Part 5 (2/2)
She paused a moment, her lips pressed tightly together.
”Read, read, read!” commanded the teacher, whacking the chart with a pointer.
”'M-a-n, man,'” repeated the little girl, her eyes on his face.
”Don't look at me,” he scolded; ”look at the chart.”
”I don't haf' to,” said the little girl, earnestly; ”I--I--”
Something unpleasant would certainly have happened at that moment, had not ”Frenchy,” deep in his geography lesson, piped up at the teacher from the rear of the room.
”T-a-n-g-a-n-y-i-k-a,” he spelled, snapping his fingers and waving his arm. ”Wot eez dat?”
For a moment the teacher was silent, scowling down at the little girl.
Then he came back to the chart with another whack of the pointer. ”Call it Moses,” he growled.
”Mozez,” repeated ”Frenchy,” resignedly, but with a shake of his head over the intricacies of the English language.
The little girl had twisted half around to look at a Dutch child, and the teacher, angry because he had neglected to look over the geography lesson, jerked her into place again by her sleeve. ”Now, you read,” he said; ”look at the end of my pointer and read.”
”I can read them words 'thout looking at 'em,” she protested, pointing at an inquiring line, ”'cause I can read everyfing in this.” And she held up the Second Reader.
”Huh!” grunted the teacher, taking the book from her and tossing it upon his table. ”Have you ever been to school before?”
”No,” answered the little girl.
”Then you'll start right in where everybody else does,” he said. ”Read this line. 'Do you see a man?'”
”'Doyouseeaman?'” she repeated, still watching him.
”Look at the chart and read it,” he commanded furiously.
An unfriendly light suddenly shone in the little girl's eyes. She stepped back and summoned all her pride to resent the indignity that he was putting upon her before the whole school.
”Oh, I don't want to read that baby talk,” she cried, ”and--and--I _won't_, and I 'm going home to my mother.”
The teacher swayed in his wrath like a tall cottonwood. ”You don't, eh?
You won't, eh?” he bellowed, and, stooping down, plucked the little girl by the ear.
This time it was the Swede boy who interrupted the course of events in front. He leaned forward and whispered something into the ear of the boy ahead, and then, with an inarticulate shout, threw himself upon the boy and began to maul him. Instantly the teacher, yearning to use his hands upon some one, descended upon them and wrested them apart. But they clinched again and, continuing to fight, managed so to misdirect their kicks that they reached, not each other, but his lanky, interfering person.
And, while the battle raged, the little girl fled out of the school-house toward the pinto and pulled up the picket-pin. The teacher did not see her go, but, in retreating from an unusually vicious blow of the Swede boy's fist, caught sight of her just as she was leading her horse to an ant-hill to mount. With a hoa.r.s.e call for her to return, he started after her, bearing in his train the two boys, who, still struggling, impeded his progress.
He shook them off at the door-step and broke into a run. The little girl was vainly striving to climb to the pinto's back; but she was so frightened that each time she made a jump for the saddle she came short of it and fell back. And, seeing the teacher coming, her efforts were more ineffectual than ever. But when he was scarcely a rod away, and when escape seemed impossible, a new figure joined in the affair.
Luffree had been lying quietly beside the picket-pin until the little girl ran out, when he got up, ready to follow her, and joyfully leaped about the mare. Then he saw the teacher advancing, and remembered the rough handling of the day before. So, as the Yankton man came close, swinging his arms about like the fans of the Dutchman's windmill, the dog went forward to meet him, his hair on end, his eyes s.h.i.+fting treacherously, his teeth showing in an ugly white seam, all the wolf blood in him roused.
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