"That is my fault," groaned Nealie. "I made Rocky back it on to the slope, because I thought that we should be more sheltered from the terrible wind, and I knew that the boys would not be in so much danger of a wetting if it rained. Then the cattle, charging down the side of the hill in the dark, must have blundered up against the wagon and just bowled it over. They are so big and clumsy, you see, and when once they start there is no stopping them. Now, if the wagon is badly damaged, we shall be put to no end of expense because of my carelessness."
"But it was not carelessness if you did it for our comfort, and it is no use thinking that the wagon is badly damaged, and getting worried about it, until you know," said Rupert. "Of course we can"t do anything towards finding out, or putting it straight, until morning, for we might only make matters worse, and invite more disaster still."
"Will it be long before it is morning?" asked Billykins in a voice of misery. "I am quite dreadfully cold, and most horribly hungry."
"So am I, and I wish that we were back at Mrs. Warner"s," said Don in a dismal tone.
"I don"t expect that it will be very long now, and if you curl up under this rug, if it is a rug, you may go to sleep, and then you will forget about being hungry," said Nealie, gripping something which felt like drapery, and dragging it towards her.
"That is my frock!" cried Sylvia. "Creep in here, close to me, Billykins, and then you will help to keep poor Ducky warm. There is room for Don too. Don"t sit on more of the lump sugar than you can help, as it is very uncomfortable, I find; but if you were to eat some of the lumps, perhaps they would warm you a little, for I have heard somewhere that there is a great deal of warmth in sugar."
"I have found a lump. Will you have it, Nealie?" asked Ducky, groping in the darkness for her elder sister, and feeling that, of them all, it was Nealie who most needed comfort just then.
"I don"t want it, thank you, dearie," answered Nealie, her anxieties being too heavy for sugar to alleviate.
"Here is another; and--oh, I say, I have just put my fingers into something horribly sticky! What can it be?" and Ducky stuffed her fist in the face of Billykins, for it was so dark that she could not see where she was thrusting it.
"Look out!" he exclaimed in an offended tone, then suddenly changed to a shout of joy. "Oh, it is marmalade, and it is all over my mouth! Have you got any more of it, Nealie?"
"Of course. There was a pot in the grocery box, and I had forgotten about it, or we would have had it to help out with supper, and then it would not have been wasted in this fashion," replied Nealie, feeling that she would like to indulge in a good cry over the ruin which had come upon them.
"It won"t be wasted if only I can find where that pot is. Can you guide my hand, Ducky, to find it?" asked Don eagerly.
"It seems to be all over me--the marmalade, I mean--but I don"t know where the pot is, and I am most horribly sticky!" cried Ducky, who was a most fastidious little maiden.
"Where is your fist? I will suck it clean for you," volunteered Don, with such an air of brotherly self-sacrifice that Nealie burst out laughing, which was much better for her than the tears she longed to shed, and which had been smarting under her eyelids only a minute before.
For a few minutes there was great compet.i.tion between Don and Billykins for the privilege of sucking Ducky"s fists clean of marmalade, and, the comical side of the picture presenting itself to the little girl, she laughed as much as Nealie; then Sylvia joined in, and at length they were all making the best of things, groping in the dark for lumps of sugar and dabs of marmalade, until they lighted on some that had uncomfortably mixed itself up with the pepper, when a chorus of ohs! and ahs! sounded from the group of explorers, and everyone immediately decided that they had had enough marmalade for the present.
The cattle had all gone, and the night was entirely silent again, when Rupert said anxiously: "I wonder where Rockefeller has gone? We shall be in a pretty bad case if anything happens to the old horse."
"I will go in search of him when morning comes; the worst that could happen would be that he would stampede with the cattle, and we shall have the men in charge of the droves coming past presently," said Rumple, who had made a sort of shelter for himself and Rupert from the wreckage of the canvas which had been draped round the wagon.
"Perhaps the horse has not been upset at all by the panic of the cattle.
It is not as if it had been a lot of horses rushing across the encampment in the middle of the night," said Sylvia, who had succeeded in making Ducky so warm and comfortable that the little girl was falling off to sleep again, although the rest of them were very wide-awake indeed.
"I wish that I knew what the time is, but I don"t know where to find the matches, and it is too dark to see the face of my watch," said Rupert.
He was feeling the situation rather keenly, because he could do so very little to help the others, when, by right of his position as eldest of the family, he ought to have done so much.
"Don"t worry about the time, dear; try to get a little sleep if you can.
You will need it so badly when the morning comes," said Nealie, moving a little because she found that she was sitting in the frying pan, and she remembered that it had only been rubbed with a bit of paper after being used for frying bacon on the day before yesterday.
"I vote that we all go to sleep, seeing that we can do no good by keeping awake. We can"t even sort up this mess of marmalade and pepper,"
said Rumple, whose tongue was still on fire from the last lick of marmalade which had been so liberally mixed with pepper.
"Someone is coming. I wonder if it is one of the cattle men?" said Rupert, thrusting his head farther out from the canvas and getting the full benefit of the cold wind which came howling and moaning out of the south.
"There are two or three, judging by the noise. Shall we hail them, do you think?" asked Nealie; but her voice had a nervous ring which gave Rupert a sudden inspiration and made him say sharply:
"No, no. If they are the cattle men they will most likely hail us, and if they are not it may be better that they should not take any notice of us. Lie low, all of you, and don"t make a sound while they go by."
"I am horribly afraid that I shall sneeze, for that pepper has got into my nose!" gasped Don, then went off into a paroxysm of sneezing so violent that Billykins gurgled with laughter, until Nealie found it necessary to cover the pair of them with a cushion which she had found by groping among fragments of broken cups, lumps of sugar, and debris of all sorts.
The riders, of which there were two or three, checked their horses to descend the hill past the overturned wagon; but as they did not trouble to lower their voices, every word they said was perfectly audible through the hush of the night.
"As neat a job of stampeding as ever I saw," said a hoa.r.s.e voice.
"We got them away so quietly too. That was a bright idea of yours, Alf, to make friends with the watchman last night," said another, whose tones had a boyish ring, as if he were hardly grown up as yet.
"Alf always did understand making friends at the right time, and if I know anything about it, there was something more than whisky in that bottle from which you offered him a drink," said a third man, whose voice had such a horrid ring that Nealie could not repress a shudder, and she pressed the cushion down with a warning air upon the two boys as the beginning of another gurgle sounded from them.
"What is that in the hollow there?" demanded the first speaker, whom the others had called Alf.
"It looks like a wagon that has come to grief and been deserted," said the third man in a casual tone, and then they put their horses to a canter again and swept past the wagon without troubling more about it.
"Cattle thieves!" murmured Nealie, and there was a shaky sound in her voice which made Rupert reach up to grip her hand, as if he would give her more courage that way.
"What a mercy that the cattle charged down upon us and upset us in this fashion, or we might have had something even more unpleasant to bear,"
whispered Sylvia, clasping Ducky closer in her arms and feeling grateful for what at first had seemed such an awful disaster.
"Cattle thieves? But how will they manage to get clear away without the proper drovers finding which way they have gone?" asked Rupert, who had been straining his ears to discover the route taken by the men who had just ridden past.
"Here comes Rockefeller. I say, Nealie, let me ride a little way after those men and find out which way they have gone? It is a bit lighter now. I expect that the moon is getting up; there is the end of a moon that shows somewhere near morning, I know," said Rumple, then he thrust out his head and called softly to a shape which he had seen faintly outlined against the dark hillside, and he was immediately answered by a cheerful whinny, and a moment later Rockefeller shuffled up, his hobbles not permitting much in the way of pace, although he could get about sufficiently to feed during the night.
"Oh no, indeed you must not! I should be so horribly frightened lest they should shoot you or the horse!" cried poor Nealie, who had privately made up her mind that she could never let Rumple out of her sight again, because he was always getting into pickles.
"I would let him go, Nealie. He may be able to track those men and save the drovers hours of vain searching; then in return, perhaps, they will help us right our wagon. And we shall want some help there; I can see that plainly enough," said Rupert quietly. Then Nealie gave way at once, as she mostly did when Rupert undertook to advise her, for he certainly made up in wisdom what he lacked in bodily strength.
She struggled out of the wreckage of the wagon, and, having caught Rockefeller, no difficult task, since she never went empty handed to the work, she hoisted Rumple on to his back, then, slipping the hobbles, saw the two slink off in the darkness by the way the men had gone.
CHAPTER XII
Repairing the Damage
When Rumple, perched on the back of Rockefeller, had crept quietly away into the darkness, the three elders sat straining their ears into the night for some sound that should let them know help was coming. Once or twice they spoke to each other in whispers, but for the most part they were quite silent. The two younger boys had drowsed off to sleep, while Ducky lay in a profound slumber, her warm little body seeming in some strange way to bring comfort and courage to Sylvia, in whose arms she lay. An hour dragged away, and then, to the unspeakable joy and relief of the watchers, a grey light stole over the hills, then broadened and spread until it was full dawn. There was no crimson flush of sunrise this morning, the sky was too heavy with clouds that had been blown up from the south-east; but at least it was daylight, and the comfort of being able to see what was going on made them all feel better.
The children woke up then, clamorous for breakfast. Only, as provisions were so scanty it was necessary to have a little council of ways and means straight away.
"We could make some porridge, for here is some corn-meal in a tin!"
cried Nealie, who had been industriously stirring among their overturned goods and chattels since daylight came to brighten the prospect.
"But we have no wood for a fire, and we can"t make porridge without a fire," objected Sylvia.
"Ducky and the boys can get us some twigs and little bits of wood from those bushes just over the hill," said Nealie. "We shall all feel better for having something warm to eat, as the weather is so uncomfortable this morning, and while they are looking after the fire we three can clear the things from the wagon in readiness for having it set right way up once more. Never, never will I be so careless again as to leave it standing on a slope at night!"