The Camp Fire Girls on the Open Road Part 1

The Camp Fire Girls on the Open Road.

by Hildegard G. Frey.

KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS

Oct. 1, 19--.

Dear First-And-Onlys:

When I got to the post-office to-day and found there was no letter from you, my heart sank right through the bottom of my number seven boots and buried itself in the mud under the doorsill. All day long I had had a feeling that there would be a letter, and that hope kept me up n.o.bly through the trying ordeal of attempting to teach spelling and geography and arithmetic to a roomful of children of a.s.sorted ages who seem as determined not to learn as I am determined to teach them. It sustained and soothed me through the exciting process of "settling" Absalom b.u.t.ts, the fourteen-year-old bully of the cla.s.s, with whom I have a preliminary skirmish every day in the week before recitations can begin; and through the equally trying business of listening to his dull-witted sister, Clarissa, spell "example" forty ways but the right way, and then dissolve into inevitable tears. When school was out I was as limp as a rag, and so thankful it was Friday night that I could have kissed the calendar. I fairly "sic"ed Sandhelo along the road to the post-office, expecting to revel in the bale of news from my beloveds that was awaiting me, but when I got there and the post box was bare the last b.u.t.ton burst off the mantle of my philosophy and left me naked to the cold winds of disappointment. A whole orphan asylum with the mumps on both sides would have been gay and chipper compared to me when I turned Sandhelo's head homeward and started on the six-mile drive.

It had been raining for more than a week, a steady, warmish, sickening drizzle, that had taken all the curl out of my spirits and left them hanging in dejected, stringy wisps. I couldn't help feeling how well the weather matched my state of mind as I drove homeward. The whole landscape was one gray blur, and the tall weeds that bordered the road on both sides wept unconsolably on each other's shoulders, their tears mingling in a stream down their stems. I could almost hear them sob. The muddy yellow road wound endlessly past empty, barren fields, and seemed to hold out no promise of ever arriving anywhere in particular. All my life I have hated that aimlessly winding road, just as I have always hated those empty, barren fields. They have always seemed so s.h.i.+ftless, so utterly unambitious. I can't help thinking that this corner of Arkansas was made out of the sc.r.a.ps that were left after everything else was finished. How father ever came to take up land here when he had the whole state to choose from is one of the seven things we will never know till the coming of the Cocqcigrues. It's as flat as a pancake, and, for the most part, treeless. The few trees there are seem to be ashamed to be caught growing in such a place, and make themselves as small as possible. The land is stony and barren and sterile, neither very good for farming or grazing.

The only certain thing about the rainfall is that it is certain to come at the wrong time, and upset all your plans. "Princ.i.p.al rivers, there are none; princ.i.p.al mountains--I'm the only one," as Alice-in-Wonderland used to say. But father has always been the kind of man that gets the worst of every bargain.

Now, you unvaryingly cheerful Winnebagos, go ahead and sniff contemptuously when you breathe the damp vapors rising from this epistle, and hear the pitiful moans issuing therefrom. "For shame, Katherine!" I can hear you saying, in superior tones, "to get low in your mind so soon!

Why, you haven't come to the first turn in the Open Road, and you've gone lame already. Where is the Torch that you started out with so gaily flaring? Quenched completely by the first shower! Katherine Adams, you big baby, straighten up your face this minute and stop blubbering!"

But oh, you round pegs in your nice smooth, round holes, you have never been a stranger in a familiar land! You have never known what it was to be out of tune with everything around you. Oh, why wasn't I built to admire vast stretches of nothing, content to dwell among untrodden ways and be a Maid whom there were none to praise and very few to love, and all that Wordsworth business? Why do crickets and gra.s.shoppers and owls make me feel as though I'd lost my last friend, instead of impressing me with the sociability of Nature? Why don't I rejoice that I've got the whole road to myself, instead of wis.h.i.+ng that it were jammed with automobiles and trolley cars, and swarming with people? Why did Fate set me down on a backwoods farm when my only desire in life is to dwell in a house by the side of the road where the circus parade of life is continually pa.s.sing? Why am I not like the other people in this section, with whom ignorance is bliss, grammar an unknown quant.i.ty, and culture a thing to be sneered at?

Although I can't see them, I know that somewhere to the north, just beyond the horizon, the mountains lift their great frowning heads, and ever since I can remember I have looked upon them as a fence which shut me out from the big bustling world, and over which I would climb some day. Just as Napoleon said, "Beyond the Alps lies Italy," so I thought, "Beyond the Ozarks lies my world."

I don't believe I had my nose out of a book for half an hour at a time in those early days. I went without new clothes to buy them, and got up early and worked late to get my ch.o.r.es done so that I might have more time to read. When I was twelve years old I had learned all that the teacher in a little school at the cross roads could teach me, and then I went to the high school in the little town of Spencer, six miles away, traveling the distance twice every day. When there was a horse available I rode, if not, I walked. But whether riding or walking, I always had a book in my hand, and read as I went along. It often happened that, being deep in the fortunes of my story book friends, I did not notice when old Major ambled off the road in quest of a nibble of clover, and would sometimes come to with a start to find myself lying in the ditch. The neighbors thought my actions scandalous and pitied my father and mother because they had such a good-for-nothing daughter.

All this time my father was getting poorer and poorer. He changed from farming to cotton raising and then made a failure of that, and finally, in despair, he turned to raising horses, not beautiful race horses like you read about in stories, but wiry little cow ponies that the cattlemen use. For some unaccountable reason he had good luck in this line for three years in succession, and a year or so after I had finished this little one-horse high school there was enough money for me to climb over my Ozark fence and go and play in the land of my dreams. One wonderful year, that surpa.s.sed in reality anything I had ever pictured in imagination, and then the sky fell, and here I am, inside the fence once more.

Not that I am sorry I came back, no sirree! Father was so pleased and touched to think I gave up my college course and came home that he chirked up right away and started in from the beginning once more to pay the mortgage off the land and the stock, and mother is feeling well enough to be up almost all day now; but to-day I just couldn't help shedding a few perfectly good tears over what I might be doing instead of what I am.

A flock of wild geese, headed south, flew above my head in a dark triangle, and honked derisively at me as they pa.s.sed. "Not even a goose would stop off in this dismal country!" I exclaimed aloud. Then, simply wild for sympathy from someone, I slid off Sandhelo's back and stood there, ankle deep in the yellow mud, and put my arms around his neck.

"Oh, Sandhelo," I croaked dismally, "you're all I have left of my wonderful year up north. You love me, don't you?"

But Sandhelo looked unfeelingly over my shoulder at the rain splas.h.i.+ng down into the road and yawned elaborately right in my face. There are times when Sandhelo shows no more feeling than Eeny-Meeny. Seeing there was no sympathy to be had from him, I climbed on his back again and rode grimly home, trying to resign myself to a life of school teaching at the cross roads, ending in an early death from boredom.

Father was nowhere about when I rode into the stableyard, and the door into the stable was shut. I slid it back, with Sandhelo nosing at my arm all the while.

"Oh, you're affectionate enough now that you want your dinner," I couldn't help saying a little spitefully. Then my heart melted toward him, and, with my arm around his neck, we walked in together. Inside of Sandhelo's stall I ran into something and jumped as if I had been shot.

In the dusk I could make out the figure of a man sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall.

"Is that you, Father?" I asked, while Sandhelo blinked in astonishment at this invasion of his premises. There was no answer from the man on the floor. Why I wasn't more excited I don't know, but I calmly took the lantern down from the hook and lit it and held it in front of me. The light showed the man in Sandhelo's stall to be sound asleep, with his hand leaned back against the wooden part.i.tion. He had a black beard and his face was all streaked with mud and dirt, and there was mud even in his matted hair. He had no hat on. His clothes were all covered with mud and one sleeve of his coat was torn partly out.

Sandhelo put down his nose and sniffed inquiringly at the stranger's feet. Without ceremony I thrust the lantern right into the man's face.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" I said, loudly and firmly. The man stirred and opened his eyes, and then sat up suddenly, blinking at the light.

"Who are you?" I repeated sternly. The man stared at me stupidly for an instant; then he pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead and stumbled to his feet.

"Who am I?" he repeated wildly; then his face screwed up into a frightful grimace and with a groan he crumpled up on the floor. Leaving Sandhelo still standing there gazing at him in mild astonishment, I ran out calling for father.

Father came presently and took a long look at the man in the stall, and then, without asking any questions, he got a wet cloth and laid it on his head. That washed some of the mud off and showed a big bruise on his forehead over his left eye. Father called the man that helps with the horses.

"Help me carry this man into the house," he said shortly.

"But Father," I said, "you surely aren't going to carry that man into the house? All dirty like that!"

Father gave me one look and I said no more. Together father and Jim Wiggin lifted the stranger from the floor and started toward the house with him, while I capered around in my excitement and finally ran on ahead to tell mother. They carried him into the kitchen and laid him down on the old lounge and tried to bring him around with smelling salts and things. But he just kept on talking and muttering to himself, and never opened his eyes.

And that's what he's still doing, while I'm off in my room writing this.

It was five o'clock when we brought him in, and now it's after ten and he hasn't come to his senses yet. There isn't a thing in his pockets to show who he is or where he came from.

I feel so strange since I found that man there. I'm not a bit low in my mind any more, like I was this afternoon. I have a curious feeling as if I had pa.s.sed a turn in the road and come upon something new and wonderful.

Forget the lengthy moan I indulged in at the beginning of this letter, will you, and think of me as gay and chipper as ever.

Yours in Wohelo, Katherine.

KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS

Oct. 15, 19--.

Darling Winnies:

And to think, after all that fuss I made about not getting a letter from you that day, I didn't have time to open it for three whole days after it finally arrived! You remember where I left off the last time, with the strange man I had found in Sandhelo's stable out of his head on the kitchen lounge? Well, he kept on like that, lying with his eyes shut and occasionally saying a word or two that didn't make sense, all that night and all the next day. Then on Sunday he developed a high fever and began to rave. He shouted at the top of his voice until he was hoa.r.s.e; always about somebody pursuing him and whom he was trying to run away from. Then he began to jump up and try to run outdoors, until we had to bar the door. It took all father and Jim Wiggin and I could do to keep him on the lounge. We had a pretty exciting time of it, I can tell you. Of course, all the uproar upset mother and she had another spell with her heart and took to her bed, and by Tuesday night things got so strenuous that I had to dismiss school for the rest of the week and keep all my ten fingers in the domestic pie.

I don't know who rejoiced more over the unexpected lapse from lessons, the scholars or myself. I never saw a group of children who were so const.i.tutionally opposed to learning as the twenty-two stony-faced specimens of "hoomanity" that I had to deal with in that little shanty of a school. They'd rather be ignorant than educated any day. I just can't make them do the homework I give them. Every day it's the same story.

They haven't done their examples and they haven't learned their spelling; they haven't studied their geography. The only way I can get them to study their lessons is to keep them in after school and stand over them while they do it. Their only motto seems to be, "Pa and ma didn't have no education and they got along, so why should we bother?"

The families from which these children come are what is known in this section as "Hard-uppers," people who are and have always been "hard up."

Nearly everybody around here is a Hard-upper. If they weren't they wouldn't be here. The land is so poor that n.o.body will pay any price for it, so it has drifted into the hands of s.h.i.+ftless people who couldn't get along anywhere, and they work it in a backward, inefficient sort of way and make such a bare living that you couldn't call it a living at all.

They live in little houses that aren't much more than cabins--some of them have only one or two rooms in them--and haven't one of the comforts that you girls think you absolutely couldn't live without. They have no books, no pictures, no magazines. It's no wonder the children are stony-faced when I try to shower blessings upon them in the form of spelling and grammar; they know they won't have a mite of use for them if they do learn them, so why take the trouble?

"What a dreadful set of people!" I can hear you say disdainfully. "How can you stand it among such poor trash?"

O my Beloveds, I have a sad admission to make. I am a Hard-upper myself! My father, while he is the dearest daddy in the world, never had a sc.r.a.p of business ability; that's how he came to live in this made-out-of-the-sc.r.a.ps-after-every-thing-else-was-made corner of Arkansas. He never had any education either, though it wasn't because he didn't want it. He doesn't care a rap for reading; all he cares for is horses. We live in a shack, too, though it has four rooms and is much better than most around here. We never had any books or magazines, either, except the ones for which I sacrificed everything else I wanted to buy. But I wanted to learn,--oh, how I wanted to learn!--and that's where I differed altogether from the rest of the Hard-uppers. They're still wagging their heads about the way I used to walk along the road reading. The very first week I taught school this year I was taking Absalom b.u.t.ts (mentioned in my former epistle) to task for speaking saucily to me, and thinking to impress him with the dignity of my position I said, "Do you know whom you're talking to?"

And he answered back impudently, "Yer Bill Adamses good-for-nothing daughter, that's who you are!"

You see what I'm up against? Those children hear their parents make such remarks about me and they haven't the slightest respect for me. Did you know that I only got this job of teaching because n.o.body else would take it? Absalom b.u.t.ts' father, who is about the only man around here who isn't a Hard-upper, and is the most influential man in the community because he can talk the loudest, held out against me to the very end, declaring I hadn't enough sense to come in out of the rain. As he is president of the school board in this towns.h.i.+p--the whole thing is a farce, but the members are tremendously impressed with their own dignity--it pretty nearly ended up in your little Katherine not getting any school to teach this winter, but when one applicant after another came and saw and turned up her nose, it became a question of me or no schoolmarm, so they gave me the place, but with much misgiving. I had become very much discouraged over the whole business, for I really needed the money, and began to consider myself a regular idiot, but father said I needn't worry very much about being considered a good-for-nothing by Elijah b.u.t.ts; his whole grudge against me rose from the fact that he had wanted to marry my mother when she was young and had never forgiven father for beating him to it. That cheered me up considerably, and I determined to swallow no slights from the family of b.u.t.ts.

Since then it's been nip and tuck between us. Young Absalom is a big, overgrown gawk of fourteen with no brain for anything but mischief. His chief aim in life just now is to think up something to annoy me. I ignore him as much as possible so as not to give him the satisfaction of knowing he can annoy me, but about every three days we have a regular pitched battle, and it keeps me worn out. His sister Clarissa hasn't enough brain for mischief, but her constant flow of tears is nearly as bad as his impudence.

Taken all in all, you can guess that I didn't shed any tears about having to close the school that Tuesday to help take care of the sick man.

Anything, even sitting on a delirious stranger, was a relief from the constant warfare of teaching school. It was in the midst of this mess that your letter came, and lay three whole days before I had time to open it.

On Sat.u.r.day the sick man stopped raving and struggling and lay perfectly motionless. Jim Wiggin looked at his white, sunken face, and remarked oracularly, "He's a goner."