Part 6

“Nothing special,” answered Tommy dryly, “maybe he was tired of staying here and working all the time.”

“You can’t expect a little kid only nine to work very hard, can you?”

“No--o. But he’s got to do something. He keeps asking me when somebody’s going down to Nantic. Looks suspicious to me!”

“Nantic? Do you suppose--” Jean stopped short. Tommy failed to notice her hesitancy, but went on outdoors. Perhaps the boy was wondering if he could get any trace of his father down at Nantic, she thought. There was a great deal of her mother’s nature in Jean’s sympathy and swift, sure understanding of another’s need. She kept an eye out for Jack all day, but the afternoon passed and supper was on the table without any sign of their Christmas waif. And finally, when Ralph came in from the barn with Tommy, he said he was pretty sure Jack had run away.

“Do you think it’s because he didn’t want to stay with us while Mother was away?” asked Doris.

“No, I don’t,” Tommy put in. “I think he’s just born restless and he had to take to the road when the call came to him.”

But Jean felt the responsibility of Jack’s loss, and set a lamp burning all night in the living room window as a sign to light his way back home. It was such a long walk down to Nantic, and when he got there, Mr. Briggs would be sure to see him, and make trouble for him. And perhaps he had just wandered out into the hills on a regular hike and had gotten lost.

But neither the next day, nor the day after, did any news come to them of Jack. Mr. Briggs was sure he hadn’t been around the station or the freight trains. Saturday Kit and Doris drove around through the wood roads, looking for some sign of him, and Jean telephoned to all the points she could think of, giving a description of him, and asking them to send the wanderer back if they found him. But the days passed, and it looked as if Jack had really gone.

One afternoon Jean and Ralph were sitting on the back steps when Buzzy and Kit hailed them from the hill. Kit was wearing a pair of slacks and a red blouse hanging outside of them. On her head she had jammed one of Tommy’s caps, and on the side she had stuck a quail’s feather.

“Hi,” called Kit, “we’ve been for a hike, clear over to the village. Mother phoned she needed some things from the drugstore, so we thought we’d walk over and get them. Billie’s just the same. He doesn’t know a soul, and all he talks about is making his math exams. I think it’s perfectly shameful to take a boy like that who loves reading and nature and natural things, and grind him down to regular stuff.”

She flopped down on the grass in front of them with Buzzy at her side. “I love a good long hike,” Kit went on. “Especially when I feel bothered or indignant. We’ve kept up the hiking club ever since the roads opened up, Jean. It’s more fun than anything out here. I never realized there was so much to know about just woods and fields until Sally taught me where to hunt for things. Do you like to hike, Ralph?”

“I don’t know. Not too long. I think I’d rather ride.”

“Me, too,” Doris said flatly. She had been working in the garden and had come up when she heard Kit and Buzzy’s voices. “I don’t see a bit of fun dragging around like Kit does, through the woods and over swamps, climbing hills, and always wanting to get to the top of the next one.”

“Oh, but I love to,” Kit replied. “Maybe I’ll be a mountain climber yet. Kids, you don’t grasp that there is something strange and interesting in my own special temperament. The longing to attain, the--the insatiable desire to seize adventure and follow her fleeing footsteps, the longing to tap the stars on their foreheads and let them know I’m here.”

Ralph laughed at her. “Well, even if I don’t share such desires with you, Kit, how about all of us going for a picnic one of these days. It seems to me that the ground isn’t too wet for one, and it would do us all good to stop worrying about Billie since there is nothing we can do to hasten his recovery. Do you agree, Buzzy?”

“That’s a swell idea, Ralph,” he replied, chewing on a blade of grass. “Why not make it tomorrow. I’ll ask Mom to pack us up some food.”

“No, leave that to us, Buzzy,” Jean interrupted. “We’ve got some steaks in the house that are just asking to be broiled outdoors over a charcoal fire. With those and some fruit and coffee, we should have enough. Let’s plan to leave here around five and make an evening of it.”

“What good times a large family can have,” Ralph said as he slipped his arm through Jean’s on a walk through the garden later. “Sometimes I wish I had been lucky enough to have had brothers and sisters. You feel so odd when you are all the family yourself.”

The next evening Kit, Buzzy, Jean, and Ralph hiked down the river to a small beach that seemed to all of them ideal for a picnic. It was Buzzy who had suggested the spot. He said he and the other boys used to go there a lot in the summer to fish and swim. While the boys built the fire, Kit and Jean walked on down the river a little way.

Not far off, the girls found some violets and picked some to take home. Looking across the river, Jean saw an old house nestled among the trees. “Who lives there, do you know, Kit? I never saw it before.”

“It’s Cynthy Allen’s place. People say she’s queer, but I don’t think so. She’s real old, over seventy. But she thinks she is only about seventeen, and she’s always doing flighty things. She’s lived out in the woods ever since she ran away from her family years ago. Once she started to make doughnuts and they found her hanging them on nails all over the kitchen. So people have been afraid of her ever since. Isn’t that silly?”

“Let’s go over to see her some day. Want to?”

“Sure. I’ll bet she gets lonely there, all by herself. Say, we’d better start back. That fire ought to be started by now.”

And it was. The boys were lying lazily on their backs in front of it when Kit and Jean came up. “Hey, you lazy guys, why aren’t you cooking the steaks instead of lying there doing nothing?” Kit called.

“We’re waiting for you to do it,” retorted Buzzy. “It’s women’s work to do the cooking. Besides, you have to wait until the wood’s burned down to coals before you can start broiling.”

“We’ve got news for you,” put in Ralph, “we did put in the potatoes to bake. So you see, you’ve jumped to conclusions as usual, Kit, and we weren’t as lazy as you thought.”

“I’m so hungry from that trek down the hillside, I could eat those steaks raw,” said Jean. “Shall I put them on now? When did you start the potatoes?”

“Quite a while ago. They should be done soon. Here, I’ll test them.” Ralph groaned as he struggled to his feet. “This is the life for me. Flat on my back beside a nice warm fire.”

Going back up the hill after the picnic was much harder, they found, than it had been to go down. “Why did you let me eat so much,” mourned Buzzy. “I’ll never make it to the top.”

“Come on, I’ll race you,” cried Kit, and pulling him along she began to run. Laughing and shouting, they soon were out of earshot and Jean and Ralph walked leisurely on behind.

“Nothing could make me run after a supper like that,” Ralph commented. The moon had risen and it shone down on Jean’s hair making it look silvery in the pale light. Ralph kissed her lightly. “You’re awfully sweet, Jeannie. Do you know that? I wish I could make you mine forever.”

“Maybe it could be arranged sometime,” Jean said lightly.

“Won’t you be serious?”

“No. I can’t be now. I’m too young. Besides they need me at home.”

Ralph felt slightly discouraged by her answer, but he knew she was right. True, she was young, but he was young, too. And he would wait for her until she was ready, he thought to himself. He could tell by the radiant look in her face that she, too, was in love.

Before she went upstairs to bed that night, Jean went out in the kitchen to make sure the back door was locked. She glanced out of the window and caught her breath. Dodging out of sight behind a pile of wood that was waiting to be split, was a familiar figure. Without waiting to call anyone, she slipped quietly around the house and there, sure enough, backed up against the woodshed, was Jack.

“Oh, Jack,” Jean exclaimed happily. “Come here this minute. Nobody’s going to hurt you, don’t you know that? Aren’t you hungry?”

Jack nodded mutely. He didn’t look one bit ashamed, just eager and glad to be back home. Jean put her arm around him, patting him as her mother would have done, and leading him to the kitchen.

After he had finished a huge sandwich, several glasses of milk, and a piece of cake, the truth finally came out. “I went hunting my dad down around Norwich,” he said.

“Did you find him?” cried Jean.

Jack nodded happily.

“Braced him up too. He says he won’t drink any more ’cause it’ll disgrace me. He’s gone to work up there in the lockshop steady. He wanted me to stay with him, but as soon as I got him braced up, I came back here. You didn’t get my letter, did you? I left it stuck in the clock.”

Stuck in the clock? Jean looked up at the old eight-day Seth Thomas on the kitchen shelf that Kit had bought from old Mr. Weaver as a joke. It was made of black walnut, with green vines painted on it and morning glories rambling in wreaths around its borders. She opened the little glass door and felt inside. Sure enough, tucked far back was Jack’s farewell letter, put carefully where nobody would ever think of finding it. It was written laboriously in pencil, and Jean read it to herself.

Dere folks,

I hered from a pedlar my dad is sick up in norwich. goodbye and thanks i am coming back sumday.

yurs with luv, Jack.

Jack looked at her with his old confident smile.

“See?” he said. “I told you I was coming back.”

“And you’re going to stay too,” replied Jean thankfully. “I’m so glad you weren’t lost forever, Jack. Now you’d better run along to bed.”

14. Billie’s Crisis

Billie failed to rally from the pneumonia as soon as everyone had hoped. Doris was restless and uneasy over her pal’s plight. She would saddle Princess and ride over on her twice a day to see what the bulletins were, and sometimes sit out in the garden watching the windows of the room where Becky kept vigil. She almost resented the joyous activity of the bees and birds in their spring delirium when she thought of Billie, lying there fighting pneumonia.

Jean never forgot the final night. She had a phone call from her mother about nine, to leave Mrs. Gorham in charge and come to her.

“I’d like you to be here, dear. It’s the crisis, and we can’t be sure what may happen. Billie’s in a heavy sleep now, and the old doctor says we can just wait. Becky is with him.”

Jean took off her coat when she arrived, and went in where old Dr. Gallup sat. It always seemed foolish to call him old, although he was over sixty. His hair was gray and straggled boyishly as some football hero’s, his eyes were brown and bright, and his smile something so much better than medicine that one just naturally revived at the sight of him, Becky said. He sat now by the table, looking out of the window, one hand tapping the edge, the other deep in his pocket. One could not have said what his thoughts were as he sat looking out into the shadowy spring night.

“Hello, Jeannie,” he said cheerily. “Going to keep me company, are you? Did you come up alone?”

“Kit drove me over. Doctor, Billie is all right, isn’t he?”

“We hope so,” answered the old doctor. “But what is it to be all right? If the boy’s race is run, it has been a good one, and he goes out fearlessly, and if not, then he is all right too, and we hope to hold him with us. But when this time comes and it’s the last sleep before dawn, there’s nothing to do but watch and wait.”

“But do you think--”

Jean hesitated. She could not help feeling he must know what the hope was.

“He’s got a fine fighting chance,” said the doctor. “Now, I’m going in with Mrs. Ellis, and you comfort the Judge and brace him up. He’s in the study there.”

It was dark in the study. Jean opened the door gently and looked in. The old Judge sat in his deep, old leather chair by the desk, and his head was bent forward. She did not say a word, but tiptoed over and knelt beside him, her cheek against his sleeve. And the Judge laid his arm around her shoulders in silence, patting her absent-mindedly. So they sat until out of the windows the garden took on a lighter aspect, and there came the faint twittering of birds wakening in their nests.

Jean, watching the beautiful miracle of the dawn, marveled. The dew lent a silvery radiance to every blade of grass, every leaf and twig. There was an unearthly, mystic beauty to the whole landscape and the garden.

And just then the old doctor put his head in the door and sang out cheerily, “It’s all right. Billie’s awake.”

Jean called Kit later to tell her the good news and Kit drove over shortly. “That’s a relief,” Kit exclaimed. “I hardly slept a wink all night, I was so worried. You don’t look as if you slept.”

“I didn’t and I’m practically dead on my feet. But I’m so glad that Billie is going to pull through.”

Now that Billie’s recovery was assured everybody’s spirits seemed to become lighter. After two weeks of almost daily showers there had come a spell of close warm weather that dried up the fields and woods, and left them, so Becky said, dry as tinder and twice as dangerous.

Kit and Doris were preparing the garden for planting.

“Oh, dear!” Kit leaned back against the side of the barn and looked lazily off at the widening valley before her. “I’m so afraid that Dad will get too interested in chicken raising and crops and soils and things, so that we’ll stay on here forever. Somehow I didn’t mind it half as much all through the winter, but now that spring is here, it’s just simply awful to have to pitch in and work from the rising of the sun until it goes down. I want to be a lady of leisure.”

Overhead the great fleecy, white clouds sailed up from the south in a squadron of splendor. A new family of bluebirds lately hatched was calling hungrily from a nest in the old cherry tree nearby, and being scolded lustily by a catbird for lack of patience. There was a delicate haze lingering still over the woods and distant fields. The new foliage was out, but hardly enough to make any difference in the landscape’s coloring.

“How’s Billie?” asked Doris suddenly. “I’ll be awfully glad when he’s out again.”

“They’ve got him on the porch bundled up like a mummy. He’s so topply that you can push him over with one finger and Becky treats him as if she had him wadded up in pink cotton. I think if they just stopped treating him like a half-sick person, and just let him do as he pleased he’d get well twice as fast.”

Doris had been gazing up at the sky dreamily. All at once she said, “What a funny cloud that is over there, Kit.”

It hung over a big patch of woods toward the village, a low motionless, pearl-colored cloud, very peculiar looking, and very suspicious, and the odd part about it was that it seemed balanced on a base of cloud, like a huge mushroom or a waterspout in shape.

“What on earth is that?” exclaimed Kit, springing to her feet. “That’s never a cloud, and it’s right over the old Ames place. Do you suppose they’re out burning brush with the woods so dry?”

“There’s nobody home today. Don’t you know it’s Saturday, and Astrid said they were all going to the auction at Woodchuck Hill?”

Kit did not wait to hear any more. She sped to the house like a young deer and, with eyes quite as startled, she burst into the kitchen and called up the stairs.

“Mother, do you see that smoke over the Ames’s woods?”

“Smoke,” echoed Mrs. Craig’s voice. “Why, no, dear, I haven’t noticed any. Wait a minute, and I’ll see.”

But Kit was by nature a joyous alarmist. She loved a new thrill, and in the daily monotony that smothered one in Elmhurst anything that promised an adventure came as a heaven-sent relief. She flew up the stairs, stopping to call to Jean who was in her room. Her father and mother were standing at the open window when she entered their room, and Mr. Craig had his field glasses.

“It is a fire, isn’t it, Dad?” Kit asked eagerly, and even as she spoke there came the long, shrill blast of alarm on the Peckham mill whistle. There was no fire department of any kind for fourteen miles around. Nothing seemed to unite the little outlying communities of the hill country so much as the fire peril, but on this Saturday it happened that nearly all the available men had leisurely jaunted over to the Woodchuck Hill auction. This was one of the characteristics of Elmhurst, shunting its daily tasks when any diversion offered.

“Oh, listen,” exclaimed Doris who had followed Kit from the barn. “There’s the alarm bell ringing up at the church, too. It must be a big one.”

Even as she spoke the telephone bell rang downstairs, while Tommy called from the front garden. “Awful big fire just broke out between here and Ames’s. I’m going over with the mill boys to help fight it.”

“Be careful, son,” called Mr. Craig.

“Can I go too, Tommy?” cried Jack eagerly. “I won’t be in the way, honest, I won’t.”

“Naw, you’d better stay here. You might get hurt and I won’t be able to take care of you. Besides you should be here to milk the cow in case I don’t get back on time.” Tommy started off up the road with a shovel over one shoulder and a heavy mop over the other. Jean was at the telephone. It was Judge Ellis calling.

“He’s worried about Becky, Mother,” Jean called up the stairs. “Cynthy Allen wanted her to come over to her place today to get some carpet rags, and Becky drove over there about an hour ago. He says her place lies right in the path of the fire. Mrs. Gorham has gone away for the day to the auction with Ben, and the Judge will have to stay with Billie. He’s terribly anxious.”

“Oh, Dad,” exclaimed Kit, “couldn’t I please, please, go over and stay with Billie, and let the Judge come up to the fire, if he wants to. I’m sure he’s just dying to. Not but what I’m sure Becky can take care of herself. May I? Oh, you dear. Tell him I’m coming, Jean.”

Jean had left the telephone and was putting on her coat. “Mother,” she asked, “do you mind if Doris and I just walk up the wood road a little way? We won’t go near the fighting line where the men are at all, and I’d love to see it. Besides I thought perhaps we might work our way around through that big back wood lot to Cynthy’s place and see if Becky is there. Then, we could drive back with them.”

“Why, yes, Jean, I think it’s safe for you both to go. Don’t you, Tom?”

Mr. Craig smiled at Jean’s flushed, excited face. It was so seldom that she lost her presence of mind and really became excited. “I don’t think it will hurt them a bit,” he said.

Doris grabbed her coat and the two girls started up the hill road for about three-quarters of a mile. The church bell over at the Plains kept ringing steadily. At the top of the hill they came to the old wood road that formed a short cut over to the old Ames place. Here where the trees met overhead in an arcade the road was heavy with black mud, and they had to keep to the side up near the old rock walls. As they advanced farther there came a sound of driving wheels, and all at once Hedda’s mother appeared in her car. She sat hunched over the wheel, a man’s old felt hat jammed down over her heavy, blonde hair, and an old overcoat with the collar upturned, thrown about her. Leaning forward with eager eyes, she seemed to be thoroughly enthusiastic over this new excitement in Elmhurst.

“Looks like it’s going to be some fire, girls,” she said as she stopped the car momentarily to speak to them. “I’m giving the alarm along the road.” And off she went.

“Isn’t that something?” declared Jean. “And to think that she runs a ninety-acre farm with the help of Hedda, thirteen years old, and two hired men. She gets right out into the fields with them and manages everything herself.”

A farm truck coming the opposite way held Mr. Rudemeir and his son August. An array of mops, axes, and shovels hung out over the rear of the truck. Mr. Rudemeir was smoking his clay pipe placidly, and merely waved one hand at the girls in salutation, but August called, “It has broken out on the other side of the road, farther down.”

“It must be going toward the Allan place, then,” said Jean anxiously. She hesitated. The smoke was thickening in the air, but they penetrated farther into the woods. Up on the hill to one side, she saw the Ames place, half obscured already by the blue haze. It lay directly in the path of the fire, unless the wind happened to change, and if it should change it would surely catch Doris and herself if they tried to reach Cynthy’s house down near the river bank. Still she felt that she must take the chance. There was an old road used by the lumber men, and she knew every step of the way.

“Come on,” she said to Doris. “I’m sure we can make it.”

They turned now from the main road into an old overgrown byway. Along its sides rambled ground pine, and wintergreen grew thickly in the shade of the old oaks. Jean took the lead, hurrying on ahead. When they came out on the river road, the little gray house was in sight, and sure enough Becky’s car was out in front.

Jean didn’t even stop to rap at the door. It stood wide open, and the girls went through the door into the kitchen. It was empty.

“Becky,” called Jean loudly. “Becky, are you here?”

From somewhere upstairs there came an answer.

“For pity’s sakes, child!” exclaimed Becky, appearing at the top of the stairs with her arms full of carpet rags. “What are you doing down here? Cynthy and I are just sorting out some things she wanted to take over to my place.”

“Haven’t you seen the smoke? All the woods are on fire up around the Ames place. The Judge was worried, and telephoned for us to warn you.”

“Land!” laughed Mrs. Ellis. “Won’t he ever learn that I’m big enough and old enough to take care of myself. I never saw an Elmhurst fire yet that put me in any danger.”

She stepped out of the doorway, pushed her glasses up on her forehead and sniffed the air.

“’Tis kind of smoky, ain’t it,” she said. “And the wind’s beginning to shift.” She looked up over the rise of the hill in front of the house. Above it poured great belching masses of lurid smoke. Even as she looked, the huge winglike mass veered and swayed in the sky like vast shapes of strange animals. Jean caught her breath as she gazed.

Becky started out to the car with Doris. “Jean, you go and get Cynthy quick as you can!” she called.

Jean ran to the house and met Cynthy groping her way nervously downstairs. She was old and frail and her scrawny hands clutching the banister were knotted and the veins were large.

“What on earth is it?” she faltered. “Land, I ain’t had such a set-to with my heart in years. Is the fire coming this way? Where’s Becky?”

“She says for you to come right away. Please, please hurry up, Miss Allan.”

But Cynthy sat down in a forlorn heap on the step, rocking her arms, and crying, piteously.

“Oh, I never, never can leave them, my poor, precious darlings. Can’t you get them for me? There’s General Washington and Ethan Allen, Betsey Ross and Pocahontas, and there’s three new kittens in my yarn basket in the old garret over the ell.”

Jean surmised that she meant her pet cats, dearer to her probably than any human being in the world. Supporting her gently, she got her out of the house, promising her she would find the cats. For the next five minutes, just at the most crucial moment, she hunted for the cats, and finally succeeded in coaxing all of them into meal bags. Every scurrying breeze brought down fluttering wisps of half-burned leaves from the burning woods. The shouts of the men could be plainly heard calling to each other as they worked to keep the fire back from the valuable timber along the river front.