The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack

by Emily Cheney Neville

  They lifted Twinkle out of the conveyance, and set her upon the ground. A single garment of blue calico hung about the baby limply.

  “Ain’t you afraid of ants on her?” inquired Joan maternally.

  “She’s used to bites,” said Crystal. “They’s flies on her all the time.”

  The baby sat stolidly staring at them with her round blue eyes. There were tangles in her duck-tails of sunburned hair and traces of molasses about her mouth, but to Joan, hungry for the Platteville babies to mother, she was a welcome visitor. She cuddled her up beside her while they all played “claim.” Presently Autumn offered to show Phil a place where ground cherries grew, and the two wandered off over the prairie together. Then “claim” became “house,” and Joan assumed maternal charge of a family of three.

  “I’ll tell you what, le’s wash the baby,” she suggested.

  “What for? We ain’t goin’ no wheres.”

  “’Cause she’s so dirty; she’d be real nice-looking if she had that crust off of her.”

  “I’m afraid she’d take cold.”

  “Oh, no she won’t. It’s too hot to take cold. We’ll wash her right in the crick; the water’s warm. I’ll wash all of you.”

  “No, you won’t,” said the elder sister with decision. “Ma says the dust sticks to us worse if we get too clean. But we can wash Twinkle, if you want to; she won’t care.”

  “I’m going to dress her up, too,” announced Joan. “I don’t think she ought to go around so skin-out, even on the prairie.”

  “Have youse got more clothes in the house?” inquired Crystal, with awe.

  “We got some.”

  “Gee, you must be awful rich!”

  “We ain’t rich, but we ain’t starving.”

  “But you got carpets in your house.”

  “Those old rugs!” said Joan with scorn. “We had nicer things in Platteville. We just brought our for-common out here. And if you think our house is nice you ought to see some of the others back home.”

  “What did they have?”

  “Oh, carpets that your feet sink into. And grand pianos and chandeliers. An’ fountains in the yard and silver name plates on the door.”

  Crystal sighed. “Ain’t it queer how some folks have things and some folks ain’t got any! I should think God’d divide ’em up.”

  “I asked Uncle Jim about that, once. He said that God proba’ly intended folks to do that, but that there wasn’t many of them that had ever learned division. They got as far as multiplication, and then stopped. Now I’ll go in and get the things for Twinkle, and don’t you girls unpin her till I come back. She’s my child, we’re pertending, and I want the fun of taking off her dress. Pertend I was afraid to trust you with her.”

  “The Wubbers are here,” she called to Becky as she went in the front door. Becky was in the kitchen, and the partition between the rooms hid Joan’s half-guilty face.

  “That’s nice; I’m glad you have some one to play with. Don’t hold that baby on your lap; she’s too dirty.”

  “No, I won’t. May I have a little soap to wash her face?”

  “Of course. But don’t get it into her eyes.”

  Joan hurried out of the door, and Becky, sprinkling clothes at the kitchen table, smiled a little grimly to herself. “Prairie dirt is a little too much for even Joan,” she thought. “I could never have let her play with those Wubbers six months ago, but I’m getting more charitable since I’m a homesteader myself. Easy enough to keep clean when you can get water by turning a faucet; but well to pail, pail to kettle, and kettle to wash tub is another story. I don’t wonder Mrs. Wubber lies back on the job. It’s Fate that her children should all be blondes.”

  Out under the sun the adopted mother unpinned Twinkle from her one garment, found a shallow place in the creek, and set the baby in the water. Flattered at being the center of attention, she graciously permitted herself to be lathered and scrubbed. Beneath the veneer of dirt appeared fair, rosy cheeks and a clean skin.

  “I’m going to do her hair,” said Joan, enthusiastic over her charge’s changed appearance. “Shut your eyes, baby dear, and let Joan put the nice soap on your head.”

  But Twinkle had had enough of beauty parlors. The unaccustomed cleanliness disturbed her, and she wriggled her fat body away from the soap, and began to cry. Joan, fearful that the noise would bring Becky to the scene of action, was forced to stop.

  “Well, it’s better than it was, anyway. I got some of the dirt out; you can tell that by the black streams running down her. I’ll just have to leave the rest of the soap in; she’ll get it in her eyes if I rinse her.”

  She lifted the soft, baby flesh out of the water and seated Twinkle on the hot earth above the creek bed.

  “Look out,” warned Venus; “she might fall headwards back.”

  And that is just what Twinkle did. The edge of the bank crumbled with her weight, and she went down, head first. Joan and Crystal caught her, but not until her wet, soapy head had rolled through the wet, muddy earth.

  “Good thing the soap’s in it,” said Joan. “That’ll kinda eat up the dirt. Come, Twinkle, Joan’ll put you up on the nice rock. Wish we had a towel, but the sun’s so hot it’ll dry her quick.”

  The tender flesh had already begun to turn red in the sunshine. Joan pulled over the baby legs a pair of her own black sateen bloomers, put on a pair of Indian moccasins, and added the blouse of a khaki middy suit. The child looked like a picture from Hans Brinker. The wet hair began to dry, leaving a halo of stiff little wisps.

  “I ain’t just satisfied with her hair,” admitted Joan. “Maybe we could wash it again.”

  “No, she’ll never stand for that.”

  “Then I’m going to give her a dry shampoo to make it stand out fluffy. I’ll get some powder to rub on it if Becky lets me.”

  “Twinkle might blow up.”

  “Hoh, it’s talcum powder, not gun. Maybe I’d better not ask about the powder; Becky might say no. Starch’ll do just as well.”

  The victim received a liberal application of starch, which was thoroughly rubbed into her sticky head. Somehow it didn’t seem to make her fluffy. But the hair was still wet; when it dried, the powder shampoo might be more effectual.

  “Le’s take her over an’ show your mother,” suggested Joan. “I’ll go part way with you. It’ll proba’ly ‘set’ on the way.”

  “We don’t haf to go yet,” objected Crystal. “We ain’t fit.”

  Joan was not anxious to have Becky or Dick see the result of her morning’s work. “Well, we might, any time,” she predicted. “You’d better go before we do. I’ll pull her across the draw for you. Don’t she look cute?”

  “She’s awful red.”

  The baby’s wrists and neck did look scarlet, much redder than she had been when she arrived; and when the children touched her she cringed away from them. She even cried a little when the wagon jolted.

  “She acts sick,” said Crystal. “Maybe it’s the washing; she ain’t used to so much rubbing.”

  “I guess I’d better be going back,” said Joan, as they reached the draw. “I guess maybe your mother’s too busy hoeing to want me around.”

  “You better come on an’ tell ma that it was you that did it,” suggested Crystal.

  But the prospect did not sound inviting. “Some other day,” said Joan, and she turned and went back over the prairie, leaving the explanation to the Wubbers.

  “Where are your friends?” asked Dick, as she passed him in the potato field.

  “They hatto go,” answered Joan.

  * * * *

  The potatoes were doing well. Their leaves were sturdy and green, and they had begun to bud. Back of the plot in which he was working the corn was high enough to show a ripple when the wind blew through it. The tomatoes were lusty, the cucumbers had sent out their first curly tendrils, and the melons had begun to vine. When Dick was called in to dinner he carried a surprise with him. “Guess what I’ve got!” he said to Bec
ky, at the kitchen door.

  “Another snake?”

  “Better than that.” He opened his hands to show the first fruit of the garden—ten small red radishes.

  Becky gave a squeal of delight. “Oh, Dick, won’t they taste heavenly! Where did they come from? I thought the rabbits got every one of our two plantings.”

  “I tried a third, and sprinkled a little red pepper above each hole. They’re pretty small, still, but I was afraid that a rain might wash the pepper away, and the rabbits might get these before we did.” He rinsed them in a cup of water, and set them, still dripping, on the table.

  “Gee, radishes!” said Joan, coming in the door. “I could eat them all at one mouthful. How soon will the rest be ripe?”

  “In a day or two, if the rabbits let them alone.”

  “I can hardly wait. I’m so sick of cans I never want to see one again. It seemed grand, when we first came out here, to see those long rows of tins, but that was before I had to eat a million of them. The pictures on the outside look so different from the taste inside.”

  “You ought to have to cook from them,” said Becky, sitting down at the table. “That’s worse than eating from them. No matter how I season them the tinny taste is always there. Ten radishes: two for you and me, Dick, and three for the kids.”

  “Two and a half for each one of us,” said Joan. “Uncle Jim would have made us divide them even.”

  Becky gravely cut two of the larger radishes into halves. “Where is Phil?”

  “He and Autie went to find ground cherries.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Just after the Wubbers came.”

  “That was two hours ago. I don’t like to have him wandering around the prairie that way. He ought to show up for meals, at least.”

  “He’d be on hand if he knew about the radishes,” said Joan.

  “I’ll save his,” said Becky. “He’ll be back as soon as he gets hungry.”

  Dick went back to the garden, and Becky and Joan to the dish washing, but Phil didn’t appear. Becky weeded the onion bed, and trained the morning glory vines that had begun to climb around the front door, but her eyes went frequently to the prairie trail. At two he hadn’t appeared. At two-thirty she carried the milk and the butter, which had been awaiting him, back to the well, and lowered them into the coolness. At three she went out to Dick, who was hoeing corn in the garden.

  “I’m worried about Phil,” she said.

  “Hasn’t that little rat turned up yet?”

  “No, and I can’t see him from the big hill. I climbed it to look. There’s not a sign of him along the creek.”

  “Maybe he went to the Wubber’s with Autie.”

  “He would have been back by this time.”

  Dick picked up the spading fork and the hoe with an anxious look on his tanned face. He certainly had grown older, much older, in the months since Uncle Jim died. The careful way in which he cleaned his tools, the worried expression with which he received Becky’s announcement, the readiness with which he accepted responsibility was not like the Dick of three months ago. It was a comfort to have him sharing the things that threatened, and the girl felt a nearness that seemed to cut out the two years between their ages.

  “I’d better ride over to the Wubber’s and see,” he said.

  He galloped over the prairie, but was back in a few minutes. “They haven’t been around there,” he reported. “Wubber isn’t home, and Mrs. Wubber doesn’t seem worried. She’s rocking on her stoop. ‘He’ll show up before long,’ she told me, ‘Autie always does show up.’ But I don’t want to wait for that. I think I’ll start out and round ’em up. Phil has never gone away like this before.”

  * * * *

  The two little boys had followed the trail that led between the Linville house and the Welp shack. They found some ground cherries, growing along some furrows that had evidently been the fireguard of some homesteader, and they turned back the papery husks and ate their fill. In Platteville Phil would have scorned their queer, musky taste, but to the fruit-hungry lips of the boys they seemed delicious. Then they had walked a mile to see “The Lone Tree,” a single, large cottonwood, that had, by some miracle, been seeded and grown along the trail. It was the first real tree that Phil had seen in Tripp County, and after pounding the ground around it to dislodge any chance snake, the boys lay down under it, and reveled in its shade. The soft grasses waved around them, the gophers popped in and out of their holes, and the meadow-larks whirred close above them.

  “Le’s go up to the water-mark,” suggested Autie.

  “What’s the water-mark?”

  “Haven’t you seen those piles of stone built on the hills above the creek? The Indians left them. They built ’em to show where there was water.”

  “Do you know where is one?”

  “Up there. Just on the aige of the hill. You can see it if you look clost.”

  Phil “looked clost.” On the butte above them he could make out a little tower of stones, which he never before had noticed. Together the two boys climbed to the top, and stood panting on the edge of the ravine. The water-mark was made of a circle of big stones, piled one on another, until it was a tower several feet high. Buried in the ground near it Phil found an Indian arrow-head. “This proba’ly was their regular stamping ground,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they had many a war dance up here.”

  Autie agreed. He was the easy-going son of his easy-going mother, and his mild acquiescence was refreshing after two months of constant association with Joan.

  “I’ll bet they had lots of fights here.”

  “Sure,” agreed Autie, “The Sioux is the worst fighters of all. The prairie is just thick with their arrow-heads. My father turned up nine when he was plowing our east forty.”

  “Le’s go down the hill where the wind doesn’t blow so wild,” suggested Phil.

  Again Autie agreed, and the boys climbed down the slope to the little rocky shelf which jutted out a dozen feet below. Here they sat, side by side, sheltered from the wind, looking down at the rolling grass below them. They were higher than the hawks that sailed lazily above the prairie; so high that they seemed almost on a level with the two purple peaks of Dog Ear Buttes, miles away.

  Suddenly something whizzed over their heads. Both boys looked up just in time to see a noose of rope poise itself for a second above each one of them, then tighten around their arms. They felt themselves being lifted in the air, and pulled several feet above the rocky ledge where they had been sitting. They looked again, half expecting a joke, but there was nothing to be seen but the two stout ropes which hung from the top of the bluff. The pulling stopped, and the boys hung suspended in the air. They could feel the rope jerk and give; then finally stop, as though the mysterious lassoer had fastened the other end. They struggled to loosen their arms, but the ropes pulled tighter with each movement. Three feet above the ledge they dangled, perilously near the stony face of the butte. Both shouted desperately. There was not a sound in reply except the whiff, whiff of the wind blowing over their heads, and the call of the larks in the grass below.

  “Do you s’pose it’s Indians?” said Phil.

  Autie did not answer. He only sobbed.

  The sun shone into their eyes, giant grasshoppers jumped into their faces, and hungry flies settled on them. Autie, who hung nearer the hillside, and had one hand free, kicked his legs until he swung back and forth, and tried to pull himself to the face of the bluff. But the grass broke in his grasp, and there was nothing else within reach. It seemed impossible that they should be stranded there. They were so near safety, and yet they were unable to reach it. They shrieked again and again, but nobody answered. The wind whistled overhead, and the sun beat down.

  Before they had hung an hour it seemed like a whole day. When two hours had dragged themselves away it was like a year. As the sun went farther west the butte failed to shadow them; they were exposed to a glare and heat that was almost unbearable. Sometimes the boys ca
lled; sometimes they cried; sometimes they struggled. In one of his mad attempts to reach the hillside and pull himself to safety Autie struck his head upon a jutting rock which cut a gash over one eye. The blood ran down his face and stiffened his overalls, making a feast for every fly in the neighborhood, and there seemed to be hundreds of them. The children did their best to help each other—Phil trying in vain to get a handkerchief out of his pocket for Autie’s wound, and Autie struggling, with his one free arm, to keep the flies off both of them.

  “Becky’ll be looking for us,” comforted Phil. “She’ll get Dick out after us.”

  “My folks won’t even know I’m gone,” moaned Autie.

  “Dick’ll take you home, too.” There was a pause filled only with the buzzing of flies and the call of a far-off mourning dove. “If he can see us, way up here,” Phil added.

  There came a time when it seemed as though the ropes must cut them in two at the waist; when a belt of numbness circled each body, and their feet and hands seemed going to sleep. Then it was that they stopped crying and struggling and hung limply, spent with heat and pain and thirst and loneliness. Their eyes had ceased to search the prairie below. They did not see Dick who rode across the waves of grass below, calling and looking everywhere.

  It was Autie’s tow head, a white spot against the green, that caught Dick’s attention. He strained his eyes to see. What was it that made the two specks of color on the hillside? He turned Job off the slough grass and toward the butte. It took ages for the horse to wind his way up the stony incline. Dick’s heart went into his mouth as he climbed till the ropes came into view. Had those two boys hanged themselves in play? Was this what the prairies had done to the Linvilles? He gave a great cry. The boys heard it and opened their eyes. Back to Dick, borne on the breeze, came a faint halloo.

  “Alive, alive!” sang Dick’s heart. He urged Job on as far as the horse could go up the hill. Then he dismounted, and climbed the last and steepest part of the slope. He stood on the ledge, caught each boy in an arm, and eased the strain of the cruel ropes. It was only a moment before both bonds were cut, the children were laid side by side on the ledge, and Dick was rubbing their lame bodies to restore the circulation.