Part 2
The writing was very round and plain. It seemed marvelous to the Rose that he could do it already. He would reach the higher life sooner than she had thought. She would leave out her “between” toddies to-morrow.
A week later brought still another letter. Already there was improvement.
DEAR ROSE,—Thare are no hills here. I luk at my pic-cher of Sams grav ev-ry day. I am lern-ing fig-grin, they call it num-ber work. Yours, P. NUTT.
After that, letters came almost every week, and became the chief life interest of the lonely woman above the clearing. She pinned them side by side to the wall of her cabin, that she might read them without the wear of handling. She learned each by heart as it came, but this in no way destroyed the joy of after-perusal. She compared the writing, too, and his rapid improvement gratified her and spurred her to vigorous new efforts of her own.
I may say here that the boy’s progress gratified Miss Schofield as well. Alert, eager, sensitive to new impressions, Peanut in two months had overtaken many of his own age. Some he had passed altogether. In a November letter, he wrote:
“There is a rale-road here that runs up in the air, and rale-roads on the groun that go all the time, day an nite. I want to see you and the bears and Sams grave. And I want to be in the woods where there are no rale-roads.”
The evident homesickness of this letter touched the Rose deeply. The “rale-road in the air” made her marvel.
The next letter contained further information.
“Wim-men here do not smoak. And they do not say dam. I mean wim-men like Miss Schofield.”
The Rose had never been given to profanity. It had been a luxury, to be indulged in on rare occasions. She could forego it easily. Her pipe would be a harder matter. Harder even than her toddy—yet, she must do it—she would begin at once. She resolved that nothing should stand between her and a share in that higher life for which Peanut was destined.
Later in November there came a letter in which he said:
“The people here have white stones at their graves in-sted of boards. They call them marble. They put their names on them, and when they was born and was kild, or died. They are not alwis kild here. I wish Sam had a white mar-ble stone with his true name on it. We could keep the other too. They have one at each end. When I come back I will by one.”
The Rose toiled earlier and later than before. She no longer had time for solitaire. She also grew thinner, and a new look had come into her face. The possibility of former beauty could be more easily accorded. A miner from the camp came one day and wanted to marry her. Some trace of a far-off former life of coquetry made her laugh and say to him:
“You’re too late. I’ve a sweetheart already. He’s coming in a buggy, with fine clothes on, and a high hat.”
The miner went back to camp and reported that the Rose had caught a speculator, who would take her to Ogden in the spring.
Autumn became winter. The bears went to sleep in their cave, and came no more to the cabin. Blazer Sam’s grave was lost in folds of white, and at times the lone woman above the clearing was shut in for days. But though alone, she was no longer lonely. With work and the letters upon the wall her days had become as dream-days, her nights brief periods of untroubled sleep. It was only when the passes were blocked and detained the stage with Peanut’s letter that she minded the storm. At one time the delay was long. Then she received two, and was proportionately gratified. In the longer of these he wrote:
“Miss Schofield gives shose. She has a lant-ern that makes pic-tures on a big sheet. They are seens of where she goes. Last night she shode the mines and told about them. Then she shode Sams grave with me a-sleep on it, and it was as big as it is there. She came and took my hand and led me up in front of the peo-ple and told them it was the grave of the cel-ib-ra-ted Sam Hopkins, and that he had been called Blazer Sam, and how she found me asleep on his grave, and how he used to make me whissels and go with me over the mount-ins. And how he must have had a good hart to care so much for a lit-tle boy. And when I saw the picture so big and plain and heard how much she liked Sam too, I had to cry, and Miss Schofield says that then all the peo-ple cried, and that she must not do it again. If Miss Schofield was not so good I would come back. I think about the bears up in their cave a-sleep, and how the snow is on Sams grave, and how lonesome you must be there alone. She is almost as good as Sam, and I know now that Sam belonged to the hire life. I guess he lerned it when he was away so much.”
It is doubtful if Miss Schofield saw all the letters which Peanut wrote to the Rose. I have reason to believe that she saw none of them after the first, and that one only to be sure that it was legible and properly addressed. She meant to be liberal, and was so, according to her lights. Her favorite word was “spontaneity” and she was eager to allow the boy his own privacy and expression—any form of freedom, indeed, that did not conflict with the lives of others or with his spiritual development.
Concerning his former guardian and beloved hero, she carefully avoided any suggestion that would tend to destroy a beautiful illusion of childhood. In the boy’s dream-life Sam had been all that he appeared, and there must be no rude awakening. Little by little, as we learn the truth about Santa Claus and fairies, and never wholly lose faith in them, so in due course and almost imperceptibly would come enlightenment and a truer understanding.
But this attitude did not prevent Miss Schofield from dilating upon the lurid history of Blazer Sam in her entertainment, as usually given. Peanut was absent at such times, and the audience unknown to him. It was one of her choicest bits, and the grim humor of it was only heightened by the touch of pathos supplied by the picture of the grave with the sleeping figure of Peanut, the story of his devotion to the outlaw, and his present relation to herself. As I have said, Miss Schofield was, before all, the artist.
Nor would it be fair, I think, to attach blame to Miss Schofield for what the super-sensitive reader might regard as a certain disloyalty to Peanut. Certainly it was proper to leave his faith in Sam’s goodness undisturbed, at least through the boy’s trusting childhood; while it was no less justifiable to make such use of the facts as would best serve their artistic presentation. The ends of art have justified conditions far more questionable than these, and her error, if there was an error, would seem to have been an earlier matter—committed on that August day when, following a sudden half-romantic, half-philanthropic impulse, she was prompted to transplant, to a crowded and noisy environment, a life so essentially a thing of the open sky and the wide freedom of the hills. But perhaps there are no mistakes in this world. A good many otherwise reasonable persons hold by this doctrine.
V
MISS Schofield had been careful to see that Peanut was in bed and asleep on that night in June when the schools closed and she was giving a cozy supper to her fellow-teachers. Ever since the breaking of the buds in the park the boy had been restless, and she did not wish him to be disturbed by the voices and merriment of her company. Then, too, a little private exhibition of some of her choicest “in-gatherings” would follow, and it would not do for her group of special friends to be deprived of any feature of her collection. They would be quite sure to want the outlaw’s grave and her picturesque narrative accompaniment.
She bent over the sleeping boy and listened to his heavy breathing. What a joy and comfort he was to her! She had felt his hunger for the open air and the breath of the mountains. Yet how faithful he had been to his books—how little he had mingled with the sports of other children! He was of different fiber. And what progress he had made! Some day the world would honor and claim him. Now he was all hers—her captive wood-creature—her dreamer, her poet! She bent over and lightly kissed his hair. Sometimes she had strained him to her bosom. She longed to do so now, but a moment later was stepping silently to the door, then as silently she closed it and drew the heavy curtain without.
Miss Schofield was not mistaken in the expectations of her guests. Like their pupils, the merry teachers rejoiced in a newly acquired freedom and wished to be amused. In the darkened parlor they forgot the year’s restraints and labors and gave themselves up to luxury of enjoyment.
As the gem of the programme, the Blazer’s grave was held for the last. When at length it was thrown upon the sheet there was a chorus of approval and a round of applause. And Cynthia Schofield rose to the occasion. She had never been so full of joy in the present, so satisfied with what life had brought to her in the past, so pleased with the outlook ahead. The picture on the screen was a part of these happy conditions, her audience inspiring. Her friends expected the best, and they should have it. With what subtle art she led up to the incident: The stopping of the stage, the driver pointing up the hillside with his whip. Then the scaling of the steep ascent, the pausing here and there to look down upon the scene of the outlaw’s former crimes, which she recalled, as she had heard them, in the vernacular of the hills. Next, her entrance to the little clearing about the grave—the black stumps, the flowers—and Peanut on the grave, asleep. And her interview with Peanut! She made it a masterpiece! She even may have colored it a little—the ends of art would justify that, too. The imitation of Peanut’s voice, and his monotonous reading of the profane and half-comprehended epitaph—she gave them with a fidelity that startled even herself. Her friends became hysterical. At one moment sobbing and wiping their eyes, at the next laughing, the tears still running down their cheeks. And then the picture she drew of the Rose of Texas, and of Peanut when he sat waiting for her to take him away. “Worthy of Dickens!” they cried out to her. “You must write it, Miss Schofield! You must certainly write it!”
But Miss Schofield will never write that scene, and those of us who listened that night in June heard not only its greatest presentation, but its last. A moment later the lights went up, and she turned for congratulations. Then she saw him. He stood just inside the door, and his face was like death.
The prolonged merriment had found its way through the heavy curtain and closed door. Unable to sleep, he had dressed and come out to find the cause. He had never been forbidden any part of the house, and at the entrance of the darkened parlor had listened in silence to the entertainment that ended with ridicule and defamation of his hero, with jeers of laughter for himself and Rose. Once more he had met with deception—this time in one whom he had trusted and loved, even as he had loved and trusted Sam—in her, of all others, who had promised to lead him to the higher and better life.
As white and death-like as himself, Cynthia Schofield led him back to his bed. There she tried to speak to him.
Peanut turned his face to the wall.
VI
THE letter which the postmaster handed to the Rose of Texas seemed heavier than usual. The Rose hugged it all the way up the mountain. Then out on the doorstep, where he had said good-by, she opened and read it. The first sentence made her heart leap:
DEAR ROSE,—I am coming back. I will start before morning. If I go west and keep on every day, some day I will get there. Miss Schofield told me once that it was fifteen hundred miles, so if I can walk fifteen miles a day it will take me a hundred days to get to the cabin and Sam’s grave. The money you gave me is not enough to come on the cars. I will spend it for things to eat. At ten cents a day it will last till I get home. Perhaps some days I won’t need to spend so much. I will wear the clothes you made me and my own hat and shoes. I have them all on now, and the lether sack with Sam’s ambertipe and the whissel, and the money. I would like to take the picture of the grave, but I shall leave it on the wall.
I wrote you how Miss Schofield showed the picture of the grave and told about Sam’s good heart. When I am not there she tells how he had a cruel heart and was only good to me. And it is not true, and when she told how she met me at Sam’s grave she told other things that were not true, and that did not happen at all. She laughs at Sam and the grave and at you and me. And she makes other people laugh. That is all she cares for. I thaut she was like Sam, but she is not and I could not be good here either, where there are so many bad people and nothing is clean. The snow is so dirty here they take it right away and you can never hear the wind and rain. They have trees in the park and animals and birds in cages, but they make me cry because they are so homesick, like me. I want to come back to the hills where there is just you and the bears and Sam’s grave. If I start to-night and it takes a hundred days it will be more than a year since I went away. I will never leave you any more. I am obliged to Miss Schofield for sending me to school, but I cannot stay here now. I was yours before I was hers, and I will be yours again. Perhaps I can get some books and study lessons there with you and learn to be a naturallist, when I grow up, which means to live in the woods and know about the birds and animals, and I will dig gold out of the mines for us and I will put a white stone at Sam’s grave so we can see it from every-where.
Now I am going to start. I am going to slip down-stairs and I will be out in the country before morning. Sam taut me how to hide, and how to keep in one direction. Perhaps I will write to you on the way, but I must not buy many stamps or paper. Anyway I will be coming all the time, and some day I will be there the same as ever.
Yours,
PEANUT.
The Rose of Texas was a bundle of conflicting emotions by the time she reached the end of this letter. But out of it all came one dominant joy. Peanut was coming back to her—he was already on the way. Whatever resentment she may have felt toward Miss Schofield was swallowed up in this great fact.
As to Peanut’s ability to make the long journey, she did not question it—not yet. She knew, of course, that the way was long, and would be hard in places. How long or how hard, neither she nor any one could know. She realized much more fully Peanut’s subtle knowledge of outdoor life, his persistence, and the endurance of his wiry little frame. She forgot that a winter of comparative inaction and close mental application might have told on his physical powers. It would be a weary journey, but with the long days of summer-time at hand he would not fail, and September would bring him back to her.
She would begin preparing for him at once. She would make up one of the new dresses, and leave off her second toddy to-morrow. Then there was another purpose, which must be accomplished now, sooner than she had expected. Her boy was coming back to her—not as she had once dreamed, in a buggy, and wearing a tall silk hat—but, better still, the boy who had gone away. He would find her ready to receive him.
But one thing troubled the Rose—the amount of Peanut’s resources. With the aid of her fragmentary arithmetic she verified his calculation that if a little boy traveled fifteen miles a day, and traveled a hundred days, he would travel fifteen hundred miles; also, if the same little boy had ten dollars, and spent ten cents of it every day, he would have enough to last him through the journey. Only, she wished that he might have more than ten cents a day. It seemed to her so little—she wondered what he would buy with it. Crackers, mostly, she thought, and cheese. The Rose thought of the eatables kept at the camp store, and sighed as she remembered how little of them could be had for ten cents. If she only knew where to send him more money. But she remembered hearing that things were cheaper beyond the mountains, and this thought consoled her.
As the days passed, her confidence in Peanut’s ability to make the long trip began to wane. Chicago lay far to the eastward, across rivers and beyond mountains. She reasoned that there must be a road and bridges between, but in her imagination she began to see the dusty little figure toiling along in the sun, overcome by thirst and heat, where the prairies were wide, and the houses far apart. At times she pictured him as being run down by those terrible railroad trains, as waylaid and robbed of his little store of money and left by the roadside to die. Almost clairvoyantly, at night, she saw him asleep in fence-corners, in haystacks, under bushes and ledges of rock—anywhere that afforded shelter to the friendless little wayfarer toiling back to his beloved hills. When the storm raged down the mountains she would open the door and, looking out into the mystery of blackness, fancy she heard his thin voice calling to her above the roar of the torrent and the wail of the tree-tops. However busy her days, they no longer seemed brief, her nights were no longer untroubled. She knew that he was still far away beyond the mountains, yet twenty times a day she hastened to the door to look and listen, while at night wild dreams brought her bolt upright to answer to his call.
When two weeks had passed the stage one day brought her two letters. One of them from Miss Schofield—written from a sense of duty, we may believe—told, briefly and guardedly, of the strange disappearance of Peanut. The writer assured the Rose that there was no cause for uneasiness, that every effort was being made to find the missing boy and that he was certain to be discovered in a brief time. The Rose smiled grimly as she read this epistle, for the other one had been from Peanut—just a line on a bit of wrapping-paper, to tell her that in seven days he had reached Iowa, which was farther than he had expected to be at that time. People had asked him to ride, sometimes, on their wagons. There were nearly always good places to sleep—mostly in the woods, where he had the birds and squirrels for company. He was well, and happier than he had been for a year.
The Rose did not know where Iowa was. When she asked the postmaster he showed it to her on the map. Then she did not know any better, but she was comforted. Peanut wrote again when he reached Nebraska, but that was nearly three weeks later, and the Rose had become almost desperate. Now she was made briefly happy by the statement that he was still well, and had money, and that he had found there were only two more states to cross, Nebraska and Wyoming, and then a little more and he would be home.
To the Rose a state was a state. That the distance yet to be traveled was double that already covered, and many times more difficult, did not occur to her. But when two weeks more had passed, and yet two more, and brought no further word from the little wayfarer, her heart grew very heavy again, and she haunted the camp post-office with each arrival of the stage.
And still another two weeks went by, and yet he did not come, and the days brought her no word. She did not know that the number of crackers obtained by Peanut for five cents had been reduced in his westward march from ten to eight, from eight to six, and that the bit of cheese received in exchange for the other five cents had grown so small that the little boy, alarmed, had feared to spend even the money necessary for another letter. The Rose did not know these things, and even had she known, it would hardly have lessened her anxiety.
She spent most of her time now in watching for him. The hundred days had by no means expired, but his letters had led her to hope that he had gained time and would be there sooner than he had calculated. According to her count, if a little boy could cross two states in four weeks, he could cross four states and something over in about nine weeks, and now twelve weeks had gone by and he had not come. The fact that he no longer wrote encouraged her to believe that at any moment he might walk in upon her.
But now came an added anxiety. A letter, indeed, not from Peanut, but a broken-hearted confession from Cynthia Schofield, who, good woman that she was, acknowledged everything, begging the Rose to forgive her, and to write if she knew aught of their little lad.
“It was all so strange and unsuited to him here,” she wrote. “I can see, now, how he belonged only there in those beautiful hills and how his life there would mean more to him, and to others, too, I believe, than here in the sordid clatter and struggle and deception that he could not endure—” Then, in closing, she added: “Sometimes I think he must have started home, and I am having notices posted and published all along the way, so that somebody may find him and keep him safely until I come. Poor little fellow! Where is he, and what is he doing to-night, out all alone in this great wicked waste of a world?”
The Rose comprehended little more than the grief of this letter, and she pitied Miss Schofield, as one woman may pity another when there is but one heart’s desire for both; but her sympathy vanished in the fear that Miss Schofield’s agents with their wide knowledge and ample resources would find the boy after all and that to her, the Rose, he would now be lost forever.
She was in a frenzy of suspense. A hundred times she would have closed the cabin and gone to meet him, but feared she might pass him by a different way, and so wander on and on helplessly. Her anxiety at last overcame her secretiveness, and she one day partially unburdened herself to the postmaster, who informed her that for at least fifty miles to the eastward there was but one road. This was in September, more than three months from the night that Peanut had left Miss Schofield’s apartment in Chicago. The Rose could wait no longer. She set out to meet him the same afternoon.
She put on one of her new plain gowns, and a new, though not altogether plain bonnet which the storekeeper had ordered for her from Ogden. She started to put on her new shoes, too, but, remembering that she might have far to walk, held to the old ones. Then she packed a basket with eatables—good things such as Peanut had always liked. He would be tired of the things he could buy with his ten cents a day along the road. Tired? dear heart! As if a little boy trudging over range after range of lofty mountains, only to find range after range of still loftier ones beyond, could be tired of any kind of food! The Rose imagined how he would welcome the freshly cooked bread, and the coffee which she would make in the little pail. She felt much less unstrung now that she was really going to meet him, and more nearly happy than she had been for weeks. Only, she must hurry, and get as far as possible before nightfall. Over her arm she threw a thick army blanket, for sleeping on the ground.
It was well on toward two o’clock when she started. The path led by Sam’s grave, and she paused an instant to regard the place with a new pride. Then she pressed on—there would be time enough for this afterward.