Ladybird (14 page)

“Oh,” she said aloud, “oh, I’m so glad!” And she found there were tears running down her face. It had been a terrible strain, walking that track through the dark woods, with water on either side down below the grading and the dread of a special train, perhaps, rushing at her unawares.

She slid down the grade as soon as she got beyond the marshy land and was glad, indeed, to get on firm, dry ground once more.

The place around her looked more inviting than where she had been all day. There was a house a long way off and roads going here and there. There was even a stretch of land that seemed to have been made ready for planting. A plow stood in a furrow, as if it had just been left for a while. Also there were pleasant, friendly trees along the way, and a smooth road presently presented itself to be walked on. She was almost too tired to keep on much longer, but she must until she found a safe place to sleep.

She was watching the way to choose smooth spots, for her feet were very sore, when suddenly she looked up and saw a rider coming toward her on a black horse, and her heart stood still with fear.

There was not time to study him through her binoculars and see if he was one of her enemies. It might be that he had not yet noticed her. She turned and fled like a streak of light, but to her horror as she ran, she heard the man calling. She did not stay to hear whether he was calling her or someone else. She fled for her life back on the road, back to the last tree she had passed. She flung herself upon its trunk as she had often done before and shinned up into the thick branches where she was completely hidden from view. The branches were so dense that she could not even look out herself without parting them, and she did not dare do that. Silently she waited, seated on a high bough, frightened eyes staring down, ears strained to listen to the horse’s hoofbeats on the hard earth.

Yes, he was coming on. Had he seen her? Was it Brand or Pete? Was she caught at last? It was of no use to cry out, for that house was too far away, even if there might be friendly people in it. Her only chance was to keep silent and hope he had not seen her. Perhaps he lived in that house and had been calling to someone on the porch. Perhaps he had not seen her at all, or if he had he might have missed where she went and would ride straight by.

But no, the horse had stopped. There was a sound of someone springing to the ground, and then she heard steps. He was coming toward the tree.

“Oh, I say, you up there? What are you? A bird or a girl? What do you seem to think you are doing up there anyway?”

The voice was crisp and hearty, and the eyes that looked up were full of merry twinkles. Fraley leaned forward and stared down and answered in a frightened little voice. “I’m—just resting—a little.”

“Oh, I see,” said the young man jovially. “Well, would you mind if I interrupted you a minute to inquire the way? I’m a stranger around here, and I guess I’ve made a wrong turn. I want to get to the log schoolhouse, wherever that is. Can you tell me? You see, I’m lost.”

Fraley looked down at his nice, lean, tanned face, noticed the wave in his brown hair and the merry twinkle in his eyes, and lost some of her fear.

“But—you see—I’m lost, too,” she said gravely.

“The dickens! You are?” said the young man and bent over, laughing. “Say now, that’s a great joke, isn’t it? Well, perhaps I can help you then. Where were you going?”

“I—don’t—quite know,” she vouchsafed in a small voice. “I’m traveling.”

“Oh, I see,” said the young man, sobering down and giving her a quick, surprised glance. “Well,” he said at last, “I see you’re a lady and, I should judge, a lady in distress, and I hope I’m a gentleman. You needn’t be afraid of me, if that’s what’s the matter. I’m perfectly respectable. Suppose you come down and let’s talk this thing over. Where were you really heading for?”

Fraley sat very still for a minute and then answered slowly, “Why—I—suppose New York, in the end. But it seems to be a long ways off.”

“You bet your life it is,” said the young man bitterly. “I’d like right well to be there myself if I hadn’t been chump enough to promise to stay out here and hold down another fellow’s job while he goes to the hospital. But I’m here, and I guess I’ll have to stick it out. How about it, will you come down and help me decide which way we ought to go, or do I have to come up there?”

Fraley looked wildly around and at once uncurled her feet from under her dress where they had been tucked out of sight.

“Let me help you,” said the young man, reaching up a friendly hand.

“Thank you,” said Fraley solemnly, “I can get down alone.” And she proceeded to swing herself off the high bough and drop with a graceful little spring to the ground, as if she had really been the bird he had suggested.

“Well, that was some jump!” declared the young man, surveying her as she stood silently before him, watching him with wise, half-frightened eyes.

The kerchief had caught in the branches and was hanging on her back, and her golden hair was flowing in waves around her shoulders. Even in the old overcoat she was lovely; barefoot and tired and ragged, she made a picture there in the wilderness.

“Now, what are we going to do about it?” asked the young man after he had surveyed her. “What good jokes do you know?”

“Jokes?” she said, looking puzzled. “I’m not sure what you mean. But there’s a railroad over there, just behind those bushes down there. It goes east that way, because that’s where the sun rises.”

“The dickens it does! I take it you’ve watched it rise, too. Well, that’s something, only the sun isn’t rising now.”

“No, it’s almost sunset time,” said the girl gravely. “Were you going east or west?”

“Well now, that’s what I don’t know. You see, I started from a ranch where this friend of mine is supposed to board, and I’m due at that log schoolhouse at seven o’clock. I’ve got to get there or bust because I told this fellow I would. He’s counting on me! It isn’t my kind of a job, but I’ll have to do the best I can with it, and I’ve got to get there. By the way, how can I serve you? You said you were going to New York. Do you want to get to a station? I should suppose there would be one somewhere along a railroad eventually, although you can’t always tell in a new country like this. I could take you to a station if we could find one lying around loose.”

“No, thank you; I thought I would walk a little farther first,” said Fraley shyly. “It costs a lot of money, I guess, to ride on the cars, and I haven’t very much.”

“Oh!” said the young man. “So it’s money, is it? That’s my bugbear, too. Not for myself, you understand. I happen to have been born with plenty, and I can help you out in that way if you’ll let me.”

“Oh no,” said Fraley, shrinking away, “I’ll be all right. But I’m sorry I can’t help you. I’ve been traveling all day, and I haven’t seen any log schoolhouse—that is, nothing that looked like that—”

“I see,” said the young man. “Well, what about some supper? I’m getting perfectly hollah! Suppose we just sit down here under this tree and have a bite and talk it over. Perhaps that will help.”

“I’m sorry,” said Fraley again, “but I have nothing but some crackers and a few prunes. You are welcome to half of those if you like. They are not very nice.”

“Oh, but I’ve got a real lunch,” said the young man. “The lady at the ranch put it up for me. There’s enough for a regiment, and I do hate like the dickens to eat alone. Won’t you share it with me? Then we can decide what’s best to be done.”

Fraley looked troubled. It was not quite her idea of etiquette nor safety, this picking up a strange young man in the wilderness and going out to dinner with him under a tree, but he waited for no acquiescence. He stepped over to his horse and began to unstrap a box from the back of the saddle.

“Gaze on that!” said the young man, opening the box and disclosing neat packages wrapped in wax paper, and glimpses of golden oranges.

“Oh,” said Fraley, looking with amazement at the arrangement, “that is wonderful!”

“Now, let’s sit down here and eat. I’m simply ravenous. We had lunch at eleven o’clock, and I expected to reach this place an hour ago and have time to get all primed up for the evening. Here, let me fix that knapsack of yours so you’ll be comfortable.” He sprang forward and lifted the bag from her tired shoulders and placed it down by the tree trunk.

“Now, tree-lady, drop down there and rest against that. There’s nothing breakable in it, I’m sure, the way you lighted down from that tree.”

She obeyed him because she did not know just what else to do and because she was too tired to stand up longer.

He dropped down on the grass in front of her and opened the box again, handing her one of the little wax paper parcels.

“How’s that? Open it and see what it turns out to be. If I can judge by the lunch we had, it’ll be something pretty delectable. They think because I’m taking the job of their preacher that I must be fed on nectar and ambrosia.”

“Is this nectar and ambrosia?” asked Fraley seriously, looking down at the package she held, still unopened.

The young man laughed.

“Something like that,” he said. “Try it.”

“Oh, but I mustn’t,” said Fraley, handing it back to him. “You will need every crumb you can get if you’re really lost. It’s such a long way to anywhere out here. I know, for I’ve tried it.”

“The dickens you have!” said the young man. “Well now, that’s too bad because I never eat alone, and if you won’t, I won’t, you see, and we’ll just starve together!”

Fraley looked at him in astonishment, and then she laughed, a rich, sweet, childish gurgle of fun.

“I’ll eat some,” she agreed and opened her little package.

She found delicate slices of fine white bread with slices of chicken breast laid in between. And when she put it in her mouth she thought it was the best thing she had ever tasted.

There were other little packages with other sandwiches, some with fragrant slices of pink ham between them. There were hard-boiled eggs rolled in paper. There were olives and pickles, and chocolate cake and cookies, and white grapes and oranges—a feast for a king! There was coffee amazingly hot in a Thermos bottle. And in the wilderness!

Fraley ate silently at first, until the faint sick feeling was gone, and then she looked up with a smile. “This is just like Elijah under the juniper tree, isn’t it?”

The young man stared at her. “Beg pardon, who did you say?”

“Elijah! Don’t you know? The first time he was in the wilderness, the ravens fed him; and then the time he was so discouraged under the juniper tree, an angel came and baked him a little cake.”

“Am I to understand that I am an angel or a raven?” asked the young man. “Consider, I beg you, for it will make a great difference to me whether you think I’m a raven or an angel.”

Fraley looked up and laughed.

“But I mean it seriously,” said the young man, helping himself to his third ham sandwich. “It may make a great difference to me all my life whether you consider me a raven or an angel. And who is this person Elijah that you seem so intimate with?”

Her face grew sober again. “Oh, don’t you
know
Elijah?”

“Sorry, but I never had the pleasure of meeting him,” said this strange merry gentleman as he handed her a bunch of luscious grapes. “I’m a graduate of one of the best colleges of the land, too, and I suppose I ought to have heard of him at least, but I simply can’t recall his identity.”

Fraley looked troubled.

“It’s a long story,” she said. “I’d have to begin at the beginning to tell it all, but you can read it.”

“I detest waiting for a thing when I want to know it at once. Just give me some clue; I may know the gentleman after all.”

“Why, he was a prophet, you know,” began Fraley, looking at him hopefully.

“A weather prophet?” asked the young man, catching the word lightly.

“Yes,” said Fraley with a clearing of her expression. “That’s the one. I was sure you knew him. He told Ahab, you know, that there wasn’t going to be any dew nor rain, and it made Ahab so angry that he told the prophet to get out of the country; and he went where there was a brook, and the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.”

“Oh, I see,” said the young man. “But that’s the raven; where does the angel come in? I don’t seem to recall the rest of the story. Where did the ravens get the sandwiches do you think?”

“Why, they weren’t sandwiches,” said the girl earnestly. “I don’t think people fixed them like this then; it doesn’t say anything about it. But God sent the ravens, you know. He told Elijah He was going to do it, and He sent the angel to him, too, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” said the young man. “Where do you get all this? I don’t recall ever having heard it. Tell me the rest. It sounds interesting. We have ten minutes before we have to start. I’m sure that will give us plenty of time to hunt out that schoolhouse, for it ought to be within a mile of us somewhere. I know just where I got off the track.”

Fraley looked at the sun.

“It’s getting late,” she said uneasily. “I ought to start right away myself. I’ve got to get somewhere for the night.”

“That’s all right,” said the young man easily. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go. That horse is good for two riders as well as one. You can come on with me till I get this job done I’m in for, and then I’ll carry you wherever you say. Why not come on back to the ranch with me till morning? My landlady will be delighted to take you in, I’m sure. I’ll just tell her I picked you up on the road and you need a night’s lodging.”

Fraley’s eyes were filled with alarm.

“Oh, I couldn’t really!” she said, getting to her feet. “I must be getting along fast. It is time I was gone now. The sun is going down, see, and I must find—I must get—somewhere—before it is quite dark.”

“Where is it you have to get?” asked the young man, springing up also.

“I have to find the place. I don’t know just where and so I must hurry.”

“Do you mean you are going to some house where friends live?” he asked, eyeing her keenly.

The alarm was growing in her eyes, and when she did not answer immediately, he went on: “Because there isn’t any house anywhere near here except that one up there, I can tell you that; I’ve been riding around quite a bit, and I’ve got a pretty good idea of the lay of the land. Where is it you think you are going? You know it isn’t safe for a nice little ladybird like you to be cutting around lonely places all alone like this. You don’t
live
around here, do you? You don’t
live
up in that old empty house up there, do you? Because I happen to know it’s perfectly empty, for I looked through one of the windows a few minutes ago, meaning to ask the shortest way to my schoolhouse. There isn’t a stick of furniture in the place.”