Ladybird (11 page)

“Oh, I couldn’t,” said Fraley in a small disturbed voice. “I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t. I really ought to go on tonight. You see, I’m in a great hurry. I’ll just ride as far as you go, and by that time I’ll be rested and can go on. I really must get on tonight.”

There was actual panic in her voice. Brand and Pierce! Then she was not out of their region after all. Perhaps she was getting into an even worse place. Perhaps Brand or Pierce would come tonight and find her in this woman’s house.

“Naw, you can’t go on ta-night,” said the woman, eyeing her curiously. “I ain’t lettin’ no kid like you go gallivantin’ out in the dark. There’s wolves beyond the ranch in the forest. They come out sometimes. My Jimmy seen ’em. You ain’t got no gun, hev ye? Well, you jest better wait till daylight. It’ll be plumb dark now afore we git to my shack an’ time fer you ta rest. My Car’line, she’ll git ya off at daybreak, ef that’ll suit ya, but I ain’t lettin’ no child wander off ta get lost in the desert this time o’ night. Ef you’d get inta the desert alone an’ lose yer way yer bones might bleach white afore anyone found ’em. You trust me.”

Fraley’s face could turn no whiter, but she said nothing more. Perhaps there would be a chance to sneak away in the night.

The sky ahead was showing pearly tints with blue and green and fire pink like an opal. When she turned to look behind her, the sun was a burning ball just touching the rim of the horizon, and poised above a dark mountain. But she was relieved to see that so far there was no traveler in the long, beaten strip of white road that rose and fell and rose again mile after mile as far as she could see, until the forest through which she had come intercepted.

The woman began to talk of her home and the children, telling bits of family life, until Fraley grew interested. Her heart leaped at the thought of knowing another girl. Only once or twice had she seen girls of her own age—once when a party of tourists lost their way and stopped at the cabin to inquire. There had been two pretty girls in that company, dressed in lovely garments the likes of which she had never seen before. And once she had seen some girls in the town when her father took her with him to buy her shoes. The ride had taken all day, and she had been very tired. He never took her again. He said it was too much trouble. It would be nice to know a girl and to see some children. There had been no children near the cabin since her baby brother died of croup, and she was a tiny thing then herself.

It was quite dark when at last they came in sight of a speck of light in the distance. She could see nothing in the blackness but that light like a red berry, and she began to be afraid again.

“That’s my place,” announced the woman cheerfully. “Now, we’ll have some grub. I’m gettin’ hungry. What about you? There! Hear the dogs howl! They know it’s me just as well ’zif they cud see me. We keep five dogs around the place an’ there couldn’t no stranger come within a half a mile ’thout we’d know it. You like dogs? Ever have one?”

“I had a dog but it is dead,” said Fraley in a low voice, and the woman could see the tears were not far away.

“Well, they will die, too. That’s so! But they’re right useful while they live. I reckon Car’line’s got hot bread fer supper. You like hot bread? Car’line kin make it good. She knows how to housekeep real well, an’ she c’n work the farm, too, only I won’t let her. I say that’s man’s world. Though goodness knows I’ve done enough of it myself, too. But that’s diffrunt! Car’line ain’t gonta!”

They were nearing the ranch house now—a long, low building made of logs. The door was flung open wide, and shyness descended upon Fraley. She wondered what to say to these strange people. She had had no dealings with her own kind, and she remembered keenly the mirthful glances of the two daintily dressed girls in the lost party on the mountain. They had made fun of her bare feet, she knew as well as though she had heard the words they were whispering. What would this Caroline think of her?

Then the dogs broke around them with barks of joy and leaped at the woman as she halted the old horse in front of the door.

Fraley stood, in a moment more, inside the open door, holding her precious bag in her arms, looking like a frightened rabbit.

She did not know that she made a picture as she stood there in her bare feet and the old coat and kerchief, with the light of a big log fire flickering on the golden curls that strayed from under the binding silk. The other children stood off, suddenly shy, and watched her, and she eyed them and then stared at the great beautiful fire in bewilderment. She had never been in a room like this, nor seen a fire in an open fireplace.

The baby of the house ran and jumped into her mother’s arms, and the others stood around, evidently happy that she had come home. It seemed like heaven to Fraley.

Caroline stood by the side of the fire and stared at the girl her mother had brought home. Said “howdy” perfunctorily when her mother told her to and went on looking at her curiously. The other children stood around and watched her.

There was a certain dignity about Fraley, even as she stood there in bare feet, clasping her bundle, that made the others feel shy. But suddenly one of the dogs sprang through the door, went wagging from one member of the family to the other, wagged up to the stranger, sniffing around her skirts and laying his muzzle against her hands. Fraley stooped down and began to pat him, snuggling her arm around him. Here was someone she understood, and who understood her.

“Oh, he is a dear dog,” she said, looking up, and he wagged his tail and whined in pleasure at her attention. There was something in the tone of her voice or the way she spoke that made the children stare again. This was a person of another kind. There was something fine in the quality of her speech that they recognized as beyond theirs, which Caroline perhaps resented a little.

“He’s fell fer you all right,” said the mother as she removed the old felt hat she wore and hung it on a peg between the logs. “I ken see he things you’re jest right. Swing that kettle round, Car’line; you’ll have that stew burned before we get a chance to get it et up. Whar’s Jimmy?”

The boy appeared at the door, awkward in the presence of the stranger but melted into a grin as he saw how the dog had made friends with her.

“She’s a girl I picked up on the road,” introduced his mother informally. “She’s goin’ to stay with us ta-night. She’s all right.”

“I bet she is,” vouched Jimmy. “Buck wouldn’t take up with ’er ef she wasn’t. Say, girl, you gotta dog t’home, ain’t ya? He smells it on ya, I guess.”

“I did have,” said Fraley sadly, dropping her head to hide the tears that stung her eyes. “He got shot two days ago.”

“Aw shucks! Ain’t that a dirty shame,” said Jimmy sympathetically.

Fraley liked Jimmy from that time, and the rest of the children gathered around her with clumsy affection, feeling that her love for dogs had made her kin to them.

They gathered around the table while Caroline took up the stew in big tin plates. Fraley had a nicked thick white one because she was company.

She took off her head kerchief and washed her hands at the tin basin on the bench as the rest did. Then she sat down as a guest at a table with strangers for the first time in her life.

And here, as before, they noticed a difference in her. She did not reach out and grab for things. She did not make a noise with her lips as she ate, nor swoop up gravy with her spoon. She did not fill her mouth too full, nor talk when she was chewing. She seemed to eat without doing so. She put things into her mouth with quiet little unobtrusive movements, as if eating were quite a secondary thing, yet she seemed to enjoy what they gave her and accepted the second helping when it was offered.

The children watched her fascinated, the candlelight playing on her gold hair and on her delicate features. She seemed like a creature from another world to them. Yet she was telling their mother that she had lived all her life in these parts, and the garments that she wore were no better than their own.

It appeared that the cows had been milked by Caroline and Jimmy, so the guest had no opportunity to prove her abilities in that line, but she promised to be up bright and early the next morning to do it before she left.

It was after the supper was cleared away and Fraley had helped with the washing up that they gathered around the fire, and Fraley felt a sudden loneliness in the midst of the friendly family. She and her mother had been like this together, even though there had only been two of them, and now there was no one! If only this were thousands of miles away from the home cabin gladly would she have accepted the earnest invitation of her hostess to stay on indefinitely and visit. But the thought of the men who were expected the next day to buy steer filled her with terror.

“Say, why’n’t you git out yer Bible an’ read to us all?” asked the mother presently, reaching forward to stir up the fire with a long stick that lay on the hearth. “I’d like to see what it sounds like after all these years, an’ it wouldn’t do these children any harm to hear it once, too.”

Fraley shrank from bringing out the dear relic, sewed so carefully into its cotton covers by the hand of the beloved; but she could not refuse when they had been so kind to her. She must do something to repay them for her supper and night’s lodging. So she went to the corner where she had laid her gray woolen bag and took out the Bible for the first time since her mother had committed it to her care. She was a little troubled as she did so because of the papers that her mother had told her were inside the Book, but when she unwrapped the outer sheathing of cotton, she found that the cover was fitted tightly over the old worn boards of the original and that the papers were securely placed within this outer jacket of cloth with a fold of the cloth turned inside over their edges. Then she need not explain everything to these strangers and have them fingering over her precious papers and asking her all sorts of questions when she had scarcely seen the papers herself.

With quiet reserve she took the chair that her hostess had placed for her beside the table, where two candles pierced the gloom of the room outside the ring of firelight.

“Where shall I read?” she asked, lifting her serious big eyes to look around the group.

“Anyplace,” said Caroline, peering over her shoulder curiously. “Is it a story?”

“Yes, it’s full of stories.”

“Read what you like,” said the mother.

So Fraley turned to a favorite chapter to repeat it.

The candlelight flickered on the worn page, the edge almost in tatters where the little Fraley had fingered it long ago when she learned it; and the sweet earnest face of the girl was bent over the book for a moment and then lifted, with her gaze across to the firelight, as she spoke the wonderful words.

The family watched her spellbound.

“Say, you ain’t lookin’ on that there book; how can you know what it says?” interrupted Jim finally, too puzzled to wait until she was done. “Are you all makin’ that up?”…

Fraley smiled. “Oh no. I know it all by heart. I forgot I was not looking. I learned it when I was a very little girl.”

“You learned that whole book?” asked Caroline incredulously.

“Oh no, but a great many parts. I used to learn a chapter a week and sometimes more. I know a lot of the gospels and the epistles and a great many psalms. You see, this was the only book we had. I never went to school, so Mother made me learn out of here.”

“Car’line went a whole two terms when we was back in Oregon,” boasted her mother, “but she can’t read good like that.”

“Oh, I can’t be bothered,” said Caroline with a toss of her head, “I allus hev too much to do. And ennyhow, where’s the good of readin’? I’d never hev ennythin’ to read.”

“I’m gonta send fer us one o’ them Bibles, an’ you better git practiced up, Car’line, fer I meanta hev it read now an’ then.”

“Gwan!” said Jimmy. “I wanta hear what’s it’s like. Mebbe I’ll read it.”

So Fraley went on with her chapter, being many times interrupted in the course of her recitation.

The room was very still. Even the little ones listened with round, wondering eyes, and the mother nodded now and then as her memory brought back her vague former knowledge of the story that was being told, although it had never reached her soul before as a thing that had anything to do with her personally.

As the story of the death on the cross changed into the glory of resurrection, the faces around the fire grew vivid with excitement, and Fraley, led on by their interest, told of Christ’s appearance to the different disciples and to the women.

As she paused, the great log that had been burning in the fireplace fell in two and sent up a shower of sparks, and the mother, more deeply stirred by the story than she cared to have her children see, rose and fixed the fire again; but Jimmy leaned forward eagerly.

“An’ wot happened then? Gwan!”

So Fraley told of the ascension, taking the words from the first chapter of Acts.

“Oh gosh! Then He’s gone,” said the boy, flinging himself back in dismay. “Wot was the use of risin’ from the dead then? He might just as well be dead as up in the sky.”

“Oh no,” said Fraley earnestly, “because He’s coming again. Listen—” and she began to recite again. “ ‘This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.’ And you know in that first chapter I read, He said, ‘If I go…I will come again.’ ”

“Well, did He?” The boy’s brows were drawn in a frown of earnestness.

“Not yet. But He’s coming sure, sometime. There are lots of places in the Bible where it tells about it. He might come tonight or tomorrow. It says it will be when no one knows not even the angels know. But it’s going to be wonderful!”

“Gosh! Then you can’t tell us the rest of it t’night,” he said in a disappointed tone. “I don’t see why He had ta go away ’tall ef He was comin’ back.”

“Why,” said Fraley, puckering her brows in her effort to explain, “because He had something to do for us up there before He came back.”

“What ’e have ta do?”

“He had to take our sins up there and tell God He’d taken them all on Him when He died.”