Part 17 (2/2)

Such a shock! Not until we realized that everything could be restored was our grief a.s.suaged--that is, everything but Dandy Jim. He was a serious loss, for he was our only black bottle and had always been kept to wait on Martha Was.h.i.+ngton.

We worked fast, and had accomplished so much before being called into the house that we might have put everything in order next day, had Georgia not waked up toward morning with a severe cold, and had grandma not found out how she caught it. The outcome was that our treasures were taken to the store-room to become medicine and vinegar bottles, and we mourned like birds robbed of their young.

New duties were opened to me as soon as I could wear my shoes, and by the time Georgia was out again, I was a busy little dairymaid, and quite at home in the corrals. I had been decorated with the regulation salt bag, which hung close to my left side, like a fisherman's basket.

I owned a quart cup and could milk with either hand, also knew how to administer the pinch of salt which each cow expected. After a little practice I became able to do all the ”stripping.” In some cases it amounted to not more than half a pint from each animal. However, much or little, the strippings were of importance, and were kept separate, because grandma considered them ”good as cream in the cheese kettle.”

When I could sit on the one-legged stool, which Jakie had made me, hold a pail between my knees and milk one or more cows, without help, they both praised my cleverness--a cleverness which fixed more outside responsibilities upon me, and kept me from Georgia a longer while each day. My work was hard, still I remained noticeably taller and stronger than she, who was a.s.signed to lighter household duties. I felt that I had no reason to complain of my tasks, because everybody about me was busy, and the work had to be done.

If I was more helpful than my little sister, I was also a source of greater trouble, for I wore out my clothes faster, and they were difficult to replace, especially shoes.

There was but one shoemaker in the town, and he was kept so busy that he took a generous measure of children's feet and then allowed a size or more, to guard against the shoes being too small by the time he should get them finished.

When my little stogies began to leak, he shook his head thoughtfully, and declared that he had so many orders for men's boots that he could not possibly work for women or children until those orders were filled.

Consequently, grandma kept her eye on my shoes, and as they got worse and worse, she became sorely perplexed. She would not let me go barefooted, because she was afraid of ”snags” and ensuing lockjaw; she could not loan me her own, because she was saving them for special occasions, and wearing instead the heavy sabots she had brought from her native land. She tried the effect of continually reminding me to pick my way and save my shoes, which made life miserable for us both.

Finally she upbraided me harshly for a playful run across the yard with Courage, and I lost my temper, and grumbled.

”I would rather go barefooted and get snags in my feet than have so much bother about old shoes that are worn out and no good anyway!”

I was still crying when Hendrik, a roly-poly Hollander, came along and asked the cause of my distress. Grandma told him that I was out of humor, because she was trying to keep shoes on my feet, while I was determined to run them off. He laughed, bade me cheer up, sang the rollicking sailor song with which he used to drive away storms at sea, then showed me a hole in the heel of the dogskin boots he wore, and told me that, out of their tops, he would make me a beautiful pair of shoes.

No clouds darkened my sky the morning that Hendrik came, wearing a pair of new cowhide boots then squeaked as though singing crickets were between the heavy soles; for he had his workbox and the dogskins under his arm, and we took seats under the oak tree, where he laid out his tools and went to work without more ado.

He had brought a piece of tanned cowhide for the soles of my shoes, an awl, a sailor's thimble, needles, coa.r.s.e thread, a ball of wax, and a sharp knife. The hair on the inside of the boot legs was thick and smooth, and the colors showed that one of the skins had been taken from the body of a black and white dog, and the other from that of a tawny brindle. As Hendrik modelled and sewed, he told me a wondrous tale of the great North Polar Sea, where he had gone in a whaling vessel, and had stayed all winter among mountains of ice and snow. There his boots had worn out. So he had bought these skins from queer little people there, who live in snow huts, and instead of horses or oxen, use dogs to draw their sleds.

I liked the black and white skin better than the brindle, so he cut that for the right foot, and told me always to make it start first. And when I put the shoes on they felt so soft and warm that I knew I could never forget Hendrik's generosity and kindness.

The longer I wore them the more I became attached to them, and the better I understood the story he had told me; for in my musings they were not shoes, but ”Spot” and ”Brindle,” live Eskimo dogs, that had drawn families of queer little people in sleds over the frozen sea, and had always been hungry and ready to fight over their scanty meals. At times I imagined that they wanted to race and scamper about as happy dogs do, and I would run myself out of breath to keep them going, and always stop with Spot in the lead.

When I needed shoestrings, I was sent to the shoemaker, who only glanced up and replied, ”Come to-morrow, and I'll have a piece of leather big enough.”

The next day, he made the same answer, ”Come to-morrow,” and kept pegging away as fast as he could on a boot sole. The third time I appeared before him, he looked up with the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, ”Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned, if she ain't here again!”

I was well aware that he should not have used that evil word, yet was not alarmed, for I had heard grandpa and others use worse, and mean no harm, nor yet intend to be cross. So I stood quietly, and in a trice he was up, had rushed across the shop, brought back two round pieces of leather not larger than cookies, and before I knew what he was about, had turned them into good straight shoestrings. He waxed them, and handed them to me with the remark, ”Tell your grandma that since you had to wait so long, I charge her only twenty-five cents for them.”

[Footnote 16: Now Jamestown.]

CHAPTER XXIV

MEXICAN METHODS OF CULTIVATION--FIRST STEAMs.h.i.+P THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE--”THE ARGONAUTS” OR ”BOYS OF '49”--A LETTER FROM THE STATES--JOHN BAPTISTE--JAKIE LEAVES US--THE FIRST AMERICAN SCHOOL IN SONOMA.

By the first of March, 1849, carpenters had the frame of grandma's fine new two-story house enclosed, and the floors partly laid. Neighbors were hurrying to get their fields ploughed and planted, those without farming implements following the Mexican's crude method of ploughing the ground with wooden p.r.o.ngs and harrowing in the seed by dragging heavy brush over it.

They gladly turned to any tool that would complete the work by the time the roads to the mountains should be pa.s.sable, and the diggings clear of snow. Their expectations might have been realized sooner, if a bluff old launch captain, with an eye to business for himself and San Francisco, had not appeared on the scene, shouting, ”Ahoy” to everybody.

”I say, a steams.h.i.+p anch.o.r.ed in the Bay of San Francisco two days ago.

She's the _California_. Steamed out of New York Harbor with merchandise. Stopped at Panama; there took aboard three hundred and fifty waiting pa.s.sengers that had cut across country--a mixture of men from all parts of the United States, who have come to carry off the gold diggings, root and branch! Others are coming in s.h.i.+ploads as fast as they can. Now mark my words, and mark them well: provisions is going to run mighty short, and if this valley wants any, it had better send for them pretty d.a.m.n quick!”

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