Part 13 (1/2)

It was after one of these reminders of a new day that I saw Leanna. I don't know when or how she came, but I missed Frances and Georgia the more because I wanted them to share our comforts. Nevertheless a strange feeling of uneasiness crept over me as I noticed, later, that grandpa lingered and that the three spoke long in their own tongue, and glanced often toward me.

Finally grandpa and Jakie went off in the wagon and grandma also disappeared, but soon returned, dressed for a trip to the Fort, and explained that she had heard that Georgia was sick and she would take me back and bring her in my place. I had known from the beginning that I was to stay only a little while, yet I was woefully disturbed at having my enjoyment so abruptly terminated. My first impulse was to cry, but somehow, the influence of her who under the soughing pines of the Sierras had told me that ”friends do not come quickly to a cry-baby child” gave me courage, and I looked up into the dear old face before me and with the earnestness of an anxious child asked, ”Grandma, why can't you keep two of us?”

She looked at me, hesitated, then replied, ”I will see.” She kissed away my fears and rode off on old Lisa. I did not know that she would ride farther than the fort and imagined she had gone on horseback so that she might the easier bring back my little sister.

Leanna washed the dishes and did the other work before she joined me in watching for grandma's return. At last she came in sight and I ran up the road craning my neck to see if Georgia were really behind on old Lisa's back, and when I saw her pinched face aglow with smiles that were all for me, I had but one wish, and that was to get my arms around her.

One chair was large enough to hold us both when we got into the house, and the big clock on the wall with long weights reaching almost to the floor and red roses painted around its white face, did not tick long before we were deaf to its sound, telling each other about the doings of the day.

She knew more than I, who listened intently as she excitedly went on:

”Me and Frances started to find you this morning, but we wasn't far when we met Jacob in the wagon, and he stopped and asked us where we was going. We told him. Then he told us to get in by him. But he didn't come this way, just drove down to the river and some men lifted us out and set us in a boat and commenced to paddle across the water. I knew that wasn't the way, and I cried and cried as loud as I could cry, and told them I wanted to go to my little sister Eliza, and that I'd tip the boat over if they did not take me back; and one man said, 'It's too bad! It ain't right to part the two littlest ones.' And they told me if I'd sit still and stop crying they would bring me back with them by and by, and that I should come to you. And I minded.

”Then they taked us to that house where we sleeped under the carpet the night we didn't get to the Fort. Don't you remember? Well, lots of people was there and talked about us and about father and mother, and waited for grandma to come. Pretty soon grandma come, and everybody talked, and talked. And grandma told them she was sorry for us, and would take you and me if she could keep Leanna to help her do the work.

When I was coming away with grandma, Frances cried like everything. She said she wanted to see you, and told the people mother said we should always stay together. But they wouldn't let her come. They've gived her to somebody else, and now she is their little girl.”

We both felt sorry for Frances, and wished we could know where she was and what she was doing.

While we were talking, grandma kept busily at work, and sometimes she wiped her face with the corner of her ap.r.o.n, yet we did not think of her as listening, nor of watching us, nor would we ever have known it, had we not learned it later from her own lips, as she told others the circ.u.mstances which had brought us into her life.

Some days later Georgia and I were playing in the back yard when Leanna appeared at the door and called out in quick, jubilant tones: ”Children, run around to the front and see who has come!”

True enough, hitched to a stake near the front door was a bay horse with white spots on his body and a white stripe down his face, and tied to the pommel of his saddle was another horse with a side saddle on its back. It did not take us long to get into the house where we found Elitha and our new brother, who had come to arrange about taking us away with them. While Elitha was talking to grandma and Leanna, Georgia stood listening, but I sat on my new brother's knee and heard all about his beautiful spotted horse and a colt of the same colors.

Elitha could not persuade Leanna or Georgia to go with her, nor was I inclined to do so when she and grandma first urged me. But I began to yield as the former told me she was lonesome; wanted at least one little sister to live with her, and that if I would be that one, I should have a new dress and a doll with a face. Then my new brother settled the matter by saying: ”Listen to me. If you'll go, you shall have the pinto colt that I told you about, a little side saddle of your own, and whenever you feel like it, you can get on it and ride down to see all the folks.” The prospects were so alluring that I went at once with Leanna, who was to get me ready for the journey.

Leanna did not share my enthusiasm. She said I was a foolish little thing, and declared I would get lonesome on such a big place so far away; that the colt would kick me if I tried to go near it, and that no one ever made saddles for colts. She was not so gentle as usual when she combed my hair and gave my face a right hard scrubbing with a cloth and whey, which grandma bade her use, ”because it makes the skin so nice and soft.”

Notwithstanding these discouragements, I took my clothes, which were tied up in a colored handkerchief, kissed them all good-bye, and rode away sitting behind my new brother on the spotted horse, really believing that I should be back in a few days on a visit.

CHAPTER XIX

ON A CATTLE RANCH NEAR THE COSUMNE RIVER--”NAME BILLY”--INDIAN GRUB FEAST.

We left the Fort and grandma's house far behind, and still rode on and on. The day was warm, the wild flowers were gone, and the plain was yellow with ripening oats which rustled noisily as we pa.s.sed through, crowding and b.u.mping their neighborly heads together. Yet it was not a lonesome way, for we pa.s.sed elk, antelope, and deer feeding, with pretty little fawns standing close to their mothers' sides. There were also sleek fat cattle resting under the shade of live oak trees, and great birds that soared around overhead casting their shadows on the ground. As we neared the river, smaller birds of brighter colors could be heard and seen in the trees along the banks where the water flowed between, clear and cold.

All these things my sister pointed out to me as we pa.s.sed onward. It was almost dark before we came in sight of the adobe ranch house. We were met on the road by a pack of Indian dogs, whose fierce looks and savage yelping made me tremble, until I got into the house where they could not follow.

The first weeks of my stay on the ranch pa.s.sed quickly. Elitha and I were together most of the time. She made my new dress and a doll which, was perfection in my eyes, though its face was crooked, and its pencilled hair was more like pothooks than curls. I did not see much of her husband, because in the mornings he rode away early to direct his Indian cattle-herders at the _rodeos_, or to oversee other ranch work, and I was often asleep when he returned nights.

The pinto colt he had promised me was, as Leanna had said, ”big enough to kick, but too small to ride,” and I at once realized that my antic.i.p.ated visits could not be made as planned.

Occasionally, men came on horseback to stay a day or two, and before the summer was over, a young couple with a small baby moved into one part of our house. We called them Mr. and Mrs. Packwood and Baby Packwood. The mother and child were company for my sister, while the husbands talked continually of ranches, cattle, hides, and tallow, so I was free to roam around by myself.

In one of my wanderings I met a sprightly little Indian lad, whose face was almost as white as my own. He was clad in a blue and white s.h.i.+rt that reached below his knees. Several strings of beads were around his neck, and a small bow and arrow in his hand. We stopped and looked at each other; were pleased, yet shy about moving onward or speaking. I, being the larger, finally asked,

”What's your name?”

To my great delight, he answered, ”Name, Billy.”