The Best of Gene Stratton-Porter

by Gene Stratton-Porter

  “Of course I am,” said Elnora. “I settled that as soon as I knew what a college was. I will put all my money in the bank, except what I owe you. I’ll pay that now.”

  “If your arrows are heavy,” said Wesley, “I’ll drive on to Onabasha with you.”

  “But they are not. Half of them were nicked, and this little box held all the good ones. It’s so surprising how many are spoiled when you wash them.”

  “What does he pay?”

  “Ten cents for any common perfect one, fifty for revolvers, a dollar for obsidian, and whatever is right for enormous big ones.”

  “Well, that sounds fair,” said Sinton. “You can come down Saturday and wash the stuff at our house, and I’ll take it in when we go marketing in the afternoon.”

  Elnora jumped from the carriage. She soon found that with her books, her lunch box, and the points she had a heavy load. She had almost reached the bridge crossing the culvert when she heard distressed screams of a child. Across an orchard of the suburbs came a small boy, after him a big dog, urged by a man in the background. Elnora’s heart was with the small fleeing figure in any event whatever. She dropped her load on the bridge, and with practised hand flung a stone at the dog. The beast curled double with a howl. The boy reached the fence, and Elnora was there to help him over. As he touched the top she swung him to the ground, but he clung to her, clasping her tightly, sobbing with fear. Elnora helped him to the bridge, and sat with him in her arms. For a time his replies to her questions were indistinct, but at last he became quieter and she could understand.

  He was a mite of a boy, nothing but skin-covered bones, his burned, freckled face in a mortar of tears and dust, his clothing unspeakably dirty, one great toe in a festering mass from a broken nail, and sores all over the visible portions of the small body.

  “You won’t let the mean old thing make his dog get me!” he wailed.

  “Indeed no,” said Elnora, holding him closely.

  “You wouldn’t set a dog on a boy for just taking a few old apples when you fed ’em to pigs with a shovel every day, would you?”

  “No, I would not,” said Elnora hotly.

  “You’d give a boy all the apples he wanted, if he hadn’t any breakfast, and was so hungry he was all twisty inside, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, I would,” said Elnora.

  “If you had anything to eat you would give me something right now, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Elnora. “There’s nothing but just stones in the package. But my dinner is in that case. I’ll gladly divide.”

  She opened the box. The famished child gave a little cry and reached both hands. Elnora caught them back.

  “Did you have any supper?”

  “No.”

  “Any dinner yesterday?”

  “An apple and some grapes I stole.”

  “Whose boy are you?”

  “Old Tom Billings’s.”

  “Why doesn’t your father get you something to eat?”

  “He does most days, but he’s drunk now.”

  “Hush, you must not!” said Elnora. “He’s your father!”

  “He’s spent all the money to get drunk, too,” said the boy, “and Jimmy and Belle are both crying for breakfast. I’d a got out all right with an apple for myself, but I tried to get some for them and the dog got too close. Say, you can throw, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” admitted Elnora. She poured half the milk into the cup. “Drink this,” she said, holding it to him.

  The boy gulped the milk and swore joyously, gripping the cup with shaking fingers.

  “Hush!” cried Elnora. “That’s dreadful!”

  “What’s dreadful?”

  “To say such awful words.”

  “Huh! Pa says worser ’an that every breath he draws.”

  Elnora saw that the child was older than she had thought. He might have been forty judging by his hard, unchildish expression.

  “Do you want to be like your father?”

  “No, I want to be like you. Couldn’t a angel be prettier ’an you. Can I have more milk?”

  Elnora emptied the flask. The boy drained the cup. He drew a breath of satisfaction as he gazed into her face.

  “You wouldn’t go off and leave your little boy, would you?” he asked.

  “Did some one go away and leave you?”

  “Yes, my mother went off and left me, and left Jimmy and Belle, too,” said the boy. “You wouldn’t leave your little boy, would you?”

  “No.”

  The boy looked eagerly at the box. Elnora lifted a sandwich and uncovered the fried chicken. The boy gasped with delight.

  “Say, I could eat the stuff in the glass and the other box and carry the bread and the chicken to Jimmy and Belle,” he offered.

  Elnora silently uncovered the custard with preserved cherries on top and handed it and the spoon to the child. Never did food disappear faster. The salad went next, and a sandwich and half a chicken breast followed.

  “I better leave the rest for Jimmy and Belle,” he said, “they’re ’ist fightin’ hungry.”

  Elnora gave him the remainder of the carefully prepared lunch. The boy clutched it and ran with a sidewise hop like a wild thing. She covered the dishes and cup, polished the spoon, replaced it, and closed the case. She caught her breath in a tremulous laugh.

  “If Aunt Margaret knew that, she’d never forgive me,” she said. “It seems as if secrecy is literally forced upon me, and I hate it. What shall I do for lunch? I’ll have to sell my arrows and keep enough money for a restaurant sandwich.”

  So she walked hurriedly into town, sold her points at a good price, deposited her funds, and went away with a neat little bank book and the note from the Limberlost carefully folded inside. Elnora passed down the hall that morning, and no one paid the slightest attention to her. The truth was she looked so like every one else that she was perfectly inconspicuous. But in the coat room there were members of her class. Surely no one intended it, but the whisper was too loud.

  “Look at the girl from the Limberlost in the clothes that woman gave her!”

  Elnora turned on them. “I beg your pardon,” she said unsteadily, “I couldn’t help hearing that! No one gave me these clothes. I paid for them myself.”

  Some one muttered, “Pardon me,” but incredulous faces greeted her.

  Elnora felt driven. “Aunt Margaret selected them, and she meant to give them to me,” she explained, “but I wouldn’t take them. I paid for them myself.” There was silence.

  “Don’t you believe me?” panted Elnora.

  “Really, it is none of our affair,” said another girl. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Elnora stepped before the girl who had spoken. “You have made this your affair,” she said, “because you told a thing which was not true. No one gave me what I am wearing. I paid for my clothes myself with money I earned selling moths to the Bird Woman. I just came from the bank where I deposited what I did not use. Here is my credit.” Elnora drew out and offered the little red book. “Surely you will believe that,” she said.

  “Why of course,” said the girl who first had spoken. “We met such a lovely woman in Brownlee’s store, and she said she wanted our help to buy some things for a girl, and that’s how we came to know.”

  “Dear Aunt Margaret,” said Elnora, “it was like her to ask you. Isn’t she splendid?”

  “She is indeed,” chorused the girls. Elnora set down her lunch box and books, unpinned her hat, hanging it beside the others, and taking up the books she reached to set the box in its place and dropped it. With a little cry she snatched at it and caught the strap on top. That pulled from the fastening, the cover unrolled, the box fell away as far as it could, two porcelain lids rattled on the floor, and the one sandwich rolled like a cartwheel across the room. Elnora lifted a ghastly face. For once no one laughed. She stood an instant staring.

  “It seems to be my luck to be crucified at every point of the compass,” she said at last. “
First two days you thought I was a pauper, now you will think I’m a fraud. All of you will believe I bought an expensive box, and then was too poor to put anything but a restaurant sandwich in it. You must stop till I prove to you that I’m not.”

  Elnora gathered up the lids, and kicked the sandwich into a corner.

  “I had milk in that bottle, see! And custard in the cup. There was salad in the little box, fried chicken in the large one, and nut sandwiches in the tray. You can see the crumbs of all of them. A man set a dog on a child who was so starved he was stealing apples. I talked with him, and I thought I could bear hunger better, he was such a little boy, so I gave him my lunch, and got the sandwich at the restaurant.”

  Elnora held out the box. The girls were laughing by that time. “You goose,” said one, “why didn’t you give him the money, and save your lunch?”

  “He was such a little fellow, and he really was hungry,” said Elnora. “I often go without anything to eat at noon in the fields and woods, and never think of it.”

  She closed the box and set it beside the lunches of other country pupils. While her back was turned, into the room came the girl of her encounter on the first day, walked to the rack, and with an exclamation of approval took down Elnora’s hat.

  “Just the thing I have been wanting!” she said. “I never saw such beautiful quills in all my life. They match my new broadcloth to perfection. I’ve got to have that kind of quills for my hat. I never saw the like! Whose is it, and where did it come from?”

  No one said a word, for Elnora’s question, the reply, and her answer, had been repeated. Every one knew that the Limberlost girl had come out ahead and Sadie Reed had not been amiable, when the little flourish had been added to Elnora’s name in the algebra class. Elnora’s swift glance was pathetic, but no one helped her. Sadie Reed glanced from the hat to the faces around her and wondered.

  “Why, this is the Freshman section, whose hat is it?” she asked again, this time impatiently.

  “That’s the tassel of the cornstock,” said Elnora with a forced laugh.

  The response was genuine. Every one shouted. Sadie Reed blushed, but she laughed also.

  “Well, it’s beautiful,” she said, “especially the quills. They are exactly what I want. I know I don’t deserve any kindness from you, but I do wish you would tell me at whose store you found those quills.”

  “Gladly!” said Elnora. “You can’t buy quills like those at a store. They are from a living bird. Phoebe Simms gathers them in her orchard as her peacocks shed them. They are wing quills from the males.”

  Then there was perfect silence. How was Elnora to know that not a girl there would have told that?

  “I haven’t a doubt but I can get you some,” she offered. “She gave Aunt Margaret a large bunch, and those are part of them. I am quite sure she has more, and would spare some.”

  Sadie Reed laughed shortly. “You needn’t trouble,” she said, “I was fooled. I thought they were expensive quills. I wanted them for a twenty-dollar velvet toque to match my new suit. If they are gathered from the ground, really, I couldn’t use them.”

  “Only in spots!” said Elnora. “They don’t just cover the earth. Phoebe Simms’s peacocks are the only ones within miles of Onabasha, and they moult but once a year. If your hat cost only twenty dollars, it’s scarcely good enough for those quills. You see, the Almighty made and coloured those Himself; and He puts the same kind on Phoebe Simms’s peacocks that He put on the head of the family in the forests of Ceylon, away back in the beginning. Any old manufactured quill from New York or Chicago will do for your little twenty-dollar hat. You should have something infinitely better than that to be worthy of quills that are made by the Creator.”

  How those girls did laugh! One of them walked with Elnora to the auditorium, sat beside her during exercises, and tried to talk whenever she dared, to keep Elnora from seeing the curious and admiring looks bent upon her.

  For the brown-eyed boy whistled, and there was pantomime of all sorts going on behind Elnora’s back that day. Happy with her books, no one knew how much she saw, and from her absorption in her studies it was evident she cared too little to notice.

  After school she went again to the home of the Bird Woman, and together they visited the swamp and carried away more specimens. This time Elnora asked the Bird Woman to keep the money until noon of the next day, when she would call for it and have it added to her bank account. She slowly walked home, for the visit to the swamp had brought back full force the experience of the morning. Again and again she examined the crude little note, for she did not know what it meant, yet it bred vague fear. The only thing of which Elnora knew herself afraid was her mother; when with wild eyes and ears deaf to childish pleading, she sometimes lost control of herself in the night and visited the pool where her husband had sunk before her, calling his name in unearthly tones and begging of the swamp to give back its dead.

  Chapter 6

  Wherein Mrs. Comstock Indulges in “Frills,” and Billy Reappears

  It was Wesley Sinton who really wrestled with Elnora’s problem while he drove about his business. He was not forced to ask himself what it meant; he knew. The old Corson gang was still holding together. Elder members who had escaped the law had been joined by a younger brother of Jack’s, and they met in the thickest of the few remaining fast places of the swamp to drink, gamble, and loaf. Then suddenly, there would be a robbery in some country house where a farmer that day had sold his wheat or corn and not paid a visit to the bank, or in some neighbouring village.

  The home of Mrs. Comstock and Elnora adjoined the swamp. Sinton’s land lay next, and not another residence or man easy to reach in case of trouble. Whoever wrote that note had some human kindness in his breast, but the fact stood revealed that he feared his strength if Elnora were delivered into his hands. Where had he been the previous night when he heard that prayer? Was that the first time he had been in such proximity? Sinton drove fast, for he wished to reach the swamp before Elnora and the Bird Woman would go there.

  At almost four he came to the case, and dropping on his knees studied the ground, every sense alert. He found two or three little heel prints. Those were made by Elnora or the Bird Woman. What Sinton wanted to learn was whether all the remainder were the footprints of one man. It was easily seen, they were not. There were deep, even tracks made by fairly new shoes, and others where a well-worn heel cut deeper on the inside of the print than at the outer edge. Undoubtedly some of Corson’s old gang were watching the case, and the visits of the women to it. There was no danger that any one would attack the Bird Woman. She never went to the swamp at night, and on her trips in the daytime, every one knew that she carried a revolver, understood how to use it, and pursued her work in a fearless manner.

  Elnora, prowling around the swamp and lured into the interior by the flight of moths and butterflies; Elnora, without father, money, or friends save himself, to defend her—Elnora was a different proposition. For this to happen just when the Limberlost was bringing the very desire of her heart to the girl, it was too bad.

  Sinton was afraid for her, yet he did not want to add the burden of fear to Katharine Comstock’s trouble, or to disturb the joy of Elnora in her work. He stopped at the cabin and slowly went up the walk. Mrs. Comstock was sitting on the front steps with some sewing. The work seemed to Sinton as if she might be engaged in putting a tuck in a petticoat. He thought of how Margaret had shortened Elnora’s dress to the accepted length for girls of her age, and made a mental note of Mrs. Comstock’s occupation.

  She dropped her work on her lap, laid her hands on it and looked into his face with a sneer.

  “You didn’t let any grass grow under your feet,” she said.

  Sinton saw her white, drawn face and comprehended.

  “I went to pay a debt and see about this opening of the ditch, Kate.”

  “You said you were going to prosecute me.”

  “Good gracious, Kate!” cried Sinton. “Is that what
you have been thinking all day? I told you before I left yesterday that I would not need do that. And I won’t! We can’t afford to quarrel over Elnora. She’s all we’ve got. Now that she has proved that if you don’t do just what I think you ought by way of clothes and schooling, she can take care of herself, I put that out of my head. What I came to see you about is a kind of scare I’ve had to-day. I want to ask you if you ever see anything about the swamp that makes you think the old Corson gang is still at work?”

  “Can’t say that I do,” said Mrs. Comstock. “There’s kind of dancing lights there sometimes, but I supposed it was just people passing along the road with lanterns. Folks hereabout are none too fond of the swamp. I hate it like death. I’ve never stayed here a night in my life without Robert’s revolver, clean and loaded, under my pillow, and the shotgun, same condition, by the bed. I can’t say that I’m afraid here at home. I’m not. I can take care of myself. But none of the swamp for me!”

  “Well, I’m glad you are not afraid, Kate, because I must tell you something. Elnora stopped at the case this morning, and somebody had been into it in the night.”

  “Broke the lock?”

  “No. Used a duplicate key. To-day I heard there was a man here last night. I want to nose around a little.”

  Sinton went to the east end of the cabin and looked up at the window. There was no way any one could have reached it without a ladder, for the logs were hewed and mortar filled the cracks even. Then he went to the west end, the willow faced him as he turned the corner. He examined the trunk carefully. There was no mistake about small particles of black swamp muck adhering to the sides of the tree. He reached the low branches and climbed the willow. There was earth on the large limb crossing Elnora’s window. He stood on it, holding the branch as had been done the night before, and looked into the room. He could see very little, but he knew that if it had been dark outside and sufficiently light for Elnora to study inside he could have seen vividly. He brought his face close to the netting, and he could see the bed with its head to the east, at its foot the table with the candles and the chair before it, and then he knew where the man had been who had heard Elnora’s prayer.