Mistress Madcap/Chapter 5
THE first part of December found snow upon the ground around the Condit farm. There had been that early-season gale of rain and sleet, with subsequent freezing, on the night the Squire had rescued the Indian; but the frost had soon melted and for days thereafter the weather had been crisp and bright. Now, however, after two days and nights of steady snowing, the sun came up one morning to slant glaringly across an earth blanket of dazzling snow.
Mehitable, who was a true out-of-doors girl, revelled in the depths of the drifts.
"Why, 'tis as high as the fence along the road by the north pasture," she was saying excitedly, unwinding her long woolen tippet and shaking her homespun skirt. She leaned over to pull from her feet an old pair of boots, which had belonged to her brother John.
"B-r-r!" shivered Charity, looking up from her knitting as she sat huddled by the fire. "I don't see how you can like it so well, Hitty! 'Tis most uncomfortable, I think, to be out in the snow!"
"'Tis monstrous pretty, the snow is," returned her sister, moving over to the fireplace to warm her cold hands before the blaze. "It sparkles so, and the shadows cast by the pines are as as can be!"
"'Tis monstrous cruel!" retorted Charity, with unwonted spirit. "The snow would smother you, freeze you, kill you, an it could!"
"Why, Charity!" observed Mehitable, her eyes widening. "I never heard you speak thus of the snow before!"
"I do dislike it!" muttered Charity, with another shiver. "I wish it were summer again!"
She started nervously as a shutter banged against the house somewhere.
"Well, I like it," answered Mehitable decidedly, "and I"
Her voice stopped suddenly. Charity, who was counting the stitches in her knitting, glanced up curiously after a while and found her sister staring at something over her shoulder. She turned immediately and at that instant a cold draught struck her. Thereafter, the sand in the quaint hourglass must have run through its tiny hole a full minute before either girl moved. For through the crack of the door two eyes were looking at them!
Then Mehitable, whose natural courage never long forsook her, recovered from her fright and strode forward indignantly to fling the door open.
"Why do you not knock or come in?" she demanded irritably.
The Indian who had been standing outside stepped across the threshold with unruffled dignity and looked around the room inquiringly.
"Father?" he asked.
"Father out foddering stock, I suppose," answered Mehitable shortly. She looked at the tall, straight figure contemptuously, for her father had told her of his trying to steal her mother's candlestick holders. But Charity, whose quiet eyes were more observant, uttered a little cry.
"Why, you are hurt!"
The Indian swayed a little; but shook his head in denial.
"But you are!" insisted Charity. "See, there is blood upon the floor!"
Mehitable's slower gaze had just verified this fact when the Indian, as though at the end of his endurance, staggered and slowly sagged into the chair the girls were quick-witted enough to push toward him.
"Ugh, hurt!" he acknowledged, then. His blanket fell away at that instant and Charity gave another pitiful cry, for the Indian's brightly beaded hunting shirt was rapidly crimsoning beneath his heart.
"Oh, Hitty, what shall we do?"
Mehitable's round cheeks were pale as she gazed; but not for nothing was she a pioneer's daughter.
"Do!" she repeated scornfully. "Why, bind it up, of course!"
"Can't—can't we wait for Mother? She will be back in another hour," stammered Charity, shrinking. But Mehitable shook her head sturdily.
It was only when the hard task was finished, the open wound washed and dressed, that the Indian, who had sat in stoical silence all through the operation, spoke again.
"Hessians," he announced. "Signal fires—mountaintain top—me hurt!
"You go?"
Mehitable, who had been on her knees before him, about to lift the basin of warm water she had been using, set it down again and sank back upon her knees to stare at him open-mouthed. It was as amazing as though the brass warming pan, hanging innocently upon its hook beside the fireplace, had spoken.
The younger girl crept to her sister.
"What does he mean?" she whispered.
"Signal fire!" repeated the Indian impatiently, in his guttural voice.
"You mean those great heaps of branches and leaves on top of the First Mountain?" asked Mehitable slowly. "You mind the ones Father told us Parson Chapman had arranged for signals across Pleasant Valley to the Second Mountain, Charity?" turning to her sister.
The Indian nodded.
"Are you with General Washington's army?" asked Mehitable shrewdly. "How can I tell whether you are truthful or not?"
With a quick gesture, the Indian now held out an object that glittered and sparkled in his hand. Mehitable took it from him with a little cry.
"John's silver shoe buckle, Charity!"
The two girls bent over the shining thing with bated breath. It was as though their brother had spoken to them from far away! Then Mehitable raised her head to gaze searchingly at the strange visitor.
"How do I know that you did not steal this?" she asked sternly.
The Indian's eyes met hers unflinchingly.
"No!" he said. And in his voice rang the truth.
"I believe him, Hitty," said Charity suddenly, as the older girl still hesitated. "I am quite sure that the time has come when we must do as John wished, as we promised, for this is surely the sign that he must have our help. The buckle has come back to us, as we agreed!"
"But how can we reach the mountain top through this snow?" Mehitable now got slowly to her feet to carry away the basin. "'Tis growing dark," she went on worriedly. "And 'tis too late to get Young Cy to help us!"
The Indian's eyes watched her anxiously as she paced up and down the kitchen in unconscious imitation of her father.
"Go away down to the meeting house and back for Young Cy!" It was now Charity who had suddenly assumed the lead.
"No good—too late!" The Indian shook his head.
"He is right! We must be the ones to go!" As she spoke, the little sister caught up her cape, and fifteen minutes later found the two girls well upon their way.
It was settling into early dusk, as Mehitable had said, with the still cold of deep snow cutting into their cheeks and biting their nostrils until they felt as though they were breathing pepper! It was almost impossible walking, too, for the drifts were very deep, and once off from the road they would have floundered to their waists. They had chosen the wood path, which was shorter and apt to be more protected from the snowfall.
As they neared the Briggs's farm, which they had to skirt, Mehitable suddenly spoke.
"Charity, think you we are nearing that old cistern behind the Briggs house?"
"Oh, Hitty!" Charity stopped short to look around her fearfully. "We are in the pasture north of their house, where Grandfather Briggs's house once stood, and that is where the cistern is. However did we get off from the path!"
"The snow is so deep," said Mehitable, stopping, too, to gaze around her with troubled eyes. "I am sure it is just about here! And the last time we passed throught the pasture, I remember—'twas last Fall—the hole was uncovered, Miranda was vexed and said how her father begrudged both the time and the wood to cover it. He said that any one trespassing deserved to fall down into it!"
"How could he be so mean!" Charity spoke with unusual bitterness; but she was thoroughly frightened at their plight.
"Well, 'tis no use to stand here. We must go on, Charity! The only way to get out of the pasture and on to the path again is to walk out!"
So saying, Mehitable started forward in her usual impetuous way and was laughing triumphantly as she neared the edge of the snow-covered field when a strangled cry sounded behind her and she turned around to see two upflung arms disappearing through the snow. Then what appeared to be a great blot of ink showed against the white of the snow. And silence reigned!
Too stunned at what had befallen to move at first Mehitable stood motionless with horror for a moment. Then she turned and stumbled back through the snow, moaning as she ran.
"Charity, Charity, are you killed?"
At last a weak voice came wavering up to her.
"No, but I'm pretty nearly killed!"
Mehitable stopped upon the edge of the hole just in time, for the treacherous snow began at once to cave in beneath her weight. She stood there sobbing frantically.
"What shall I do! What shall I do!"
Then her common sense reasserted itself and some inner voice seemed to speak to her.
"Get help! Run for help!"
She leaned forward and tried to steady her tones, her heart torn by the faint, pitiful whimpers that came up to her from the cistern's depths.
"Art listening, Cherry? I am going for help! Keep up your courage—it will not take me long!"
"Oh, Hitty, hurry! It is so cold down here in the water. And—and—I told you the snow was cruel!"
"I will hurry!" promised Mehitable, her lips white with fear. She turned and ran toward the Briggs's dwelling.
It was a hard struggle and one that Mehitable did not soon forget, that plunging and rising and falling again and again through the heavy snow. But finally she was leaning weakly against the Briggs's kitchen door, almost too exhausted to knock. Miranda soon appeared.
"Why, Hitty," she began in delight. "Art come to spend the afternoon with me? I am alone!" Then she stopped short at sight of the other girl's face. "What is the matter?" she faltered in sudden terror.
"Cherry—oh, Randy!—Cherry" gasped Mehit able.
"Yes, what about Cherry?"
"Cherry—down—your father's cistern!" And Mehitable reeled against the other girl.
Miranda uttered an exclamation of horror. Then she shook her visitor roughly. "I will get Father's rope. Stand up, Hitty! We must get Cherry out ourselves, for no one is home but me. Stay, however—I'll call to make sure." She stepped back into the kitchen and sent her clear, frightened young voice ringing through the house. "Father! Fath-er! Help!"
But only the echoes of her own fright came back to her, and soon she had rejoined Mehitable upon the doorstep, a thick rope coiled over her arm.
When they arrived at the edge of the cistern Mehitable strove to call. But from sheer terror her voice would not come and she looked piteously at Miranda.
"Cherry! Cherry! Art still there?" called Miranda in unconscious irony, answering the appeal in her friend's eyes. To their joy, a faint little voice answered from the cistern and the two girls could hear the terrible chill in it.
"Ooh—I am so-o-o co-old!"
"Now, Hitty," said Miranda, assuming charge of the rescue as she recognized Mehitable's frantic state, "I am going to try to tie this rope around that big boulder which I know is near here, then we will lower the other end to Cherry, holding the tied end so that it cannot possibly slip. Do you understand?"
"Ye-es. But suppose she is too weak to climb the rope," faltered Mehitable, cheered, in spite of herself, however, by Miranda's assured manner.
"She can climb!" repeated Miranda inexorably. And advancing as near as she dared to the edge of the hole, she called down her instructions to the imprisoned girl in a short, imperative voice. This manner and her precise instructions had the effect she sought, doing much toward restoring poor Charity who, in spite of her constant shivering from having stood in icy water to her boot tops for so long, managed to wrap her feet around the rope and commence to climb.
Perhaps a city girl of that time, with her false idea of a lady's delicacy, could not have achieved this remarkable feat of climbing a rope from the cistern's depths; but as Miranda had said, Charity could climb, for the three girls had practised this stunt many times in secret. And now their country training came in good stead. After an agonizing period of suspense, Charity's head appeared at the edge of the hole, and the other two, bidding her hold on tightly, managed to drag her across the soft snow toward them to firm ground. And soon Mehitable's arms were wrapped thankfully around the shivering, weeping little figure.
"Run, Charity!" Miranda, noting anxiously the other's blue lips and chattering teeth, gave her a little push in the direction of the house. But Charity tarried a moment and spoke through her tears.
"Oh, Hitty, you must go on alone! See, it grows darker even now! And we promised!"
"But I cannot leave you, Charity! Mother would never forgive me an anything happened to you. You must have hot blankets and something warm to drink!" Mehitable looked at her in misery and indecision.
"'Randy will help us, won't you, 'Randy?" Charity shook her head.
"Where is she to go?" asked Miranda in astonishment. "I thought you were on your way to spend the rest of the afternoon with me!" Then, as the two sisters looked at her, she suddenly flushed. "I know, you were on your way to do something for the patriots," she concluded keenly. She lifted her head proudly. "Well, you can trust me, for I am a patriot, too! Do you think just because my father is—is—what he is that my mother and I do not know what is right!" And the hot tears stood in her eyes.
Instantly both girls embraced her. Then Charity started to run toward the house and Mehitable, feeling the tinder box in her pocket, swung resolutely In the other direction, knowing that Miranda would give her sister all needful attention
And now how cold It was! And how the wind sighed and moaned in the bare branches of every forest tree! Rapidly, too, it grew dark, so that mounting steadily in much the same direction she and her family had fled not so long ago, Mehitable could scarcely make out, through the openings of the woods, the valley below.
But her face and her heart were turned upward, ever upward, toward that goal to which she had been sped by the simple pleading of an Indian's eyes and the memory of her promise to her big brother.
She reached, at last, the great sentinel pines upon the mountain ridge, underneath which had been prepared the signal mounds of brush and logs. But arrived there, she gazed in acute dismay at the snow which covered them until each mound looked like miniature mountains of snow. However, she set to work grimly to drag away the wet branches and pile the drier brush on top.
Then how her fingers ached with the cold as she knelt and patiently worked with flint and steel in her tinder box to get a spark, the one little spark necessary to complete this great task she had undertaken.
Lonely and solemn it seemed up there in that vast, white, still world of ice and snow. Not a living creature stirred, not even the ever-active jack rabbit. Night settled down, and star by star the heavens above began to be illuminated. And now she had to stumble to her feet and stride up and down to get the blood once more circulating in her chilled veins. Then back at her discouraging task again, striking, striking, to get that vital spark.
At last it came. The tinder caught! Swiftly, but not too swiftly, she applied it to the dry brush she had arranged. It caught, in turn! A little tongue of flame curled around a brittle leaf, another flame shot across to a second leaf and finally the great pile of brush was flaring, roaring toward the silent sky.
Mehitable stepped back and watched anxiously. And drew a quick breath after a while. For, far across Pleasant Valley, from the Second Mountain flamed the answering signal!