"T"ink I kin? Dat"s good, now! Yo" run along down to de ribber an" hab a good paddle afore hit gits too late."
Accordingly I slid off of Frank"s back while Joe, gathering in the slack of the lines, clucked encouragingly to him to go on. Instead of doing that the horse wheeled around in the furrow until he had brought my retreating figure into view, then stopped and gazed inquiringly after me.
"Joe," I called back, halting, "maybe I"d better not leave."
"Yo" jess run right erlong, Miss Leslie, honey; dis hoss gwine ter go all right jess soon"s he make up he mine whar yo" is gwine."
Glancing back again presently, I found that Joe was right. Frank was working with promising sedateness.
It was deliciously cool down underneath the shadow of the cliff, on the banks of the shallow, bright river. Guard had followed me from the field; he, too, enjoyed the cool water and proceeded to make the most of it. After I had bathed my hot face and hands I sat on the bank and watched him as he splashed about, making sudden, futile darts at the tiny fish that swarmed around him when he was quiet, and went scurrying away like chaff before the wind, the instant that he moved.
I had just risen to my feet, intending to start to the house, when Guard suddenly sprang out of the water with a growl. At the same instant the direful squawking of a frightened chicken broke on my ears. The squawking, close at hand at first, receded rapidly.
Evidently some animal had caught one of our flock of poultry and was making off with its prize.
There was a wildness of rocks and gnarled cedar trees on the steep mountain slope above us, just beyond the bend in the river, and toward this wild quarter, judging by the outcries--fast lessening in the distance--the animal, whatever it might be, was bearing its prey. I was drenched with a shower of water drops as Guard shot past me, taking the trail with an eager yelp, while I, no less eager, and with as little reflection, ran after him. The dog had cleared the underbrush on the river bank, as I rushed out, and was racing across the little interval, or clear s.p.a.ce between the river bank and the first jumble of rocks where the abrupt rise of the mountain slope began. Just in front of him, so close it seemed the next leap would surely enable him to seize the creature, glided, rather than ran, so swift and stealthy was the motion, some large animal, bearing a white chicken in its mouth. A tiny trail of white feathers drifted backward as the animal ran, while the helpless white wings beat the air frantically on either side of the unyielding jaws.
The poor chick might be badly hurt, but it could still squawk and struggle. Indignation gave me renewed strength. I ran forward, shouting, "Sic him, Guard, sic him!" and the next instant my foot caught under a projecting root and I fell headlong to the ground. It really seemed for a blank s.p.a.ce as if my fall must have jarred the earth. There was a whirling dance of stars all about my head; the ground rolled and heaved underneath me; sky, earth, and trees swam together, joining that whirling dance of stars. It must have been a full minute before I was able to sit up and weakly wonder what had happened. It all came back to me as a cold, moist nose touched my hand and a sympathetic whimper broke the silence. I turned on Guard reproachfully.
"Why did you leave that thing to come back to me, sir? You could have caught it if you had kept right on after it, and you might have known I"d get along all right without your help. Now, do you go and find it, sir!" and I pointed imperatively, if rather vaguely, towards the jumble of rocks. The chicken"s cries had ceased; there was now nothing to guide the dog, even if he understood, which I, having great faith in his intelligence, believed he did. He ran along the trail for a few yards, stopped, gave a joyful bark, and came running back to me with a stick in his mouth.
I had been trying to teach him to retrieve, and my order, "go find it," suggested that pastime to him. When he laid the stick at my feet, wagging his tail and looking up in hopeful antic.i.p.ation of the praise that he felt to be his due, I could not find it in my heart to withhold it. Besides, the chicken thief was, no doubt, safe in his lair at this time, so, abandoning the hopeless pursuit, we made our way homeward.
When Joe came in, and I related our adventure to him, he said: "Yo"
may t"ank yo" sta"hs, Miss Leslie, dat yo" done got dat tumble w"en yo" did! Dat feller wif de black coat, trimmed in yeller, was a lynx--dat"s his"n"s dress ebbery time--an" I"d "a" heap rudder meet up wif a mountain lion, any day, dan one "o" dem ar! Land, chile! Ef hit had "a" been me, down dar by de ribber, I"d "a" helt Guard to keep him still, an" I"d "a" kep" out o" sight. Dat"s w"at I"d "a" done, honey."
"Do you recollect, Leslie," Jessie chimed in, "what Mrs. Loyd told us about her encounter with a lynx, last year? She said that she was in the house one day, when she heard a great outcry among her chickens, right close at hand, in the yard. She ran to the door, and there was a great lynx, chasing the chickens around. The minute the door was opened, they ran toward it, and into the house. The lynx was right behind them, but it stopped as the chickens crowded around her, and she seized the broom and struck at it. Instead of running, it stood its ground and showed its teeth, bristling up and growling. She dropped the broom and sprang into the house, slamming the door shut just as the lynx hurled itself against it. She said that she was almost scared to death. She locked the door, and scrambled up into the loft--she said that she was afraid the cat would take a notion to break in at one of the windows--and the creature stayed outside and killed chickens as long as he pleased, while she stayed up there, trembling, until her husband came home. She said that the next time a bob-cat wanted one of her chickens it could have it, for all of her."
"I would hate to have Guard get hurt," I said, looking affectionately at our follower.
CHAPTER XIII
JOE DISAPPEARS
The plowing was done--had been done for some days, indeed--and the time set for our offering final proof was close at hand. But Jessie and I, going about our household tasks with sober faces, had hardly a word to say to each other.
We had looked forward to this coming day with such eager expectation, but now that it was so near, we shrank with dread from facing it. A trouble so great as, under the circ.u.mstances, to deserve to be ranked as a calamity, had befallen us. Joe was gone. He had left us without a sign, at the time, of all others in our whole lives, when we most needed him. On the evening of the day that the plowing was done he had retired, as usual, to his little room off the kitchen, and when we awoke in the morning he was gone. That was all. But it was enough. It was a fact that seemed to darken our whole world. It was not alone that we missed his help; we had believed in his fidelity as one believes in the fidelity of a mother, and he had left us without a word of explanation or regret.
The subject was so painful that, by tacit consent, we both avoided it.
It would have been better, I think, to have expressed our views freely, for, as we could dwell on nothing else, we seldom spoke at all, and that added to the gloom of the situation.
Joe had been gone several days, and we had been silently struggling in the Slough of Despond, when I awoke one morning filled with a new and ardent resolution, which I proceeded to carry into instant execution.
Jessie was always the first one up. I heard her moving about in the kitchen, and, making a hasty toilet, joined her there. She was grinding coffee in the mill that was fastened securely to the door-jamb. It was, I believe, the noisiest mill in existence; its resonant whi-r-rr was like that of some giant grist-mill. Jessie suspended operations as I drew near to remark:
"You"re up early, Leslie."
"Yes; I"ve thought of something, and--"
"It"s the early thought that is caught, same"s the early worm," my sister remarked, unfeelingly. Then she added: "Excuse me a minute, Leslie, I must get this coffee ground, and can"t talk against the mill."
When the coffee was in the pot on the stove, she turned to me again:
"Now what have you thought of that is so wonderful?"
"It isn"t wonderful, Jessie. It"s sensible."
"It amounts to the same thing."
"Not in this case. First, I think we ought to stop grieving over Joe"s desertion."
Jessie"s bright face clouded instantly:
"It is cruel!" she protested.
"I don"t feel as if we ought to say that, Jessie. Joe has been a good, true, faithful friend to us, and he loved father; we, ourselves, loved father no more than Joe did--"
"Why, Leslie!"
"It is true, Jessie. I feel it, someway, and I am not going to blame Joe any more; not even in my own thoughts. It does no good, and it makes us very unhappy. Let"s try to be cheerful again, Jessie, and make the best of it."
"We must make the best of it whether we are cheerful or not."
"Very well, then; one of the first things that we must do, if we are to depend on our own efforts, is to market that cantaloupe crop."
"What, you and I, Leslie?" Jessie sat down with the bread knife in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other, the better to consider this proposition.
"Just you and I, Jessie. We cannot afford to hire an agent, supposing that one was to be had for the hiring, which is by no means likely.
We"ve been eating the melons for days; they are just in their prime, and I know that Joe counted on making quite a little sum on his cantaloupe crop, but if we wait now, hoping for his return, the melons will be ruined; they will be a total loss."
"You needn"t offer any more arguments, Leslie. I"m glad you thought of it; it"s a pity that I never think of any such thing myself until the procession has gone by. Now let me see, have I got your morning thoughts in order? First, Charity. Toward Joe. Second, Resignation--all capitals--Toward Joe. Third, Labor. For ourselves.
Is that right?"
"Yes; if you like to put it that way."
"You shall have it any way you please, Leslie dear, and I will help you."
"After breakfast, then, we will harness up the team and drive the wagon into the melon patch, then--we will fill it."
"Yes, and what then?"
It was like taking a plunge into cold water. I am sure that I was not intended for a huckster, but I managed to respond with some show of courage:
"Why, then I will drive over to the store and sell what I can, and then I will go about among the neighbors with the rest."
"Will you?" Jessie breathed a sigh of relief. "That will be enterprising, anyway. I should dreadfully hate to drive about peddling melons myself, but there"s such a difference in people about things of that sort."