The Little Colonel in Arizona

Since dinner Mary and Holland had swept the yard, brought wood for the camp-fire, filled the boiler and the pitchers in the tents, and then gone off, as Joyce supposed, to rest under the cottonwood-trees. Presently she heard Mary tiptoeing into the sitting-room, and peeped in to find her standing in the middle of the floor, with her hands clasped behind her.

"Isn't it sweet and homey!" Mary exclaimed. "I'm so glad to see the old furniture again I could just hug it! I came in to get the book about Hiawatha, sister. Holland keeps teasing me 'cause I said I wished I was named Minnehaha, and says I am Mary-ha-ha. And I want to find a name for him, a real ugly one!"

"Call him Pau-Puk-Keewis, – mischief-maker," suggested Joyce. "There's the book on the second shelf of the bookcase." She stepped into the room to slip the soft silk curtain farther down the brass rod.

"I'm prouder of this bookcase than almost anything else we have," she said. "Nobody would guess that it was made of the packing-boxes that the goods came in, and that this lovely Persian silk curtain was once the lining of one of Cousin Kate's party dresses."

"I'm glad that everything looks so nice," said Mary, "for Mr. Phil said he was coming up to see us this evening. I'm going to put on a clean dress and my best hair-ribbons before then."

"Very well," assented Joyce, going back to the kitchen. "I'll change my dress, too," she thought, as she went on with her work. "And I'll light both lamps. The Indian rugs and blankets make the room look so bright and cosy by lamplight."

It had been so long since she had seen any one but the family and the invalids at the ranch, that the thought of talking to the jolly young cadet added another pleasure to her happy day.

"Oh, Joyce," called Holland, from behind the tents, "may we have the paint that is left in the cans? There's only a little in each one."

"I don't care," she called back. That had been an hour ago, and now, as she broke the eggs for a cake into a big platter, and began beating them with a fork, she wondered what they were doing that kept them so quiet. As the fork clacked noisily back and forth in the dish and the white foam rose high and stiff, her whistling grew louder. It seemed to fill all the sunny afternoon silence with its trills, for Joyce's whistle was as clear and strong as any boy's or any bird's. But suddenly, as it reached its highest notes, it stopped short. Joyce looked up as a shadow fell across the floor, to see Jack coming in the back door with Phil Tremont.

She had not heard the sound of their coming, for the noise of her egg-beating and her whistling. Joyce blushed to the roots of her hair, at being taken thus unawares, whistling like a boy over her cake-baking. For an instant she wanted to shake Jack for bringing this stranger to the kitchen door.

"We just stopped by for a drink," Jack explained. "Tremont was coming out of the ranch with his gun when I passed with mine, so we've been hunting together. Come in, Phil, I'll get a cup."

There was such a mischievous twinkle in Phil's eyes as he greeted her, that Joyce blushed again. This was a very different meeting from the one she had anticipated. Instead of him finding her, appearing to her best advantage in a pretty white dress, sitting in the lamplight with a book in her hands, perhaps, he had caught her in her old blue calico, her sleeves rolled up, and a streak of flour across her bare arm. She rubbed it hastily across her apron, and gathered up the egg-shells in embarrassed silence.

"Did you tell those kids that they might paint up the premises the way they are doing?" demanded Jack.

"What way?" asked Joyce, in surprise.

"Haven't you seen what they've done to the front of the house? They haven't waited for your name contest, but have fixed up things to suit themselves. You just ought to come out and look!"

Phil followed as they hurried around to the front of the house, then stood smiling at the look of blank amazement which slowly spread over Joyce's face. Down one of the rough cottonwood posts, which supported the palm and bamboo thatch of their Robinson Crusoe porch, was painted in big, straggling, bloody letters: "W-A-R-E-S W-I-G-W-A-M." Joyce groaned. She had made such an attempt to convert the rude shade into an attractive spot, spreading a Navajo blanket over her mother's camp-chair, and putting cushions on the rustic bench to make a restful place, where one could read or watch the shadows grow long across the desert. She had even brought out a little wicker tea-table this afternoon, with a vase of flowers on it, and leaned her mother's old guitar against it to give a final civilizing touch to the picture. But the effect was sadly marred by the freshly painted name, glaring at her from the post.

"Oh, the little savages!" she exclaimed. "How could they do it? Ware's Wigwam, indeed!"

Then her gaze followed Jack's finger pointing to the tents pitched under the cottonwood-trees. The one which she was to share with Mary and her mother stood white and clean, the screen-door open, showing the white beds within, the rug on the floor, the flowers on the table; but the large, circular one, which the boys were to occupy, was a sight to make any one pause, open-mouthed.

Perched beside it on a scaffolding of boxes and barrels stood Holland, with a paint-can in one hand and a brush in the other, putting the finishing touches to some startling decorations. Mary, on the other side, was brandishing another brush, and both were so intent on their work that neither looked up. Joyce gave a gasp. Never had she seen such amazing hieroglyphics as those which chased each other in zigzag green lines around the fly of the tent. They bore a general resemblance to those seen on Indian baskets and blankets and pottery, but nothing so grotesque had ever flaunted across her sight before.

"Now, get the book," called Holland to Mary, "and see if we've left anything out." Only Mary's back was visible to the amused spectators. She took up the copy of "Hiawatha" from the barrel where it lay, careful to keep the hem of her apron between it and her paint-bedaubed thumbs.

"I think we've painted every single figure he wrote about," said Mary. "Now, I'll read, and you walk around and see if we've left anything out:

"Very spacious was the wigwamWith the gods of the DacotahsDrawn and painted on the curtains."

"No, skip that," ordered Holland. "It's farther down." Mary's paint-smeared fingers travelled slowly down the page, then she began again:

"Sun and moon and stars he painted,Man and beast and fish and reptile."Figures of the Bear and Reindeer,Of the Turtle, Crane, and Beaver."Owl and Eagle, Crane and Hen-hawk,And the Cormorant, bird of magic."Figures mystical and awful,Figures strange and brightly coloured."

"They're all here," announced Holland, "specially the figures mystical and awful. I'll have to label mine, or somebody will take my turtle for a grizzly."

"Oh, the little savages!" exclaimed Joyce again. "How could they make such a spectacle of the place! We'll be the laughing-stock of the whole country."

"I don't suppose that'll ever come off the tent, but we can paint the name off the post," said Jack.

"Oh, that's a fine name," said Phil, laughing, "leave it on. It's so much more original than most people have."

Before Joyce could answer, the rattle of wheels announced the coming of the surrey, and Mrs. Lee drove into the yard with Mrs. Ware and Norman, and her own little daughter, Hazel. Then Joyce's anger, which had burned to give Holland and Mary a good shaking, vanished completely at sight of her mother's amusement. Mrs. Ware had not laughed so heartily in months as she did at the ridiculous figures grinning from the tent. It seemed so good to see her like her old cheerful self again that, when she laughingly declared that the name straggling down the post exactly suited the place, and was far more appropriate than Bide-a-wee or Alamo, Joyce's frown entirely disappeared. Mrs. Lee caught up the old guitar, and began a rattling parody of "John Brown had a little Indian," changing the words to a ridiculous rhyme about "The Wares had a little Wigwam."

Mrs. Ware sat down to try the new rustic seat, and then jumped up like a girl again to look at the view of the mountains from the camp-chair, and then led the way, laughing and talking, to investigate the new home. She was as pleased as a child, and her pleasure made a festive occasion of the home-coming, which Joyce had feared at first would be a sorry one.

Phil shouldered his gun ready to start off again, feeling that he ought not to intrude, but Jack had worked too hard to miss the reward of hearing his mother's pleased exclamations and seeing her face light up over every little surprise they had prepared for her comfort. "Come and see, too," he urged so cordially that Phil fell into line, poking into all the corners, inspecting all the little shelves and cupboards, and admiring all the little makeshifts as heartily as Mrs. Lee or Mrs. Ware.

They went through the tents first, then the kitchen, and last into the living-room, of which Joyce was justly proud. There was only the old furniture they had had in Plainsville, with the books and pictures, but it was restful and homelike and really artistic, Phil acknowledged to himself, looking around in surprise.

"Here's the Little Colonel's corner," said Mary, leading him to a group of large photographs framed in passe-partout. "You know mamma used to live in Kentucky, and once Joyce went back there to a house-party. Here's the place, Locust. That's where the Little Colonel lives. Her right name is Lloyd Sherman. And there she is on her pony, Tar Baby, and there's her grandfather at the gate."

Phil stooped for a closer view of the photograph, and then straightened up, with a look of dawning recognition in his face.

"Why, I've seen her," he said, slowly. "I've been past that place. Once, several years ago, I was going from Cincinnati to Louisville with father, and something happened that we stopped on a switch in front of a place that looked just like that. And the brakeman said it was called Locust. I was out on the rear platform. I believe we were waiting for an express train to pass us, or something of the sort. At any rate, I saw that same old gentleman, – he had only one arm and was all dressed in white. Everybody was saying what a picture he made. The locusts were in bloom, you know. And while he stood there, the prettiest little girl came riding up on a black pony, with a magnificent St. Bernard dog following. She was all in white, too, with a spray of locust blossoms stuck in the cockade of the little black velvet Napoleon cap she wore, exactly as it is in that picture; and she held up a letter and called out: 'White pigeon wing fo' you, grandfathah deah.' I never forgot how sweet it sounded."

"Oh, that was Lloyd! That was Lloyd!" called Mary and Joyce in the same breath, and Joyce added: "She always used to call out that when she had a letter for the old Colonel, and it must have been Hero that you saw, the Red Cross war-dog that was given to her in Switzerland. How strange it seems that you should come across her picture away out here in the desert!"

Mary's eyes grew rounder and rounder as she listened. She delighted in romantic situations, and this seemed to her one of the most romantic she had ever known in real life, quite as interesting as anything she had ever read about.

"Doesn't it seem queer to think that he's seen Lloyd and Locust?" she exclaimed. "It makes him seem almost like home folks, doesn't it, mamma?"

Mrs. Ware smiled. "It certainly does, dear, and we must try to make him feel at home with us in our wild wigwam." She had seen the wistful expression of his eyes a few moments before when, catching Joyce and Jack by the arms, she had cried, proudly: "Nobody in the world has such children as mine, Mrs. Lee! Don't you think I have cause to be proud of my five little Indians, who fixed up this house so beautifully all by themselves?"

"Come back and take supper with us, won't you?" she asked, as he and Jack started on their interrupted hunt. "We'll make a sort of house-warming of our first meal together in the new wigwam, and I'll be glad to count you among my little Indians."

"Thank you, Mrs. Ware," he said, in his gentlemanly way and with the frank smile which she found so winning; "you don't know how much that means to a fellow who has been away from a real home as long as I have. I'll be the gladdest 'little Indian' in the bunch to be counted in that way."

"Then I'll get back to my cake-making," said Joyce, "if we're to have company for supper. I won't promise that it'll be a success, though, for while it bakes I'm going to write to Lloyd. I've thought for days that I ought to write, for I've owed her a letter ever since Christmas. She doesn't even know that we've left Plainsville. And I'm going to tell her about your having seen her, and recognized her picture away out here on the desert. I wish she'd come out and make us a visit."

"Here," said Phil, playfully, taking a sprig of orange blossoms from his buttonhole, and putting it in the vase on the wicker table. "When you get your letter written, put that in, as a sample of what grows out here. I picked it as we passed Clayson's ranch. If it reaches her on a cold, snowy day, it will make her want to come out to this land of sunshine. You needn't tell her I sent it."

"I'll dare you to tell," said Jack, as they started off.

Joyce's only answer was a laugh, as she went back to her egg-beating. Almost by the time the boys were out of sight, she had whisked the cake dough into a pan, and the pan into the oven, and, while Mrs. Ware and Mrs. Lee talked in the other room, she spread her paper out on the kitchen table, and began her letter to the Little Colonel.

CHAPTER V.

WHAT A LETTER BROUGHT ABOUT

Lloydsboro Valley would have seemed a strange place to Joyce, could she have followed her letter back to Kentucky. She had known it only in midsummer, when the great trees at Locust arched their leafy branches above the avenue, to make a giant arbour of green. Now these same trees stood bleak and bare in the February twilight, almost knee-deep in drifts of snow. Instead of a green lacework of vines, icicles hung between the tall white pillars of the porch, gleaming like silver where the light from the front windows streamed out upon them, and lay in far-reaching paths across the snow.

In the long drawing-room, softly lighted by many candles and the glow of a great wood fire, the Little Colonel sat on the arm of her father's chair. He had just driven up from the station, and she held his cold ears in her warm little hands, giving them a pull now and then to emphasize what she was saying.

"The first sleigh-ride of the season, Papa Jack. Think of that! We've had enough snow this wintah for any amount of coasting and sleighing if it had only lasted. That's the trouble with Kentucky snow; it melts too fast to be any fun. But to-night everything is just right, moon and all, and the sleighs are to call for us at half-past seven, and we're going for a glorious, gorgeous, grandiferous old sleigh-ride. At nine o'clock we'll stop at The Beeches for refreshments."

"Yes," chimed in Betty from the hearth-rug, where she sat leaning against her godmother's knee. "Mrs. Walton says we shall have music wherever we go, like little Jenny that 'rode a cock-horse to Banbury Cross.' She has a whole pile of horns and bells ready for us. It's lovely of her to entertain both the clubs. She's asked the Mu Chi Sigma from the Seminary as well as our Order of Hildegarde."

"Oh, that reminds me," exclaimed Mr. Sherman, "although I don't know why it should – I brought a letter up from the post-office for you, Lloyd." Feeling in several pockets, he at last found the big square envelope he was searching for.

"What a big fat one it is," said Lloyd, glancing at the postmark. "Phœnix, Arizona! I don't know anybody out there."

"Arizona is where our mines are located," said Mr. Sherman, watching her as she tore open the envelope.

"Oh, it's from Joyce Ware!" she cried. "See all the funny little illustrations on the edge of the papah! And heah is a note inside for you, mothah, from Mrs. Ware, and oh, what's this? How sweet!" A cluster of orange blossoms fell out into her lap, brown and bruised from the long journey, but so fragrant, that Betty, across the room, raised her head with a long indrawn breath of pleasure.

"Listen! I'll read it aloud:"

"'Ware's Wigwam, Arizona.

"'Dearest Lloyd: – Mamma's note to your mother will explain how we happened to stray away out here, next door to nowhere, and why we are camping on the edge of the desert instead of enjoying the conveniences of civilization in Kansas.

"'The sketch at the top of the page will give you an idea of the outside of our little adobe house and the tents, so without stopping for description I'll begin right here in the kitchen, where I am sitting, waiting for a cake to bake. It's the cleanest, cosiest kitchen you ever saw, for Jack and I have been cleaning and scrubbing for days and days. It has all sorts of little shelves and cupboards and cuddy holes that we made ourselves, and the new tins shine like silver. A tall screen in the middle of the room shuts off one end for a dining-room, and the table is set for supper. To-night we are to have our first meal in the wigwam. Holland and Mary named it that, and painted the name on the porch post in big bloody letters a little while ago.

"'Through the open door I can look into the other room, which is library, studio, parlour, and living-room all in one. Everything is so spick and span that nobody would ever guess what a dreadful time we had putting on the paper and painting all the woodwork. I spilled a whole panful of cold, sticky paste on Jack's head one day. We had made a scaffolding of boxes and barrels. One end slipped and let me down. You never saw such a sight as he was. I had to scrape his hair and face with a spoon. Then so much of the paper wrinkled and would stick on crooked, but now that the pictures are hung and the furniture in place, none of the mistakes show.

"'Jack has gone hunting with Phil Tremont, a boy staying at Lee's ranch. I am learning to shoot, too. I practised all one afternoon, and the gun kicked so bad that my shoulder is still black and blue. Phil said the loads were too heavy, and he is going to loan me his little rifle to practise with. He is such a nice boy, and, oh, Lloyd! it's the strangest thing! – he has seen you. I have those pictures of Locust hanging over my easel, and, when he saw the photograph of you on Tar Baby, he recognized it right away. He was on the train and saw you ride in at the gate with a letter for your grandfather, and Hero following you.

"'I didn't get any farther than this in my letter (because I spent so much time making the illustrations) before Phil and Jack came back with some quail they had shot. They were the proudest boys you ever saw, and nothing would do but they must have those quail cooked for supper. They couldn't wait till next day. Mamma had invited Phil to take supper with us, and help make a sort of house-warming of our first meal in the new home.

"'We had the jolliest kind of a time, and afterward he helped wipe the dishes. I told him that I was writing to you, and he took this little piece of orange blossom out of his buttonhole, and asked me if I didn't want to send it to you as a sample of what we are enjoying in this land of perpetual sunshine.

"'It isn't a sample of everything, however. The place has lots of drawbacks. Oh, Lloyd, you can't imagine how lonesome I get sometimes. I have been here a month, and haven't met a single girl my age. If there was just one to be chums with I wouldn't mind the rest so much, – the leaving school and all that. I don't mind the work, even the washing and ironing and scrubbing, – it's just the lonesomeness, and the missing the good times we used to have at the high school.

"'Save up your pennies, or else get a railroad pass, you and Betty, for some of these days I'm going to give a wigwam-party. It will be a far different affair from your house-party (could there ever be another such heavenly time?), but there are lots of interesting things to see out here: an ostrich farm, an Indian school and reservation, and queer old ruins to visit. There are scissors-birds and Gila monsters – I can't begin to name the things that would keep you staring. Mrs. Lee has a Japanese chef, and a Mexican to do her irrigating, and a Chinaman to bring her vegetables, and she always buys her wood of the Indians, so it seems very foreign and queer at first. There is no lack of variety, so I ought to be satisfied, and I am usually, except when I think of little old Plainsville, and the boys and girls going up and down the dear old streets to high school, and meeting in the library, and sitting on the steps singing in the moonlight, and all the jolly, sociable village life and the friends I have left behind for ever. Then it seems to me that I can hardly stand it here. I wish you and Betty were with me this very minute. Please write soon. With love to you both and everybody else in the family and the dear old valley,

"'Your homesick"'Joyce.'"

Mrs. Ware's letter was cheerful and uncomplaining, but there were tears in Mrs. Sherman's eyes when she finished reading it aloud.

"Poor Emily," she said. "She was always such a brave little body. I don't see how she can write such a hopeful letter under the circumstances, – an invalid sent out into the wilderness to die, maybe, with all those children. She has so much ambition to make something of them, and no way to do it. Jack, if you go out to the mines this month, as you talked of doing, I want you to arrange your trip so that you can stop and see her."

Lloyd looked up in surprise. "When are you going, Papa Jack? Isn't it queah how things happen!"

"The latter part of this month, probably. Mr. Robeson has invited me to go out with a party in his private car. He is interested in the same mines."

"I wonder – " began Mrs. Sherman, then stopped as Mom Beck came to announce dinner. "I'll talk to you about it after awhile, Jack."

Somehow both Betty and Lloyd felt that it was not the summons to dinner which interrupted her, but that she had started to speak of something which she did not care to discuss in their presence.

"Arizona has always seemed such a dreadful place to me," said Lloyd, hanging on her father's arm, as they went out to the dining-room. "I remembah when you came back from the mines. It was yeahs ago, befo' I could talk plainly. Mothah and Fritz and I went to the station to meet you. Fritz had roses stuck in his collah, and kept barking all the time as if he knew something was going to happen. You fainted when we got to the house, and were so ill that you neahly died. I heard you talk about a fiah at the mines, and evah since I've thought of Arizona as looking like the Sodom and Gomorrah in my old pictuah book – smoke and fiah sweeping across a great plain, and people running to get away from it."

"To me it's just a yellow square on a map," said Betty. "Of course, I've read about the wonderful petrified forests of agate, and the great cañon of the Colorado, but it's always seemed the last place in the world I'd ever want to visit. It's terrible for Joyce to give up everything and go out there to live."

"The Waltons were out there several years," said Mrs. Sherman. "They were at Fort Huachuca, and learned to love it dearly. Ask them about it to-night. They will tell you that Joyce is a very fortunate girl to have the opportunity of living in such a lovely and interesting country, and does not need any one's pity."

Little else was discussed all during dinner. Afterward they sat around the fire in the drawing-room, still talking of the Wares and the strange country to which they had moved, until a tooting of horns and a jingling of bells announced the coming of the sleighing party. Both the girls were into their wraps before the first sleigh reached the gate. They stood waiting by the hall window, looking out on the stretches of moon-lighted snow. What a cold, white, glistening world it was! One could hardly imagine that it had ever been warm and green.

Lloyd put her nose into the end of her muff for a whiff of the orange blossoms. She was taking Joyce's letter to show to the girls.

Betty, her eyes fixed on the stars, twinkling above the bare branches of the locust-trees, caught the fragrance also, and it fired her romantic little soul with a sudden thought.