Meg of Mystery Mountain Part 16

Meg had reached the stairway hewn in the rocks, leading to the cabin, which, for so many minutes had been uppermost in her thoughts, and she drew rein, yodeling to a tall, graceful girl whom she saw standing by a pine gazing out over the valley. Jane Abbott turned and looked down, amazed that the mountain girl should have the effrontery to yodel to _her_. "Just because she mailed a letter for me does not ent.i.tle her to _my_ friendship as an equal!" Abruptly Jane turned her back and walked away toward the cabin. Meg's face flushed and her inclination was to ride on to her own home, but she recalled the clinging of little Julie's arms and the sweet, yearning expression in the small girl's face when she had said, "Meg, I like you. I wish you were my sister instead of Jane. You'd love me, wouldn't you?"

Leaping from her pony, she bade him wait for her, and, taking the paper, the girl sprang, nimble as a mountain goat, up the rocky steps. Jane had seated herself in the comfortable chair on the porch, and was reading when she heard hurrying footsteps. She looked up, an angry color suffusing her cheeks. This halfbreed was evidently going to force her acquaintance upon her. Well, she would soon regret it. But the proud, scornful words were never spoken.

CHAPTER XXI.

MEG AS BENEFACTRESS

Dan and the children had gone on a hike, and Jane, being quite alone, rose and confronted the mountain girl with a cold stare that would have caused Meg at another time to have whirled about and departed, but for the sake of the other three she was willing to be treated unkindly.

"Miss Abbott," she said, holding out the newspaper, and pretending not to notice the unfriendly expression, "there is news in here which may be of great importance to you. May I show it to your brother?"

Suddenly Jane found herself trembling from some unnamed fear. Instantly she had thought of the taxes. Perhaps, without really being conscious of it, she had read the word somewhere on that outheld paper.

She sank back into her chair, saying, almost breathlessly, "Dan isn't here. What is it, Miss Heger? Is something wrong?"

The mountain girl pointed to the paragraph and was amazed at the effect the reading of it had upon the proud girl. There was an expression of terror in the dark eyes that were lifted.

"Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?" she implored helplessly. "Our father gave us the money. He told us the taxes must be paid, but I thought another two weeks would do as well as now. Dan did not know the need of haste."

Meg, seeing that the girl, unused to deciding matters of importance, was more helpless than even Julie would have been, felt a sudden compa.s.sion for her and so she said: "If you can get the money to the county seat before five o'clock you will not lose your property."

A dull flush suffused the dark face. "I--I haven't the money! I--I borrowed it for something I wanted. It was in that letter that Julie gave you this morning to mail."

Then looking up eagerly, hopefully, "Miss Heger, perhaps you forgot to post it. Oh, how I hope that you did!"

But the mountain girl shook her head. "I sent it by Mr. Bently to the eastbound train, which was due about noon. He said that he himself would put it in the mail car."

"Then there is nothing that I can do!" The proud girl burst into sudden tears. "Father has lost everything but our home in the East, and now, now I have been the cause of his losing the cabin he so loved." Lifting a tear-stained face to the girl who was watching her, troubled and thoughtful, she implored: "Oh, isn't there something I can do? If I tell them I will pay it in two weeks, when my birthday money comes, won't that do as well as now?"

Meg shook her head. "No," she said. "This is final. They notified your father some time ago."

Jane nodded hopelessly. "Oh, if only brother were here! But the worry would start him to coughing."

Again the girl, who scorned tears in others, began to sob helplessly. How vain and foolish she had been to want that necklace, hoping that it would make her appear more beautiful in the eyes of Jean Sawyer.

Meg stood for one moment deep in thought. Then she said: "Miss Abbott, find your papers. Have them ready for me when I return. I'll try to save your place."

With that she turned and ran back to her pony, leaped upon it and galloped out of sight up around the bend.

"What does she mean?" Jane sat, almost as one stunned, for a moment, then as the command of the mountain girl recalled itself to her, she arose and went indoors to locate the papers their father had given Dan.

These being fastened with a rubber band into a neat packet, she held closely while she ran out to the brook calling Dan's name frantically, but there was no response. Soon she heard the musical yodeling which had so filled her heart with wrath a short half hour before. Now it was to her a sound sweeter than any she had ever heard. It brought a faint hope that her father's cabin might yet be saved. Down the stone steps she went, holding out the papers. Then and for the first time she thought of something: "But the money--I haven't any to give you."

Meg's answer was: "I am loaning you twenty-five dollars from my savings, but don't hope too much. It will be very hard for me to make Scarsburg by five o'clock, but for Julie's sake I'll do my best."

"For Julie's sake!" The words drifted back to Jane as she stood watching the pony hurtling itself down the mountain road until the cloud of dust hid it from view. She, Jane, had never done anything for Julie's sake, and why, pray, should this mountain girl loan her own money to strangers who might never repay her, and risk her life and that of her pony, as it was evident she was doing?

Jane looked out into the heat-shimmering valley. Many times the mountain road reappeared to her as it zigzagged down to Redfords. Again and again a rushing cloud of dust a.s.sured her that Meg was still racing with time.

Returning to the porch, Jane sank down in the deep chair, keenly conscious of her own uselessness.

"Oh, what a vain, worthless creature I am! I don't see why Dan cares for me so much; why he risked his health that I might finish my course in that seminary where everyone, everything, conspired to make me more proud and helpless."

Then before her arose a mental picture. Meg, clear-eyed, eager to be of service in an hour of need, and more than that, capable of being, and she, Jane, had snubbed her, but for Julie's sake the mountain girl had persevered in her desire to be neighborly.

Unable to sit still, Jane went again to the brook to call, but the children, with Dan, had climbed higher than usual and had found so much to interest them that they had failed to note the pa.s.sage of time.

As there was no answer to her calling, Jane went back to the house, and, because she had to do something (she had entirely lost interest in her book), she wandered out into the kitchen. She saw on the table a pan of potatoes with the paring knife near.

Hardly knowing what she was about, Jane took the pan to the porch, and, seating herself on the step, she began most awkwardly to pare. She had heard her grandmother say that the peeling should be as thin as possible as the goodness was next to the skin. It took a very long time for Jane to pare the half dozen potatoes and she had almost resolved not to tell Dan about the taxes until she knew the worst or the best, when she heard him hallooing from the brook. Placing the pan on the step, she ran to meet him. One glance at her white, startled face a.s.sured him more than words could have done that something of an unusual nature had occurred during their absence. Catching her in his arms, he felt her body tremble.

He led her back to the porch before he asked, "Jane, tell me. What has happened? Has that Slinking Coyote frightened you?"

Julie and Gerald, wide-eyed and wondering, crowded near. "Dan," Jane clung to him as she had not since the long ago childhood, when she had so often been frightened and had turned to him for protection, "please send the children away. I want to tell you alone."

Gerald needed no second bidding. "Come on, Julie," he called. "Let's go and practice on our pine tree rifle range." He was carrying the small gun, and so away they raced. Although they were almost overcome with natural curiosity, they neither of them desired to stay where they were not wanted.

When they were gone, Jane leaned against her brother and told the story between sobs that were almost hysterical. "Oh, brother, brother! If only this cabin is saved for Dad, I will never, never again be so vain and selfish. Oh, Dan, tell me, say that you think Meg will reach the county seat before five."

The lad found that his heart was filled with conflicting emotions. The scorn his sister's pride and selfishness would have aroused in him at another time was crowded out by pity for her. She had suffered enough without his rebuke. Then there was the dread that the cabin might not be saved, for well he knew the sorrow its loss would bring to his father, but, above all, there was something in his heart he had never felt before, a warm glow of admiration for a girl who was not his sister. What he said was, "Jane, dear, quiet yourself. We can do nothing but wait."

And a long, long wait they were destined to have. The hands of the clock moved slowly to four, then five and then six. Jane's poor efforts at paring the potatoes received much comment from the children alone in the kitchen.

"Gee," Gerald confided to his small sister, "something must have happened if it upset Jane so she didn't know what she was doing. She surely didn't, or she wouldn't have tried to pare potatoes and stain those lily hands of hers."

Try as the small boy might, he could not keep the scorn out of his voice.

But Julie was more forgiving. "Gerry, don't be too hard on Jane. She acts awfully worried about something. I don't believe she saw a bear or anything that scared her. I think it's something in her heart that's troubling her. I think she's sorry about something she's done."

"Well, she sure ought to be." The boy was less sympathetic. "She's been dirt mean to us ever since she's been home from that hifalutin' seminary, and what's more, she's none too good to Dan. I'd hate her, that's what, if she wasn't my sister, and if she didn't look just like our mother. But even for all of that, I'm going to let myself hate her hard if she isn't better to you, Jule. The way she lets you do the work, and she setting around reading novels to keep her hands white so's folks will admire them! Aren't you the same family as she is, and shouldn't your hands be kept just as white? Tell me that now!"

The boy, who was holding the bread knife, whirled with such an indignant expression on his freckled face that Julie laughed merrily, which broke the spell.

"Oh, Gerry, you do look so funny! If I had time, I'd find some riggins to make you into a pirate. It could be done easy, 'cause your face looks just like their pictures and that knife would do for a dagger."

Meanwhile, on the front porch, the two who had long watched and waited, were getting momentarily more anxious, and often Dan walked to the top of the steep stairway, down which he gazed at the zig-zagging mountain road.

At last he saw a pony climbing, oh, so slowly, as though it could hardly take another step; and at its side there walked a girl. Dan leaped back to the porch and s.n.a.t.c.hed up his hat. "Jane," he said, "you and the children have your supper. I'm going up to the Heger cabin and get one of their horses. Meg's pony is worn out, and I'm not going to have that brave girl walk all the way up the mountain, just to serve us."

Jane did not try to detain him, and the lad fairly leaped up the road to the Heger cabin. He found the trapper, who had just returned from a ride over the other side of the mountain. "Take this hoss," he said, when he had heard the story which fairly tumbled from Dan's mouth. "Ol'

Bag-o'-Bones ain't a bit tired, and he's the best hoss I have on the place."

Then the man held out a strong hand as he said: "Dan, boy, I hope my gal made it! She would if anyone could."

Dan silently returned the clasp, then he mounted the horse, that was not at all what its name might suggest, but lean and wiry, as were all of the mustangs of the West, with hard muscles and a loping step that carried it down the road, sure-footed and with great rapidity. Jane heard the halloo when he pa.s.sed, but she did not stir. She felt that she never could move again until she had learned the news that Meg would have for them.

And Meg, far down the mountain, looked up and saw Bag-o'-Bones, her foster-father's favorite horse, descending with speed, and, believing it to be ridden by Mr. Heger, she wondered why, at that hour, he was in such haste. But at a lower turn of the road, she saw that the figure on the horse was that of the lad from the East, who as yet did not know how to ride as they did in the West.