Tabitha's Vacation Part 15

"Headache!"

"_You_ didn't eat any castor-beans, did you?"

Billiard paused in the act of crawling into bed to glare angrily at his brother, thinking he was being made fun of; but Toady's cherubic face seemed to allay his suspicions, and he briefly, but savagely replied, "Naw!"

"You better tell Tabitha--" began Toady in genuine solicitude; but Billiard again misconstrued his brother's meaning, and interrupted, "Aw, shut up! Let a feller alone for once, can't you?" And as Billiard wriggled into bed, puzzled Toady lapsed into silence.

Tabitha, too, was puzzled by the older boy's actions. She had hoped that the poisoning of his brother would awake his better nature if nothing else would, so she was keenly disappointed, as well as surprised, at the change which now took place in him.

"It seems so strange," she confided to Gloriana. "He acted so terribly cut up the day he brought Toady home sick, that I thought it would cure him of his mean mischief, at least. But now he seems bent on trying to find the limit of human endurance--doubling his mischief and being more aggravatingly hateful than ever."

"Perhaps he is getting even for Toady's reform," suggested the red-haired girl, looking worried.

"Toady--bless the boy!" exclaimed Tabitha fervently. "I should go wild if he had taken the streak Billiard has."

"And yet I can see how provoking it must be to Bill----"

"Why, Gloriana!"

"I mean that Toady's declaration of independence would naturally rouse Bill's 'mad,' as Rosslyn says, when Toady had blindly followed his leaders.h.i.+p for so long. And besides, the way Toady flaunts his virtues in his brother's face----"

"That _is_ rather amusing, isn't it?"

"Provoking? I should, say! Billiard has been used to saying the word and Toady has obeyed. It's rather a--a--jar, to be defied, or ignored all of a sudden. Bill is bright----"

"Too bright," sighed Tabitha, somewhat sarcastically, Gloriana thought.

"He _is_ bright!" championed the younger girl warmly. "This morning I happened to overhear him teasing the girls at play under the kitchen window, and he declared that it was a mistake for Inez and Irene to be twins; that it should have been Susie and Inez, and then their names would have been Suez and Inez."

Tabitha smiled in spite of herself, then said heatedly, "But he is so mean about it! To-day while you were at the bakery and he thought I had gone for the mail, I heard a commotion in the yard, and what do you suppose I found him doing?"

Gloriana shook her head.

"He had the girls and Rosslyn lined up by the woodpile and was making them carry in _his_ wood. Even little Janie was loaded down with two immense sticks, so heavy she could hardly toddle with them."

"What did you do?"

"Made them drop their loads right where they were, and he had to carry it all in by himself."

"Without even Toady's help?"

"All by himself!" repeated Tabitha emphatically.

"I am afraid--we are not apt--to----"

"To what?" asked Tabitha, as her companion stammered in confusion and paused abruptly.

"To gain anything--_much_ of anything by trying to force Billiard into being good."

"How _are_ we to make him mind, then? He won't coax. You can't flatter him into behaving himself, and threats don't do a mite of good.

_I_ think a smart dose of the hickory stick would be the most effective medicine for such cases as his."

Glory looked dubious.

"You don't agree with me?" suggested Tabitha.

"He is such a big boy to be thrashed," she evaded.

"He is such a big boy to act that way!"

"Yes, that's true, but----"

How she would have finished her sentence Tabitha never found out, for at that moment a piercing scream broke the stillness of the desert afternoon, followed by a medley of excited accusations, denials, threats, and Billiard's taunting laugh. Tabitha flew to the rescue of her brood and found Irene stretched full length in the gravel, with Mercedes and Toady deluging her with water, while the rest of the sisters danced frantically about the trio.

"He--he shot her!" cried Rosslyn indignantly, at sight of the slender figure in the doorway.

"I gave her fair warning," said defiant Billiard.

"Hand me your gun!" demanded Tabitha in exasperation, after a hasty examination of the victim had convinced her that Irene was more frightened than hurt.

"Gun! Ha, ha, ain't that rich?" mocked Billiard.

"'Twas a slingshot," volunteered Toady.

"And he shooted a rock," added Janie.

Tabitha held out her hand with an imperious gesture. "Pa.s.s it over quietly, or I shall make you."

Billiard calmly pocketed the article in dispute, and seeing that Irene was recovering under the heroic treatment of her amateur nurses, he seated himself in tantalizing silence upon the saw-horse, as if to enjoy the scene he had created. But his enjoyment was short lived.

Tabitha, now thoroughly aroused, and forgetful of her dignity, swooped down upon the tormentor, wrested his slingshot from his grasp, and before anyone could divine her intentions, seized a barrel stave from the woodpile and gave the surprised boy a sound drubbing.

In the midst of the thras.h.i.+ng, there came vividly to her mind her childish horror of that day of reckoning with her father, when he had struck her with one of his slippers, and she recalled the fact that it was not the physical hurt, but the humiliation of the blow which had wounded her most deeply. Flinging down the stick, she released the struggling lad as suddenly as she had seized him; and in tones that sounded husky in spite of herself, briefly ordered, "Go to your room!"

Angry, stunned, shamed, Billiard bounced through the kitchen, slammed the door of his room, turned the key in the lock and--stood still in the middle of the floor. Whipped by a girl not four years his senior!

Whipped by a _girl_! It was an unforgivable outrage. He would get even for that. But what was he to do? Would _could_ he do? She had beaten him at every turn, she had set Toady against him, she had made him the laughing stock of his cousins. He--he--he would do something desperate. He would----

As if in answer to his thoughts, he heard a strange voice close beside the open window say, "Yes, he has run away. The inspector completed his job this morning, found At.w.a.ter's accounts five hundred dollars short, and he skipped."

"Who?" demanded Mercedes. "The post-master?"

"Yep! Lit out. Can't have been gone more'n an hour, but no one seems to have seen him anywhere around town, and they are scouring the country for him."

Billiard drew a deep breath. That was an idea. Why hadn't he thought of it before! He, too, would run away. Stealthily he crept to the little closet, selected a clean s.h.i.+rt, a pair of stockings, a necktie, and his pajamas, tied them up in a bath-towel, not having such a thing in his wardrobe as a bandana handkerchief, although he felt that this was an essential; and after a cautious survey of the premises to make sure that the children were nowhere near, he crawled out of the window, carefully shut the screen again, and darted swiftly down the steep, pathless incline on the west side of the house to the flat below. It was a hazardous undertaking, and at any other time he would have shrunk from attempting it, but in his unreasonable anger and desire for revenge, all else was forgotten; and he arrived at the sandy bottom breathless, badly scratched by the mesquite, and smarting from the p.r.i.c.k of cactus thorns, but triumphant.

Pausing only long enough to shake his fist defiantly at the house on the cliff above, he made off across the desert as fast as his legs would carry him. His first idea had been to follow the railroad, but on second thought he concluded that he might easily be overtaken and brought back if he took that course. So after a brief survey of the pathless landscape, he decided to skirt the mountains in whose hollow lay the town of Silver Bow, and to strike off to the west, in the direction of a neighboring mining camp called Crystal City.

"If I _should_ miss that place," he reasoned to himself, "I am sure to get somewhere. Perhaps to Los Angeles that Mercy goes so crazy about.

Say, that's just the thing! It takes only about twelve hours to get there by train; I ought to be able to walk it in two days, and I'll join the navy. I always did want to be a sailor!"