“‘When?’ Three days ago. ‘What made me?’ You. ‘Why didn’t I tell you?’ Because I can’t be sure in the least that she will come. Mother is the most individual person. She never does what every one expects she will. She may not come, and I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”
“How did I make you?” asked the Angel.
“Loving Alice. It made me realize that if you cared for your girl like that, with Mr. O’More and three other children, possibly my mother, with no one, might like to see me. I know I want to see her, and you had told me to so often, I just sent for her. Oh, I do hope she comes! I want her to see this lovely place.”
“I have been wondering what you thought of Mackinac,” said Freckles.
“Oh, it is a perfect picture, all of it! I should like to hang it on the wall, so I could see it whenever I wanted to; but it isn’t real, of course; it’s nothing but a picture.”
“These people won’t agree with you,” smiled Freckles.
“That isn’t necessary,” retorted Elnora. “They know this, and they love it; but you and I are acquainted with something different. The Limberlost is life. Here it is a carefully kept park. You motor, sail, and golf, all so secure and fine. But what I like is the excitement of choosing a path carefully, in the fear that the quagmire may reach out and suck me down; to go into the swamp naked-handed and wrest from it treasures that bring me books and clothing, and I like enough of a fight for things that I always remember how I got them. I even enjoy seeing a canny old vulture eyeing me as if it were saying: ‘Ware the sting of the rattler, lest I pick your bones as I did old Limber’s.’ I like sufficient danger to put an edge on life. This is so tame. I should have loved it when all the homes were cabins, and watchers for the stealthy Indian canoes patrolled the shores. You wait until mother comes, and if my violin isn’t angry with me for leaving it, to-night we shall sing you the Song of the Limberlost. You shall hear the big gold bees over the red, yellow, and purple flowers, bird song, wind talk, and the whispers of Sleepy Snake Creek, as it goes past you. You will know!” Elnora turned to Freckles.
He nodded. “Who better?” he asked. “This is secure while the children are so small, but when they grow larger, we are going farther north, into real forest, where they can learn self-reliance and develop backbone.”
Elnora laid away the violin. “Come along, children,” she said. “We must get at that backbone business at once. Let’s race to the playhouse.”
With the brood at her heels Elnora ran, and for an hour lively sounds stole from the remaining spot of forest on the Island, which lay beside the O’More cottage. Then Terry went to the playroom to bring Alice her doll. He came racing back, dragging it by one leg, and crying: “There’s company! Someone has come that mamma and papa are just tearing down the house over. I saw through the window.”
“It could not be my mother, yet,” mused Elnora. “Her boat is not due until twelve. Terry, give Alice that doll—”
“It’s a man-person, and I don’t know him, but my father is shaking his hand right straight along, and my mother is running for a hot drink and a cushion. It’s a kind of a sick person, but they are going to make him well right away, any one can see that. This is the best place.”
“I’ll go tell him to come lie on the pine needles in the sun and watch the sails go by. That will fix him!”
“Watch sails go by,” chanted Little Brother. “’A fix him! Elnora fix him, won’t you?”
“I don’t know about that,” answered Elnora. “What sort of person is he, Terry?”
“A beautiful white person; but my father is going to ‘colour him up,’ I heard him say so. He’s just out of the hospital, and he is a bad person, ’cause he ran away from the doctors and made them awful angry. But father and mother are going to doctor him better. I didn’t know they could make sick people well.”
“’Ey do anyfing!” boasted Little Brother.
Before Elnora missed her, Alice, who had gone to investigate, came flying across the shadows and through the sunshine waving a paper. She thurst it into Elnora’s hand.
“There is a man-person—a stranger-person!” she shouted. “But he knows you! He sent you that! You are to be the doctor! He said so! Oh, do hurry! I like him heaps!”
Elnora read Edith Carr’s telegram to Philip Ammon and understood that he had been ill, that she had been located by Edith who had notified him. In so doing she had acknowledged defeat. At last Philip was free. Elnora looked up with a radiant face.
“I like him ‘heaps’ myself!” she cried. “Come on children, we will go tell him so.”
Terry and Alice ran, but Elnora had to suit her steps to Little Brother, who was her loyal esquire, and would have been heartbroken over desertion and insulted at being carried. He was rather dragged, but he was arriving, and the emergency was great, he could see that.
“She’s coming!” shouted Alice.
“She’s going to be the doctor!” cried Terry.
“She looked just like she’d seen angels when she read the letter,” explained Alice.
“She likes you ‘heaps!’ She said so!” danced Terry. “Be waiting! Here she is!”
Elnora helped Little Brother up the steps, then deserted him and came at a rush. The stranger-person stood holding out trembling arms.
“Are you sure, at last, runaway?” asked Philip Ammon.
“Perfectly sure!” cried Elnora.
“Will you marry me now?”
“This instant! That is, any time after the noon boat comes in.”
“Why such unnecessary delay?” demanded Ammon.
“It is almost September,” explained Elnora. “I sent for mother three days ago. We must wait until she comes, and we either have to send for Uncle Wesley and Aunt Margaret, or go to them. I couldn’t possibly be married properly without those dear people.”
“We will send,” decided Ammon. “The trip will be a treat for them. O’More, would you get off a message at once?”
Every one met the noon boat. They went in the motor because Philip was too weak to walk so far. As soon as people could be distinguished at all Elnora and Philip sighted an erect figure, with a head like a snowdrift. When the gang-plank fell the first person across it was a lean, red-haired boy of eleven, carrying a violin in one hand and an enormous bouquet of yellow marigolds and purple asters in the other. He was beaming with broad smiles until he saw Philip. Then his expression changed.
“Aw, say!” he exclaimed reproachfully. “I bet you Aunt Margaret is right. He is going to be your beau!”
Elnora stooped to kiss Billy as she caught her mother.
“There, there!” cried Mrs. Comstock. “Don’t knock my headgear into my eye. I’m not sure I’ve got either hat or hair. The wind blew like bizzem coming up the river.”
She shook out her skirts, straightened her hat, and came forward to meet Philip, who took her into his arms and kissed her repeatedly. Then he passed her along to Freckles and the Angel to whom her greetings were mingled with scolding and laughter over her wind-blown hair.
“No doubt I’m a precious spectacle!” she said to the Angel. “I saw your pa a little before I started, and he sent you a note. It’s in my satchel. He said he was coming up next week. What a lot of people there are in this world! And what on earth are all of them laughing about? Did none of them ever hear of sickness, or sorrow, or death? Billy, don’t you go to playing Indian or chasing woodchucks until you get out of those clothes. I promised Margaret I’d bring back that suit good as new.”
Then the O’More children came crowding to meet Elnora’s mother.
“Merry Christmas!” cried Mrs. Comstock, gathering them in. “Got everything right here but the tree, and there seems to be plenty of them a little higher up. If this wind would stiffen just enough more to blow away the people, so one could see this place, I believe it would be right decent looking.”
“See here,” whispered Elnora to Philip. “You must fix this with Billy. I can’t have his trip spoi
led.”
“Now, here is where I dust the rest of ’em!” complacently remarked Mrs. Comstock, as she climbed into the motor car for her first ride, in company with Philip and Little Brother. “I have been the one to trudge the roads and hop out of the way of these things for quite a spell.”
She sat very erect as the car rolled into the broad main avenue, where only stray couples were walking. Her eyes began to twinkle and gleam. Suddenly she leaned forward and touched the driver on the shoulder.
“Young man,” she said, “just you toot that horn suddenly and shave close enough a few of those people, so that I can see how I look when I leap for ragweed and snake fences.”
The amazed chauffeur glanced questioningly at Philip who slightly nodded. A second later there was a quick “honk!” and a swerve at a corner. A man engrossed in conversation grabbed the woman to whom he was talking and dashed for the safety of a lawn. The woman tripped in her skirts, and as she fell the man caught and dragged her. Both of them turned red faces to the car and berated the driver. Mrs. Comstock laughed in unrestrained enjoyment. Then she touched the chauffeur again.
“That’s enough,” she said. “It seems a mite risky.” A minute later she added to Philip, “If only they had been carrying six pounds of butter and ten dozen eggs apiece, wouldn’t that have been just perfect?”
Billy had wavered between Elnora and the motor, but his loyal little soul had been true to her, so the walk to the cottage began with him at her side. Long before they arrived the little O’Mores had crowded around and captured Billy, and he was giving them an expurgated version of Mrs. Comstock’s tales of Big Foot and Adam Poe, boasting that Uncle Wesley had been in the camps of Me-shin-go-me-sia and knew Wa-ca-co-nah before he got religion and dressed like white men; while the mighty prowess of Snap as a woodchuck hunter was done full justice. When they reached the cottage Philip took Billy aside, showed him the emerald ring and gravely asked his permission to marry Elnora. Billy struggled to be just, but it was going hard with him, when Alice, who kept close enough to hear, intervened.
“Why don’t you let them get married?” she asked. “You are much too small for her. You wait for me!”
Billy studied her intently. At last he turned to Ammon. “Aw, well! Go on, then!” he said gruffly. “I’ll marry Alice!”
Alice reached her hand. “If you got that settled let’s put on our Indian clothes, call the boys, and go to the playhouse.”
“I haven’t got any Indian clothes,” said Billy ruefully.
“Yes, you have,” explained Alice. “Father bought you some coming from the dock. You can put them on in the playhouse. The boys do.”
Billy examined the playhouse with gleaming eyes.
Never had he encountered such possibilities. He could see a hundred amusing things to try, and he could not decide which to do first. The most immediate attraction seemed to be a dead pine, held perpendicularly by its fellows, while its bark had decayed and fallen, leaving a bare, smooth trunk.
“If we just had some grease that would make the dandiest pole to play Fourth of July with!” he shouted.
The children remembered the Fourth. It had been great fun.
“Butter is grease. There is plenty in the ’frigerator,” suggested Alice, speeding away.
Billy caught the cold roll and began to rub it against the tree excitedly.
“How are you going to get it greased to the top?” inquired Terry.
Billy’s face lengthened. “That’s so!” he said. “The thing is to begin at the top and grease down. I’ll show you!”
Billy put the butter in his handkerchief and took the corners between his teeth. He climbed the pole, greasing it as he slid down.
“Now, I got to try first,” he said, “because I’m the biggest and so I have the best chance; only the one that goes first hasn’t hardly any chance at all, because he has to wipe off the grease on himself, so the others can get up at last. See?”
“All right!” said Terry. “You go first and then I will and then Alice. Phew! It’s slick. He’ll never get up.”
Billy wrestled manfully, and when he was exhausted he boosted Terry, and then both of them helped Alice, to whom they awarded a prize of her own doll. As they rested Billy remembered.
“Do your folks keep cows?” he asked.
“No, we buy milk,” said Terry.
“Gee! Then what about the butter? Maybe your ma needs it for dinner!”
“No, she doesn’t!” cried Alice. “There’s stacks of it! I can have all the butter I want.”
“Well, I’m mighty glad of it!” said Billy. “I didn’t just think. I’m afraid we’ve greased our clothes, too.”
“That’s no difference,” said Terry. “We can play what we please in these things.”
“Well, we ought to be all dirty, and bloody, and have feathers on us to be real Indians,” said Billy.
Alice tried a handful of dirt on her sleeve and it streaked beautifully. Instantly all of them began smearing themselves.
“If we only had feathers,” lamented Billy.
Terry disappeared and shortly returned from the garage with a feather duster. Billy fell on it with a shriek. Around each one’s head he firmly tied a twisted handkerchief, and stuck inside it a row of stiffly upstanding feathers.
“Now, if we just only had some pokeberries to paint us red, we’d be real, for sure enough Indians, and we could go on the warpath and fight all the other tribes and burn a lot of them at the stake.”
Alice sidled up to him. “Would huckleberries do?” she asked softly.
“Yes!” shouted Terry, wild with excitement. “Anything that’s a colour.”
Alice made another trip to the refrigerator. Billy crushed the berries in his hands and smeared and streaked all their faces liberally.
“Now are we ready?” asked Alice.
Billy collapsed. “I forgot the ponies! You got to ride ponies to go on the warpath!”
“You ain’t neither!” contradicted Terry. “It’s the very latest style to go on the warpath in a motor. Everybody does! They go everywhere in them. They are much faster and better than any old ponies.”
Billy gave one genuine whoop. “Can we take your motor?”
Terry hesitated.
“I suppose you are too little to run it?” said Billy.
“I am not!” flashed Terry. “I know how to start and stop it, and I drive lots for Stephens. It is hard to turn over the engine when you start.”
“I’ll turn it,” volunteered Billy. “I’m strong as anything.”
“Maybe it will start without. If Stephens has just been running it, sometimes it will. Come on, let’s try.”
Billy straightened up, lifted his chin and cried: “Houpe! Houpe! Houpe!”
The little O’Mores stared in amazement.
“Why don’t you come on and whoop?” demanded Billy. “Don’t you know how? You are great Indians! You got to whoop before you go on the warpath. You ought to kill a bat, too, and see if the wind is right. But maybe the engine won’t run if we wait to do that. You can whoop, anyway. All together now!”
They did whoop, and after several efforts the cry satisfied Billy, so he led the way to the big motor, and took the front seat with Terry. Alice and Little Brother climbed into the back.
“Will it go?” asked Billy. “Or do we have to turn it?”
“It will go,” said Terry as the machine gently slid out into the avenue and started under his guidance.
“This is no warpath!” scoffed Billy. “We got to go a lot faster than this, and we got to whoop. Alice, why don’t you whoop?”
Alice arose, took hold of the seat in front and whooped.
“If I open the throttle, I can’t squeeze the bulb to scare people out of our way,” said Terry. “I can’t steer and squeeze, too.”
“We’ll whoop enough to get them out of the way. Go faster!” urged Billy.
Billy also stood, lifted his chin and whooped like the wildest little savage that ever c
ame out of the West. Alice and Little Brother added their voices, and when he was not absorbed with the steering gear, Terry joined in.
“Faster!” shouted Billy.
Intoxicated with the speed and excitement, Terry threw the throttle wider and the big car leaped forward and sped down the avenue. In it four black, feather-bedecked children whooped in wild glee until suddenly Terry’s war cry changed to a scream of panic.
“The lake is coming!”
“Stop!” cried Billy. “Stop! Why don’t you stop?”
Paralyzed with fear Terry clung to the steering gear and the car sped onward.
“You little fool! Why don’t you stop?” screamed Billy, catching Terry’s arm. “Tell me how to stop!”
A bicycle shot beside them and Freckles standing on the pedals shouted: “Pull out the pin in that little circle at your feet!”
Billy fell on his knees and tugged and the pin yielded at last. Just as the wheels struck the white sand the bicycle sheered close, Freckles caught the lever and with one strong shove set the brake. The water flew as the car struck Huron, but luckily it was shallow and the beach smooth. Hub deep the big motor stood quivering as Freckles climbed in and backed it to dry sand.
Then he drew a deep breath and stared at his brood.
“Terence, would you kindly be explaining?” he said at last.
Billy looked at the panting little figure of Terry.
“I guess I better,” he said. “We were playing Indians on the warpath, and we hadn’t any ponies, and Terry said it was all the style to go in automobiles now, so we—”
Freckles’s head went back, and he did some whooping himself.
“I wonder if you realize how nearly you came to being four drowned children?” he said gravely, after a time.
“Oh, I think I could swim enough to get most of us out,” said Billy. “Anyway, we need washing.”
“You do indeed,” said Freckles. “I will head this procession to the garage, and there we will remove the first coat.” For the remainder of Billy’s visit the nurse, chauffeur, and every servant of the O’More household had something of importance on their minds, and Billy’s every step was shadowed.
The Best of Gene Stratton-Porter Page 59