CHAPTER XXI. MEG AS BENEFACTRESS
Dan and the children had gone on a hike, and Jane, being quite alone,rose and confronted the mountain girl with a cold stare that would havecaused Meg at another time to have whirled about and departed, but forthe sake of the other three she was willing to be treated unkindly.
"Miss Abbott," she said, holding out the newspaper, and pretending not tonotice the unfriendly expression, "there is news in here which may be ofgreat importance to you. May I show it to your brother?"
Suddenly Jane found herself trembling from some unnamed fear. Instantlyshe had thought of the taxes. Perhaps, without really being conscious ofit, she had read the word somewhere on that outheld paper.
She sank back into her chair, saying, almost breathlessly, "Dan isn'there. What is it, Miss Heger? Is something wrong?"
The mountain girl pointed to the paragraph and was amazed at the effectthe reading of it had upon the proud girl. There was an expression ofterror in the dark eyes that were lifted.
"Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?" she implored helplessly. "Ourfather gave us the money. He told us the taxes must be paid, but Ithought another two weeks would do as well as now. Dan did not know theneed of haste."
Meg, seeing that the girl, unused to deciding matters of importance, wasmore helpless than even Julie would have been, felt a sudden compassionfor her and so she said: "If you can get the money to the county seatbefore five o'clock you will not lose your property."
A dull flush suffused the dark face. "I--I haven't the money! I--Iborrowed it for something I wanted. It was in that letter that Julie gaveyou this morning to mail."
Then looking up eagerly, hopefully, "Miss Heger, perhaps you forgot topost it. Oh, how I hope that you did!"
But the mountain girl shook her head. "I sent it by Mr. Bently to theeastbound train, which was due about noon. He said that he himself wouldput it in the mail car."
"Then there is nothing that I can do!" The proud girl burst into suddentears. "Father has lost everything but our home in the East, and now, nowI have been the cause of his losing the cabin he so loved." Lifting atear-stained face to the girl who was watching her, troubled andthoughtful, she implored: "Oh, isn't there something I can do? If I tellthem I will pay it in two weeks, when my birthday money comes, won't thatdo as well as now?"
Meg shook her head. "No," she said. "This is final. They notified yourfather some time ago."
Jane nodded hopelessly. "Oh, if only brother were here! But the worrywould start him to coughing."
Again the girl, who scorned tears in others, began to sob helplessly. Howvain and foolish she had been to want that necklace, hoping that it wouldmake her appear more beautiful in the eyes of Jean Sawyer.
Meg stood for one moment deep in thought. Then she said: "Miss Abbott,find your papers. Have them ready for me when I return. I'll try to saveyour place."
With that she turned and ran back to her pony, leaped upon it andgalloped out of sight up around the bend.
"What does she mean?" Jane sat, almost as one stunned, for a moment, thenas the command of the mountain girl recalled itself to her, she arose andwent indoors to locate the papers their father had given Dan.
These being fastened with a rubber band into a neat packet, she heldclosely while she ran out to the brook calling Dan's name frantically,but there was no response. Soon she heard the musical yodeling which hadso filled her heart with wrath a short half hour before. Now it was toher a sound sweeter than any she had ever heard. It brought a faint hopethat her father's cabin might yet be saved. Down the stone steps shewent, holding out the papers. Then and for the first time she thought ofsomething: "But the money--I haven't any to give you."
Meg's answer was: "I am loaning you twenty-five dollars from my savings,but don't hope too much. It will be very hard for me to make Scarsburg byfive o'clock, but for Julie's sake I'll do my best."
"For Julie's sake!" The words drifted back to Jane as she stood watchingthe pony hurtling itself down the mountain road until the cloud of dusthid it from view. She, Jane, had never done anything for Julie's sake,and why, pray, should this mountain girl loan her own money to strangerswho might never repay her, and risk her life and that of her pony, as itwas evident she was doing?
Jane looked out into the heat-shimmering valley. Many times the mountainroad reappeared to her as it zigzagged down to Redfords. Again and againa rushing cloud of dust assured her that Meg was still racing with time.
Returning to the porch, Jane sank down in the deep chair, keenlyconscious of her own uselessness.
"Oh, what a vain, worthless creature I am! I don't see why Dan cares forme so much; why he risked his health that I might finish my course inthat seminary where everyone, everything, conspired to make me more proudand helpless."
Then before her arose a mental picture. Meg, clear-eyed, eager to be ofservice in an hour of need, and more than that, capable of being, andshe, Jane, had snubbed her, but for Julie's sake the mountain girl hadpersevered in her desire to be neighborly.
Unable to sit still, Jane went again to the brook to call, but thechildren, with Dan, had climbed higher than usual and had found so muchto interest them that they had failed to note the passage of time.
As there was no answer to her calling, Jane went back to the house, and,because she had to do something (she had entirely lost interest in herbook), she wandered out into the kitchen. She saw on the table a pan ofpotatoes with the paring knife near.
Hardly knowing what she was about, Jane took the pan to the porch, and,seating herself on the step, she began most awkwardly to pare. She hadheard her grandmother say that the peeling should be as thin as possibleas the goodness was next to the skin. It took a very long time for Janeto pare the half dozen potatoes and she had almost resolved not to tellDan about the taxes until she knew the worst or the best, when she heardhim hallooing from the brook. Placing the pan on the step, she ran tomeet him. One glance at her white, startled face assured him more thanwords could have done that something of an unusual nature had occurredduring their absence. Catching her in his arms, he felt her body tremble.He led her back to the porch before he asked, "Jane, tell me. What hashappened? Has that Slinking Coyote frightened you?"
Julie and Gerald, wide-eyed and wondering, crowded near. "Dan," Janeclung to him as she had not since the long ago childhood, when she had sooften been frightened and had turned to him for protection, "please sendthe children away. I want to tell you alone."
Gerald needed no second bidding. "Come on, Julie," he called. "Let's goand practice on our pine tree rifle range." He was carrying the smallgun, and so away they raced. Although they were almost overcome withnatural curiosity, they neither of them desired to stay where they werenot wanted.
When they were gone, Jane leaned against her brother and told the storybetween sobs that were almost hysterical. "Oh, brother, brother! If onlythis cabin is saved for Dad, I will never, never again be so vain andselfish. Oh, Dan, tell me, say that you think Meg will reach the countyseat before five."
The lad found that his heart was filled with conflicting emotions. Thescorn his sister's pride and selfishness would have aroused in him atanother time was crowded out by pity for her. She had suffered enoughwithout his rebuke. Then there was the dread that the cabin might not besaved, for well he knew the sorrow its loss would bring to his father,but, above all, there was something in his heart he had never feltbefore, a warm glow of admiration for a girl who was not his sister. Whathe said was, "Jane, dear, quiet yourself. We can do nothing but wait."
And a long, long wait they were destined to have. The hands of the clockmoved slowly to four, then five and then six. Jane's poor efforts atparing the potatoes received much comment from the children alone in thekitchen.
"Gee," Gerald confided to his small sister, "something must have happenedif it upset Jane so she didn't know what she was doing. She surelydidn't, or she wouldn't have tried to pare potatoes and stai
n those lilyhands of hers."
Try as the small boy might, he could not keep the scorn out of his voice.But Julie was more forgiving. "Gerry, don't be too hard on Jane. She actsawfully worried about something. I don't believe she saw a bear oranything that scared her. I think it's something in her heart that'stroubling her. I think she's sorry about something she's done."
"Well, she sure ought to be." The boy was less sympathetic. "She's beendirt mean to us ever since she's been home from that hifalutin' seminary,and what's more, she's none too good to Dan. I'd hate her, that's what,if she wasn't my sister, and if she didn't look just like our mother. Buteven for all of that, I'm going to let myself hate her hard if she isn'tbetter to you, Jule. The way she lets you do the work, and she settingaround reading novels to keep her hands white so's folks will admirethem! Aren't you the same family as she is, and shouldn't your hands bekept just as white? Tell me that now!"
The boy, who was holding the bread knife, whirled with such an indignantexpression on his freckled face that Julie laughed merrily, which brokethe spell.
"Oh, Gerry, you do look so funny! If I had time, I'd find some riggins tomake you into a pirate. It could be done easy, 'cause your face looksjust like their pictures and that knife would do for a dagger."
Meanwhile, on the front porch, the two who had long watched and waited,were getting momentarily more anxious, and often Dan walked to the top ofthe steep stairway, down which he gazed at the zig-zagging mountain road.At last he saw a pony climbing, oh, so slowly, as though it could hardlytake another step; and at its side there walked a girl. Dan leaped backto the porch and snatched up his hat. "Jane," he said, "you and thechildren have your supper. I'm going up to the Heger cabin and get one oftheir horses. Meg's pony is worn out, and I'm not going to have thatbrave girl walk all the way up the mountain, just to serve us."
Jane did not try to detain him, and the lad fairly leaped up the road tothe Heger cabin. He found the trapper, who had just returned from a rideover the other side of the mountain. "Take this hoss," he said, when hehad heard the story which fairly tumbled from Dan's mouth. "Ol'Bag-o'-Bones ain't a bit tired, and he's the best hoss I have on theplace."
Then the man held out a strong hand as he said: "Dan, boy, I hope my galmade it! She would if anyone could."
Dan silently returned the clasp, then he mounted the horse, that was notat all what its name might suggest, but lean and wiry, as were all of themustangs of the West, with hard muscles and a loping step that carried itdown the road, sure-footed and with great rapidity. Jane heard the halloowhen he passed, but she did not stir. She felt that she never could moveagain until she had learned the news that Meg would have for them.
And Meg, far down the mountain, looked up and saw Bag-o'-Bones, herfoster-father's favorite horse, descending with speed, and, believing itto be ridden by Mr. Heger, she wondered why, at that hour, he was in suchhaste. But at a lower turn of the road, she saw that the figure on thehorse was that of the lad from the East, who as yet did not know how toride as they did in the West.
Then she knew why he was coming, and for the first time in her lonely,isolated life, there was a sudden warmth in her heart. She had a realfriend, she knew that instinctively, and his name was Dan Abbott.
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