimmy-Boy,” he began, leaning over and peering into the tear-wet face that was half hidden on Dixie’s shoulder, “if you’ll eat every spoonful of your milk and porridge, Big Brother will let you ride on Pegasus and hold the reins all by your very own self.”
The dearest desire of the small boy was to reach that age when he would be considered old enough to sit, unsupported, upon the back of the gentle, jogging creature, hold the reins, and drive alone. Ken’s offer had been an inspiration, for the little fellow’s tears ceased, and his face, which Dixie kissed till it was rosy, beamed up at her with its sunniest smile. Then, once more in his high-chair, he fulfilled his share of the bargain by eating porridge to the very last mouthful.
Dixie glanced gratefully over at Ken, managing to say softly as she passed him on her way to the stove, “Stay very close to Pegasus when Jimmy takes his first ride, won’t you?” Then she added, as she noted an expression of reproach in her brother’s eyes, “Of course, Ken, I know that you would, anyway.”
Five minutes later the two boys, hand in hand, went outdoors to feed the “live-stock,” which consisted of a goat, Pegasus, the burro, Topsy and her kittens, the three little hens, and Blessing, the pig. As soon as the door closed behind them, Dixie went across the room and placed her hand on the bent head. “Sylvia,” she said kindly, “won’t you come to the table and have some breakfast?”
There was no response. The child curled up in the chair did not stir. Pity filled the heart of the older girl, and impulsively she knelt, and, putting her arm about the frail figure, she said tenderly: “Don’t grieve so hard, Sylvia. Your father told me your mother is sure to get well. You can go home again in two short weeks.”
Then the unexpected happened. The child lifted a face that was more angry than sorrowing, and sitting erect, she exclaimed vehemently, “I’m not crying about my mother. I’m crying ’cause I just hate my father. He’d no right to bring me to this poor folks’ cabin. My mother told him I was to be put in a boarding-school where children from the best families go. My mother don’t want me to associate with poor folks’ families. O dear! O dear! What shall I do?”
The sobbing began afresh, but there was a chill in the heart of the older girl, who, almost unconsciously, held herself proudly. “Well,” she said rather coldly, “since it’s only yourself you are pitying, I wish your father had taken you somewhere else, but he didn’t. He wanted you here with us, and so I suppose you will have to stay.”
Then she asked hopefully, “Sylvia, couldn’t you try to be happy here, for your father’s sake, just two little weeks? Won’t you try, dearie?”
“No, I won’t!” the pale, spoiled child snapped without looking up. “And I’m not going to stay, neither.”
Dixie sighed, and, turning, she started toward the ladder that led to the loft. Was Carol going to be as stubborn as Sylvia was, she wondered.
Dixie climbed the ladder to the loft and looked quickly toward the bed, but the little sister whom she sought was not there. Going to the curtained-off corner, she quickly drew aside the cretonne, and there, sitting on the floor, holding fast to the old doll for comfort and companionship, was Carol.
There were no tears in the beautiful violet-blue eyes that were lifted, but there was an expression in them so hurt that Dixie knew that it would be very hard for her little sister to forgive their unwelcome guest. Too, when she recalled the spoiled girl’s rudeness of a moment before, Dixie suddenly resolved that she would not ask Carol to put herself in a position to be again humiliated as she had been in her recent experience in the Clayburn home.
“Dearie,” she said, as she stooped and took the warm hand of the younger girl, “please come out of that dark, smothery place. I’ve thought of a plan, and I want to talk about it to you. First of all, I want you to be happy ’cause this is your home, not Sylvia’s.”
Carol smiled up gratefully and came out willingly. “Oh, Dix,” she said, “what shall we do? I don’t want to go down-stairs and have to see that mean-horrid girl. Won’t you please send her away?”
Poor Dixie looked her despair, for, after all, she was very young herself, and this problem seemed too difficult a one for her to solve. They owed so much to kind Mr. Clayburn, they just couldn’t turn his little girl out of their home, but what could they do with her in it?
“I ’most don’t know what to do,” she confessed, turning toward Carol a face that quivered sensitively. “I was wondering if, maybe, you’d like to go over to the Valley Ranch and visit. You know Sue’s mother has often asked you to come. I didn’t know but maybe you’d rather do that than stay here with Sylvia.”
Carol pouted. “No, I don’t want to leave my own home. If anybody’s sent over to the Valley Ranch, I should think it ought to be Sylvia.” The tone in which this was said was so reproachful that the perplexed girl could be brave no longer, and, throwing herself unexpectedly upon the bed, she sobbed as Carol had never heard her cry before. Feeling that she was in some way to blame, she ran to her side, exclaiming contritely: “Oh, Dixie, Dixie! Please don’t cry that way. I’ll do anything you say. I won’t care if Sylvia slaps me even—if only you won’t cry.”
With a glow of happiness in her heart, the little mother of them all sat up, and, catching the younger girl in her arms, she held her close. It was such a comfort to her to know that Carol loved her and was willing to do something that would be, oh, so hard, to prove her love.
To show that she had really meant the hastily-made promise, the younger girl said, “Tell me what you want me to do, Dix, and I’ll go right this minute and do it.”
Then Dixie, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding fast to the little sister she loved, told her, as she had told Ken, about Grandmother Piggins’s game of pretend. “It’ll be awfully hard to pretend even to myself that I like Sylvia Clayburn,” Carol said; “but I’ll play that game, Dix, I will, honest, if you want me to.”
“Goodie, let’s start right this very minute,” the older girl exclaimed. “Now, remember, we’re to pretend that the horrid, rude things she will say are pleasant things.”
The younger girl sighed as she replied, “Well, I like hard games, but this one will be the hardest that I ever played.” Then, rising, she held out her hand as she continued, “Come on, Dixie, I’m going down to breakfast.”
What a glad light there was in the plain, freckled face of the older girl, and, springing to her feet, she kissed her truly beautiful younger sister as she whispered: “Thank you, dearie, you have made me very happy. Now it won’t be half so hard.” Then they left the loft and went down the ladder together.