The Carter Girls Part 21

"Geewhiz! Something must have been doing here once to make such a mess,"

declared Lewis Somerville.

"Just look at that great rock balanced there on that little one! It would take just a push to send it clattering down. To think that one great heave of Mother Earth must have sent it up, and there it has been just as it is for centuries!" said Douglas.

"Well, we uns bets Mr. Bill could send it over with one er his side splitters." And with that from Josh, Bill gave a sample of his laugh that did not dislodge the great boulder but made Tillie Wingo stop talking for a whole minute.

"You uns ain't lowing to eat here, is you uns?" asked Josh rather plaintively.

"Well, this is a pretty good place," suggested Dr. Wright, who had found a pleasant companion in Miss Hill although he had made some endeavor at first to walk beside Helen. But that young lady swished her cold-gravy corduroy skirt by him and refused to be walked beside. Helen was looking particularly charming on that day, although she could but confess to herself that she was a little tired. Making sandwiches for such a lot of persons was no joke, and she had been at it for hours before they started on the hike. She had had plenty of helpers, but sandwiches were her particular stunt and she had had a finger in every one.

Dr. Wright's last glimpse of Helen as she had sat in the coach of the moving train, telling a truly true made-up story to Bobby, had remained a very pleasant picture in his mind. He had decided that there was a lot of sweetness in the girl and certainly a great deal of cleverness and charm--if she would only not feel that her th.o.r.n.y side was the one always to be presented to him. When he had handed her the aromatic ammonia for Douglas and she had thanked him so sweetly, he had felt that surely the hatchet was buried between them and now they were to be friends. He had been thinking of her a good deal during the past week and had quite looked forward to the possibility of becoming better acquainted with her.

Helen had really meant to be nice, but on the young doctor's arrival a spirit of perverseness had seized her and she had her thorns all ready to p.r.i.c.k him whenever he approached her, hoping for some share of the sweetness she could lavish on others: on Bobby, for instance. That youngster always declared Helen was his favorite sister, and there was never a time when Bobby was too dirty or too naughty for Helen to think he was not the sweetest and most kissable thing in the world. As Bobby's conversation when he was with his 'ployer was taken up a great deal with Helen, and vice versa, those two young persons perforce heard much of one another. Helen was grateful to Dr. Wright for his kindness to Bobby and at the same time was a little jealous of Bobby's affection and admiration for him.

"It isn't like me," she would argue to herself, "but somehow this man seems always to be putting me in the wrong, and now he even has Bobby loving him more than he does me, and as for the girls--they make me tired!"

That very morning when they were dressing for the hike and she was putting on her cold-gravy corduroy skirt, grey pongee shirtwaist and grey stockings and canvas shoes--all thought out with care even to the soft grey summer felt hat and the one touch of color: a bright red tie knotted under the soft rolling collar--she had been irritated almost to a point of tears because Nan, who was all ready, came running back into the tent to put on some khaki leggins because Dr. Wright said it would be wise to wear them, as a place like the Devil's Gorge was sure to be snaky. Douglas and Lucy had done the same thing and had wanted her to.

"Indeed I won't! How did he happen to be the boss of this camp? His power of attorney does not extend to me, I'll have him know! Besides, do you think I am going to ruin the whole effect of my grey costume with those old mustard colored leggins? Not on your life!"

"Helen is very tired; that's what makes her so unreasonable," Nan had whispered to Douglas as they left the tent to Helen and her costume.

"She has worked so hard all morning on the sandwiches. When I finished the deviled eggs, I wanted her to let me help, but she wouldn't."

"Yes, I know. I was so busy in the tents, making up cots and straightening up things, that I had to leave it all to you and Helen, but I thought Gwen and Susan were there to help."

"So they were, but Susan has a slap dash way of making sandwiches that does not appeal to Helen, and while Gwen is very capable, she cannot take the initiative in anything unless she has been taught it at school.

The next time we make sandwiches she will do it much better. She was so anxious to make them just right that she was slower than Brer Tarripin."

"I asked Gwen to go with us this morning, but she shrank back in such horror at the mention of the Devil's Gorge that I realized I had been cruel, indeed, to speak of the place to her. That's where her father killed himself, you know."

"Yes, poor girl! Doesn't it seem strange that there were no papers of any sort found to show where he came from?"

Just then Dr. Wright joined them and they told him of the little English girl and how her father had killed himself and how, there being no papers to show that he had made a payment on the mountain property, Old Dean, the country storekeeper, had foreclosed at the Englishman's death and the property had later been given to their father in payment of a debt Dean owed him for services in rebuilding the hotel at Greendale, also owned by Dean.

"Aunt Mandy says it was only about a thousand dollars in all," explained Douglas, "and she was under the impression that Mr. Brown had paid cash for the land, but he was so reticent no one knew much about him and old Dean said that he had never paid anything. Of course Dean is the rich member of the community and gives them credit at his store, so all the mountaineers are under his thumb, more or less. Father got only half the land."

When Helen appeared, she fancied Dr. Wright looked disapprovingly at her because of her legginless state, but on the contrary he was thinking what a very delightful looking person she was and never even thought of leggins. He only thought how nice it would be if she would permit him to walk by her side and hold back the low hanging branches and briars so that her bright, animated face would escape the inevitable scratches that attend a hike in the mountains. He liked the way she walked, carrying her head and shoulders in rather a gallant way. He liked the sure-footed way she stepped along in her pretty grey canvas ties. He liked the set and hang of her corduroy skirt and the roll of the soft collar of her shirt--above all, he liked the little dash of red at her throat. She reminded him of a scarlet tanager, only they were black, and she was grey, grey like a dove--but there was certainly nothing dovelike about her, certainly nothing meek or cooing as she swished by him.

No one laughed more or chattered more than Helen did on that hike, not even Tillie Wingo herself, the queen bee of laughers and chatterers; but Nan noticed that the last mile of their walk her sister's carriage was not nearly so gallant, and Dr. Wright noticed that the scarlet of her tie was even more brilliant because of an unwonted paleness of her piquant face. He tapped his breast pocket to be sure that the tiny medicine case he always carried with him was safe.

"You never can tell what will happen when a lot of youngsters start off on a hike, and it is well to have 'first aid to the injured' handy," he had said to himself.

"Wal, if you uns is lowing to eat here, reckon we uns will drive Josephus round the mounting a bit. We uns feels like it's a feedin' the Devil and starvin' G.o.d to eat in sech a spot," and Josh prepared to unload his mule after he had a.s.sisted Bobby to the ground.

"Oh, please don't eat here," begged Nan, "this is where the Englishman died."

"Where? Where?" the others demanded, and Josh, nothing loath to tell the dramatic incident and emboldened by the crowd and broad daylight, when hants were powerless, told again the tale of the man with the sad, tired face who was always trying to get away from the ringing and roaring in his head; how he had drifted into Greendale and bought the land with the cabin on it from old Dean and taken his little girl up there where they had lived about two years; and then how one night he had not come home, and Gwen had come to their cabin early in the morning to ask them to hunt her father, and after long search they had found him down in the Devil's Gorge--dead.

"Dead's a door nail and Gwen left 'thout so much as a sho 'nuf name, 'cause the Englishman allus called hisself Brown, but the books what Gwen fetched to we allses' house is got another name writ in 'em, an' my maw, she says that Gwen's jes' as likely to be named one as tother. My maw says that she don't hold to the notion that the Englishman took his own life, but that was what the coroner said--susanside--an' accordin'

to law we uns is bleeged to accept his verdict."

"I agree with your mother," said Dr. Wright. "It is more apt to have been vertigo that toppled the poor man over. That ringing in the head is so often accompanied with vertigo."

They carried the provisions around the mountain, out of sight of the gruesome spot, and under a mighty oak tree ate their very good luncheon.

CHAPTER XVII.

FIRST AID.

"It is strange we haven't seen a single snake," said one of the visiting girls.

"Thank goodness for it!" exclaimed another. "I was almost afraid to come camping because of snakes."

"We haven't seen any around the camp at all," Douglas a.s.sured them.

Bill and Lewis exchanged sly glances, for the truth of the matter was they had killed several in the early days when they were breaking ground for the pavilion--had killed and kept mum on the subject.

"Girls are just as afraid of dead snakes as alive ones, so let's keep dark about them," Lewis had said, and they had also sworn Josh to secrecy.

"There is one thing to be remembered about snakes," said Dr. Wright, "most snakes, at least, that they are as afraid of you as you are of them and they are seldom the aggressors; that is, they do not consider themselves so. They strike when they think that you have encroached on their trail. If you look carefully where you walk, there is no danger ever of being bitten by a snake, and very few snakes will come deliberately where you are. I will wager anything that Josh here has never stepped on a snake."

"We uns done it onct but Maw lambasted we uns with a black snake whip fer not lookin' whar we uns trod, so's ain't never had no accident since. Maw, she said if the har of a dog was good fer the bite, that a black snake whip would jest about cure we uns fer most gittin' bit by a rattler."

"Oh, he didn't bite you, then?"

"Naw, 'cause we uns war jes up from the measles an' Maw had put some ole boots on we uns. Maw says that the best cure for snake bite is to have the measles an' wear ole boots so you uns don't git bit."

"Very sound reasoning," laughed Dr. Wright. "In the mountains, top boots or leggins would cure all snake bites."

"Helen wouldn't wear her leggins," declared Bobby, "'cause she said you couldn't come attorney-generaling her about her clothes, and mustard don't help cold gravy none, anyhow."

"Oh, Bobby!" gasped Helen.

"So it won't, Bobby," said Dr. Wright, somewhat mystified as to the hidden meaning of mustard and cold gravy but feeling sure that there was some significance in it. He did not interpret it as did Mrs. Bardell the cryptic notes from Mr. Pickwick concerning tomato sauce as being love messages, but well knew that they were more nearly proofs of dislike if not hate from Helen.

"Nothing can help cold gravy in my opinion," drawled Nan, "not even heating it up."

"How about cold shoulders?" asked the doctor.

"Or icy mitts?"

"Or glacial reserve?"

"Or chilling silence?" Suggestions from different ones of the picnickers.