Part 8

It happened that the very next day Kit decided that it was high time to garner in the crabapple crop and start making jelly. The best trees around Woodhow were up on the old Cynthy Allen place. While the house had burned down the year before, still Cynthy’s fruit trees were famous all over Elmhurst and Mr. Craig had bought up the crop in advance from her.

It was only about a mile and a half to Cynthy’s place from the crossroads, but Jean had taken the car to Nantic and Kit had no inclination to carry several pecks of crabapples in a sack along a dusty road. Doris and her mother were over at Becky’s for the afternoon, so that Kit was left to her own devices.

She stood on the porch undecided, a couple of grain sacks thrown over her shoulder, and suddenly the sparkle of the river through the trees in the distance caught her eye. Certainly, that was the answer. She had not had a chance the whole summer to go out in the boat and bask in idleness. Always before, she had managed to row a little during the summer so she knew Little River all the way from the Fort Ned Falls at the crossroads to where it slipped away in a shallow stream to the upper hills.

There were several old rowboats lying bottom-side-up on the shore above the falls. Kit selected the newest of the lot, a slender green boat that Billie rarely used, although she had never tried rowing anything but a flat-bottomed boat. It was the very first time also that she had been out in a boat alone, but this fact never daunted Kit. She rowed up the river with a firm level stroke, thoroughly enjoying herself and the novelty of solitude. When she passed the island, Frank was down on the little stretch of beach cleaning a mess of fish for supper. She called to him across the water, and he held up a string of pickerel invitingly. There had been a thunderstorm and a quick midsummer rain the early part of the afternoon, and the campers had been quick to take advantage of the fishing.

“I’ll stop for them on my way back,” Kit called. “Just going up after crabapples at the Allen place.” She had swerved the boat toward the bank on the opposite side of the island, without looking behind her, when suddenly Frank sprang to his feet and shouted across the water, “To the left, Kit--hard to the left, do you hear!”

Instead of obeying without question, Kit turned her head to see what he was warning her against, and before she could stop herself the rowboat was caught in an eddy that formed a miniature maelstrom at this point, caused by a large sunken tree that fell nearly to midstream from the shore. The frail rowboat overturned like a crumpled leaf. It seemed to Frank as long as he lived he would never forget the sight of her upturned face, as it slipped down into the dark, swirling water. She did not cry out, or even seem to make an attempt to swim, it all happened so suddenly. There was only the horrible, warm silence of the drowsy, midsummer landscape, and the dancing, pitching rowboat, twirling around and around in circles.

It seemed an hour to him before he had plunged into the river, and swam across to the spot where she had disappeared. The gripping horror was that she hadn’t come up at all. Even before he reached the spot where he had seen her go under, Frank dove and swam under water with his eyes open. The river bottom was a mass of swaying vegetation and gnarled, sunken roots of old trees. It seemed for the moment like outreaching fingers clutching upward. He could see the black trunk of the tree, but there was no sign of Kit until he was fairly upon her, and then he found her, her dress and hair held fast on the bare branches.

Billie had been in the cabin, getting the potatoes on for dinner, and otherwise performing his duties as assistant camp cook. He had heard Frank’s voice calling to someone, but had not taken the trouble to look out until he failed to find a favorite pot on its accustomed hook. Sticking his head out the door, he called down to the beach, “Say, Frank, where’s the aluminum pot with the big handle?”

He listened for an answer but none came, and after a second call he started to investigate. The sudden complete disappearance of Frank mystified him. Their favorite boat lay in its accustomed place on the shore with oars beside it, and there were the fish beside the cleaning board just as he had left them a moment ago.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” muttered Billie when there came a cry across the river--Frank calling for help.

Billie could just see him swimming with one long overhand stroke, and holding up something on his other shoulder. Not stopping to figure it out, Billie pushed the boat off to the rescue.

There was no sign of life, at least to Billie’s fear-struck eyes, in the limp, dripping figure which Frank laid so tenderly in the bottom of the boat.

“Quit shaking like that, Bill,” he ordered in husky sternness. “You row to the island as fast as you can.”

On the way across he knelt beside her, applying first-aid methods, while Billie rowed blindly, trying to choke back the dry sobs that would rise in his throat. It did not seem as if it could possibly be Kit lying there so white and still. When they reached the shore of the island, Frank carried her in his arms to his own cot.

“Hadn’t I better go for help?” Billie asked.

“There isn’t time,” Frank answered shortly. “Warm those blankets, get me the bottle of spirits of ammonia, and unlace her shoes.”

All the time he was talking, he worked over Kit as swiftly and tenderly as any nurse, but it seemed hours to Billie before there came at last a half-sobbing sigh from her lips, as the agonized lungs caught their first breath of air, and she opened her eyes.

Neither Frank nor Billie spoke as she stared from one to the other in slow surprise, taking in the interior of the cabin, and Frank’s dripping clothing. Then she said, crazily, “Billie, did I lose the crabapples, or haven’t I gotten them yet?”

“So that’s what you were after,” Billie cried, “poking up the river by yourself in that beastly little boat that turns over if you look at it, and you can swim about as well as a cat. If it hadn’t been for Frank here, you’d be absolutely drowned dead by now.”

The color stole back into Kit’s face. Perhaps if he had sympathized with her, she might have broken down, but as it was, she looked up into Frank’s eyes almost appealingly.

“I’m awfully sorry,” she began, but Frank stopped her with a laugh, as he rolled her up tighter in another blanket.

“I’m the doctor here now,” he said, “and you’ll have to mind. I guess if I carry you, we can get you home somehow. The sooner you’re in bed, the better.”

Mrs. Craig, Jean and Doris were just coming along the road when they saw the startling procession coming up from the river bank, Frank carrying the blanketed figure and Billie bringing up the rear.

“Why, Mother,” Jean exclaimed, “someone’s been hurt.”

“She’s all right,” called Frank, cheerily. “Just took a dip in the river, Mrs. Craig. If you’ll go ahead, please, and get a bed ready, I’ll bring her up.”

Kit’s eyes were closed. He had told her to put her arms around his neck so that he could carry her easier up the hill. Just as they got to the porch steps he said, under his breath, “Are you OK, Kit?”

She nodded her head slowly and opened her eyes. “Thank you for getting me out,” she whispered, with a shyness absolutely new to her. “You don’t know how I felt when I found myself caught down there, and couldn’t get away. I thought that was just all.”

“Bring her upstairs, Frank,” called Jean. “Mother’s telephoning to Dr. Gallup, but I suppose the danger’s all past now. Kit, you big dope, what did you ever go in that boat alone for? The minute you’re left alone, you’re always up to something. Just like the day when she had you locked up in the corncrib, Frank.”

Frank smiled, a curious reminiscent smile, as he laid his burden down on the bed.

Probably only Kit heard his answer, for Jean had gone after hot tea, and Doris was getting the heating pad, but Kit heard and smiled as he said, “God bless the corncrib.”

18. Jean’s Romance

Probably the next three days were the longest Kit had ever spent in her life. Under Dr. Gallup’s orders, she remained in bed to get over the shock of her immersion.

“When I don’t feel shocked a bit,” she argued, “I don’t see why I can’t sit in a chair down on the porch.”

“Yes, you just want to pose as an interesting invalid,” Jean laughed. “Becky sent down a stack of books for you to read. Frank and Billie call about six times a day to inquire after you, and Madame Ormond has offered to come and sing for you.”

“Jean, look at me,” said Kit suddenly. “Will you tell me something, honest and true?”

“I think Mom’s calling.” Jean’s voice was rather hurried, as she started for the door.

“No, she isn’t any such thing. I want to know if you and Ralph are engaged. I don’t see why you should try to keep it a secret when everybody thinks you are anyway. And a wedding in the family would be so exciting.”

“Well, all right, yes,” she conceded. “Ralph’s giving me a ring before he leaves. We were going to keep it a surprise until then. We’re not getting married for a long time yet, so don’t start getting excited now.” With that she turned and hurried downstairs.

Kit stared out of the window, rather resentfully. She would be seventeen in November, and Jean was past nineteen. Nineteen loomed ahead of her as a year of discretion, a time when you naturally came into your heritage of mature reason and common sense. The Dean, she remembered, had once remarked that the human brain did not reach its full development until eighteen, and how at the time she resented it, feeling absolutely sure at sixteen there was nothing under the sun she could not understand fully.

But the tumble in the river and peril to her life had left her completely stranded on the unknown shore of indecision. Evidently it was just what Billie had called it, a fool stunt for her to try and row up that river alone. Kit had always gone rather jauntily along doing as she thought best with an unshakable confidence that nothing could happen to her.

Another thing, she had a very uncomfortable sensation, for her enemy had heaped coals of fire on her head and returned good for evil in such an overwhelming measure that she never could repay him. Twenty-four hours had made an enormous difference in her outlook on life.

The afternoon of the third day she was allowed to sit down on the porch. Doris and Jean hovered over her quite as if she was made of glass, and nearly all the cabin colonists visited her in relays. Billie came up last of all, but Frank did not appear.

“He’s gone off up in the hills,” Billie told her, “chasing some kind of a new moth. He said to tell you he would be back to see you later this afternoon. You’d be awfully dead by now, Kit, if he hadn’t happened to see you go down, because I was in the cabin and didn’t know anything about it. But it was just like him to dash after you and pull you out.”

Kit leaned her chin reflectively on her hand. “Heroes are such uncomfortable people in everyday life, Bill,” she said. “Everybody, even Dad and Mom, keep telling me how everlastingly grateful I must be to him for saving my life. I don’t see what I can do except thank him, and I’ve done that.”

“Treat him decently,” Billie suggested, “even if you don’t like him. Hide it.”

“Oh, I like him well enough,” Kit answered, “only he’s never seemed like Buzzy, and Ralph, and you. I guess I’ve always resented everyone thinking he was so wonderful. It was as though he had had a sort of sweet revenge on me for taking him for a berry thief.”

True to his word, Frank came down to see Kit just before dinner with some startling news.

“I’ll be leaving for Europe in another month, Kit. I just received a letter granting me a fellowship to go over there to examine European species of insects. If you’ll be real good, Kit, and never call me a berry thief again, I’ll write to you.”

He was only joking, but there was no answering glint of humor in Kit’s eyes as she said, “I’ll never, never even think of you as a berry thief again, Frank. I didn’t know you were planning to go away off over there, and I’m willing now to say I am sorry for the first day, and Tommy locking you up, and Mr. Hicks coming to arrest you.”

“I do believe you’re trying to forgive me, Kit,” Frank said teasingly. “Is this a truce, or a lasting peace? You see, I want to know for sure, because I haven’t any sisters, or mother, or anyone who cares a rap whether I go or stay, and you’re the first person I’ve even told.”

“It’s peace,” Kit answered, firmly.

Frank was very busy pulling a small box out of his pocket. In it was a silver bracelet on which was engraved a tree. “Keep this so you won’t forget me. It’s an Indian bracelet I brought from New Mexico, and the tree is alive and growing. It isn’t a sunken snag.”

Kit was obviously very pleased and tried to thank him for it but she stopped as Ralph and Jean came slowly up the drive together.

Ralph came up the porch steps and sat down beside her. “Jean told me you guessed our surprise. How do you like your new brother, Kit?”

“I approve,” answered Kit, solemnly. “You know I’ve always liked you, Ralph. Are you going to let her keep on painting?”

“She can do anything she likes,” Ralph promised. “And if she can find any more beautiful scenery than we have in Saskatchewan and through Northwest Canada, she’ll have to show it to me.”

Jean smiled happily but said nothing. She was looking out at the hills but what she really saw was a ranch in Saskatoon.

Transcriber’s Note:

Punctuation has been standardised.

Falcon Books preliminary page Ralph MacRae came along _changed to_ Ralph McRae came along

In the Contents The Suprise _changed to_ The Surprise

Page 72 wasn’t anything in itat _changed to_ wasn’t anything in it at

Page 117 all abou tthat _changed to_ all about that