Read Ebook: Harper's Round Table May 26 1896 by Various

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Ebook has 328 lines and 27080 words, and 7 pages

They had a "big supper," to which Dee's boyish appetite did abundant justice. Flea berated and despised herself for seeing that the coffee-pot was tin and was the boiler in which the coffee had been made, and that the handles of the two-tined forks were of bone; that her mother poured her coffee into her saucer to cool before drinking it, and that everything--fried chicken, ham, fish, preserves, cake, pudding, pie, frozen custard, and waffles--was put on the table at once.

It was unkind, ungrateful, undaughterly, and every other "un" she could think of, to let such trifles destroy the comfort of the first evening at home.

Her pillow was moistened with remorseful tears, and the more she hated herself for such meanness, fickleness, and ingratitude, the more plentiful was the flow of briny drops.

Things were more tolerable in the morning. With the elasticity of youth she adjusted ideas and feelings to suit her circumstances, or, as she put it to herself, she "came to her senses." She donned the neat habit her Aunt Jean had ordered for her, and tripped down stairs when the horses were ready, radiant with pleasurable anticipation. The habit found little favor in the sight of her mother and sister. They called the gray linen braided with black "Quakerish." To her father's eyes she looked the little lady from crown to toe.

The clover-fields were aflush with bobbing blooms, and a thousand bees were swinging and humming above these; the hay was ripe for cutting; the corn-fields shook glossy lances in the face of the sun; in the woods every bird that could sing was swelling his throat and heart with music; hares scampered fearlessly in the open road under the horses' feet; and striped ground-squirrels raced on the top rails of the fences for a mile at a time, just ahead of the riders.

"I must have been tired last night," repeated Flea, filling her lungs with the scented air. "I didn't feel a bit like myself. I am all right again. How dear and beautiful everything is to-day! There's nothing like the country, after all, especially the country in Old Virginia."

With that her tongue was loosened, and she opened to her indulgent confidante her hopes, aspirations, and plans. Aunt Jean was as gentle and tender as a mother to her; her teachers were wisdom and goodness personified; she was doing well in all her classes, and had taken two prizes on Examination day, the first for composition, the second for history.

"It's like a fairy-tale," she prattled on, happily. "When I was young and foolish I used to dream of such things as are coming to pass every day, and I take them as a matter of course, until I stop to think how wonderful and nice it all is. I often call Aunt Jean my fairy godmother.'"

In return, her father talked of his hope of being his own master and a land-owner by the time her school days should be over, hopes he had shared with no one else, he said, not even her mother, who might be disappointed if they came to nothing. "My canny little lassie can always be trusted," he said, with fondness.

Happy, honored little Flea! Riding close beside him, his hand on the neck of her horse, her eyes, moist and beaming, upturned to his, she would not have exchanged places with a princess of the blood. The weakness and false pride of yesterday were recalled only to brighten by contrast the joys of to-day.

As the day neared noon the bird-music ceased, and the stir of green leaves in the weak wind did not rise above the thud of hoofs upon the dead leaves that had fallen and lain on the bridle-road for fifty winters. The crash of a falling tree, that might have been a mile away, boomed and echoed like the report of a cannon, and was a long time in dying upon the distant hills. From the virgin forest, where oaks and hickories locked arms above their heads, they emerged upon a swampy spot through which a fire had swept in April, leaving a deserted track behind it. Ferns and wild flowers were springing up as though eager to hide the blackened ruins.

"The Major is having this swamp cleared," remarked Mr. Grigsby. "The men are about other work to-day, but they have been cutting in here all the week."

Rounding an evergreen thicket, they saw a horse harnessed to a low gig, which the riders recognized at once. The carriage was empty, and the gray mare was tethered to the stump of a sapling. She neighed long and wistfully at sight of Mr. Grigsby. He patted her in passing.

"The Major cannot be far off," he said. "He is looking to see what we have been doing, I suppose. I am glad to see him show interest in plantation work once more. He never opens his lips to me on the subject, of course, but there is something heavy on his mind. The gossips say that he is bitterly opposed to Miss Emily's marrying Mr. Tayloe."

RICK DALE.

BY KIRK MUNROE.

BONNY COMMANDS THE SITUATION.

Our lads had barely time to do up the tents and blankets they had used for bedding into compact bundles before M. Filbert arrived, with his servant Fran?ois, and a carriage full of packages, including a bundle of iron-shod alpenstocks. He was clad in what appeared to Bonny and the idlers gathered about the station a very curious costume, though to Alaric, who had often seen its like in Switzerland, it did not seem at all out of the way. It consisted of a coat and knee-breeches of dark green velveteen, a waistcoat of scarlet cloth, stout yarn stockings patterned in green and scarlet and folded over at the knees, the heaviest of laced walking-boots with hobnailed soles, and a soft Tyrolese hat, in which was stuck a jaunty cock's feather.

He was full of excited bustle, and the moment he caught sight of Alaric, began to shower questions and directions upon him with bewildering rapidity. At length, thanks to Alaric's clear head and Bonny's practical common-sense, confusion was reduced to order, and everything was got on board the train that was to carry the expedition to Yelm Prairie--a station about twenty miles south of Tacoma, from which the real start was to be made.

The arrival at Yelm Prairie produced an excitement equal to that of a circus, and our friends had hardly alighted from the train before they were surrounded by a clamorous throng of would-be guides, packers, teamsters, owners of saddle-animals or pack-ponies, and a score of others, who were loud in declaring that without their services the expedition would surely come to grief.

In vain did the bewildered Frenchman storm and rave, and stamp his feet and gesticulate. Not one word that he said could be understood by the crowd, who, in their efforts to attract his attention, only shouted the louder and pressed about him more closely. Finally the poor man, turning to Alaric and saying, "Do what you will. Everything I leave to you," clapped his hands to his ears, broke through the uproarious throng, and started on a run for the open prairie.

"He leaves everything to us," said Alaric, who was almost as bewildered by the clamor and novelty of the situation as was M. Filbert himself.

"Good enough!" cried Bonny. "Now we will be able to do something. I take it that on this cruise you are first mate and I am second. So if you'll just give the word to go ahead, I'll settle the business in a hurry."

"I only wish you would," returned Alaric, "for it looks as though we were going to be mobbed."

Armed with this authority, Bonny sprang on a packing-case that lifted him well above his surroundings, and shouted, "Fellow-citizens!"

Instantly there came a hush of curious expectancy.

"I reckon all you men are looking for a job?"

"That's about the size of it," answered several voices.

"Very well; I'll give you one that'll prove just about the biggest contract ever let out in Yelm Prairie. It is to shut your mouths and keep quiet."

Here the speaker was greeted by angry murmurs and cries of "None of yer chaff, yung feller!" "What are you giving us?" and the like.

Nothing daunted, Bonny continued: "I'm not fooling. I'm in dead earnest. What we are after is quiet, and the Prince out there, whom you have scared away with your racket, is so bound to have it that he's willing to pay handsomely for it. He's got the money, too, and don't you forget it. He wants to hire several guides and packers, also a lot of saddle-horses and ponies, but a noisy, loud-talking chap he can't abide, and won't have round. He has left the whole business to my partner here and me to settle, seeing that we are his interpreters, and we are going to do it the way he pays us to do it and wants it done. So, according to the rule we've laid down in all our travellings and mountain-climbings up to date, the man who speaks last will be hired first, and the fellow who makes the most noise won't be given any show at all. Sabe? As an example, we want a team to take our dunnage to the river, and I'm going to give the job to that fellow sitting in the wagon, who hasn't so far spoken a word."

"Good reason why! He's deaf and dumb," shouted a voice.

"All the better," replied Bonny, in no wise abashed. "That's the kind we want. There are two more chaps who haven't said anything that I've heard, and I'm going to give them the job of pitching camp for us. I mean those two Siwash at the end of the platform."

"They are quiet because they can't speak any English," remonstrated some of those who stood near by.

"We don't mind that, though we are French," replied Bonny, cheerfully. "You see, the Prince looked out for such things when he engaged us interpreters, and now we are ready to talk to every man in his own language, including Chinook and United States. Now the only other thing I've got to say is that we won't be ready to consider any further business proposals until two o'clock this afternoon, and anybody coming to our camp before that time will lose his chance. After that we shall be glad to see you all, and the fellows that make the least talk will stand the best show of getting a job."

The effect of this bold proposition was surprising. Instead of exciting wrath and causing hostile demonstrations, as Alaric feared, its quieting influence was magical. Times were hard in Yelm Prairie, and a well-paid trip up the mountain, or the chance to obtain a dollar a day for the hire of a pony, was not to be despised.

So Bonny was allowed to engage the deaf-and-dumb teamster by signs, and the two Indians by a few words of Chinook, without hinderance. All these worked with such intelligence and expedition that within an hour one of the neatest camps ever seen in that section was ready for occupancy beside the white waters of the glacier-fed Nisqually.

When M. Filbert, who spied it from afar, came in soon afterwards, with hands and pockets full of floral specimens, he found a comfortably arranged tent and a bountiful camp dinner awaiting him. At sight of these things his peace of mind was fully restored, and he congratulated himself on having secured such skilful interpreters of both his words and wishes as the lads through whom they had been accomplished.

Promptly at the hour named by Bonny a motley but orderly throng of men, mules, and ponies presented themselves at the camp, and the whole afternoon was spent in making a selection of animals and testing the skill of packers. Both Alaric and Bonny were inexperienced riders, but neither of them hesitated when invited to mount and try the steeds offered for their use. A moment later Bonny was sprawling on the ground, with his pony gazing at him derisively, while Alaric was flying over the prairie at a speed that quickly carried him out of sight. It was nearly an hour before he returned, dishevelled and flushed with excitement, but triumphant, and with his pony cured of his desire for bolting, at least for a time.

That night our lads slept under canvas for the first time, and as they lay on their blankets discussing the novelty of the situation, Bonny said:

"I tell you what, Rick, this mountain-climbing is a more serious business than some folks think. When you first told me what our job was to be I had a sort of an idea that we could get to the top of old Rainier easy enough in one day and come back the next. So I couldn't imagine why Mr. Bear should want to engage us by the month. Now, though, it begins to look as though we were in for something of a cruise."

"I should say so," laughed Alaric, who had learned a great deal about mountain-climbing in Switzerland. "It would probably take the best part of a week to go from here straight to the summit and back again. But we shall be gone much longer than that, for we are to make a camp somewhere near the snow-line, and spend a fortnight or so up there collecting flowers and things."

"Flowers?" said Bonny, inquiringly.

"Yes. M. Filbert is a botanist, you know, and makes a specialty of mountain flora. But I say, Bonny, what makes you call him 'Mr. Bear'?"

"Because I thought that was his name. I know you call him 'Phil Bear,' but I never was one to become familiar with a Cap'n on short acquaintance."

"Ho! ho!" laughed Alaric; "that's a good one. Why, Bonny, Filbert is his surname. F-i-l-b-e-r-t--the same as the nut, you know, only the French pronounce things differently from what we do."

"I should say they did if that's a specimen, and I'm glad I'm not expected to talk in any such language. Plain Chinook and every-day North American are good enough for me. I suppose he would say 'Rainy' for Rainier?"

"Something very like it. I see you are catching the accent. We'll make a Frenchman of you yet before this trip is ended."

"Humph!" ejaculated Bonny. "Not if I know it, you won't."

Sunrise of the following morning found the horsemen of the expedition galloping over the brown sward of the park-like prairie toward the forest that for hundreds of miles covers the whole western slope of the Cascade Range like a vast green blanket. The road soon entered the timber and began a gradual ascent, winding among the trunks of stately firs and gigantic cedars that often shot upward for more than one hundred feet before a branch broke their columnlike regularity.

Another day's journey through the same grand forest, only broken by the verdant length of Succotash Valley, and by the rocky beds of many streams, brought them to Longmire's Springs and the log cabins of the hardy settler who had given them his name. At this point, though they had been steadily ascending ever since leaving Yelm Prairie, they were still less than three thousand feet above the sea, and the real work of climbing was not yet begun. After an evening spent in listening to Longmire's thrilling descriptions of the difficulties and dangers awaiting them, Bonny admitted to Alaric that he had never before entertained even a small idea of what a mountain really was.

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