The Carter Girls

The tent was tidy and sweet when George Wright entered to see how his patient fared. Gwen had spread the steamer rugs over the cots and had even placed a bunch of honeysuckle on the little table at Helen’s bedside. She had had to purloin the table from Miss Somerville’s cabin, but that lady was willing to give up more than a table for her favorite young cousin.

Helen blushed a little when the young man asked her if she had had any bad dreams. The fact was she had had very pleasant dreams in which he had largely figured. She had dreamed that Josephus had turned into Pegasus and that, as she flew along on his shapely back, she had met Dr. Wright floating by on a white cloud and he had wanted to feel her pulse. She had put out her hand and as he felt her pulse, he had jumped from the white cloud square onto the back of Pegasus, and together they rode through the air, the winged horse looking kindly on them with much the benevolent expression of Josephus.

“No, my dreams were pleasant,” she smiled.

Dr. Wright certainly took a long time to feel any one’s pulse, but the truth was that he had forgotten to count, so taken up he was with the fact that pale blue was quite as becoming to Helen as gray with a dash of scarlet. I think if he had felt his own pulse, he would have been astonished at how far from normal his heart beats were at that moment.

“I have brought you the wallet from the Devil’s Gorge. Here it is for you to open!”

“Oh, Dr. Wright! Is that where you were going when Gwen saw you so early this morning?”

“Yes!”

“I think you are very good to take that tramp for Gwen,” she said, taking the bulky wallet in her hand.

“I didn’t take it for Gwen, but for you.” Gwen had left the tent for a moment.

“But you would have done it for Gwen, I am sure.”

“Yes, of course, but perhaps not on an empty stomach,” laughed the doctor. “But why don’t you open the pocketbook?”

“Because it is Gwen’s! She must be the one to open it.”

“But you are not sure it is hers. I brought it for you to have the pleasure of opening it.”

“Yes, I am sure it is hers, and I’d take more pleasure in seeing her open it than doing it myself.”

Just then Gwen returned with a pitcher of fresh water. Helen held up the wallet and said:

“Did you ever see this before?”

Gwen turned pale and her steady little hands, that could usually carry a brimming cup of coffee safely to its destination without once slopping over, shook so that she spilled the water from the pitcher.

“Oh, Miss Helen! Where did you find it?”

“Never mind now where we found it! You open it and see if you can identify it,” said Helen kindly. She realized that Gwen was to have excitement enough in opening this wallet of her father’s, lost as it had been for five years, without having to picture, as she would surely do, his death, the fall from the cliff and this pocketbook slipping from his coat and lodging in the tree.

The wallet was evidently an expensive one: alligator skin lined with Russian leather. The silver clasp was rusty and Gwen’s trembling hands could hardly force the sliding catch, but Helen motioned for Dr. Wright not to assist her. She felt, somehow, that the girl would rather do it all herself. They were silent while the little English girl fumbled the lock and finally sprung it. The wallet was stuffed full of papers and letters. In one compartment was some silver, several gold pieces and some English coins. The papers were yellow with age, but so stout was the alligator skin that the many rains that must have fallen during the five years the wallet had been wedged in that scrub oak’s branches, had not wet them nor defaced them.

“Be very careful, Gwen, there may be all kinds of precious documents in there,” exclaimed Helen, as some of the papers floated to the floor of the tent and some fluttered to her own cot.

Gwen had sunk to the floor in a little heap and was sobbing.

“I can remember so well how my father used to open up this pocketbook and pore over these letters. I was never allowed to touch it. He kept his money in it and receipts and things.”

“Look, here is a receipt for one thousand dollars in cash payment for land!” exclaimed Helen, as a yellow slip of paper fell on her coverlet. The paper was written in a bold black hand so that any one might read it:

Received payment from St. John Brownell for 100 acres of land at Greendale, Albemarle County, Va. $1,000 in cash.

(Signed) Abner Dean.

The signature was in violet ink and very shaky. Helen recognized it as old Dean’s writing, as when he sent up any produce to the camp from his store at Greendale, it had been her duty to go over the bill which invariably accompanied the goods.

“Why, Gwen, Gwen! That old wretch has cheated you out of your land! Do you know, he handed over to Father, for money he owed him, land that did not belong to him, and this minute our camp is built on your property?” Helen was very much excited, and as for Gwen, – she was pale and trembling. “I’d like to get up out of this bed and go horse-whip him – ”

“Please, can I do it for you?” from the doctor. “But wouldn’t it be better to get a lawyer to take the matter up and have the thing legally adjusted?”

“We-e-ll, ye-s! Maybe – But I’d certainly like to make that old man suffer some. Wouldn’t you, Gwen?” But the little English girl was so busy sorting the papers that had fallen from her father’s old wallet that she did not hear.

“What is that in the back of the pocketbook where the other fastening is?” asked the doctor.

“Money and more money! Why, Gwen, look at the bills!”

Helen was right. In a neat and orderly manner in yet another closed compartment of the wallet were placed greenbacks and yellowbacks of high denominations. The girls feverishly counted out $1,500.

“No wonder it was so fat! We had better not say anything about having all this money in camp. It ought to be in the bank, Gwen, as it might be stolen from you. Dr. Wright will deposit it for you in Richmond and you can draw on it as you need.”

Gwen handed over the bills to the young man without a moment’s delay.

“Wait now, let’s count it again to make sure, and I will give you a receipt for the amount.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary, is it, Miss Helen?”

“Certainly not!” And then Helen blushed to think how short a time had elapsed since she had expressed all kinds of doubts about the honesty of this man, because, forsooth, he had been given power of attorney over a paltry $83.59! Here she was advising this little mountain waif to hand over to Dr. Wright what seemed to them a large fortune without even a receipt.

George Wright smiled and quietly wrote a receipt for the amount.

“It would be safer to let me carry this money for you because it might get out that you have it, and it would be easier to get it from you than me. I will deposit it at the Virginia Trust Co. in Richmond, and will send you the bank book immediately. You can invest it or not as you see fit. It would bring in forty-five dollars a year if you put it in the savings bank.”

“Oh, that would be enough for me to go to school on and even be a boarder at school! But I want some of it to buy a new mule for Aunt Mandy. Josephus is so old and feeble.”

“You had better not tell Josh you think so,” laughed the doctor. “But will you be contented, child, just to stay on in the mountains for the rest of your life?”

“This is the only home I have. Where else can I go?”

“You can go wherever we are,” cried Helen impulsively, and Dr. Wright’s admiration for her was increased if possible.

“Oh, Miss Helen, you are so good! But Aunt Mandy needs me and maybe if I stay here I can make Josh wash, even in the winter time.”

“Well, maybe you can,” said the doctor kindly, “and it is a great thing to be needed and to see some chance of improving your fellow man. You could, with economy, get yourself through college on this money.”

“And then, of course, you own the land our camp is built on,” remembered Helen. “That is a thousand dollars more.”

“But I don’t want that,” exclaimed Gwen. “It has been so wonderful to have all of you here and so good to me.”

“But, my dear child, the land belongs to you and this Abner Dean will have to be the one to suffer, not you or the Carters. If you will let me, I will consult a lawyer in Richmond and have him take hold of the matter. Don’t you find a deed of some sort among those papers?”

There was no deed among the papers and, in fact, one never was found. The mystery was never solved how such an intelligent man as St. John Brownell evidently was had contented himself with a mere receipt for the $1,000 paid Abner Dean. He was perhaps suffering so with the nervous complaint which finally caused his death, that he had accepted the simplest method which presented itself to establish himself in a place where he hoped to find some peace.

While Helen was confined to her couch with the spurious sprained ankle, she helped Gwen unravel the story of her life from the letters found in the wonderful wallet. It was not such an extraordinary story, after all. St. John Brownell was of good family and education but evidently of small means, being the younger son of one of the many daughters of an impoverished earl. He had married young, come to America, and taken up teaching as a profession. His wife had died and then had come on him the strange malady that had caused him so much agony. Cities were hateful to him and he had decided that his small patrimony would serve best in some locality where the living was very inexpensive. Helen gathered from some of the letters that this patrimony amounted to about $3,000. He seemed to have arrived in the mountains with that much money in cash. He had bought the one hundred acres of land on the side of the mountain, hoping to improve it, possibly by going into Albemarle pippins. Gwen thought he had perhaps put his money into cash expecting to place it in a bank in Virginia; but as his malady gained on him all money dealings became very hateful and irksome to him, and he had evidently procrastinated until he had become in the habit of just carrying that roll of money around with him.

Gwen could recall nothing of her mother, but she remembered being in a kindergarten in New York and of course remembered coming to Virginia, and her father’s every characteristic was as fresh in her mind as though he had died only yesterday. The poor man had never been too miserable to be anything but gentle and loving to his little daughter, and he had spared no pains in teaching her, so that at nine years, her age when he had died, Gwen had been quite as well educated as many a child of twelve.

“Aren’t you going to write to some of your father’s family, Gwen?” asked Helen, who had become so absorbed in the research that she felt like a full-fledged detective.

“I think not,” and Gwen shook her head sadly. “He must have gone completely out of their lives. I can’t remember his getting any letters after we came to Virginia. Some day, maybe, I can make enough money to go to England, and then I will hunt them up and peep at them through the shutters, and if they look kind and nice, I’ll make myself known to them.”

“Perhaps you are right. They may be all kinds of pills and they might come over here and take you back with them whether you wanted to go or not. And you might have to live in stuffy chambers in London and never see the mountains any more.”

“Dreadful! That would kill me!”

And so Gwen went on living with kind Aunt Mandy, little by little cleaning up that good woman until she became reconciled to water and almost fond of it.

George Wright consulted a lawyer friend who took Gwen’s affairs in hand and by skillful management brought old Abner Dean to the realization that it would be best for him to execute a deed to the land bought by St. John Brownell, arranging it so Gwen would own the property without any string tied to it. He was forced to pay the money to Mr. Carter, and then the girls, having unwittingly built on Gwen’s land, rented it from her. Land had increased twofold in value since the Englishman had made his purchase, and the timber had grown so there was every indication that by careful management Gwen would have a good deal more money to add to her bank account.

Before Dr. Wright went back to Richmond, he told Helen he had killed the snake, if not the one who had taken a nip out of her tendon Achilles, at least one just as good or just as bad, whichever way she chose to look at it.

“Poor old snake!” exclaimed Helen. “He shouldn’t have been punished for acting according to his nature. I am the one that should have been punished, because I hope I acted not according to my nature.”

“Well, haven’t you been punished?”

Helen said nothing. She felt in her heart that she had not been punished at all but had been favored, in that through that rattlesnake she had gained a real friend in the young doctor.

CHAPTER XXI

WHERE IS BOBBY?

“Where is Bobby, Helen?” asked Douglas, coming into the tent where Helen was having an enforced invalidism. She had promised Dr. Wright to be quiet until he returned to camp, which he was planning to do in a week.

“I want to make you glad to see me and if my coming means you are no longer in durance vile I know I shall be welcome,” he had said when he told her good-by after a little more pulse taking.

“We shall always be glad to have you,” she had replied impersonally. He did think she might have used a singular pronoun but he was grateful to her for any small scrap of politeness. As for Helen, it was difficult for her to get over a certain sharpness of manner she had up to this time carefully kept for the young physician. When she had fooled herself into thinking she hated him there had been times when she had forgotten to be rude in spite of her intentions and now, when she meant to be mild and gentle, sometimes the old habit of studied disagreeableness got the better of her. That long week of enforced idleness had chastened her spirit wonderfully. She was so gentle that Douglas sometimes thought maybe she was ill. The rattler seemed to have extracted the poison from her system, rather than injected it.

“Only one more day!” she was thinking when Douglas came in. Dr. Wright was expected on the morrow and then she could be up and doing once more. There were absolutely no ill effects from the wound and that tiny excuse for a bandage had wholly disappeared. It seemed foolish to be nursing up herself like this, but then she had promised and Helen Carter never broke her word.

“Bobby, you say? Why, he must have gone with Josh.”

“No, Josh was to go a long way for some chickens and I thought Bobby would get too tired.”

“Maybe Lewis took him to the station with him.”

“Of course! I hear the goat chugging up the mountain now. I’ll go see.”

But no Bobby!

The mountain goat was laden with packages and two previous boarders who could not wait for the week-end to return to camp. No one had seen Bobby for hours and hours it developed on investigation.

“He done pestered the life out’n me all mornin’,” declared Oscar, “an’ I done tol’ him go fin’ Susan and worry her some.”

“Yes, an’ I sint him back to you.”

“Well, he ain’t never come.”

“He came to me for a story,” confessed Nan, “but I was so interested in my book I couldn’t stop. I’m so sorry.”

“He wanted to go with Lil and me but we didn’t want him tagging on,” and Lucy looked ready to weep.

“He came to me and wanted me to build a log cabin out of sticks but I had my accounts to go over,” groaned Douglas. “I sent him to Helen but she hasn’t seen him.”

“Well, he is around somewhere,” comforted Lewis.

“Sure!” declared Bill. “All hands turn out and hunt.”

The sisters all felt guilty consciences for not having looked after their little brother, all but Helen, who was the only one who had not seen him.

“I was the only one who had time for him and I am the only one he didn’t come to,” she cried. “If I only hadn’t promised Dr. Wright to stay still until he got here! I know I could find Bobby.”

“But, honey, there are lots of hunters and you must do what the doctor told you,” begged Douglas.

“Oh, I’ll mind him all right – that is unless Bobby stays lost too long and then I’ll have to get up and break my word if I lose my immortal soul in the act.”

Staying still while the hue and cry for her dear little brother was going on was about the hardest job Helen Carter ever undertook. She imagined all sorts of terrible things. Maybe gypsies had stolen him. Maybe a rattlesnake had bitten him and he was even now dying from it. Maybe he had fallen down the mountain side and had dashed his brains out on some boulder. Worse than anything he might be lost forever, wandering over the mountains trying to find his way home, crying and calling, scared almost to death, tired and hungry, dying finally of starvation and exposure.

Taking Bill’s advice, all hands turned out to hunt for the lost boy. In five minutes Helen was the only person left in camp, even Miss Elizabeth Somerville and the newly arrived boarders joining in the search. There were many paths leading from camp and up and down these the crowd scattered.

Dear little Bobby! No one thought him a nuisance now. Nan and Gwen made their way to Aunt Mandy’s cabin, thinking perhaps he had gone there in search of Josh. Aunt Mandy came out with kindly words of discouragement and gruesome tales of a child her mother told her of who wandered off and never was found.

“That there Bobby looks like a angel anyhow. Children like him is hard to raise. We uns is been a tellin’ of Gwen and Josh that Bobby is too purty for a boy. He looks to we uns more like a gal angel.” Gwen tried to stop her but the old woman went on until Nan was almost in tears. If she had not been so distressed she would have found this amusing, but with Bobby gone for hours a sense of humor did not help much.

“Oh, Gwen! Where can he be?”

“Let’s keep on down this path for a while. He and Josh often go this way.”

“If Josh would only come! I know he could find him.”

“He will be found soon, I am sure. His little legs cannot carry him very far and I am sure he would not get out of the trails. He may be back at camp now. You turn back and let me follow this trail for a mile or so. You are tired, I know.”

“No, indeed, I’m not; if I were it would serve me right. If only I had stopped and told him a story! I am so selfish when I get steeped in a book. What will Mother say if Bobby is lost?”

“Oh, but I am sure we will find him.”

The girls wandered on, stopping every now and then to call to the lost child. Sometimes they would be answered by an echo and then would stop and listen and call again.

Douglas got in the car with Lewis, who whisked her down the mountain side to the station.

“Maybe he has carried out his threat of running away. He is always saying he is going back to Richmond when he gets tired of the camp, which he does occasionally when he has nothing to occupy him. If I had only stopped adding up expenses and built the log cabin for him! I have neglected him, I am sure – and what will Father and Mother say? I wish I had let him go with Josh. He always takes such good care of him.”

“We are going to find him, Douglas, I feel sure. Why, the little shaver could not walk very far.”

He was not at the station and no one had seen him. Old Abner Dean came out of his store and actually seemed to feel some concern for the boy. He was a hard old man but not hard enough to resist the charm of Bobby’s eyes.

“He could not have come to the station without some one seeing him, and now I am going to take you home. He may be found by this time and if he is not I’ll start out again. There is no use in your going,” said Lewis, feeling very sorry for the distracted sister and very uneasy himself in spite of his repeated assurances to Douglas that the little shaver was all right wherever he might be.

“First let’s go down this road a little way. He might have turned off before he got to the station. He knows that this is the road Josephus and Josh took this morning.”

“All right! Anywhere that there is a chance of finding him!”

Lucy and Lil with Frank and his friend Skeeter, went over the mountain. Lucy and Lil were feeling very much cut up that they had refused to let poor little Bobby tag along earlier in the day.

“I should have taken him with me,” wailed Lucy. “Maybe I can never take care of him again. S’pose wild cats get him.”

“But they wouldn’t attack in daylight,” declared Frank.

“But we might not find him before dark and wolves and snakes and wild cats and all kinds of things might get him. I promised Mother I’d be good to him, too.” Lucy was sniffing dismally and Lil joined her friend in her demonstration of woe.

They came to the reservoir where Bobby loved to play and was not allowed to come alone. It was not deep but then a little child does not need much water to drown in.

“It is so clear that if he is in the bottom we can see him, that’s one comfort,” suggested Skeeter, but the rest of them could not extract much joy from the fact.

“I am scared to look in!” exclaimed Lucy, hiding her eyes.

“Nothing in there but a bullfrog,” reassured Frank, so they left the reservoir and climbed on up the mountain.

Susan and Oscar took the path around the mountain. The two devoted servants were so deeply concerned about their darling Bobby, very precious now that he was lost, that they felt there was no way to express their concern but by quarreling with each other.

“Whin I sint him to you, why’n you keep keer er him?” grumbled Oscar.

“Wherefore you didn’t keep keer er him yo’ se’f?”

“I ain’t no nuss!”

“Me neither! I done hi’ed out fur a housemaid. I is demeanin’ of my rightful oaths to be adoin’ what I is. If the haid of our sassiety should git wind of all the occupations I is a occupying I ain’t got a doubt she would read me out in meetin’.”

“Well, nobody ain’t a goin’ to blow ’bout what wuck you does but yo’se’f. I can’t see but what you keeps to yo’ vows well enough. If lookin’ after chillums aint ’ooman’s wuck I lak to know what is.”

Every now and then they stopped their wrangling to shout for the lost boy.

“Bo – oob – by! You, Bo – oob – by! I got some ca – an – dy fur yer,” called Susan.

“’Andyfuryer!” came back from the next mountain.

“Thar he is!” declared Oscar.

“Thar he is much! That there is what Miss Nan calls a ego. It’s some kind er a beast I reckon what mocks folks. Sounds lak hants ter me. I done dream of trouble last night anyhow. I dream I was a gittin’ married – ”

“That would sho’ be trouble to the groom,” chuckled Oscar.

“My dream book says that dreamin’ of marriage is sho sign er death. I reckon our little Bobby is dead by this time. Out here cold and starved in the mountings.”

“Well, he done et a good breakfast this mornin’ and ain’t starved yit as ’tain’t time ter dish up dinner yit. An’ if he is cold I’d lak ter know whar he done foun’ a cool spot. I sho is a sweatin’ myse’f.”

“Go ’long, you ole nigger! You ain’t got no feelin’.”

“I’s got as much feelin’ as you is but I’s got enough ter worry ’bout without makin’ up troubles. I want ter find that there Bobby an’ I feel turrible bad ’bout his a gittin’ lost but I ain’t agoin’ ter trouble my haid about his bein’ cold and hongry whin the sun is a shinin’ down on my back as hot as a mustard plarster an’ I done see the boy put away two full batches of waffles with enough scrambled eggs to feed a whole fambly. His appletite done pick up wonderful sense we been a campin’ out.”

Miss Elizabeth Somerville had to help in the search, too, although Bill Tinsley tried to persuade her that he and Tillie Wingo could do her part and she had better go back to the pavilion, but go she would down the rocky path.

“‘Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him,’” she declaimed grimly. “If I had my way I should give that child a good whipping when he is found. He knows perfectly well he should not have gone off without asking.”

The search kept up for more than an hour and still no sign of little Bobby. Even the most cheerfully sanguine of the campers began to feel dubious. Helen lay on her cot in an agony of suspense. The search party had none of them returned. She began to fear that the worst might have happened to her beloved little brother. If she could only get up and help! She regretted the promise she had made Dr. Wright. How could she stay still until the next day? She knew she could find Bobby if any one could. Did he not love her best of all the sisters? How strange that he had not come to her when Douglas sent him! She would have told him stories and amused him.