The Sun Maid Part 15

"I'm afraid you'll get everything upset."

"I won't touch a thing more 'n I have to. I'll set right here in the chimney-corner an' doze an' take it easy. The fall work's all done, an' I'd ought to rest a mite."

"Rest! Rest? Yes. That's what a man always thinks of. It's a woman who has to keep at it, early an' late, winter an' summer, sick or well.

If I should go an' happen to take cold, I don't know what to the land would become of you, Abel Smith."

"I don't either, ma."

There was a long silence, during which Mercy tied and untied her bonnet-strings a number of times; and each time with a greater hesitancy. Finally, she pulled from her head the uneasy covering and laid it on the table. Then she unpinned her shawl, and Abel regarded these signs ruefully. But he knew the nature with which he had to deal; and the occasional absences that were so necessary to Mercy's happiness were also seasons of great refreshment to himself. During them he felt almost, and sometimes quite, his own master. He loafed, and smoked, and whittled, and even brought out his old fiddle and just "played himself crazy"--so his wife declared. Even then he was already recalling a tune he had heard a pa.s.sing teamster whistle and was longing to try it for himself. He abruptly changed his tactics.

Looking into Mercy's face with an appearance of great gladness, he exclaimed:

"Now ain't that grand! Here was I, thinkin' of myself all alone, and you off havin' such a good time, talkin' over old ways out East an'

hearin' all the news that's going. There. Take right off your things an' I'll help put 'em away for you. You've got such a lot cooked up you can afford to get out your patchwork, and I'll fiddle a bit and----"

"Abel Smith! I didn't think you'd go and begrudge me a little pleasure. Me, that has slaved an' dug an' worked myself sick a help-meetin' an' savin' for you. I really didn't."

"Well, I'm not begrudging anybody. An' I don't s'pose there is much news we hain't heard. Though there was a new family of settlers moved out on the mill-road last week, I don't reckon they'd be anybody that we'd care about. Folks have to be a mite particular, even out here in Illinois."

Mercy paused, with her half-folded shawl in her hands. Then, with considerable emphasis, she unfolded it again, and deliberately fastened it about her plump person.

"Well, I'm goin'. It's rainin' a little, but none to hurt. I've fixed a dose of cough syrup for Mis' Waldron's baby, an' I'd ought to go an'

give it to her. Them new folks has come right near her farm, I hear.

If you ain't man enough to look out for yourself for a few hours, you cert'nly ain't enough account for me to worry over. But take good care of yourself, Abel. I'm goin'. I feel it my duty. There's a roast spare-rib an' some potatoes ready to fry; an' the meal for the stirabout is all in the measure an'--good-by. I'll likely be back to-night. If not, by milkin' time to-morrow morning."

Abel had taken down the almanac from its nail in the wall and had pretended to be absorbed in its contents. He did not even lift his eyes as his wife went out and shut the door. He still continued to search the "prognostics" long after the cabin had become utterly silent, not daring to glance through the small window, lest she should discover him and be reminded of some imaginary duty toward him that would make her return.

But, at the end of fifteen minutes, since nothing happened and the stillness remained profound, he hung the almanac back in its place, clapped his hands and executed a sort of joy-dance which was quite original with himself. Then he drew his splint-bottomed chair before the open fire, tucked his fiddle under his chin, and proceeded to enjoy himself.

For more than an hour, he played and whistled and felt as royal and happy as a king. By the end of that time he had grown a little tired of music, and noticed that the drizzle of the early morning had settled into a steady, freezing downpour. The trees were already becoming coated with ice and their branches to creak dismally in the rising wind.

"Never see such a country for wind as this is. Blows all the time, the year round. Hope Mercy'll be able to keep ahead of the storm.

She's a powerful free traveller, Mercy is, an' don't stan' for trifles. But--my soul! Ain't she a talker? I realize _that_ when her back's turned. It's so still in this cabin I could hear a pin drop, if there was anybody round hadn't nothin' better to do than to drop one.

Hmm, I s'pose I could find some sort of job out there to the barn. But I ain't goin' to. I'm just goin' to play hookey by myself this whole endurin' day, an' see what comes of it. I believe I'll just tackle one of them pumpkin pies. 'Tain't so long since breakfast, but eatin' kind of pa.s.ses the time along. I wish I had a newspaper. I wish somethin'

would turn up. I--I wouldn't let Mercy know it, not for a farm; but _'tis_ lonesome here all by myself. I hain't never noticed it so much as I do this mornin'. Whew! Hear that wind! It's a good mile an' a half to Waldron's. I hope Mercy's got there 'fore this."

Abel closed the outer door, and crossed to the well-stocked cupboard.

As he stood contemplating its contents, and undecided as to which would really best suit his present mood, there came a sound of somebody approaching the house along the slippery footpath. This was so unexpected that it startled the pioneer. Then he reflected: "Mercy.

She's come back!" and remained guiltily standing with his hand upon the edge of a pie plate, like a school-boy pilfering his mother's larder.

"Rat-a-tat-a-tat!"

"Somebody knockin'! That ain't Mercy! Who the land, I wonder!"

He made haste to see and opened the heavy door to the demand of a young boy, who stood shivering before it. At a little distance further from the house was, also, a woman wrapped in a blanket that glistened with sleet, and which seemed to enfold besides herself the form of a little child.

"My land! my land! Why, bubby! where in the world did you drop from?

Is that your ma? No. I see she's an Indian, an' you're as white as the frost itself. Come in. Come right in."

But the lad lingered on the threshold and asked with chattering teeth, which showed how chilled he was:

"Can Wahneenah come too?"

"I don't know who in Christendom Wahneeny is, but you folks all come straight in out of the storm. 'Twon't do to keep the door open so long, for the sleet's beating right in on Mercy's carpet. There'd be the d.i.c.kens to pay if she saw that."

Gaspar, for it was he, ran quickly back toward the motionless Wahneenah, and, clutching the corner of her blanket, dragged her forward. She seemed reluctant to follow, notwithstanding her half-frozen condition and she glanced into Abel's honest face with keen inquiry. Yet seeing nothing but good-natured pity in it, she entered the cabin, and herself shut the door. Yet she kept her place close to the exit, even after Gaspar had pulled the blanket apart and revealed the white face of the Sun Maid lying on her breast.

"Why, why, why! poor child! Poor little creatur'. Where in the world did you hail from to be out in such weather? Didn't you have ary home to stay in? But, there. I needn't ask that, because there's Mercy off trapesing just the same, an' her with the best cabin on the frontier.

I s'pose this Wahneeny was took with a gossipin' fit, too, an' set out to find her own cronies. But I don't recollect as I've heard of any Indians livin' out this way."

By this time the water that had been frozen upon the wanderers'

clothing had begun to melt, and was drip-dripping in little puddles upon Mercy's beloved carpet. Abel eyed these with dismay, and finally hit upon the happy expedient of turning back the loose breadth of the heavy fabric which bordered the hearth. Upon the bare boards thus revealed he placed three chairs, and invited his guests to take them.

Gaspar dropped into one very promptly, but the squaw did not advance until the boy cried:

"Do come, Other Mother. Poor Kitty will wake up then, and feel all right."

The atmosphere of any house was always uncomfortable to Wahneenah.

Even then, she felt as if she had stepped from freedom into prison, cold though she was and half-famished with hunger. Personally, she would rather have taken her bit of food out under the trees; but the thought of her Sun Maid was always powerful to move her. She laid aside the wet blanket, and carried the drowsy little one to the fireside, where the warmth soon revived the child so that she sat up on her foster-mother's lap, and gazed about her with awakening curiosity. Then she began to smile on Abel, who stood regarding her wonderful loveliness with undisguised amazement, and to prattle to him in her accustomed way.

"Why, you nice, nice man! Isn't this a pretty place. Isn't it beau'ful warm? I'm so glad we came. It was cold out of doors, wasn't it, Other Mother? Did you know all the time what a good warm fire was here? Was that why we came?"

"I knew nothing," answered Wahneenah, stolidly.

"But I did!" cried Gaspar. "As soon as I saw the smoke of your chimney I said: 'That is a white man's house. We will go and stay in it.' It's a nice house, sir, and, like Kitty, I am glad we came. Do you live here all alone?"

"No. My wife, Mercy, has gone a visitin'. That's why I happen to be here doin' nothin'. I mean--I might have been to the barn an' not heard you. You're lookin' into that cupboard pretty sharp. Be you hungry? But I needn't ask that. A boy always is."

"I am hungry. We all are. We haven't had anything to eat in--days, I guess. Are those pies--regular pies, on the shelves?"

"Yes. Do you like pies?"

"I used to. I haven't had any since I left the Fort."

"Left what?"

"The Fort. Fort Dearborn. Did you know it?"

"Course. That is, about it. But there ain't no Fort now. Don't tell stories."

"I'm not. I'm telling the truth."

If this was a refugee from that unhappy garrison, Abel felt that he could not do enough for the boy's comfort. He could not refrain his suspicious glances from Wahneenah's dark face, but as she kept her own gaze fixed upon the ground, he concluded she did not see them. In any case, she was only an Indian, and therefore to be treated with scant courtesy.

Mercy would have been surprised to see with what handiness her husband played the host in her absence and now he whipped off the red woollen cover from the table and rolled it toward the fireplace. But she would not have approved at all of the lavishness with which he set before his guests the best things from her cupboard. There was a cold rabbit patty, the pot of beans, light loaves of sweet rye bread, and a pat of golden b.u.t.ter. To these he added a generous pitcher of milk, and beside Gaspar's own plate he placed both a pumpkin and a dried-apple pie.

"I'd begin with these, if I was you, sonny. Baked beans come by nature, seems to me, but pies are a gift of grace. Though I must say my wife don't stint 'em when she takes it into her head to go gallivantin' an' leaves me to housekeep. 'Pears to think then I must have somethin' sort of comfortin'. I'd start in on pie, if I was a little shaver, an' take the beans last."

This might not have been the best of advice to give a lad whose fast had been so long continued as Gaspar's, but it suited that young person exactly. Indeed, in all his life he had never seen so well spread a table, and he lost no time in obeying his entertainer's suggestion. But he noticed with regret that his foster-mother did not touch the proffered food, and that she ministered even gingerly to Kitty's wants.