Her Father's Daughter Part 45

CHAPTER x.x.xI. The End of Donald's Contest

The middle of the week Linda had told Katy that she intended stocking up the Bear Cat for three and that she would take her along on the next Sat.u.r.day's trip to her canyon kitchen. It was a day upon which she had planned to gather greens, vegetables, and roots, and prepare a dinner wholly from the wild. She was fairly sure exactly where in nature she would find the materials she wanted, but she knew that the search would be long and tiring. It would be jolly to have Katy to help her prepare the lunch. It would please Katy immensely to be taken; and the original things she said in her quaint Irish brogue greatly amused Donald. The arrangement had been understood among them for some time, so they all started on their journey filled with happy expectations. They closed the house and the garage carefully. Linda looked over the equipment of the Bear Cat minutely making sure that her field axe, saw, knives, and her field gla.s.ses were in place. Because more food than usual was to be prepared in the kitchen they took along a nest of cooking vessels and a broiler. They found Donald waiting before either of them were ready, and in great glee, with much laughing and many jests they rolled down the valley in the early morning. They drove to the kitchen, spread their blankets, set up their table, and arranged the small circular opening for their day's occupancy. While Katy and Linda were busy with these affairs Donald took the axe and collected a big heap of wood. Then they left Katy to burn the wood and have a deep bed of coals ready while they started out to collect from the canyon walls, the foot of the mountains, and the near-by desert the materials they would use for their dinner.

Just where the desert began to climb the mountain Linda had for a long time watched a big bed of amole. Donald used the shovel, she the hatchet, and soon they had brought to the surface such a quant.i.ty that Donald protested.

"But I have two uses for them today," explained Linda. "They must serve for potatoes and they have to furnish our meat."

"Oh, I get you," said Donald. "I have always been crazy to try that."

So he began to dig again enthusiastically.

"Now I'll tell you what I think we had better do," said Linda. "We will skirmish around this side of the mountain and find a very nice tender yucca shoot; and then we'll take these back to Katy and let her bury them in the ashes and keep up the fire while we forage for the remainder of our wild Indian feast."

Presently they found a yucca head that Linda said was exactly right, a delicate pink, thicker than her wrist and two feet in length. With this and the amole they ran back to Katy. She knew how to prepare the amole for roasting. Linda gave her a few words of instruction concerning the yucca. Then from the interior of the Bear Cat she drew a tightly rolled section of wire window screening. Just where a deep, wide pool narrowed at a rocky defile they sank the screening, jammed it well to the bottom, fastened it tight at the sides, and against the current side of it they threw leaves, gra.s.s, chunks of moss, any debris they could gather that would make a temporary dam. Then, standing on one side with her field knife, Linda began to slice the remainder of the amole very thin and to throw it over the surface of the pool. On the other, Donald pounded the big, juicy bulbs to pulp and scattered it broadcast over the water.

Linda instructed Katy to sit on the bank with a long-handled landing net and whenever a trout arose, to s.n.a.t.c.h it out as speedily as possible, being careful not to take more than they would require.

Then the two youngsters, exhilarated with youth, with living, with the joy of friendship, with the lure of the valley, with the heady intoxication of the salt breeze and the gold of the sunshine, climbed into the Bear Cat and went rolling through the canyon and out to the valley on the far side. Here they gathered the tenderest heart shoots of the lupin until Linda said they had enough. Then to a particular spot that she knew on the desert they hurried for the enlarged stems of the desert trumpet which was to serve that day for an appetizer in the stead of pickles. Here, too, they filled a bucket from the heart of a big Bisnaga cactus as a basis for their drink. Among Katherine O'Donovan's cooking utensils there was a box of delicious cactus candy made from the preserved and sun-dried heart meat of this same fruit which was to serve as their confection. On the way back they stopped at the bridge and gathered cress for their salad. When they returned to Katy she had five fine trout lying in the shade, and with more experienced eyes and a more skillful hand Linda in a few minutes doubled this number. Then they tore out the dam, rinsed the screen and spread it over a rock to dry. While Donald scaled the fish Linda put the greens to cook, prepared the salad and set the table. Once, as he worked under her supervision, Linda said to Donald: "Now about bread, kid--there's not going to be any bread, because the Indians did not have it when they lived the way we are living today. When you reach the place where your left hand feels empty without a piece of bread in it, just b.u.t.ter up another amole and try it. It will serve the same purpose as bread, and be much better for the inner man."

"If you would let me skin these fish," said Donald, "I could do it much faster and make a better job of it."

"But you shouldn't skin them; you want the skin to hold the meat together when it begins to cook tender; and you should be able to peel it off and discard it if it burns or gets smoky in the cooking. It's a great concession to clean them as we do. The Indians cooked them in the altogether and ate the meat from the bones."

"Oh my tummy!" said Donald. "I always thought there was some dark secret about the Indians."

Linda sat on a rock opposite him and clasped her hands around her knees.

She looked at him meditatively.

"Did you?" she asked. "Suppose you revise that opinion. Our North American Indians in their original state were as fine as any peoples that ever have been discovered the round of the globe. My grandfather came into intimate contact with them in the early days, and he said that their religion, embracing the idea of a great spirit to whom they were responsible for their deeds here, and a happy hunting ground to which they went as a reward for decent living, was as fine as any religion that ever has been practiced by people of any nation. Immorality was unknown among them. Family ties were formed and they were binding They loved their children and reared them carefully. They were hardy and healthful. Until the introduction of whiskey and what we are pleased to term civilized methods of living, very few of them died save from war or old age. They were free; they were happy. The moping, lazy, diseased creature that you find sleeping in the sun around the reservations is a product of our civilization. Nice commentary on civilization, isn't it?"

"For heaven's sake, Linda," said Donald, "don't start any big brainstorming trains of thought today! Grant me repose. I have overworked my brain for a few months past until I know only one thing for certain."

"All right then, me lad, this is the time for the big secret," said Linda. "I just happened to be in the a.s.sembly room on some business of my own last Thursday afternoon when my sessions were over, and I overheard your professor in trigonometry tell a marl I did not know, who seemed to be a friend visiting him, that the son of Judge Whiting was doing the finest work that ever had been done in any of the Los Angeles high schools, and that undoubtedly you were going to graduate with higher honors than any other boy ever had from that school."

Donald sat thinking this over. He absently lifted an elbow and wiped the tiny scales from his face with his shirt sleeve.

"Young woman," he said solemnly, "them things what you're saying, are they 'cross your heart, honest to goodness, so help you,' truth, or are they the fruit of a perfervid imagination?"

Linda shook her head vigorously.

"De but', kid," she said, "de gospel but'. You have the j.a.p going properly. He can't stop you now. You have fought your good fight, and you have practically won it. All you have to do is to carry on till the middle of June, and you're It."

"I wish Dad knew," said Donald in a low voice.

"The Judge does know," said Linda heartily. "It wasn't fifteen minutes after I heard that till I had him on the telephone repeating it as fast as I could repeat. Come to think of it, haven't you noticed a particularly c.o.c.ky set of his head and the corksome lightness about his heels during the past few days?"

"By Jove, he has been happy about something!" said Donald. "And I noticed that Louise and the Mater were sort of cheery and making a specialty of the only son and brother."

"Sure, brother, sure," said Linda. "Hurry up and sc.r.a.pe those fish and let's scamper down the canyon merely for the joy of flying with wings on our feet. You're It, young man, just It!"

Donald was sitting on a boulder. On another in front of him he was operating on the trout. His hands were soiled; his hair was tousled; he was fairly well decorated with fine scales. He looked at Linda appealingly.

"Am I 'It' with you, Linda?" he asked soberly.

"Sure you are," said Linda. "You're the best friend I have."

"Will you write to me when I go to college this fall?"

"Why, you couldn't keep me from it," said Linda. "I'll have so many things to tell you. And when your first vacation comes we'll make it a hummer."

"I know Dad won't let me come home for my holidays except for the midsummer ones," said Donald soberly. "It would take most of the time there would be of the short holidays to travel back and forth."

"You will have to go very carefully about getting a start," said Linda, "and you should be careful to find the right kind of friends at the very start. Christmas and Thanksgiving boxes can always be sent on time to reach you. It won't be so long for you as for us; and by the time you have Oka Sayye beaten to ravelings you will have such a 'perfect habit'

that you will start right in with the beating idea. That should keep you fairly busy, because most of the men you come up against will be beaters themselves."

"Yes, I know," said Donald. "Are you going to start me to college with the idea that I have to keep up this beating habit? If I were to be one of fifty or a hundred, wouldn't that be good enough?"

"Why, sure," said Linda, "if you will be satisfied with having me like fifty or a hundred as well as I do you."

"Oh, d.a.m.n!" said Donald angrily. "Do I have to keep up this top-crust business all my days?"

Linda looked at him with a queer smile on her lips.

"Not unless you want to, Donald," she said quietly; "not unless you think you would rather."

Donald sc.r.a.ped a fish vigorously. Linda sat watching him. Presently the tense lines around his eyes vanished. A faint red crept up his neck and settled on his left cheek bone. A confused grin slowly widened his naturally wide mouth.

"Then it's me for the top crust," he said conclusively.

"Then it's me for you," answered Linda in equally as matter-of-fact tones; and rising, she gathered up the fish and carried them to Katy while Donald knelt beside the chilly stream and scoured his face and hands, after which Linda whipped away the scales with an improvised brush of willow twigs.

It was such a wonderful day; it was such an unusual and delicious feast.

Plump brook trout, fresh from icy water, delicately broiled over searing wood coals, are the finest of food. Through the meal to the point where Donald lay on his back at the far curve of the canyon wall, nibbling a piece of cactus candy, everything had been perfect. Nine months would be a long time to be gone, but Linda would wait for him, and she would write to him.

He raised his head on his elbow and called across to her: "Say, Linda, how often will you write to me?"

Linda answered promptly: "Every Sat.u.r.day night. Sat.u.r.day is our day.

I'll tell you what has happened all the week. I'll tell you specially what a darned unprofitable day Sat.u.r.day is when you're three thousand miles away."

Bending over the canyon fireplace, her face red with heat and exertion, Katherine O'Donovan caught up her poker and beat up the fire until the ashes flew.

"Easy, Katy, easy," cautioned Linda. "We may want to bury those coals and resurrect them to warm up what is left for supper."

"We'll do no such thing," said Katy promptly. "What remains goes to feed the fish. Next time it's hungry ye are, we're goin' to hit it straight to Lilac Valley and fill ourselves with G.o.d's own bread and beefsteak and paraties. Don't ye think we're goin' to be atin' these haythen messes twice in one day."

To herself she was saying: "The sooner I get you home to Pater Morrison, missy, the better I'll be satisfied."