The Biography of a Prairie Girl Part 5

When school took up again, the Swede boy was told to put his sums on a bit of tar-papered wall near him, and a mixed cla.s.s in reading lined up in front of the teacher's table. Soon, however, the room was again quiet. The Swede boy and the cla.s.s sat down, and the whole school, made sleepy by the warmth from the stove, lounged on their benches and drowsed on their books, and even the little girl, sitting idly on the rostrum, nodded wearily. But right in the midst of the silence, and just before the pupils were dismissed for noon, something so startling happened that the little girl's curls fairly stiffened in alarm.

The teacher clapped his hands, the children followed with a hurried banging of their books and slates, and, instantly, before the little girl had time to think what it all meant, the scholars, with one accord, began to roar at the top of their lungs.

"Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning!"

they cried, rapping their knuckles upon their desks in the rhythm of galloping horses,--

"More water! More water!

Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!

More water! More water!"

The little girl straightened herself and a gray light crept up to where the flush had been, so that every freckle of the hateful thirteen stood out clearly. Near her, the teacher was standing, with his feet planted wide apart and his eyes raised to the ceiling. And before him, shouting and pounding and staring with crimson faces into his, were the pupils.

"Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!"

they yelled. It brought back to the little girl that terrible moment when the farm-house, with a dripping-pan full of hog-fat flaming in the oven, was threatened with destruction.

"Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning!"

sounded the warning again. No one moved. But, not knowing just how near Scotland might be, and fearful for her safety with danger so imminent, she did not wait longer. Clutching her hat and book, with a bound she cleared the distance to the youngest brother, and, with a stifled cry, leaped into his arms.

But in her excitement she had forgotten Luffree, lying asleep under the bench, and had jumped squarely upon one soft, outstretched paw. The dog sprang up with a howl of pain, the school stopped its singing, and the angry teacher left the rostrum and advanced toward the little girl. The next moment he dragged the dog from under the bench by the scruff of the neck and hurled him out of the door; the next, he shook an admonishing finger in the very face of the thirteen unlucky freckles.

LATE that afternoon, the eldest brother paddled across the sloughs in the bull-boat, and had a talk with the teacher. The teacher lived in the Irishman's shack, which was made of cottonwood logs laid one upon another and covered with a roof of sticks and dirt, and "bached" by himself through the term, because the little girl's mother had refused to board him. So, when the eldest brother had finished his visit and rowed back, he recited such an ill-natured version of that day's happenings at the school-house, that the family, until then divided by the contradictory stories of the youngest brother and the little girl, united in heaping reproaches upon her.

Next morning she again traveled the winding path that skirted the marsh-gra.s.s and bulrushes, this time on the pinto. Luffree, who had been tied up at breakfast, but had mysteriously slipped his collar, followed, as before. When she arrived within a short distance of the school-house, she climbed down and, without taking any notice of the giggling, waiting crowd by the door, carefully picketed the mare out of reach of the other ponies. Then she pulled off the bridle, put it beside the picket-pin, and, after bidding Luffree watch beside it, went in quietly to take her seat. She had not unblanketed her horse because, underneath the soft sheepskin saddle and well out of sight, was tucked one of her mother's latest magazines that had pictures scattered through it.

When school was called, she was not allowed to keep the seat on the rostrum. One of the Dutchman's seven being absent, she was told to share the rear bench with the neighbor woman's daughter, and spent a happy hour in the seclusion of the high seat, watching "Frenchy," who had no slate, write his spelling on the smooth, round stove, and smiling at the Swede boy when he looked slyly across at her.

Then she heard some one call her name. It was the teacher. "Come forward to the chart," he said, and his voice seemed to shake the very floor.

She took up her Second Reader, edged herself off her seat, and stood beside it, her eyes fixed questioningly upon him.

"Come forward to the chart, I say," he said again. "Can't you hear!"

"Yes," answered the little girl, starting up the room. But she walked so slowly that, when she came near his table, he put out one lean hand, grabbed her by the arm, and hurried her. She resented his touch by twisting about until she was free. Then she took her place in front of the chart, feeling as if every eye in the room were looking up and down the row of blue crockery b.u.t.tons on the back of her ap.r.o.n.

The teacher began to turn forward sheet after sheet of the chart, until the first page was before him. It depicted a figure in silk hat, long coat, and light trousers, promenading with a cane in his hand and a dog at his heels. Underneath were two lines of simple words, and two inquiring sentences. The teacher picked up a long cottonwood stick and pointed it first at the man and then at the dog.

"What is that?" he said.

"A man," answered the little girl.

"And that?"

"A dog."

"Now read after me," he went on, indicating a word, "'M-a-n, man.'"

She paused a moment, her lips pressed tightly together.

"Read, read, read!" commanded the teacher, whacking the chart with a pointer.

"'M-a-n, man,'" repeated the little girl, her eyes on his face.

"Don't look at me," he scolded; "look at the chart."

"I don't haf' to," said the little girl, earnestly; "I--I--"

Something unpleasant would certainly have happened at that moment, had not "Frenchy," deep in his geography lesson, piped up at the teacher from the rear of the room.

"T-a-n-g-a-n-y-i-k-a," he spelled, snapping his fingers and waving his arm. "Wot eez dat?"

For a moment the teacher was silent, scowling down at the little girl.

Then he came back to the chart with another whack of the pointer. "Call it Moses," he growled.

"Mozez," repeated "Frenchy," resignedly, but with a shake of his head over the intricacies of the English language.

The little girl had twisted half around to look at a Dutch child, and the teacher, angry because he had neglected to look over the geography lesson, jerked her into place again by her sleeve. "Now, you read," he said; "look at the end of my pointer and read."

"I can read them words 'thout looking at 'em," she protested, pointing at an inquiring line, "'cause I can read everyfing in this." And she held up the Second Reader.

"Huh!" grunted the teacher, taking the book from her and tossing it upon his table. "Have you ever been to school before?"

"No," answered the little girl.

"Then you'll start right in where everybody else does," he said. "Read this line. 'Do you see a man?'"

"'Doyouseeaman?'" she repeated, still watching him.

"Look at the chart and read it," he commanded furiously.

An unfriendly light suddenly shone in the little girl's eyes. She stepped back and summoned all her pride to resent the indignity that he was putting upon her before the whole school.

"Oh, I don't want to read that baby talk," she cried, "and--and--I _won't_, and I 'm going home to my mother."

The teacher swayed in his wrath like a tall cottonwood. "You don't, eh?

You won't, eh?" he bellowed, and, stooping down, plucked the little girl by the ear.

This time it was the Swede boy who interrupted the course of events in front. He leaned forward and whispered something into the ear of the boy ahead, and then, with an inarticulate shout, threw himself upon the boy and began to maul him. Instantly the teacher, yearning to use his hands upon some one, descended upon them and wrested them apart. But they clinched again and, continuing to fight, managed so to misdirect their kicks that they reached, not each other, but his lanky, interfering person.

And, while the battle raged, the little girl fled out of the school-house toward the pinto and pulled up the picket-pin. The teacher did not see her go, but, in retreating from an unusually vicious blow of the Swede boy's fist, caught sight of her just as she was leading her horse to an ant-hill to mount. With a hoa.r.s.e call for her to return, he started after her, bearing in his train the two boys, who, still struggling, impeded his progress.

He shook them off at the door-step and broke into a run. The little girl was vainly striving to climb to the pinto's back; but she was so frightened that each time she made a jump for the saddle she came short of it and fell back. And, seeing the teacher coming, her efforts were more ineffectual than ever. But when he was scarcely a rod away, and when escape seemed impossible, a new figure joined in the affair.

Luffree had been lying quietly beside the picket-pin until the little girl ran out, when he got up, ready to follow her, and joyfully leaped about the mare. Then he saw the teacher advancing, and remembered the rough handling of the day before. So, as the Yankton man came close, swinging his arms about like the fans of the Dutchman's windmill, the dog went forward to meet him, his hair on end, his eyes shifting treacherously, his teeth showing in an ugly white seam, all the wolf blood in him roused.