Miracles on Maple Hill (Harcourt Young Classics) (8 page)

Another careful step, and they all moved again. One spoke to her in a low voice. "Moooo
ooooooo!
"

She began to talk to herself, saying, "They're not mean little cows at all. They're just
curious.
"

But the reason she said it was because she really wasn't sure. They could just close in, if they wanted to, and tramp her under. Nobody would ever know where she had disappeared. Great, long shivers began to go over her from her head to her heels.
Oh, Joe!
she thought.
If only he were here now!
Once Joe had been with her when a cow came running over a field, and he just stood still and faced her, as brave as could be. And she stopped and mooed at him. He said, "I'll keep her interested while you get away, Marly." And he did. When she was over the fence, she turned around to see what he'd do to escape himself, and he had walked right straight up to that cow and was rubbing her long nose!

She would as soon have touched a lion.

But these cows were lots littler than that other one. They weren't much more than calves, she knew. But there were so many of them, and whatever one did, all the rest hurried to do it, too. One shook its head, and so did all the others. One took a step, and every single one of them took a step.

She tried another hummock. It was firm under her foot. But every cow moved as she took that one step. She could practically feel them breathing. How huge and steady and unblinking were their eyes!

I'll never go anywhere without Joe again,
she thought,
or without Mother, or Daddy, or Mr. Chris.

Then the horrible thought came that maybe she would never go anywhere again at all, with or without anybody. All the rest of time she would just be stuck in this terrible swamp...

"Git! Go away!" she cried again, and shook both her arms at them.

"Mooooo!" one said, and lifted its nose as it spoke as if making a signal to somebody far off. It tossed its head. Every cow in the circle tossed its head then and said, "Mooooo!" It was terrible.

"Please let me get to the fence. Let me get to the fence," Marly whispered to herself, like a prayer, and looked carefully at every green spot between her and the beautiful rails where a squirrel was running, stopping to watch her a minute and then trotting on again. If she jumped quickly there—and there—and if she didn't slip and fall—then she would be at the fence.

She had to try. There was nothing else to do.

She took a deep breath and looked straight at the cows and spoke in a low voice as friendly (and shaky) as it could be. "My name is Marline," she said, "but everybody calls me Marly. Do you belong to Mr. Chris? I'll bet you're Mr. Chris's cows, aren't you? I heard him telling Mother how many nice calves he had." They looked very interested. Some of them glanced at each other, and one of them actually nodded. Then they all nodded, the whole row. She took a step.

The whole row moved again.

I've got to—
I've got to
... Help me get to that fence. And she turned quickly and made one big leap, and another, and splashed and sank and ran through the water and the cattails, and clung to the fence. And then she was up and over.

Instantly the whole bunch of cows were right by the fence, looking at her. But she was safe.

She sat down on the ground, shivering horribly. And the row of cows looked very pleased, really, and satisfied just to see what she meant to do next. Now she saw how funny they looked, young and curious and wide-eyed. They were exactly like a row of children looking over the fences at the zoo. She smiled at them, knowing they couldn't get over that fence. She was rather surprised when they didn't smile back.

All the time she crossed the field, they stood watching her. She could tell how wonderful and interesting they thought she was, all muddy and barefoot, and now she really knew they hadn't meant to worry her. They were just full of pushing, too, and they would have been sorry if they had pushed her into that swamp and lost her in the mud. She could see now how it had been. They had heard somebody strange splashing around in their drinking place and had to find out who it was.

Now she could laugh.

When she told the family at supper, everybody laughed. But Mother said it was a shame to lose her shoes, even though they were old ones. When she told Mr. Chris the next day, he said he'd take her over and introduce her to those cows properly, which he did. With him there she didn't mind facing the whole circle of them, although she did hang on to Mr. Chris's big hand.

The odd thing was that Mr. Chris said her adventure had probably saved the lives of every single calf! He should have known enough to fence that swamp off before this, he said, with an electric wire. Once he had a herd go in and eat those very flowers she was after. They were called cowslips sometimes, and sometimes marsh marigold. If cows ate too many, their stomachs swelled, and sometimes they died before the doctor could come to help.

What wonderful names he knew for
that
flower! Some called them "capers" and some called them "meadow boots." And when he was a boy, his mother had called them "crazy bet."

"I'm going to call them 'meadow boots,' " Marly said. "That's what they need where they grow."

After the wire was up, she and Mother went back for a nice bouquet and some supper greens. The leaves made fine greens, Mr. Chris said, before the spinach was ready. The cows came thundering toward Marly and Mother just the way they had before, but way back they stopped like magic. It didn't take them long to learn where the electric fence was strung. They looked a little sad, she thought, not to be able to come close enough to see what she was doing.

It was the very last Friday before the very last week of school. As they drove up the hill Mother always called "the great slippery" because of that first time they were stuck on it, Joe suddenly said something wonderful to Marly. "You know, there's the queerest place up this side of the sugarbush. Moss all over on great big bumps. I'll show it to you tomorrow, if you want."

She held her breath. Had he explored and explored until now he had started to want to show somebody?

"We called those bump-things hummocks," Mother said.

"Some are ant-towns," Joe said. "The little ones." He smiled at Marly. "I'll show you tomorrow."

She could tell he had something very special on his mind. "Shall I fix a lunch?" she asked. He liked it when she fixed a lunch if it didn't slow them up too much getting started. "I can get up real early and fix it."

"That'll be swell," he said.

So at last, she thought, the time had come. Now she could go anywhere and be as safe as could be. Even if there were cows, with Joe she wouldn't need to be one bit afraid. She was awake so early the next morning that the birds had hardly beat her to it. As she hurried with the sandwiches and cookies and fruit, she kept humming inside, like a cat.

Joe was surprised to find her all ready when he came down—and how pleased! There she was, waiting on the back step with two neat sacks beside her, one for herself and one for him, only his exactly twice as big.

Joe explained some things on the way up the road. Maple Mountain was strange, Mr. Chris said, because it had swamps and bogs right up in its highest places. The humpy-bumpy meadows on top were part of its queerness, too. Joe and Marly went from one hump to the other, opened some to watch ants, and looked at the queer moss and starry little plants on others. Joe had his magnifying glass, and they gazed into the strangest worlds, with funny little bugs tumbling around in the moss like animals in a jungle.

They went on to a little valley, then, and followed a brook that made one huge curve after another, doubling itself over like a coiled rope.

Joe said the curves were "meanders," and he showed her rocks in the streambed that were full of ancient shells. They'd been left there ages ago when the ocean was practically everywhere. There were scrapings on the big stones and perfectly round stones that Joe said were shaped by huge slides of ice that were in that very spot about a million years ago—or maybe a billion. Marly couldn't think what the difference might be with those numbers, only that one was lots bigger than the other.

She felt proud of all Joe knew. Maybe Mr. Chris knew about flowers and birds and things, but Joe was the one who knew about bugs and the queer plants that grew on stumps and fallen trees. They had nice names, too. For instance, there were funny things like little plugged-up funnels, some gray called pixie-cups and some bright red called British soldiers. And there were odd little shelves that looked like they'd been made for fairies to sit on. Only Joe said they were just wood rot. On old logs there were tall black things called dead-man's-fingers. And one funny toadstool was bright yellow, called a jack-o'-lantern, that Joe said really gave light at night.

"Joe, you know more things than Mr. Chris," Marly said.

To her surprise he said, "Oh, no, I don't! Nobody knows more than Chris. Who do you think told me most of that stuff? We came out here last week, and Chris showed me some things I wanted to show you. In the fall around here there are mushrooms all over, if you know where to find 'em. One of Mr. Chris's hired men, before Fritz, used to gather quarts and quarts and sell 'em to an Italian in town and make a mint of money every fall."

She hardly heard the last of it. "Joe," she said, "Mr. Chris didn't climb clear up this hill, did he? Why, if Chrissie heard about that—"

Joe went red. He pretended not to hear what she was saying but leaned over and then knelt right down on the ground. "Look there, at that striped beetle. Blister beetle, that's who! When we get to a pool I found, I'll show you some diving beetles, too. You ever see a whirligig?"

"Joe—did he?" she asked. "Because he shouldn't. Chrissie told me to look out for him and not let him climb even the littlest hill. And this one—" She looked behind them at the steep path.

"You know, the other day I saw a huge bumblebee caught in a lady-slipper," Joe said. "Couldn't get out to save him. I could hear him a block off, roaring—"

Marly interrupted. It wasn't because she wasn't interested in that bumblebee, but Joe had to know about taking care of Mr. Chris if he didn't know it already. "Joe, you and Chris were supposed to go into town that day in the car."

He stood up suddenly and turned to her. "I guess you'll go right and tell!" he said. "Just like a girl, can't keep anything to herself! Sure we went to town. We talked with that man in the restaurant, see. He buys all his syrup from Mr. Chris and says it's the best syrup in the world. He buys all his apple juice from Mr. Chris, too. And he says he used to buy chestnuts—but that's been years and years. After, Mr. Chris and I came up here, and he showed me those old chestnut snags—see, along there? There used to be so many you could get a half bushel of chestnuts in an hour."

"Joe, Mr. Chris didn't walk clear up here,
did
he?" Marly asked. "You shouldn't
ever
let him, Chrissie said. She told me we've got to help, because when he gets interested in showing people things, he just forgets."

"Okay, okay. We walked real slow. And he told me how this country used to look. Lots more forest than now. Between diseases like the one that killed all the chestnuts, and then people timbering their land, he says almost all the virgin forest is gone now."

Marly stood still. As if what Joe said had started the sound, she suddenly began to hear the whine of a saw. From Mr. Chris's place? "Joe, Mr. Chris isn't cutting down trees, is he? Just for money? He told me he never would."

"Of course he's not." He looked disgusted that she should even ask. "But I want to watch them cutting that tree. It's an old maple," he said.

As they walked, the whining of the saw grew louder and louder until it seemed to make huge circles of sound through the woods. They made a big circle and came finally to the sugarbush.

Mr. Chris was there with Fritz and a strange man with an electric saw. The old tree at which the saw was working was dead except one great branch that stood green among the masses of brown boughs. It was over a yard thick and was giving the saw a very hard time of it.

Mr. Chris waved to Marly and Joe as they came. When he talked, he had to shout over the ugly whining of the saw. "A grand old tree," he said. "A good sugar tree, for years and years. I've tapped it every season until this last one, for at least thirty years. We used to boil the sap right over there-had a long oven and one big pan. You can even see the old stones where the oven was."

Joe and Marly stood watching. They didn't try to talk, and Mr. Chris didn't say any more, either, for a while. The saw's humming was almost a scream as it got near the center of the trunk. Mr. Chris leaned close to Marly's ear. "When she falls, we'll count the rings and see just how old she is," he said.

A red squirrel began scolding from another tree. Mr. Chris looked up and shook his fist, laughing. "It's all right, old fellow," he called. "We're leaving you your butternut tree. But this old maple is going to come home with us and keep us warm this winter."

The squirrel sat looking at him, its paws folded in front as if it might be saying its prayers. Then the great maple began to crack and groan, and the squirrel turned and vanished into a hole. Fritz shouted, "Watch out! She's coming down!"

Like a giant, the great tree fell. Its immense dead limbs struck the ground first and broke, crashing, and it sagged and roared and seemed to fight with the air. For a minute it lay trembling all over. Then it was still.

Marly wanted to cry. But Joe laughed and yelled, "Hurrah! Boy, oh boy!" and before the tree had really settled down, he was into the branches. And then he was counting the rings. That tree had been growing for over a hundred years.

It was dusk as they started for home. Now that the saw had ceased to whine, the silence seemed immense and wonderful. They could hear the rustling of the trees that still stood up straight into the air.

Suddenly, just as they came to the hummocky place, Joe clutched Marly's arm. And then, without warning, he laid his hand hard across her mouth, whispering, "Sssssh!"