Lost Farm Camp Part 6

She lay awake long after he had left her, turning the coins over in her hot fingers. Presently she slipped from the bed and, drawing the blanket about her, stole softly to the door.

CHAPTER V-A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE

With a soft rush of wings an owl dropped from the interior blackness of the midnight forest and settled on a stub thrust from a dead tree at the edge of the clearing.

Beelzebub, scampering sinuously from clump to clump of the long gra.s.s, flattened himself to a shadow as the owl launched silently from the limb, legs pointing downward and curved talons rigid. Wide, shadowy wings darkened the moonlit haze where Beelzebub crouched, tail twitching, and ears laid back. Suddenly he sprang away in long, lithe bounds; a mad patter of feet on the cabin porch and he scrambled to his fastness in the eaves.

Slowly the great bird circled to the limb again, where he sat motionless in the summer night, a silver-and-bronze epitome of melancholy patience.

Below him a leafless clump of branches moved up and down, although there was no breeze stirring. The owl saw but remained motionless. Stealthily the branches moved from beneath the shadow of the trees, and a buck stepped to the clearing, his velvet-sheathed antlers rocking above his graceful neck. Cautiously he lifted a slender foreleg and advanced, muzzle up, scenting the warm night air. Down to the river he went, pausing at times, curiously intent on nothing, then advancing a stride or two until he stood thigh-deep in the stream. Leisurely he waded down sh.o.r.e, lifting a muzzle that dripped silvery beads in the moonlight.

Above him on the slope of the bank a door opened and closed softly. He stiffened and licked his nostrils. With the slight breeze that rippled toward him over the wavering gra.s.ses, he turned and plunged toward the sh.o.r.e, whirling into a dusky cavern of tangled cedars. With a swishing of branches he was gone.

"Ding thet deer," said Swickey, as she hesitated on the cabin porch. She listened intently. Sonorous and regular strains from her father's room a.s.sured her that he had not been disturbed.

She stepped carefully along the porch and into the dew-heavy gra.s.s, gathering the blanket closely about her. Beelzebub's curiosity overcame his recent scare and he clambered hastily from his retreat, tail foremost, dropping quickly to the ground. Here was big game to stalk; besides, the figure was rea.s.suringly familiar despite its disguise. The trailing end of the blanket bobbed over the hummocks invitingly.

"_Ouch!_ Beelzebub, you stop scratchin' my legs!" Swickey raised a threatening forefinger and the kitten rollicked away in a wide circle.

She took another step. Stealthily the kitten crept after her. What live, healthy young cat could resist the temptation to catch that teasing blanket end? He pounced on it and it slipped from her nervous fingers and slid to the ground, leaving her lithe, brown young body bathed in the soft light of the summer moon. She dropped to her knees and extracted Beelzebub from the m.u.f.fling folds. Then she administered a spanking that sent him scampering to his retreat in the eaves, where he peeked at her saucily, his wide round eyes iridescent with mischief. She gathered the blanket about her and resumed her journey, innocently thankful in every tense nerve that the cabin in which David Ross slept was on the other side of the camp. Patiently she continued on her way, keeping a watchful eye on Beelzebub's possible whereabouts until she arrived at the smallest of the three buildings. She took the silver pieces from her mouth, where she had placed them for safe-keeping while admonishing the kitten, and rapped on the pane of the open window.

David Ross had found it impossible to sleep during the early hours of the night. The intense quiet, acting as a stimulant to his overwrought nerves, tuned his senses to an expectant pitch, magnifying the slightest sound to a suggestiveness that was absurdly irritating. The roar of the rapids came to him in rhythmic beats that pulsed faintly in his ears, keeping time with his breathing. A wood-tick gnawed its blind way through the dry-rot of a timber, _T-chick_-_T-chick_-_T-chick_-It stopped and he listened for it to resume its dreary progress. From the river came the sound of some one or something wading in the shallows.

Each little noise of the night seemed to float on the undercurrent of that deep _hum-m-m_ of the rapids, submerged in its heavier note at times, at times tossed above it, distinctly audible, always following the rushing waters but never entirely lost beyond hearing. Finally, he imagined the river to be a great m.u.f.fled wheel turning round and round, and the sounds that lifted from its turning became visible as his eyes closed heavily. They were tangible annoyances, imps in stagged trousers and imps in calico dresses. The imps danced away to the forest and the dream-wheel of the river stopped abruptly. So abruptly that its great iron tire flew jangling across the rocks and fell a thousand miles away with a faint _clink, clink, clink_.

He sat up in bed listening. _Clink, clink_. He went to the window, leaned out, and gazed directly down into the dusky face of Swickey.

Without preamble she began.

"I shot a b'ar yest'day."

"You did! Well, that's pretty good for a girl."

"My Pop guv me the money fur the ile."

"Yes, but why did you come out to-night to tell me? Aren't you afraid?"

"Afraid of what?" she asked, with an innocence that despite itself was ironical.

"That's so. There's nothing to be afraid of, is there?"

She hesitated, drawing the blanket closer about her.

"Nothin'-'cept you."

"Afraid of me? Why, that's funny."

"I was sca'd you'd laugh at me." Then she whispered, "I da.s.sent tetch my clothes, 'cause Pop would have waked up, so I jest put on this, and come."

"That's all right, Swickey. I'm not going to laugh."

"I say thanks fur thet."

Such intensely childish relief and grat.i.tude as her tone conveyed, caused David to feel a sense of shame for having even smiled at her pathetically ridiculous figure. He waited for her to continue. Rea.s.sured by his grave acceptance of her confidence, she unburdened her heart, speaking with hesitant deliberation and watching his face with a sensitive alertness for the first sign of ridicule.

"You're goin' to Tramworth in the mornin', ain't you?"

"Yes."

"I reckon you could buy me a book if I guv the money-dollar fur it?"

"A book! What kind of a book, Swickey?"

"Big as you kin git fur this," she said, thrusting the moist dollar into his hand; "a book what tells everything, to sew on b.u.t.tins and make clothes and readin' and writin' and to count ca'tridges fur a hun'red-and everything!"

"Oh, I see!" His voice was paternally gentle. "Well, I'll try to get one like that."

"And a pair of 'specs'"-she hesitated as his white, even teeth gleamed in the moonlight-"fur Pop," she added hurriedly.

"All right, Swickey, but I-"

"His'n don't work right."

"But I don't just know what kind of 'specs' your father needs. There are lots of different kinds, you know."

Her heart fell. So this man with "larnin'"-his man who could fight Fisty Harrigans and make dead kittens come alive and jump right up, didn't know about "specs." Why, her Pop knew all about them. He had said his didn't work right.

The troubled look quickly vanished from her face, however, as a tremendous inspiration lifted her over this unexpected difficulty.

"Git 'specs,'" she whispered eagerly, "what Pop kin skin a b'ar with 'thout cuttin' his hand." There! what more was necessary except the other silver piece, which she handed to David with trembling fingers as he a.s.sured her he would get "just that kind." In her excitement the coin slipped and fell jingling to the cabin floor.

"I-beg-your-pardon."

She had heard David say that and had memorized it that afternoon in the seclusion of the empty kitchen, with Beelzebub as the indifferent object of her apology. She cherished the speech as a treasure of "larnin'" to be used at the first opportunity. Ross missed the significance of her politeness, although he appreciated it as something unusual under the circ.u.mstances.

"You won't tell Pop?" she asked appealingly.

"No, I won't tell him."

She retraced her steps toward the main camp, bankrupt in that her suddenly acquired wealth was gone, but rich in the antic.i.p.ated joy that her purchases would bring to her father and herself accurate eyesight and "book-larnin'."

David wanted to laugh, but something deeper than laughter held him gazing out of the window, across the cabin roofs to where the moon was rocking in the haze of the tree-tops on the distant hills. Long after she had regained her bedroom and crept hurriedly beneath the blanket to fall asleep and dream of Beelzebubs wearing bright new "specs" and chasing little girls across endless stretches of moonlight, he was still gazing out of the window, thinking of his little friend and her trust.

CHAPTER VI-TRAMWORTH