Overland Tales Part 6

Though Juanita had returned on foot, she had ridden away on the pony the day before, and the soldiers started out to look for the animal, thinking it had escaped from her, or had been stolen by some marauding Indian. But they found the carca.s.s not far from camp--with Juanita's dagger in the animal's heart. The next day she went to the top of the hill again, and when night came, she said, "The cloud grows bigger." On the third day, when Juanita lay stretched on the hard, uncomfortable bed, denuded of all its gay robes and blankets, a sudden excitement arose outside, such as the signs of anything approaching camp always create. A hundred different opinions were expressed as to what and who it could be. Nearer and nearer came the cloud of dust, and a cry of surprise went up, as the horse fell from fatigue on the edge of the camp, and the rider took his way to old Screetah's hut.

What pa.s.sed within those dark, low walls--what pa.s.sionate appeals for forgiveness, what frantic remorse and bitter self-accusations they echoed--only Screetah and the dying girl knew. The old Indian was touched, and tried to plead for him; but Juanita seemed to heed neither the man's presence nor the woman's entreaties. She died "with her face to the wall," and the words of forgiveness, which he had staked life and honor to hear, were never uttered by those firmly-closed lips.

With the day of Juanita's death commenced the old Indian woman's search for the rosary, and she tore her hair in desperation when they laid the girl in her narrow cell before she had found it. Day after day, the search was continued. Was it not the peace of Juanita's soul she was seeking to restore? After awhile the camp was broken up, by orders from district head-quarters, and a forage-station established. Our friend, whose term of service had expired, was made station-keeper, and, one by one, the people from the settlement followed the military, till, at last, only he and old Screetah were left of all the little band that once had filled the dreary spot with the busy hum of life.

_HETTY'S HEROISM._

"But, father, you don't really mean to watch the old year out, do you?

It's only a waste of candles, and the boys won't want to get up in the morning."

"Mebbee so, mother; but New Year's Eve don't come every day; so let's have it out." And old man Sutton tipped back his chair, after filling his pipe, and looked contentedly up at the white ceiling of the "best room."

Johnny, the younger son of the family, whistled gleefully, threw more wood on the blazing pile in the fire-place, and then, resuming his oft-forbidden occupation of cracking walnuts in the best room, said:

"Don't the wind howl, though? Just drives the rain. Golly, ain't it nice here?"

"You're not to say bad words," broke out his mother, sharply. "Father, why don't you correct the boy? Such a night as this, too, when--"

"What's that?" interrupted the oldest son, springing from his seat, and showing a straight, manly form and clear, deep eyes, as he stood by the door in a listening att.i.tude.

"Coyotes, brother Frank; the ghosts don't come round this early, do they?" laughed the younger.

"Hush, Johnny! It's some one crying for help--a woman's voice!"

"Tut, tut! where would a woman come from this time o' night, and not a house within miles of us?"

"A woman's voice, I'll stake my head," insisted Frank, after a moment's silence in the room.

The mother had laid down her gla.s.ses. "Wonder if the boy thinks Lolita is coming through the storm to watch the old year out with him?" She laughed as at something that gave her much pleasure, though the rest did not share her merriment.

They were all three listening at door and window now, and when Frank threw the one nearest him quickly open, there came a sound through the din and fury of the rain-storm that was neither the howling of the wind nor the yelp of the coyote.

"Now what do you say?" asked Frank; and he had already pa.s.sed through an inner apartment, and in a moment stood on the porch again, swinging a lantern and peering out into the dark and rain, listening for that cry of distress. It came in a moment--nearer than they had expected it.

"Help! help! oh, please come and help!"

"The d--l!" was old man Sutton's exclamation; not that he really thought the slender little figure perched on the back of the tall horse was the personage mentioned--it was only a habit he had of apostrophizing.

The horse had stopped short and was breathing hard, and the prayer for help was frantically repeated by the rider. "Come quick, and help the poor fellow; I've been gone so long from him--oh! _do_ come!"

"What poor fellow--and where is he?" asked the old man, in bewilderment.

"The stage-driver--and he's lying near the old Mission, with his leg broken. The horses s.h.i.+ed in the storm and overturned the stage, and I was the only pa.s.senger, and I crept out of it, and the driver couldn't move any more, and told me to unhitch the horses and come this way for help, and--oh! _do_ come now!" She ended her harangue, delivered with flying breath and little attention to rhetoric or inter-punctuation.

"And you came those nine miles all alone, gal?" asked the old man.

"Oh, I think I must have come a hundred miles," she replied, with a wild look at the faces on the porch and in the open doorway; "and it is so cold!" She drew the dripping garments closer about her, while father and son consulted together, with their eyes only, for a brief moment. Then the old man said she must be taken in, and they must get the wagon ready, and waken Pedro and Martin.

Without a word Frank gave a lantern to Johnny, lifted the girl from the horse and carried her into the room, brus.h.i.+ng the drenched hair back from her face, when he sat her down, as he would have done a child's.

But she pleaded excitedly, "Indeed I cannot stay--let me go back, and you can follow."

"So you shall go back, my gal," said Mr. Sutton, "as soon as the wagon is ready. See how she's s.h.i.+vering, mother; get her some hot tea, and give her your fur sack--for she'll go back with us or die."

"My fur sack?" repeated the old lady, incredulously; "my best sack--out in this rain!"

"Best sack be ----," he shouted, angrily; "I'll throw it in the fire in a minute!" And the best sack quickly made its appearance, in spite of the threat of speedy cremation.

The tea was brought by Johnny, hastily drank, and then the girl repeated her wish to move on. Frank's own cloak was thrown over "the best fur sack"--not, I fear, so much from a desire to save this garment as from the wish to keep the shrinking form in it from s.h.i.+vering so painfully.

It was New-Year's day--though the light had not yet dawned before the sufferer was comfortably lodged at the Yedral Ranch, and Hetty, as well as the Sutton family, slept later into the morning than usual. The sun had risen as serenely cloudless as though no storm had pa.s.sed through the land but yesternight; and Father Sutton, thinking he was the first one up, was surprised to encounter Hetty with Johnny, her new-found cavalier. He hailed her in his unceremonious fas.h.i.+on: "I'm glad to see you up bright and early, gal--make a good farmer's wife some day. Did you come down this way to live on a ranch?"

"No, sir; I came to teach school. Your name is among those of the gentlemen who engaged me."

"The ----! Are you the new school-marm? Then you're Miss----"

"Hetty Dunlap is my name."

He held out both hands. "A happy New-Year to ye, Hetty Dunlap--and happy it'll be for all of us, I'm thinking; for a gal that's got so much pluck as you is sure to know something about teachin' school. Here, Johnny, how d'ye like your teacher?"

Now, Johnny had drawn back with some slight manifestation of disfavor when Hetty's true character came to light. But she laid her hand on his shoulder in her shy yet frank manner, and said quickly:

"I had already selected Johnny as a sort of a.s.sistant disciplinarian. I am so little that I shall want some one who is tall and strong to give me countenance;" which at once restored the harmony between them. They went in to breakfast together, during which meal it was decided by Father Sutton that Hetty was to live in his family, though "the Price's"

was the place where, until now, the teachers had made their home, being nearest to the school.

"But then," said the old man, "if the Rancho Yedral can't afford a mustang for such a brave little rider every day of the year, then I'll give it up;" and he slapped his hat on and left the house.

"Yes," Frank commented rather timidly, "you are brave--a perfect heroine. And yet you are so very small." She was standing in just the spot where he had brushed the hair out of her face last night, and perhaps his words were an apology.

"True," she a.s.sented, "I am small; not much taller than my sister's oldest girl, and she is only twelve."

"You have a sister?"

"Yes, in the city; and she has six children." Her voice was raised a little, her nut-brown eyes looked into his with an unconscious appeal for sympathy, and her delicate nostrils quivered as in terror--which the bare recollection of the little heathens seemed to inspire her with.

"And did you live at her house?--have you neither father nor mother living?"

"Neither. How happy you must be--you have so kind a father and so good a mother--"

The "good mother" came in just then, shaking her best sack vigorously, and lamenting, in pointed words, the "ruination" of this expensive fur robe--calling a painful blush to Hetty's cheek as well as Frank's. The young man tried vainly to make it appear a pleasant joke. "Indeed, mother, you ought to look upon that piece of fur as a handsome New-Year's gift--you have my promise of a new fur sack as soon as I go to the city. And isn't my word good for a fur sack?" he asked, laughingly.

"Yes," said the good mother. "I know your extravagance well enough; but, to my notion, you can afford such things better after you've married Lolita, than before."

Frank bit his lips angrily, and turned away--but not before Hetty had seen the hot red that flushed his cheek.