CHAPTER XXVII

An Early Customer

IT was the last day of June, and the promise for July was for fine weather and sunshine.

Camp’s Gulch was in a state of bustle and activity, which bespoke great business activity. There was a row of ugly little huts for miners on the side of the depot farthest from the Settlement road. Some of the miners had their wives and children with them now, and this increase of population necessitated a school-house here as well as at the Settlement.

So a wooden shed, brown and unpainted, with a shingled roof, had been hastily run up, and Gertrude had applied for and obtained the post of teacher. She had fortunately taken her certificate at Nine Springs, before becoming a telegraph operator, so there had been no difficulty regarding her fitness for the post, and as she was on the spot, everyone regarded her as the most suitable for the position.

Mrs. Lorimer had slipped out of life during the first days of March. Her sufferings had been so great that those who watched her could feel only thankfulness that the hour of her release had come.

Her children mourned her truly, but in the months of her helplessness they had learned to do without her, and so they could not be said to miss her as much as if she had been cut down in rude health.

With the coming of more women to Camp’s Gulch, some parts of Nell’s business had grown less, for where men had their wives to keep house for them, they did not need to go and buy cooked food. But she had made up the lack with other things, until her little kitchen had come to look like a regular store.

On that last day of June, Nell had an inspiration, and, according to her wont, she acted upon it promptly.

“Do you know, Gertrude, I am disposed to think we might take a summer boarder, perhaps two, if they were willing to share one room,” she said, as they sat resting in low chairs out in the garden, after the day’s work was done.

“Is it necessary, dear? You have such heaps to do already,” Gertrude said, a little doubtfully, for Nell worked so hard that it scarcely seemed possible she could do more.

“It would be very pleasant to have a city-dweller with us for a few weeks, and might save us from becoming too hopelessly countryfied,” Nell answered, with a laugh; then added in a more serious tone, “The fact is, I heard of one to-day, and that is what made me decide, all in a great hurry, that a summer boarder is the one thing needed to make my happiness complete.”

“But where would you put the individual to sleep, Nell?” asked Flossie, who lay in a hammock stretched between the wall of the house and a straight young cedar, which by a happy chance had escaped the destruction when the ground was cleared.

“I fear we should have to turn Gertrude out. But if we offered her the hospitality of our loft, perhaps she wouldn’t mind very much,” Nell replied, with a low laugh. Her mood was very happy to-night, and the others quickly caught the infection of her good spirits.

“Oh, I love to sleep in the loft, only I hope you won’t put my bed close to the stove-pipe, if the weather is very warm. But where did you hear of your boarder, Nell?”

“Mrs. Peters came over this afternoon while you were in school. She had just had a letter from a lady living in Victoria, over in Vancouver, a Miss Alfreton, who wanted to know if she could be accommodated at Camp’s Gulch, because she said that her nephew, who was here last summer, had told her it was the loveliest place on earth.”

“Poor lady, how disappointed she will be!” murmured Gertrude, thinking of the bare little school-house and the ugly houses of the miners.

“The trees and the hills are beautiful, anyway,” broke in Flossie, in a tone of protest, not choosing to hear Camp’s Gulch despised even by insinuation.

“And the view from my kitchen window is not to be surpassed, of that I am positive,” said Nell, with a laugh. “Miss Alfreton may or may not be accompanied by her sister. Now, shall we take them or not?”

“Would they board with us?” asked Gertrude, doubtfully still.

“They must. I for one shall not consent to give up our only sitting-room and take my meals in the wood-shed. Besides, I fear there is so much of the Yankee independence about me still, that I should not choose to have people here who wished to eat at a separate table, because we were not fine enough in our manners, or sufficiently solid in our finances, to eat with them,” Nell replied, with a toss of her head.

Gertrude’s brow cleared. “Oh, if they are to come on terms of equality, just paying for their board, that is a different matter. It is sinful to be so proud, especially when one is poor, but I just hated the thought of people lodging in the house, and having to be waited on by you, poor overworked dear!”

“I’m not overworked, so dismiss the idea at once and for ever,” said Nell, with a wave of her hand. “But if we could make a little money in that way this summer, we should be able to get Patsey into that school for electrical engineers next fall, without any more trouble, and once he is there, I am confident he will make his own way all right.”

“You are always thinking of us, Nell, never of yourself!” exclaimed Gertrude. And now there was almost a reproachful inflection in her voice, as if unselfishness were a matter for regret.

“Well, you need not be so ready to remind me that I am only adopted, and not the real thing,” said Nell, with a strained laugh as she rose hastily and went indoors, saying that there was something in the kitchen which she must do before bedtime.

“There, now you have hurt her feelings,” said Flossie, in low-voiced reproach.

“I did not mean to,” said Gertrude, humbly. “But it fairly frightens me sometimes to think of how much we owe to Nell that we can never, never pay. Why, to one dollar that I earn, she earns or saves ten, and she works twice as hard as I do every day in the week.”

“I know all that,” replied Flossie, with a contented laugh. “But there is another side to it, what Dr. Russell calls the other point of view, and that is that, while there is only one Nell to love us, there are five of us to love Nell, and that, as she reckons wealth, makes the balance even.”

“I wonder very often how we could ever have got through last winter without her,” Gertrude said, with a little sigh, as her thoughts went back to those days of pain and strain, when Nell had been the only breadwinner.

“I suppose we could not possibly have done without her, and that was why God sent her to us,” said Flossie, with such a thrill of confidence in her tones that Gertrude was comforted in spite of herself.

“Dear old Nell, she does deserve to be happy!” she murmured.

“Nell is happy, except for a slight pang now and then when you drop out allusions to her being only our adopted sister. The rest of us never hurt her in that way, because we never remember about her not being our own sister, unless some one reminds us. I’m going indoors now to see what she is doing, and if I find her weeping in the back entry, I shall come out and pinch you for having made her cry,” said Flossie, with a laugh, as she slipped out of her hammock and stole softly into the unlighted house to discover what Nell was doing.

Gertrude sat on in the gloaming, thinking her own thoughts and smiling over them. She was very tired with her day’s work, and rest was welcome. It was pleasant, too, to have a brief space in which to sit with folded hands while visions of the future stretched before her, tinted with a rosy light of happiness.

Back in the sad days of last winter Dr. Russell had asked her to let him share the burdens which had descended upon her, and although she would not let him do it then, it had brought comfort and happiness to her to know that he cared enough to be willing to take her and her family too.

But it was only common prudence to wait, for the doctor was earning little more than sufficed to keep Sonny and himself in food and clothes, although the increase of population in the neighbourhood would doubtless bring him more patients in course of time.

Gertrude could not stand alone and organize a career as Nell had done, she was formed on such entirely different lines. But she possessed a fund of enduring patience, and could bear great burdens if only she had some one to take the initiative for her.

Her thoughts to-night, resolved into plain speech, meant that if Patsey could be got into the school of electrical engineers next fall, it would clear the way considerably for herself and the doctor. Teddy and little Abe would require little more than food and clothes for some years to come, and could be brought up easily with Sonny Russell, for boys, like colts and calves, always do better in groups than singly, while Flossie belonged so entirely to Nell that no one would dream of parting them.

“Are you coming to bed to-night, or do you intend staying out there?” asked the brisk voice of Nell from the door, and then Gertrude’s dream visions fled, leaving her in the world of actualities once more.

“What a pity it is to be obliged to go to bed on a night like this,” she said regretfully, as she paused on the threshold.

“It would be a still greater pity if we could get no chance for sleep and forgetfulness, before the work of to-morrow began,” said practical Nell. “Come in and shut the door, Gertrude; you look just like a ghost.”

“I feel like one,” Gertrude answered dreamily. Then she said abruptly, “I have got a sensation about me that change is impending, and that we shall somehow be different to-morrow.”

“That follows as a matter of course, and to-morrow is always in advance of to-day. But I am too sleepy for moralizing, so let us go to bed,” Nell said, with a shiver, as she drew Gertrude in, and bolted the door.

Patsey and the two boys were already in bed and asleep. The three girls made haste to be ready for slumber also, and soon sleep and darkness held the little household in a profound hush until the coming of dawn.

Nell was early astir next morning. She made it a rule always to get her housework done before the cooking for the day began, and as she had mapped out an extra amount of housework for this particular morning, it behoved her to be up early to get it out of the way.

If Miss Alfreton were really coming, the room she would occupy must be scrubbed out, and put into fresh order for her arrival, so as soon as Gertrude could be persuaded out of bed Nell attacked the task with tremendous energy, turned almost all of the furniture out of doors into the cool shade thrown by the cedar, then scrubbed the floor and the wooden walls until the little chamber was redolent of cleanliness. Her housewifely instincts were very strong, and every part of her small domain must be as spotless as her hands could make it.

By the time the cleaning was done she had to start work in the kitchen, and was hard at work getting her first batch of pies baked, when a small boy of uncertain age appeared at the open door of the kitchen, and stood there as if not sure about entering.

He was a complete stranger to Nell, who knew most of the people, old and young, in the neighbourhood. He might have been merely nine or ten, judging by his size; or if one reckoned his age from the expression of his face, he would at once have been taken for fifteen or sixteen.

“Come in,” said Nell, pleasantly; then, seeing that he still hesitated, she asked, “What do you want?”

“I want a pie if you please, ma’am,” he said, with a true Yankee drawl.

“But they are not made yet. At least they are not baked,” said Nell, as she stooped to put another tin filled with pies into the oven, and shut the door, after having carefully tested the heat with her bare elbow, which was the only thermometer she possessed.

“How long to wait?” demanded the boy, in a laconic fashion.

“Half an hour, more or less. Where do you come from?” inquired Nell, turning from the oven to the table, and starting on a fresh batch of pies, her quick fingers turning, twisting, and moulding with an ease and skill delightful to witness, or at least the boy appeared to think so, as he crept into the room, and stood by the table, watching her operations with a look of absorbed interest.

At the question, he shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, as if hesitating about his answer; then, lifting his head with a defiant jerk, he replied—

“From Goat’s Gulch.”

“Goat’s Gulch?” repeated Nell, wondering why the name seemed so familiar, and at the same time brought with it such disagreeable sensations. Then suddenly she started, remembering that it was the place from which the man unknown had said that he brought the Chinaman’s coffin on that eventful evening in last September. “That is a long way from here, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes, about six or seven miles, perhaps, and such a road!” said the boy, rolling up his eyes until only the whites showed, as if to express its badness.

“Did you come all that way, just to buy a pie?” asked Nell, in surprise.

He nodded, then became more explicit. “I’ve got to take two, one for myself, don’t you see, for dad said I shouldn’t be picking and pulling at the one for old Doss if I’d got one of my own.”

Nell’s hand trembled suddenly, and there was a great clattering among the crockery which she was handling, but her tone was quite steady when she asked—

“Who is old Doss?”

“Oh, he’s our lodger, and he’s been sick a good while back. Off his feed he is too, and so thin you could pretty nearly count every bone in his body. So dad he said I was to come over and buy him a pie from the cook-shop close to Camp’s Gulch depot, and as there ain’t no other cook-shop than this, I guess I’ve hit the place right plump in the middle of the bulls-eye,” the boy said, with great complacency.

“But pies are not good for sick folk; they should have broths, and jellies, eggs, gruel, and that sort of thing,” expostulated Nell, in a shocked tone, for the thought of giving new pastry to an invalid did appear rather dreadful to her.

“Dad ’as made him broth and gruel, but he just tastes it and turns his head away, as if he hadn’t any relish for it. Then dad thought of your pies, and said he guessed the sight and smell of one of them would make old Doss eat, if anything could.”

Nell had grown very white; it had not taken her long to decide that probably the old man of whom the boy spoke was her grandfather, and she with equal quickness made up her mind what was her duty concerning him.

“I think I should like to come and see your sick man. How can I find my way from the Settlement to Goat’s Gulch?” she asked.

“You don’t want to go to the Settlement at all; there’s a nearer way over the hills. But you’d never find out where we lived, not alone,” said the boy, with a chuckle.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because we live in a cart—me, and dad, and old Doss, and if we didn’t want our location spied upon, why we should just move on round the next corner, don’t you see,” the boy answered, with another chuckle.

“But you can’t live in the cart in winter,” objected Nell.

“We did last winter, and the winter before too. We backed the cart under a bluff, made a platform with a bit of sheet iron across the shafts, lifted the stove up on to that, and was just as cosy as chipmunks, I can tell you,” said the boy, who was eagerly eyeing Nell’s cooking operations.

“As you say I couldn’t find this place where you live without help, will you let me walk back with you, because I want to see your sick man?” she asked, rather anxiously.

The boy stared at her in undisguised amazement. “Do you mean you are wanting to tramp all the way to Goat’s Gulch, just to see whether old Doss is fit to eat one of your pies?” he demanded.

“I should not like him to have one unless he is fit for it,” Nell said, with a smile. “But if you are willing to let me go with you and will do an errand for me first, I will give you a nice pie to eat when the errand is done, and a big glass of lemonade to drink with it.”

“I’ll take you, though I ain’t, so to speak, much given to walking out with young ladies. What is the errand?” He smacked his lips appreciatively as he looked at the pies; then stuffed his hands deeper in his pockets as he waited to know what was really required of him.

Nell scribbled a few words on a piece of paper, and asked him to carry it across to Mrs. Peters, the station-master’s wife, and wait for an answer.

When the boy had gone on his errand she hurried to get her morning’s baking done, and to arrange matters so that she could leave for a few hours.

The answer sent back by Mrs. Peters was brief and to the point, for she had simply turned Nell’s piece of paper over, and written on the other side in very big letters, “I’ll be there.”

Nell put a big pie on a plate, poured out a glass of lemonade, and bade the boy sit down on the doorstep to eat his lunch.

“I shall be ready in just one hour,” she said. “So get a good rest, for I am a fast walker, and I shall expect you to keep up with me.”

The boy grinned as his sharp teeth closed on the first mouthful of that toothsome pie, but he was too busily occupied to discuss the question of his walking powers just then.

Never had Nell found an hour slip by at a quicker rate than this. There was the baking to finish, the kitchen to clear up, dinner to get ready for Gertrude and the children, and the furniture to restore to the room she had so carefully cleaned in the early morning.

But all the time she was darting to and fro in her endeavours to compress the work of two hours into one, there kept ringing in her mind Gertrude’s words of yesterday, “We shall somehow be different to-morrow.”

“If it is really granfer, I must not let him slip out of sight again, poor old man,” she murmured to herself. “I must take care of him somehow. Perhaps Joey and Mrs. Trip could board him; but I shall know better when I have seen him—poor granfer!”