Chicken Little Jane on the Big John Part 24

Captain Clarke explained to Gertie exactly how to strike the blow that should send the ginger ale foaming over the bow, and repeated the formal words of christening until she knew them by heart. Gertie was so interested she forgot to be shy, and performed her office with much spirit, repeating the "I christen thee, _Chicken Little_," as solemnly as if she were standing beside a battles.h.i.+p instead of a blue-and-white row boat. It was a pretty ceremony, but it took so long that Wing Fan came to announce supper before they were all fairly packed away in the boat for their promised ride. The six were a snug fit.

Supper was served on the uncovered veranda. A stream of late afternoon suns.h.i.+ne filtered through the trees, and, with the lengthening shadows, cast a sunflecked pattern of branch and foliage on the white linen tablecloth and s.h.i.+ning gla.s.s and silver. Some of Chicken Little's own clove pinks, mingled with feathery larkspur and ribbon gra.s.s, filled a silver bowl in the center of the table.

"How did you keep them fresh so long?" Chicken Little asked curiously.

"Wing Fan performed some kind of an incantation over them. You'll have to ask him."

Wing was delighted to have Jane notice them. "Velly easy keep--put some away in box with ice all same b.u.t.ter."

Captain Clarke had been the first person on the creek to put up ice for summer use and Wing was the proud possessor of a roomy ice box.

"It seems like home to have ice again." Katy was stirring the sugar in her tea for the sheer satisfaction of hearing the ice tinkle against the sides of the gla.s.s. A sudden thought disturbed her. "Though there couldn't be anything nicer than your spring house for keeping things. I don't believe our melons at home ever got so nice and cold all through as yours do down in the spring stream."

"That's a wonderful spring you have over on the place." Captain Clarke came to Katy's rescue. "And that big oak above it is the finest tree in this part of the country. I'll venture it has a history if we only knew it."

"Yes, Father is very proud of the old oak. He says it is at least two hundred years old. He wouldn't take anything for it," Ernest replied.

"Everybody calls Kansas a new country," said Sherm, "but I guess it is pretty old in some ways. Kansas had a lot of history during the war."

"Yes, and lots of the people who helped make the history are living down at Garland now. The old Santa Fe trail runs clear across our ranch. You can tell it still--though it hasn't been traveled for almost twenty years--by the ruts and washouts. And even where the ground wasn't cut up by the countless wheels, it was packed so hard the blue stem has never grown there since. It is all covered with that fuzzy buffalo gra.s.s. In winter this turns a lighter brown than the prairie gra.s.s and you can see the trail for miles, distinctly." Ernest loved history and politics.

"What was the Santa Fe trail? I have heard you speak of the trail so much and I never knew what you meant." Katy asked eagerly.

The Captain answered: "The old trans-continental wagon road to the gold fields of California. You know there was a time when Kansas didn't have anything so civilized as a railroad and people traveled by wagon and horseback--even on foot, all the way to the coast."

"Yes," added Ernest, "and lots of them died on the way or got killed by Indians."

"Indians?" said Katy, "why, we haven't seen a single Indian and Cousin May said she'd be afraid to come out here because there were lots of them still about."

"Not in this part of Kansas--you needn't lose any sleep. The Kaw reservation isn't so very far away and parties sometimes come this way to revisit their old hunting grounds, but the Kaws were a peaceable tribe even in their free days."

"There are lots of Indian mounds and relics around here," put in Chicken Little. "Father got those arrow heads, and that stone to pound corn, and his tomahawk heads out of a mound over on Little John."

"Yes, and there's a tree on the main street in town that used to be a famous meeting place for the Indians. Oh, we must take you all to see the old Indian Mission. It was used as a fort, too, more than once, they say. The walls are fully two feet thick."

"Whew, I didn't know you had so many interesting things round here!"

exclaimed Sherm.

"We are so used to them we hardly think of them as being interesting.

Have I ever told you about the hermit's cave?"

"Hermit's cave? No, where is it?"

"On the side of that big bluff just west of town. Oh, that's some story.

The hermit lived there until about ten years ago. Some said he was a Jesuit priest who lived a hermit's life to become more holy, and others that he was an Italian n.o.ble who had fled from Italy to escape punishment for a crime. n.o.body ever really knew much about him except that he was highly educated and read books in several different languages. But the cave is still there, in the ledge of rocks near the top of the bluff."

"Oh, I'd love to see it." Gertie liked romantic things.

"So would I," Katy added.

"Me too," echoed Sherm.

"Count me in," said the Captain, "or rather let me take you all to town some day to explore these marvels."

"They really aren't much to see--they're more interesting to tell about.

But I'd be glad to see them all again myself," Ernest replied.

Wing Fan had prepared so many good things for them that none of the party felt energetic enough for rowing immediately after supper. They were glad to linger over the peach ice cream which was Wing's crowning triumph, and nibble at the Chinese sweetmeats about which they were rather doubtful.

"I don't believe I ever tasted such good ice cream," exclaimed Katy.

"I think Wing Fan must say magical words over everything he cooks--his things are so different and taste so good. I never thought I liked rice before, but his was delicious."

[Ill.u.s.tration: And he brandished it fiercely.]

"Wing Fan knows all about the family history of rice. He talks to each grain separately," laughed the Captain.

The boys didn't praise Wing's efforts in words, but their appet.i.tes kept Wing on the broad grin. He could not resist looking proudly at his employer when Sherm accepted his third saucer of cream.

The Captain invited them into the library to pick out Sherm's elephant.

They were all so interested in the curios and asked so many questions they came near forgetting the boat ride. Ernest picked out a s.h.i.+p's cutla.s.s the first thing. The Captain took it down for him to examine and he brandished it fiercely.

Captain Clarke smiled. "I fear you wouldn't do much execution if you handled it that way, Ernest. A cutla.s.s has tricks of its own. Here, this is the way." He showed the boy how to get the proper hold and how to swing it.

Ernest struck an att.i.tude. "Behold your sailor brother as he skims the briny deep, Chicken Little."

"Pooh, naval officers don't carry cutla.s.ses, do they, Captain Clarke?"

"No, I believe the sword used now is straight. But this cutla.s.s has a history I think might interest you."

"Tell us."

"If you like. It won't take long. Boys, will you draw up chairs for the girls?" Captain Clarke reached out his hand for a big easy chair nearby at the same moment that Sherm laid his hand upon it to draw it nearer for their host himself. The two hands rested in almost the same position on the opposite arms of the chair. They were singularly alike. Katy, the observing, noticed this instantly.

Captain Clarke studied Sherm's hand for a minute, then his gaze s.h.i.+fted to his own.

"I doubt if my hand was ever as good looking as Sherm's," he said easily. "You have a hand that denotes unusual strength and will power, according to 'palmology.' You will have to live up to it."

But Katy was persistent. "It's almost exactly like yours, Captain Clarke, only yours isn't so smooth and has more lines. Don't you see it's a square hand with unusually long fingers. The thumbs are shaped just the same, too."

"You should be an artist, Katy, you are such a close observer," replied the Captain.

They settled down comfortably for the story. Chicken Little noticed Sherm regarding his own hand rather critically and glancing from it to the Captain's, who used frequent gestures as he warmed with his talk.

Gertie could not take her eyes from the cruel steel blade of the cutla.s.s. "I wish there were no awful things to kill people with. I don't believe G.o.d meant people to kill each other in battle any more than to kill each other when they get mad."

Captain Clarke smiled at her disturbed look. "That is one of the most terrible questions human beings have ever had to answer, little girl. I thought as you do once, Gertie, before the Civil War broke out. I loathed the histories and pictures of fighting. My schoolmates used to dub me a sissy because I hated the sight of blood. But when President Lincoln called for volunteers to save our country, when I realized that it was a choice between having one great free country with liberty in it for both blacks and whites, or letting our own race and kin leave us in hatred to continue the wickedness of human slavery right at our doors, it didn't take me long to decide. War and all unnecessary suffering inflicted by human beings upon each other, are hideous. But have you ever thought how much more of such suffering there would be if parents didn't inflict suffering upon their children to make them control their ugly pa.s.sions? If our courts didn't punish people for being cruel to other people? And when it isn't a child or one or two grown men or women who try to be cruel or unjust, but a whole nation, what then? Surely other nations should come to the rescue of the right, even if it means war. You wouldn't let a big dog kill a little one without trying to save it, would you, Gertie?"