The Little Colonel in Arizona

"Lloyd," she exclaimed, "what if that orange blossom was an omen! What if Phil were the one written for you in the stars!"

"Oh, Betty! The idea!" laughed Lloyd. "You're always imagining things the way they are in books."

"But this happened just that way," persisted Betty. "His passing Locust on the train and seeing you when you were a little girl, and then finding your picture away out on the desert several years after, and sending you a token of his remembrance by a friend, and orange blossoms at that! If ever I finish that story of Gladys and Eugene, I'm going to put something like that in it."

"Heah they come," interrupted Lloyd, as the sleighs dashed up to the door. "Come on, Papa Jack and everybody. Give us a good send-off."

She looked back after her father had helped them into the sleigh, to wave good-bye to the group on the porch. How interested they all were in her good times, she thought. Even her grandfather had come to the door, despite his rheumatism, to wish them a pleasant ride. Life was so sweet and full. How beautiful it was to be dashing down the snowy road in the moonlight! Was she too happy? Everybody else had troubles. Would something dreadful have to happen by and by, to make up for all the unclouded happiness of the present? She was not cold, but a sudden shiver passed over her. Then she took up the song with the others, a parody one of the Seminary girls had made for the occasion:

"Oh, the snow falls white on my old Kentucky home.'Tis winter, the Valley is gay.The moon shines bright and our hearts are all atune,To the joy-bells jingling on our sleigh."

Down the avenue they went, past Tanglewood and Oaklea, through the little village of Rollington, on and on through the night. Songs and laughter, the jingling of bells and the sound of girlish voices floated through all the valley. It was not every winter that gave them such sport, and they enjoyed it all the more because it was rare. It was nine o'clock when the horses swung around through the wide gate at The Beeches, and stopped in front of the great porch, where hospitable lights streamed out at every window across the snow.

There was such a gabble over the steaming cups of hot chocolate and the little plates of oyster patés that Lloyd could not have read the letter if she had tried. For there were Allison and Kitty and Elise passing the bonbons around again and again, with hospitable insistence, and saying funny things and making everybody feel that "The Beeches" was the most charming place in the Valley for an entertainment of that kind. Everybody was in a gale of merriment. Miss Allison was helping to keep them so, and some of the teachers were there from the college, and two or three darkies, with banjoes and mandolins, out in the back hall, added to the general festivities by a jingling succession of old plantation melodies.

However, Lloyd managed to tell Mrs. Walton about the letter, saying: "It almost spoils my fun to-night to think of poah Joyce being away out in that dreadful lonesome country."

"Why, my dear child," cried Mrs. Walton, "some of the happiest years of my life were spent in that dreadful country, as you call it. It is a charming place. Just look around and see how I have filled my home with souvenirs of it, because I loved it so."

Lloyd's glance followed hers to the long-handled peace-pipe over the fireplace, the tomahawks that, set in mortars captured during a battle in Luzon, guarded the hearth instead of ordinary andirons, the baskets, the rugs, and the Navajo portières, and the Indian spears and pottery arranged on the walls of the stairway.

"Even that string of loco berries over Geronimo's portrait has a history," said Mrs. Walton. "Come down some day, and I'll tell you so many interesting things about Arizona that you'll want to start straight off to see it."

Her duties as hostess called her away just then, but her enthusiasm stayed with Lloyd all the rest of the evening, until she reached home and found her father and mother before the fire, still talking about the Wares and their wigwam.

"Your mother wants me to take you with me when I go to Arizona," said Mr. Sherman, drawing her to his knee. "Mr. Robeson had invited her to go, but, as long as that is out of the question, she wants to arrange for you to go in her place."

"And leave school?" gasped Lloyd.

"Yes, with Betty's help, you could easily make up lost lessons during the summer vacation. You'd help her, wouldn't you, dear?"

"Yes, indeed!" cried Betty. "I'd get them for her while she was gone, if I could."

"Oh, it's so sudden, it takes my breath away," said Lloyd, after a moment's pause. "Pinch me, Betty! Shake me! And then say it all ovah again, Papa Jack, to be suah that I'm awake!"

"Do you think you could get your clothes ready in ten days?" he asked, when he had playfully given her the shaking and pinching she had asked for.

"Oh, I don't need any new clothes," she cried. "But, Papa Jack, I'll tell you what I do want, and that's a small rifle. Please get me one. I used to practise with Rob's air-gun till I could shoot as straight as he could, and I got so that I could put a hole through a leaf at even longer range than he could. Christmas, when Ranald Walton was home, we all practised with his gun. It's lots of fun. Joyce is learning to shoot, you know. Please let me have one, Papa Jack. I'd rather have it than a dozen new dresses."

Mr. Sherman looked at her in astonishment. "And this is my dainty Princess Winsome," he said at last. "I thought you were going for a nice, tame little visit. I'll be afraid now to take you. You'll want to come back on a bucking broncho, and dash through the Valley, shooting holes through the crown of people's hats, and lassoing carriage horses when you can't find any wild ones to rope. No, I can't take you now. I'm afraid of consequences."

"No, honestly, Papa Jack," laughed Lloyd, "I'll be just as civilized as anybody when I come back, if you'll only get me the rifle. I'll try to be extra civilized, just to please you."

"We'll see," was the only answer he would give, but Lloyd, who had never known him to refuse her anything, knew what that meant, and danced off to bed perfectly satisfied. She was too excited to sleep. To see Joyce again, to share the wigwam life, and make the acquaintance of Jack and Holland and Mary, who had been such interesting personages in Joyce's tales of them, to have that long trip with Papa Jack in Mr. Robeson's private car, and a month's delightful holiday, seemed too much happiness for one small person. All sorts of exciting adventures might lie ahead of her in that month.

The stars, peeping through her curtains, twinkled in friendly fashion at her, as if they were glad of her good fortune. Suddenly they made her think of Betty's words: "What if Phil should be the one written for you in the stars?" It was strange, his having seen her so long ago, and finding her picture in such an unexpected way. She wondered what he was like, and if they would be good friends, and if she could ever think as much of him as she did of her old playmates, Rob and Malcolm. Then she fell asleep, wishing that it was morning, so that she could send a letter to Joyce on the first mail-train, telling her that she was coming, – that in less than two weeks she would be with her at Ware's Wigwam.

CHAPTER VI.

WASH-DAY AND WASHINGTON

It was wash-day at Ware's Wigwam; the first that Joyce and Jack had personally conducted, as it was the first Monday after moving from Lee's ranch.

Out in the back yard a big tin wash-boiler sat propped up on stones, above a glowing camp-fire. From time to time Jack stooped to poke another stick of mesquite into the blaze, or give the clothes in the boiler a stir with an old broom-handle. Then tucking up his shirt-sleeves more firmly above his elbows, he went back to the tub by the kitchen door, and, plunging his arms into the suds, began the monotonous swash and rub-a-dub of clothes and knuckles on the wash-board.

"We allee samee lak Chinamen," he said to Joyce, who was bending over another tub, rinsing and wringing. "Blimeby, when we do heap more washee, a cue will glow on my head. You'll be no mo' Clistian lady. You'll be lil'l heathen gel."

"I believe you're right," laughed Joyce. "I certainly felt like a heathen by the time I had finished rubbing the first basket full of clothes through the suds. The skin was off two knuckles, and my back was so tired I could scarcely straighten up again. But it won't be so bad next week. Mamma says that we may draw enough out of bank to buy a washing-machine and a wringer, and that will make the work lots easier."

A long, shrill whistle out in the road made them both stop to listen. "It's Phil," said Jack. "He said he would ride past this morning to show us the new horse he is going to buy. My! It's a beauty bright!" he exclaimed, peering around the corner of the kitchen, "Come out and look at it."

Hastily wiping the suds from his arms, and giving a hitch to the suspenders of his old overalls, he disappeared around the house. Joyce started after him, then drew back, remembering her old shoes and wet, faded gingham, as she caught sight of Phil, sitting erect as a cavalryman on the spirited black horse. From the wide brim of his soft, gray hat to the spurs on his riding-boots, he was faultlessly dressed. A new lariat hung on the horn of his saddle, the Mexican quirt he carried had mountings of silver on the handle, and the holster that held his rifle was of handsomely carved leather. While he talked to Jack, the horse stepped and pranced and tossed its head, impatient to be off.

"Come on out, Joyce, and look at it," called Phil.

"I can't," she answered, peeping around the corner of the kitchen. "I'm running a Chinese laundry back here. Jack says I'm no longer a 'Clistian lady.'"

"Do you want any help?" he called, but there was no answer. She had disappeared. Phil was disappointed. It was for her admiration more than Jack's that he had ridden by on the new horse. He was conscious that he made a good appearance in the saddle, and he had expected her to show some interest in his purchase. Usually she was so enthusiastic over everything new. The work might have waited a few minutes, he thought.

But it was not the urgency of the work that sent Joyce back to the tubs in such a hurry. It was the rebellious feeling that swept over her at the sight of his holiday appearance. She was tired and hot and bedraggled, having splashed water all over herself, and the contrast between them irritated her.

"If I have to be a Polly-put-the-kettle-on all the days of my life, I'll just be one," she said, in a half-whisper, giving the towel she was wringing a vicious twist. "I'm not going out there to have him feel sorry for me. He's used to seeing girls who are always dainty and fresh, like his sister Elsie, and I'm not going to let him see me looking like a poor, bedraggled Cinderella. It isn't fair that some people should have all the good things in life, and others nothing but the drudgery.

"Jack doesn't seem to mind it. There he stands out in the road in his old faded, paint-smeared overalls, and his sleeves rolled up, never caring how awkward and lanky he looks. He's taking as eager an interest in that horse's good points as if he were to have the pleasure of riding it. But then Jack hasn't the artistic temperament. He likes this wild country out here, and he never can understand what a daily sacrifice it is for me to live in such a place. My whole life is just a sacrifice to mamma and the children."

By the time the basket was full of clothes, ready to be hung on the line, Joyce had worked herself up to such a pitch of self-pity that she felt like a martyr going to the stake. She carried the basket to the sunny space behind the tents, where the line had been stretched. Here, with her sunbonnet pulled over her eyes, she could see without being seen. Phil was just riding away whistling. She watched him out of sight. The desert seemed lonelier than ever when the sound of hoof-beats and the cheery tune had passed. Her gaze wandered back to old Camelback Mountain. "We'll never get away, you and I," she whispered. "All the bright, pleasant things in life will ride by and leave us. Only the work and the waiting and the loneliness will stay."

When she went back to the house with her empty basket, Jack was rubbing away with a vigour that was putting holes in one of Holland's shirts.

"Why didn't you come out and see Phil's new horse?" he cried, enthusiastically. "He let me try him, and he goes like a bird. And say, Joyce, he knows where I could get the best kind of an Indian pony for almost nothing, at a camp near Scottsdale. It is good size, and it's broke either to the saddle or buggy, and the people will sell it for only ten dollars. Just think of that. It's almost giving it away. The man who had it died, and his wife couldn't take it back East with her, and she told them to sell it for anything they could get. Don't you think we could manage in some way to get it, Joyce?"

"Why, Jack Ware! What can you be thinking of!" she cried. "For us to spend ten dollars on a horse that we don't need would be just as great an extravagance as for some people to spend ten hundred. Don't you know that we can only buy things that we absolutely have to eat or to wear? You've surely heard it dinned into your ears long enough to get some such idea into your head."

"We don't absolutely have to have a washing-machine and wringer," he declared, nettled by Joyce's unusual tone. "A horse would be lots more use. We could have it to bring wood up with from the desert when we've burned all that's close by. And we can't go on all year borrowing a horse from Mrs. Lee every time we want to go to town, or have to have a new supply of groceries."

"But you know well enough that mamma's teaching Hazel, after awhile when she gets well enough, will more than make up for the borrowing we will do," answered Joyce. "Besides it would only be the beginning of a lot of expense. There'd be feed and a saddle to start with."

"No, there wouldn't! There's all that alfalfa pasture going to waste behind the house, and Mrs. Lee has a saddle hanging up in her attic that somebody left on a board bill. She said I might use it as often as I pleased."

"Well, we can't afford to spend ten dollars on any such foolishness," said Joyce, shortly. "So that is the end of it."

"No, it isn't the end of it," was the spirited answer. "I've set my heart on having that pony, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll take the place of the washing-machine and wringer. You give me the five dollars they would cost, and I'll do every bit of the rubbing and wringing every Monday morning. I'll borrow the other five dollars, and give a mortgage on the pony. I'll find some way to earn enough to pay it off before the summer is over."

Joyce shook her head. "No, a mortgage makes a slave of anybody foolish enough to chain himself up with one, Grandpa Ware always used to say. I'm running the finances now, and I won't give my consent. I think it is best to get the machine, and I don't intend to change my mind. You may get a position next fall, and then I'd be left to do the work without any machine to help. Besides, you sha'n't run in debt to get something that nobody really needs."

"I do need it," insisted Jack, "and I don't see why, when you are only a year older than I am, that you should have the say-so about the way all the money is to be spent."

"Because mamma wishes me to. Don't you see that the very fact of your wanting to be extravagant in this case, and go in debt and load yourself down with a mortgage shows that I have better judgment than you?"

"Oh, you've got a great head for business!" sneered Jack. "Don't you see that it wouldn't be the same as buying something to eat up or wear out? It's an investment. You put the money into the pony instead of the bank, and any time you want to get it out, you just sell the beast. I might be able to get twice as much for him next fall when the tourists begin to come into Phœnix for the winter."

"Yes, you might, but it would be more like Ware luck for it to cut itself all to pieces on the barb-wire fences before then, or break its legs stumbling into a gopher hole, or founder itself by getting into a neighbour's oat-bin. Something would be sure to happen. The money is safe where it is, and I believe in letting well enough alone."

"Banks bust sometimes, too," said Jack, moodily, "and I believe that 'nothing venture, nothing have.'"

It was the first quarrel they had had in months. Each, feeling firmly convinced of being in the right, grew indignant with the other, and they passed from teasing banter to angry words, and then to an angrier silence. "It won't be any harder for him to give up what he had set his heart on than it is for me," thought Joyce, as she hung up the last garment. "I have to do without things I want all the time. And I'm not going to let him think that I'll give in if he teases long enough. I wouldn't have any authority at all over the children if I wasn't firm with them."

As Jack emptied the last tubful of water, and stood the wash-board up to dry, he broke the angry silence that had lasted fully ten minutes.

"Holland has a dollar in his savings-bank, and Mary has seventy-five cents. We could all chip in with what we have, and then go without butter or something for awhile till we'd saved enough."

Joyce only gave an impatient shrug as she replied: "Much comfort we'd get out of a horse that everybody had a share in. If Holland felt that he'd sunk a dollar and several pounds of butter in that pony, he'd feel privileged to ride it any hour of the day or night, no matter who wanted it, and he'd do it, too. You might as well give it up, Jack. It is selfish of you to insist on spending so much on just your own pleasure."

"Selfish!" blazed Jack. "It's you that's selfish, wanting to be so bossy and have everything just your way. I haven't asked you to do without anything, have I, or to put in any of your money? And if I do the work of the washing-machine and wringer, I don't see why I shouldn't have what they would cost, to do what I please with. You're the selfish one!"

He banged the tub up against the tree and walked off toward his tent, buttoning his shirt-sleeves, and muttering to himself as he went.

"Now, he'll go and tell mamma, I suppose, and worry her," thought Joyce, as she went into the kitchen. "But I'm too tired to care. If I hadn't been so tired, I probably wouldn't have snapped him off so short, but it just goes to prove that we can't do without a machine. The washing is too hard for me without one. I can't afford to get so worn out every week. It is all right for him to offer to take the place of one. He might keep it up for weeks, and even months, but next fall, if he should get a position in Phœnix, the money would be spent and I'd be left with the bag to hold. I don't think that, under the circumstances, he has any right to call me selfish. I'm not!"

The word stuck in her memory, and hurt, as she dragged herself wearily into the sitting-room, and lay down on the couch. After she had pulled the afghan over her shoulders and buried her face in one of the pillows, a few hot tears trickled down through her closed eyelids, and made them smart. The kitchen clock struck eleven.

"Oh, dear!" she said to herself, "I must get up in a few minutes and see about dinner." But the next thing she knew, Norman was ringing the dinner-bell in her ears, shouting that it was one o'clock, and that Jack had dinner ready, and to come before it got cold.

"Oh, Jack, why didn't you call me?" she cried. "I didn't mean to fall asleep. I only stretched out to rest for a few minutes."

He made no answer, busying himself in carrying a hot dish of poached eggs and toast to the table, and bringing his mother's tea. He was carrying on a lively conversation with her.

"Still mad, I suppose," thought Joyce, when he ignored her repeated question. "But evidently he hasn't said anything to mamma about it."

The meal seemed an unusually cheerful one, for although Jack and Joyce had nothing to say to each other, they kept up such a chatter with their mother, that she ate her dinner serenely unconscious of their coolness toward each other. Afterward she insisted upon washing the dishes, so that Joyce could take a well-earned rest, and Jack go down to the ranch to see Mr. Ellestad's new microscope, which had just come. Joyce would not listen to her appeal that she was perfectly able to do that much work, and that she needed the exercise, but finally consented to her helping wipe the dishes, while she cleared the table and washed them. But Jack, after a little urging, started down the road toward the ranch, to spend a long, interesting afternoon there. As he went whistling out of sight Mrs. Ware looked after him fondly.

"I know he's the best boy in the world," she said. "I wish I could afford to give him some of the pleasures that other boys have."

"Seems to me he has about as much as the rest of us," said Joyce, rattling the cups and saucers in the dish-pan. But a picture rose in her mind as she spoke, that made her wish that she had not been so cross and so positive. It was Phil Tremont, on his horse, as he had looked that morning, handsome, fun-loving, and free to do as he pleased, and then in sharp contrast, Jack, standing in the road beside him, in his old outgrown, paint-smeared overalls, his fingers red and wrinkled from the suds, called from his work to see a pleasure in which he could not share. Now that she was rested and refreshed by her dinner, matters looked different. She could even see the force of Jack's argument about the pony being an investment, and she wished again that she had not been so positive in her refusal.

But having once said no, Joyce felt that it would not be dignified to yield. If she changed her mind this time, Jack would think that she was inconsistent; and such is the unyielding policy of fifteen, that she felt that she would rather be called selfish than to admit that she was in the wrong or had been mistaken.

It was a long afternoon. The fact that she and Jack had quarrelled kept recurring to her constantly, and made her uncomfortable and unhappy. He came back from the ranch at supper-time as if nothing had happened, however, and when she asked him some question about the new microscope, he answered with a full description that made her feel he had forgotten their morning disagreement.

"I don't believe that he cares so much about that pony after all," she thought. After supper, when Holland and Mary had disposed of the dishes, she drew out the kitchen-table, and began sprinkling clothes ready for the next day's ironing. The boys had gone to their tent. The door was open between the kitchen and the sitting-room so that the heat might pass in to where Mrs. Ware sat knitting by the lamp. Mary was there also, and her voice came out to Joyce shrilly, as if she were in the room with her.

"It seems a waste of time for me to be learning new pieces to say at school when I know at least a dozen old ones that I recited in Plainsville that would be new out here. But teacher picked this out for me. She's going to keep us in at recess if we don't know our pieces Friday. This has forty-eight lines in it, and I've only four nights to learn it in."

"That is not bad," said Mrs. Ware, consolingly. "Only twelve lines an evening. Read it all to me, then I'll help you with the first quarter."

Joyce stopped her humming as Mary began dramatically:

"'A Boy of Seventy-six.' That's the name of it." She read unusually well for a child of her age, and the verses were new to Joyce:

"You have heard the story, time and again,Of those brave old heroes, the 'Minute Men,'Who left their homes to fight or fall,As soon as they heard their country's call.Let me tell you of one, unnamed, unknown,A brave boy-hero, who fought alone.When the breathless messenger drew reinHe had started whistling, down the laneWith his rod and line, to the brook for trout,But he paused as he heard the warning shout,And his father called to him, 'Ben, my son,I must be off to Lexington!There is little time for fishing now,You must take father's place behind the plough.'One quick good-bye! The boy stood still,Watching him climb the homeward hill —In and out of the house again,With his musket, to join the 'Minute Men.'Then he turned the furrows, straight and true,Just as he'd seen his father do.He dropped the corn in the narrow rows,And fought for its life with the weeds and crows.Oh, it was hard, as the days wore on,To take the place of that father, gone.The boyish shoulders could hardly bearAll their burden of work and care.But he thought, 'It is for my country's sakeThat father's place at the plough I take.When the war is over, and peace is won,How proud he'll be of his little son!'But they brought him home to a soldier's grave,Wrapped in the flag he had died to save.And Ben took up his burden again,With its added weight of grief and pain,Saying bravely, 'In all things nowI must take father's place behind the plough.'Seed-time and harvest came and went,Steadily still to the work he bent,For the family needed bread, and then,So did the half-starved fighting men.Only a boy! Not a hero bold,Whose deeds in the histories are told.Still, there fell under British fire,No braver son of a patriot sireThan this young lad, who for duty's sakeSaid, 'This is the task I'll undertake.I cannot fight for my country now,But I'll take father's place behind the plough.'"

"I wonder why it is," said Mary, thoughtfully, as she came to the end, "that all the heroes live so far away that nobody knows them except the people who write the books and poetry about them. I wish I knew a boy like that."