CHAPTER X.
UP THE GULCH.
"I do believe every-day things are pleasantest, after all," said Allie contentedly.
It was a month after their camping party, and she and her mother were comfortably settled in the parlor, with the mending basket between them. The windows and doors were thrown wide open, and the room was flooded with the yellow sunlight that lay across the floor, while the warm September wind softly fluttered the light draperies. Outside the door, on the piazza, Ben lay snoozing in the sun, sleepily wagging his tail in some happy dream of full-flavored bones or trespassing cats; and beyond him Victor was trudging up and down the path in front of the house, laden with a tiny scarlet pail filled with sand. Allie glanced thoughtfully about the pretty room, and out at her baby brother; then she turned back to her mother again, as Mrs. Burnam asked,—
"How do you mean, Allie?"
"Why, after all our camping and fun, it seems good to sit down and visit a little, mammy. Don't you see, we haven't had a chance for ever so long, not since Charlie was hurt; and I enjoy it, once in a while. The other is fun; but I like to stop and talk it over sometimes." And Allie paused meditatively, with one of Howard's long stockings drawn over her hand.
"Yes, I know," her mother answered, while she trimmed a patch to fit the hole which it was intended to fill; "we haven't had a quiet afternoon for a long time, hardly since Charlie came out here, last spring. You've been so busy with the boys that I didn't know whether you'd ever enjoy sitting down with me any more."
"Yes, this is nicest," said Allie. "The boys aren't you, any more than Charlie is Howard. I like them both; but I need you to straighten out things sometimes."
"What is it now?" asked her mother quietly, for she saw from Allie's face that something was troubling her, and, mother-like, she wished to help her little daughter.
"Why, it isn't so much; only something that Grant was telling, something Mrs. Pennypoker said," answered Allie, while she threaded her needle and stuck it in beside the hole. Then she asked abruptly, "Mamma, is it true that Charlie has ever so much money?"
"Yes; that is, he will have, when he grows up," replied Mrs. Burnam, a little surprised at the question, for she had tried to train her children to feel that wealth was by no means the main end in life.
"How much?" persisted Allie.
"A great deal, for Uncle Charlie was a rich man, and our Charlie is his only child."
"Oh!" And Allie lapsed into silence again.
"What made you ask, Allie?" her mother inquired, after a pause.
"Nothing; only Mrs. Pennypoker said somebody told her he was very rich, and that was the reason you'd let him come here, so maybe we could get some of it; and she asked Mrs. Pennypoker if she hadn't seen the way I hadn't had so much to do with Ned and Marjorie since he'd been here, and all. Wasn't it horrid, mamma?"
Mrs. Burnam frowned. She was sorry to have such ideas put into the head of her young daughter; and, during the past five months, she had grown to feel that Charlie was almost one of her own children; so the worldly-wise tone of these comments grated upon her ears.
"Grant had no right to tell you this," she said thoughtfully.
"I don't care if he did," Allie interrupted. "I knew 'twasn't true, and I told him that I didn't think Charlie had any money, and we didn't want any of it, if he had; we'd plenty of our own. But I wish people wouldn't talk such things. I like Ned and Marjorie just as well as I used to; but when Charlie's here in the house, and just as splendid as he can be, I don't see why I shouldn't like him better. Nobody minded when I was with Howard 'most all the time, and Charlie's just like another brother." And she nodded conclusively as she resumed her work.
Mrs. Burnam watched her steadily for a moment, trying to read whether there was any unspoken thought in her daughter's mind; but Allie looked up, and her blue eyes met her mother's so squarely that Mrs. Burnam was satisfied.
"Charlie does seem just like one of us," she assented heartily; "and I know we've all enjoyed his being out here; but it isn't because he's rich that we've liked him, it's because he's just what he is, a bright, manly boy, without any airs or nonsense. Aunt Helen asked to have him come to us, because he hadn't any other cousins; and it would have been a pleasant six months for all of us, if it hadn't been for his terrible illness." Mrs. Burnam paused; she could never speak of his accident without a shudder.
"I'm glad it happened," returned Allie proudly. "If it hadn't, we shouldn't ever have known how brave he was. And, besides, if it hadn't been for that, we never should have known Dr. Brownlee half so well, and he wouldn't have gone into camp with us; so you see there was some good came out of it. But didn't we have a fine time in camp, mammy?"
"Yes, I think our camping trip was a success, in more ways than one," said Mrs. Burnam, smiling quietly to herself, as she recalled certain scenes in which Louise and the doctor had played a part. There was no doubt in her mind about the enjoyment of two of their number, however the others might have looked upon it.
"But, after all," resumed Allie, going back to her original statement; "I do like getting settled down again; and this vacation has been so stirred up that I believe I shall be glad to have some lessons once more."
"Here comes Ned," said her mother, glancing up from her work as the boy turned the corner and came up the street towards the house. "He's probably after you and the boys for some frolic or other."
"All right; I've just finished my last stocking. Did you ever see anybody make such holes as Howard does?" And she rolled the stockings into a ball and tossed them into the basket, as Ned came up the steps.
"Hullo!" he remarked, dropping into the chair from which Allie had just risen, and helping himself to her orderly work-basket. "Where are the other fellows?"
"They've gone up the creek fishing," answered Allie, watching, with an anxious face, while Ned investigated her papers of needles, and then turned his attention to her button bag.
"They must want something to do," returned Ned scornfully. "I should think you about lived on fish, up here."
"They don't often catch anything," said Mrs. Burnam, laughing; "not even colds. Howard fell into the creek, day before yesterday, and then sat around in his wet clothes all the afternoon; but it didn't seem to hurt him any."
"I tried that once," said Ned, as he stealthily put the basket on the floor, just behind Allie, where she could not fail to step in it and overturn it; "but I had the worst of it, for Cousin Euphemia saw me when I came home. She put me to bed, right in the middle of the day, and made me take some hot ginger-tea. Ugh, what a mess 'twas! I'd rather have had a dozen colds than be choked to death, and left to stew in a flannel blanket. But what I came to say, Allie— Oh, isn't that too bad! You've upset your basket."
"What a wretch you are, Ned!" And Allie slyly dropped a large, flat button down inside his collar, as she stooped to pick up her scattered treasures. "You've done this before, and I know just how sorry you are."
"I didn't do a single thing," returned Ned innocently. "How'd I know you were going to put your foot in it that way? But I stopped to see if some of you didn't want to go up the gulch this afternoon. It's not so very warm, and Lou and Grant are going, so I said I'd hurry on ahead and get you to come too. Here they are, now."
"I'll go; wait till I get my hat." And Allie vanished.
"Come along too, Mrs. Burnam," said Ned persuasively.
"I wish I could, Ned; but I must stay with Vic, for Janey has gone out this afternoon. You'd better stop in here, all of you, when you come back, though. The boys will be home by that time, and I want to see Louise, too," she added, as Ned and Allie went down the steps.
At the west side of the town, the mountains rose up, sheer and straight, their slopes ending abruptly at the outer streets, which were carefully laid out and numbered, although no houses had yet been built there. However, the low, even ground was elaborately divided into blocks, and the blocks, in their turn, into building lots, to be in readiness for the possible purchaser, who might appear at any moment. On the boundary line between the town and this suburban region was the little brick school-house; and beyond it lay the open ground which now, in the absence of any inhabitants, was still used as a wood yard for the distant smelter, whose constant fires easily devoured the vast piles of wood daily unloaded by the trains which ran down the spur of track leading to the yard. Beyond this again were the mountains, which rose to their highest point just to the west of the town, where the tips of the tallest peaks were always blanketed with the soft, white piles of snow. At only one spot their unbroken front was interrupted, where a deep, narrow ravine led far up among the mountains, forming a delightful walk in a warm summer day. After the burning glare on the dry, sandy soil of the town, which, in its barren lack of grass and trees, stared back at the sun like a lidless, lashless eye, the cool shadows of the pines in the gulch were a refreshing change. The little gulch had its variety of names: Bear Gulch, it was called, Lover's Gulch, and even Cemetery Gulch, from the lonely burial ground perched on the top of the rugged bluff at its entrance.
Ned and Allie had taken the lead, with Louise and Grant following close behind them, as they picked their way among the countless tin cans scattered over the fields, or paused to look and laugh while the boys clambered to the top of the long wood-piles, and ran slow, unsteady races over their uneven surfaces. Then they came out to the track, and followed along its course, where Ned and Allie joined hands and walked the rails, and Grant trudged along behind them, stepping with an elaborate care upon each one of the ties, or leaping over occasional cattle-guards, as they crossed his path.
They were far past the western houses of the town, and rapidly approaching the foot of the mountain, when Ned gave Allie's hand a violent twitch.
"Look back!" he exclaimed in an undertone.
With a little cry of alarm, Allie sprang from the track; then, as she glanced back over her shoulder, she burst out laughing.
"How you scared me, Ned!" she said, as she stopped abruptly. "I thought 'twas a train, but it's only Dr. Hornblower."
True enough; up the track behind them came the excellent doctor, waving his cane in amicable salutation, as he strode along at a pace which might have put to shame the wearer of the famous seven-league boots. His leathery skin was dark and shining from the violence of his exercise, as he came sweeping on towards them, till he paused by the side of Louise, who watched him with some anxiety while he stood wheezing and panting before her.
"My dear Miss Everett," he said, when he could regain his breath enough to speak once more; "are you not afraid to walk so rapidly at this altitude? I fear you may over-exert yourself some day." He paused for a moment, puffing like the engine of an overloaded freight train; then he resumed, "I called at your residence, and was so regretful at not finding you at home that your cousin, Mrs. Pennypoker, told me that you were bound for the gulch, and assured me that there was—um—some prospect of my overtaking, not to say catching up with you."
"Are you out on the round-up again to-day, Dr. Hornblower?" asked Ned soberly.
The Reverend Gabriel looked at him with a perplexed countenance.
"I am afraid that I do not perfectly apprehend your meaning," he said.
"Why, you said, last time you called on Lou, that you were hunting up stray sheep, and I didn't know but you were out after some more to-day," Ned explained, with a naughty satisfaction in his sister's struggles to repress her smiles.
But Dr. Hornblower was quite unmoved. His professional dignity rose to the surface, and his voice took on its Sunday twang as he replied pompously,—
"No, Edward; the sheep are all in the fold. To-day I am only in search of congenial society." And he bowed gravely to Louise.
"Come on, now," whispered Grant, as he joined Allie and Ned in advance, and left Louise to follow them with her elderly admirer; "the doctor's lost his wind already, and can't keep up; but, if he wants a walk, we'll give him one."
His companions entered into the spirit of his proposition, and they quickened their pace, after casting one backward glance towards Louise, as she lingered along, with a sort of repressed impatience of step and manner, while she listened to the Reverend Gabriel's elaborate explanations of his reasons for following her. Then such a race as they led him! Quitting the track, they turned aside into the open ground, covered with uneven tufts of coarse bunch grass and thickets of sage brush, now racing down a little hillock, now jumping over a tiny stream and forcing their way through the clumps of willows on the bank, but always choosing the roughest, hardest path, and always going at the top of their speed, while Louise and the doctor panted and floundered along too far in the rear to be heard in their calls for mercy. Even Allie was beginning to be exhausted when, a few hundred feet above the mouth of the gulch, Grant turned abruptly to the right and scrambled up the steep hillside leading to the cemetery.
"There!" he chuckled, while Ned and Allie, breathless with laughing and with their rapid climb, dropped down on the ground beside him; "we'll give him a rest when he gets up here. If he's going to come along and spoil all our fun, he must pay for it; but he'll be tired by this time."
"I wonder if he'll ever get up here alive," said Allie, as she reached out to the nearest bush, to pick a bit of fur from the twig which had caught it from some passing cottontail. "You almost used me up, and I don't believe Miss Lou could have gone on much farther, so I shouldn't wonder if he was pretty nearly dead."
"Well, 'twould be a nice, convenient place for the funeral; only I shouldn't be surprised if he stuck, half way up here," suggested Ned, comfortably lying on his back, and fanning himself with the hat which Allie had tossed aside. "No; here he comes," he added, as the Reverend Gabriel's wide-brimmed straw hat and flushed face appeared over the brow of the hill, followed by Louise, looking rosy and mischievous, but as fresh as she had done at the start.
"Come over to this tree, doctor, and sit down here in the shade while you rest," she said kindly, as she led the way to the spot where the boys were stretched out on the grass.
There was an unwonted gentleness in her voice, for she had been quick to discover the impish intention of her brothers, and was anxious to atone for their lack of courtesy towards an acquaintance whom she had always regarded as an old man, on the down-hill side of life. In spite of herself she had been amused at the doctor's frantic efforts to keep up with her own firm, quick pace, and at his urgent entreaties that she should tell him if he walked too fast for her. Nevertheless, as she seated herself beside her young brothers, she was resolving to give them a lecture upon the sins of the afternoon, so soon as she could get them in a place of safety.
In the mean time, the doctor appeared to be strangely annoyed over something, although she was unable to discover the cause of his trouble. In obedience to her inviting gesture, he had spread out his large blue silk handkerchief on the ground by her side, and seated himself upon it. Then he started to remove his hat; but he had no sooner raised it a little from his head than he hastily clapped it on again, with a little exclamation of surprise and displeasure.
"I do hope that these bad boys haven't given you too hard a climb, doctor," Louise was saying politely, while she turned to frown down any fresh demonstrations on the part of Grant, who was evidently plotting some new mischief.
"Um—m—ah—no—at least, I beg your pardon, but what was it you said?" inquired the doctor, so abstractedly that Louise looked at him in astonishment.
The Reverend Gabriel sat with his face slightly turned away from her. He was tilting his hat so that, on the farther side, it was raised an inch or two from his head, while, with his disengaged hand, he was feeling carefully about underneath it, as if in search of some missing object. His face, meanwhile, was rapidly assuming every appearance of trouble and distress, which became more and more acute with every fresh motion of his hand. Louise watched him compassionately, sure that something was amiss, but not daring to offer to come to his assistance; then, thinking to spare him any added mortification, she looked away towards the valley.
A lovely picture lay at her feet, for the cañon opened out before her eyes in all the grandeur of its mountainous surroundings, while the little town in its bosom was softened and beautified by the kindly autumnal haze, which took away the crude shabbiness of its detail and brought it into harmony with the rugged landscape about it. Beyond the town lay the creek, and over it all floated the heavy pall of thick white smoke, which seemed to be supported on the tall red chimneys of the smelter buildings. The sun was dropping behind the mountains, and already the town lay in shadow, while the last beams lingered upon the cloud of smoke which flushed to a pale pink, then deepened to a rosy glow. The girl's eyes rested on the scene below her; then, surprised at the continued silence of her escort, she glanced at him once more. He was still groping about underneath his hat, with the same strained, upward roll to his eyes; but, as she looked at him, a new light burst in upon Louise's mind, for two long locks of tawny hair had straggled down over his right ear, and lay in a feeble ringlet against the top of his tall collar. The Reverend Gabriel's wrist brushed against them; he felt of them inquiringly; then he deliberately took off his hat to show the top of his head shorn of the glory of his curl, and the long ends of hair hanging in elf-locks about his face.
"Miss—um—Miss Everett," he began hesitatingly, while a dark flush rose on his weather-beaten cheeks; "Miss Everett, I am exceedingly sorry to trouble you, but"—he paused; then went on desperately; "in fact, could you be good enough to lend me a hairpin? The exertion of my climb has removed mine from its accustomed place, and I fear that my hair may be slightly disarranged."
The silence that followed was unbroken while Louise felt about among her braids and drew out a long, slender pin; but when the doctor put his hat down on the ground by his side, carefully rolled up his hair over his two forefingers, spread it into the usual long curl, and fastened it into its place, Allie and Ned fell into an uncontrollable fit of giggling. But, for the once, Grant's attention was distracted, for he was gazing steadily towards the engine house at the mouth of the mine.
"Say, Lou," he exclaimed; "what's going on down there? Everybody's rushing over to the mine; something must be wrong."
Louise's eyes followed the direction of his hand.
"There 's some trouble, down there," she said, rising abruptly. "Will you excuse us, Dr. Hornblower, if we go down without waiting to get rested? I am always a little anxious about my father." And she hurried away down the hill, leaving the Reverend Gabriel to adjust his hairpin at his ease, while he reflected upon the unsatisfactory nature of his walk.