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PAGES FROM THE BOOK OF EVE
by Ora Pate Stewart.
Etext prepared by Theresa Hoose (belle2714@yahoo.com)
Electronic manuscript © 2008 Cumorah Foundation. www.cumorah.com.
All rights reserved.
Forward
Little Eve is charming. In straightforward, simple English she tells of life just as it happened to her in the pioneer days of the west. Some of the episodes cause laughter; others compel tears to flow. That is always the way of real life.
She also paints a picture of man's toil for the necessities of life. This is a good tonic in our days, when the love of labor is becoming flabby, and selfishness walks under the cloak of honor. Little Eve does not know that she is preaching a big economic lesson to her readers. And, some of her readers may not realize it.
Then, when some of us would be engulfed by emotional upheavals when disaster overtakes us, Little Eve walks straight on, hopefully facing the enemy with clenched teeth. Thgat is also a lesson to be learned by all who want happiness in life.
However, to enjoy to the full a few hours of leisure, forget all lessons and teachings, lean back, with Eve's book in hand, in an easy chair, or maybe on the grass under the maple tree. Let Eve tell you her story. Laugh with her; cry with her; plan with her -- and life will look better to you, and people will look lovelier to you, and you will feel refreshed, as if on a warm day you have had a refreshing drink.
PAGES FROM THE BOOK OF EVE is a unique but captivating story.
JOHN A. WIDTSOE.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWARD
Genesis
Exodus
"Go to the Ant ... Consider Her Ways"
Devil's Child
The Last of the Blackfeet
There's Spode in Them There Hills
Of Death and Hell
"If Ever You See"
Experiment in Spearmint
A Corner on Wheat
What the History Book Didn't Say
Two Little Hands
Not Without Honor
"Fancy Ladies in Society Pays Big Money fer Mud Baths"
Crazy Water
Wolf!! Wolf!!
"Cherries are Ripe"
Who Goes Over My Bridge?
The "Kern" Party
The Gray Sateen Hats From Sears and Roebuck
Under the Old Veranda
Pepper Tea
People Who Have Money
"Pride Goeth Before"
Valentine Election
Freddy Came A-Courtin'
Of Hoofs and Herds
An Apple for the Teacher
Scattering the Blood
"Nevertheless ... Oats for the Horses"
With All the Facts
The Show Troop With the Guitar
It's Nice to Have a Party
Like Ripe Wheat
The Insecticide Vanity Case
The Lambies That Came in the Spring
Genesis
The two log rooms with the slab lean-to on the Idaho homestead creaked with an early fall wind -- uncommon maybe for early fall, but common enough for the snowy Tetons. And Mamma was uneasy.
"Jake, hadn't you better get this plaster mended today or tomorrow? That wind was right raw last night -- and if you leave it to any later the mortar will freeze. Hadn't you better take time out and plaster today?"
"Well, Julie, it's like this," Papa explained; "Cy Swenson promised he'd help me dig the spuds today, 'fore the frost hits. He wants me t' fix his mowin' machine tomorrow, so he can git his barley in. But by the first of the week --"
"But Jake, you are only getting seventeen cents a hundred for those potatoes, and the sacks cost eleven cents. It isn't worth digging them. We can dig enough for ourselves and let the rest go. They could wait till the first of the week. We'll all help."
"Well, Julie," Papa insisted, "you see, Cy promised t' help me today. It'll go a lot quicker that way. Besides, you ain't able t' be out in the tater-patch with another young 'un comin' along in a couple-a weeks. You jist take it easy and wi'll git at the plasterin' by the first uv the week." He picked up the water bucket and emptied its dreggy contents into the washdish.
"David, bring a bundle-a gunny sacks and the shovel. We better git at it."
David was approaching twelve, but in a potato patch he was as much man as boy. The two reached for their frayed straw hats and left the house.
Mamma held her pose. All her married life she had had to wait until Papa had fixed Cy's mowing machine or Abel's harness or helped brand Edward's calves ... This time the plaster was going in.
Molly was poking around in the breakfast dishes.
"There's no dish water, and the men took the water buckets," she announced, hoping that this would finish the business. Molly was not a bit lazy, but having been drafted into the household chores for all her eight-and-three-quarters years as the oldest girl, she decided it would be nice to have one task less to do this morning.
"We'll leave the dishes," Mamma promised. "We have a bigger job to do today."
Prue and Johnny were sent to the yeard; and Prue was counseled again and again not to let little Johnny pick up any screws or worms or anything, and not to chase chickens.
Now -- they could begin. The gypsum had already been burned in the lime kiln and was all chalky and crystalline. Molly was to get the old tub and the wooden potato masher and proceed to reduce the gypsum to a dusty consistency. This would be mixed into a batter of red mud and the mortar would be ready.
Mamma armed herself with an old case knife and railroad spike and proceeded to cut, poke, and pound the weakened old plaster out of the cracks between the logs. She stood on the washbench to reach the higher ones.
The job took a little longer than she'd figured. It would be all right if the menfolks didn't come back for dinner. She figured they'd want to get the potatoes all out and maybe take them into town and get back by dark. They'd had a late breakfast, and they wouldn't starve. And Mamma was generally right when she figured. So she kept on poking plaster.
Molly fixed some bread and milk for Prue and Johnny, and the masonry continued.
Toward late afternoon Mamma told Molly that her back hurt a little, but there was so little of the plaster left to loosen that she'd go ahead and finish it, she thought.
But the work began to lag. And it was dusk when the last crack was widened out. Putting the new plaster in was a daylight job. Disappointing, but it would have to wait till tomorrow.
As the sun went down in the west there seemed to be a reinforcement of the breeze from the east that swept the coolness from the snow-patched Tetons ... and Mamma felt a chill.
"Molly," she said, "you'd better get Prue and Johnny and put them to bed. Then fill the teakettle and the dishpan and poke up the fire. Oh, Molly," she added, her features twisting in pain, "never mind about Prue and Johnny ... You'd better go for Mrs. Sorenson ... And Molly, you'd better run all the way!"
The woodsmoke was curling up from the cabin chimney and making fleecy streaks across the moon as the men drove up to the stable to put the horses away. They were weary and a little cold. As they walked toward the house, David noticed that uncommonly much light shone through the cabin cracks, considering that there was only one coal-oil lamp in working order.
"Ya know, Papa," he said slowly, "we really ought to fix that plaster before the nights get much cooler."
As they neared the lean-to, the smell of simple antiseptics floated out to meet them ... Papa pushed the door open nervously.
Mrs. Sorenson fluttered past him to close it.
"Man, watch out fer that draft!" she scolded. "It's bad fer the young 'un ... This 'un's kinda puny, anyway ... not as big as the last one ... only weighed nine pounds on the grain scales. But then, girls never is as big as boys. They're easier t' raise though. And now since ye'r here, there's nothin' more fer me t' be a-stayin' fer. My ole man'll be wantin' his supper anyway."
She got her shawl. David went back to the stable to hitch up the wagon all over again to take Mrs. Sorenson home. She was the nearest neighbor, and the best, but she still lived a mile and a half away. She had stopped in the middle of churning and had come as fast as her legs could trot when Molly had given her the message.
Papa took off his hat and went into the other room where the good bed was.
"Gosh, Julie," he said, as he sank down beside her. "Are ya all right?"
Then he pulled the covers down a little and looked in at me.
"Gosh, Julie, she's gonna look jist like you."
Exodus
Shortly before my second birthday the family moved from the snug homestead in Idaho to the ranch in Wyoming. The road was an old Indian trail that braided the borders of the two states from the Tetons to the coalbeds ... and it was so old in places that it seemed to wear out, and once we had to stop and ask a big Indian, "Where goes the road?"
Our procession was led by seven slow-plodding cows, two of which provided the family dairy fare. They all ambled from side to side, sniffing the salt brush and scratching their flanks on the high sage. After them trudged young David, waving a long willow and whistling signals to Sport, the black dog who seemed to understand enough of boy and cow to keep harmonious relations.
The flat-topped wagon followed, juggling such household effects as the good bed, the rocker, the churn, the organ, the kitchen stove, and the plow. Papa manned this float, and, as became his ingenuity, had drafted the flow to the foremost place so that the seat would serve as a driver's perch. Here Papa sat, with six-year-old Prue standing between his knees.
The covered wagon that brought up the rear of the procession might have been an ancestor of the house trailer. It carried a small wood stove, two bed bunks, and cupboard accommodations for staple edibles. The particular positions which these fixtures occupied varied with the humps in the road. This was also true of the frying pan and the tub that hung (on smooth stretches) on the outside. On the inside Mamma presided at the reins, with four-year-old Johnny providing the back seat element and spelling her off at places that required special skill. And behind the seat in the living quarters baby Rachel bounced on the bunk. That is where they kept me, too.
Two wheels buckling in to fit the low side of the road made life in the covered wagon interesting and at times even energetic. There were the downhill stretches where the horses lengthened out a little, belching the baby from the bunk and pelting her with canned sardines and pork and beans. And then the long waits while Molly went back after the tub. Molly's duties included keeping the canned goods and potatoes in their places, changing the baby, going back after the tub when it bounced off, gathering cedar brush knots for the fire at night, and helping David with the cows in-between-times.
At night a count was taken of cows and kids. The simple supper was generally bread and warm milk, sometimes with potatoes baked in the charcoals of the bonfire. Then in the last glow of the fading flames, after the beds were laid and the animals tended, Papa would relate some moral tale, Bible story, or some childhood experience that had been a lesson to him. Some nights he would undo the rope that held the old reed organ on the back of the load and play a verse of "Come, Come, Ye Saints." We loved the courage of that good song. It seemed to fit us as it had fitted the pioneers. And Papa's rich tenor gave us a strong lead for the sturdy hymn:
Come, Come, ye Saints, no toil nor labor nor fear
But with joy wend your way;
Tho hard to you this journey may appear,
Grace shall be as your day.
'Tis better far for us to strive
Our useless cares from us to drive;
Do this, and joy your hearts will swell --
All is well! All is well!
Then he would swing quickly into "Onward, Christian Soldiers" or "Count Your Blessings." (The coyotes must have enjoyed these sessions.) Mamma would say he hadn't ought to take the horse blanket from around the organ because some dust might get in. But Papa would always reply:
"What wuz music made fer if it wuzn't to teach yer children some gospel hymns?" And besides, he'd get her one of those new-fangled pianers when the organ wore out.
After this we would go into the family prayer. We were grateful for life and protection; thankful for great leaders, past and present; grateful for this great land, America, blessed with freedom and resources; thankful for this family; God bless these children with virtue and understanding; protect them from such temptations as they could not resist; direct them that they might be shining examples of godliness; and this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Then quiet settled on the range, broken only in the distance by the coyotes' moonlight serenade. And finally ... only quiet.
"Go to the Ants ... Consider Her Ways"
Mamma and Papa had gone to Salt Brush for some groceries. Molly and Prue had gone after the cows. David had taken old Snooks to pull the drag with the two barrels down to the "crick," half a mile away, for the drinking water. That was before they'd dug the well on the big new ranch in Wyoming.
Ordinarily it was all right for Johnny to go along with David after the drinking water, because Johnny was almost five. It was out of the question for me, though; and Rachel wasn't quite a year old. But this time David told Johnny to stay home and take care of Rachel and me. It was the rule that the oldest one home was the boss. It was a good rule except when Johnny was the oldest one home.
We had some bricks that Papa was saving to build a good chimney. They were stacked in a big pile at the end of the house. Then, in the front yard we had an anthill that looked like a pyramid, made out of hundreds of little squared-off pieces of rock and full of hundreds of big red ants. Mamma had said that Papa had ought to pour some coal oil over the anthill to kill the ants, and haul the gravel away so the yard would look nice. But Papa had said, "Go to the ant ... consider her ways ... They're harmless little devils so long as you leave them alone."
So Johnny was considering. He was not only considering the ants; he was considering the ant house. And he was considering the bricks.
"Eva," he said, very proud because he was the boss, "go bring me them bricks, one at a time. You're gonna see the best chimney in the world." He sat down by the anthill and waited for the bricks. They were pretty heavy and it took quite a while. When there were five or six, he began to build. He used the anthill for the house and the bricks for the chimney. Rachel crawled up to help him. But she wasn't much help. And pretty soon Johnny began to consider Rachel. She couldn't walk yet, but she was as fat as a little pig. There was a story in Prue's reader about a little pig who had built a brick chimney. The big bad wolf had jumped down the chimney. Rachel would make a good little pig. And Johnny would make a splendid wolf. So Johnny lifted Rachel up and set her down in the chimney that was only half-done, and told me to hurry faster with the rest of the bricks.
Rachel gooed and ran her hands down into the ant gravel. Then all of a sudden she started to bawl and squirm until she almost knocked the chimney down. But Johnny held it up and told me to hurry faster with the rest of the bricks.
By the time the chimney was ready for the wolf, Rachel was squealing like a little pig, and Mamma and Papa were driving into the yard with the groceries.
"Merciful heavens! What on earth have you done to my baby?" Mamma snatched Rachel out of the anthill and ran into the house.
There was a piece of oilcloth on the table that we ate off of, and it wasn't nice to stand on it with your bare feet. But she stood Rachel on it just the same and began to peel her off and throw her clothes on the floor. Some ants crawled up Mamma's arm but she didn't stop to brush them off. She just kept peeling Rachel. And Rachel just kept on squealing.
When Rachel didn't have any more clothes on she looked like she had the measles.
Mamma took a towel and dipped it in the washdish and wrapped it around Rachel.
"Eva," she said, "climb up into the cupboard and get me the sody." Then she unwrapped Rachel and patted the soda all over her fat little body and wrapped her up in the towel again.
She sat in the rocking chair and rocked Rachel for a long time.
We sat very still and hoped she'd forget about us.
But she didn't.
Devil's Child
The chicken coop would make a wonderful playhouse all but for two reasons: there wasn't time to play, and the chickens were already using it. Mamma had sent us out to dig in the slack pile to see if we could find enough lumps to bake bread. It was a job just big enough for Johnny and me, and too big for Rachel. Rachel still ate the coal and poured the slack in her hair. But she always followed after us.
The slack pile was leaned up against the chicken coop. Johnny leaned up against the chicken coop by the slack pile.
"Ya know, Eva, this chicken coop would make a good house," Johnny said.
"Mamma told us never to open the door. A house has to have a door."
But Johnny had more imagination. "The window will make a good door," he said. "You wait and see." He unlocked the door and darted quickly inside. "Lock me in," he commanded.
It was a simple matter to drop the railroad spike through the staple and lock him in.
"Now, you hold up the window and push hard."
This necessitated my climbing up the slack pile and bracing myself against the window. Johnny unfastened the hooks from the inside that held it in place, and the window let go and began pushing me back down the slack pile where Rachel sat pouring handfuls of slack over her head.
"Hold it up!" Johnny yelled. And his scream frightened five or six Plymouth Rocks clear out of the window. They cackled and clucked and flapped their wings and scared Rachel and she bawled ... And Mamma came out to see why the chickens were getting out and making such a noise and why Rachel was bawling, and to see why we hand't got the coal.
There was just enough room under the roost for Johnny, but the weight of the window was not quite enough to drive me down into the slack pile out of sight, and Mamma found me.
Now, if Mamma had said, "Eve, why did you take the window out of the chicken coop?" it could have all been explained. But she didn't say that. She said, "Eve, who took the window out of the chicken coop?"
Well, putting it that way, Rachel did.
"But Rachel isn't big enough," Mamma said, "and she couldn't even lift the window."
Well, then, maybe Johnny did.
"No, Eve," Mamma said, "you mustn't make it any worse. You will have to have two spankings already ... one because you took the window out and one because you took the window out and one because you lied about it." She lifted the window off of me and leaned it against the coop. "Johneeeeee!" she called, like he was down in the willows by the creek instead of down in the straw under the roost. "Come and help round up these hens."
Ordinarily Mama would have spanked me on the spot. She had flour on her hands from molding out the bread. Yet even her flour on my coal dust would not have saved me. But my sins, up to now, had not included so black a thing as a lie. There had been sins, plenty of them. But this time one of the Commandments was involved. There would have to be some special punishment thought up for this.
"The devil is the father of lies," Mamma resumed. "Now hurry with the coal." She went back to the house. "Johneeeeee!" she called from the back steps, and then disappeared into the kitchen.
So the devil was the father of lies. What were his other children like? Looking down at my coal-dusty legs brought the unpleasant thought that the devil's children must look greatly like me. And if they were all as remorseful and worried, the devil had a very unhappy family.
That night Molly and David made a bonfire out of sage-brush and willows. Papa took me between his knees and explained that the devil had a bonfire something like that. He kept it burning for people who told lies and were greedy and selfish. These people just burned and suffered and couldn't get out of the bonfire until they had paid for all their sins. And when they got out some would still be scarred and stunted from where their sins had been; but their biggest handicap would be that they could never quite catch up to where they could have been in the great race of Eternal Life. He said the Hell Fire part wasn't exactly how it was ... that was sort of a parable ... but on account of my being so small he couldn't make me understand it any better, and if he waited for my understanding to catch up, the devil would probably have a head start.
Then Mamma told me the story of the boy who cried "Wolf." It was a very interesting story, all but the ending. The little boy got eaten by the wolf because he had lied.
Then Papa took out of the fire a willow that hadn't burned clear up. He broke the burnt end off and threw it back into the fire. It hurt him to have to do it, he said. There were two spanking all right. The one about the window wasn't so bad, but the one about the lie hurt a lot.
Johnny was poking in the fire with a long willow.
"If you wuz a good little child like me ya wouldn't have t' be spanked," he said.
The Last of the Blackfeet.
Elizabeth was born in July and the pea crop came on in August. It had said in the seed catalog that they were early June peas. But the catalog took it for granted that you ate them green. We ate our dried. So our peas were ready in August.
The Indians timed it pretty well. Pioneer stories had it that the Indians could smell the bread baking and always showed up for a handout just as you were taking it out of the oven. Brigham Young had told pioneers that it was better to feed the Indians than fight them. Besides, he claimed a distant relationship with them since, according to the Book of Mormon, we were all sons of Joseph, who was sold into Egypt. The Indians were sort of prodigal sons, while we were the ones who had remained in the estate -- but we were still related. So we felt a kind of responsibility for the Indians, even if we didn't altogether trust them. Mamma had been only a year old when Brigham Young died, but she could tell us all about his Indian policy. And it was still a pretty good policy.
So the day we planned to thresh the peas was the day the Indians came. They had a covered wagon that they had probably salvaged from some sheepherder, and three of the boniest horses you ever saw, one pushing and two pulling. There were two men, with long black braids that hung down their backs and wearing bright-colored plaid shirts, and a squaw in ragged calico witha little shriveled-up baby that cried all the time. The baby was about ten months old, but it wasn't any bigger than our Elizabeth, who was only one month old. It was a little longer but not as thick. And it was wrapped in a piece of dirty blanket. It didn't have any other clothes on.
The squaw carried a filthy flour sack that had something in it that rattled. She shuffled past Mamma and dumped the sack on the table, and out rolled three baking powder biscuits, as hard as rocks. Mamma gave her a cup of fresh milk, and the squaw picked up the dirty mush kettle and dropped the biscuits in it and poured the milk over them. Then she put her hand in and tried to mash the biscuits. But they were so hard they had to soak. So she pinched off pieces and tried to put them in the baby's mouth.
The baby couldn't seem to swallow, but just kept on whining. So the squaw took the safety pin out of her dress front and exposed an empty, shriveled breast. Then she pointed to Mamma and grunted. Mamma didn't understand, so the squaw pointed to Elizabeth, who was asleep in the big bed. Mamma still didn't understand, so the squaw went over and started to pick Elizabeth up. Mamma shook her head and hurried to Elizabeth. Then the squaw turned back to the table where her baby was and carried it over to Mamma and dumped it in her arms. We all hoped she wasn't trying to trade off her scrawny little brown Indian for Elizabeth. Mamma looked worried, but being of an old English family, she still didn't catch on. But the little brown baby did -- first with both hands -- and finally with his mouth; and the squaw looked as happy as he did. But Mamma just looked surprised.
The peas were dried in the pods and ready to be pulled up and threshed. That was before we got the thresher. So Mamma spread a canvas out on the ground and stacked the peas, pods, vines, and all on the canvas. Then she told Johnny and me to climb on and "tromp." Rachel tried to tromp too, but she was so soft she wasn't much good. We did sort of an Indian dance on the vines, and the Indians stood by and watched. They grunted once in a while, but showed no sign that they recognized any part of the ritual. Mamma stood close by us, holding Elizabeth, who was trying to go back to sleep. Mamma wasn't sure that the squaw might not still want to trade babies, and she wasn't letting Elizabeth out of her sight.
Molly and Prue brought the vines faster than we could tromp them, and the Indians stood around and looked on. They didn't offer to help, but we didn't mind because their feet didn't look very clean. Afterwards we figured it out that they must be the Blackfeet Indians.
When we had tromped for quite a while. Mamma sent Johnny to the blacksmith shop for the fan. It was a bucket lid with a stick nailed onto it that Papa used to fan the fire in the forge before we got the bellows. Then Mamma propped Elizabeth over her hip and held her with one arm while she fanned the pile of vines. And pretty soon you could see little pockets of peas here and there on the canvas, and the ground was snowed about with straw-colored chaff.
Seeing those pockets of peas, the Indians grunted louder. And pretty soon they squatted down and began dipping them up in their hands, and lapped them, like the soldiers of Gideon lapped the water from the brook. And the peas went down their throats like so much Indian corn.
Mamma scraped up the peas that were left and put them in the dirty flour sack where the biscuits had been and gave them to the squaw.
The squaw threw the sack of peas over her shoulder and followed the two men back to the wagon.
They were the last Indians that ever came around.
There's Spode in Them There Hills
It was that energetic year when housewives and their daughters took to making arty works of empty pickle jars and odd-shaped jam bottles. A fruit bottle would do if the top was chipped so that it couldn't be used for fruit anymore.
You made a gluey dough from salt, flour, sugar, and water, cooked it in a bakepan on the top of the stove. It would have been nice to have had some cake coloring to put in it like the "receipt" said; but then, it would have been nice to have had some cake. A ball of blueing, mashed up, made the dough a grayish color, and two balls made it come out about the shade of a fair of faded overalls. You molded this mixture around the fruit bottle like you'd wrap a pancake around a sausage. Then you stuck into this doughy blanket bits of broken china, brass buttons with eagles on them, and sharp little rocks in odd colors -- but mostly the amber, dark red, and pale green glass fragments from pounded beverage bottles that you found half-full of mud along the highway when you were going after the cows. Finished and dried, the vase made a glittering show of culture on the lampstand of the organ -- if you didn't mid a little dust.
And Prue was going to make such a vase. The dough was practically ready, and she had everything she needed except one thing -- a very valuable possession of mine. It was a small blue bottle, not two inches high. The blue was the lovely shade of the magnesia bottle -- but it had never held magnesia in it because there had been a skull-and-cross-bones label on it at the garbage dump. But that bottle was the sole medication of my wooden doll. And now Prue wanted to mash it up and stick the pieces of it into her vase.
She tried to bargain. She would give me a share in the vase. She would even let me dust it sometimes with the turkey-feather duster. Better still, she would give me some little dishes for it. She had seen some just my size once when she had gone after the cows.
What color were these little dishes?
Why, they were red, of course.
How many were there?
O, there was a whole set of them. Five or six. She thought there were six.
My mind skipped out to the hills and spotted the dishes. There they were left carelessly at the edge of an old ash heap where some sheepherder had burned the trash before moving camp. There were sardine cans and half-burnt striped wrappers from pork and beans, a few broken hotel saucers -- and the darling little dishes. They were very thin china, milk-white in the background, but almost completely covered with raised blossoms in red and with pale green leaves with gold stemwork in-between. The edges were gracefully scalloped and a raised red lattice ran all around the brim. Mamma had a piece of red china that her mother had brought from England. It was beautiful. And so were my little red dishes.
So my little blue bottle was straightway pounded into bits and mounted for future generations in a stately urn.
It was awful waiting the hours until Prue and Johnny to go after the cows. It was awful even after they had gone. And when the cows appeared single file around Shale Point, there was a thick, hot, syrupy feeling in my throat, and my heart beat like it would burst with anticipation.
Finally the cows were in the corral and Prue was coming toward the house with my precious dishes caught up in her skirt. She was beaming as she spread them out before me on the railroad tie that was the doorstep -- the bottoms from six red beer bottles.
Of Death and Hell
Papa was very good at inventing. He invented a windmill that would beat the Dutch. It had a wagon wheel on top that had some slats nailed to it. And whenever the wind blew the slats off, there was enough wind to draw water, but not enough slats. So mostly we used the pump. This was after they'd dug the well.
But sometimes the pump got stopped up and then we had to draw water in the bucket. This was not so easy because the two boards that covered the hole were fitted so tight together that you had to use the axe to pry them up.
Of course, that was a good idea because it kept the children from falling into the well -- that is, when the boards were down.
But one day the boards were up. Papa had been fixing the pump. He had gone out to the blacksmith shop to get another wrench. Mamma was scrubbing the kitchen floor. Molly was straightening the pantry. Prue and Johnny were playing outside. Elizabeth was sound asleep in her new crib. So that left me to watch Rachel, who was a little past two, and keep her herded away from the well. This was hard to do because of the well being in the kitchen the way it was, and because Rachel was so big she was hard for me to manage. She loved to sit on the platform that covered the well. Her feet just barely touched the floor, and she would sit there and sing by the hour. It was all right for her to sit there and sing when the well was closed; but when the board was up, it was a different matter.
The hole, with just one board up, was about eight inches wide and about two feet long. When both boards were up it was big enough for a man to go down. But with just one, it was only big enough for Rachel. So it was my job to keep her away until Papa got back with the wrench.
It was a funny thing about that well. When they were digging it the hired man had said: "Sure as you build the new kitchen over this here well you're gonna have a couple of kids go down." But Papa had said, "Well, Bob, we're livin' in a modern age. And it seems t' me we ought take advantage of it. Ya take our women folks, fer instance: they're entitled t' things bein' a little easier than they've been havin' 'em. It won't be long 'fore people gegin t' see that, and then they'll all be puttin' their wells on the inside." So they dug the well nice and deep, and built the new room around it with railroad ties, and that was the new kitchen, with the well in the corner.
And now the board was up, and Rachel was sitting there on the platform, swinging her feet and singing. It was up to me to get her away.
Every time any attempt was made to pull her off, she would land both feet in my middle and go on singing as if nothing happened. Finally it occurred to me to use the same tactics. But if my feet were to land in her middle, she'd go backwards down the hole -- and that wasn't the idea. It would have to be done from behind.
There was just about a foot of room between the back of Rachel and the hole. It wasn't enough room to sit down in; that is, when you considered bracing yourself so your feet could land in the middle of her back. But there was enough room to stand in, and you might could buckle your arms around her body and carry her away to where it was safe.
But just about the time Rachel felt me close in around her, she half stood up and raised her arms above her head and slid to the floor like a sack of cornmeal.
But not before she had set me off balance.
The hole in the top of the well was blue and oblong. It kept getting smaller and smaller above me. The blue kept getting darker and darker. There was no sensation of falling at all. The sides of the well merely seemed to climb up past me, and the hole at the top merely rose higher and higher. The ragged walls of the well were lined with streaks of alkali and white mold. The pump shaft went up one side, rusty and beaded with water. Prue had dropped a quarter down the well the month before. Maybe it would be there shining through the six feet of water. There were field mice down there too, because one had got in the pump one time. But what about Rachel? What would Mamma say when she saw that no one was watching her? But Mamma was scrubbing and probably wouldn't notice.
This was a funny way to have things end. There were many things to be ashamed of in my four years. Goodness knows they had given me enough spankings. Maybe that would pay for part of my sins. God was supposed to be quite fond of little children. But not such bad ones. There was the incident of the chicken coop window.
If you wuz a good little child like me ya wouldn't have to be spanked.
It was a good thing this was the end of me instead of Johnny.
It was certainly a long way down to the water. The hole in the top of the well got very small and very far away. Finally someone put the board back. Then it was quite dark, but my eyes were pretty well accustomed to it, so it wasn't entirely black. The white gypsum still showed on the edges of the well. Now, which would be the easiest way to die? Holding my nose, or holding my breath, or just plain drowning? My thumb and finger clamped over my nose. Good-bye, Mamma and Papa. Don't scold me for not keeping Rachel away from the well. Come and get me, God. You might have a little trouble finding me, and you'll have to use the axe to pry up the boards. So long. World ...
In the kitchen above everything was calm until Rachel slid to the floor. Her little fat head made a thumping sound as it hit the well platform, and although Rachel almost never cried, Mamma heard the thump.
"Sakes alive! Now where's Eva gone to? Wouldn't ya know she'd disappear just when ya needed her? Molly ya'd better put that board back before Rachel goes down that hole."
Molly put the board back obediently and stomped it into place.
"Mamma," Molly drolled, "where'd Eva go?"
"Don't know. Did you see her go out? She was here a minute ago."
There was less than half an inch between the two thick boards that covered the manhole in the well platform. They were swollen with moisture and wedged tight at the ends. It was a man's job to pry them up with the blade of the axe. And the axe was in the chopping block out by the blacksmith shop. David had used the poker once and bent it into an elbow shape.
But Molly used the fingers of her left hand this time, and the board flew over her head and lit in the middle of the floor between Rachel and where Mamma was kneeling over the scrubbing brush.
The ladder hung down the side of the well to within about three feet of the top of the water. It had been put there for the times when the pump needed fixing. Molly found me on the third rung, coming up, my eyes shining out from my wet face like a couple of quarters in a pool. That's what Molly said ... but you couldn't prove it by me. You couldn't have proved anything by me for a couple of hours. They had dried me off and dressed me in the ugly brown dress made out of the flannel shirt that was too tight and put me in Mamma's and Papa's bed.
It was awful, waking up there with all the family around. They had me cornered. You see, there was a heavy penalty for anybody found on Mamma's and Papa's bed.
"If Ever You See"
According to the teacher's magazine the highlight of the Christmas program was supposed to be a chorus from the first grade. But since the whole first grade was confined to the first seat on the left hand row, Miss Brinkerhoff let me do the number as a solo. The song was a nature study of nestlings which might be found in a bush or a tree, and of the very moral respect a child should accord them. It was obviously designed to instill in the child the delicate beauty of young birds in a pretty nest, with overtones of mother love, in a setting of spring blossoms, and to impress him with his responsibility in protecting it. The whole thing was hinged upon whether or not you'd ever run across such a picture, and it was called, perhaps doubtfully, "If Ever You See."
In fact it was quite doubtful that such a scene ever would be encountered in Salt Brush, because there were no actual bushes closer than the currants up the creek, and the service berries on the way to the grazing range; and no trees on our side or Orchard Valley far, far away. The magpies made their nests high up in the willows where you couldn't see into them, and the sage hens built theirs at the roots of the sage brushes where you seldom looked. So the temptation to steal their young birds away was very slight. Of course, the song didn't necessarily confine itself to what might be encountered in Salt Brush. It said, "If Ever You See"; and one might sometime venture forth from Salt Brush into the world outside -- although no one there ever had. There was nothing really wrong about the song except that there was nothing about Christmas in it, and the fact that what was designed to be a chorus must, because of the numerical limitations of our first grade, be rendered as a solo.
It wasn't so bad having to practice before the rest of the school every afternoon; it wasn't so much different from reciting the daily assignments prescribed for the first grade. Many times they had been singing assignments, like "The Babes in the Woods" or "America the Beautiful." But the day Miss Brinkerhoff's beau came up from Gopher Hole -- the one with the black hair and the little mustache -- the music just wouldn't come out of me.
"But, Eva, you must," Miss Brinkerhoff coaxed. "Suppose you forget it! Then you won't be able to sing on the Christmas program. Wouldn't that be dreadful?"
Not only the music, but all the words of any kind had solidified within me. My feet were welded firmly to the floor and my eyes fastened securely on my feet.
"Prue, you try to make her sing," Miss Brinkerhoff said.
"Sing, Eva," Prue commanded dutifully.
But nothing came out of me.
"Rachel's the stubborn one," Johnny said out loud, without being asked. "Eve ain't never acted like this before."
"You mustn't say 'ain't,' Johnny," Miss Brinkerhoff said.
"Eve hasn't never been stubborn like Rachel," Johnny corrected.
Miss Brinkerhoff ignored him and tried me again.
"Won't you please sing for Mr. George? It will be like singing for the program. Mr. George will be the audience. It will be excellent practice for you."
It would have been all right to have given in earlier in the argument. But now there was too much to go back on. Papa always said: "Never be coaxed. If you can do what you're asked, do it. If you can't, tell 'em so. But you'd better have a good reason."
My reason this far along in the argument, was that it wasn't right to give in to coaxing. They'd had my answer at the first; the song was simply fastened down inside of me. It would be changeable and almost dishonest to produce one now.
So after tedious minutes Miss Brinkerhoff allowed me to return to my seat -- without a song.
The night of the Christmas program arrived in a flurry of snow. Everything was perfect for a very Merry Christmas party. Miss Brinkerhoff read off the program: There would be a duet, "Happy Greeting," by the third grade. The fourth, fifth and sixth would put on a pageant, drawing on the seventh and eighth for the Wise Men. That took up about all the students and most of the time. The second grade said a recitation, and Santa Claus gave us each a popcorn ball. Jim Langley and Jerry Manwell pushed the benches up against the wall and cleared the floor for the dance. Miss Brinkerhoff would the victrola and changed the needle. There had been no program music from the first grade. Miss Brinkerhoff had forgotten.
Or maybe she hadn't forgotten. Maybe she meant it that way. Maybe she thought that the music had drained out of me for all time. It was true that not since the day of Mr. George's visit had she asked me to sing. She might never ask me again.
The party seemed quite dull from my corner, where Mamma had left me to keep baby Alice from rolling off the top the desk and Elizabeth from getting all stuck up with her popcorn ball, so that Prue could be free to teach Johnny the twostep. Rachel was big enough to sit in a seat by herself, and Miss Brinkerhoff let her putter with molding clay. She looked as if she were having a wonderful time. In fact everybody was, but me.
When the phonograph ran down in the middle of a Virginia reel, Miss Brinkerhoff didn't rewind it.
"We need a rest anyway," she said, after catching her breath. She looked around the room, as good school teachers do, to see if everyone were having a good time.
"There is something that completely slipped my mind," she announced. She was looking at me holding Alice on the desk by the stomach with one hand, and with the other daubing the front of Elizabeth with a handkerchief, "We were supposed to have a solo from the first grade."
Everybody clapped hands, and Jerry Manwell led me out into the middle of the floor. A responsible glance back to my corner proved that Prue had gone on duty as guard of the infantry. Mamma looked very proud and Papa looked encouraging. The song must begin quickly before anyone could start coaxing; it wasn't good to be coaxed. So even before Jerry Manwell could return to his seat, the song had begun.
Oh don't you remember a long time ago ...
Prue was frowning a deep dark frown. That wasn't "If Ever You See." That was "The Babes in the Woods."
"That was fine," Miss Brinkerhoff praised, after the people had stopped clapping. "But what happened to 'If Ever You See'?"
"Well, you see, Miss Brinkerhoff, there is so much music in me that it has stir around and get comfortable. And tonight, 'The Babes in the Woods' were on top."
Experiment in Spearmint
The scissors were gone. Everyone had looked everywhere. They had been gone for a week. Some of the things we needed to cut could be torn, like certain kinds of carpet rags. And some could be haggled with the butcher knife, things like sack twine and bandages. But when it came to taking an old pair of suit pants and cutting out a new flannel school dress to be trimmed with red felt braid and brass overall buttons, you had to have scissors.
But the loss of the scissors didn't register with much importance with me until Mamma offered a reward for the one who could find them. Nor did the reward register until she said chewing gum. Ther would be one whole package for the person who could find the scissors.
In all my near seven years it had been a point of curiosity with me just what it would be like to have a whole package of chewing gum at once. There were a lot of possibilities. You could chew one stick and put the others in your drawer to make your clothes smell nice. Or you could save the pack and use a stick at a time for special favors. It would be nice to be able to say casually, "Would you like a stick of gum?" Or you could strip the whole package, peel the sticks one by one, stack them tight against each other, and then gnaw into the naked bundle like old man Jennings did his plug of Union Leader.
It was time something should be done about the scissors. And since hunting had already failed, it might be well to use some headwork.
Who had the scissors last?
Mamma.
Where was she when she had them?
Upstairs in the boys' room.
What was she doing?
Cutting carpet rags.
Where would she naturally have put them when she was through with them?
In the drawer of the sewing machine downstairs.
But they were not in the machine drawer.
Then she wasn't through with them.
Something had distracted her attention, or she had been called away before she had finished and had expected to go right back to her cutting.
In that case she would most likely have laid the scissors down in the rag box.
But they weren't in the rag box.
That meant that whatever it was that had called her away was unusual or exciting or demanding enough to make her forget that she was holding the scissors.
In that case she would have taken them with her.
What then had called her away?
Oh, yes! Jim Langley had ridden into the yard; he was in a hurry. He had jumped off his horse and said, "Where's your Ma, Johnny, quick? Where's your Ma?" And then he rushed into the house and yelled, "It's Effie! Can ya come quick?"
And Mamma had rolled up the bottle of Lysol in a clean sheet and jumped on behind Jim, and they had galloped away. (He had brought her back in the wagon about ten o'clock that night. Effie had had a baby.)
And it was a long way up to Langleys'.
If our scissors were at Langleys', no telling when we would get them back, because the Langleys weren't too scrupulous about other people's property.
Mamma must have gone downstairs in a hurry. There were three ways you could go downstairs. You could slide down the veranda railing on the outside. (But you might get a sliver, and to my knowledge Mamma had never used that method.) Or you could run down the veranda steps. (But that left you facing the blacksmith shop and not the front yard, where the horse was.) Or you could just let yourself down the hole and go down the ladder that put you into Mamma's and Papa's room. That would have been the quickest way because you could let yourself 'way down if you wanted to, holding onto the top rung, before you took hold of the ladder with your other hand.
But just a minute! It would have been not only awkward but also dangerous to go down the ladder with the scissors in your hand.
So Mamma must have started with the scissors, but put them down before she started down the ladder.
That left just a few feet to be covered in the search.
It might help to dramatize her exit.
She would be sitting like this on the boys' bed with one leg on either side of the rag box and her lap made very wide so as to hold more carpet rags.
"It's Effie! Can ya come quick?"
She would give a little jerk and look straight ahead for a second, and then she would think to herself, "Poor Effie!" Then she would stand up quickly, still straddle of the rag box, and the cut rags would fall into it.
But the scissors would be stuck to her hand with her thumb and two fingers.
They would be half open.
She would rush to the hole and drop down. Then when she went to put her other hand on the top rung, she would notice the half open scissors. She would shut them with a snip while she pulled her fingers loose. Then she would put them in the hole that was just under the floor of the room above, and just on top of the ceiling of the room underneath.
Sure enough. Right in plain sight everytime you went up or down the ladder.
And they smelled like a package of chewing gum.
It was a couple of weeks before Mamma had an occasion to go down to Salt Brush, which was the nearest place where you could buy a package of gum. She generally brought two packages because there were ten of us, counting Alice, who was the baby. But she was too little to chew. Elizabeth always swallowed her stick, but it wasn't fair not to give her one. So there was usually just one stick left over for when Mamma had the sour stomach.
But this time there would be three packs, because of finding the scissors. And one of them would be mine.
But when Mamma got home there were only two packs. That put a different angle on things. You could see right away that she'd forgotten all about the reward. Prue felt sorry for me because she knew how much it meant. So she said, "Does Eve get one of these packages on account of finding the scissors?" That made me feel a little better because it wouldn't have been right for me to ask. That would have been selfish, when you could see thee was just enough to go around.
Mamma said, "Golly, that's right." And it was decided that starting with Elizabeth and going on up, each child could have a stick of the other package as far as it would go, not counting Alice, who was too little to chew. Elizabeth, Rachel, skipping me, Johnny, Prue, and Molly. That left David and Mamma and Papa out. Molly said Mamma could have her stick on account of her sour stomach. That made me feel more selfish.
"You can have a stick of mine, Molly." It was hard to say, though. "And so can David and Papa." But the two sticks left wouldn't be a very good plug.
"No, Eve," Molly said. "You earned it, and it was the reward."
"Don't give me any," David said.
"Me neither," said Papa.
"Pine gum is good enough for me," David said.
It was wonderful to have a whole package of chewing gum. It was wonderful just to carry it around. And the pack got moist and steamy in my fist. It would make a wonderful plug like old man Jennings' Union Leader. Maybe there would never be another chance for the plug idea. It had been a pretty close shave this time. You could bring your teeth down into it and gnaw off a hunk, chew a couple of times, and let the juice kind of trickle down the corner of times, and let the juice kind of trickle down the corner of your chin. It wouldn't be varnish-colored like Union Leader, but you could pretend about that. Besides, if it looked too real there might be some sin in it, because tobacco was "not for the belly, neither the body; but for bruises on sick cattle, to be used with judgment and skill."
An hour later Mamma found me on the organ stool looking like some pleasant variety of the toothache.
"Eva! What in heaven's name have you got in your mouth?"
"It's the reward." That much came out around the wad. It's a good thing it wasn't bubble gum or it never would have made it.
"Do you mean to tell me that you've got five sticks of gum in your mouth at once?"
Gulp.
"Well, take it out this minute! And it will be a long time before you ever get a whole package of gum again to waste." That was true. "Talk about yer selfish kids! You beat all!" That was true, too.
"But nobody seemed to want any of it. They all had a chance."
"Maybe they didn't want any right then, but they might have wanted some later on. Who'd ever thought of such selfishness?"
It began to look like she was right. But even whether it looked like it or not, she always was.
"Now take that wad and make it into five balls. You can chew one of them until bedtime. And tomorrow you can have another. You had to make sure nobody else would get a smell."
There was no use to tell her about the plug idea. If she was this bad about the selfishness, what in the world would she have to say about the tobacco? So for days you could see the gummy monuments of my greed collecting dust on the lampstand of the organ. No one offered to divide the reward and no one offered to share my stigma. And no one else knew what a funny sensation it was to sink your teeth into a whole package of chewing gum at once.
A Corner on Wheat
During the war the government wanted to know the most things. One of them was how much wheat everybody had. We had a lot that was piled up in the other end of the boys' room. We had our own grinder to make it into flour. The government wanted to know about the flour too. So they sent a man around. He came from the county seat, and he was a politician. Anyway, he was very polite. He said the government didn't want our wheat. They just didn't want us to use it. We could have just a certain amount each week. He said he would trust us to follow his orders. He said there wouldn't be any need for the government to take our wheat away if we didn't use it. Then he went back to the county seat. Papa went, too, and brought back a hundred pounds of rice and some sugar. The government hadn't said anything about rice. But that's what almost got us into trouble just the same.
One day a fancy black auto came around Shale Point and turned in at our road. It was the politician. It was about an hour before dinner. He came into the house and looked all over, like he was hunting for something.
"Well, Jake Old Man," he said to Papa -- polite government men always called him Jake Old Man -- "ya still got all that wheat?"
"Yep, she's all there," Papa answered, "jist like she wuz when you wuz here before, 'cept the weekly allowance we keep here in the flour bin. Got a nice grind on it this time. Wanna see the cutter? It's sort of an invention. Works like a charm."
"Maybe ya better show me the wheat, Jake Old Man."
"Sure you can see the wheat. It's all there jist like ya seen it." They went up the ladder that went from Mamma's and Papa's room through the hole in the ceiling into the boys' room. The man from the government ran his arms down into the pile.
"This sure is fine wheat ya got this year, Jake Old Man." He looked like he was hunting for something buried in the wheat.
"Ya better not lose that watch and chain in that there wheat," Papa warned him. "Ya'd never be able to tell it from them golden grains."
Apparently the man didn't find what he was hunting for.
"Ya got any more wheat anywhere else?"
"Nope, only what's in the flour bin downstairs."
The man poked around again.
"Ain't gone down noticeably. It sure is fine wheat."
They went back down the ladder.
"Ya might as well stay for dinner," Papa invited. "We don't eat so fancy, but we kin always divide what we got."
"Thanks, Old Man. Might stay at that."
They went out to inspect the farm machinery and Papa showed him a couple of inventions. "The government might be interested in 'em," he said.
Mamma got the dinner. It was a little different with company. She put a clean bedsheet over the oilcloth and took the two napkins out of the box where she kept the wedding diploma and David's first baby tooth.
She called Prue. "Run down to Jennings' and see if they can spare a little butter. Tell 'em this bottle of choke-cherries without dropping it?"
When the table was set there were baked potatoes and milk gravy, rice pudding and a pitcher of milk, a plate of bread and a bottle of sour pieplant. Prue came with the butter just in time, and we were ready to eat.
The government man tucked his napkin in his vest. But Papa told Mamma to put his back in the box. "There ain't no use pertendin' to be whatcha ain't," he told her. She looked a little hurt, but she was glad he didn't get the napkin dirty.
"Help yourself to the spuds," Papa said to the government man. "An' you ain't tasted milk gravy like this since ya wuz a boy." Mamma had had to use the morning milk to make it. There wouldn't be milk for supper.
But the government man said, "Please pass the bread."
"Sure," Papa said, "help yourself."
"This bread is sure nice and white," the government man said. "Do you ever put any bran in it?"
"Sure, sometimes," Papa told him. "But we use the bran mostly for mush in the mornings. The kids like it better than flour mush and that saves the flour for the bread."
"Of course, ya knew, didn't ya, that it's government orders not to eat white bread?"
"You don't have to eat it, Mister," Papa told him, "that is, if you can make a meal on potatoes and gravy and pieplant. Ya see, the Missus is on the delicate side right now, and too much of that bran stuff kinda sickens her."
The man from the government stood up. "Jake Old Man," he said slowly, "yer a good man. And yer wife is in a delicate condition. And it's a dirty shame, but ya gotta be arrested. Ya see, the orders wuz no white bread. An' it's been reported that you been using white bread right along. That's defyin' the government, Jake Old Man, and ya gotta be arrested. My wife's delicate too. It's a darned shame."
"Don't she like that black stuff either?" Papa was very sympathetic in those situations. "Maybe you'd take her a loaf of this. Julie, ain't ya goin' t' mix bread agin today anyway? Wait till the bakin' and you kin take her a fresh loaf."
After dinner the man from the government didn't say much. He just leaned back in the chair with his thumbs in his vest. He had a star-shaped button that didn't seem to be sewed on very well. There wasn't any buttonhole on the other side. It must have been just for trimming.
Papa didn't say much either. He sat in the chair opposit the man and leaned back with his thumbs in his overall bib. They just looked at each other and rocked back and forth and kind of smiled.
Mamma went on abut the bread mixing. It would have been done before noon if it hadn't been for the company. First she measured the little dab of white flour that the government had said was our allowance. Then she took the rice off the stove and drained it into the colander. She poured some cold water through the rice to make it cool enough to handle. Then she dumped the rice in with the flour. She took the yeast bucket from the warming oven and poured the foamy stuff on the rice. Then a handful of salt and a spoonful of lard and she was ready for the rice water. She kneaded the batch until it was doughy, then stiff, then smooth. She took some lard and patted it over the top of the great lump. Then she tucked it in with a clean white flour sack and set it up on the warming oven to "raise."
By this time the government man had taken his thumbs from his vest and was leaning forward with his hands on his knees.
"That the way ya always mix yer white bread?"
"Generally," Mamma answered. "Of course, it was easier before we were put on these rations, not having to fuss with the rice. But it's not so bad."
"No," the government man said. "It's not so bad. It sure had me fooled. And it saves me from taking you up, Old Man. Don't like to do them things."
"Maybe yer wife'd like the receipt," Papa said, "bein' she's delicate."
"Reckon she might," the government man answered.
So Mamma wrote out the recipe on the back of an envelope, and he put it in his pocket and left.
A couple of weeks later we got a letter from the Helping Hand Society of Indian Gulch. It was from the president of the Helping Hands. She was a society woman who went around telling people how to do their canning. She would come around in her Sunday dress. Anybody knows you can't can in your Sunday dress. And you could see she didn't even know how to put up wild currants without sugar. And there wasn't any more than enough sugar to go on the mush in the mornings, let alone go into the currants. So Mamma had to teach her quite a few things.
But she was right nice in her letter. There were two pages of it. On one it said:
After months of experiment and research and untiring effort on the part of our diligent staff, we are able to offer the housewives of this territory the recipe for a white bread that meets all government requirements regarding the conservation of white flour.
And on the other page she had sent us back Mamma's rice recipe -- not on the envelope like Mamma had written it, but typed out nice and neat on a clean page of new catalog paper.
What the History Book Didn't Say
My third year in school at Salt Brush, we had Mrs. Peterson for a teacher. She was a good enough teacher, but she didn't know much about history. She proved that the day the fourth grade learned all about the Western Hemisphere. She started out by saying that Columbus discovered America. That part was all right; but she went on to say that he found a lot of Indians and nobody knew where they came from. That left a big gap in her historical education. But it wouldn't take long to fix it for her. What was so strange was that the rest of the children just sat there and accepted it that nobody knew anything more about the Indians. It was plain that they had to have some help from the third grade. So up went my helping hand.
"Did you want something, Eva?" Mrs. Peterson asked.
"Do you want me to tell you all about the Indians?"
Mrs. Peterson was a good teacher, and she must have been reading in the magazine about letting the children express themselves, because she said:
"Why, can you tell us all about the Indians?"
"Yes, ma'am."
So they all settled themselves back to be enlightened.
The Indians came from Jerusalem.
But they weren't Indians. They were white people.
They were the children of Joseph who was sold into Egypt.
But they didn't stay in Egypt.
They carried Joseph's bones back to Jerusalem.
So they had been both in Egypt and Jerusalem. And now they were in America.
They came here before Christ -- even before Columbus -- so they wouldn't be in Jerusalem when it fell.
Jerusalem fell right after that.
And it must of fell pretty hard, because a lot of the people got killed and the king got his eyes put out.
But the Indians were safe in America.
But they were white people before they turned Indians.
The Lord turned half of them into Indians when they had a quarrel in their family, and the ones who started it got mad and tore off their clothes and acted like Indians.
The fight lasted a long time and sometimes the Indians won, but usually the white ones did because the white ones were usually in the right.
But finally the white ones began to get wicked and act like Indians.
The Lord didn't have enough paint to make them Indians too. So He just stood by and let the Indians kill them off.
Then there were just Indians.
"That's extremely interesting," Mrs. Peterson said. She was very grateful. "But tell me -- where did you learn about all this? It is not mentioned in the history book."
She had me there. It had always been a part of my little knowledge, like the Columbus story, David and Goliath, the simple problems in arithmetic, Samson and the jawbone, and how to play "Hark, Listen to the Trumpeters" on the organ.
On the way home Prue put her arm around my shoulder in a big-sisterly manner. Prue was old and wise and in the seventh grade.
"That was nice about the Indians, Eve," she said approvingly. "You remembered the story well. Only you shouldn't say the Lord didn't have enough paint. He had enough paint all right; but those people had used up all his patience."
Do you think Mrs. Peterson knows enough to be a schoolteacher, Prue?"
"She knows enough," Prue said respectfully; "only apparently she has never read the Book of Mormon."
Two Little Hands
Nineteen hundred and eighteen was a pretty cold winter in Wyoming. Especially the mornings. Our underwear covered up our arms and legs. We usually had pretty good coats that were either handed down or made over. And there were generally enough knitted caps and four-buckle overshoes to protect our hands and feet. But by the time the menfolk had got all the wear out of their wool socks so that they could spare the tops for mittens, there was little warmth left for our hands.
Sometimes Mamma would put small baked potatoes in the lunch basket. Then when our fingers began to get cold we'd take out the potatoes and carry them inside our mittens. But that made it hard to carry the lunch bucket, if it happened to be your turn. And besides, it was only once in a while that we had warm baked potatoes, because we usually had to use the oven to get our feet warm in before we started off to school. On those days Mamma would give us a bowl of bran mush and a cup of barley coffee before we started on our cold three-mile walk.
All the neighbors had real coffee; but they didn't know about the Word of Wisdom, which said, "Strong drinks are not for the belly," so Mamma would mix some bran and barley and spread it out in a large bakepan. She would salt this, pour some molasses or any other kind of syrup that we had over the mixture, and put the pan in the oven and bake it until it was like peanut brittle. Then she'd break this up in chunks, and grind it in the foodchopper. On cold mornings, she'd put a cupful of this "coffee" into some water and bring it to a boil. When she thought all the nourishment was boiled out into the water, she'd set it off the stove and pour in a panful of cold milk. We didn't need to strain this coffee because there was nothing in it but what was "ordained for the use of man." It was warm and tasty.
But even this didn't always get down to our fingers.
The lunch bucket was the tin box with the handles on it that said, "Union Leader Cut Plug." Old Man Jennings had given it to us after it was empty. Mamma had scalded it good to get rid of the tobacco germs, and it made an elegant lunch bucket.
But it also made a lot of trouble. That was because we took turns carrying it. The turns would go -- Prue, Johnny, me, and Rachel -- then start with Prue again.
Rachel was big enough for her age, and fat enough. But she was still only six years old. So she didn't reason like Johnny did. Johnny was ten.
That particular day in November Prue didn't go to school. But if she had gone, it would have been her turn to carry the lunch bucket.
After Prue came Johnny.
So Johnny reasoned:
"Today is Prue's day to carry the lunch bucket ... But Prue isn't here ... So Prue will have to carry it tomorrow. Rachel always carries it the day before Prue ... That's today ... Here, Rachel, you carry the lunch bucket."
"Nope," Rachel said flatly. "Yesterday was my turn."
"That don't make any difference," Johnny reasoned, "because if tomorrow is Prue's day, then today is yours." He set the lunch bucket down in the snow.
Rachel sat down beside it.
"Come on, Eve," Johnny said. "Let her pout it out if she wants to. We don't have ot wait for her."
We started on.
"Don't look back," Johnny said. "She'll git tired of sittin' there and come along."
But she didn't come along; and after we'd gone about a quarter of a mile my conscience began to hurt something awful.
There was a time when Prue and Johnny had left me like that; only it must have been my rightful turn, because Prue never stood for much of Johnny's reasoning. It was the morning we'd taken the short cut through Jennings' pasture. Mrs. Jennings' mother was staying with them and she had brought her whole pack of hounds from England. They were giant dogs, and everybody was afraid of them ... They had chased our little rat terrier, Jumbo, right through our house in the middle of the night, and under Mamma's and Papa's bed, where they cornered him and tore his leg off at the hip! Papa got the gun, and Mamma said she wished he'd shoot every one of those hounds, even if they did cost a hundred dollars apiece. But Papa just reached under the bed and pulled poor little Jumbo out and carried him outside, away from the house, where he hoped we would not hear the shot. But we did ... The leader of the pack was a solid white and very large. The rest of them were spotted. But they were all terrible... And no sooner had Prue and Johnny gone on and left me than the hounds began to bay in the distance. They were coming down the short cut behind me. The awful noise got closer, and pretty soon it got so loud that there was no use trying to scream. They seemed to cover about a rod at each jump and just touch the ground long enough to get another spring. There's no use to run from a pack of hounds; only foxes and rabbits do that. But ostriches bury their heads in the sand. Then, even though danger is right upon them, they don't see it. So, with face mashed right into mittens and mittens mashed into the snow, little Eva waited for the hounds. But the rabbit went on over, so the hounds did too. And Prue and Johnny came cautiously back to see if the blood on their jaws was mine.
Rachel looked quite small sitting back there in the road, certainly quite helpless.
"Don't you think we'd ought to go back and get her, Johnny."
"Naw ... she'll come along after while."
But Johnny wasn't considering how stubborn Rachel was. "Quit lookin' back. She'll be comin' along. Children like Rachel has to be handled in a special way." Johnny halfway turned around.
"She might set there all day." (Rachel was closer to me and nobody else quite knew how she looked at things.)
"She don't dare set there all day," Johnny said. "The folks would sure see her and she'd get a lickin' and she knows it."
"It doesn't do any good to lick Rachel, Johnny. Mamma said so." It really didn't. "But she might tell how you made her carry the lunch bucket."
Johnny squirmed.
"And if she does sit there all day, we won't have any lunch. Aren't you getting hungry, Johnny?"
"A little bit," Johnny said, turning halfway around again.
About that time we heard a low drawn-out bawl. We both turned around. We were about a quarter of a mile from Rachel; and Rachel was about a quarter of a mile from home. There wasn't any wind, so if we could hear her, so could Mamma, if she happened to open the door to throw out the dishwater or something.
"O well," Johnny said, "maybe we'd better go back and git her."
Rachel looked terrible. Her face looked like the face on the dramatc pin that Molly had. And her hands were sticking out in front of her with the fingers spread out like frozen sausages. But she sounded worse than she looked; and it was awful.
We pulled her to her feet. She stood up like the elbow link in the stovepipe. Rachel was in a bad way.
We all knew we couldn't go back home. We had been told many times what would happen if we ever played hooky. There would be a choice of three things, the fire shovel, the riding quirt, or the razor strop. It was out of the question to go home.
We were close to Jennings' house so we dragged Rachel in that direction, rubbing chunks of snow over her hands as we went. But no one seemed to be home at Jennings', and we could see the lamp through the window sitting on the table, half full of oil; but we were not supposed to go in anyone's house if no one was home.
Johnny took Rachel's left hand and put it inside of his mitten and forced it inside his pocket. It hurt her so badly it made me cry. We tried to force my mitten over the fingers of her right hand, but they were so stiff and swollen that we could not make it work. Finally she allowed me to hold her hand between my two, and we trudged on toward school.
We must have been an hour late; but Mrs. Petersen was kind. She looked at Rachel's blackened fingers and then called on one of the bigger boys.
"Run over to my quarters and bring the washbasin and the can of kerosene and a couple of towels." Then she said to Johnny, "Don't take her near the stove."
There was no more school that day. Mrs. Peterson sat with Rachel over a washdish of coal oil, gently immersing the useless little hands and telling us stories that she hoped would appeal to a chubby little girl of six.
It was sad that Rachel wouldn't get to be a little pilgrim in the Thanksgiving play. And it was sadder still that she had to lie at home with her hands propped up for so many weeks that she had to miss the rest of the year. But she was a good little soldier through it all; the hours of soaking in olive oil ... the awful smell when the flesh fell away from the bones and the bones themselves looked so useless ... the weeks of mending as the new flesh grew back and the tender new skin began to lose its redness. She watched in supreme patience while the left hand was restored. And as if to compensate for her courage, it grew as handsome as the hand of any princess in a story. The right hand, too -- the hand that wouldn't fit any mitten. The fingers tapered nicely over the first and second joints. But it was a little too much to ask for lovely nails to grow where even the bone had crumbled away. But we were thankful for her two little hands.
And then years later in Utah, when she was a grown girl in the sixth or seventh grade, the professor needed another first violin in the orchestra. Papa made an especially nice violin for Rachel. But she sat in the second violins.
"We need more melody," the professor said. "Let me hear the people on the second row play the passage, one at a time."
An angular boy with glasses squeaked out the phrase a little off key. The professor looked worried. The next tried, and the next. And then came Rachel's turn. The tones came out nice and true and with an honest rhythm.
"That is very nice, Rachel," the professor complimented. "But why must you wrap your fist around the bow? You never saw an artist clutch his bow like that."
For a moment the flame rose in Rachel' cheeks and she clutched her bow savagely. How could she ever hope to sit on the front row where everyone would see? It had been stupid to choose the violin. Hadn't she become practically left-handed so that people wouldn't know?
"Come here, Rachel," the professor said kindly. "Let me fix your right hand."
Fix it indeed! Let anybody fix it! But Rachel was an obedient child. Painfully she pushed forward the hand with the bow. The indignation of her whole soul was concentrated with her rigid fingers.
The professor pried gently at the stubborn little fist.
"There's a lot of determination in that hand," he said quietly, "and who can tell but what you'll do big things with it?"
He called it DETERMINATION. He had pried it open, and had called it DETERMINATION.
And then somehow the moment came that comes once to us all. Only Rachel used her moment... and took her place with the first violins.
Not Without Honor
We had to walk three miles to school from the ranch, and the same distance home. It was generally cool in the mornings, but in the afternoons it was pleasant and the lunch bucket wasn't so heavy to carry. Sometimes in the fall we'd scare up a sage hen, and sometimes in the spring we'd see a coyote trotting across the ridge. But usually we didn't even see a man on a horse. (All the auto traffic was saved for summer.) So there were few things to make one of these walks any different from the rest.
Of course there was the time when Mrs. Allen stopped us on our last mile to ask us if we'd care to ride in their wagon. And all the while we were climbing in she was saying "Whoa, Whoa, Whoa," with an upward curve in her voice that sounded like the cracked place in the phonograph record. And after the horses were sufficiently fussed, they broke into a run, juggling us around in the wagonbed like so many sacks of feed. We were a mile past our house when she finally got the horses stopped, but the experience gave us momentum for the walk back. That was the only lift we ever got.
Yet even this was not so unusual as what happened one afternoon. We were about the same place as where Mrs. Allen had picked us up, when we saw something bobbling in the road ahead. It was reddish-brown, and it gleamed in the sun. We all stopped and stared. We must have been a little scared, too, because we were motionless and silent. As the figure drew nearer, the bobbing bronze object turned into the top of a man's head. About twenty yards away from us he stopped short and began making wild gestures for us to advance. He held a large stick, for a staff, away from his body in a pose like a picture of a prophet in the Bible. But the stick wasn't as funny as his head. There was not a single hair on top, and his skull was as smooth and as bright and as brown as a copper doorknob. He looked just like you would picture Elisha of old, only we didn't say so, because Elisha, you remember, called out the bears when the children remarked about his bald head. He had a beard though. It was a yellowed white, and it draped over his open collar and thinned out all over his throat. His suspenders were frayed rope, fastened with tenpenny nails, and his trousers were pitiful. He wore so sox, and his bare toes followed the upward curve a little farther than where his shoes left off. All our fear turned into pity. But it was hard to turn our amusement into anything else.
He asked us to direct him to the schoolhouse. And his voice sounded dry, as if the sun had burned his throat, too. We told him to follow the road for two miles and there would be a white one-room building on the right hand side, with two small white buildings in the back. He lowered his head so the top shone right into the sun, and bobbed past us on his way. Johnny called after him that school was already out. But he just kept on. There was a small bundle tied up in a piece of patchwork quilt swung over his back. We raced home to tell the family what we had seen.
The men were just finishing the chores and Molly was dishing up the rice pudding and baked potatoes when there came a loud knock on the door. It was almost dark and an odd time for a visitor. Everything stopped while Mamma called, "Come in."
It was Elisha.
He had been to the schoolhouse and the store and had asked for nourishment and a place to stay.
They had sent him to us.
He had secured the use of the schoolhouse for an evening preaching service and had invited the village to attend. He didn't want much food, just a bowl of bread and milk, but Papa insisted that he sit up to the table with the family.
"There is plenty of the kind," Papa said.
Mamma told Prue to rinse out the washdish and pour him some warm water. He seemed grateful, swishing the water over his face and rubbing his beard with a clean cement-sack towel. And he ate like a hungry man.
After supper the men folks hitched up the horses and we all piled into the wagon and headed for the schoolhouse. There was no one there but Mrs. Peterson, the schoolteacher, and her thirteen-year-old son. That made fourteen in all, if you counted our little Allen, who was only three months old, and Elisha.
But he didn't act disappointed in the crowd. He didn't even act pleased. He just opened the bundle that had been on his back and took out a Bible and a smaller book that had some songs in it and began to sing. When nobody else sang, he got a little angry and stopped to tell us to sing. We would have liked to sing, but we didn't know what he was singing about. He tried two or three more songs and then closed the book and began to preach.
He preached for quite a while and then stopped to see if he'd done any good. He asked if anyone had anything to say, or if anyone was willing to come forward and confess Jesus.
Papa was willing. In fact he was anxious. He arose and discoursed eloquently about faith and repentance and baptism. From these elementary steps he went into the Plan of Salvation. He said he was going to tell it like a play; and he set the stage for the time when the world was getting made. He made you see the drama of God, Christ, and the devil, and the spirits of mankind right there before them as big as life. (But none of these spirits had been born yet into the world.) Then he divided mankind into three groups, putting one-third with the devil, one-third with Christ, and one-third on the fence halfway between. Then he put Jesus and His third busy making the earth. The ones on the fence just sat there and looked on; but they didn't offer to help. The devil and his third he kicked clear out of the place and they went sprawling all over creation. They became the "agitators."
Now the earth was ready for the people. He put Adam and Eve down first, and they got together and figured out a way to get the rest of the people down there; and pretty soon the world was covered with people.
Now the problem was to get these people back into heaven again. This wasn't so easy, because nobody could remember what heaven was like, so it was hard to get them to work for it. But it had been agreed that after enough of them had come down, God would simply send Jesus down to show them the way back. Now nobody but Jesus could do this, because he had engineered the making of the earth, and He was the only one besides God who knew all the ins and outs. So it paid you to follow Him.
After all the people had had a chance to live in the earth, and prove their souls, and after they had died and been resurrected, then God would divide them three ways again; the ones who had lived the VERY BEST He would take with Him to a world that shone like the sun; the ones who were JUST AVERAGE He would send to a world that gleamed like the moon; the ones who hadn't done so well He would crowd into a world that just flickered like the stars. And so, everybody was "saved" from the grave, but only a few would be "exalted." But they would all go on progressing for ever and ever... Amen.
Mrs. Peterson said "Amen."
But Elisha didn't. He just said, "Now, if anyone will be blessed of God come forward and make an offering."
Mrs. Peterson went forward with fifty cents, only she tried to give it to Papa. But Papa explained that he couldn't accept money for preaching the gospel. The gospel was free. So Mrs. Peterson put the fifty cents in her purse again.
On the way home Papa kept remembering things he'd forgotten to put in; and by the time we'd arrived, Elisha was pretty well informed about the gospel.
Mamma fixed more bread and milk for the big folks while Molly put the sleepiest of the smaller ones to bed. Papa and Elisha went on with their orations. Mamma put clean blankets on the daybed in the living room for our visitor, and packed him a lunch. She found a coat that could be spared and a hat that would keep off some sun. Elisha planned to take the train that left at seven-something in the morning.
It seems that in all this time Elisha hadn't caught on that we were Mormons. All of the sudden he had a revelation.
He sprang to his feet. "Mormons! Of course you are! They warned me about you in Missouri! And you have lured me here... an innocent preacher of the truth." He raised his eyes as if to plead for some divine deliverance. And there they were, hanging handily from the low ceiling -- the big thirty-thirty, the Remington, the Winchester, the twenty-two, and the shotgun. (The coyotes were bad in the spring.)
"Mormons! And you will kill me!"
The poor soul! He was exhausted and trembling. Papa told him as soothingly as he could to go to bed and get himself some rest, and that everything would be all right in the morning. We all went to bed quietly and left him.
In the morning we dressed with special modesty as we had to go through the living room where Elisha slept to get to the kitchen, the place of all early morning activity. We even tiptoed so that if he hadn't awakened yet, we wouldn't disturb him.
But Elisha was gone. There wasn't even a wrinkle in his bed. It was just as Mamma had fixed it. The lunch was on the kitchen table. The coat and hat were still on the chair. No one had even heard the door creak. But Elisha was gone. He was not in the barn or in the blacksmith shop.
Papa looked at the clock. There might be time. He took up the coat and the hat and the lunch and rode bareback to the railroad station in the village three miles away.
Had the night clerk seen a lone minister who was waiting for the seven-twenty?
No. A shivering bald-headed old tramp had come in about one-thirty and asked if he could lie down by the stove. And he had taken off before day-light. But that was all.
"Fancy Ladies in Society Pays Big Money for Mud Baths"
Papa was always one to see that his children had all the advantages. That's how he came to dig out the swimming pond for us. Of course, it was thoroughly understood that we were to allow the ducks and geese to swim there, too. But even so, we were never crowded, because the coyotes kept the geese flock from ever amounting to much, and the spring cloudbursts generally washed away the baby ducks; or else it wouldn't rain all summer and then there wouldn't be any water in the pond, except for irrigations, and the ducks would get tired of waiting and sneak off to the creek and we'd never see them again. So usually we had the pond to ourselves.
The pond was really just a wide place in the Wash. The Wash was a small crooked ditch that had been there from the time when there had been enough water.
Nobody had made it. It had just been there. And now about the only time there was standing water in it was when it rained.
The pond was just a few rods in front of the house. The road out to the front gate ran over the dam that held the water in the pond, and a twelve-inch culvert ran through the dam. The water had to be about three feet deep before it could run out of the culvert. So it generally didn't run out.
If we'd all been boys, there wouldn't have been any problem about bathing suits. There were some in the catalog, but why pay ninety-eight cents apiece for bathing suits when ninety-eight cents would buy a union suit? You could wear a union suit, but it never would come white again. And besides, it showed your shape something awful. You could wear your coveralls, but then you wouldn't have anything dry to put on when you got out.
Them somebody thought of the gunny sack idea. It must have been Johnny because nobody else ever had quite so many ideas as Johnny. You could take an old gunny sack, one that couldn't be used for anything useful, and turn it upside down. Then you could take the scissors and cut a hole for your head out of what used to be the bottom, but what now was the top. Then you could top off the corners and put your arms through, and yip-pee! A bathing suit! It didn't matter that you couldn't get the donkey ears undone where the sack had been tied. They sort of drew it around your feet and really made it more modest. It itched a little here and there, but you couldn't expect all the comforts of life when you had everything else.
The swim itself was more of a water fight. You ran your arms down into the black mud at the bottom of the pond and brought up handfuls to splatter of somebody's shoulders. Sometimes we'd put on black-face comedies in the water, and sometimes we'd lather our bodies with the tarry stuff, the parts that showed, and act like all the villains we knew -- the big bad wolf, or the orge under the bridge of the Three Billy Goats Gruff.
Mamma would say that this was carrying things too far -- going in swimming to wash the dirt off, and then wallowing in mud like so many pigs. But Papa would say, "Let 'em play, Fancy ladies in society pays big money fer mud baths."
Papa was the best swimmer. He could swim on his back. He could even swim with two children sitting on his chest. Sometimes he would play like he was a log and just float. (Elizabeth said "flope.") But generally he didn't have time to go swimming with us. If there was enough water to swim, there was usually enough to irrigate with. So Papa mostly had to irrigate.
It was like that the day of the cloudburst. We were sitting at the table. It was just after dinner. The door was open. Papa looked out and saw Topsy and the rest of the young horses kicking up their heels and chasing from one side of the field to the other.
"It looks like we're gonna git some rain," Papa said.
The horses always found out first.
The ducks were just beginning to get their pin feathers and lose their fuzz. We had about two dozen of them before the rain. They always got into formation at the first smell of water and made for the pond in a straight line that wobbled from side to side. Mamma looked out the door and saw the ducks in line.
"Yes," Mamma said, "it does look like a little rain."
Just then the door banged shut and knocked the clock down off the medicine shelf where we kept the turpentine and liniment.
"Whew!" Papa said, "this is gonna be a good one! Well, when there's water ya gotta use it." Then he took the shovel and started down to the lower field where the wheat was needing that water.
"Kin we go swimming, Mamma? Kin we go swimming?" It was a chorus in five or six parts.
"Let your dinner settle down some," Mamma said. So we all bounded out to the granary box and brought in bundles of gunny sacks.
"Me, this one!" "No, me!"
"No," Mamma said, "that's too good. But here's one you can have. Put the hole to the back and it'll be all right." She sorted out five or six of the most worn-out sacks and made us wait turns for the scissors.
So by the time we were done up in our prickly bathing suits, the pond was prickly with rain spatters.
But it wasn't just an ordinary rain. Before long it was coming down like the flood in the day of Noah. The pond was like a pot of boiling red mud. It looked like a mush kettle just before it boils over.
Then the rain stopped just as suddenly as it had started, and everything was wonderful. We played and splashed, and even dived. For once there was enough water to really swim in. We wished that Papa had time to enjoy it too.
All of the sudden we saw a brickish-colored wall of water about three feet high coming down the Wash. We didn't see it until it had made the last bend. It was going to sweep right over the pond. It was higher than the culvert. It was higher than the road. And it was coming fast.
We were not allowed to scream or squeal. Such noises were reserved for the kind of people who giggle. But somebody squealed anyway, and Mamma came to the door just in time to see five children stirred into a squirming froth like so many raisins in a pudding. Johnny came up two or three times holding Alice, then he came up once without her.
"Eve!" he yelled, "Quick! Git to the culvert! Cover the culvert!"
The water was already flooding over the dam where the road went, and the culvert would be quite a way down.
Just the Elizabeth went over the dam with her head and feet sticking out.
The culvert wasn't hard to find. A swirl of water showed where it was. Something tangled with my legs. It was hard to get free with the swirl pulling me down. There was a moment when the current over the dam fought with the power of the swirl. But the swirl won and the mouth of the culvert bit at the bottom of me just as my fingers clamped over my nose and the water closed over my head. The culvert had a good grip, but it gave me a chance to untangle my legs. And after some thrashing around, Alice got untangled and went to the top and on over the dam.
It was a good thing the culvert had me instead of Alice. She'd most likely have got stuck in it. But it certainly had me.
After Alice had gone over the dam and was sitting half-dazed in a foot of water in the potato patch a few rods away, Johnny tried to pull me free. But the force of water was too much for him and he couldn't help much. The dirt was washing away from the end of the culvert so there was no place he could brace against. And when he went up for air, the water carried him on over.
Everybody always thought Johnny was a genius. And it certainly must have been genius that made him do what he did. Because when he got over the dam he caught on the culvert at the other end.
There wasn't much water coming out of his end of the culvert because there wasn't much going in from mine. So he pressed himself tight against his end, and all of the sudden my end let go. The water was going down by that time. A gush of water blew Johnny off the end of the culvert like the cork out of a ketchup bottle.
The water was flattening out over the potato patch and the alfalfa field by the time Papa got to us. He had pulled off his heavy boots and had run barefoot through the alfalfa when he heard the scream. When the water hit, it was like running upstream; and he was exhausted and out of breath when he got to the pond. He had picked up Elizabeth in the alfalfa field and Alice in the potato patch.
Mamma came running with a quilt to wrap up Alice and Elizabeth.
"Where's Rachel?" Papa was almost breathless.
We began to look for Rachel. The potato patch looked like so many leaves floating on a lake. The alfalfa field looked like a lake without the leaves. Even the tall sage-brush on the banks of the Wash looked short.
But there was one brush that was a little taller than the rest. As we were watching it, it grew still taller. It was on the far side of the pond. We all stood still, watching. And pretty soon we could see Rachel's head rising above the sage. She looked very disgusted. She was pulling with all her might on the side of her bathing suit.
"This darn thing!" she said slowly. "It's got its ears tangled up in this bush!"
Crazy Water
There was something funny about the water in the well, even after we got the rat out. It never hurt any of us, unless we were away for a day or so and had to drink somebody else's. But just let some stranger come around, and let him ask for a drink of water. He'd tip up the cup like he was very thirsty. Then you'd see his eyes get suddenly rounder and his Adam's apple stick way out and he'd make for the door ... The well was in the house ... And sometimes he wouldn't make it.
A usual exclamation from a first-taster, if he was a Sectarian or a Democrat was: "My God! What ya got in this stuff? Tastes like 'fermeldehyde'!" Or, "What ya tryin' to do -- exterminate me?" Or, "That ain't water -- that's sheep dip!"
Of course, we had some friendly visitors, and they would sometimes drink several swallows at a time. But they went down about the size and shape of peach pits.
Nobody ever doubted that the water was hard. It always took sal soda and Twenty Mule Team and sometimes pure lye to do a washing. And we had to send away for a new tea-kettle about once a year because the old one wouldn't hold enough water to do the dishes after it was half-full of lime crust. But formaldehyde and sheep dip -- those were powerful words.
So Papa decided to send a bottle of the water to the Capitol to see what the assayer had to say about it. He sent a letter with it. It said:
DEAR MR. ASSAYER: WE BEEN DRINKING THIS WATER FOR SIX OR SEVEN YEARS AND WE NEVER HAD ANY SICKNESS EXCEPT ONE BROKEN LEG AND THREE BABIES BORN HERE. CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT ITS GOT IN IT THAT WOULD BE USEFUL TO HUMAN HEALTH.
YOURS TRULY AND MUCH OBLIGED.
JACOB COLLIER
About a month later a letter came back ...
MY DEAR MR. COLLIER,
WE FIND THATTHE WATER SAMPLE YOU SENT CONAINS CONSIDERABLE DEPOSITS OF PHOSPHATE, LIME, GYPSUM, COMMON SALT, GLAUBER SALT, AND EPSOM SALT. IT SHOULD BE EXCELLENT FOR THE WASHING OF THE FEET.
Of course, right then and there we should have got the old pump to work and sent the water out in gallon jugs all over the country: "Collier's Mineral Miracle ... The footbath of the century ... coming straight to you from the famous underground caverns where it has precipitated these millions of years ..." or, "Rout your gout with our magic mineral cure..." Oh, it had endless possibilities.
Several years later we went back to the ranch, just to have a look around.
We even looked in the old well.
But there wasn't anything in it but a dead sheep.
Wolf! Wolf!
Rachel was a bit determined. She was all right until she thought she was imposed upon. Then nothing did any good. It was perfectly useless to spank her. She would just stand there, her feet braced and her lower lip stuck out and her whole face a mop of unbroken cloud. No amount of words, harsh or gentle, could alter her pose or expression and it went on for hours, and sometimes days, until the wheels of her disposition came to their own adjustment. This was an enviable trait at times. It kept Rachel from getting ever so many spankings; it kept people from crossing her unduly. It insured her the smuggest solitude until she could recapture her former self. At all other times Rachel was favorite company.
On this particular day the fuss arose over a pan of breakfast dishes. It seems that it was my turn, but since Mamma needed me to cut carpet rags that morning, it passed on down to Rachel; this is, it should have passed on down to Rachel. But about that time Rachel had her feet braced and her lip stuck out.
At noon it wasn't surprising that Rachel wasn't there for dinner. She was probably sitting quietly in the grain box of the binder, waiting a turn of mind on a high rafter in the barn. But nobody looked either place for her. Papa was working on the steam engine, which had balked in the field the day before; he stayed with his job and didn't come home for dinner. David had been ditching by hand all morning in the lower field, where the engine had left off.
At the far end of the field and about a quarter of a mile north of it, there was a smooth white limestone ridge projecting out from the mountain rim that circled the valley. It was high and steep and it glistened barefaced in the sun. We called it the White Hill.
David straddled the bench that was his place at the dinner table.
"Did you ever see two coyotes just sit and stare each other in the face for half a day?" he said. That was a little out of the ordinary. Coyotes were generally seen slinking around trying to take mortal advantage of some defenseless farm animal. They never seemed hurried, and they never stopped to sit.
David went on: "Well, there are two coyotes sitting on the point of the White Hill about twenty yards apart. They're just staring at each other, and they've been there all morning. If there was just some way of getting the thirty-thirty down there without them smelling it, you might see some fun." And he took the thirty-thirty when he went back to the horses waiting in the field.
He was ditching the field lengthwise, and kept getting closer and closer to the White Hill. Once he thought he was within aiming range and raised the big gun. But he couldn't decide which one to level at. Perhaps he could sneak up on them and drop them both. He left the horses and carried the thirty-thirty in front of him, so as not to give it a separate silhouette, and stalked cautiously toward the White Hill.
It was almost impossible to climb the nose of the peak because it was so steep and smooth. And it is not the best coyote psychology to make a surprise cornering attack. So David zigzagged up the side of the White Hill to where he would be in line with both animals and come into a face-to-face position with the larger one.
It was not a coyote.
It was a large silver gray wolf, probably the one that had killed Peterson's registered bull and a team of Matthew Allen's mules.
It carried a heavy bounty.
But David didn't fire.
He didn't even aim.
The other one was Rachel.
"Cherries Are Ripe"
Indian Gulch was twenty-five miles from the ranch. It was straight up the railroad, but the road was mostly twists and dugways. Dugways always terrified me because if you were to meet another car, you would have to back up to the beginning of the dugway and let it squeeze past. So we didn't go to Indian Gulch very often. Sometimes Papa would go without us and sometimes he would take just Mamma.
One summer they brought back five new hats. Alice wasn't big enough to have a hat, and Elizabeth always chewed the ribbons. So five hats were enough to go around.
Molly's was just like Mamma's. They were white leghorn. The weave of the straw did resemble the wrapping on a chicken's leg, but hardly enough to call them leghorn. Sometimes Mamma and Molly couldn't tell their hats apart, so Mamma would smell them. She always said her hair smelled like her mother's.
Prue's hat was very plain because she was thirteen and almost a young lady. Besides, she was quite pretty and might become a little too proud with a fancier headpiece.
There were two hats left. One was white with a wreath of twisted forget-me-nots that just matched Rachel's eyes; the other one was the color of straw, with a red ribbon around it and a bunch of red cherries fastened on the front. It was by far the prettier one. But Rachel liked the forget-me-not one better.
These hats were just for Sunday, because we didn't need to be dressed up to go after the cows. And it would just be showing off to wear them down to the post office.
The next Sunday was Conference at Shelby. That was twenty-one miles. People came from Meadowville and Homestead and the tabernacle was always crowded. The meetings were quite long but very interesting, because there were usually one or two returned missionaries who had labored in Alabama or Chicago, and they could tell us the most amusing things about the people of the world. And the music was beautiful because the choir always sang, "Let the Mountains Shout for Joy" and the "Song of the Redeemed." Two of the ladies took the high part of like a duet, while the rest of the choir sang the guarter parts below. It was beautiful. And then they would call on someone who hadn't had a chance to talk to give the closing prayer. We would all be standing because we had all helped with the last song. The man chosen for the prayer would be in the audience. He would step out into the aisle and button his coat as he went up to the pulpit. The prayer was beautiful too -- it was like a sermon, only it didn't have amusing things in it. And it wasn't polite to laugh even if it was amusing, like the time when Brother Van Ostendorpf said, "Vill us mit peas in our boosums." In fact it wasn't polite to do anything during the prayer except shut your eyes and look down.
And if Merlin Procter had done this, everything would have been all right. He was the bishop's son and he was on the bench just ahead of me.
The beautiful new hat with the cherries was turned so that anyone who just looked down and didn't shut both eyes could admire it. This necessitated holding it slightly over the bench in front so that those people could see it to -- if they just looked down. It was hardly adjusted before Merlin saw it. He fingered the cherries and smacked his lips. The cherries made a nice rattling noise and a few more people looked. Then suddenly he jerked one off, and in the next instant he had cracked it between his teeth. It made a red place on his tongue, and the cotton innards were drawn out and chewed into a pinkish spitball. This was ceremoniously aimed at Brother Paxton's bowed bald head, and Merlin was ready for another cherry. The innards twisted inside of me each time he snatched one off. And little hot beads pried my eyelids farther apart. An agonized silent prayer went up along with the one from the pulpit: "Lord, make him stop." But faith without works is dead. And there was nothing that would make it proper for me to rudely jerk the hat away.
So when the people said "Amen" there was one scrawny cherry, sticky with spit and surrounded by several naked stems -- all that was left of beauty and hope -- and the chance to look like the other kids.
Who Goes Over My Bridge
We were almost home with the cows. They were nibbling at the field daisies and stray grasses that clumped sparingly along the shoulders of the road. Rachel had a willow that she was drawing hopscotch squares with in the dust. And that was a good thing, because if it hadn't been for her hopscotching, we wouldn't have noticed the gypsies in time.
She had hopped to the top of the frame and had done the funny little flip-flop that turns you around ready to come back. So she was facing me, but she was looking back up the road at Shale Point and the look on her face suddenly froze. She went the color of sour milk and said: ":Eve, it's gypsies!"
Now, you could count on six or eight cars going by during the hottest summer months. The doctor might come down if somebody thereabouts had a baby -- but they generally had them in the winter when the doctor couldn't get down. Then you could expect the Rawleigh man once a year to come by and leave the vanilla and cinnamon and liniment. (He always gave Rachel and me a square of gum or else an all-day sucker with the kind of stick that you could eat.) But the Rawleigh man had already been by. Then sometimes a traveling salesman would come with some union suits. And once a man came through trying to get everybody to wear glasses. Some of them looked like window panes and others looked like the bottoms of beer bottles, and you could take your choice for seventeen-fifty.
But those cars always came by themselves.
If there was a convention at Gopher Hole, you might see two or three cars the same day.
But when you saw eleven cars coming around Shale Point ... not new ones like the convention cars, but the kind that blew steam from one end and smoke from the other ... and rattled like so many frying pans hung on a sheep wagon ... and packed with junk as high as a load of hay ... you could depend on it: the gypsies were coming.
Gypsies were terrible. They stole everything you had. They told lies. They were always quarrelling. Sometimes they killed each other. They lived like wolves, in villages made of boxes and tents. But the worst thing they did was to steal little children. They'd squeeze walnut skins and stain children all over with walnut juice, and then wrap some rags around them and send then into the cities to beg. Sometimes they made them lame and starved them to death. And they never put enough rags on them to keep them warm.
No, it would be better for a wolf to get you than for a gypsy to.
And with eleven cars, and five or six gypsies to each car, we didn't have a ghost of a chance.
We were supposed to take care of the cows, but in an emergency like this the cows had a better chance than we did. They didn't have room for more than one cow, but they would make room for two children. If they took a cow we hoped they'd take Mulie instead of Mabel. And if they took Rhonny they would have a fight on their hands. She had horns and was very bossy with them.
There was a place where the fence was down in our upper field. Maybe we could drive the cows through and hide somewhere before the gypsies saw us. We took clods and bombarded Mabel and Mulie, and they went a little faster. But we could see we weren't going to make it to the tall brush.
There was a little headgate where the irrigation ditch divided. It was nearly dry. But you couldn't hide behind it very well. The only place left was the sixteen-inch culvert that carried our share of the irrigation ditch under the road and into our upper field. It had about two inches of water standing in it. The water had been turned off farther up at the big headgate so there was just what leaked through. We'd get good and wet, but maybe the gypsies wouldn't find us.
Rachel crawled in first. She crawled in from my end so she wouldn't have to cross the road where they could see her, and so she would be looking out from her end. She was kind of plump, and she just barely made it. She sort of pushed the water in front of her so that it ran back out of the culvert and made a little puddle between the culvert and the headgate.
We didn't stop to figure that the water might swell and drown us out. You don't stop to think of those things when there are gypsies. But we thought about it after we were in the culvert. And Rachel had to crawl backwards two or three times to make room for the water.
We remembered drowning out ground squirrels many times, when we had turned tiny irrigation ditches down into their holes and waited with the hoe at the top. The only chance they had was if, their furs heavy with mud and their eyes blinded with water, they could dodge the hoe and run faster than we could. They generally didn't make it.
We hoped the gypsies didn't have a hoe.
The noise grew louder and the culvert shook. The dirt over it was only a few inches thick. It was like in the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, when the ogre roared from underneath: "WHO GOES OVER MY BRIDGE!" Only the ogres were roaring over the bridge, and we were the goats underneath.
When about three of the cars had rumbled over us, we heard the engines race and several doors slam. Then it sounded like dozens of people -- all mad at each other and shouting at the top of their voices. They had seen us, then, and were closing in like a pack of wolves around a couple of stray lambs.
Rachel crawled back a little farther and her feet touched mine. By both of us drawing up our legs, she could make only one more move, and then we would either have to give ourselves up or she would drown. There wasn't enough water getting past her to hurt me. But we were both just about at the end of our culvert.
The voices got louder and pretty soon we heard pans rattling. Maybe they had stopped to get their supper. After all, it wouldn't be long before dark. We couldn't understand what they were talking about. They just sounded mad because we'd given them the slip.
Finally one of them showed up at Rachel's end of the culvert with a frying pan. He just dipped up some water and went away. Another one came with a slop jar and another with a kettle. And pretty soon Rachel was able to straighten out her legs and give me a little more room.
After several of these water parades the man with the slop jar came back, and another one with a tin cup, and we could hear them scraping the gravel bottom of the ditch for more water. Rachel could see them. So when they went away she crawled forward a little and the last of the water ran out of the culvert into the puddle. They screamed excitedly and came back to dip some more.
The chumps! If it is water they wanted, why hadn't they stopped at Shale Point where they could have had the whole creek? But that was like gypsies. They never took things that were plentiful. The less there was the more they wanted it.
All of a sudden it dawned on me that they might be that way about stealing children too. They would rather steal where there were only one or two. So we might be quite safe, since there were nine children in our family.
When the eleventh radiator had quit sputtering, the gypsies raced their engines again and rattled on down the road.
We watched them turn the bend a mile away.
We were as wet and as wobbly as brand-new calves.
"Eve," Rachel drawled, her eyes still fixed on the dust cloud that blurred the last car, "whenever you crawl into a culvert, crawl in from the same end the water does."
The "Kern" Party
The "kern" parties in the late summer were wonderful. Sometimes we'd go alone; but sometimes we'd make it a neighborhood affair, and everyone would bring a bucket and we'd all go up the creek about three miles to where the "kerns" were thickest. After Molly and Prue had been away to high school for a year, they called them "currants." But Mrs. Allen said to Mrs. Jennings: "Them Collier girls is gittin' mighty stuck-up with all their ejecation!" So Papa said maybe we'd better just call them "kerns" while we were picking them. He said we'd call them "currants" when we got home.
Mamma would spread out a quilt on the ground and leave a seven- or eight-year-old to look after the little ones. There wasn't anything to hurt them, but she said she didn't want them eating any worms or caterpillars.
It was sort of a race to see who could fill a bucket first. But leaves were no fair. And since the bushes were very scattered and quite scarce it was a real job to get a bucketful. All together, our family usually got enough currants to fill the big kettle and the dishpan.
One night it was quite late when we finished our currant picking. This was one of the times we had gone alone. Because of the bushes being so scattered, we had spread out over a strip of creek about a mile long. Now it was getting dark and we went back to the quilt. Mamma counted, beginning at the littlest: Allen, Alice, Elizabeth, Rachel, Eva, Johnny, Prue ... and David. Somebody was gone. It was Molly.
Molly had gone to the farthest bush and apparently had found good picking. But it was getting too dark to see. Already we could hear the coyotes howling their dreary wail up on the ridge on the other side of the creek. The footpath that more or less followed the creek was twisted and uneven. The high sage on either side was covered with wood ticks. Weird night life scurried out from under your feet. A porcupine or a badger crossing in front of you on his way home. And once in the early morning on that trail David had surprised a gray wolf gnawing on the carcass of a cottontail. But David had been on a horse, swinging a riding quirt. Molly would be walking, carrying a lard buck of currants. Still, it was not pitch dark.
David unstaked the horses and hitched them up while Papa lifted the children into the wagon and Mamma gathered up the camp.
"What's keeping Molly?" Mamma said.
"It's too dark to see," Papa said. "And by the time we get home and get the cows milked and some supper into us, it'll be pretty late."
"And besides," Mamma added, "she ought to be here helping us with the children."
"David," Papa said, "you'd better go back after Molly. She hadn't ought to be very far."
Mamma went on arranging the wagon bed. She put the currant buckets up under the seat. Then she put the quilt on the floor of the wagon. Next she put a layer of children, and on top, the other quilt.
It's funny that she didn't miss Elizabeth then. But of course, Elizabeth had been there on the first count.
Mamma stood up in the wagon bed. "Moll-eeeee --" she called, raising her voice to a good octave in the middle and holding the last part about four measures. It's a good thing we had our Old Snooks and Charlie instead of Mrs. Allen's team. But them, Mamma had a nicer voice than Mrs. Allen. She had even sung in the Tabernacle Choir when she was a girl.
But just the same, Papa said, "Better not scare the horses, Julie."
"Well then, you call her, Jake," Mamma said.
But Papa said, "They'll be along in a minute."
The stars come out very early in Wyoming. And they seem a lot closer there than anywhere else. None of us knew any astronomy, but we could all pick out the Big and Little Dippers. Johnny tried to explain to Rachel why the Dippers couldn't hold water. But Rachel proved he was all wrong because every night when it rained they dipped it out of the sky and spilled it on us.
Mamma stood up again.
"Sit down, Julie," Papa said. "It sounds like they're coming."
They were, David and Molly and Elizabeth. They were all tired; Elizabeth was panting until she couldn't talk. She couldn't talk very well anyway. She called herself "Awizadus."
"Goodness!" Mamma said. "When did Elizabeth get away?"
"You'd better count 'em over again," David suggested. "There might be more missing."
Mamma looked in the wagon bed.
"No, there's six here. That makes it. But Elizabeth, how did you get away?"
Molly explained. The currants were too good to leave; and first thing she knew everybody had gone and left her. It kept getting darker, and over on the ridge those coyotes started up.
"It would have been right lonesome if it hadn't been for Elizabeth here. She ran all the way so as to walk back with me so nothing would frighten me."
Papa thought of the darkness; of the winding trail between the high sage; of the coyotes, and the badger, and the wolf -- not as a man of forty-three, nor as a girl of seventeen -- but as a five-year-old would think of them. Then he lifted Elizabeth up to the warm and sheltered place on the wagon seat between him and Mamma.
"Git up, Snooks! Git up, Charlie!" And we started home.
The Gray Sateen Hats From Sears and Roebuck
Every summer Mamma would send off an order to Sears and Roebuck. They would send back pieces of gingham for school dresses, lengths of black sateen for bloomers, dark-colored outing flannel for quilt linings, and some long underwear to go under the bloomers.
One time they put in a bolt of gray sateen. It was a light gray, the color of an old lady's shawl. It had a shine to it at first, but that would wash off. They had put in a piece of blue and a piece of pink, but these were just for trimming.
As soon as we saw the pink and the blue pieces we knew she was planning something for Rachel and me. And it turned out to be the gray sateen.
Mamma measured us from the shoulders almost to the shoe tops, leaving barely enough room for you to see how our underwear made out stockings blouse out. Then she cut these lengths in two at the middle. The shirt half was easy. She sewed it like a barrel first, and then drew it up at the top with a basting thread. It was the waist that took the time. This was where the trimming came in. She pleated the pink and the blue pieces into panels that ran up the front of us like the slats on a window shutter. The pleats pointed down, though, so that anything we spilled could just slide off.
The dresses weren't so bad when they were all finished, because we could stick out our stomachs and make it look like there were more pink or blue than there really was. Rachel could make hers look like a lot.
So we didn't mind so much, only there was some cloth left over -- not the pink or blue, but the gray. There was enough to make us some hats.
Each hat had a cardboard skeleton shaped like a short length of stovepipe. But the cardboard had been a corrugated box before it was a hat skeleton, and was used to being square instead of round. It formed a very stubborn skeleton. The gray sateen was stretched tight over this. The rim was cut out of the bottom of the box. Mamma bent it so it would droop. But it didn't droop; it just stuck out all the way around. But after a rain it drooped and smelled kind of like glue. Mamma had sewed some red yarn around the outside of mine, with a blanket stitch for trimming. Rachel's was sewed with blue. We didn't have any pink yarn. Red was the nearest. In the middle of the front Mamma sewed what she thought looked like a red sunflower out of the yarn. But to me it looked more like the sun coming up.
Mamma said we could wear the new hats to school like the other kids, because that year we were going to go to the town school at Shelby. It was better for me to wear a hat because my hair was scraggly. But it was a shame about Rachel because her hair was beautiful.
Mamma said that when the other kids asked us where we got our new hats, all we needed to say was Sears and Roebuck. We thought it would be much better to say: "They're made to match our new gray sateen dresses. It isn't everybody who can have dresses and hats to match." But Mamma said there was no need to explain to anybody.
So the first day at school we wore our new gray sateen dresses -- with the hats. Merlin Proctor and Sandy Smith were coming down the street that passed their places, and we were going down our street. They caught up with us at the corner. Only we were keeping just in front of them.
Sandy started it. He said, "It looks like you got new hats, ain'tch?"
We didn't turn around. We just kept going. And Rachel said, "Yes, we got new hats."
Then Merlin said, "It looks like you made 'em, didn'tcha?"
"No," Rachel answered, like Mamma said to. "They came from Sears and Roebuck."
Sandy said, "They don't look to me like they came from Sears and Roebuck."
And Merlin said, "Me, neither. They look more like you made 'em."
"No," Rachel said like Mamma told us to. "They came from Sears and Roebuck."
"Aw, come on," Sandy said, "Ya made 'em, didn'tcha?"
We thought it would be better to say, "Yes, Mamma made them," and be done with it; but Mamma had told us to say, "They came from Sears and Roebuck."
"No," Rachel said painfully. "They came from Sears and Roebuck."
Under the Old Veranda
Prue wasn't always the most practical person in the world, but you could always count on her for ideas. And about the biggest idea Prue ever had was the state fair under the veranda. Our state was Wyoming, and the fair she had seen was in Utah, when she had gone down with Papa and Mamma the fall that Grandma had died. But she saw many places where the Wyoming fair could at least approach the Utah exhibit in stately rivalry.
The Wyoming fair grounds would be the plot immediately under the veranda, appropriately roped off with binding twine. There would be a booth of extra fancy bakery stuff displaying the fine arts of mud pastry, with layer cakes spread with the frosty coconut of wild daisy petals and baked in Mason lids. There would be no competition in this entry. There was never any competition when Prue made mud pies. She was an artist, and nobody could touch her. Johnny could manage the invention, farm implements, and livestock. The livestock could include Nellie, our pet lamb, and Sport, our aged black dog. (If Johnny were enterprising enough he might even have a flea circus if he could find the right kind of backing in Sport.) But Prue would leave the details of that up to Johnny. To me she entrusted the arts and crafts. Rachel could manage the farm produce booth because she always said she was going to marry a farmer and raise haystacks. Rachel was already eight, and she would need the practice for her career. But it was hard to decide what Elizabeth cold do that wouldn't entirely spoil the fair -- she did everything with so much originality. Then Prue remembered that she had seen a display of modern bone-setting apparatus at the state fair. The patient was bound securely in tapes and casts and was suspended by wires, ropes and pulleys in a mid-air position on a board. Elizabeth could be the patient. Four-year-old Alice could be the demonstrating nurse, and that would take care of them both.
Prue decided that the refreshment for the fair would be vinegar fizz. This was made of water mostly, with a little sugar and vinegar added, and a pinch of soda thrown in just at the last moment. Molly could serve this to the customers.
That left only Mamma and Papa and Baby Allen for the customers, because David had gone to Chicago on a mission and wouldn't be back for a couple of years.
But on the day of the fair, just as Prue was putting the last dab of mud in place on the torso cast that encased Elizabeth, where she lay in her gunny sack bathing suit on the veranda in the sun, a very gratifying thing happened: Matthew Allen drove into the year with Mrs. Allen dressed in her best gingham, himself in brand-new Levis. He said, with a wink in his eye, that he had come to get Papa to help him sharpen his mower blades on our grindstone, and that he'd brought Mrs. Allen along to visit Mamma. Prue was so excited she could hardly stand it; and Elizabeth lay still in her mud corset on the veranda only after earnest threats that if she moved one muscle until the cast dried she couldm't be the orthopedic exhibit in the fair.
And when Jim and Effie Langley, with Peter and the baby and their grandmother, appeared around Shale Point, and jogged along the road that divided our upper field from the little gray-green molehills that were Matthew Allen's new-mown hay -- and when their wagon turned in at our gate -- then the prospects of the day really mounted. Jim wanted to know if Papa would help him sharpen the blades of his mower that morning. He'd had a good cut, he said; nearly three tons to the acre.
But when Mr. and Mrs. Jennings arrived with Jerry Manwell and his family, followed by the Arthur Petersons and Falene Crosby and her mother, Papa said:
"Don't tell me. You would like to use my new grindstone to put an edge on your mower blades."
And Prue thought of some last minute details that required her immediate attention and disappeared through the door above the veranda.
The fair, of course, was colossal. The customers entered by the pastry booth and admired the appetizing displays. But Prue was petrified when young Jerry Manwell bit a generous sample out of her prize coconut cake.
"Ya oughta be made to swallow it!" She stormed under her breath.
Next in line and importance was Johnny's implement and animal booth. Johnny demonstrated the scooter he had made for Allen, and the dogcart and harness big enough for Alice and Elizabeth. Then he exhibited a fruit bottle which encased a piece of coal -- the only specimen of mineralogy at the fair.
"This is a piece of coal from the Black Dog Coal Mine," Johnny proclaimed proudly. "It was scratched up by Old Sport here when he chased a rabbit down his hole. Take a good look at Old Sport -- the only dog in the fair that's got a coal mine named after him." And then Johnny put Old Sport through his feeble tricks.
"For my last invention," Johnny announced loudly, after Sport had successfully attracted the attention of the complete crowd, "you'll have to step back where you can see the whole veranda. Then just keep your eyes on the door up above." And Johnny backed through the open window that went from my booth into Mamma's and Papa's room. He was up the ladder in almost no time at all, and emerged through the upstairs door above the veranda with a huge wing-like structure fitted over his shoulder, making him look like a great barn owl.
"These wings," he explained, "are made, as you can see, out of two old copper wash boiler lids fastened together in the back with wood struts and hinges." He flapped them and the hinges squeaked.
"Now just keep your eyes on the wings," Johnny continued, "and you will see this remarkable flying machine in action." He mounted the guardrail of the veranda by his feet and hands and raised to an uncertain balance upon his feet. He kept his eyes on the roof of the blacksmith shop and searched gropingly with his hands for the two straps he had fastened under the wings to hold to.
"Don't you dare jump, Johnny Collier!" Mamma breathed in a loud whisper out of the silence of the crowd. But Johnny was about as attentive as the statue on top of the Sea Gull Monument. And as it was no time to remind him what a ten-foot fall might do for him, Mamma held her breath anxiously.
Johnny balanced precariously on the banister for a moment and then made a run for the steep guardrail which ran down the steps like a power dive. We were supposed to be watching his wings, but we couldn't help seeing his feet falter at the tope about halfway down, under which the orthopedic exhibit was suspended; and he took the remainder of his descent in a sitting position, folding up at the bottom like a June bug.
"That rope wasn't there in the practice flights," he apologized, as he righted himself to his original likeness to a barn owl.
At this point we were summoned by the dutiful cries of the demonstrating nurse. The orthopedic trappings had given away on one end, and Elizabeth hung diagonally by her head and shoulders from her bandages. Some of her cast had fallen apart with the impact; but her only motion was a shifting of her eyes until she located Prue. She hadn't moved another muscle.
Johnny hurried to administer his inventive genius in evolving a better means of supporting the exhibit than Prue had devised.
"If she'da let me do it in the first place, it wouldn't a-ruined my take-off," he said.
The booth of the arts and crafts was squarely in front of the window sill of Mamma's and Papa's room. This was so that the organ could be drawn up to the window on the inside, and the sill could be used as a seat. My most finished rendition, of course, was "Hark Listen to the Trumpeters"; but there were two or three original compositions like "Evening Reverie," and "The Doll's Dream" to round out the programme. Then there was a wardrobe of dolls clothes, ranging from a pair of bib overalls and a braided oat straw hat to an elegant wedding ensemble made from an old net curtain that had come in the carpet rags. But a dress-up tin hat made from the top of an old kerosene lantern and decorated with a live spring of wild choke cherries drew the most comment from the customers. My only literary entry was a poem cataloguing my knowledge of flowers -- known and imagined: "The Death of June Rose."[1] It was hand printed upon a piece of drawing paper, cut round, and draped at the left was a spray of wild roses done in water colors. The whole was framed in an abandoned rim from a headlight of the Studebaker. Mrs. Allen did me the honor of stepping up close and reading it aloud:
[1] Used by permission of "The Instructor."
The Death of the June Rose
1
Doctor Dandelion --
Hurry up and come --
Sweet June Rose is dying --
Dying in the sun!
2
Bring a nurse, and Doctor,
Hurry if you can!
Bring a cup of Dewdrops --
Yes, and bring a fan.
3
Telephone to Lily,
Cousin Primrose, too --
Dainty Lady Slipper,
And modest Violet Blue --
4
Buttercup and Daisy --
Tell them all to come --
Sweet June Rose is dying --
Dying in the sun!
5
Doctor, you distress me!
Must you pause this way?
While you Daffodillied
She has passed away!
6
Ring the Bluebells loudly,
Put the Flags half-mast --
Call up six Snapdragons
For the bearing cast --
7
In the Morning Glory,
'Neath the Goldenrod,
She'll rest beside Sweet William
In the darkened sod.
It was very touching as Mrs. Allen read it; and Mrs. Jennings was moved to suggest that it be sent to a children's magazine.
Rachel was carefully watering a box of dirt with a self-devised tomato-can sprinkler. When it was sufficiently dampened she began planting it with an assortment of Rhode Island Red and Plymouth Rock hen feathers. It was a short cut to a chicken farm, she explained; and Jerry Manwell asked her how long it took an egg to get ripe. It was a little corny, but then, it had its place in the farm booth.
Rachel deviated from her produce theme to display a large ball of carefully wound carpet rags. She pulled the rocking chair out into better view and called for a volunteer to help her illustrate her next demonstration.
"The fatter the better," she amended her appeal. And Jerry Manwell, who could never resist a chance for public applause, patter his well-fed stomach and presented himself as Rachel's assistant. Rachel solemnly placed the large ball of carpet rags in the seat of the rocking chair.
"Now you just make yourself comfortable here in this rocker, Mr. Manwell," she said, "and in due time you might hatch out a nice big round rug."
Everybody snorted. But Matthew Allen fairly doubled up.
"Ya look mighty motherly there, Jerry, ma boy," he drawled.
Elizabeth lay rigidly silent in her straitjacket on her board hammock under the veranda steps. Even when Alice pulled the baling wires and binding twines, and the pulleys squeaked mournfully as they exercised the little bandaged limbs in angular and ungraceful distortions, Elizabeth, of her own volition, moved never a muscle.
Prue selected Matthew Allen, Jerry Manwell, and Mrs. Jennings for a committee of judges. And as they went into a huddle, Molly summoned the remainder of the spectators to the refreshment booth to sample the vinegar fizz.
It wasn't until then that the first sound came out of Elizabeth.
"Did the muscles move, Prue?" she asked in her particular dialect.
"No, dear, you were wonderful," Prue praised.
"Then do you mind unlacing these corsets and lettin' me scratch my stomach?" Elizabeth asked meekly.
Prue unwound the bandages and peeled away the remainder of the cast. Then as she lifted the gunny sack foundation garment, a profuse patch of bumpy pimples appeared on Elizabeth's abdomen.
"Chicken pox!" Prue screeched in horror.
But a closer examination of the gunny sack foundation produced three enormous red-and-black ants.
It would have been a shame if the orthopedic exhibit hadn't won the prize. Jerry Manwell returned the verdict with an all-day-sucker each for Elizabeth and Alice. Prue received the next honor for her idea of the state fair. She divided her package of gum with the rest of us. It was voted that "The Death of June Rose" should be copied off and everyone present should receive an autographed copy. Johnny's wings should be put on permanent display in the blacksmith shop where all the people could admire them when they came to sharpen their mower blades. And Jerry Manwell said, by way of special tribute, that Rachel could come down to his saloon and select a box of striped stick candy for her contribution to the rug industry.
"Well, boys," Papa said, after Mamma had taken the women inside to look at her assortment of new rugs she had made to trade for fruit in the fall, "maybe we'd better get after them mower blades."
And then toward evening as we were all sitting around the big bonfire out beyond the fairgrounds, eating Mamma's savory stew of bottled mutton and sipping Molly's special blend of warm chocolate milk, Papa remarked casually:
"Let me see ... The Allens and the Langleys live in the general direction of the cow pasture." The Allens and the Langleys nodded over their bottled mutton stew. "And the Jennings and the Petersons and the Crosbys live on the way to Salt Brush." The Jennings and the Petersons and the Crosbys nodded over their cups of chocolate. "And the Manwells live in the back of the saloon opposite the Post Office ... It is gradually becoming quite clear why on Wednesday Prue insisted on going after the mail -- and why on Thursday she went so willingly after the cows."
Later in the evening when everyone had gone, we were undressing upstairs in the creamy light of a yellow moon, reflecting on whitewashed walls. The ladder that went from Mamma's and Papa's room into the upstairs gave forth a few groaning creaks, and the shadow of Papa's head and shoulders appeared on the door to the veranda.
"It seems to me, Prue," he went slowly, and the words gave animation to the shadow on the door, "that the fair next year ought to be early in the summer -- that is, unless you want to change the wording of your invitations a little. It occurs to me that most good farmers sharpen their mowers before they cut their hay."
Pepper Tea
Our two-room town house was twenty-one miles from the ranch. In the summertime you could make it in an hour with a car if you didn't have any flat tires. But in the winter you couldn't get through with a car, and it took anywhere from five to twelve hours with a sleigh, depending on whether you had to scoop the snow off the dugways or whether there'd been a man ahead of you since the last snow.
It was winter of '20-'21, and we had about five feet of snow from November to March. Nobody else ever gave this snow a thought. But we gave it several because our monthly food supply depended upon whether or not Papa could get through from the ranch with the groceries. Molly and Prue were in high school, so the folks had rented a little two-room house and let Rachel and Elizabeth and me stay with them and go to the town school. It made it better every way because we could be right there for church; and they held Primary on Saturdays and Religion Class on Fridays after school; and Molly and Prue could go to Mutual Improvement on Wednesday nights. There weren't any of these advantages at Salt Brush because we were the only ones there who "belonged." The arrangement lasted for three winters, but it was only during the middle one that we had any trouble because of the snow.
Papa came over once a month wit the sleigh and brought such things as flour, potatoes, beans, sugar, yeast, salt, matches, soap, coal oil, and coal. He generally came on a Saturday, arriving quite late at night, and stayed for church on Sunday.
But one Saturday he didn't come -- and after we'd waited up until way into the night, Molly and Prue made us go to bed. He hadn't come by morning so we left for Sunday School without him. By Sunday night he hadn't arrived and a big storm had come in, so we gave him up and supposed he'd come the next Saturday. We were out of flour and coal, but we had a few beans, and we could scout around and pick up a little firewood to last.
By Wednesday we were out of sugar, and by Friday we had used the last of the rice, but Papa would surely be over on Saturday.
But Saturday came and Papa didn't.
Molly worked for Mrs. Cameron on Saturdays to pay for my music lessons. She asked Mrs. Cameron if it would be all right for me not to take a lesson that week and for her to give us the fifty cents instead. Mrs. Cameron said that would be all right, and she would pay Molly the fifty cents the next week after Mr. Cameron got paid.
So after work Molly went to the grocery store and asked Mr. Rich if we could charge a sack of flour until Papa came over. Mr. Rich said we didn't have an account there and Papa would have to sign. We had bought a few things there for cash in emergencies. But Mr. Rich couldn't see his way clear for an emergency without the cash.
So Molly went to the post office. There still wasn't anything in our box.
She had a friend, Phoebe Smith, who worked for the telephone company, so she went there. Phoebe said she guessed she could call up the store at Salt Brush and see what the troubles was with Papa. Phoebe tried, but found out the lines were down.
So for our Sunday dinner, we boiled our last pint of beans. We were out of salt, but we put pepper in them. There wouldn't be any hope of Papa's getting through for several days if the telephone lines were still down and the mail wasn't running. So Molly explained to us that we would have to drink soup off the beans, and save the beans for soup again the next day.
But by Wednesday the beans were so dissolved that they were mostly soup, and the soup was mostly water.
Friday morning we went to school with nothing but a cupful of warm water with a little pepper in it swishing around in our middle regions.
Mrs. Williston, taught my room. She had the fourth and fifth grades. She always read a chapter from some book in the mornings to start us off. On that Friday morning the chapter was extra long, and the pepper tea in my stomach began to itch and roll around like a volcano about to erupt. The back of my tongue began to quiver and the cords in my neck got tight. It wouldn't be long now ... So up went the two fingers that were supposed to excuse you without any question. But Mrs. Williston went right on reading. Things were clouding up pretty fast and my hand was trembling so that it was hard to hold up the two fingers. Finally Mrs. Williston looked up and frowned and shook her head.
There was no use. Things were going from dark blue to black ... And all of a sudden the volcano erupted, and my pepper tea breakfast was a puddle in the aisle.
"Somebody's sick!" whispered the boy across from me.
Mrs. Williston closed her book and came down the aisle. She looked at the puddle and felt of my forehead. Then she addressed the room.
"Perhaps we had better have an early recess," she said. She had had a little nurse training and there was a lot of flu going around. She had lost her husband in the epidemic the year before.
The children filed out solemnly to the cloakroom and on downstairs, all but Donna Bailey, who wanted to stay and help me tidy up the offending aisle -- which loyalty will never be forgotten. But Mrs. Williston sent her away, too. "It might be something catching," she explained.
"Eva," she asked when they had all gone, "what did you have for breakfast?"
Couldn't she see? There was the puddle. And there wasn't enough strength left in me to make a decent answer.
"Eva," she said, looking at the watch that had belonged her her dead husband, and that she carried in her smock pocket, "it's only twenty minutes past nine. Your breakfast hasn't had time to digest. Are you one of those little girls who won't eat their cereal? On cold mornings like these you must eat a good breakfast. When you don't, you're liable to get sick." She again felt my forehead, which was moist and cool. "You don't feel very well, do you?" she said kindly. "Perhaps you had better wipe up the floor and go home for the rest of the day. Or, come back at noon if you feel better."
Donna Bailey and Evelyn Cameron walked home with me.
"It don't feel very warm in here," she said.
"Maybe you'd better go to bed and cover up and we'll bring you some hot bread and milk," advised Evelyn. "That's what Mamma gives me for the stomach ache."
"O, no, don't give me that," was my protest. "Bread and milk don't set very well on my stomach."
"Well then, how about a poached egg?" Donna said. "Where do you keep your eggs?"
"Listen, kids, it was nice of you to walk home with me. Now everything's all right and you'd better be going back to school." Prue and Molly had said it would be better if the other children didn't know about our food situation. They could trust Rachel and me, but we'd had an awful time with Elizabeth. She would bring children home from school with her and then start shouting, "We want some bread and jam!" and a couple of times she had even gone to the neighbors and asked!
But wait until Prue and Molly heard about this -- and about Donna going to the cupboard and saying, "It don't look like the groceries have come yet."
"They'll be here tomorrow, honestly," came my weak but hopeful defense.
"You ain't got nothing to eat," Evelyn announced, and Donna looked at me pityingly, and they left.
Rachel and Elizabeth came home for "lunch." Prue and Molly stayed at the high school and had a study period.
Rachel said: "The kids are all saying that you got sick this morning. They said it was something you ate. You never ate anything, did you, Eve?"
"Nope. No more than you and Elizabeth."
"Well, here's a piece of licorice," Rachel said. "Nelly Parker gave it to me at recess."
We divided it three ways, licking it a long time and drinking a lot of water.
"Do you suppose we ought to have saved a piece for Molly and Prue?" Rachel asked. But it was too late now.
Going back to school in the afternoon, we passed Monroe's house. They were having fried potatoes. We stood in front of their house and opened our mouths wide and swallowed great lumps of fried potato air until we were almost late.
Mrs. Williston was glad to see me feeling better and all the children treated me wonderful. Janet Pierce said that she would let me draw all her valentines and that she would pay me a penny apiece for them -- and she wanted about twenty. And Judy Walker, the banker's daughter, said she had a doll that she wanted me to have.
Prue was the first one home that afternoon. She arrived just in time to see Mrs. Ward, the Relief Society President, fastening our gate on her way out. Mrs. Ward was a very good friend of the family. She was pulling the little red wagon that she always got her groceries in. Prue looked past her and saw the basket on the doorstep. It was a typical relief basket: flour, sugar, potatoes, beans, cereal, and bottled fruit. We'd contributed lots of times for such baskets. But they were for poor people. And we weren't poor! Prue was furious.
"What makes you think we need any help?" she said hotly. "You take your basket and give it to the poor! We got plenty!" And she rushed past Mrs. Ward into the house and threw herself on the bed sobbing. Mrs. Ward followed her and put her arm over her shoulders and tried to reason with her.
"Prue," she said, "you're fifteen -- you can take it. But you must think of the children. They're hungry. You mustn't act like this."
Prue jerked away and stood up. "We can stand on our own feet, Mrs. Ward. You take that basket to someone who needs it! And now it's time for me to be getting the kids their supper. It's the rule: first home gets supper ready."
Mrs. Ward surveyed the bare kitchen helplessly and left. We met her down the block. She was pulling a small red wagon with a large grocery basket on it. We must have gazed at it hungrily, because she looked at us with tears in her eyes and went on past.
"O Eva!" she called, turning back. "Tell Molly we got separated milk going to waste, and you can have it for five cents a gallon."
We thanked her and told her we'd probably start coming after it next week.
"Tell you what," she said; "if you will help me home with this heavy wagon, you can take a couple gallons home with you now."
All three of us ran to help her.
When we passed the schoolhouse, Mrs. Williston was coming down the walk. She hurried when she saw us.
"Eva," she said, "do you feel well enough to stay with my children tonight? There's a parent-teacher's party."
That made me feel fine. She didn't always have the ten cents to pay me, but there was always a supper and a breakfast counted in.
And the next morning when it was time to go she handed me a big package wrapped in newspaper.
"It's a long time between pay days," she apologized, "but here's a little piece of the pork we killed last week. You might could use it."
It felt like the south side of a full-grown sow -- but it was a pleasant feeling to be bringing home the bacon.
At home the smoke was climbing out of the chimney -- not in streaks like the thin smoke from odd bits of wood, but in big black patches like the smoke puffs from soft coal, and like there was enough fire in the stove to raise the lazy soot that had accumulated. There were sleigh tracks into our gate, and there was the smell of damp horses. It was plain that Papa had arrived.
The table was covered. Besides the staple goods, there were doughnuts frozen solid, and boiled eggs mashed into odd shapes and hard as lumps of ice. There were loaves of bread that chipped under the bread knife, and bottles of mutton that had swelled and broken the containers.
It had been a wonderful spread two weeks before ... the bread fresh and warm and the doughnuts steaming, before the long sleigh trip when the blizzard came and banked the dugways, and the sleigh, horses, and all slid down the bank and on down another twenty feel, to stop in a tangle of twisted harnesses, scattered coal, and a sleigh that was upside down over a month's supply of groceries. It had happened on the first dugway and Papa had had to untangle the horses and fight his way back to the ranch through eight miles of blizzard. Then the long and anxious wait until the road could be cleared and someone be persuaded to help him back up the dugway with his sleigh. None of the neighbors had thought it possible. But it was Matthew Allen who finally had offered to try. And Matthew Allen and his mules were very stubborn in doing whatever they tried.
It was truly a beautiful spread now.
People Who Have Money
Mrs. Williston let me stay with her two children a lot the year she taught our room at the Shelby School. Sometimes she'd give me some eggs in a bucket or a piece of meat in a flour sack, but usually she'd give me the ten cents. Then toward spring when there were so many things she needed the money for, she sort of let it ride.
But when we went for our report cards the day school let out for the summer, there was a note in my envelope.
It was a check.
It was for one dollar!
There were an awful lot of things you could do with a dollar. It would buy a lot of beans -- but we were going back to the ranch for the summer, and we would probably have enough beans. It would buy one-third of a pair of shoes -- but you could do without shoes in the summer, and it was too early to determine what size to buy for fall. It would buy something nice for the new baby, Judy -- but Judy had so many hand-me-downs she really didn't need a thing.
Of course, there actually wouldn't be a whole dollar to spend after the tithing was paid. The catalog showed a pair of coveralls that were a very good value for ninety-eight cents. But they had another pair for eighty-nine cents that would do. They were just about as good only they weren't trimmed in red. And coveralls were a real necessity.
Mamma was delighted about the dollar, but she wasn't quite so enthusiastic about the coveralls. A dollar was a lot of money. But people who had money were inclined to be selfish. It wasn't a good thing for them to spend it all on themselves.
She turned the catalog pages over till she came to the yard goods.
"Now here's some denim that will make splendid coveralls. And by getting it by the yard there will be almost enough to make coveralls for both you and Rachel."
And that's the way it came -- almost enough.
The coveralls in the catalog had legs that went down to the ankles and sleeves that didn't stop till they got to the wrists. But the ones that came by the yard stopped off just beyond the knees and elbows. We looked like a pair of bed pillows, but we felt like a couple of sacks of mush, straining at the seams.
And Rachel said, "Eve, the next time Mrs. Williston gives you a dollar let's get a pair of of coveralls that ain't so stingy, and take turns at wearing them."
"Pride Goeth Before"
Nobody ever made much fuss about birthdays. Of course if it were little Allen's, Johnny might invent some toy for him to push or pull or treadle. If it were Alice's, Papa might whittle out a wooden doll for me to dress. Rachel made a nice picture book for Elizabeth one time out of an old seed catalog. But if it were Rachel's birthday or mine, Prue might give up a skein of embroidery floss and Mamma might make a Yorkshire pudding. Baby Judy had never had a birthday yet, and if anybody else ever had one, it wasn't mentioned. The fact that we grew was often commented upon, but age was somehow included in our growth. Rachel had turned nine before my birthday eleven; but we wore the same sized clothes, and she took a larger shoe. So when the yardage was being figured for our school wardrobes, we were always counted off as twins. The difference in ages didn't matter.
In spite of all these facts my birthday eleven was an occasion. Mamma had given me a length of pink plaid gingham to design and make into something for school. Of course, Rachel would have a piece exactly like it, only blue; but Rachel hadn't come to the place where she could design and sew. It made a tremendous difference. My seniority was at last gaining a little overdue respect. Mamma threaded the bobbin of the sewing machine in her room and went out and shut the door. The importance and responsibility closed in around me. This would be my best dress. Mamma opened the door.
"Felled seams are all right for coveralls and straw mattresses," she said, "but French seams are better for good clothes." She shut the door again. Her footsteps sounded through the carpeted living room and on into the kitchen. She wouldn't come back. The cloth and the work and the worry were mine.
By late afternoon the creation was finished. It was a middy and skirt with a flour sack underwaist. It was too bad we weren't having a fair to show it off.
Mamma was taking up the hot bread in the kitchen. But she took time to wipe off her hands and inspect the seams.
"You can take full charge of your own clothes now, Eve," she said. And if she had given me the Louisiana Purchase it would not have meant any more. There would be no more gray sateen hats. And there would be some other colors besides pink. Maybe yellow, or green. There might even be an infringement of Rachel's monopoly on blue. The fashion models in Sears and Roebuck's catalog could be studied with an up-to-date purpose, with moral alterations, of course, where length of sleeve and depth of neck line were concerned.
"You might run out and show your pa," Mamma said. "He's helping Matthew Allen make a new doubletree in the blacksmith shop." She broke a fresh loaf in two and daubed the halves generously with butter. "You might take 'em this fresh bread as an excuse so they won't think yer too proud."
The dusty path that led to the blacksmith shop simply forced my feet into a dance. It was a kind of special dance, celebrating my arrival at recognition. It was something like Miriam's freedom from leprosy as she led the maidens of Israel in a ballet. Only mine was much more graceful because of my being only eleven; Miriam had been at least in her nineties.
There was an old bottle lying a little to the left of the path that appeared just at the place in the dance which required a pivot. A delicate balance on the left toe, or nearly the toe -- but alas! the bottle was more delicate than the balance. The hot summer sun had crystallized the weathered glass. It fell apart under the ball of my bare foot. The ugly prong from the bottom of the bottle rose through the muscle and spread the small bones wide apart. With a half-a-loaf of hot bread in either hand -- the situation required help. Matthew Allen took the bread and Papa removed the glass. The blood came out in bright red spurts in the rhythm of my fast beating heart.
"You've cut an artery," Papa diagnosed. "We better git ya to the house."
"Ya better hurry, Collier," Matthew put in as he looked at the growing red sea in the dust. "A pig don't bleed no more'n that."
Rachel pumped a basin of cold water and Mamma got the peroxide.
"It ought to have a few stitches," Mamma said. "Shall we try it with a needle and thread?"
At this the last of the bravery slumped out of me. The rest of the operation was performed under a dark blue ether.
Mamma carefully removed the gingham masterpiece and laid it over a chair for all the family to admire. She helped me back into my coveralls and propped my foot up over a chair in the living room.
"Now just lean back and let your system make some more blood," she said kindly. "In a few days you'll be as good as new." She didn't tell me that the toes would never wiggle again, nor that the already stingy proportions of my foot would be retarded that much more. She only said encouraging things like:
"Papa said your dress was nice; and Matthew Allen says you have a good connecting rod between your brains and your hands."
Rachel looked at her stubby little fingers which had been frozen so badly nearly three years before. That had been an accident too, but so much worse. Rachel had overcome a lot. She was stubborn and very sure of her rights, but she had courage. She had run away one time -- when she was only seven -- and was going to Gopher Hole so get a job. It was twenty-five miles around the road, so she had planned to take a shortcut through the hills. She would spend the first night in the shelter of the Black Dog Coal Mine -- a damp, deserted black hole where our Old Sport had once unearthed a coal deposit when he was chasing a rabbit. It was the halfway mark to Gopher Hole. But Rachel had gone only as far as White Hill opposite our lower pasture when she met the big bad wolf himself. They had stalked each other on the point for several paralyzed hours before David finally appeared with the thirty-thirty to break the spell. The wolf had gained quite a head start into the hills while David was persuading Rachel to come back with him. But three days later Papa and David had returned with his silvery hide. All the neighbors had been glad to be safe from the dreaded beast that had done so much damage among the valuable stock in years past. But no one had been able understand why he hadn't harmed Rachel. Some had said it was because Papa had stayed in the field under the hill and the wolf had felt he was watched. Others had said it was Rachel's motionless courage. But David had said:
"There ain't no danger of anything bothering Rachel when she's got her lip stuck out."
For months Rachel had avoided the living room where the wolf pelt served as a rug underneath the organ stool. But she had overcome that too. She was sitting at the moment with her bare toes buried in the thick fur. Someone should have sung a special praise for Rachel.
But this wasn't Rachel's birthday, and this particular accident hadn't been hers. And the numerous and exaggerated tributes being showered upon me -- calculated purely to bring back a little color into my cheeks and to show the family appreciation that my casualty had not been complete -- created, let me blush to say, a very heady atmosphere.
The pride that goeth before a fall is often a high tide created by the patronizing ripple of many friends. But after the big splash there are few who will stand by to fit the splinters together and set your sails to the wind. But even this belated acknowledgment can never excuse the egotism of that moment. My mind cast about for something brilliant enough to lend ambition to a great brain such as mine. Cooking, teaching, nursing -- ordinary mentality would do for those. The problem had never occurred to me before. Nor had the solution: my mind was good enough for crime. It called for a high grade of mental cleverness to be a good crook. Only the smartest of them got by. Admittedly, the only thing attractive about a career of crime was the brains it took.
With some slight mistrust this new secret mental ambition was confided quietly to Rachel. But Rachel stayed to pick up the pieces. She didn't betray my unholy revelation in loud and righteous accents as Johnny might have done. She merely sat there with the sundown spinning golden gauze in her lovely hair -- and studied her bare toes digging in the wolf pelt rug -- and gave me what well may turn out to be the greatest birthday present of a lifetime:
"Why don't ya be a little smarter and go straight?"
Valentine Election
The three years we went to the Shelby school were wonderful. The last year there were about twenty of us in the sixth grade and about fifteen in the seventh, and they put us all together in one room of the high school building. We had a man for a teacher, Mr. Cameron.
His niece Evelyn was in my grade. She was without question the prettiest girl in the room. She wasn't the kind of girl who has to wait until she's blossomed out before she gets pretty. She had clear blue eyes and lovely white skin and beautiful natural pink cheeks, and the thickest, loveliest yellow hair that was pretty even in braids. She was always the Angel in the Christmas pageant, and she was always Snow White or Dewdrop or Sleeping Beauty in whatever plays our room put on at the Opera House. They generally made me a dwarf because there wasn't much else they could make of me. But they always put a part in for me to sing and Evelyn always got mad at me every time they asked me. It was funny. They could have flunked me in geography if they'd have only let me be the Sleeping Beauty, but Evelyn always wanted to do the singing part.
(The Christmas when we were in the fifth grade she was supposed to stand in a pretty pose with her wings stretched out and her head bowed to the music of "Silent Night." That was my part behind the scenes. She was beautiful. And she was going over so well that Mrs. Williston stepped up and told me to sing another verse. But Evelyn didn't know about the other verse. She had been making her mouth go like she was singing, and she had stopped with the first verse. When she came off the stage she came too fast and the cheese-cloth wrapped around her legs and tripper her. She was almost off, so it didn't entirely spoil the pageant. But she got up crying and rushed back to me and sobbed. "It's all your fault! You sung so terrible."
That same year Mrs. Williston told us to each write a poem to go on a Mother's Day calendar we had made. We had twenty minutes to write it in. Mine was finished first, so the teacher let me read it to the whole room. Evelyn was sitting across the aisle and two seats back. She jumped up and tore her poem in two and twisted it up. "That's just what mine was going to be, word for word!")
But Evelyn was my best friend, and we understood each other pretty well; and the year we went to the sixth she "palled" around with me mostly. And we got along better because we were more grown up, and the teacher, being a man, didn't have us put on my pageants or plays or anything.
But he did let us have a valentine election. It was three or four days before Valentines Day. Mr. Cameron thought it would be nice to elect a Queen to take the valentines out of the box and read the names off when the time came.
Of course, nothing would be quite as nice as getting to be that Queen. But that was out of the question for me because of Evelyn's being so pretty. And because she was Mr. Cameron's niece he would naturally see to it that she got to be it. But he was very fair. He just gave us each a piece of paper and told us to take turns going to the window sill and writing the name of the one we wanted to be Queen. Then we were to drop the names in Mr. Cameron's hat on his desk.
It came my turn to go to the window sill. Evelyn would get a lot of votes. She probably would get about all of them. But it would be nice to have one vote with my name on it. It wasn't exactly sporting, but on the other hand, hadn't Lincoln gone out in public and given speeches asking people to vote for him? And wasn't my own father always saying if you wanted something to go after it? And so my vote went into Mr. Cameron's hat. And so did all the other votes, and Evelyn looked very smug.
Sandy Smith and Doris Conly counted the votes. Doris took out the names and Sandy read them.
"Eva Collier," Sandy said. That made me blush, having my vote right on top that way. But it did make me feel important. Doris handed him the next one.
"Eva Collier," said Sandy. Well, that was to be expected -- Evelyn would almost have to vote for me -- being best friends like we were.
"Eva Collier." This was magnificent.
The smugness went out of Evelyn's face.
Then a desperate look appeared on Evelyn's face. And a worried look might have showed on mine. What if they all said Eva? Then everyone would know about the vote. But they couldn't all say Eva. Maybe it was just a joke. Maybe Sandy was just saying that and the votes were really for somebody else.
"Evelyn Cameron."
Well, now everything was all right. Evelyn looked like she was beginning to feel a little better. But the next one gave her a relapse. And by the time Sandy and Doris had emptied the hat Evelyn looked pretty sick.
"Well," Mr. Cameron said, "that's splendid; Eva will make a very nice Queen. It seems that everyone in the room wants you to be Queen, Eva."
"No, Mr. Cameron," Sandy corrected. "Somebody voted for Evelyn."
"Oh, yes, of course," Mr. Cameron said. "Well, Eve voted too, you must remember; and you couldn't expect her to have voted for herself."
Oh, dear! Dear me.
There was not much use trying to follow the geography lesson. And when Evelyn went up to the big map to point out the Straits of Magellan, she stopped by my desk to point out something to me. There was a little note in front of my book after she was gone. It was very handsome writing. She was about the prettiest writer in either the sixth or seventh grade. But the words weren't very pretty. She didn't even start "Dear Eve." She just said: MY DAD IS RICHER THAN YOUR DAD AND HE'S PRETTIER AND HE'S SMARTER AND HE CAN SING BETTER."
Well, maybe he did have more cows; but he couldn't have more machinery. And as far as her dad being prettier or smarter -- those were pure lies. He dad did lead choir on Sundays, but my dad was one of his best tenors. He would have been soloist if he could have got to choir practice every week. And he was the only one who came twenty-one miles to make the old choir a success.
When Mr. Cameron asked me to point out Puget Sound he had to ask me three times. Just then another note bounced on my desk and bounced off.
"Pick it up, Eve," Mr. Cameron said. "We have a bulletin board for all communications. Will whoever wrote this note please come up and write it on the bulletin board?"
Nobody had written it.
"Well, then, Eva," Mr. Cameron said, "perhaps you wouldn't mind writing it on the board." He handed me the chalk. Slowly the awful words unwound themselves on the board. My hand wasn't as good as Evelyn's, but my spelling was better. YOUR YELLER. YOU DON'T DAIR FITE. It didn't look quite right so the words "yellow" and "fight" were fixed. But there wasn't any way you could fix her meaning. And by the time geography was over there were enough notes on my desk to paper a chicken coop.
"Sure you can beat her!"
"Let's see you mop up the place with her."
"Me and Sandy are on your side."
"Don't let her get away with it."
When school was out, the march was more like a stampede. There wasn't any rule about fighting on the grounds if you were on other side of the canal. So we crossed the bridge like a herd of pigs going to feed, everyone trying to be first. Then they all made a kind of circle with me and Evelyn in the middle.
"Show her ya ain't yeller!"
"Come on! Tie in to her!"
If Evelyn had any supporters, they kept still. But it would have looked a little better to have it more evenly divided. You're liable to do some pretty silly things with so many people on your side. Anyway, it was all pretty silly; and before long my beads were in the snow like so much chicken feed. Those beads were a keepsake from a girl who had died. Well, there was nothing stopping me now from twisting my fingers in her blonde braids and settling broadside slaps across her cheek. And Eva Collier was in the middle of her first fight. Oh, it's true she scratched my neck and made my lip bleed; but when my arm got tangled up in her lovely hair she was quite willing to just walk along in front of me the rest of the way home. You could do a little gee-haw like you do to a horse and plow. She lived in a different part of town from me so we took her home first.
"My dad will come out and beat you up!" she called back from the porch. But he didn't come out, so we went away.
We were just about halfway to our house when we met my sisters Molly and Prue. The high school had let out. Molly was very mad. She was responsible for me. She said: "Alright you kids go home. Eve doesn't need any help in her fights!" She had found out already about Evelyn and me.
"She didn't need any help," somebody said. "You oughta see Evelyn!"
And just then somebody saw Evelyn ... She was running toward us and panting like she was tired. Molly grabbed hold of me.
"Now Eve ... there'll be no more of this. Whatever it's about, it's over." She took me firmly by the arm and we started home.
"Wait!" Evelyn said, almost crying and out of breath. "Wait a minute." So we waited.
"Here's your valentine," she sobbed. "It's the prettiest one in the bunch. And Mamma says to tell ya that your dad can sing as good as my dad."
Things were a little bit embarrassing and everybody was very quiet. Then Evelyn came up close and whispered:
"Eva ... will you do one thing for me? ... Promise not to tell anybody that you didn't vote for me?"
Freddy Came A-Courtin'
We had some good neighbors at the ranch. None of them belong to the Church, so you couldn't expect much of them; but they were good people in their way. Some of the neighbors' sons wanted to marry Molly and Prue. Molly was a good, steady girl and Prue was quite pretty. Papa told the neighbors' sons that they were welcome to come around if they cared to, but that his girls were going to college. They boys thought that was just an excuse. They thought the real objection was that we were Mormons and that we didn't believe in marrying outside of the Church.
"Yer right about that," Papa told Fred Langley. "And a point further. My girls are expected to go through the Temple jist like their ma an' me."
Being married in the Temple practically insured a permanent marriage. It was not just a wedding for life, or "till death do us part," like the ministers said, because it was not just a bodily agreement. The spirit was in on it, too. It was a wedding of two souls ... and endured, like the soul, "through time and all Eternity." The children "belonged," and of course, the ones that God sent to such families would be specially selected. It promised a generation of the best, both in body and spirit.
This was worth living for, even if it did require the strictest moral life and the foregoing of all destructive pleasures. In fact -- Papa went into great detail to explain -- the moral requirements for a Temple marriage were so high that only a percentage of the people raised in the Church were able to meet them. Before you could even set a foot in the Temple you had to be a member in the best standing, and have a written statement from your bishop showing that you had paid a full and honest tithing, that you had abstained from tea and coffee and tobacco, that you had never touched liquor, and above all, that you had lived a moral life. If you lacked any of these requirements you just didn't get to go, as the Temple represented all that was holy.
"So you see," Papa told Fred Langley, "the Temple means quite a bit to my girls. Who they marry, and when, is up to them. But they're countin' on goin' to the Temple when the time comes."
"Well," Fred agreed, "that might be all right. Fact is, it sounds pretty good." And then as he rode out of the yard he remarked to his brother:
"It won't be so bad havin' to go through the Temple to git her ... But damned if they'll git me to join the Church!"
Of Hoofs and Herds
Dusk had settled in the valley as we filed into the kitchen part of the ranch house, dipped our fingers in the waiting washbowl, shook them into a cement-sack towel, and took our places behind the rows of bread and milk.
"Can't understand them cows," Papa said. "Second time they've run off in a month. Ain't like they wuz huntin' company. Two of 'em are ready to calve any day now. And the other two must be pretty uncomfortable not bein' milked since morning. But they're gone. Molly, ya better save back some milk for the mush in the morning."
Molly said she hadn't skimmed the second pan.
"You'd better put it back in the well so it'll keep," Papa advised. "And first thing in the morning Eva and Rachel better start after them cows."
We were glad to hear that. It was much more fun to hunt cows than to patch the grain sacks for the September oats.
We were ready at four. Coveralls, and shoes that laced above our ankles. One pocket of raisins, another of dried corn. That was our wardrobe and subsistence. Papa checked the reins and tested the cinches, the while rehearsing his traveling advice.
"Don't go near any sheep camps." (The herders were French World War deserters mostly, hiding out in the hills on thirty a month. Some were Mexican fugitives. They'd never caused any trouble in the valley, outside of a few knifings among themselves. We had heard of a fight one time during shearing when one of them had come out with a nasty abdominal cut. Word had trickled out from the saloon that he had poured a bottle of whiskey in it and ridden back to his haunt in the hills.)
"And don't annoy the range cattle. They're liable to stampede. The milk cows are most likely with 'em. Don't run 'em when you're trying to separate 'em or they'll prob-ly lose their calves."
So were off up the draw. The air was still milky from the night, but we could see our way fairly well. Pat, Rachel's horse, was high-spirited and quick ... a little too high-toned for draft duty. Papa had said, but he was his favorite for the saddle. Mine was a roan mare, Betsy, a little older and more practical as an all-around ranch horse. They both knew the trail ... up past the spring ... up past the service berry bushes ... up to the top of the ridge. The sun was coming up the other side. It was practically a race. But the sun always wins, and when we arrived at the top to stretch our limbs and shake our braids in the mountain breeze, the sun was there already.
The stretch along the top of the plateau was uneventful as a trail, save for a few deserted camp sites where sheepherders had fried their bacon and beans. A few prairie dog holes threatened the footing here and there where the wind had rubbed off the warning dirt mound. It was such a one that caused us no little delay. Rachel was a length behind. It wasn't like anything serious happened. She simply drolled, "Ya better stop, Eve. This darn horse has run a rabbit hole up his leg." Then she added, a bit shaken, "The little fool ... he mighta broke it."
After a couple of attempts to extricate himself and with some impatience at his clumsiness, Pat made a final rearing effort. That time he cleared, his belly muscles stiffening to drum tightness. The cinch, too, expanded as far as was reasonable. But it was a home-talent affair made of several thickness of burlap sacking quilted together with sack twine. It gave way in mid-air. And so did the saddle. And Rachel. Pat was very ashamed. He watched every thumby stitch as we poked our shoe laces back and forth through the ragged burlap edges in baseball fashion until the cinch was mended. We could watch out for those prairie dog holes hereafter. So would Pat.
The hills ran long and parallel and numberless with shadow valley between, washboard-like, clear over to where the snow and the clouds came together perpetually. You could feel the mist of the clouds in your hair. And the air was free and plentiful. You sat up very tall on your horse and counted your blessings and forget about cinches and prairie dog holes.
And so, with our heads in the skies, we rode right upon it -- the sheep camp. We looked at each other and hurried the horses a little. It was well to avoid sheep camps. The story of the pool hall knifing loomed red and drippy. There was a big knife hanging on a protruding rid of the covered sheep wagon. An axe leaned against the front wheel. Dangling by the legs in the door way (drawn wide for summer ventilation), headless, and dripping his last darkened blood in jellied spatters on the doubletrees below, hung the kill. And on the wagon tongue, raw sides up, steamed the pelt of a half-grown lamb.
A few feet away a smudge was laid, consisted of assorted buffalo chips chosen for their size and crispness. (You wouldn't know about a buffalo chip. It's fancy for cow dung. And it comes in a large round disk when it's dried and ready for the smudge. You light the smudge at sundown and sit close around it. It's the best thing in the world to discourage the mosquitoes. Sheepherders are not every delicate about wood ticks and dog lice, but they were immaculate about mosquitoes.)
Over to the left in the washboard valley a woolly carpet that was a couple-a hundred sheep moved restlessly against the ground ... mobile, yet without direction or distance. A couple of coyote-colored dogs skirted the woolly mat and kept the fringe hemmed in. A saddled roan in a pose not unlike "the end of the trail" kept the last outpost on the opposite ridge. But no sheepherder. You couldn't say his flock was untended, but just the same it would have been a comfortable sight to see him sitting slumped lazily over his knees, rolling a Bull Durham ... on the far side where the horse was. But then, we reasoned, he might have been in the wagon. And he might not have heard our approach.
At last we had passed, and no one had jumped out after us. But we rode very quietly and didn't turn around to look back.
There is always a spring within a quarter of a mile of a sheep camp. Our horses were a little dry; and we also could have stood a drink to wash down the clinging remains of our raisin breakfast. So we began to look for the spring. There was a green patch a little below us on the sloping side. Our eyes followed the slight impression that led up the ridge from the green patch. A little farther and we could hear the gurgle of the water on the rocks. The carcass of some unfortunate horse lay mossy and wet in the path of the little stream; the water tumbled through his ribs just as it would through the corrugations of a culvert. It was always best to drink water at the spring. So we passed the carcass and turned our horses back up toward the top of the ridge. Just below the top we discovered a small cave.
Yes, there was the spring. And the sheepherder. And the gurgle we had heard was made by a union suit and a pair of Levis on the end of a stick that he was swishing up and down in the spring. It seemed to be a one-batch washday as there was no more clothing in sight. Including the sheepherder.
For two disheartening hours we plied around the outskirts of the big main herd of range cattle, routing every bush and briar that might harbor a milk cow, and listening with practiced ears for the bells that would give them away. We even called, "Here, Mabel; come, Mulie," but none of the range cows was named Mabel or Mulie. They were all alike, dark red with white faces, and had nothing so distinguishing as names. There wouldn't have been names to go around, and no one could have told which was which anyway. There was no sound of bells. Our long and tiring trip had been useless.
There were one or two more places those cows could be. Emmett's Draw ... but that was way back in the hills, and it wasn't probable that they had gone that far in just a day and a half. Besides, they'd have had to pass the range herd, and it isn't cow nature to go on past. Then there was the old abandoned stone quarry where the choke cherries would be turning ... much closer to home, but far from our present point. We'd look there. It was close to the highway and we could bathe our feet in the fine, warm dust of the wagon tracks. Yes, we'd look at the quarry.
We were in the thin part of the range herd, and were all set to head down the ravine toward the highway when a low, rumbling noise rose behind us.
"Watch out, Eve!" Rachel's face was a map of sudden terror as she wheeled her horse about-face and sped out over the salt-brush at full rein. The roar came closer with increasing momentum. There seemed to be no action in my limbs ... a frozen sentry on a frozen mount. Then Betsy roused to the situation and lengthened her lean self out. She kept an unaccountable two lengths in the lead, but the angry breath of the raging herd was the air that burned in my lungs. It was heavily scented with stale cud and salt brush. But mostly with beastly hate. It was a nasty backwash. But it did have a lot of push.
It's a funny thing about range cattle: it doesn't take much to start a stampede, but after it's under way they don't seem to stalk any particular person or thing, just so they roll ahead like a great red cloud. Betsy seemed to know this. Gradually she swerved to the left until she became a part of the thin detachment that made up that wing. As one with them, her fear subsided and she seemed to run for the sport of it. At this point Rachel rejoined us, and Pat and Betsy were persuaded to drop out of the left wing.
The fatigue of an hour before gave way to muscular tremors as we headed down the ravine. The horses were sticky and nervous. Rachel was slumping in her saddle. She said there was a sore place that started just above her left ankle and arched over and down to about the same place, above the right one. And back there some place, under the two inches of cow muck and minced by countless hoofs, lay my two laceless, useless shoes.
The horses were glad to start down the draw that led to the highway. We could feel their warm, sweaty flesh quivering nervously under us. We were all a little unsteadied by the stampede, and when a coyote, surprised by our sudden intrusion upon his late luncheon in the tall brush, bounded up right in front of Betsy, Betsy reared to her hinders ... and Rachel and Eva were very near tears.
There was no path, so we let the horses choose their way. They led us carefully down the draw ... now down around a clump of service berries, now up over a vein of oil shale. Disappointment and fatigue had robbed us of our usual chatter, and the only noise was the crunching of the shale under the tired hoofs. About halfway down we rounded a big boulder, the base of which presented the grassy indications of sheltering a spring.
"Stop in yer tracks!" came a sudden and growling command. It was Jim Langley' in a two weeks beard, holding a sawed-off shotgun with its blunt barrel poking Betsy in the nose.
Betsy stopped and pushed the clumsy weapon out of line with her weary head. Jim stepped back, lost his balance, and fell over a tub of dirty whiskey bottles that were half full of gutter mud. He evoked a divine condemnation on some canine mother's son, which didn't make much sense, and righted himself on the other side of the tub.
Crouched a few feet away was his younger brother, Fred, poking at a smoldering fire of brush knots, over which a battered copper washboiler steamed uncertainly into a mutilated gun barrel and on into a big jug. The whole place smelled like a bottle of sour choke cherries that had "worked."
Jim straightened up, and then lowered his head so that his beady eyes shot up at us from an angle.
"So ya thought ya could sneak up on us, did ya?" he roared. "Well, we heard ya, see. Them horses ain't no pussyfoots ... So Collier thought he'd hunt me down and turn me in, did he? Didn't dare come himself ... had to send a couple of kids. Well, we'll teach ya to come snoopin' around. Git down off your nags an' start washin' bottles. There's plenty-a nice cold water in the spring. It's a good thing ya happened along. We wuz jist washin' we had somebody to wash them bottles. Ya don't have to be too peticular ... jist souse 'em out."
It wasn't like we weren't neighbors. Jim lived only a few miles from us. Mamma had even delivered their first baby all by herself and helped Dr. Allen with their second one. And Fred had told everybody that he wanted to marry our Prue. Neither Jim nor Fred was entirely clear of the law. Jim had been up twice for sheep stealing, and once for suspected disposal of an old prospector. But he'd always got out. Fred has just been warned by the deputy to keep out of his way.
"We didn't come snooping around," Rachel said with admirable composure.
"No, we were looking for the cows." (We had almost forgotten the cows.)
But Jim was out of sorts.
"First ya come bustin' in on what's none of yer business, and then ya accuse us of stealing your cows! What do ya think we are, outlaws?"
Well, he had something there.
"Do you know where we could look?" Rachel asked bravely. "Two of 'em was gonna have calves, and the other two must be busting with milk. They been gone since yesterday morning."
Jim looked at Fred.
"Come to think of it ... didn't we see them cows breaking down our fence and gettin' in our alfalfa about noon today, Fred? But they didn't look like they wuz gonna have calves though. They looked like they'd had 'em."
Fred nodded agreeably.
"They're probably down there in our alfalfa patch right now."
"We'll have to go get 'em," Rachel said. "Papa don't want 'em in anybody's hay."
"They ain't takin' no hurt," Jim said. And that somehow didn't sound like Jim. "You wash up them bottles. And jist to make sure ya won't be tellin' anybody what ya seen here." ... He swung the sawed-off shutgun back and forth in his best bandit fashion ... "Remember ... we'll keep a bead on ya ... An' we got an eye on yer ole man too. He's altogether too law-abidin'. There won't be no trouble if ya jist keep yer mouth shut."
Going on down the draw an hour later there seemed nothing to say. We felt like two little old ladies who had grown gray and feeble together, who had extracted the same experiences from life and had learned the same lessons. And neither felt like contributing anything to the other. It seemed a long and faraway day since we had left the ranch that morning ... way back when we were mere children of nine and eleven.
But the road looked good in the twilight. It wound around the hills like a dusty ribbon. We wanted to dismount and bury our toes in the soft dust, but it was getting late.
Across the road and before you came to the creek, lay the Langley ranch ... the two-room log house, the stable, and the corral that circled it ... the Langley's weren't much for buildings. But they had nice alfalfa. Only our cows weren't in it. There was a little dog that barked loud in the yard, and two horses were bridled to the corral waiting to be unsaddled. But no cows. Not where you could see them. But something told us we were getting warm.
Just then Effie, Jim's wife, came around the house with an armful of stovewood. She was only about twenty-five, but she looked as old as Mamma. She seemed startled at seeing us, and glanced nervously at the stables.
"You made it quick," she said kindly. "Jim an' Fred ain't been home five minutes." (They hadn't passed us. They must have come a different way.) "You'd better come in and have some bread and milk. You must be starved." She looked back at the stables.
Rachel gave me a quick look as we slid off our horses. Langleys didn't have a fresh cow. Their cow wouldn't be fresh for months. Papa had said so. But you didn't tell everything you knew. Not to people like Langleys.
We went into the house and Effie poured us some bowls of milk. Her widowed mother-in-law strained her eyes in the poor light over a patch in a pair of Levis. The baby clung bashfully to her skirt. Only young Peter looked frank and open and unsurprised.
"Our cow just came in last night," Effie said matter-of-factly. But it was little five-year-old Peter who gave us the real low-down.
"We got two little cafses," he chirped. "An' Papa's gonna bitcher 'em an' take 'em up to Indian Gulch."
Rachel looked at the milk and looked at me. We never drank first milk .... not until the third day. We always fed it to the dogs. But this wasn't first milk. It had a good cream and a good smell. So we broke the bread in silence.
"The calves are twins," Effie said, as she pulled little Peter up to her, where she could better control his informative outbursts.
And Rachel said, "Twins are quite unusual in cows," and we went on with our bread and milk.
When Jim and Fred came in from the stable, they were smiling and rubbing their hands.
"It looks like an early fall," Jim said. "It gits dark pretty quick." But it wasn't too dark to see out the stingy window that four cows were already out of the corral and passing the place where the horses were tied and making a beeline for the dusty road that led home.
"We better go, Eve," Rachel said.
"We found yer cows fer ya," Jim said. "We jist started 'em down the road. They wuz down in the willows by the creek where ya couldn't see 'em."
"We better go, Eve," Rachel repeated; and we left, thanking them for their bread and our milk.
Jim was right about Madel and Mulie. They'd had their calves all right. But they must already have been "bitchered" because Madel and Mulie were hurrying home fast without them.
"Do you think Prue will ever learn to like Fred Langley, Rachel, and marry him like he says she will?" We were rounding Shale Point on the last half mile.
"There ain't much danger of a Collier ever marryin' into the Langleys, Eve."
An Apple for the Teacher
Elizabeth's first grade teacher had understood her, and so she had passed. But her second grade teacher hadn't caught on, so she had to do the second grade over again. That year we were back at Salt Brush. There were seventeen children in the room, and the teacher was eighteen. She really was eighteen, and her name was Gladys McCurtain. She looked at our report cards and divided us up into eight grades. One of the boys was nineteen, and he liked the teacher. But he must have quit liking her because he quit coming for school before long and just came for recess. So that left just two in the eighth grade -- my brother Johnny and a boy named Jim.
A boy named Walter divided the seventh grade with me. He was fifteen and would have been in high school, only his mother had followed the railroad, and it must not have gone through any towns where they had such good schools. Walter was very nice and had candy and licorice about every week. He passed it around to the seventh grade.
There were five from our family in school that year, not counting Prue and Molly, who were away at Logan, Utah, attending high school and college. So lots of times we were half the school. And it made it so that the teacher had to be prepared for at least five grades every day. Alice was in the first -- and you already know that Elizabeth was doing the second over. Rachel was holding down the fourth that year and it looked like she would turn out all right. But there was one thing you could predict about Elizabeth: she was bound to do something embarrassing everyday. Maybe two or three things.
One particular Friday the sixth grade was having a hygiene lesson. They had gone over the regular sanitary measures -- brush your teeth or wash them with a piece of flour sack at least once a day -- take a bath once a week in the summertime and at least every two weeks in the winter unless you had a cold -- and then somehow the discussion settled upon germs and microbes. Germs were small animals that flew through the air. Like flies? No. Germs weren't as large as flies. In fact, sometimes flies carried germs. Were they as small as -- bedbugs? Well, you see, Miss McCurtain had never seen a bedbug.
There was instant activity in the second grade. Ordinarily Elizabeth had to have an interpreter because she didn't talk altogether plain. But out it came in the most enlightening language: "Do you want me to bring you one?"
Poor Rachel! She was advanced for her age and always took things very hard. You could see it get pink around her blonde braids as she ducked deeper into her geography book.
Everything was quiet going home. Except Elizabeth. Elizabeth was never quiet. It was awfully dumb of Miss McCurtain never to have seen a bedbug -- as plentiful as they were. She must not have been around very much. But there was no reason for her to go on in ignorance. Elizabeth was never one to leave anyone in ignorance. And Monday morning found her clutching her reader in one hand and a match box in the other. Triumphantly she dumped the match box into Miss McCurtain's lap.
"There's your bedbugs!" she announced.
Miss McCurtain let out a horsey little squeal and stood clear as the box rolled over and over on the floor. Elizabeth hurried to the rescue -- opened the box and examined the innards. A cloud of disappointment came over her face.
"Where they gone?" She was crushed. "There wuz three in there. Honest there wuz!"
Scattering the Blood
Walter was fifteen and should have been in high school. But nobody at Salt Brush blamed him for being only in the seventh grade. He lived in a boxcar on the side track with his mother. They hadn't always lived there. They had moved from place to place like the section gang. The section gang lived in a boxcar and worked on the railroad. But Walter's mother didn't. She just lived in a boxcar.
"She was sidetracked a good many years ago," old Jerry Manwell said. And a fat section hand sitting on a pickle barrel laughed clear down into his stomach and almost swallowed his Union Leader.
"She's a poor unfortunate woman," Mrs. Jennings had said. Mrs. Jennings knew of troubles and trials and many of the circumstances which made women unfortunate.
But Mrs. Allen had said, "She's a common little trollop, if you ask me." Nobody had asked her, so she most likely said it just to get to use a new word she had found in a novel left over from the war.
"They're not our kind," Mamma had said one time when Walter walked home from school with us.
"You've got to give the boy a chance, Julie," Papa said. "Lots of great men have developed from his kind. Look at Alexander Hamilton --" But Mamma was looking out the window at Walter, who was watching Johnny milk old Mulie. Walter was a year older than Johnny, but Johnny would make easily one and a half of him.
"Walter's chance won't begin until he gets out of that boxcar and gets off his diet of sody crackers and cheese," Mamma observed. "He needs milk and potatoes and some kind of meat besides baloney."
"That's a good idea, Julie," Papa said. "Why don't we take him in and give him a little care? He could learn about the ranch and get a fresh start in life. You could give him the kind of meals a growing boy needs, and we could maybe make up to him some of what he's missed."
"We'd best not interfere," Mamma said. "But we might ask him up for Thanksgiving. It would do me good to see what a slab or roast goose and a few potatoes and gravy would do for him."
So Walter was properly invited to be our guest for Thanksgiving. He was supposed to arrive sometime during the morning of the Day of Thanks. But quite unexpectedly Walter arrived the night before. He was pale and nervous and had apparently run most of the way. Even the blustery November night and the three-mile exercise had failed to bring a good color to his cheeks. Underfed as he was, he really looked quite ill in the yellow flicker of the coal-oil lamp.
"What's the trouble, boy?" Papa asked. "Something wrong?"
"It's true --" Walter said, very quiet, between his teeth. "Will you let me stay? Johnny could teach me to milk, and it'd be fun to draw water for the cows. Would ya let me stay?"
Papa put his arm around Walter's shoulder. That small sympathy seemed to break him, and Walter dropped to the bench and buried his face in his hands on the kitchen table. Mamma, who was mixing raisin bread, and me, grinding cranberries for sauce. Then Papa sat silently with Walter for a long time.
"What is it, boy?" Papa asked gently, when the sobbing had stopped.
Walter looked up.
"Have you ever been called a goddam dirty bastard, Mr. Collier?"
"No, son," Papa said; "but people have called me a lot of other things. You ought not to say it in front of women and children though, son."
Walter hadn't noticed us; or maybe it was because the terms were more commonplace with his kind. Yet it appeared that combination of them was shocking even to him. He blushed at his ungentlemanliness.
"It was young Jerry Manwell that said it." Jerry Manwell was only in the fourth grade. "But somebody told me that once before -- the exact words. It was in Gopher Hole last year at shearing time. He paid up with a bloody nose and a loose tooth. But when Jerry said it tonight it made me see red. Jerry's smaller than me, and it wouldn't be decent to bust him. But he's so much younger it didn't seem reasonable he'd think of such a thing by himself -- unless he'd heard it from someone older. It made me wonder if it wuz so."
"The saloon wuzn't very crowded. It wuz just about time fer the mail train, and old Jerry Manwell had left Matthew Allen to look after things at the bar while he went over to mail a letter. Nobody seen me leave the saloon and sneak out in the willows by the creek to think things out. Nobody but young Jerry, that is. He had to tag along and make noises like an owl. He says, 'Who -- who -- who is yer father? Betcha wish ya knew.' That made me throw a stick at him and of course he found me. Then we sat down on the creek bank and he told me a lot of things. He says, 'Why do you suppose yer mother sends you over to the saloon every night? Do ya think it's becuz she wants to be alone? Well, she ain't alone, ya kin bet!'
"And then Jerry had an idea. He said he could let me take his stilts and he'd borrow his little brother's, and we'd stride over to our boxcar and peek in. He said if she wuz alone it would save my pride, and if she wuzn't it would save his. But what we saw didn't save anything fer either one of us. The man wuz old Jerry Manwell."
"Have you talked things over with your mother, Walter," Papa asked; "that is -- about coming to live with us?"
"My mother --," Walter said, and the words had never sounded so loathsome. Something beautiful had been twisted into a serpent-like shape in the boy's soul, and his words crawled out on their bellies. "She wuz no mother to me. What's the use in talking things over with her?"
"You mustn't feel that way, son," Papa said. "Motherhood is the nearest thing to Godhood that there is in the world. It's sacred and above every other thing. It's the part of the creation that God entrusted to mortals. He somehow knew that mothers could do it. And you have a mother, Walter. She bore you. And in her way she has worked for you. She has tried to shelter you. It is quite remarkable that she has succeeded until now. You see, Walter, your mother does love you. You mustn't cause her any worry. If she doesn't know where you are, you must let her know. Then you are welcome to stay here if she thinks you will be better off. Have you ever rode a horse, Walter?"
"A few times," the boy replied.
"Well, take Old Snooks," Papa offered. "He's gentle and safe. We're gonna take all the horses down to Orchard Valley for the rest of the winter. They're kinda poor, and they'll get better feed there. Old Snooks is in a pretty good condition. You can ride him back tomorrow when you come. But tonight you must spend with your mother. Whether you tell her what you saw or not is up to you. But you must go in respect."
It was a quiet Walter who rode into our yard the next morning with a small bundle tied behind the saddle.
"It looks like we've got another boy," Mamma observed.
"We always wanted another boy," Papa added welcomingly.
It was a wonderful morning. The whole house smelled of those once-a-year delicacies -- crisp celery, and spicy carrot pies, chilled cranberries, and warm raisin bread, roasting goose gorged with bread stuffing and giving off a sage-y scent. Walter helped beat the potatoes and stir thickenings, and even to whip the cream for the pie toppings. It was nice having someone around who didn't automatically know everything. Nobody expected Walter to know much; and he made a very gratifying student in the kitchen, quietly watching, studying out the methods and proportions and quietly imitating. He was good for my leadership. We worked well together. And when we had set the table, even Mamma put her hands on her hips and beamed at the perfection of it.
"This is the Day of Thanks," Papa remarked sagely, as we waited that long, respectful moment that would determine which member was to offer our combined gratefulness to God. The stuffing was steaming in savory spires. It reminded me of the thank offering of ancient Israel. And it was a sacrifice just to wait.
"We should be especially thankful this year," Papa continued. "We got a lot of snow -- and that means we'll get a good crop next year. Maybe we can put up enough hay and grain that we won't have to let the horses go again."
Letting the horses go for the winter would be like having Molly and Prue away at college. We would miss them almost as much.
"Yes, we can afford to be very thankful," Papa repeated.
"Shall we take turns thinking of something we're especially grateful for?" Mamma suggested. Mamma was thankful for the new shuttle guard on the loom. "It doesn't break so many threads," she said.
Molly and Prue were having their Thanksgiving dinner at the Stratford home in Logan. But they would be home in the morning. David hadn't seen them since he had returned from Chicago. In fact, it had been more than two years. He hadn't seen any of the young folk from Shelby yet either. Many of them had grown up and moved away, like Bella Stratford. David was thankful that Bella would be coming in on the morning train with Molly and Prue to spend the rest of the holidays from college with us. But he didn't say so. He just said, "It will be nice seeing Molly and Prue again." And the turn passed on down to Johnny.
Johnny was glad that he wouldn't have to pump water for the horses all winter. "It won't be so hard with just the cows," he said.
And so the turns went around the table. When it came Walter's turn, we were all very still. He hadn't said much all morning. But he was ready with his thanks.
"My mother," he said simply, and the words came out straight and wholesome. "She doesn't know about last night. It might hurt her."
The month that followed was very pleasant. Walter not only helped Johnny milk Mabel and Mulie, but he helped me strain the milk. Even school was more fun, getting ready for the Christmas program and all. The whole room drew names for an exchange of presents. Johnny got mine at first, but it ended up with Walter, with Johnny being two dollars to the good. It didn't bother me that Johnny had sold me out, but it did bring out a little color when he drew hearts in the snow on the way home and labeled them Walter and Eva.
The Christmas party was the biggest affair of the school year. We had recitations from the smaller grades and duets from the larger grades and a pageant from the whole room, and everybody in town came. Even Santa Claus came. He stamped the snow off boots and shook a string of sleigh bells, and the little children laughed. But Walter wasn't so little after a month of Mamma's good cooking, and he didn't laugh. He slipped down into the seat beside me.
"That's Jerry Manwell," he whispered. "He would have to come and spoil everything." He looked worried for a minute, then added: "When he hands you your presents, please don't open them in front of everybody. There's two packages. There's something sort of personal in one of 'em."
Jerry clowned around some and then began stripping the Christmas tree of its treasures. There were marbles, handkerchiefs, and toothbrushes, and a pair of wool mittens and a pencil box. After each of the fifteen children had received a gift, our clowning Santa cleared his frosty throat and rubbed his fat hands in an over-gesture of anticipation.
"And now my little friends --" he began.
"The big stuffed toad," Walter muttered. "Always has to spoil everything."
"We have another package," Jerry resumed. "Indeed we have two packages! And who is the little lady so highly favored? Oh, yes -- Miss Eva Collier. Will Miss Collier please come forward and open her presents?"
"Please don't open them," Walter pleaded in a hoarse whisper.
"Don't be bashful, Miss Eva," Jerry beamed. "Just come up and open your packages. Want me to cut the strings for you? It looks to me like you two'll be wantin' somebody to tie the strings before long."
Walter stood up. But it was too late. Jerry had cut the strings of the larger package and was shaking out the folds of a sensible looking brown serge dress, size twelve -- my age, but somewhat in advance of my size. He held it up in front of me.
"At the rate you're growing, Eva, you'll be able to wear this in a couple of years."
It had always smarted me -- being such a pint size; but what smarted me now was how Walter must feel. Jerry Manwell was a big toad like Walter said. His crass implication that Walter should ever want to be "tied" to me had honestly never entered my head. And anyway, such things weren't to be spoken of so crudely. But these things weren't unthought of in the Manwell family. Maxine Manwell was only fourteen, but she was already married and divorced and was going to have a baby.
Jerry picked up the smaller package and shook it. It sounded like candy.
"Sounds mighty sweet," Jerry said; and as he peeled off the wrappings a red satin box emerged, heart-shaped. "My punchboard never produced anything like this!"
Elizabeth and Alice looked hurt that Santa Claus would indulge in anything so immoral as a punchboard.
It seemed that all the sacred privileges of personal and private rights and feelings had been violated before my eyes in Jerry Manwell. But no -- there was one vile trick yet unplayed. He lifted the satin cover and sniffed the chocolate luxuries. A small note fluttered from the lid. If Jerry were to get that note it would be out from under my dead body. His clowning had gone far enough. We both had the same idea and our heads bumped soundly on the way down. But it was Walter who got the note and kept it for me until after the party.
Walter didn't go home with us that night in Matthew Allen's sleigh. He said he'd stay in town and catch the early train for Indian Gulch. His mother had gone there to start a hotel. She was going to settle down and build up her business. He'd come back after the holidays, he said.
That night going home Papa was thoughtful. Mrs. Allen kept chattering on and on about "human charities" and "the milk of human kindness," and nobody seemed to pay much attention to her.
"But really, Mr. Collier," she said, when she had finally come to the conclusion that only bluntness was meet for the blunt, "do you think you should continue to shelter that boy when his mother has been literally forced to leave town? They say she even has her own establishment now in Indian Gulch!"
"May the milk of human kindness never so sour in my cellar," Papa said. And for the rest of the way home Mrs. Allen was thoughtful.
After we'd got home and started Rachel and the smaller ones off the bed, Papa asked me to step into the kitchen for a minute. Papa had never looked like that before. He was very serious.
"Eva," he said, "you know, of course, that these are the days for the gathering of Israel?"
"Yes, Papa."
"For hundreds of years the chosen blood has been scattered and lost in the world."
"Yes, Papa."
"Well, now that blood is being gathered for the last time, so there will be a strong following for the Lord when He comes back to rule the world. That time is very near."
"Yes. That is what you have always taught me."
"Well then, Eva," Papa continued, "there isn't time for any more scattering of blood. Good night, Eva."
The log walls of the girls' room upstairs had been whitewashed in the spring. The whitewashed flour sack ceiling cut the point from the gable and gave the room a shape like a hayloft. Spring rains had leaked through in places and made gnarlie designs in rusty browns and yellows on the whited ceilings and walls. These murals had been "set" by the summer's heat and preserved for long winter nights of study and wonder. There were grotesque gnomes half-swallowed in the pools of swirling quicksands, and leafy mounds were the babes in the woods might be buried; there were cumulus clouds, and enough woolly sheep to count you into sleepiness. In fact, on the walls and gabled ceiling together, there were ample makings for many dreams and nightmares. In the light of December snow they made a pageant above me. Rachel was already dozing beside me, and across the room, under the eaves, Elizabeth and Alice were breathing in the long regular rhythm of sleep.
So Papa was worried about his little Eva. He was worried about the scattering of the blood. Walter's note was folded tight in my hand under the covers. It smelled of chocolate and vanilla. There was no need to unfold it again -- ever. The words were locked in my heart. It seemed that the finer emotions of life were found tangled together with pain and complications. The dreams must be unraveled from the nightmares. Some hopes must be crushed so that other hopes might be realized. It wasn't a difference of people; it was a difference of hopes. Some hopes were aimless and some had a pattern. The hopes of Israel had a pattern.
The time had come when it was necessary to hurt. And it was a shame, because hurt was about all Walter had ever known. But it would be the honest thing to tell him, straight and immediately. There would be no scattering of the blood.
A few days later Walter received a letter, addressed, after much pain, to Dear Sir, and expressing the appreciation of a small girl of a lovely dress, which must, of course, under the circumstances, be returned to stock and the credit deposited to his mother's account at Sherman-Sikes' Department Store in Indian Gulch. The chocolates unfortunately had been sniffed by Jerry Manwell and were not in a condition to be returned.
"It doesn't seem the same without Walter," Mamma said one night in February, as she was setting the sponge for the raisin bread.
It didn't seem the same, either at home or at school. The seventh grade was as lonely as if all the other grades hadn't even been there. But the hurt in my heart was gradually lessening. It was not so much the hurt of loss; it was the hurt of hurting someone else. But Indian Gulch was a big place; and Walter would make his adjustments.
"Nevertheless ... Oats for the Horse"
Some people thought Old Man Jennings was peculiar. Others said he drank too much. But Papa always said, "We ain't to judge." And of course, we weren't.
There was the Spring Conference at Shelby; and after a week of taking apart and putting together, Papa had the Studebaker ready, but reluctant. It was a two-day Conference, Saturday and Sunday. So Sunday morning Papa put some extra hay in the horse stalls and fastened the doors of the stable so they wouldn't blow shut. As he walked through the corral, he slapped Old Snooks on the rump.
"So long, ole man -- see you tomorrow night. If you get cold just go on inside. There's feed enough to last you. So long, ole man."
Old Snooks was blind in one eye, but you could tell by the twinkle in the good one that he understood. Pat and Betsy and the other horses were down in the field. There were nineteen of them, counting the colts. They had been boarded out to a prosperous rancher during the winter months because of the scarcity of grazing on our ranch and because we had needed the stable and our scant supply of hay for the cows. Now in April things were beginning to grow and the horses seemed to be glad to be home.
But we were glad to get away -- especially for Conference. The Studebaker staggered as we all wedged in, and coughed like something consumptive as Papa gave it the crank. Then, like a tired horse, it strained at the gears, and we were on our way to Shelby.
There were things about Old Man Jennings that made you think he was peculiar. For instance, he was lonely since his wife had taken to making long visits away with her married daughter, so he would wait until we'd all gone somewhere and then come to visit. And there was evidence that he also drank too much because sometimes when we'd get back, we'd find empty whiskeys bottles in our stable.
We had two cellars at the ranch. One was for the potato bin and the bottled fruit and the other was for the government oats. The government oats were in hundred-pound sacks, and there were several sacks. It takes a lot of oats to feed the ground hogs on a few hundred acres, even if you only feed them once.
The idea was to take a bucket of oats and make a little visit to the home of each ground hog. Impolite little devils -- they always ran down their holes when they saww us coming. It showed they had a conscience, though, since they lived for the sole purpose of garnering the grain, be it green or golden, from the fields of the farmers. So they had a right to be ashamed. And we had the right to deliver the groceries. The ground hog would wait until we were only a little distance on our way to the next hole; then he would appear at his front door to sample this handful of oats. They're greedy little fellows and it wouldn't take him long before his belly would begin to swell. Only it wouldn't be a natural swelling. And pretty soon he would roll over with his feet in the air and settle down to his last after-dinner nap.
The government oats looked innocent enough; only they had been rolled in some kind of flour, and we had to wear cloth masks when we distributed them to keep the white dust out of our lungs. Even then we always got sick to our stomachs after handling the oats.
We weren't bothered with ground hogs in the winter because they are like bears and like to sleep in. The calendar said they were supposed to come out some time in February. But they generally came out in April. So the government had sent us the oats in March so we'd be ready. And we had kept them in the cellar by themselves.
Old Man Jennings was a little peculiar. Mamma said he was even a little bit snoopy. Anyway, while we were at Conference he went down our cellar where we had the government oats. There were sacks of them all along the wall. He punched them with his swollen fist. Oats pack squashier than wheat.
"Them's oats all right," he probably muttered to himself. "More oats than he'll raise in a year. Collier's a tight old devil -- hoardin' 'ees oats while 'ees horshes starves t' death in a boardin' school!" He chuckled -- probably, you remember -- at his near wit. "Starvin' to death, them horshes is -- while their pappy hoards their oach. Heesh savin' 'em fer seed, ish 'ee? -- Well, we'll show 'eem. Ho horsh is gonna starve with me around."
He took out his pocket knife and plunged it into the belly of a bag. The floured oats poured out on the dirt floor.
It was fun, so he knifed another and another. "Always wanted to wield a knife." There was a bucket hanging in the ceiling of the cellar. It was for the government oats. He scooped it full and stood up swaying from side to side. "Now wheresh them horshes --"
It was dusk when we pulled in on Sunday evening. We hadn't stayed for the night session because of the chores at home.
There were no horses in the lower pasture.
There were none in the upper field.
But there were three or four in the corral lying down with their feet sticking up. There were half a dozen more on the floor of the stable. And another half a dozen that were still standing in their stalls swollen so badly they were stuck there.
There was another swollen figure in the stable. He was lying in the manger on a lump of hay with two empty bottles at his sides.
Mamma said, "You kids better go on in the house."
And Papa said, "Come on, Jennings, ya better wake up and go home. It's gonna be cold t'night."
And Jennings stirred. But Betsy didn't. And neither did Snooks. And neither did any of the others.
With all the Facts
The principal visited our school about twice a year because he lived in Gopher Hole and that was twenty-five miles. He generally came once in the fall to see what books we needed and once in the spring to see if we'd learned anything out of them.
One spring we had learned a lot. Especially the seventh grade. It was the year Miss McCurtain taught us. She was a good teacher, even if she was only eighteen. The principal was a good principal too. It was on his spring visit that Miss McCurtain took him off to the side. She had told us to have a study period while she talked to the principal. We looked like we were studying, but we were really listening to what they were talking about.
And they were talking about the seventh grade. It seemed that all the important subjects like geography and physiology and European history were completed with the seventh grade. The eighth grade took up insignificant things like eighth grade arithmetic and modern history and a lot of stuff about verbs and proverbs. Just about all the eighth grade really did was to press the pleats in your brains a little deeper in what you'd already learned.
Miss McCurtain said, "Is there any reason why a seventh-grader couldn't skip the eighth grade and go into high school?"
"How old is he?" the principle said.
"It's Eva," Miss McCurtain said. "She's twelve."
"Which one is Eva?" the principal asked.
Miss McCurtain pointed. "The one with the round face in the back row."
"She doesn't look twelve," the principal said. They were whispering. "She looks more like ten. Are you sure she's twelve?"
"Yes, she's twelve all right," Miss McCurtain said, "because Rachel is ten and Johnny is fourteen. They have one every two years -- regular as clockwork. We have five of them right here in this room. They were just about all born in July."
"Eva was born in the fall," Elizabeth corrected. "But me and Alice and Rachel and Johnny was all borned in July."
"Elizabeth!" Miss McCurtain said out loud. "You must not speak out during school." That made everyone look up, and they couldn't whisper very well with us all looking up, so Miss McCurtain said, "You may be excused for recess."
That afternoon just when school let out, Miss McCurtain gave me a note to take home. She said it was for my father and mother, so we all knew it wouldn't be honest to unfold it.
"What do you suppose it says?" Johnny asked.
"Maybe it's telling Mamma on Elizabeth," Rachel said.
"Nope," Johnny said, "if that'd been it they'd have give it to me." Anything that important would certainly have been given to Johnny because he was the oldest. "Nope, it must be something about Eve. Lemme see it, Eve." He reached over and took the note.
"You'd better not unfold it," Rachel said. "Miss McCurtain said it was for Mamma and Papa."
"Nobody said anything about unfolding it," Johnny said. "But what if she'd lose it on the way home? Then nobody would ever know what it said."
It was true that Johnny had the best pockets. But he didn't put it in his pocket. He just carried it in his fist. When we'd gone about a half mile he remarked, "One of us really ought to know what it says in this note. What if it wuz to blow away? You kids better go on ahead and let me see what it says."
So we went on ahead.
Johnny got home quite a while after we did. He said just as casually as he could, "They're gonna make us go to Gopher Hole this year the state exams."
"Goodness!" Mamma said, "they can't do that. How are we gonna get five children to Gopher Hole with the car broke down?"
"It doesn't say all five," Johnny said. "It just says Eva and me."
"Who says? What says?" Mamma asked.
"This note," Johnny answered.
"Let's see it." Mamma read: "The Gopher Hole School District is asking all eighth grade students to go to Gopher Hole to take the state exams this year. If you will let Eva go, we feel that she might pass and can go to high school next year. Gladys McCurtain, Teacher. Ernest Bolander, Principal."
Gopher Hole. That was a very wicked city.
"P.S. Eva can stay with my aunt, Mrs. Stonebridge."
Mamma had heard of Mrs. Stonebridge. She was a society lady who was Notary Public, or Deputy Sheriff, or something on the school board. Mamma had voted for her in some election.
At supper Mamma was worried. "What do you think, Jake? Do you think we ought to let Eva go into high school next year?"
"She's just a kid," Papa said. "How old is she now, anyway?"
"Twelve."
"Has anything happened yet?" Papa asked.
"No," said Mamma.
"Does she know anything yet?" Papa continued.
"No."
"Well, you'd better be gettin' her told if yer figurin' to send her to high school next year."
"It means that she's gotta go to Gopher Hole and take the state exams," Mamma said.
"Gopher Hole!" Papa looked worried. "Well, Julie, you'd better be gettin' her told."
The next day was Saturday.
"Eva," Mamma said right after breakfast. "You'd better come with me. If you're going to Gopher Hole to stay overnight you'll have to have clothes for the trip. So go look in the Hutchinson box" -- it was a wooden box that Hutchinsons had sent us full of things for carpet rags; but it had a lid with hinges, so it served now as a sort of trunk; later it became my hope chest -- "and bring me that white embroidered petticoat ruffle." She had been saving that ruffle for a long time. It was about two feet wide and about three or four yards long. It must have been elegant when it was new. And it was still too good to put in a rug.
"Now get me the scissors and the spool of white thread and come along." We went into her bedroom. "Shut the door," she said. She held the ruffle up to me and marked the measurement in the starch with her thumb nail. "This wuz to be your graduation dress," she said, "but if you're to go to Gopher Hole you'll need a petticoat and pants." The black sateen ones wouldn't be so good to go away in."
She took the scissors and began to cut the white embroidery where she had marked it. It looked like the petticoat was going to have a long skirt and a short waist.
The treaty made so many months before about my being allowed to design and make my own clothes was being shelved for a moment. Obviously for purpose. The petticoat was a blind for some delicate conference. Mamma cleared her throat all the way up from her stomach. The conference was coming up.
"Eva," she said, like she was trying to get around something. "You have a nice body." That made me a little embarrassed. "Have you ever thought what your body was for?"
"Well, it holds me together pretty well."
"Yes," Mamma said, "it holds you together." She broke off a piece of thread and moistened the end in her mouth so it would go through the needle. "But it also holds other things."
"Lungs, liver, stomach, heart and intestines." You could tell physiology was a favorite subject with me. And you could tell that it was not a favorite subject with Mamma.
"Yes," Mamma said, "your body contains all those." She pinned the ruffle to me with the needle while she measured the sugar sack for the waist. Sugar sack was finer than flour sack -- whiter, too -- but it wouldn't wear so well. But it would wear as long as the embroidered ruffle would.
"Eva," she said, like she was trying to get a new start, "do you know why Adam and Eve were put out of the Garden of Eden -- the real reason?"
"Because Eve ate the apple or whatever it was."
"No, Eva, that was just an excuse," Mamma said. "The fruit was a bait that was put there on purpose. The Lord knew they'd get into it sooner or later. They had to if they were going to have mortal children. It was part of His plan. You see the Lord had made Adam and Eve. He made them immortal. The mortal part they had to put in for themselves. And they put in the mortal part by eating the fruit. That gave them a sense of right and wrong. Before they found that fruit they had done everything because the Lord told them to. But after they ate it, they had reason, so they were on their own, able to figure out things for themselves."
"And then they had to work for a living." That was to help her out.
"Yes," Mamma said, "they had to work for a living." She pulled the drawstring in the top of the ruffle up around my chest. "But they had something else to do, too," she said. "The Lord had told them to 'multiply and replenish the earth.' That was the main job."
"Yes, he wanted them to raise some kids to help around the farm." You could see she'd have to have some help if she was to finish the story by the time she'd finished the petticoat.
"Well, yes," Mamma said, grateful-like. "And not only that. There was the whole round earth ready to be lived in and a world of spirits waiting in heaven to come down and live in it."
"So Adam and Eve were supposed to give them a start in the world?"
"Yes," Mamma said, "that's it." That sort of finished the chapter, and Mamma screwed up her face like a puzzle. You could tell there was another installment coming up.
"Eva," she said, after she'd cut out the sugar-sack waist, "have any of your playmates at school ever discussed with you the facts of life?"
Well, now, she hadn't said, "Any of your playmates on the way to school," so that didn't need to include Ellen Baker at Shelby, who was a year younger but who was an oldest child and therefore entitled to know a lot more, even though we were only nine and ten when we had discussed it that time. Besides, if Mamma were to find out about Ellen she would have me telling her the facts instead of her telling me. It would be much better for Mamma to do the telling, if it had to be told.
"Nope, nobody at school ever discussed any facts with me."
So Mamma became very factual.
(The petticoat was a beauty. It had butterfly sleeves that came just over the shoulders and the white embroidered skirt was elegant. The neck was immorally low, so that you could put it on without having to be buttoned in. Mamma said it would do for a nightgown at Gopher Hole and then it could be just a petticoat after. That is, it could be a Sunday petticoat.)
All these facts, Mamma resumed, were strictly and absolutely to be saved until after my wedding. God would not look upon any experimenting with these facts with the least degree of tolerance. And because we belonged to the Church and knew what He expected of us, there would not be even the slightest degree of allowance for us if we disobeyed. We would be ruined for life and damned for Eternity. Nobody who was worthy would want to marry us. And even if we did get married, we couldn't be married in the Temple.
And even good people who had lived all their lives together on this earth -- if they were not married in the Temple -- would have to live apart throughout Eternity. There would be many of these good people in heaven. But they would be as servants to the ones who had obeyed all the rules. No, if we disqualified ourselves for the Temple, even if we did repent and get into the Celestial Kingdom, there would be no advancement or progression -- just existence, in a state of heartbreak and sorrow when we saw what our lives could have been. This, she explained, would be the real fire and brimstone. No, there was no other way but a virtuous life for peace and progress and a fullness of joy -- no matter how many temptations there were in the world, and no matter how many people there were who tried to tell you different.
"Temptation might come," Mamma said.
(Lead us not into Temptation. There ought to be more prayers like that.) But what worried me most was, Lead me not into anybody else's temptation. And from that day Virtue was a beautiful burden to be carried with great concern and not to be spent on the way. The whole plan for happiness both in this world and in the Hereafter seemed to rest upon Virtue. My father had often quoted, "Let Virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly." And my thoughts were duly garnished.
The ride on the train was exciting.
Johnny had gone to Indian Gulch one time on the train to get a tooth pulled. So he was all informed. But this was my first trip. So Mamma had told me all about trains ... especially trains going to Gopher Hole.
There were certain people, both men and women, who rode on trains for the special purpose of "enticing young girls."
"They will offer you candy or chewing gum," Mamma had said, "or maybe a man will offer you a drink of water. But don't talk to strangers and don't accept anything from any of them. They're like as not to be 'White slave traders.' They get you to take a piece of candy or a drink of water; then first thing you 'faint' and they tell the conductor that you're a sister, or niece, or little cousin, and they carry you off the train and put you in a bad house. There are plenty of them in Gopher Hole."
There was a man with gum all right just like Mamma had said there would be, only he didn't offer us any. And a lady with red hair and black eyelashes tried to give me some cherry chocolates. She even offered Johnny some.
But the man who offered to get you a drink of water wasn't there. He must have been working another car. You had to get the drink yourself and you had to pay a penny for the cup. Johnny had the dollar Mr. Bolander had sent him so he could go to the hotel, but Mr. Bolander hadn't given us any pennies. So we didn't get a paper cup. But the conductor brought us a tin cup from his room, and Johnny got a drink. He brought me one too; but it didn't look right for me to make him look like the man who offers you drinks of water on the train. He wasn't quite fifteen, but he was pretty big and the rest of the people might think he was the water man, so he drank the cupful too and then gave the cup back to the conductor.
At Gopher Hole we were supposed to go straight to the high school building. We would take the state exams in history and arithmetic that day. Then Johnny was to take to Mrs. Stonebridge's home and then go to the hotel. The next day we were to take the exams in language and spelling. They made me take the exams in physiology and geography, too, because of my being actually only in the seventh grade. Then we were to go straight to the railroad station and wait until time for the train back home.
The exams were very fair. They didn't ask us anything we didn't know. And we could have written a lot more, only there wasn't room.
Mrs. Stonebridge was very glad to see us. She seemed to be expecting me. She said, "So you're little Eva!" and looked at my slick braids like she didn't mind that they weren't curls, or that they were dark brown instead of golden blond like everybody always expected little Eva's to be.
"Have you had your supper?" she asked.
"We brought our food with us."
She looked in my sack -- two jelly sandwiches and a boiled egg and some homemade cookies.
"Umm," she said. "That's a wonderful supper. But wouldn't you like to save it for tomorrow and come into the kitchen and have a sandwich and a glass of milk with us? You see, we're going out to some friends' for dinner tonight -- and Mr. Stonebridge can't wait that long for something to eat."
No, thank you, Mrs. Stonebridge."
After all, this was Gopher Hole, you remember.
"Johnny took the lunch bucket to his hotel." His hotel -- it sounded so worldly. "We have plenty of food for tomorrow."
"But it seems a shame," Mrs. Stonebridge said. "We have to eat alone so much. Maybe you'd make room for a piece of chocolate cake?"
"No, thank you, Mrs. Stonebridge." Why did she have to say chocolate cake? Oh well, temptations were to be expected. This is Gopher Hole. "No, there's plenty here for me, thank you."
Perhaps this was being too careful. After all, Mrs. Stonebridge wasn't altogether what you might call a stranger. Mamma had voted for her in the election. But of course, you couldn't be expected to always know what you were voting for.
Mrs. Stonebridge put on her coat. It was a warm-looking brown fur, not so gray as a wolfskin and not so red as a coyote. It looked more like a bear. "Make yourself comfortable," she said. "We should be home around midnight." Yes, anybody should. "You can sleep in here with me," she added.
The bed was wide and you could see that this was their room -- his and hers. And it puzzled me where he was going to sleep. Perhaps this was the only bed. Perhaps they considered me just an ignorant little girl and we would all sleep in the same bed! Oh, dear! But she hadn't said us.
The railroad track ran just behind the house. Tramps always chose the railroad track because it was the shortest distance between towns. Gopher Hole was a good tramp town because everybody there had money. The Stonebridges had about the most. Suppose some tramp were to come along now. Tramps had always represented a tribe of lonely, unfortunate travelers, who didn't have a particular place to go, nor any particular reason for going there, and who carried nothing but an appetite and a fresh batch of bedbugs. They always stopped at our place and Papa would look them over. If they were clean enough they could sit up to the table and eat what we had; but if they were dirty or too friendly, or on the sissy side, he generally told Mamma to give them some bread and milk on the washbench. But tramps were always men, and always strangers. And strange men were suddenly quite dreadful.
The bed was soft and the room was dark -- but the night was alive with noises, most of which came from the railroad track. There were a few trains that couldn't seem to get settled, and a neighbor's baby that woke up and squalled; and then later there was a barber-shop arrangement of "Three O'clock in the Morning" that went by. But there weren't any coyotes howling close like at home.
Finally the Stonebridges came back. They were talking quietly. They made a light in the front room. Then they both came into the bedroom.
"Sleeping like a lamb," Mrs. Stonebridge whispered.
"She's had a heavy day with exams," Mr. Stonebridge said. "They're pretty serious for a youngster that size."
It had been a heavy day all right, and pretty serious. But not because of the exams. It was because of my being out in the world and knowing all the facts.
"Wouldn't it be wonderful to sleep that way?" Mrs. Stonebridge said. "Never a worry."
She didn't know. "Mr. Stonebridge was already peeled down to his underwear and it looked like he was getting ready for bed. Their bed. Our bed.
"Where'd you put my nightshirt, Grace?" he said. And Mrs. Stonebridge whispered, "It's lying on the daybed in the dining room."
"Well, goodnight, Sweet," Mr. Stonebridge said. "Don't let me oversleep."
"There's no danger of your oversleeping on that daybed," Mrs. Stonebridge said.
Well, Gopher Hole couldn't be such a bad place. There were a lot of strange men there who worked in the mines and the coke ovens. But they worked hard. And people who work hard and have homes and children aren't bad people. Of course, there were those bad houses. Oh, well, if there were any bad men in town, the'd most likely go there. And my virtue would be safe until morning.
We boarded the train for home the next evening. We felt very traveled, and Johnny talked to the conductor about important things Johnny was quite sure of his exams. Many an important man had launched out on less education. We rode a pleasant hour, and it was almost dark when we pulled in to Salt Brush. And the three-mile walk home was refreshing.
A week passed. It was a very anxious week. So many things at the ranch seemed to depend on what my status would be as a result of those exams at Gopher Hole. If the examiners didn't pass me, things would go on as usual. Molly would stay in college at Logan. Prue would stay with her for her last year of high school. Johnny might take his choice of boarding at Shelby or Logan for his freshman year. But if there were to be four of us away from home, that made too big a break in the family, and Mamma would probably rent a house in Logan for the winter months, where there were enough schools to go around, and where she could look out after the bunch of us. That would leave Papa alone during the long winters at the ranch. So my state exams were very important. It would have been much less worry never to have taken them.
Finally, one day, Johnny came home from the post office with three letters, two large and one small. They were addressed to Johnny, to me, and to Mamma. Johnny was first. His enveloped contained a small slip of paper and a folder with two ribbons pasted on them with an important-looking seal. Johnny was promoted. Then everyone looked at me and waited. My envelope seemed to be sealed fast. Finally Johnny took it out of my hands and tore off the end and shook it. A small white slip fluttered to the floor. Elizabeth caught it up and handed it to Mamma. Mamma turned it slowly and read:
Seventh Grade Geography 100 Seventh Grade Physiology 99 Eighth Grade Arithmetic 85 Eighth Grade Spelling 96 Eighth Grade History 86 Eighth Grade Grammar 100
My folder was just like Johnny's.
Then Mamma opened her letter. It was from her father. Grandpa lived in a suburb of Salt Lake City. It was about two hundred miles away. Grandpa was very old and only wrote once or twice a year. Mamma was his youngest child, and the ties between them were very close, to make up for the distance that separated them.
Mamma cried a little as she scanned the small, cramped page. She raised her head and wiped her eyes with her apron.
"Pa will be ninety-one in August," she said, "and Ma has been gone now ten years. Pa wants me to bring my little brood and come down and look after him. He says we can have the whole house all but his room, and there's good schools close." She looked at Papa, half asking and half announcing. "It looks like this is it, Jake."
"Well, Julie," Papa said, "there's a lot of advantages in Salt Lake. It may be just the thing to do."
Salt Lake was a very big city. We had been there once. Lots of buildings were five stories high, and one or two towered up to ten. There would be people -- lots of people -- and streetcars and electric lights -- and high schools and colleges.
It had been a wonderful week: the state exams and all the facts of life, and getting promoted, and now we were going to move to Salt Lake City -- for the winter anyway -- as soon as summer was over and the crops were gathered in. It was all a woman of twelve could contain.
The Show Troop With the Guitar
Summer was wonderful. The roads had been improved and sometimes five or six cars would go by in a single day. And every time anyone broke down on the road anywhere between Salt Brush and Shelby, or Salt Brush and Gopher Hole, or Salt Brush and Indian Gulch, they always sent them to us at Salt Brush. We met a lot of nice people that way. In fact, they were about the only people we ever met.
"Collier never turns anybody away," they'd say. And if it happened to be a con-rod or an axle, Papa would get the forge going and would fix it somehow. Mamma didn't always take well to this. She'd say, "Who's gonna put the post holes in?" or, "Didn't you say you was gonna cultivate spuds today?"
But Papa would answer: "They need help, or they wouldn't come to us."
And that's how we came to get the show troop with the guitar. They had been to Gopher Hole and were on their way to Indian Gulch. That didn't sound too good, because Gopher Hole and Indian Gulch were very wicked cities. But when people were sent to us for help it made little difference what kind of people they were.
There were two young ladies and three young men in the troop, and they had a guitar. It was built like one Matthew Allen had once owned, only this one was played with a steel bar. You played it the first time without the steel, four strikes; then you slid the steel to the fifth fret and took four more strikes; then you went backward to the second fret, then forward to the seventh in the same way. You repeated this process until everybody was ready and on the right key. Then you just sang and played on the place where it sounded the best for the particular place in the song. It was beautiful.
Mamma was worried about where everybody would sleep. So after supper she took Papa off to the side and tried to figure it out. Papa could sleep on the cot in the boys' room; and Mamma could sleep with me and Rachel if they put Elizabeth in with Molly and Prue, who had just come back from Logan for the summer. They could put Allen with David and Johnny, and put Alice in Allen's crib with baby Judy. That left Mamma's and Papa's bed free, besides the daybed in the living room. Papa said to let them figure it out themselves from there.
But Mamma was still worried. You see, the young ladies had said they were married to two of the young men. But they smoked cigarettes and wore britches, and smelled of perfume; so you couldn't altogether trust what they said. And if they weren't married, Mamma was certainly not going to permit them to sleep together. Not in the good bed!
It was finally decided that the young ladies would sleep in Mamma's and Papa's bed, and the three young men would have to sleep outside in the tent.
The evening was spent in singing, accompanied by those four places on the guitar. The girls said they could dance; but they didn't show us. But they really could sing.
When it came bedtime the girls said they wanted to say goodnight outside. Mamma said all right -- but she waited for them to see that they did not scramble her sleeping arrangement.
So they stepped out into the back hall. One of the girls whispered: "They're Mormons! Do you suppose we'll be safe?" (They must have come from Missouri, too, like the minister.) And one of the men said: "You'll be all right. If anything happens just yell. We'll be just outside of the window."
The girls came back in alone, and Mamma showed them to the good bed.
The next day Papa took the broken pieces of their auto and put them in the forge and then pounded them on the anvil. He wasn't through when it got dark; so they sang again that night and played the guitar.
It took five days to get their car fastened together so that it would run.
When they were ready to go one of the men asked Papa how much they owed us. Papa said that we had enjoyed the music and supposed we were about square. But the man was very grateful. He said: "Let's see, there are five of us and we have been here for five days. You have fixed our car for us, and with the meals and everything ... it ought to be worth at least five dollars."
"No," Papa said, "we'd do as much for anybody."
But as they pulled away the man called back, "We'll send you the five dollars from Indian Gulch."
Mamma turned back into the house. She had work to do. She got the formaldehyde and the Lysol from the medicine shelf above the washbench, and the can of coal oil from the pantry. She found some packing papers and the whitewash brush. She spread the papers out all over the bedding, and soaked them good with formaldehyde. Then she rolled the bedding, papers, and all into a tight roll and tied them with carpet rags. Next she took the whitewash brush and saturated it with coal oil, and proceeded to paint the bedsprings. Then she gave the bedstead a final rubdown with Lysol. She closed the room tight. We could use the veranda stairs for the next twenty-four hours. She guessed that would take care of that stinking perfume.
It's Nice to Have a Party
"It isn't going to be so easy to leave this old ranch," Mamma reflected at breakfast one morning in late summer. Quilt making, school sewing, and taking care of the vegetable crops had made a busy summer; but as the time drew near for the fall school term to begin, we were all a little reflective.
"It won't be the same when we come back," Johnny said.
"It won't ever be the same, my boy," Mamma said sadly, and just for a moment it seemed that something might happen to the beautiful castle of hope anchored firmly upon the rocks of opportunity that was my picture of life and adventure in Salt Lake City. But just for a moment were my fears thus raised.
"The ground will still be here, Julie," Papa said, "but we mustn't let it bury us."
"It would be kinda nice to have a going-away party," Mamma suggested, although she didn't quite know how we could entertain our worldly neighbors with their kind of fun. "In all our years at Salt Brush Flat we've never had a party."
"We had a state fair once," put in Elizabeth, who had won highest honors of the day for her orthopedic performance and had never forgotten it.
"Don't be childish, Elizabeth," Prue scolded. Three years of high school had done a lot for Prue.
"It would be nice to have a party," she beamed sweetly. "We could invite all of Salt Brush --"
"To come up and sharpen their mower blades?" Papa teased.
"We could serve mutton stew and hot chocolate," suggested Molly, who had always been the mainstay in the kitchen, and was known to repeat a good thing.
"Not this time," Mamma said. "We will serve barbecued lamb, roasted over an open fire pit like David saw in Chicago."
We all looked at David. He was tall and dark and very handsome and quiet. But the most wonderful thing about David was he had been to Chicago.
"Could ya do it, David?" Johnny asked.
"Sure he could," Rachel affirmed, "if he had Bella Stratford to set there and call him pretty names."
The day of the party finally came. The house had never been so clean -- which seemed beside the point since the party was to be held outside. The fat lamb killed the day before dangled from the ceiling in the cool fruit cellar, wrapped in a clean white sheet like a harmless goat.
Mamma surveyed the spotless cleanliness of that sanctuary known as Mamma's and Papa's room, the morning task assigned to Prue and me.
"It looks pretty good," she said. And just then David rumbled out of the yard in the Studebaker, washed and proud in its old age. Papa put his head in the doorway.
"Who told him he could take my car?" he inquired. "The car don't need to go everytime somebody goes after the mail"
"We need ice, Jake," Mamma said coolly. "Didn't you say you'd like to serve ice cream?"
Papa came into the good room.
"That ladder," he said, looking at the venerable old structure that had served us so faithfully for all those eleven years, "-- it never has just suited me. How'd ya like a nice staircase into the upstairs? Molly and Prue are gettin' too modest to use the ladder."
"Not today, Jake," Mamma said. "They can use the veranda stairway if they're bashful."
But Papa put his hand on his chin and began to whistle. He always did that when he was figuring; and he usually figured best with the square and the saw and a pile of boards.
"Eve," he said, "run out to the blacksmith shop and fetch me the square."
When David drove into the yard an hour later he had the mail and the ice and Bella Stratford, who had come in on the morning train.
"It's wonderful to have so much good help," Mamma said, "-- two girls who have been to college, and one who has been to high school, and a boy who had been to Chicago. This ought to be a really great party."
David gave Molly and Prue their letters, and then he produced a large package wrapped in the familiar labels of Sears and Roebuck.
"Eva," he said, quite calmly for such a great occasion, "it must be getting kinda close to your birthday. Doesn't seem possible you could be thirteen. You seemed to enjoy that show troop so much that it occurred to me you might like one of those guitars. It isn't genuine Hawaiian one, of course, but it ought to sound about the same. There's supposed to be an instruction book inside."
Nobody had ever had such a magnificent present. My appreciation, if expressed at all, must have been muffled and incoherent, as the family, the party, and even the blond elegance of Bella Stratford melted into an unimportance atmosphere, and only an urge remained -- to rush to the organ and put the guitar in tune. The harmonies of the show troop had stayed clear in my mind; four strikes on the open strings, or three if you wanted to play a waltz -- then repeat on the fifth fret -- backward to the second -- forward to the seventh. And oh so many songs would fit into those chords -- good fireside songs that we all could sing. We could have a show troop every night! Nothing could be more wonderful!
It was Mamma who brought me back to earth.
"Well, children," she said, "there's still a lot to be done. David, you and Bella better attend to that barbecue; Molly, you take charge of the ice cream; Prue, you can help me with the vegetables and churning; Johnny, you and Rachel can put the planks on the sawhorses outside for the tables; and the rest of you kids keep out from underfoot. Oh, and Eva," she added, "you might see if you can work up something nice on that guitar for the folks tonight -- something like 'Old Folks at Home' or 'Where the Sunset Turns the Ocean's Blue to Gold.' "
The tuning chart in the instruction book said to start with the lower string and tune the guitar to E - A - E - A - C♯ - E. Running the tones thus associated in a mental arpeggio proved the chord to be the same as on the guitar of the show troop. The instruction book had now served it purpose and was deposited in the music rack on the organ. The picks, too, were unnecessary accoutrements. Only a steel bar -- and the precious instrument would wield to my touch like the harp in the hands of the shepherd boy. Maybe no kings would listen, but they'd be missing something.
The living room seemed much too unsacred for the birthplace of my career on the strings -- especially with all the pounding going on in Mamma's and Papa's room adjoining. Besides, it would be extra handy if Mamma should decide that peeling a bushel of potatoes was more immediately important to the success of the party than an arrangement of "Old Folks at Home." A mental survey of the outbuildings suggested the haybarn as the most appropriate and least frequented place. Out there the rafters could ring till the cows came home.
The guests arrived early in the evening in wagons and cars; and Fred Langley came on a horse. Papa, or course, couldn't come out to greet the people like Molly said was proper, because he hadn't finished with the staircase yet.
"You'd better leave him be," Mamma advised. "If he lays that hammer down now we might have to use the ladder for the next eleven years."
"Gracious me!" she exclaimed as she surveyed the bare sawhorses where Johnny and Rachel had laid the planks for the tables. "It does look like that man could have found some other wood besides my table boards!"
A party to some is good food. To others it is a good story or pretty song. To the young folks it might be a challenging game of wits or a little dancing. And to the very young it is, of course, ice cream. So we had all of these. The barbecue was perfect, and flanked with mashed potatoes, and served with a crunchy cabbage salad, it drew forth many an um and ah. And the guests seemed not to mind that they had to eat it from their laps. Johnny said we looked like so many Indians squatting around a campfire. But Prue said it was buffet style.
Then David tried some of the community games he had learned in Chicago.
"It's remarkable what two years away have done for that boy," Mrs. Allen remarked during a breathing spell, after she had shone wittily in one of his games. "He has such a fine leadership now."
"He's always been a good boy," Mamma defended.
"Yes," Mrs. Allen said, "but now he does things."
Papa came to the party just in time to hear Mamma announce my song on the new guitar. He'd changed into his suit and combed his hair, but he still had sawdust in his eyelashes.
Papa didn't know anything about the guitar, and Mamma hadn't had time to hear what had developed on it, so what came out was a surprise to both. It was a surprise to me, too, because it didn't altogether sound like the harp of the shepherd boy. The song turned out to be "My Old Kentucky Home," because the harmonies were adaptable and the theme quite appropriate.
The four strikes on the open strings brought everybody to attention -- then came the gentle stride to the fifth fret -- back to the second -- up to the seventh. The bar behaved beautifully, giving me confidence as the silver strings sang in that familiar introductory cadence used by the show troop.
Open .................. 5th ................... 2nd ........... 7th ...
1 . . 2 . . 3 . . 4 . . 1 . . 2 . . 3 . . 4 . . 1 . . 2 . 3 . 4 1 2 3 4
O...................... 5 ................... 2............ 7....
1 . . 2 . . 3 . . 4 . . 1 . . 2 . . 3 . . 4 . 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 1 2 3
......... O.............................. 5................ O....
The sun shines bright on my Old Kentucky Home --
4 . . . 1 2 . 3 . 4 . 1 . 2 . . 3 . 4 . 1 2 . . 3 . 1 . 1 . 2 . 3
..................... 2............ 7....
'Tis summer, the darkies are gay --
4 . . 1 . . 2 3 . 4 . 1 2 3 . 4 . . 123412
..... O ....................... 5 ................. O....
The corn tops ripe and the meadows in full bloom
3 . 4 1 2 . 3 4 1 2 3 . . 4 . . 1 2 . . . 3 . 4 . . 1 . 2
..................5 0 . 7.....................0......
While the birds make music all the day.
3 . . . 4 . 1 2 . 3 4 . 1 2 . . 3 . . 4 . . . 1234123
......................................5...................0..
The young folks roll on the little cabin floor --
4 . . . 1 . . 2 . 3 4 . 1 2 3 . 4 . . 1 2 . . . 3 4 . . . 123
.....................2................7.......
All merry all happy and bright --
4 . . 1 . 23 . 4 . . 1 . 23 . 4 . . . 123412
............... O............................ 5 .................... 0..
Bye and bye hard times come a knocking at the door --
3 . . . 4 . . . 1 2 3 4 1 . . 2 . 3 . . . 4 . 1 . 2 . . . 3 . 4 . . 1 2
......................... 5.. O . 2 ..... 7 ..... O......
Then my Old Kentucky Home, good night.
3 . . . 4 . . 1 . . 2 . . 3 . 4 . 1 . 2 . 3 4 . . 12341234
O............. 5......... O....... 5....................... O......
Weep no more, my lady -- O weep no more today --
1 . 23 . . 4 . 1 . 2 . 34 123412 34123 . . . 4 . . 1 . 2 . 34123412
O............................................ 5................ O....
He will sing one song for the Old Kentucky Home --
3 . . . 4 . . . 1 2 . 3 4 1 2 . . 3 . . 4 . . 1 2 . . . 3 . 4 . 1 . 2
....... 7...... O............. 5.... O...... 2.......... 7.... O.......
For the Old Kentucky Home far away.
3 . . . 4 . . . 1 . . . 2 . . 3 . . 4 . . . 1 . . 2 . . 3 . . 41234123
Everybody was pleased and Mrs. Jennings cried a little. She said that it reminded her of her old home in England. Mrs. Allen wanted to hear "Darling Nellie Gray," and Jerry Manwell asked for a Hawaiian fandango so he could do a dance.
Mamma had another surprise.
"It isn't exactly my place," Mamma began, "but since Bella's folks couldn't come anyway, she's going to let me tell it. Miss Bella has decided to join the Collier clan. This makes all of us, and especially David, very happy.
Jerry Manwell said this called for a real dance. So papa went back to the house and got his violin.
"Sound 'A,' " he said, very professionally. He tuned the fiddle and tightened the bow. And without even asking whether it was in my musical power to follow, he took his place at the head of the orchestra and patted his foot three times.
We played "Over the Waves" and "The Merry Widow Waltz" and "When Irish Eyes are Smiling," while everybody danced. Everybody but Old Man Jennings, who sat off at the edge of the crowd and nibbled away at a plug of Old Leader, and Mrs. Jennings, who sat quietly with her hand on Mamma's knee. When the waltz was over Mrs. Allen joined Mamma and Mrs. Jennings.
"These dances are all right for the young folks," she emphasized, as she sat down panting. But she bounced up again when Papa announced a Virginia reel.
We played some more waltzes and "Coming Through the Rye." The guitar was getting a little more accustomed to my inexperienced hands, leaving me more free to watch the people. It was fun watching them. To me a party was people. It was a conclusion formed then and there. My place in the orchestra was a particularly good vantage point. You had to adjust yourself to the different people to enjoy them fully and make the party a success.
It was a little difficult to adjust to Mrs. Allen's endless chatter; but if you listened long enough, you would get some little wisdom like, "The best wheat is not necessarily the tallest, but that has absorbed the most sunshine." That was a pleasant proverb for me to work on, because of my not being very tall. It was a personal diagnosis with a personal prescription. It was nice to have one friend like Mrs. Allen.
Then there was Mrs. Jennings. She had a sad face and was living tight within herself. She hadn't always been like that. Something in her had resigned, and something else was still hanging on. She would have that sad, divided look until she either let go altogether or got a better grip. Nobody could adjust very well to sullen Old Man Jennings. Maybe that's what Mrs. Jennings thought too.
Jerry Manwell was a bit of a clown. His antics were not always refined, but neither were they always offensive. He seemed to cover his moral nakedness with a fig leaf of frivolity. But there was some good in him or he wouldn't have tried to cover at all. It showed he was conscious of his weaknesses.
It was pleasant to study the people from the bandstand under the veranda. The bonfire glowed like a mellow hearth; and the harvest moon produced a cool, soft lightning effect.
Old Man Jennings seemed especially sullen, sitting off at the side and gazing east past Shale Point.
"He's got England in his eyes," Mrs. Jennings said sadly. "But then, that's better than whisky."
Mrs. Allen was talkative, as usual, and nobody was very attentive, as usual. Jerry Manwell had taken over in his favorite role of master of ceremonies and released David to dance with Bella. Bella was tall and blond and elegant. They made a nice couple. Fred Langley was trying to impress Prue, and Prue was remaining unimpressed, not through any coquetry -- but Prue was getting letters from Logan. Johnny was making boyish passes at Falene Crosby, who was making girlish passes at Fred Langley. Nobody was making any passes at Maxine Manwell, who was jigging her sleeping baby to the rhythm of the two-piece orchestra. When our eyes met, she came over and sat close. Maxine was neither child nor woman. At fifteen she had been married, divorced, and had a six-month old daughter. There was no one else there quite in her bracket. She had tried to make conversation with the older women, but the things that came out were very adolescent.
"Do you hear from Walter?" she asked, near the end of a piece.
Walter had left Salt Brush at Christmas time. And to my knowledge, nobody had heard from him. Walter would be sixteen by now. He would be taller and quite handsome, with his dark features. He would be making a name for himself in Indian Gulch for his fairness and generosity.
"He never answered my letter," was my studied reply at the end of the music.
"Mine either," Maxine confessed. "He sure wuz one nice guy. But of course, he'd be a little young fer me."
"Well," Mrs. Jennings said, as the farewells were being pronounced, "a party is a wonderful thing. Maybe things would have gone better for us if we'd had a few parties and made a few friends."
Mamma tried to think of something especially cheerful to say to her; but when she looked up, Mrs. Jennings was gone.
There was a sawdust trail that extended practically all through the house when we went in to get the wraps. Some of the youngsters had discovered the new stairway and had formed a parade that had clomped sawdust upstairs and downstairs, but mostly in my lady's chamber.
"Oh well," Mamma laughed, "it takes a little more than ice cream to make it interesting for the little folks." When Mamma laughed like that everything was all right; and Elizabeth and Alice came out from under the new steps with young Peter Langley and the Peterson baby -- sawdust and sheepishness in their eyes.
"That's a wonderful staircase, Jake," Mamma concluded, after the people had all admired it sufficiently and had gone.
"It's too bad ya couldn't-a-had it eleven years ago, Julie," Papa said. "After all, it only took a day."
Like Ripe Wheat
There wasn't a great deal of packing to do because we weren't going to take a great deal.
"Just the same, it'll take two trips," Papa said.
And by some miraculous maneuvering the first trip pulled out of the yard with a load of bedding, clothing and rugs, but most miraculously -- with Rachel and me and the guitar.
We had decided to go by the way of Logan because Mamma had some rug customers there. She had sent them rugs in years past, and they had sent us fruit. It was a good arrangement. Mamma had gained a good reputation for her well-made and artistic rugs, and Logan raised wonderful peaches.
But just before we got to Logan the old Studebaker threw an axle. Papa walked into the city and secured the necessary part. He got back just before dark, tired and sad.
"There's been an earthquake," he announced.
Mamma looked worried. "Are the kids at home all right? Or was it Salt Lake City?"
"It was Japan," Papa said. "Thousands of people killed. The fires are still burning."
The road commission truck towed us to a spot on a slight elevation of ground on the upper side of the road.
"We'll have to camp here, Julie," Papa announced. "It'll take a day of daylight to git that axle in."
Camping out was more of a delight than a calamity to Rachel and me. We had plenty of bedding, and we loved the out-of-doors.
"Shall we lay the beds in the gulch so we'll be sheltered by the knolls on each side?" Mamma suggested.
"We'll be closer to the stars on top," Papa philosophized.
The night was a navy blue field with no stars. But the beds were laid on top of the small ridge by the side of the Studebaker.
After prayers we lay for a long time and discussed the wonders of the sky and the tragedies of Japan. Then by the long sonorous breathing emitting from the other bed we knew that Mamma and Papa were asleep.
"Eva, did you hear something?" Rachel asked anxiously, half sitting up. Her words seemed to catch me up out of a doze.
"Why, Rachel? What did it sound like?"
"It sounded like an earthquake in Tokyo!" she exclaimed. And by this time we were both sitting up. A great black hulk was tumbling swiftly down the ravine.
"Mamma!" Rachel screamed, more in protective warning than out of childish panic. "Let's git out of here!" But her words were smothered in a dreadful rumble, and there was no time to repeat them. Already the great black hulk had passed us and was balanced squarely across the road; and behind it in the gulch -- in the precise shelter where Mamma had suggested we lay our beds -- rested a boulder the size of a claim shanty. A muddy sludge of mush consistency poured down around the boulder and leveled the low place between the ridges.
It's the providence of God," Papa said quietly after the surrounding boulders and rivers of mud had seemed to get settled in their unruly places all around us, leaving only our little knoll unravaged.
"It looks to me like a cloudburst in the mountains," Mamma said. And then we remembered that we had driven through a light rain early that afternoon as we had entered the top of the canyon.
"Just think," Papa continued. "We might-a been in that cloudburst."
The next morning we discovered that the great hulk was a dislocated hillside hayloft, with hay still intact. The rest of the debris was the dislocated hillside. The road was completely camouflaged with a chocolate-like pudding.
The two weeks that followed were a gypsies' paradise for Rachel and me. With eight or ten feet of mud overlaying the highway, traffic was blocked from both ways. But by ambling goatlike over the upper ridges, we could communicate with neighbors on either side. We traded a small rug to one family for some milk, eggs, and butter, with a bucket of potatoes and a loaf of warm bread thrown in. Another neighbor brought over some Plymouth Rock hens and a cabbage, and wanted a small bedroom rug in exchange.
"Well," Mamma said, "at least we needn't go hungry. But what worries me is that the peaches are on now. In another two weeks they'll be gone and we'll be out of our winter's fruit."
But that, too, was forestalled. All the rugs not definitely promised to customers were price-marked, and labeled with Mamma's stickers.
"You girls can take those into town and peddle them for cash," Mamma said. "Then we'll buy some bottles and sugar. We can pick peaches on shares and put them up here."
So Papa made a rock grill where we had had our bonfire and we put up peaches -- cases of them.
In the evenings when it was too dark to see we'd get out the guitar. The neighbors would come over and sit by our fire and sing.
"Well, maybe that show troop never sent us any five dollars fer puttin' 'em up," Papa said one night after a particularly happy session. "But the laws of compensation, Julie, we've been overpaid. They got five days of board and room -- but we got a musician."
When we left, piloted carefully by a caravan of road commission machinery over the soft, newly cut road, we had enough money to make a comforting noise in our pockets, and enough bottled peaches for the winter ahead.
Of course, we were two weeks late for the school term when we arrived at Salt Lake. And Mamma knew that they must hurry back for the rest of the children, who would miss still more school than we would. So she made shorts calls upon the aunts and uncles, and promised to make a better visit after the moving was completed.
"But Julie," Aunt Katherine persisted, "you can't leave these two girls without a mother's care for all the while you're away. You may be gone a couple of weeks. Let me take care of them."
Now this was all very nice of Aunt Katherine. But frankly, we were scared. Aunt Katherine had a beautiful home and everything nice. Not only that -- she was something of a society woman. She was very proper. What if we were to do something wrong? We felt like two little wild goats just before being domesticated.
The domesticating process was exacting, but not as painful as we had feared. It went pretty hard with me when Aunt Katherine caught me biting my nails; and Rachel was taught to leave her bread and butter on her plate, instead of keeping it in her fist down under the table.
Cousin Loraine was married and lived away. She had a daughter just younger than Rachel. But for some reason Loraine happened to come home just as Aunt Katherine was preparing us for the evening bath.
"Come in, Lorry," Aunt Katherine called. "We're in the bathroom."
Now, maybe we had missed a few rules of polite society in our growing up. But none of the rules of modesty had been ignored. We stood hugging our petticoats close around our throats and trembling in immoral horror as the introductions, were being made.
"This is your cousin Loraine," Aunt Katherine said sweetly, and added for her daughter's enlightenment the facts that our naked anatomy might not have already betrayed:
"Rachel is eleven and Eva is thirteen. Eva is in high school, Lorry; and just imagine -- when you started high school you were as large as you are now."
The water was measured then, and we were told to lower ourselves into the great tub. We were being put to soak. It took all the courage we could muster to complete our undressing. Cousin Loraine turned to leave and we lowered our petticoats hesitatingly.
"O look, Lorry," Aunt Katherine exclaimed in surprise. "They're white underneath."
Our outward likeness to praire Indians had never been so clearly pointed out before. That was why Aunt Katherine had tried so patiently to tame us at the dinner table. We were prairie Indians. Nobody could modestly be expected to see that underneath we were white. Rachel looked at me. We were two little brown buffaloes in a white porcelain bath. And for a moment it looked as if there might be a stampede.
"They're like ripe wheat," Cousin Lorry said softly; and there was understanding and affection in her voice.
That night we lay between soft white sheets in the guest room. The walls were papered in a delicate flower pattern and the ceiling was done in cream. There was no chummy little brown gnomes to pry into our dreams as there were on the whitewashed flour-sack ceiling in our room at the ranch. But then, Aunt Katherine's roof probably didn't leak brown gnomes as ours did at home. And home was far away in the land of Indians and buffaloes. Brown gnomes were rather childish creatures anyway. All that must be left behind now with the playhouse under the veranda. We were in the city now, and we must grow to fit it. Aunt Katherine was trying to help us. Lorry, too. She hadn't said we were either Indians or buffaloes. Those were foolish sensitivities that had arisen out of us. Lorry had said we were like ripe wheat. Wheat is a very useful commodity. It is at its best when it is ripe. "The best wheat is not necessarily the tallest, but that that has absorbed the most sunshine." Nobody wants green wheat but ground hogs and unruly geese and breachy cows; and they'd as soon have alfalfa.
There were many things about city life that we would have to learn. But learning was what life was for. That was why we had come to Salt Lake. It would be hard at first; but if the children at school saw us as buffaloes and Indians; we might, by showing the sunshine we had absorbed, mellow the illusion into ripe wheat.
The Insecticide Vanity Case
Pamela Pomeroy was about my age, but her older brother Paul was in my class. We were sophomores. Pamela was a freshman. Some of the kids thought Pamela was stuck up. But she always treated me quite nice. Once she even stopped in at my house after school for a few minutes.
It embarrassed me some that we had to have the daybed in the living room, where Johnny and Allen slept. But that didn't seem to embarrass her so much as the fireplace did. It took up a large space on one wall and projected out into the room about two feet. It was made of dark brick that had been calcimined yellow and was smoked dark again. It had a flat top where Mamma could put Papa's underwear to finish drying. And it was the only place where we could put our school books where Judy couldn't get into them. And it really proved its worth the time Elizabeth had the croup ... She slept up there as warm as toast.
Pamela looked at it rather puzzled.
"Oh, that's our fireplace, Pamela. Papa made it. We don't have a furnace in this house."
"We have a furnace," Pamela said. "It's in the basement and it doesn't smoke."
"Our basement is outside." So was our plumbing system ... and the other utilities.
"Let's go to your room," Pamela said.
There were five doors going out of the living room ... the outside door, the one to Mamma's and Papa's room, the ones to ours, the pantry, and the kitchen. We crossed over and went through the middle one.
"Oh, don't you even have a room by yourself?" Pamela said, looking around the place with about as much concern as a social service worker.
"Oh, yes, this is my room. Only Rachel sleeps here with me, and we let Elizabeth and Alice sleep over there." The magazine in the school nurse's office said it was quite fashionable to have twin beds. Ours were double beds, but maybe Pamela wouldn't notice.
"They don't match very well," Pamela said. "The wooden one looks a little better than the brass one. It looks like you've sawed it off."
"Um hum. The head used to be the foot. Papa's going to paint it as soon as he gets time. He's going to make a clothes closet out of the headboard."
"My bedroom is done in walnut," Pamela said, "with a turquoise broadloom rug that comes clear to the walls. My clothes closet has a full-length mirror in the door. Where do you keep your clothes?"
"Behind the door. This is my nail, and this one is Rachel's." Elizabeth and Alice had a box under the bed. There was a faded gingham dress and a frayed sweater on my nail. "Mamma keeps our good clothes in her cedar closet." That would be all right if Pamela didn't insist on going into Mamma's room. "We can't go in because we are redecorating in there ... and the paperhangers have got the ladder up against the door."
Just then Mamma came in. "Eva," she said, "you'd better get your good dress off and get busy. We got to bottle the pears tonight. Go in my room and get a couple-a bushels and put them in the kitchen. Pamela can help you carry them in. My back hurts."
In Mamma's room there were six baskets of pears covered over with a horse blanket. We had picked them the week before. The carpet loom stood next to the bed, with boxes of unwoven carpet rags sitting about and lint from the woven ones littering the floor. Papa's shirt and vest hung on one end of the loom, and Mamma's flour-sack nightgown hung on the other. You could still make out the red and blue lettering of the brand.
"It looks like the paperhangers didn't come today like they said they would." That was after we'd closed the door in Mamma's room.
Pamela took the other handle of the basket of pears. "Is that the door to the cedar closet?" she asked, pointing to the door that led from Mamma's room to the alcove where Grandpa had spent his declining days, and which now served as Judy's nursery.
"Well, you see, Pamela, it's not exactly a cedar closet. You see, it's sort of a cedar chest ... and she keeps it under the bed."
Pamela set the basket down and looked under the bed. But there was nothing under there but the pot.
Mamma came in with a bucket of water just as we set the pears down on the kitchen floor. "That room's mess," she apologized to Pamela, "but we're going to rear that paper off and calcimine as soon as Mrs. Winthrop settles with me for that carpet. Say, Pamela, ask your mother if she can use a nice bedroom rug. Mrs. Shelby changed her mind and wants a pink one instead. So the blue one is up for sale."
Pamela met me at the lockers the next morning. She was very reserved. She handed me a package and a folded note. The note was from her mother.
Does your mother happen to have a bedroom rug that she could sell to me? We have house guests coming for Thanksgiving and our spare room is so bare. If you could bring one down soon it would help me so much.
Here is a dress that doesn't fit me anymore. Pamela says you sew, and we thought you might be able to make it over for yourself.
Cordially,
CHARLOTTE POMEROY
The dress was a lovely dark blue satin with silk lace sleeves. There was enough material in it for an elegant party dress. It would even leave a choice of styles. And it wouldn't take long to cut it from a thirty-eight down to a size ten.
So all through English B and Ancient History my mind was busy. But not with English B and Ancient History. Not even with the blue satin dress with the silk lace sleeves. But with the puzzle of what to give Pamela that would do in a measure show my appreciation. Finally in study period it came to me.
She could use a vanity case. It was the time when girls and women carried handbags made out of inner tube and decorated with rubber fringe and glass beads. Pamela had such a handbag. But she didn't have a vanity case. Nice girls of fourteen didn't use lipstick and rouge, but there was no harm in having a vanity case to carry your handkerchief and comb in. You could get a fairly nice vanity case for fifty cents; but it wasn't so easy to get the fifty cents. And if you had the fifty cents you'd probably get a pair of lisle stockings instead. You couldn't make a pair of lisle stockings, but you could make a vanity case. Pamela would get a surprise. It would be a blue satin vanity case.
The questions at the end of the chapter were easy, so the English book went up on the fireplace with the Ancient History. There was a trinket box high up on a pantry shelf that was my sanctuary for very special treasures. It held odd beads and bits of baby ribbon, a broken mirror, a velvet flower from an old hat, and a few matted skeins of embroidery floss. Mamma gave me a piece of white silk that had been a petticoat. It could be dyed pink with a dab of red crepe paper, and would make a nice lining. There would be enough of the dark blue satin for the outside.
Most vanity cases were made by covering a cardboard disc for the bottom and sewing around it a straight band which was drawn up at the top with a twisted cord. Some of them had a mirror in the bottom on the outside, and some had a mirror dangling on a ribbon inside. But those were quite common and not at all like Pamela. This one would be different. It would even have a shape. And a personality. (It turned out that it even had a smell.)
The frame was a small bellows-shaped cardboard box. It had originally held some kind of insecticide powder. But it had been empty for a couple of years since we no longer had any insects. We had kept the box as sort of a prescription. The blue satin was stretched over the outside of each half of the box and drawn temporarily into place with a basting thread. The velvet petals from the old hat flower were cut into smaller flowers and sewn on the side that was supposed to be the front, with rows of small seed beads outlining the petals. Then the larger piece of broken mirror was glued securely on the inside. It wasn't square and it wasn't oblong. It was the shape of Nevada. But it was different. The clouded pink silk made a good lining; and the baby ribbon, braided, made a good handle. Finished, the insecticide box made a good vanity case. Papa said it ought to be worth about a dollar. And Mamma said that any girl should like a vanity case like that.
So my heart was high, carrying the light blue bedroom rug and the dark blue vanity case down to Pamela's house late the next afternoon. She lived in the town part of our suburb. It was about a mile.
Mrs. Pomeroy liked the rug and gave me the three dollars. And Pamela was very nice about the vanity case. But Pamela had company. It was Camellia Wentworth. She was an only child and new to our neighborhood and talked with airs.
"Let me see that little number," she told Pamela, raising her fingers like Johnny did when he made rooster shadows on the windowblind in the lamplight. "Mumm ... not a bad little pill box. What came in it? Some kind of laxative?" She opened it too wide straining the stitches where the halves were sewn together. "Mumm ... and what a perfume! Smells like flea powder." She dropped it on the davenport and put her arm around Pamela. "You pedal around with me, Pam, and for Christmas you'll get a real vanity case, a golden one with a big mirror and all the fittings."
As they went out the front door arm in arm, Pamela turned a little, giving me a look that might have been gratitude mixed with embarrassment, or might have been a kindly pity. They went down the steps.
Mrs. Pomeroy had gone upstairs to try the new rug in the guest room. She hadn't heard Camellia, and she hadn't seen Pamela's face. And there was no need for her to see mine. There are times when you'd rather people wouldn't ask you how you are and all the things that nice people ask. She was coming downstairs. It was rude to hurry away without a word. But it saves a lot of time .. and sometimes tears.
The Lambies That Came in Spring
Papa was never one to take his kids out of school for anything. Many a time he paid out up to nine dollars a day for the help of some hired hand when his own boy could have done the job as well. But education was the only wealth he wanted for his kids, Papa said, and he stuck to it.
"If ya got an education," he said, "you can be what ya want to be, and that's better'n all the money in the world. When ya go out of here, ya ain't takin' no money. But Gabriel himself can't take yer learnin' away from ya. The people that's the happiest is them that kin do the most fer their fellow men. An' the ones that knows the most about the most things is the ones who can do that the best. So keep yer eyes open an' git yerselves all the useful learnin' ya kin git."
So that was why we went to school, sometimes under great odds. And that is why all the especially big jobs at the ranch were left for vacation times when it wouldn't interfere with out education to help. Providence itself had made allowance for this by putting all the hoeing, weeding, and irrigating in the summer months. And then where Providence left off, the schools took it up, so that in October when the sugar beets were ready to come out of the ground they called a "vacation" so the kids could top the beets ... That is the Utah version because Utah grows beets. But in Wyoming it was sheep. And sheep don't have to be "topped" in the fall ... they have to be "lambed" in the spring.
So with his kids in school in Utah and his sheep on the ranch in Wyoming, Papa had his problems. He generally solved the lambing problem by arranging for them to arrive the latter part of May when school finished. But these lambs were only a nuisance in the June shearing, and they made a puny show as lamb chops when the market was best for lamb. Besides, the ewes were hardly ready for the long trek to summer grazing ground so soon after their motherhood. Altogether, the lambies should come in the spring.
As a rule there is no spring vacation in the Utah schools. But one year something very co-operative happened to the school board. Their funds were a little low, so they decided to clip out a few days from the school calendar ... They would create a spring vacation ... two weeks out of March and April. The weather prophets had promised a mild winter, and the best ground could be readied early. This would keep the youngsters out of mischief and help the farmers ... and keep the school board from being criticized.
Papa was pleased. "If the school board don't change their minds we'll prob'ly git a head start with the lambs next year. There's five hundred ewes this fall; and with a fair sheepherder's luck in twins there oughta be seven hundred lambs in the spring."
So Papa went back to the ranch. And seven hundred lambs were ordered for the latter part of March.
The winter was mild like the prophets said. Papa came down for the holidays and reported the canyons clear. We spent a bare Christmas, and even by February there wasn't enough snow to hold up a ground hog's shadow. But the prophets hadn't said much about the spring. The winds began about the middle of March, and blew a steady cold breath across the plains of Wyoming that we could feel even in Utah. And Mamma said:
"It must be dreary for yer pa up there in Wyoming with them sheep, and no one fer company but Mexican Mike." Mexican Mike was a deaf-mute, but he was a good man with sheep.
Then the school board put a notice in the hall at the high school:
UNLESS THE COLD WEATHER SUBSIDES SUBSTANTIALLY BEFORE MONDAY, THE SPRING VACATION WILL BE INDEFINITELY POSTPONED.
Classes as usual in Utah ... and Papa alone except for old Mexican Mike in Wyoming with five hundred ewes that couldn't be postponed. And as we studied the prospect at noon from the study-hall window on that late day in March, that season which should open the first creaky door of spring, the snow blew thick and icy on the long row of panes.
Johnny stood looking over my shoulder at the blinding snow. Johnny was seventeen. We were both juniors, but Johnny had certainly become a man. Nobody thought of me as anything but a kid ... a little kid. But Johnny was a man. He had made numerous automobiles out of heaps of junk. And no one, even at the county fairs, had exhibited such skill and understanding over a motorcycle. He had an ancient Harley-Davidson that everybody called the "Puddle-Jumper!" Whimsical students nicknamed him "Barney," and lower classmen frequently asked him if the Google comic strip were named after him. People in distant parts of the state who had never heard of Johnny Collier all knew "Barney and his Puddle-Jumper." Yes, there was genius in Johnny. He turned and looked at the big calendar that some book wholesale house had bequeathed to the school.
"Eva," he said sagely, "Sunday is the first day of spring. Papa was gonna come for us tomorrow -- you and me and Rachel, to help him with the lambs. But Eve" -- you could see Johnny still considering me just a little kid -- "Papa won't be able to come for us in this blizzard ... He won't be able to leave the sheep with Mexican Mike in a situation like this. But we've gotta go, Eve. He needs us worse now than ever. Rachel can't go. There won't be room. Besides, Rachel's not big enough to be much help ..." (That was technically not true; Rachel outdid me in both weight and measurement. But if Johnny were trying to bring me to a certain useful maturity by his psychological slight of Rachel, he could get by with it this once.) "Lambing isn't a very pretty picture for a girl in junior high."
So Johnny began to map out his program.
"It'll be a cold ride, Eve, and there ain't much upholstery on the hind seat of a motorcycle. And two hundred miles is a little more than an evening joy ride ... How about it, Eve, do ya think ya can take it?"
Papa had always said if a thing had to be done, the easiest way was to do it.
"Sure, Johnny. Do we go tonight?"
"Yes. This storm will probably bring the lambs early. The ewes will be uneasy over the blizzard and get sick too soon. Besides, there's a lot of preparations to be made before those lambs can come in comfort. Papa didn't count on the blizzard, you know, and the sheds will probably need a lotta work."
There were the big main stable that had more or less gone to pieces since the horses died, and several open sheds where the sheep usually sheltered during late spring lambing. They were entirely inadequate for a winter reception. "Yes, we'll have to go tonight," Johnny continued. "There's only one serious problem; it'll take about four gallons of gas more than we've got in the tank."
"Mrs. Pennington owes me a dollar for last week." It would strengthen my position considerably to be able to finance the expedition. Maybe Johnny wouldn't consider me such a child.
"Well, stop in after school and ask her for it. Then go home and put up some kind of a lunch. Better put yer coveralls on over your dress, and get a quilt ... a small one. That's all we can take. We'll start as soon as we can get away," Johnny finished.
"Shall we ask Mamma?"
"We won't ask her," Johnny said. "We'll tell her. Women don't use their heads in these situations. If we establish it that we're going, before she gets a chance to say we can't she ain't so likely to say no when she gits a chance." Johnny was respectful to all of the commandments ... the "honor thy father and thy mother" one as much as any other. But even in the commandment the father came first.
"Dad's gotta have some help ... anybody can see that, and it's gotta be quick. Mom'll give in. Leave it to me."
It was true that Johnny had special powers with Mamma. But to get her permission to buck a blizzard on a motorcycle for two hundred miles of canyon road in the dark of night .... those would be powers to do even Johnny credit. And after he got the permission he would still need some extra power to make the trip. But he would do it somehow. Johnny could do anything on a motorcycle.
Wouldn't that be something to tell the kids around school, just casual-like, not making it sound important at all ... for instance: "Oh, Johnny happened to be going up to Wyoming a couple of weeks ago ... the blizzard wasn't so bad ... only made drifts about three or four feet high across the road ... Wasn't so very far, though, only a little over two hundred miles as the snow flies ... in your face ... So he took me along. You can't see the canyons so well from a car. (They wouldn't need to know that Papa had the car with him in Wyoming.) So, we took the motorcycle. We saw some pretty nice scenery ... only of course it was in the dead of night ... but we've seen it so many times before ..." (It would have a traveled air.)
It would be fun to see what they would make of it. Maybe they'd say, "Goodness! weren't you scared of the dugways?" or "Heavens! what if you'd got in a snowslide? Didn't you nearly freeze?" Pauline Perkins would say, "Ain't Johnny just wonderful?" Maybe even the school paper would hear of it ...
THE MIDNIGHT RIDE OF JOHNNY AND EVA COLLIER
Two young students brave two hundred miles of blizzard on a motorcycle to save a crop of early spring lambs. Such courage and bravery have been exhibited by a few other persons in history. Paul Revere made such a ride, but we understand that he had the luxury of a horse ...
Maybe Albert would see it, since he was the editor, and maybe he'd feel sorry that he hadn't taken me to the prom.
The bell cut sharply into my thoughts, slicing away any further musing into the future, and leaving me only the blunt stub of the immediate ... sixth period ... sociology test.
Johnny picked up his books. "Be sure to get the dollar from Mrs. Pennington," and he was off to his class in advanced mechanics.
It was four o'clock when we got home. Rachel, Elizabeth, Alice, and Allen were already there and were absorded in various aspects of work and play. But Mamma wasn't there. She'd left a note conspicuously on the fireplace:
Have gone to a quilting and taken Judy. Be home about dark. Eva mold out the bread. Rachel practice your violin. Elizabeth gather the eggs.
Johnny took up the pencil and wrote boldly across the bottom of the page:
JOHNNY, GO TO WYOMING AND HELP YOUR FATHER WITH THE LAMBS.
"It's as easy as that," he said, very satisfied. "There won't be any argument outta Mom."
The bread took hurried shapes in the bakepans. Rachel could see to it from there. We wouldn't be able to wait through the last "raise" for the baking. So two round gobs of dough had been saved back. There's nothing like a couple of top-of-the-stove flapjacks when you can't wait for the baking.
Johnny checked over the equipment. He put the dollar in his pocket. "We'll fill up at the first station," he said. He put the lunch in a flour sack and tied it to the belt of my coat in front. The warmth of the hot flapjacks came through the layers of cloth.
"Better get about three big safety pins," Johnny said, "biggest ones you can find. This quilt will turn a a lotta blizzard off ya." But when we were ready he folded the quilt and put it around him, squaw fashion, over his shoulders.
"Now, you take those safety pins and pin this quilt up the back of my Machinaw," he said, "but be careful not to get a vertebra."
Wonderful genius, that was Johnny! He had fashioned for his flight a giant pair of quilted wings ... and for me, the safe, warm shelter that lay between them!
If God had chosen to look down on us that night (as most certainly He did), He might have said to His angels:
"Look, here come Johnny and Eve, looking like some mammoth moth, with its wings folded back, all ready to light upon some flower. Quickly, hang out the brightest stars to glisten through the falling snow; and send a crossward wind to blow a path among the drifts. And where the dugways wind, extent the earth, that they find not a sepulchre among the sunken crags below. They have a mission among My little lambs.
Toward midnight we reached the mouth of the last canyon. Salt Lake and Ogden were far behind. Even Logan was a dim, cold patch of light reflected in the sky. Ahead lay twenty miles of winding canyon climb, to be rewarded at the top with the jewel-like glimpse of lower Clearwater Lake, cold and blue and priceless ... and from there, that last well-known stretch across the border into Wyoming and Salt Brush ...
Johnny guided the motorcycle toward the caretaker's shed at the foot of the canyon. The electric plant and the reservoir seemed to preside over the valley below.
"How about some lunch?" Johnny said, when he had turned the handle grip that cut out the gas. "Our steed could use a little rest. We'll step into this watershed and get thawed out a little. What ya got in that flour sack that's good to eat?" He climbed stiffly off, dragging his wilted wings. "We're halfway, Eve. We've come the longest half."
The night watchman came out with a lantern. It swung like a railroad beacon as he talked.
"What we got here?" he called from a few feet away. He looked at my coveralls, just like a boy's, and didn't stop off short like the stubby ones that Mamma had made. "Yer brother's kinda little, ain't he, for a jaunt like this?" he said to Johnny. "Where ya headed for? Does yer folks know ya got the kid?"
Johnny squirmed. The folks really didn't know.
"Eva's my sister. She's fifteen, but she hasn't got her growth yet. But she can cook pretty good ... good enough fer a lambing crew. We're going up to help with the sheep."
The night watchman was kindly skeptical.
"Got any particular ranch in mind? It's a little early fer lambing, ain't it?"
"It seems a little early all right," Johnny admitted, "but Dad though his lambs better come during spring vacation so we could help. So our sheep at Salt Brush will lamb this week." (He didn't need to know there wasn't going to be any vacation.)
"Salt Brush," the watchman said thoughtfully. "You ain't part of the Benton tribe, are you?" Benton Brothers was one of the largest sheep outfits in Wyoming. They sometimes ran their sheep on our land. They rented large tracts at a time all over the southwestern part of the state. But their sheep would probably be lambing in late April, and they would likely have some seasoned old sourdough for a cook, with four or five kinds the size of me to help him peel potatoes.
"No," Johnny said, "we're the Collier kids. We're about six miles from the Benton ranch."
"Collier," the watchman said. "Jake Collier's kids?"
Johnny brightened.
"Jake Collier was through here just a few months ago," the watchman continued. "Sat up half the night and talked religion. That man knows more about the Bible than old man Genesis himself. Now with me, our folks was always Presbyterians. But no minister ever laid the Bible out to me as plain and reasonable as Jake Collier did. So you're Jake Collier's kids ... He said he had some."
"There's ten," Johnny said. "Three older than me and five younger than Eva. But we're the oldest ones home. Two are married and one's teaching."
"So you're Jake Collier's kids," the watchman repeated. "Let's go in an' see what there is in the lunch bucket."
"We got our own food," Johnny said, "but we would like to come in and get warm."
The shed was cozy with a good fire. On top of the round stove a pot of coffee bubbled. The watchman took a tin cup off a nail on the wall and poured it full of fresh hot coffee.
"This'll take the crimps outta yer knees," he told Johnny, "and help keep you awake on those canyon curves ahead."
"We don't drink coffee," Johnny said, "but thanks, anyway."
The watchman was pleased.
"Yer a good boy, son. Collier oughtta be proud sure enough. Now with me it's different. My ma nursed coffee right into me from the first. With us it ain't no particular sin. But you got a belief. And when ya got a belief, ya gotta stick by it. There ain't no respect otherwise. It wouldn't surprise me to see the Mormon people get to be the healthiest folks in the world .... lessen they back down on what they believe."
We ate our flapjacks and jelly and the watchman at his sandwiches and coffee. The flapjacks had been hot when they had started on the trip, split, and with jelly spread between. The jelly had melted some and had run out into the flour sack.
"You'd better leave that flour sack here," the watchman advised, "and sponge off yer sister's coat where it's run through. The bears might smell that jelly and think it was honey or something. Why, last fall there was a fruit peddler goin' up the canyon with a truck of cantaloupes. He stopped to git himself some sleep and the bears completely ruined his load. Near scared him to death, too. And then jist two weeks ago they brought a three-hundred pound brown bear outta that canyon about ten miles up."
Johnny looked at me. "We ain't no scaredy cats," he said, "but maybe we'd better leave the sack."
"You kin pick it up on yer way back," the watchman said.
We hated to leave the caretaker's shed. It was warm and light inside and the talk was good. The watchman came out to see us off with his lantern. He thought Johnny's wings were an excellent idea.
"But why don't you fasten them around your sister in back?" he asked.
"She might go to sleep if she got too comfortable," Johnny explained, "and two people can't ride a motorcycle unless they both stay awake. They have to lean alike on the curves. But the big reason is, what if the thing happened to skid and pin one of us under? If we wuz pinned together neither one of us could get clear. No, it's best not to get tangled up in a motorcycle. You want yer arms and legs free."
Three times the watchman had tested Johnny's character. And three times Johnny had been wise.
"Yer good kids," the watchman praised. "Jake Collier oughtta be proud."
The canyon became suddenly steeper. The watershed and the reservoir fell gradually behind. The putt-putt of the small motor spat saucily back at the snow. It seemed like we were heading into a huge funnel of flakes. There were a few night birds who called to us; and once Johnny called back to me over his own flapping wings.
"Wish you could see how many different kinds of things stay awake at night. This canyon's alive with zoology. We've scared up two deer and a flock of sage hens and about a hundred rabbits and a skunk." But if he mentally included any bears, he didn't point them out.
The blizzard was lessening; but the drifts were getting higher with the grade. The motor sometimes struggled into a lower key and hummed a slower tune. At times we'd have to lean forward and watch our balance carefully.
"If this motor quits singin' you better start in," Johnny encouraged. "The pioneers would never have been able to cut through these canyons if they'd quit singin'." Johnny didn't carry a very good tune himself, but he had a nice listening talent. And with the next bend it was time to begin that song ... not through any default of our trusty motor, but because of a drift that completely blocked the road.
"This is one puddle we ain't gonna jump," Johnny observed. "We'll have to cut through it. You stay here and let me go over the top and see where the weak places are on the other side." He rummaged in the small tool kit and handed me a screw driver. "If any bears come snoopin' around jist don't notice 'em. But if they come up close and bother ya, jist give 'em an eye full of this. You'll only have to do it once if you hit hard enough. Remember ... in the eye. Now unpin this quilt and keep yourself warm fer a minute. You can help me with the tunnel soon as we know which way to dig." Johnny climbed up onto the drift. It was head high and quite solid.
"We're in luck," he said; "it's packed too solid to slide."
He was back before more than five or six bears had pawed over my imagination.
"It ain't so bad," he announced, "only about two rods through if we aim at that pine tree over there. But there's a couple of drifts ahead that'll hold us for a while."
It was morning when we reached the top of the canyon, pushing the motorcycle and puffing great clouds of stream that caught and froze in icicles on our chests. The last drift lay behind, broken and conquered. Ahead lay the cold blue mirror that was Clearwater Lake. The blizzard had settled. A breeze that wasn't quite a wind fanned at out frozen clothing. Thin streaks of smoke marked the chimneys of the earlier risers on the lakeside. No sign that spring had come showed on these farms. It was winter in this country in the cold, dead earnest. But it was a friendly winter and a welcome morning.
Our musings were interruped by a crackling, scraping sound. We turned in unison to the left where the sound came from. A naked quaking aspen tree stood shivering about two hundred yards away, in solitude but for a big brown bear that gnawed at its very bark.
"He's sharpening his teeth for his breakfast bacon," Johnny said. "We better git goin' an' tell those farmers down there they've got three hundred pounds of trouble right here in their back yard." He started the motor as we piled on.
We met the snow plow coming out of Blue Water.
"Anything much in the canyon?" they called.
"Not much," Johnny answered.
We stopped at the first house and told them about the bear. We recognized the man as the fish peddler who came up through Salt Brush every summer with fresh lake trout. He thanked us and got his rifle and a horse and headed for the canyon road.
"Hope the road commission don't see that bear first. There's a nice bounty on his sneakin' hide." And he was off at a brisk trot.
His wife fixed us some pork and fried potatoes and insisted that we stay and get dried out.
"Many's a time my Tom and the boys has et at yer ma's table," she said. They had stopped over once, but it had been years before. "Now set up here and put yer feet in the oven while ya eat."
The world was a very good place.
We didn't arrive a minute too soon at the ranch. Papa and Mexican Mike had worked all night in the stables. Johnny went to help out there and sent me to the house.
The kitchen was in utter disorder. The fire was out in the range. A ragged quilt was spread upon the floor, bedding six or seven feeble new lambs and a couple of dead ones. Lambs came in the house only when their mothers had died. These had to be coaxed to eat from catsup bottles with improvised nipples made from scraps of inner tube. A mother whose lamb had died won't adopt another mother's orphan unless it's wrapped in the skin of her own dead lamb; and of course, there was no time for that. Apparently things weren't going so well at the stables. Sheep aren't so hardy as some animals. You always expect to lose some lambs. But there shouldn't be so many dead mothers.
Papa came in carrying two more lambs just as the fire began to take hold in the range. He looked like he had been days and nights without sleep. He protested my squeeze of greeting with silent motion toward his untidy attire. His overall legs were startched stiff with the frozen bilge of blood and slime. He placed the two newest orphans down tenderly on the quilt and lifted the two that were orphans no more to the crook of his tired arms. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away," he might have thought; but all that came out of him was a weary sigh.
"How many so far?" You measure your words to a tired man.
"Forty. Maybe fifty. 'Bout half alive." His voice was rusty from long disuse. He took the two little dead lambs and went back to the job.
Three things were plain: about one-tenth of the lambing was accomplished; of those, about one-fourth of the mothers had died; only half of the lambs had lived. Things weren't going so well at the stables.
An inspection of the pantry disclosed the raw staples of ranch fare. It would be a good idea to cook up plenty of plain food to carry through about two days and nights for when the lambs came on heavy ... boiled beans, rice pudding, baked spuds ... things that could cook themselves. The cook might any moment be called upon for a shift in the lambing sheds.
But nobody ate.
As the evening came on the lambs came faster. A cold northeasterly wind kept the snow restless in the air, blowing it through the wide opening where never a door had swung since those days long ago when nineteen horses had eaten their last oats in that same stable. The horse blanket hanging at the windows flapped in the wind.
We placed kerosene lanterns about ten feet apart among the sheep for light and warmth. Johnny had rustled every lantern from the Ranchers' Exchange. But the light and warmth that were needed we couldn't supply. Many of the mothers had no milk and these refused to claim their own lambs. Some lived for a couple of hours and others were to live for two or three days. But Mexican Mike had a full-time job dragging lifeless bodies to the rising pile outside in the snow. He swept little streets in the crowded floor with their wool.
My senses were numbing. There is only so much to see and smell and handle before a better sense takes over and blurs out the things you feel. Dozens of little yellowed lambs had died before they had any more than straightened out their legs. The smell of burned kerosene diluted the more noisome stench. The low and infrequent bleating bore small evidence of the pain and suffering and death that carpeted the stable floor. The whole merged into a somber scene. Yet there remained a job to be done.
By midnight the peak of the ordeal was past, and Papa sent me to the house for some sleep. But the lambs that were offered on the cold altar of experience that night had made by morning a heap like a giant drift of stained snow. And after three days, when the last little lamb had arrived, we counted the life in the stable and sheds ... three hundred and four mothers and one hundred and eighty-four lambs. That meant that the pile outside numbered about seven hundred. And four human souls could be accounted for as half alive, to be optimistic, or half dead, in more literal terms.
The snow began to melt on roofs of outbuildings and drip down on the drifts below, eating into them with tarnished teeth. The roof of the stable actually steamed with the thaw. Mexican Mike worked long hours with the shears trying to save some of the long winter wool from the sheep in the pile. Papa made "drag" of some boards on which to carry away the carcasses. They put them in another pile down in the field. On the spring evenings that followed, the coyotes came in twos and threes to feast upon their bones. Papa stood on the porch with the thirty-thirty and made many of them, as the Bible says of the lion, "to lie down with the lamb," in the final peace that will eventually come to all flesh.
We stayed at the ranch a week, until things began to resume their normal schedule, and it looked as if Mexican Mike could carry on.
"Well, you kids better be gittin' back to school," Papa announced. "There ain't much left here to hold ya. Kinda think we'll let the ranch go. Yer big enough now t' git around an' you'll prob'ly see quite a bit more of this world fer not bein' tied to the ranch. You'll probably see a lot more than your old dad has ever seen. You'll maybe have a lot more opportunities an' you'll likely make a lot more out of 'em.
"But don't despise the lessons you've learned here. You've learned t' work the way honest people does. An' you've learned what t' look fer in people. There ain't a one of ya that wants to grow up like Jim Langley an' be duckin' the law all the time. An' yet, he's always been a lean-to fer his poor old widowed maw, an' ya kin all see he's got some good in him.
"An' old man Jennings ... he's a testimony against drinkin' ... his wife has left him an' his kids keep outta his way. But you know he hasn't always been like that, cause you remember him from when he wuz peaceable.
"Now Matthew Allen gits riled at his mules and call 'em a gee dee Mormon layout ... but he ain't castin' no reflection on them mules, and there ain't a better neighbor in Salt Brush Flat than Matthew Allen when a feller's in a pinch.
"Nope, wherever ya go in the world you'll find Jim Langleys and Matthew Allens. But give 'em a fair chance an' you'll find a lotta good in 'em.
"An' jist remember, when in Rome, let Rome do as it pleases. But you don't necessarily have to do it too."