Carol was so eager that her small fingers just could not untie the strings, and so Ken sprang forward and offered the services of the two-bladed knife of which he was so proud.
Snap! Snap! The cord was sundered. Then Carol was about to lift the cover, when Dixie laid her hand on her sister’s. “Guess first, what’s in it,” she suggested, wishing to prolong the thrilling moment.
“I say, Dix, that isn’t fair,” Ken interceded. So the small girl was permitted to lift the top and peep into the folds of soft tissue paper.
As she gazed at her very first blue silk dress, those who loved her were amazed to see that she grew very pale, then tears rushed into her lovely violet eyes, and, turning to her older sister, she threw her arms about that small girl and sobbed as though her heart would break.
“Why, why, Carol, are—are you disappointed, dear? Isn’t it the color you’ve been wanting?” Dixie felt as though she, too, would have to cry, but the younger girl lifted her head and smiled through her tears. “I’m crying ’cause I’m so glad, glad, glad! There’s lace in the neck and sleeves, just the way I’ve always wanted, and there’s ruffles!”
How every one laughed, and then Sylvia spied a card in the silken folds.
This she pounced upon, handing it to Carol. “I know it!” that shining-eyed maiden exclaimed. “It’s a gift from Dixie and from dear teacher.”
Then it was that Ira remembered something, and darted out of the house and back to the buggy.
Dixie, the little mother of the brood of Martins, knew just why Carol had cried, for when the second box was opened, and in it was found a silk dress, the shimmery green of springtime, she felt as though she, too, would cry. She said little, although her wonderful gold-brown eyes were eloquent.
Miss Bayley went with her to the loft to help her don her new dress, and when they reappeared, the others actually stared, for Dixie looked almost pretty. In fact, Ken, as he glanced about at the guests, thought that, in some way he couldn’t just describe she was the best-looking girl there.
Miss Bayley saw it, too, that something in the face they had called plain, which seemed to prophesy that the young lady who-was-to-be would be called beautiful. Perhaps it was the glow of happiness which was making the little hostess so radiant; perhaps it was the new way that dear teacher had combed the red-gold hair, which, when loosened from its tight braid, waved and curled in little ringlets above her ears. Moreover, for the very first time, her head was adorned with a witching big, pale-green, butterfly bow. On Carol’s curls was another like it, only it was the color of the sky in June.
Ken had disappeared, though no one had noticed it. Suddenly there came a tapping on an outer door, and when Sylvia, being nearest, skipped to open it, in walked Topsy with a red bow around her neck, while Spotty and Downy-Fluff followed, wearing smaller neck-ribbons.
Ken, who had been hiding for a moment, bounded in after them, grinning his delight as he said, “I thought maybe the kits would like to come to the party, and if I’d had a pink ribbon, I’d have brought Blessing in, too.”
“Goodness! I’m glad you didn’t have,” Sue exclaimed. “I’ve been brought up with pigs, but I don’t like them, even yet, leastwise not for pets.”
Sylvia seemed to be watching for some one. Every few minutes she would run to the window and look up toward the cañon road.
“I wonder if she’s ’spectin’ a s’prise, too?” Carol said softly to Dixie. That little maid declared that she didn’t know what Sylvia was watching for. Then, at Miss Bayley’s suggestion, games were played, such as hide-the-thimble and drop-the-handkerchief. When every one was laughing and shouting with interest and excitement, there came a loud knocking at the door.
Sylvia put her hand on her heart and cried, “Oh! Oh! I do believe it’s come, and I had forgotten to watch.”
She leaped to open the door, and the others crowded round, wondering what they were to see. It was no less a personage than Mr. Hiram Tressler, the stage-driver.
“Howdy!” he began, his leathery face wrinkling in a pleasant smile. “This here’s one of the boxes, Miss Clayburn, but the other one that yer pa sent over is too heavy for me to cart down the trail all alone. Maybe now Ken and Ira’d better come up and help me h’ist it out o’ the stage.”
“It’s a birthday present from me.”
The boys sprang forward with alacrity, and followed the old driver back up the steep trail. While they were gone, Sylvia, her face flushed with pleasure, handed a long, narrow box to Carol. “It’s a birthday present from me,” she said.
In that box was the most beautiful doll that the little girl had ever seen. “Why, it’s prettier even than the one that—that—” Carol could say no more, but turned tear-brimmed eyes toward the giver of the treasured gift.
Joy shone in Sylvia’s pale-blue eyes. It was the first time that she had ever known the great happiness of giving a present to some one. Impulsively she stepped forward, and, kissing the girl who was holding the doll in her arms, she said softly: “Carol, I’ve been just mean and horrid. I knew all the time that you didn’t break my dolly, and—and I asked Papa to get this one for your birthday. I’m sorry, and—and I love you now, just like you were a really, truly sister.”
They were too young to know that this love was the greatest gift that was given to Carol on her ninth birthday.
“What do you s’pose the boys went to get?” Sue Piggins was peering out of the door and up toward the trail as she spoke.
“I don’t know. I didn’t ’spect Mr. Tressler to bring anything more’n just the box with the doll in it, and that’s here,” Sylvia said as she, too, peered out curiously.
“The stage is driving up the cañon,” Sue reported to the others in the living-room, “so maybe it wasn’t anything for us after all.” But Sylvia’s sharp eyes caught sight of the two big boys who were coming slowly down the trail, carrying something between them. “Oh! Oh! I know!” she cried excitedly. “It’s ice-cream in a freezer!”
Mr. Clayburn had sent it, and since Sue had brought a wonderful frosted cake as a gift from her mother, Dixie at once laid out the best kept-for-company dishes, and refreshments were served. An hour later, when the guests departed, Ken went with them to help dear teacher into the buggy. He looked up at her with shining eyes. “Oh, gee-whizzle, look’t the sky, Miss Bayley!” he exclaimed. “I do believe a blizzard’s coming. How I do hope ’tis!”
Miss Bayley looked her surprise. “Why, Ken,” she said, “how strange! Do you honestly want this glorious autumn weather to turn into a blizzard?”
“Yes’m, that is, I—er—I mean I’d like to have Rattlesnake Sam come down from the mountains and pay us a visit,” the lad stammered, growing red as though he were embarrassed.
Ira was starting the horses and so Miss Bayley said no more, but she was puzzled, and wondered if anything had happened to the imagination of her best pupil in mathematics.
The threatening blizzard broke over the Sierra Nevadas about sundown, and for three days it raged. Ken seemed to be hilariously excited, and Dixie, Carol, and Sylvia wondered about it. The snow, which had commenced falling the first night, did not cease, and had it not been that the lad worked untiringly with a shovel, the animals and hens would have been without food.
At last Dixie suggested that the lean-to shed, which was back of the kitchen, should be occupied by the three hens, the small pig, and the goat.
“Topsy and the two kittens can come in with us. I always make her a bed back of the stove when the winter storms come,” the little mother explained to Sylvia.
“But what shall you do with Pegasus?” that small maiden asked.
That was indeed a problem. “We didn’t have our burro last winter,” Dix said. Then she added, “What shall we do with him, Ken? When the snow piles up half-way to the top of the house, you can’t keep a path shoveled out to the barn. We’ll just have to bring Pegasus in somewhere.”
The lad rubbed his ear, which was stinging with the cold, for he had but recently come in from the storm. “I dunno,” he finally conceded, “unless we put him in the lean-to shed and tie him up in one corner. Then we can sort of fence off the three other corners and put the goat in one and the hens in the other, and Blessing in the last.”
How Sylvia laughed. “I never had so much fun before in all my life,” she confessed. Monday came and although the storm was not raging quite as furiously as it had been, still the four children could not attempt to go to school, nor did Miss Bayley expect them. Ken was very restless, and kept listening, as though he expected to hear some sound besides the moaning and whistling of the wind. Too, he would stand for fifteen minutes at a time straining his eyes through the dusk, watching, watching up the trail.
“Ken Martin, you act so queer!” Carol said at last. “Whatever are you looking out of the window for? You’ve seen the ground covered with snow lots of times before, haven’t you? Come on over here and help us tease Dixie to let us make some popcorn balls.”
The boy turned reluctantly back into the room, and, at the suggestion of his older sister, he brought forth a few ears of corn, which the laughing “twins,” as they now called Sylvia and Carol, began to shell. Then he procured the old-fashioned, long-handled popper, and five minutes later he was shaking this over a bed of red coals in the stove. The little town girl, who had never seen corn popped, stood with an arm about her best friend, watching with great interest. The kernels were bursting merrily into downy white puffs when Ken suddenly stopped shaking and listened intently. There was a prolonged dismal whistle of the wind down the chimney. That was all the girls heard, but Ken was sure that he had heard something else. “Here, Dix,” he said, as he held the handle of the popper toward her, “you take this. I want to go outside and listen.” The oldest girl complied, and the lad, putting on his heavy cap and coat, and lighting his lantern, opened the door. A gust of cold wind and sleet swept into the kitchen. Carol and Sylvia sprang to push the door shut, and, as they did so, the wide flame in the kerosene lamp flickered as though it would go out, but a moment later it steadied and shone on the puzzled faces of the three little girls.
“Dix,” Carol said, “brother’s been acting awfully queer of late, don’t you think so? He seems to be expecting somebody, and yet who in the world could it be? There’s nobody coming to visit us, is there?”
The older sister smiled. Ken had thought best to take her into his confidence, since he had offered the loft to his friend. She had assured him that he had done the right thing, but she did hope that Ken’s friend would not come until Sylvia had returned to Genoa. The little housekeeper didn’t know how they would all find places to sleep, but she remembered that Grandmother Piggins had often said, “Don’t step over a stile till you come to it.”
The corn had been popped till it filled a big yellow bowl, but Ken had not returned. Dixie carried the lamp to the window nearest the cañon trail. She was sure that she saw the lantern far off among the pine trees, but, as she watched, it disappeared. Then a sudden blast of wind roaring past the cabin told her that the storm was again increasing in fury. Why didn’t Ken come in, she wondered. Perhaps an uprooted tree had pinned him under. Perhaps she ought to go and find him.
When she arrived at this decision, she placed the lamp on the table by the window and went quietly to the loft to get her heavy coat and hood.
When Dixie ran out of the log cabin into the storm which was increasing in fury, she was at first so blinded by the stinging snow that she could see nothing. Then, when she had pulled her hood down in a way that sheltered her eyes, and had gathered the folds of her cloak tightly about her, she stood on the narrow path which Ken had shoveled a few hours before, and gazed through the dense blackness up toward the cañon road.
Again she saw a glimmer of light, as though it might be a lantern. Was Ken swinging it, hoping to attract her attention?
Believing that she had guessed aright, the small girl began battling the elements, and slowly she ascended the trail that led to the road. Now and then she stumbled over covered rocks, and at last reached the deep, unbroken snow, for Ken had not tried to shovel a path up the steep trail to the highway, and his own foot-prints had been hidden quickly by the storm.
Luckily the dim light of the lantern appeared again, and the girl headed directly for it. During a lull, she was sure she heard her brother call. After all, she feared that her surmise, that a falling tree had pinned him down, was correct, otherwise he surely would have returned to the cabin. It was at least half an hour since he had started out in search of he knew not what.
She stood still once more and listened. Again she heard the sound, and this time she knew it was her brother hallooing.
“Ken! Ken!” she shouted. “I’m coming! I’m ’most there!”
Then, as she paused to listen, she was sure that she heard an answering cry, though it seemed faint and far. Breaking through a dense growth of dwarf pines, to her great joy she saw, in a circle of light from the lantern a short distance above her, the erect form of a boy, which proved to her that at least her brother was unhurt. But as she hastened forward, she saw him lean over something that looked like a log. The girl knew that it must be the figure of a man. “Oh, Ken,” she cried as soon as she was near enough to be heard, “who is it out in all this blizzard?”
“It’s Mr. Edrington. He ’twas that was hallooing when I first heard a call. He had to leave camp, for his shelter blew away, and he couldn’t make a fire, for the matches were all wet. He tried to find the easy trail down the mountain, but the snow had covered it. He missed the way and fell right over the cliff. He’s got grit all right, Mr. Edrington has! He sort of dragged himself here. When I came, though, he’d petered all out, but he told me that much before he—he—”
The girl had knelt on the snow, and was listening to the man’s heart. “It’s only a faint he’s in,” she said, looking up at the lad. “If we rub his face and hands with snow, perhaps it will help him to come to.”
“Dix, you’re a brick!” the boy exclaimed admiringly. Then hopefully they did as the girl had suggested, watching anxiously the pale face upon which the light of the lantern shone. The wind had subsided, as it did periodically, and there was a strange silence under the pine trees. Too, the moon appeared through a rift in the clouds, making a beautiful picture of the wide, glistening cañon, while near by, the pine branches bent low under the weight of gleaming snow.
The young engineer slowly opened his eyes.
To the great relief of the boy and girl the young engineer slowly opened his eyes; then he looked about with a puzzled expression. Seeing Ken, he smiled. “I say, where am I, old man?” he asked. Turning, he saw Dixie, and he sat up as though startled.
“It’s only my sister, Mr. Edrington,” Ken explained. “She’s grown a lot since you saw her last.”
“Of course,” the young man laughed as he took the girl’s hand. “I must have been dreaming. I thought you were Marlita Arden. Oh, I remember now. I fell over the cliff, didn’t I? Wonder if any bones are broken. Give a lift, Ken, and I’ll soon find out.”
With the aid of the strong boy and girl, the stalwart young man stood on his feet, and was indeed pleased to find that he could walk without pain.
However, he quickly put his hand to his head.
“That’s where I hit when I landed, I guess,” he said, trying to speak lightly. He staggered as he walked, and was glad indeed when the cabin was reached and he found himself lying on Ken’s bed in the small room adjoining the kitchen.
Carol had put another stick on the fire and had filled the teakettle. Dixie praised her small sister for her thoughtfulness. How glad, glad, that little mother was when she realized that Carol was beginning to think of others.
As the older girl prepared a hot beverage for their unexpected guest, she was wondering where her brother would sleep. Surmising this, the lad told her he’d fold a quilt and sleep on the floor near the stove. “Ira and I slept on the hard ground for a week when we were off wood-cutting for his dad,” he concluded.
Dixie went to bed that night with a strange feeling—a premonition perhaps—that something unusual was about to happen. Nor was she wrong.
The next day dawned gloriously, but the snow was still too deep in the cañon for the children to attend the morning session of the log-cabin school.
“The snow-plow will be along soon, I suppose,” Carol said, as she peered up toward the highway.
Sylvia, who stood at Carol’s side exclaimed: “Look! Look! There’s a shining white cloud flying low. Did you suppose clouds ever came so far down the mountain?”
Carol gleefully clapped her hands. “It’s the plow going up the road this very minute,” she cried in joy. “It throws up the snow in clouds just like that.” Then she added: “I’ll tell my brother. He’ll want to finish shoveling our path now.”
“Oh-ee! How I’d love to help shovel,” Sylvia exclaimed. “Couldn’t you and I help, Carol?”
“Of course we could, and maybe it would be kind of fun! We haven’t been out of the house for ’most four days. I’ll ask Dixie.”
The older girl thought the plan a splendid one, and she bundled up Jimmy-Boy, that he might accompany them. With the three children away from the cabin, Mr. Edrington might get the undisturbed sleep that he so needed to restore his strength.
The younger girls climbed to the loft and put on their leggings, rubbers, and heavy coats and hoods; then, getting small shovels, they joined the boy who was already working with a will, his cheeks the color of the muffler that was tied about his neck.
When they were far enough away from the cabin to shout, without being heard by the injured man, they paused now and then in their path-making to have a snowball battle, and, at last, when they had cleared the trail to the highway, the four children stood looking admiringly at the road that had been so recently smoothed by the snow-plow.
Suddenly Ken sang out, “Hark, what do I hear?”
“Sleigh-bells, I do believe,” Carol cried.
“Jingle! Jingle! Somebody’s coming. Let’s guess who.” Sylvia, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling, watched the bend in the road expectantly. “I’ll guess it’s Mr. Piggins,” she concluded.
“I’ll guess it’s—” Ken began, but before he could mention a name, a trim little cutter, drawn by a spry white horse, appeared.
There was a cry of joy from one of the children.
“It’s my dad! My dear, dear dad!” Leaping from the trail into the highway, Sylvia waved her red-mittened hand, laughing and shouting. The man in the rapidly-approaching sleigh looked at the small girl as though he could not think who she might be.
Then with an expression of radiant gladness, he called “Whoa!” tossed the reins to Ken and held out his arms to catch the small figure that was flying toward him.
“My Miggins!” the father’s voice was tender with emotion. “This can’t be you!”
He held her off at arm’s length to gaze at her with admiring eyes.
The small girl laughed up at him happily, her eyes bright, her cheeks as rosy as Carol’s. Then again holding her close, he said softly: “Little girl, your mother is at home now, and she wants to see you. She has been asking every day since the storm set in if I wouldn’t go and get her baby for her.” Then he added anxiously: “Are you old enough, I wonder, to see the great change that there is in your mother, and not let her know? Our loved one is very frail yet, little daughter, but I believe, when you are with her, she will be more content and will grow stronger again. We will try to help her, for she longs to get well, that she may enjoy the simple home life which, somehow, we have always missed.” Then, smiling down at the other three children, the genial banker called, “Pile in, all of you, and I’ll give you a sleigh-ride.”
Up they scrambled, stowing the shovels away as best they could. Then again the horse started, turning down the drive toward the cabin. How the sleigh-bells rang, and how the children shouted! Jimmy-Boy was most hilarious of all, and he wanted to keep on riding, even when Dixie appeared to lift him out and carry him into the warm kitchen. “I want more sleigh-ride,” the little fellow kept saying. Then Dixie had an inspiration. “Maybe big brother will be able to make a bob-sled, and maybe Pegasus will pull it, and then Jimmy can go riding.”
“Will there be a ting-a-ling?” The small boy had been about to cry, but he waited to hear his big sister’s reply. Dixie hesitated. She never liked to promise anything that she could not grant.
“What’s the matter with that little man?” the kind banker asked as he entered the kitchen.
Jimmy-Boy, from his place on Dixie’s lap, hastened to tell him. “I want ting-a-ling to put on Pegthus.”
Mr. Clayburn looked so truly mystified that Dixie had to explain that Pegasus was their burro, and that the little fellow wished they had a string of bells to put about his neck.
“A splendid suggestion!” the genial man exclaimed. “I was wondering what I could do with the old bells, now that I have bought a new harness. Pegasus shall have them. Come with me, little chap, and we’ll see how your burro likes them.”
Ken accompanied them to the barn while Dixie went up to the loft where she found the two smaller girls busily packing the suit-case which Sylvia had brought with her.
That little maid stood up, and, throwing her arms about Dixie’s neck, she said: “Oh, I just don’t know how to tell you what a nice time I’ve had. How I do hope that I can come again!”
“Of course you’ll come again—lots and lots of times,” Dixie assured her.
Ten minutes later they were all out on the porch. Mr. Clayburn took the hand of the oldest girl as he said earnestly, “Dixie, I shall never be able to repay you four little Martins for all that you have done for my small daughter, but promise that you will call on me if ever you need help in any way.”
Dixie was glad to promise. Then, when the sleigh had been driven away, Ken said: “I didn’t tell Mr. Clayburn the reason for Mr. Edrington’s being here. That’s his secret. He doesn’t want any one to know.”
“Nobody shall know!” Dixie promised, but she was mistaken.
Miss Bayley could not understand why the Martin children did not come to school that afternoon, for she had seen the snow-plow pass by and knew that the road was open. So anxious did she become that she dismissed the three pupils who were there, at two o’clock. Then, donning her warm wraps, she started walking down the highway toward the cañon.
The air was clear and sparkling. The girl-teacher felt as though she could run and shout, as the children did, but, fearing that she might shock Mrs. Enterprise Twiggly, she waited until she was on the downward trail and out of sight of the inn, then she flung her arms wide and sang a glad song of her childhood.
“Oh, but it’s good to be alive!” she said as she turned into the narrow, well-shoveled trail leading to the cabin. Just then a breeze, on mischief bent, perhaps, tossed a heavily-laden pine bough above her head and a small avalanche of snow crashed down upon her. Laughingly, she shook herself as best she could.
The snow had knocked her cherry-colored tam awry, and had loosened her hair, which curled at the ends and clustered about her ears and on her neck. With cheeks flushed and eyes brimming with mirth, the girl-teacher tapped upon the door of the cabin. No one answered, and she pushed it open and found herself facing a strange young man who, wrapped well in blankets, sat in the big easy-chair close to the stove. How Frederick Edrington had longed to climb to the shelter of the loft when he had seen the unwelcome guest passing the window, but there had not been time.
For one terrorized moment he had feared that, when the door opened, he would behold either his aunt or the dreaded Marlita Arden. It was with an audible sigh of relief that he beheld the vision of his dreams.
Miss Bayley was the more startled of the two. “Oh!” she exclaimed, as she backed toward the door again. “I—I didn’t know that the Martin children had company. I am so sorry—if—if I—” she hesitated.
The young man was the first to recover his presence of mind. “You haven’t, Miss Bayley,” he said with the smile that won friends for him among rich or poor, young or old. “I assure you that you have done the very nicest thing that you possibly could have done. I’m mighty glad to see you again. I—”
“Again?” The girl-teacher was indeed surprised, and at once began to search her memory for the time of their former meeting. Surely she could not have forgotten the good-looking young man, who bronzed face, with its clear-cut features, plainly told that his life-work kept him out-of-doors.
“Pardon me for not rising, Miss Bayley, and please do slip off your cloak and stay a while,” he begged. “Dixie and the others have gone to the Valley Ranch on an errand, but they will soon return.”
Then, as he saw the puzzled expression in her eyes, the young man answered her unspoken query. “Miss Bayley, you have never met me before, but I have heard my little friends speak of you so often that I feel well acquainted with you.”
Relieved, Josephine slipped off her fur-lined cloak and seated herself. For a moment she sat looking thoughtfully out of the window toward a snow-covered range that formed the other side of the wide cañon.
“May I hear about it?” the young engineer asked.
The girl smiled. “I was thinking of a queer old man who is camping up in the mountains, and wondering how he has weathered the storm.”
“Oh, indeed!” Mr. Edrington sat up as though interested. “Is this—er—old man of whom you speak a particular friend of yours?”
The girl nodded, then laughed. “Well, at least I do feel friendly toward him because he likes books. He has had two of mine, one on snakes and the other a history.”
Then, turning she asked a direct question: “Won’t you tell me your name? It’s hard to talk to a person and not call him anything.”
The young engineer flushed. “I say, Miss Bayley,” he apologized, “you’ll think I’m a regular boor, won’t you? I—er—my name is—Rattlesnake Sam.”
The girl’s amused laughter rang out, and though the listener was relieved, he was certainly puzzled.
“I was sure of it!” she said triumphantly. “You see what an excellent detective I am.”
“But, I say, Miss Bayley, this isn’t very complimentary. I do know that I need shaving, but Ken led me to believe that you thought Rattlesnake Sam was an old, dry-as-dust professor, a sort of ‘fossil,’ and I—er—” Then the young engineer laughed in his hearty, boyish way. “Honestly, Miss Bayley, I didn’t suppose I looked quite that old and fogyish.” Then the query: “Do I?”
The girl shook her head, but her eyes still twinkled. “No-o!” she confessed almost reluctantly, “and I’m dreadfully disappointed in you. I was actually looking forward to meeting the snake professor who looked like—well, like Thoreau or Burroughs, as I fancied, and now—” Pausing, the girl tilted her head sideways and gazed at him critically and yet merrily.
His good-looking bronzed face was expressive as he watched her, and his eyes were telling how much he admired her. He wondered what she would say.
“I believe I am disappointed in you,” the girl declared, and yet in a tone that did not quite carry conviction. “You’re much too modern to be real interesting.”
The young man looked disconsolate. “Alas!” said he. “Fate seems to be against me.” He glanced up hopefully. “I might grow a very long beard, Miss Bayley, if that would help to make me less modern and more interesting.” Then, as she only laughed her reply, the young engineer continued. “But you haven’t told me what clues you possessed that led you to discover my supposed well-hidden identity.”
Josephine looked at him searchingly. “Can men keep a secret?” she inquired.
“Much better than boys can, or so I’m beginning to think,” was the reply.
“No, you are wrong,” Miss Bayley defended. “Ken didn’t really tell. In fact, he doesn’t know that he told at all. As I look back now upon our conversations concerning the old man in the mountains, I realize that Ken did his very best to keep your secret, but he said such strange things sometimes. He hasn’t told,—not one word,—but one day when I offered him a penny for his thoughts, he said he was wishing somebody would get married, and he seemed so doleful about it that my curiosity was aroused.
“Then, when I told him that I thought he was rather young to be a match-maker, he confessed that what he was really wishing was that there would be a blizzard, so that his friend Rattlesnake Sam would have to leave the mountains and come down and stay at their cabin.
“Well, the storm did come and so, too, did you. Wasn’t the inference a natural one?”
The young man nodded. “It wouldn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to unravel that mystery,” he began, and then paused, for he was sure the little ripple of laughter that he heard was prefacing a merry remark. Nor was he wrong, for Josephine continued: “There is one part, however, that I cannot understand. Whom do you suppose Ken wants to have married? If he hadn’t mentioned it right in the very same breath with the blizzard, I wouldn’t be so curious.”
“Your curiosity is quite natural, Miss Bayley, and it’s going to be completely satisfied,” the young man said seriously. “I may need your help almost any day now, and so you, too, may share the secret with Dixie and Ken.” Then he told the whole story, beginning with the making of the mountain road, two years previous, and ending with his recent flight from the South and his reason for hiding.
To his surprise, his listener exclaimed: “Mr. Edrington, you are indeed to be congratulated upon your narrow escape. If you know Marlita Arden as well as I do, you are then aware that what she needs most is variety and admiration. I doubt if she would be the comrade sort of wife that I believe you would want.” Then, more seriously, “I do not dislike Marlita, understand, but I would be sorry to have my brother Tim marry her.”
The girl knew, by the listener’s expression that she was amazing him. Nor was she wrong. Marlita Arden was a snob. She would not speak civilly to a woman who earned her own living, and yet this young school-teacher spoke as though she knew the Southern heiress well.
He could not ask how well, and no further information was volunteered. Miss Bayley had risen and was donning her cloak. “I must be going,” she said, smiling at him, “for the dusk comes early these winter days.”
The young man implored, “Miss Bayley, won’t you come often? Have pity on a poor old fossil who’s a shut-in.”
“Perhaps! Good-by.” The teacher looked radiantly young and beautiful as she paused in the open door and smiled back at him.
“She’s a princess of a girl,” he thought; then he recalled his decision to never fall in love, and he tried to harden his heart.
A never-to-be-forgotten winter followed that first blizzard. Never to be forgotten, at least, by the girl-teacher of the Woodford’s Cañon log-cabin school, by the young civil engineer, or by Dixie and Ken Martin. The other children were almost too young to know how portentous those months were.
After the storm there was a spell of clear, cold weather, when the snow-covered valley and mountains sparkled in the pale sunshine, inviting frolic.
For a time Mr. Edrington remained in the cabin, climbing hastily to the loft if sleigh-bells were heard without, but, as the days passed and the wrathful aunt, from whom he was hiding that he need not marry the girl of her choice, did not appear, he became more daring and ventured forth in the full light of day.
He it was who made, with Ken’s help, a wonderful slide down a steep trail which ended at the frozen stream in the valley. Then a marvelous toboggan was constructed, one long and strong enough to take them all on a wild ride from the highway to the valley-bottom.
The young engineer sat in front to steer, and Jimmy-Boy sat just behind and clung to him, and then came, Dixie and Carol, Ken and Miss Bayley.
Once, just for mischief, Mr. Edrington steered into a drift, and they were all half-buried, but they took the ducking good-naturedly.
The young engineer also spent long hours reading in the cabin of his good friend, Josephine Bayley. One of the Martin children accompanied him on these occasions, usually Dixie, who was old enough to enjoy the books that her two older friends liked to read aloud to each other.
While school was in session the young engineer was not idle, for he had with him his instruments, and many a chart he made as he studied the way to bridge chasms or to tunnel mountains.
February the first was Dixie’s birthday. Knowing that her sister and brother could not give her presents, that thoughtful little mother did not remind them of the coming event, and, childlike, they had quite forgotten, for all winter days seemed alike to them. But there was one who had not forgotten, and that one was Miss Bayley. She took Frederick Edrington into her confidence, and a surprise-party was planned and carried out.
The girl-teacher’s present to her favorite pupil was in a box, the shape of which aroused much curiosity, but when Dixie saw the gift it contained, her plain face was transfigured.
“Why, that girl is beautiful!” the young engineer said softly to the teacher who stood at his side, watching while the slender maid lifted a bow and violin.
“Miss Bayley!” How starlike were the eyes that turned toward the beloved friend and benefactress. “Do you really think that some day I shall be able to play?”
There was conviction in the tone of the young woman as she said, “I know it! Some day we shall all listen in rapture, I’ll prophesy, and then we’ll say proudly, one to another, ‘That is our Dixie.’”
Going to the girl, Miss Bayley kissed her. “May I take your violin, dear? I studied several musical instruments in school, but cannot play any of them well.”
Taking the violin and adjusting it, she played a sweet, simple melody, then explained to the girl, who listened with rapt eagerness, a few of the things that a beginner should know. “Suppose you try to play.” The young teacher smiled at the maid, little dreaming that she would comply, but Dixie did not hesitate. She lifted the violin, and, after listening to the strings for a moment, she began to play the same melody that Miss Bayley had but finished. It was imperfectly done, but the young teacher knew that she had been right in believing that the girl was rarely talented.
“I will teach you all that I know, which isn’t much,” Miss Bayley said. “Then, when the snow is gone and spring has come, you shall have lessons from some one who is a real musician.”
Dixie’s cup of happiness seemed full those wintry days, for Carol grew in gentleness and unselfishness, and was ever more loved and more lovable.
“How pleased our father would be!” Dixie said that night as she and Ken were alone in the kitchen after the party. Mr. Edrington had gone with Miss Bayley, to escort her home up the cañon trail, and the younger children were asleep. “Pleased, because we have two such wonderful friends. Three,” the girl added brightly, “for surely Mr. Clayburn has been a true friend.”
“We have managed to get along quite nicely without our aunt,” the boy said as he wound the old grandfather’s clock. “I’m just as well pleased that she never did look us up. I’m almost sure we shouldn’t like her.”
“I don’t believe she knows that we even exist,” Dixie declared. “Since she never opened any of the letters that were sent to her, how could she know?”
“That’s right,” Ken agreed. “I wonder what set me to thinking about her? Well, I won’t waste any more thought on her. Good-night, Dix.”
The girl had started to ascend the ladder to the loft where she slept, but she turned back and kissed the lad as she said: “Ken, you’ve been a wonderful brother. On birthdays one thinks of those things. Good-night.”
The moon arose above old Piney Peak as Miss Bayley and Mr. Edrington left the sheltered cañon trail and turned into the highway.
“I’m going to put out the light in the lantern,” the young man said. “We don’t need it now, do we?” he smilingly asked after having blown out the flickering flame.
“Where has it gone,” she asked, “the light that was there but a moment ago?”
The young man shook his head. “I can’t tell you,” he declared; “and, Josephine, please don’t ask me to think about abstract things just now. I want to tell you something.”
The young engineer spoke seriously, almost pleadingly. He did not seem to idealize that he had called his companion by her first name, but Miss Bayley knew it, and she was glad to have him. What had he to tell her? How she hoped—but—even to herself, she would not admit that desire.
For a few moments they walked on in silence. The road was slippery. He held her arm, but still said nothing. At last Miss Bayley peered into his face, trying to get him to lift his eyes from the ground. “I’ll not say ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ that is too trite,” she began, “but I do feel sort of left out and lonely. I’m just sure you are trying to figure out how to tunnel through Old Piney and make your walk home with me a quarter of a mile shorter.”
He looked up then, his fine eyes laughing, but in them there was an expression which assured the girl that he had not been thinking of tunnels, but of her. Taking her warmly-gloved hand, he said, “Lady of the Sunrise Peak, I’m going away.”
She stopped, and her eyes told her surprised disappointment.
“Oh, Mr. Edrington, why? May I ask? I thought you were going to stay here until spring or until you had heard that Marlita Arden had married.” She paused questioningly.
“I did intend to, but I’m running away from—something else—myself,” he hastened to add. “You see, Miss Bayley, I once made a resolution, and if I stay here I’m afraid I’ll break it.”
“Indeed? May I know what the resolution was?” They had reached the small cabin beyond the inn, and the girl-teacher paused on the doorstep waiting. What could he say? The liquid-brown eyes that were so expressive were searching his. She knew his answer before it was given.
“I have fallen in love, and I vowed I never would,” he said quietly.
“And is that why you are going away?” she inquired.