Read Ebook: A Girl of the Plains Country by MacGowan Alice

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Ebook has 2098 lines and 100058 words, and 42 pages

But Uncle Hank got up quickly, saying:

"I'll fix your bed for you right now, ma'am; you'll be as snug there as if you was in your own room," and went over to the ambulance. When Hilda followed him a little later, there was a bed all made up in it, with sheets and pillow-cases and everything, just like a bed at home. Aunt Val made haste to get into it, and Hilda drifted back to the fire. She wished she had got Aunt Val to show her how to fix Burchie's food. Papa was tending to it now. When Burch had had it, he went right off to sleep, and was carried over and put in beside Aunt Val.

The new proprietor of the Three Sorrows, when he had laid the baby in the ambulance, walked on past the vehicle and was lost in the shadows down by the creek. Pearsall began to clear up and wash the dishes. Hilda asked if she might help, and was given a towel for drying. Uncle Hank began to make cheerful conversation.

"This was a mighty long trip for a little girl like you--all the way from New York to Texas. Didn't you get tired?"

"Oh, no," said Hilda, earnestly drawing her towel between the tines of the iron fork she was wiping. "You see, there was a boy on the train that had blue eyes, like Burchie's and mothers, and--and--" blushing furiously--"like yours, some. He was a big boy. At least he was a good deal bigger than me. His father and mother were there, too; they came all the way from New York to Denver in the train with us. And, oh, he was most interesting! When my mother got sick, the boy's mother wouldn't go on and leave us. They all stayed. And he--The-Boy-On-The-Train--he took care of Burchie and me when--when the funeral was. Aunt Val hadn't got there, then."

"That's all, honey; we're done, now," said Pearsall. He saw that the child's lips trembled as she stood fumblingly but determinedly rubbing dry the last cup. So he added, cheerfully, "We'll set by the fire a spell before you go tuck yourself into bed."

There was neither sound nor movement within the ambulance. Van Brunt did not return from his stroll downstream. These two, man and child, sat beside the camp-fire. Hilda's big black eyes looked long into the great swallowing darkness of the plain, then she turned to her companion, who was filling his pipe.

"I don't think I'd be afraid here," she said, a little doubtfully.

"Sure not!" heartily. He skipped a coal lightly up in his bare fingers, made it light his pipe, and flipped it off again. "What would you be afraid of, sister?"

"Well," slowly, and watching his face, "I don't think there would be whiffenpoofs here." He didn't smile--she had been afraid he might. So she added the explanation, "You see, they mostly stay in dark halls and on stairways, whiffenpoofs do, and they grab you from behind."

"No," Uncle Hank shook his head decisively, "no whiffenpoofs here--if there is anywhere--which I doubt."

"Oh, yes, they're in houses." Hilda was pretty firm about it. "And--" She hesitated, looked away from him, then shot him one of her shy glances before she went on haltingly--"And another reason I thought I wouldn't be afraid here is that there aren't any doors."

He took the pipe out of his mouth, looked at it, then at her, and asked blankly:

"No doors?"

"Yes. And so there can't be a door-imp. When it's getting a little dark," she spoke low now, and very fast, as though she were afraid if she didn't hurry she wouldn't have the courage to tell it all, "when it's getting a little dark in the house, and they send you into another room to get something, the Skulking Door-imp watches for you. He comes out and looks around the door; then his head is the thing that you think is a knob. You see, he's invisible to every one but me."

"Truck like that," said Uncle Hank, putting the pipe back into his mouth and drawing his arm around Hilda, "is enough to scare a little girl."

"It does scare me, Uncle Hank," she confirmed gravely. "And those aren't all. There's ghosts. And there's the Barrel-tops--queer kind of creatures that just roll after you. I most scream right out sometimes when the Barrel-tops come down the dark hall chasing me."

"Well, I'll bet you four cents," and he shook her gently with his arm, "that they don't never come down no hall out here in Texas. I'll be willin' to just bet. Them things can't live in this high-and-dry Texas plains climate. Where on earth did you ever get such notions, anyhow? Did some one tell it to you, or did it come out of a fool book?"

"No," said Hilda evasively, "nobody told me, nor read it to me. I--er--I just knew it myself."

"Well, then, you must've made it up, child. I wouldn't do it if I's you. I wouldn't have no such critters."

"I try not to, Uncle Hank. I don't want to have them. They--oh! what's that?" as a long, jingling, chiming whimper came from somewhere in the surrounding dusk. She flung both arms around the old man's neck and burrowed her head on his breast. He held her tight, and laughed gently.

"Nothing but a little old coyote, honey," he told her. "They don't ever hurt anybody. He smells our bacon rinds. You must go to bed now, child. If any whiffenpoofs or suchlike cattle trouble you in the night, you come out to Uncle Hank--hear? Uncle Hank's death on all them kind o' varmints."

He saw her to the ambulance, then turned and replenished the fire and, filling his pipe, sat down to await Van Brunt's return. An hour later the two men were asleep, wrapped in their blankets. There was no sound save the wind in the cottonwoods and the occasional, far, coyote cry, the nearer chirp or stir of a bird. During the earlier part of the night Van Brunt groaned, turned and turned again; roused, sighed, rose to feed the dying fire, sat a while beside it, and went back to his blankets. Then he slept heavily, and for a long time the camp was silent under the moon and stars. In the dark hour just before dawn the old man wakened suddenly and opened his eyes to see Hilda crouching beside him, her hand on his shoulder.

"Uncle Hank!" she gasped, "I had such a dreadful dream, and when I waked, why, you see that ambulance is like a room; it's got things like doors in it; and I was afraid the door-imp--"

"All right, sister."

He lifted his head and looked about. She had left her aunt unawakened in the ambulance; she had skirted the form of her sleeping father--and come to him--to him, the friend of a day!

"Here!" whispered the man who had said he was all alone in the world. Swiftly he unwound his blankets, wrapped the small nightgowned figure in them, and settled her cosily, reaching down to get his boots and draw them on.

"But you aren't going away, Uncle Hank?" quavered the child.

"Not fur," returned he humorously, as he went over and put more wood on the fire, then seated himself beside the giant cocoon from whose top protruded the small face with the big black eyes. These eyes, under the influence of a good grip on a man's blue flannel sleeve, gradually lost their wildness. They filmed gently; the long lashes descended halfway, were swept up again with a startled gasp; and after two or three checkings and haltings, Hilda slept. The ranch boss replaced the blankets when from time to time her small, impatient arm flung them off.

Lost in the immensity of night, the camp-fire died down, was replenished, died down again, and showed only winking embers as the east began to blush with a new day.

AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART

Southwestward again, all that day--beautifully long for the little girl, wearily lengthened for Miss Valeria who alternately complained of the speed and urged the driver to hurry a little. Pearsall always gave her the same good-humored answer, as though it had been a child fretting at him: "Ponies got forty-odd miles to go, ma'am; have to just hold this same good road pace."

At noon they stopped and got out for a rest; a "dry camp" he called it, with only water from the canteens to make their coffee. Through the afternoon, the thud-thud of hoofs, the creak and swish of wheels on dry turf, like a monotonous old tune, almost sent Hilda to sleep where she sat beside Uncle Hank on the high seat. Then, when the sky flamed once more red with sunset, suddenly there was living green in front of them, the ambulance swung through an open gate, up a long avenue of young box-elders and black locusts, at the end of which they could see a low stone house, broad, sheltering, hospitable, with its dooryard of Bermuda grass, at the edge of which Pearsall pulled up, got out and helped the others down. Van Brunt, who had sat silent and uncomplaining for hours of heat and weariness, exclaimed:

"This the ranch? Why, Pearsall, I didn't suppose there was such a green place in all the Panhandle."

"Well, there's not another like the Three Sorrows, I can tell you," answered the old man, busy with bags and valises; and as they moved toward the house Miss Valeria murmured that it was better than could have been expected.

Hilda, hanging back, saying nothing, gazed about at the new home with eyes that loved every stone in its walls. Its pleasant rustle of leaves and lisp of water, after all those miles of splendid, arid plain, made her eyes smart with happy tears. The beautiful wing-like, curving sweep in which the line of young cottonwoods, following the happy course of a tiny irrigating ditch, flung away around one corner of the building--here was a world where anything--lovely--might happen. Those willows over yonder by the little lake , they looked just like Nixies crouching down in their long green hair. There was mystery in the very appearance of the plain about them. When a Chinaman came to the door she could have shouted with delight.

He was a strange, limp effigy of a Chinaman, like a badly made rag doll, his slant eyes and pigtail giving the impression that he had lately been hung up on a line with other such toys. Apparently he was young, though the Oriental never looks to our eyes either exactly young or old, and certainly he was morose. The queue on his head, the dull blue blouse he wore, his funny black-and-white boat-shaped shoes, all charmed Hilda.

The first thing she saw that looked like the old home back in New York was a familiar rug spread out at the foot of the stairs in the hall.

"I s'pose your full-sized carpets ain't come yet," Pearsall explained, as he showed his employer the living-room on one side, the ranch office on the other. "These mats looked a good deal worn," he indicated the dull bloom of Turkish rugs disposed here and there, "but of course they'll be nice and soft for the children to play on."

Van Brunt assented kindly, and neither he nor Miss Valeria offered any explanation. It was near supper time. The open door at the end of the hall showed a shouldering group of masculine forms, ranch riders, heretofore familiar to the eyes of the newcomers only in pictures. The foremost of these detached himself, came forward, and was presented as O'Meara--"One of your boys, Mr. Van Brunt." Hilda liked the look of him, and was more pleased when he spoke.

"We didn't know where you'd want your things," he said modestly. "We took everybody's opinion--even the Chink's--but at that we couldn't make out what some of 'em was intended for. We just put the trunks around here and there to make it seem home-like."

Hilda wondered that her aunt's response to this should be so faint. Shorty O'Meara's ideas on furnishing and interior decoration had immediate success with her. The open door of the office room showed a big desk, some chairs, and a pile or two of books on the floor. The little girl left that without further inquiry, and went into the living-room where a spindle-legged, inlaid dressing table, with its sweep of mirror, neighbored a trunk and several dining-room chairs. There were more books here, on the floor, the chairs, the window-sills. These latter were very deep. They might well have been specially designed for sitting in of rainy afternoons to look at picture books or play with dolls. The grown-ups walked about and looked somewhat unhappy. She had forgotten them almost in her survey of her new home. She presently got Burch and lugged him about, talking to him, since he was the only individual present sensible enough to really appreciate the attractiveness of the place. The roughcast plastered walls looked so sheltering and strong. The open doorway into the dining-room showed a great long table. All of those men were going to eat there. She groped vaguely for a line in a ballad with which her mother used to sing her to sleep--something about the baron sitting in his hall and his retainers being blithe and gay. The table wasn't in the hall, of course, but otherwise it was just the same.

Then came Aunt Valeria's voice calling to her from upstairs; she followed that weary lady, and she and Burch were washed and made seemly for the table.

That first supper was a wonderful meal to her, too, with a lot of tall men trooping in to sit at the board. Their bronzed faces, their keen, forth-looking eyes, used to search great levels, the air of individuality, of independence, laid powerful hold on the child's fancy. Every time a spur jingled beneath the table, or one of those big voices boomed out suddenly, her heart leaped in swift though uncomprehending response.

Afterward, in the living-room, she heard with some anxiety, Pearsall doubtfully suggest to her father that they might want to build a separate mess house for the men. Her father said no, he didn't mind the men at the table; and Hilda heaved a great sigh of relief. She had already struck up quite a friendship with blond, talkative Shorty O'Meara; she had even made some timid overtures to a lank, elderly cynic who lived up to the name of Old Snake Thompson. To have her social adventures in this direction curtailed would have been trying.

The days that followed the arrival were strange, interesting ones. Her father was wrapped in an obscurity of dejection and grief; Miss Van Brunt was a victim of neuralgia which she declared the plains wind had developed. The child had only the baby brother, with the occasional companionship of Uncle Hank and some of the younger cowboys; yet she made eager acquaintance with this new life; and it was to the old man she came for information or to share with him her joys.

"All the horses you ride are yellow ones, Uncle Hank, aren't they?" she asked him one evening when he came in from the range.

"Yes, honey, I've rode a buckskin pony for a good many years. I reckon the folks wouldn't hardly know me on any other color of hoss. I sort of think they're becoming to me--don't you?"

"Oh, yes, very," Hilda assured him gravely. "What's this one's name?"

"Why, you see, I just call 'em all 'Buckskin.' It's easiest."

Sometimes he took her out for short rides, of an evening, holding her before him on the saddle of the tall buckskin horse with a blaze face, or the little dark buckskin pony that had a brown mane and tail. Traveling in this fashion one evening across pastures she pointed to a queer, humped object, sway-backed, with a ewe-neck, and a rough coat of brindled hair that stuck up like the nap on a half-worn rug.

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