Rancho Del Muerto and Other Stories of Adventure from «Outing» by Various Authors

The girl flushed painfully, but stooped, kissed the child and, looking straight at Mrs. Northrup, said very gently: “No, dear; and if mamma knew me better she would not think I was colored.” Then she turned, bowed slightly and walked rapidly up the beach. Nell burst into tears, Van Zandt muttered something that didn’t sound like a prayer and tore after his lady love. Northrup was so startled and angry that, instead of comforting his wife, he gave her a little shake and exploded with: “It’s too – bad! A nice mess you and the brat have made of things!” Then, as the ludicrous side of the affair appealed to his fun-loving nature: “To save time, I’ll spank Ethel while you roll out the crust of a nice, re: “To save time, I’ll spank Ethel while you roll out the crust of a nice, big humble pie.”

Hinton and Miss Belmont slunk off, and I was preparing to follow them, when the unhappy little woman sobbed out, “Oh, Doctor, please, please don’t go! Stay and tell me what to do. Tom’s so nasty – if you laugh, Tom dear, I’ll kill you.” So I stayed, and while we were consulting what was best to do Van Zandt came quietly into the summer house, his face and tightly-closed lips ashen, and his eyes the eyes of a strong man in pain. Nell rushed at him, exclaiming: “My poor Harry, my darling brother! I am so sorry; try to forgive me!”

He put her away from him with no show of anger, but very coldly, and then, very evenly and in an emotionless, mechanical sort of way, he said: “I have asked Miss Solander to be my wife. She refused me. I hope you are satisfied. I give you my word of honor that I will never forgive you, nor speak to you, until she accepts your apology and my love – and that will be never,” he added, heavily, and half under his breath. There was no doubt that he meant it and would stick to it, and his sister, who knew he never broke his word, after one appealing look at him, threw herself in her husband’s arms and sobbed miserably. I followed the boy and took an old man’s privilege. He listened patiently and thanked me affectionately, but it was of no use. Then I tried to find Miss Viola, and came across Nell on the same quest; but no one saw her until the next afternoon.

Monday was cloudy and windy, a real gray day. The races were to begin at 3 o’clock, and the entire community was gathered on the shore of the lake. Both Miss Solander and Van Zandt were entered, and I knew their pride would make them show up. The first race was for ladies in Long Lake boats over a half mile course and return, six entries, a handicap of one hundred yards on Miss Solander and fifty on Mrs. Claggett. Viola beat it handsomely and then rowed directly across to the island, where she would have a good view of the sailing race, though I think her object was more to escape the crowd.

After an interval of a few minutes three canoes, manned by Hinton, Van Zandt and another man, came up to the starter’s boat.

The canoes got away together, Van Zandt to leeward. They had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile when a squall from the opposite shore struck them, and the canoe with the violet pennant (Harry’s) went over like a flash, the other two, with loose sheets, running before the wind. Mrs. Northrup screamed, and so did several other women; but Van Zandt was a capital swimmer, and I expected every moment to see him on the bottom of the canoe.

Half a dozen men started in rowboats, but one shot out from the island and fairly flew for the capsized craft. It was Viola, and we saw her, when she reached her goal, stand up, shake off her outer skirts and dive. I had a powerful glass, and when she came up I saw she had him and was trying to reach her boat, which was drifting away. She gave that up and struggled toward the canoe. They went down, and then the rescue boats hid them. It seemed an eternity before two boats pulled swiftly toward us. In the first was Van Zandt, a nasty cut on his head and unconscious, but breathing faintly. In the next, held in the arms of poor “Buttons,” whose tears were dropping on her lovely white face, was the sweet child-woman, all the wonderful rose tints gone from lip and cheek and in its place the sad, cold hue of death. There was no sign of vitality, and I was hopeless from the first; but we were still working over her when the steamer came in, and the next thing we knew there was a heart-broken cry and her father had her in his arms.

Was it the bitter agony and yearning love in that strong man’s cry that called back the fleeing life, or was it the sudden jar of lifting her and the fierce clasp of her father’s arms that started the stilled lungs? I do not know; but, physician though I am, I incline to the former solution. Whatever may have been the cause there was a faint flutter in pulse and breast, and we renewed our efforts. In half an hour she was breathing softly and the color was coming back to her bonny face. Her father carried her up to the hotel and her aunt and Mrs. Northrup got her to bed. She recovered rapidly, but Van Zandt was pretty ill for about a week, and positively refused to see his sister.

Well, I suppose it was officious and meddlesome in me, but one day when I knew where Violante was I took Nell’s hand in my arm and brought them together. In a few minutes they were crying over each other in real womanly fashion, and I prowled off. In about ten minutes little Nell, her eyes shining with happiness, hunted me up and said, “I want you to take me to Harry.” She showed me in her hand a beautiful and curious ring, which I knew was the engagement ring of Miss Viola’s mother. Harry was sitting in an easy chair, with his back to the door, when we entered, and, without turning his head, he asked, “Is that you, Doctor?”

I answered him, and then Nell stole up behind him, dropped the great ruby in his lap, and whispered, with a sob in her voice, “With my dear sister Violante’s love.” Harry looked at the ring stupidly for an instant, then Nell came around in front of him, and he pulled her down into his arms without a word. And I stole away with wet eyes and a glad heart, and told the news to Tom and Carrie and that prince of good fellows, “Jumbo” Hinton.

That is about all. Mr. Solander gave his consent and something more substantial, and two months later I went to the wedding of “The Lady in Rouge.”

THE BREAKING OF WINTER, By Patience Stapleton

That’s the fust funerel I’ve went to sence I was a gal, but that I drove to the graveyard.”

“I dunno as that done the corp enny good.”

“An’ seems all to onc’t I miss old Tige,” muttered the first speaker half to herself.

It was snowing now, a fine mist sifting down on deep-drifted stone-walls and hard, shining roads, and the tinkle of sleigh-bells, as a far-away black line wound over the hill to the bleak graveyard, sounded musical and sweet in the muffled air. Two black figures in the dazzling white landscape left the traveled road and ploughed heavily along a lane leading to a grove of maples, cold and naked in the winter scene.

“They say Ann Kirk left a good prop’ty,” said the first speaker, a woman of fifty, with sharp black eyes, red cheeks, few wrinkles and fewer gray hairs in the black waves under her pumpkin hood. She pulled her worn fur cape around her neck and took a new grasp on her shawl, pinning it tight. “Ann an’ me used to take a sight of comfort driving old Tige.”

The man, her companion, grunted and went sturdily ahead. He was enveloped in a big overcoat, a scarf wound around his neck and a moth-eaten fur cap pulled down over his ears. His blue eyes were watery from the cold, his nose and chin peaked and purple, and frost clung to the short gray beard about his mouth.

“Who’ll git the prop’ty?” panted the woman. She held her gown up in front, disclosing a pair of blue socks drawn over her shoes.

“Relashuns, I s’pose.”

“She was alius so savin’, keepin’ drip-pins for fryin’, and sfellin’ nearly every mite of butter they made; an’ I’ve heered the Boston relashuns was extravagant. Her sister hed on a black silk to the funerel to ride to the grave in; I guess they are well-to-do.”

“Dunno,” gruffly.

Somehow then the woman remembered that glossy silk, and that she had never had one. Then this sister’s husband, how attentive he was leading his wife out to the sleigh, and she had seen them walking arm-in-arm the past summer, when no man in Corinth ever offered his arm to his wife unless it were to a funeral and they were first mourners. “Silas never give me his arm but the fust Sunday we were merried,” she thought; “bein’ kind to wimmen wan’t never the Loweirs way.” A sharp pain in her side made her catch her breath and stop a moment, but the man paid no heed to her distress. At the end of a meadow on a little rise looking down a long, shady lane, stood a gray old farm-house, to which age had given picturesqueness and beauty, and here Maria Lowell had lived the thirty years of her married life. She unlocked the door and went into the cold kitchen where the fire had died down. A lean cat came purring from under the table, and the old clock seemed to tick more cheerily now the mistress had returned.

“A buryin’ on Christmas Eve, the minister said, and how sad it were, and I felt like tellin’ him Ann an’ me never knowed Christmas from enny other day, even to vittles, for turkeys fetched better prices then, an’ we sold ourn.” She went into a frozen bedroom, for Corinth folks would have thought a man crazy to have a fire in a sleeping-room except in sickness; she folded her shawl and cape and laid them carefully on the feather bed, covered with its gay quilt, the fruit of her lonely hours. Mechanically she set about getting supper, stirring the fire, putting a pan of soda biscuits in to bake, and setting a dish of dried-apple sauce and a plate of ginger cookies on the table. “Berried on Chrismus Eve, but little she ever thought of it, nor me, and little of it Jimmy hed here to home.”

She looked at her biscuits, slammed the oven door, glanced cautiously around to see if Silas, who had gone to milk the cow, were coming; then drawing her thin lips tighter, went back into the cold bedroom. With ruthless hand tearing open an old wound, she unlocked a drawer in the old mahogany bureau and took out something rolled in a handkerchief – only a tiny vase, blue and gilt, woefully cheap, laughed at by the cultured, scorned by the children of today. She held it tenderly in her cold hand and brought back the memory that would never die. It was years and years ago in that very room, and a little child came in holding one chubby hand behind him, and he looked at her with her own bright eyes under his curly hair. “Muver, Jimmy’s got a s’prise.” She remembered she told him crossly to go out of the cold room and not bother her. She remembered, too, that his lip quivered, the lip that had yet the baby curve. “It was a present, muver, like the minister sed. I got candy on the tree, but you didn’t git nawthin’, and I buyed you this with my berry money.” The poor little vase in that warm chubby hand – ay, she forgot nothing now; she told him he was silly to spend good money on trash, and flung the vase aside, but that grieved childish face came back always. Ah, it would never fade away, it had returned for a quarter of a century. “I never was used to young ones,” she said aloud, “nor kindness,” but that would not heal the wound; no self-apology could. She went hurriedly to the kitchen, for Silas was stamping the snow off his feet in the entry.

“I got fifty dollars for old Tige,” he said, as he poured his tea into his saucer to cool; “he was wuth it, the honest old creetur!”

The little black-eyed woman did not answer; she only tightened her lips. Over the mantel where the open fireplace had been bricked up, was a picture in a narrow black frame, a colored print of Washington on a fine white horse, and maidens strewing flowers in his pathway.

“When Tige was feelin’ good,” continued Silas, “he’d a monstrous likeness to thet hoss in the pictur, monstrous! held his hed high an’ pranced; done you good to see him in Bath when them hosses tried to parss him; you’d a thort he was a four-year-old! chock full of pride. The hackman sed he was a good ‘un, but run down; I don’t ‘low to overfeed stock when they ain’t wurkin’.”

“Ourn has the name of bein’ half starved,” muttered the woman.

Silas looked at her in some surprise. “I ginerelly gits good prices for ‘em all the same.”

“We ginerelly overreach every one!”

“Goin’ to Ann’s funerel hez sorter upset ye, M’ri. Lord, how old Tige would cavort when Jim would ride him; throw out his heels like a colt. I never told the hackman Tige was eighteen year old. I ain’t over pertikler in a hoss trade, like everybody else. He wun’t last long I calc’late now, for them hack horses is used hard, standin’ out late nights in the cold an’ – ”

“Was the Wilkins place sold out ter-day?” said the woman hastily, with agonizing impatience to divert his thoughts to something else.

“Yes, it were,” chuckled Silas, handing his cup for more tea, “an’ they’ll have ter move ter Bosting. You was ginning me for bein’ mean, how’d you like to be turned outer doors? Ef I do say it, there ain’t no money due on my prop’ty, nor never was.”

“Who air you savin’ it fur?” said Maria, quietly. She sat with downcast eyes tapping her spoon idly on her saucer; she had eaten nothing.

“Fur myself,” he growled, pushing his chair back. He lit a pipe and began to smoke, his feet at the oven door.

Outside it was quite dark, snow and night falling together in a dense black pall. Over the lonely roads drifted the snow, and no footfall marred it. Through drear, silent forests it sifted, sifted down, clung to cheery evergreens, and clasped shining summer trees that had no thought for winter woes; it was heaped high over the glazed brooks that sang, deep down, songs of summer time and gladness, like happy, good old folks whose hearts are ever young and joyous. Over the wide Kennebec, in the line of blue the ferry-boat kept open, the flakes dropped, dropped and made no blurr, like the cellar builders of temples and palaces, the rank and file, the millions of good, unknown dead, unmentioned in history or the Bible. The waves seething in the confined path crackled the false ice around the edges, leaped upon it in miniature breakers, and swirled far underneath with hoarse murmur. In the dark water something dark rose and fell with the tide. Was there a human being drifting to death in the icy sea? The speck made no outcry; it battled nobly with nature’s mighty force. Surely and slowly the high wharfs and the lights of Bath faded; nearer grew the woods of Corinth, the ferry landing and the tavern-keeper’s lamp.

“I heered suthin’ on the ferry slip,” said a little old man in the tavern, holding his hand behind his ear.

“Nawthin’, night’s too black,” said the tavern-keeper; “you’re alius a hearin’ what no one else do, Beaman.”

No star nor human eye had seen the black speck on the wild water, and no hand lent it aid to land.

In ugly silence Silas smoked his pipe, while equally still, Maria washed the dishes. She stepped to throw the dish-water outside the door and then she heard a sound. The night was so quiet a noise traveled miles. What was it, that steady smothered thud up the lane where so seldom a stranger came? Was it only the beating of her heart after all? She shut the door behind her and hurried out, wrapping her wet cold hands in her apron. Suddenly there came a long, joyful neigh!

“How on airth did that critter git home?” cried Silas, jumping to his feet.

Nearer, nearer, in a grand gallop, with tense muscles and quivering limbs, with upraised head and flying mane, with eager eyes, nearer, in great leaps thrusting time and distance far behind, came that apparition of the night.

“Oh, my God!” cried the woman wildly, “old Tige has come home – come home to this place, and there is one living thing that loves it!”

The light flared out from the open door. “How on airth did he git across the river?” said Silas, querulously. “An’ how am I goin’ to git him back in this weather?”

There he stood, the noble old horse that her boy had raised from a colt, had ridden, had given to her when he went away. “Mother,” her boy had said, “be good to old Tige. If ever father wants to sell him, don’t you let him. I’d come back from my grave if the old horse was abused – the only thing I loved, that loved me in this place I cannot call a home. Remember he has been so faithful.”

Ay, he had been faithful, in long, hot summer days, in wide, weary fields, in breaking the stony soil for others’ harvest, in bringing wood from the far forest, in every way of burden and work.

He stood quivering with cold, covered with ice, panting after his wild gallop; but he was home, poor brute mind! That old farm was his home: he had frolicked in its green fields as a colt, had carried a merryvoiced young master, had worked and rested in that old place; he might be ill-treated and starved, he did not grieve, he did not question, for it was home! He could not understand why this time the old master had not taken him away; never before had he been left in Bath. In his brute way he reasoned he had been forgotten, and when his chance came, leaped from the barn, running as horse never ran before, plunged off the wharf into the black waves, swam across and galloped to his home.

“If there is a God in Heaven, that horse shall not go back!” cried the woman fiercely; “if you take him from here again it shall be over my dead body! Ay, you may well look feared; for thirty years I have frozen my heart, even to my own son, and now the end’s come. It needed that faithful brute to teach me; it needed that one poor creature that loved me and this place, to open the flood-gates. Let me pass, and I warn you to keep away from me. Women go mad in this lonely, starved life. Ay, you are a man, but I am stronger now than you ever were. I’ve been taught all my life to mind men, to be driven by them, and to-night is a rising of the weak. Put me in the asylum, as other wives are, but tonight my boy’s horse shall be treated as never before.”

“But M’ri,” he said, trembling, “there, there now, let me git the lantern, you’re white as a sheet! We’ll keep him if you say so; why hadn’t you told me afore?”

She flung him aside, lit the lantern and then ran up to an attic chamber under the eaves. “M’ri, you hain’t goin’ to kill yourself?” he quavered, waiting at the foot of the stairs. She was back in a moment, her arms full of blankets.

“What on airth!”

“Let me alone, Silas Lowell, these were my weddin’ blankets. I’ve saved ‘em thirty years in the cedar chist for this. They was too good for you and me; they air too poor fur my boy’s horse.”

“But there’s a good hoss blanket in the barn.”

“The law don’t give you these; it mebbe gives you me, but these is mine.”

She flung by him, and he heard the barn door rattle back. He put on his coat and went miserably after her, “M’ri, here’s yer shawl, you’ll git yer death.” The barn lit by the lantern revealed two astonished oxen, a mild-eyed cow, a line of hens roosting on an old hayrack and Maria rubbing the frozen sides of the white horse. “Put yer shawl on, M’ri, you’ll git yer death.”

“An’ you’d lose my work, eh? Leave me, I say, I’m burning up; I never will be cold till I’m dead. I can die! there is death ‘lowed us poor critters, an’ coffins to pay fur, and grave lots.”

Silas picked up a piece of flannel and began to rub the horse. In ghastly quiet the two worked, the man patching the woman, and looking timorously at the axe in the corner. One woman in the neighborhood, living on a cross-road where no one ever came, had gone mad and jnur-dered her husband, but “M’ri” had always been so clear-headed! Then the woman went and began piling hay in the empty stall.

“You ain’t goin’ to use thet good hay fur beddin,’ be ye, M’ri?” asked Silas in pathetic anxiety.

“I tell you let me be. Who has a better right to this? His labor cut it and hauled it; this is a time when the laborer shall git his hire.”

Silas went on rubbing, listening in painful silence to the click of the lock on the grain bin, and the swish of oats being poured into a trough.

“Don’t give him too much, M’ri,” he pleaded humbly, “I don’t mean ter be savin’, but he’ll eat hisself to death.”

“The first that ever did on this place,” laughed the woman wildly.

Then standing on the milking-stool she piled the blankets on the grateful horse, then led him to the stall where she stood and watched him eat. “I never see you so free ‘round a hoss afore,” said Silas; “you used to be skeered of ‘em, he might kick ye.”

“He wouldn’t because he ain’t a man,” she answered shrilly; “it’s only men that gives blows for kindness!”

“Land of the living!” cried Silas, as a step sounded on the floor, and a queer figure came slowly into the glare of light by the lantern, a figure that had a Rembrandt effect in the shadow – an old man, lean and tall, shrouded in a long coat and bearing on his back a heavy basket.

“You can’t be a human creetur, comin’ here to-night,” said Maria; “mebbe you’re the Santy Claus Jim used to tell on as the boys told him; no man in his senses would come to Sile Lowell’s fur shelter.”

“M’ri’s upsot,” said Silas meekly, taking the lantern with trembling hand; “I guess you’ve got off the road; the tavern’s two mile down toward the river.”

“You’ve followed the right road,” said Maria; “you’ve come at a day of reck’nin’; everythin’ in the house, the best, you shall have.”

She snatched the light from Silas and slammed the barn door, leaving Tige contentedly champing his oats, wondering if he was still dreaming, and if his wild swim had been a nightmare followed by a vision of plenty. In the kitchen Maria filled the stove, lit two lamps and began making new tea.

“Thet was a good strong drorin’ we hed fur supper, M’ri,” said Silas, plaintively, keenly conscious of previous economies; “‘pears to me you don’t need no new.” She paid no heed to him, but set the table with the best dishes, the preserves – Silas noted with a groan – and then with quick, skillful hand began cutting generous slices of ham.

“I hope you’re hungry, sir?” she asked eagerly.

“Wal, I be, marm,” said the stranger; “an’ if it ain’t no trouble, I’ll set this ere basket nigh the stove, there’s things in it as will spile. I be consederable hungry, ain’t eat a bite sence yesterd’y.”

Silas’s face grew longer and longer; he looked at the hamper hopefully. That might contain a peddler’s outfit and “M’ri” could get paid that way.

“An’ I hain’t money nor nawthin’ to pay fur my vittles ‘less there was wood-sawin’ to be done.”

“Wood’s all sawed,” said Silas bitterly.

“I wouldn’t take a cent,” went on Maria, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. “Ann Kirk thet hed the name of bein’ as mean as me, was berried to day, and folks that keered nawthin’ fur her is a goin’ to hev her money an’ make it fly. They say ‘round here no grass will ever grow on her grave, fur ev’ry blade will be blarsted by the curses of the poor.”

“M’ri, you a perfessed Christian!” cried Silas.

“There’s good folks unperfessed,” interposed the stranger; “but I dunno but a near Christian is better nor a spendthrift one as fetches up at the poorhouse.”

“Right you air!” said Silas, almost affably feeling he had an advocate.

The stranger was tall and bony, with a thin, wrinkled face bronzed by wind and weather, with a goatee and mustache of pale brown hair, and a sparse growth of the same above a high bald forehead; his eyes were a faded brown, too, and curiously wistful in expression. His clothing was worn and poor, his hands work-hardened, and he stooped slightly. When the meal was ready he drew up to the table, Maria plying him with food.

“Would you rather have coffee?” she asked.

“Now you’ve got me, marm, but land! tea’ll do.”

“I should think it would,” snarled Silas; but his grumbling was silenced in the grinding of the coffee mill. When the ap-appetizing odor floated from the stove, Silas sniffed it, and his stomach began to yearn. “You put in a solid cup full,” he muttered, trying to worry himself into refusing it.

“We want a lot,” laughed Maria.

“Set up an’ eat,” called the stranger cheerily; “let’s make a banquet; it’s Chrismus Eve!”

“That ham do smell powerful good,” muttered Silas, unconsciously drawing his chair up to the table, where the stranger handed him a plate and passed the ham. Maria went on frying eggs, as if, thought her husband, “they warn’t twenty-five cents a dozen,” and then ran down into the cellar, returning panting and good-humored with a pan of apples and a jug of cider; then into the pantry, bringing a tin box out of which she took a cake.