The Camerons of Highboro Part 7

But when he tries to snub Bruce--gee, that gets me!"

"Aren't you tw.a.n.ging the G string rather often lately, Hal?--Stannard can't snub Bruce. Bruce isn't the kind of fellow to be snubbed."

"Just the same, it makes me sick to think anybody's a cousin to me that would try it."

Laura switched back to the main subject. "We didn't ask them up here as extra farm hands, you know."

"Bull's-eye," said Henry, and grinned.

What she did not know failed to trouble Elliott. She read on in lonely peace through the afternoon. At a most exciting point the telephone rang. Four, that was the Cameron call. Elliott went into the house and took down the receiver.

"Mr. Robert Cameron's," she said pleasantly.

"S-say!" stuttered a high, sharp voice, "my little b-b-boys have let your c-c-cows out o' the p-p-pasture. I'll g-give 'em a t-t-trouncin', but 't won't git your c-c-cows back. They let 'em out the G-G-Garrett Road, and your medder gate's open. Jim B-B-Blake saw it this mornin'!

Why the man didn't shut it, I d-d-dunno. You'll have to hurry to save your medder."

"But," gasped Elliott, "I don't understand! You say the cows--"

"Are comin' down G-Garrett Road," snapped the stuttering voice, "the whole kit an' b-b-bilin' of 'em. They'll be inter your upper m-medder in five m-m-minutes."

Over the wire came the click of a receiver snapping back on its hook.

Elliott hung up and started toward the door. The cows had been let out. Just why this incident was so disastrous she did not quite comprehend, but she must go and tell her uncle. Before her feet touched the veranda, however, she stopped. Five minutes? Why, there wouldn't be time to go to the lower meadow, to say nothing of any one's doing anything about the situation.

And then, with breath-taking suddenness, the thing burst on her. She was alone in the house; even Aunt Jessica and Priscilla had gone to the hay-field. The situation, whatever it was, was up to her.

For a minute the girl leaned weakly against the wall. Cows--there were thirty in the herd--and she loathed cows! She was afraid of cows. She knew nothing about cows. She was never in the slightest degree sure of what the creatures might take it into their heads to do. For a minute she stood irresolute. Then something stirred in the girl, something self-reliant and strong. Never in her life had Elliott Cameron had to do alone anything that she didn't already know how to do. Now for the first time she faced an emergency on none but her own resources, an emergency that was quite out of her line.

Her brain worked swiftly as her feet moved to the door. In reality, she had wavered only a second. When Tom went for the cows, didn't he take old Prince? There was just a chance that Prince wasn't in the hay-field. She ran down the steps calling, "Prince! Prince!" The old dog rose deliberately from his place on the shady side of the barn and trotted toward her, wagging his tail. "Come, Prince!" cried Elliott, and ran out of the yard.

Luckily, berrying had that very morning taken her by a short cut to the vicinity of the upper meadow. She knew the way. But what was likely to happen? Town-bred girl that she was, she had no idea. A recollection of the smooth, upstanding expanse of the upper meadow gave her a clue. If the cows got into that even erectness-- She began to run, Prince bounding beside her, his brown tail a waving plume.

She could see the meadow now, a smooth green sea ruffled by nothing heavier than the light feet of the summer breeze. She could see the great gate invitingly open to the road and oh!--her heart stopped beating, then pounded on at a suffocating pace--she could see the cows! There they came, down the hill, quite filling the narrow roadway with their horrid bulk, making it look like a moving river of broad backs and tossing heads. What could she do, the girl wondered; what could she do against so many? She tried to run faster. Somehow she must reach the gate first. There was nothing even then, so far as she knew, to prevent their trampling her down and rushing over her into the waving greenness, unless she could slam the gate in their faces.

You can see that she really did not know much about cows.

But Prince knew them. Prince understood now why his master's guest had summoned him to this hot run in the sunshine. The prospect did not daunt Prince. He ran barking to the meadow side of the road. The foremost cow which, grazing the dusty gra.s.s, had strayed toward the gate, turned back into the ruts again. Elliott pulled the gate shut, in her haste leaving herself outside. There, too spent to climb over, she flattened her slender form against the gray boards, while, driven by Prince, the whole herd, horns tossing, tails switching, flanks heaving, thudded its way past.

And there, three minutes later, Bruce, dashing over the hill in response to a message relayed by telephone and boy to the lower meadow, found her.

"The cows have gone down," Elliott told him. "Prince has them. He will take them home, won't he?"

"Prince? Good enough! He'll get the cows home all right. But what are you doing in this mix-up?"

"A woman telephoned the house," said Elliott. "I was afraid I couldn't reach any of you in time, so I came over myself."

"You like cows?" The question shot at her like a bullet.

The piquant nose wrinkled entrancingly. "Scared to death of 'em."

"I guessed as much." The boy nodded. "Gee whiz, but you've got good stuff in you!"

And though her shoes were dusty and her hair tousled, and though her knees hadn't stopped shaking even yet, Elliott Cameron felt a sudden sense of satisfaction and pride. She turned and looked over the fence at the meadow. In its unmarred beauty it seemed to belong to her.

CHAPTER V

A SLACKER UNPERCEIVED

"I think," remarked Elliott, the next morning, "that I will walk up and watch the haying for a while."

She had finished washing the separator and the milk-pans. It had taken a full hour the first morning; growing expertness had already reduced the hour to three-quarters, and she had hopes of further reductions. She still held firmly to the opinion that the process was uninteresting, but an innate sense of fairness told her that the milk-pans were no more than her share. Of course, she couldn't spend six weeks in a household whose component members were as busy as were this household's members, and do nothing at all. That was the disadvantage in coming to the place. She was bound to dissemble her feelings and wash milk-pans. But if she had to wash them, she might as well do it well. There was no question about that. If the actual process still bored the girl, the results did not. Elliott was proud of her pans, with a pride in which there was no atom of indifference. She scoured them until they shone, not because, as she told herself, she liked to scour, but because she liked to see the pans shine.

Aunt Jessica liked to see them shine, too. She paused on her way through the kitchen. "What beautiful pans! I can see my face in every one of them."

A glow of elation struck through Elliott. Aunt Jessica was loving and sweet, but she did not lavish commendation in quarters where it was not due. Elliott knew her pans were beautiful, but Aunt Jessica's praise made them doubly so.

It was then, as she hung up her towels, that she made the remark about walking up to the hill meadow. She had a notion she would like to see the knives put into that unbroken expanse of tall gra.s.s for which she continued to feel a curious responsibility. A mere appearance at the field could not commit her to anything.

"If you are going up," said Aunt Jessica, "perhaps you will take some of these cookies I have just baked. Gertrude has made lemonade."

That was one of the delightful things about Aunt Jessica, Elliott thought: she never probed beneath the surface of one's words, she never even looked curiosity, and she gave one immediately a reason for doing what one wished to do. Lemonade and cookies made an appearance in the hay-field the most natural thing in the world.

The upper meadow proved a surprise. Not its business--Elliott had expected business, but its odd mingling of jollity with activity. They all seemed to be having such a good time about their work. And yet the jollity did not in the least interfere with the business, which appeared to be going forward in a systematic and efficient way that even an untrained girl could not fail to notice. Elliott's advent would have occasioned little disturbance, she suspected, had it not been for the cookies. She was used by now to having no fuss made over her. Laura waved a hand from her seat behind the horses; the boys swung their hats; Priscilla darted over to display a ground-sparrow's nest that the scythes had disclosed.

It was Priscilla who discovered the cookies and sent a squeal of delight across the meadow. But even then the workers did not pause.

Priscilla had to dance out across the mown gra.s.s and squeal again and wave both hands, a cooky in one, a cup in the other, and add a shrill little yelp, "Come on! Come on, peoples! You don't know what we've got here," before they straggled over to what Henry called "the refreshment booth."

Then they were ready enough to notice Elliott. Uncle Robert and the boys cracked jokes, the girls chattered and laughed, and every one called on her to applaud the amount of work they had already accomplished, exactly as though she understood about such things.

And Elliott did applaud, reinforcing her words with a whole battery of dimples, all the while privately resolving that no contagion of enthusiasm should inoculate her with the haymaking germ. There were factors that made it all a bit hard to withstand; the sky was so blue, the breeze was so jolly, the mown gra.s.s smelled so delicious, and the mountain air had such zest in it. But, on the other hand, the sun was hot and downright and freckling; Priscilla's tip-tilted little nose was already liberally besprinkled. If Laura hadn't such a wonderful skin, she would have been a sight long ago, despite the wide brim of her big straw hat. A mere farm hat, and Laura looked like a mere husky farm girl, as she guided her horses skilfully around the field. How strong her arms must be! But how could a girl with Laura's intelligence and high spirit and charm enjoy putting all this time into haying? With Priscilla, of course, matters stood differently. Children never discriminate.

"No, I sha'n't do that kind of thing," said Elliott, firmly. But she would investigate the haymaking game, investigate it coolly and dispa.s.sionately, to find out exactly what it amounted to--aside, of course, from an acc.u.mulation of dried gra.s.s in barns. To this end, she invaded the upper meadow a good many times, during the next few days, took a turn on the hay-rake, now and then helped load and unload, riding down to the barn on a mound of high-piled fragrance, and came to the conclusion that, as an activity, haymaking wasn't to be compared with knocking a ball back and forth across a net. To try one's hand at it might do well enough, now and then, to spice an otherwise luxurious life, but as a steady diet the thing was too unrelenting. One was driven by wind and sun; even the clouds took a hand in cudgeling one on. A person must keep at it whether she cared to or not--in actual practice this point never troubled Elliott, who always stopped when she wished to--there were no spectators, and, heaviest demerit of all, it was undeniably hard work.

But she was curious to discover what Laura found in it, and you know Elliott Cameron well enough by this time to understand that she was not a girl who hesitated to ask for information.

The last load had dashed into the big red barn two minutes before a thunder-shower, and Laura, freshly tubbed and laundered, was winding her long black braids around her shapely little head. Elliott sat on the bed and watched her.

"Aren't you glad it's done?" she asked.

"The haying? Oh, yes, I'm always glad when we have it safely in. But I love it."

"Really? It isn't work for girls."

"No? Then once a year I'll take a vacation from being a girl. But that doesn't hold now, you know. Everything is work for girls that girls can do, to help win this war."

"To help win the war?" echoed Elliott, and blankly and suddenly shut her mouth. Why, she supposed it did help, after all! But it was their work, the kind of thing they had always done, up here at the Cameron Farm; only, as Bruce had a.s.sured her, the girls hadn't done much of it. Was that what Bruce had meant, too?