Caddie Woodlawn (6 page)

“You said if I beat you to the end of the lake on the raft, or if I wouldn't tell Mother. But I didn't beat you and I
am
going to tell Mother.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Uncle Edmund hastily, “but this dollar is just burning a hole in my pocket, my dear. Here, take it. It belongs to you.”

Suddenly Caddie felt the weight of a silver dollar in the pocket of her dress. She put her hand in her pocket and the silver dollar felt warm and round to her fingers.

“Thank you, Uncle Edmund,” she said.

They gathered up the game bag and the gun, and started for home. Their three figures were silhouetted against the sunset, Caddie, Nero, and Uncle Edmund, and their three shadows trailed far out behind them. Uncle Edmund, with a lulled conscience, was whistling. But Caddie's mind was busy with the many, many ways in which one could spend a silver dollar.

“Say, I'd take a ducking every day in the week and twice on Sunday, for a silver dollar,” remarked Tom enviously.

“Caddie, they've got bully tops in the store at Dunnville,” added Warren hopefully.

Everybody had thought of a splendid way for Caddie to spend her dollar.

“You ought to buy yourself some gloves, Sister,” said Clara. “You've never had proper ones and your hands look like an Indian's.”

“Oh, Caddie, get a doll, please do,” begged Hetty, “one of those china-headed ones with pink cheeks and blue eyes, and little china boots with high heels.”

Little Minnie thought that the whole dollar should be spent on striped stick candy, and the boys were all for marbles and tops.

“Better keep it until Christmas, my child,” advised Mrs. Woodlawn.

But Mr. Woodlawn said: “Leave the child alone. She has a wise head on her shoulders. She will know how to spend her money wisely when the time comes.”

Caddie said nothing. But she put her dollar away in the little wooden trinket box which Father had made for her. Her head was full of plans—so many that she could not yet choose among them.

It was the evening before Uncle Edmund's departure. A sharp wind blew about the house, to remind them that even Indian summer must come to an end at last. Warm and cozy indoors, the Woodlawn family sat about the dining-room table. The supper cloth had been removed with the dishes, and a homespun cloth of red and white had taken its place with a lamp in the middle. The lamp was still rather wonderful to the little Woodlawns. They remembered when Father had first brought it home to replace the candles, and how they had all stood around to see it lighted and hear Father explain its use. Tonight by the light of the lamp Mrs. Woodlawn and Clara were darning, Mr. Woodlawn was mending a clock, and Uncle Edmund
was cleaning his gun. The younger children sat about his feet near the fire, twisting bits of paper into the lighters which were used whenever possible instead of the precious sulphur matches.

Nero lay between Caddie and Uncle Edmund, his head pressed against Caddie's knee, his eyes opening from time to time to gaze in sleepy adoration at Uncle Edmund. He was completely happy here by the fire, between the two people he loved best. When he heard his name spoken, he raised his head and looked about. Uncle Edmund was saying: “There's one thing I want to ask you, Harriet. It's about Nero. Be a good sister, and let me take him back to St. Louis with me.” Caddie and Tom sat up straight to listen. They stopped twisting lighters but they said nothing. They knew very well that when a grownup asked Mother a question, it was not their business to answer it, no matter how much they were interested.

“Why, Edmund,” said Mother calmly, “whatever would you do with a sheepdog in St. Louis?”

“The point is, Nero's too good a dog for sheep. A little training and he'd be a fine bird dog. I know a chap who makes a business of training dogs. Nero would make me a splendid hunter, and you could easily get a new sheepdog.”

“A good sheepdog requires as much training as a
bird dog, Edmund,” said Mr. Woodlawn, “and to my mind he serves a worthier purpose.”

“You have the mind of a farmer rather than a gentleman, John,” said Uncle Edmund.

“Thank you, Edmund,” replied Mr. Woodlawn gravely. “I appreciate that compliment more than you suspect.”

“Come! come!” said Mother. “But surely, Edmund, you are not serious about taking Nero?”

“My heart is set on it, Harriet. You can see, yourself, how fond he is of me. I'll bring him back next fall, a perfect hunter.”

“Oh, Uncle Edmund,” Caddie couldn't help saying, “you
wouldn't
take him?”

“It would be for his own good, Caddie,” said Uncle Edmund pompously. “He's a noble animal.”

Caddie's fingers tightened in the thick wool on Nero's back. How many times she had felt its comforting warmth when things had gone wrong and she had needed comforting.

“No, Edmund, I am very much opposed to your taking him,” said Mrs. Woodlawn.

“Now, Harriet, please,” wheedled Uncle Edmund.

“You're so careless, Edmund. You nearly drowned my child last week. You'd be sure to let something happen to Nero.”

“Now, listen, my dear.” Uncle Edmund left his gun and came to hang over the back of his sister's chair. “I'll take perfectly good care of him. I'll bring him back with me next fall. You know, Harriet, you never could refuse your little brother anything he wanted.”

“Dear! dear!” said Mrs. Woodlawn, settling her white collar and smoothing her hair. “Do let me be. You are worse than a mosquito, Edmund. John, what shall I say to him?”

“It is for you and Edmund to decide, Harriet,” said Mr. Woodlawn.

“Well, then, take him,” said Mrs. Woodlawn in an irritated voice, “and take good care of him. I highly disapprove, but you always have your way, Brother, sooner or later.”

“My dear, good sister!” cried Uncle Edmund. He kissed Mrs. Woodlawn on the tip of her nose, and began to do a bit of a sailor's hornpipe. Nero sprang up barking, and the children were so enchanted by this unaccustomed scene that they sprang up, too, laughing and quite forgetting the reason why they were so gay.

They understood better the next day, when Uncle Edmund went on board the Little Steamer with Nero beside him on a leash. Nero jumped and barked, not knowing what they meant to do with him. Caddie
knelt down beside him. Her face pressed against his rough coat, she clung to him a moment before Uncle Edmund led him away.

“Come back again, some day, Nero,” she whispered. “Come back! come back!”

The Little Steamer chugged away downstream and a cold wind blew up the river in their faces. Uncle Edmund and Nero had a long journey ahead of them. Down the Menomonie River to the Chippewa, down the Chippewa to the Mississippi, down the Mississippi to St. Louis, where Uncle Edmund lived.

Tom and Caddie and Warren turned away from the dock and trudged back home to the farm. Somehow Uncle Edmund's visit had not been as satisfactory this year as they had expected. When they reached home, there was no welcoming bark, no Nero to greet them.

But it was too busy a time now to nurse regrets. There were the last wild grapes to pick, and butternuts and hazelnuts to gather. Tom, Caddie, and Warren were the fieldworkers of the family. They swung off across the fields and through the woods with buckets and baskets on their arms—three jolly comrades in search of adventure, in sunshine or frosty weather. Except for a few nutting expeditions, Clara and Hetty preferred to stay at home and help Mother with the sewing or quilting or jelly-making. As the autumn advanced
the cranberries began to ripen in the marshes. Sometimes with the canoe, sometimes on foot, the three children pushed into the marshes to fill their buckets. It was dangerous going, for sometimes there was quicksand or quagmire in the marshes, and one must be quick and light of foot to leap from hummock to hummock, choosing the ground which would bear weight. Loons called and laughed their mirthless laughter over the marshes, and often a wedge of wild geese flew honking high overhead in the cold, blue sky.

“I'm getting dents in my thumb and finger, picking so many cranberries,” complained Warren.

“I know,” said Caddie. “Every time I close my eyes, I see millions of red berries swimming around.”

“It's a good year for cranberries and for turkeys, too,” said Tom. “I guess Mother will make a lot on her turkeys in market this year.”

“Father says not. He says folks are too poor this year on account of the war to pay much for Thanksgiving turkeys.”

“But Mother got more last year than she ever did before.”

“I know, but Father says times are worse now, and she's got twice as many turkeys to sell.”

“Well, I hope she keeps a few for us,” said Warren, licking his lips. “Turkeys and cranberry sauce! Um—yum! She only let us have one for Thanksgiving last year.”

The turkeys on the Woodlawn farm were Mrs. Woodlawn's own private enterprise. From the time that they were hatched, she watched over them with the most jealous care. She had never taken wholeheartedly to farm life, but she did have a real affection for her poultry. In her clean black and white sprigged calico, she stepped daintily about the poultry runs, with wheat or bran mash for some, and tidbits of chopped, boiled egg or soaked bread crumbs for the daintier appetites.

“Mother has a delicate hand with the fowls,” Mr. Woodlawn used to say approvingly, and certainly her turkeys were the finest in all that rough, pioneer countryside. It was always a personal grief to her when a foolish young turkey swallowed a bee and died of a stung throat, and she swelled with a pride almost as great as his own when a fine cock with spread tail strutted by. This year she had the largest, finest flock that she had ever raised, and she would not listen to her husband's misgivings as to price. Away she had driven that very morning, all alone in the farm wagon with all her precious turkeys loaded on behind.

As the children returned that afternoon, their buckets heavy with cranberries, they saw her driving home. They ran to reach the farmyard as soon as she did. Mrs. Woodlawn drew up the horses silently. She had nothing to say, but the back of the farm wagon spoke for her. Gobble—gobble—gobble cried the wagonload of tired and hungry turkeys, who had come home again to roost.

“Why, Ma! You never sold your turks!” cried Tom, open-mouthed with astonishment.

“Tom Woodlawn!” cried his mother, “how many times have I told you not to call me ‘Ma'!” She climbed down over the wagon wheel with the dignity of a great lady, but her lips were tightly compressed to hide their trembling.

“They are nothing but robbers there in town!” she cried. “They wouldn't give me enough for my beautiful birds to pay for rearing them. They said there was no market for them. No market for
my
birds! Ah, if I had these fine, plump fowls in Boston! Wouldn't I make a fortune? But out in this barbarous country all folks want to eat is salt pork. Poor trash! Poor trash!” She was trembling with anger and excitement.

Mr. Woodlawn stood in the barn door smiling quietly. Now he came out and put his arm about his wife. “Better luck next time, Harriet,” he said.

“Oh, Johnny!” she cried and buried her head against his shoulder.

“But, Mother, what are you going to do with the turkeys if you can't sell them?” persisted Tom.

“We are going to eat them!” cried Mrs. Woodlawn, lifting a dauntless head from her husband's shoulder. “We'll hang them up and freeze them when the cold weather comes. We'll have roast turkey and cranberry sauce every day this winter!”

“Hooray!” shouted Caddie and Warren, waltzing each other around and around the barnyard.

“Hooray!” shouted Tom, imitating Uncle Edmund's hornpipe.

“Hooray! Hooray!” piped Hetty and little Minnie, running out of the house to hear what all the commotion was about.

Mrs. Conroy, who had come out at the first gobble of the returning turkeys, leaned her elbows on the fence and wagged her head.