The Keeper of the Bees/Chapter 18
The Little Scout on the War Path
UP UNTIL ten o’clock the little Scout served as kitchen maid, lady’s maid, house maid, errand boy, anything the interloper required. Then a load of worthless paper was sent to the incinerator which stood in the middle of the lower portion of Jamie’s side of the garden, halfway between the hives of the Black Germans and the long row of the Italians. As the Scout Master scratched the match and lighted the papers and stood a few minutes to watch the burning, an ominous rumbling that came from somewhere in the direction of the Italians became noticeable.
“Um-hum-m-m,” said the little Scout. “Dunno but I better call Jamie. Some of his bees are going to swarm.”
Coming back up the walk there was a pause of a second beside the hydrant. The Scout Master had intended to set a few drops trickling to keep the mint bed happy, but the heaviest hose was attached and stretched up the walk. The nozzle could be seen lying above one of the jacqueranda trees, open enough to let a tiny stream drip no faster than the earth would absorb it for the watering of the tree. That jacqueranda tree seemed to be particularly precious because, under its lacy shade of serene blue, some of the very happiest hours that the Bee Master had ever conjured up for the amusement of the little Scout had been spent. So the Scout Master left the back walk and circled around the house, and turned the nozzle one faint degree wider open, and laid it down in a new place as a slight expression of devotion to that special jacqueranda.
As the nozzle touched the earth there came from inside the house a splintering crash. The little Scout straightened suddenly, eyes wide open, muscles tense, and with a lighter step than ever was used in the fairiest pirouetting, the ground was covered to the side window. Carefully drawing the weight of the body upward, the little Scout peered through the open window in time to see the lid of the antique chest wide open. The ax, that must have been secured and hidden somewhere in the house before Jamie had locked up the previous night, lay on the floor.
Breathlessly the Scout Master clung to the window and peered in. The time was past for diplomacy. War had been declared. The enemy had invaded the most sacred stronghold of the Bee Master, of the little Scout, of the Keeper of the Bees. It was time for action. Clinging to the window sill with eyes wide open and mouth considerably wider, the little Scout watched while the waste paper basket that belonged beside the Bee Master’s writing desk, the big Indian cooking basket, was filled indiscriminately with everything that could be gathered up from the contents of the chest that was a picture, a paper that looked as if it might contain the slightest record of any transaction. Nothing but playthings, jewellery, ornaments, laces, and scarves were left. The basket was heaped to the top. Then Miss Worthington arose, possessed herself of a handful of matches from a dish over the mantel, and picking up the basket, started toward the back door.
Deftly the Scout Master dropped from the window sill, raced to the jacqueranda, caught up the hose, and darted down the side of the vine-laden pergola until the hydrant was reached. There was a pause to shut off the hose and turn the hydrant until the hose swelled and writhed like a snake. Behind the thickest wall of vines the little Scout crouched and hung on to the hose, both eyes trained on the incinerator, still smoking and with fire in the bottom from the papers that were smouldering. Peering through the vines of the pergola, the Scout Master could see that the girl was not yet coming and again the soft buzzing called attention to the neighbourhood of the incinerator. The little Scout leaned low and peered from side to side and stepping lightly, remaining screened to get a clear view, watched for the girl’s approach. Then in an ominous roar almost at one and the same time from two hives of Italians there came streaming swarms of bees that were leaving their hives, honeycombs filled and bee crowded, to seek new homes, at the behest of the old queen.
The little Scout’s eyes opened wider. The hose dropped from the small fingers. One leap carried to an opening in the pergola. A twist carried through, and small feet raced wildly up the back walk and to the back porch and shaking hands grabbed the bee drum. One glance in the kitchen showed Miss Worthington on her knees beside the basket with nervous fingers sorting out the papers and the things that she had thrust into it with small discrimination.
“For a little time,” said the Scout Master, grabbing up the drum, “I sure am thankful.” And a wild race began for the region of the incinerator, and softly on the morning air broke the slow rhythmic “Drum, drum, drum-drum-drum,” and the bees that were swarming in the air began to gather. The drum led them first to an orange branch within three yards of the incinerator, then headed off another bunch and guided them toward a fig branch on the opposite side. “Drum, drum,” the little Scout stood with bulging eyes and parted lips in a cloud of bees, watching first one swarm and then the other. The air was still thick with them, but it was apparent to experienced eyes that the queen of each swarm had settled and that was all that was necessary.
“Drum, drum, drum-drum-drum,” the eyes alternated between the bees and the back porch There she came; the basket full to overflowing, one hand circling it full of matches, the other hand full of the papers that it was most essential to destroy. Keeping under cover of the trees and the flowers and the pergola, stooping, on silent feet, the little Scout slipped back to the hydrant, made sure that it was wide open, dropped the drum, and picked up the nozzle of the hose that operated with the pressure of water carried at such force as a running current flowing through pipes large enough to motor on with a small automobile and carried in many places straight down mountain-sides, would attain.
The hose twisted as if it were a living thing, and the little Scout eased off the hydrant a trifle in the fear that the hose might burst.
The interloper hurried down the back walk as fast as her feet would carry her over its winding and precipitous way and dumped the contents of the basket into the incinerator. On top of it the precious papers were thrown and then the match was scratched and held a second to make sure that it was blazing before the papers were touched off at the top. As the hand holding the match reached toward the papers, a stream of water that shook the incinerator on its base struck it and began speedily soaking its entire contents and a shnill voice, keyed to the top note of wild excitement, shouted: “Look you careful there! You’ve got swarming bees on each side of you! You’ll be stung to death in just about one minute, ’cause God knows your scent ain’t right!’
How much Miss Worthington knew about bees was debatable. One thing the little Scout recognized: She knew enough about them to be afraid. She looked to the right and then to the left and decided she would risk it, though the bees were coming closer.
“Turn off that hose!” she shouted. “Turn off that hose!”
“Not on your life!” retorted the little Scout. “You ain’t a-goin’ to burn up those papers! They don’t belong to you. Don’t you touch ’em! Don’t you touch one of ’em! If you do, I’ll hit you with this hose until I knock you spang into the nearest of the bees behind youl You don’t know mountain water pressure, but I can do it!”
“Turn off that hose!” cried the young woman, clinging to the side of:the incinerator and looking with bulging eyes at the two swarms of bees milling so alarmingly near, looking up at the air above her gradually filling with the roaring wings of bees scenting something they did not like, bees already nervous with the strain of leaving the hive in which they had been reared and following their queen to a new location.
“What are you trying to do?” cried Miss Worthington.
“I’m not trying,” shouted the Scout Master. “I’m doing! I’m going to have the truth out of you or I’m going to set two swarms of bees on you, and they will sting you until you are the dcadest of anybody that ever went dead, just the horrid way you ought to go to pay for little Mary. I know you! I’ve seen your picture! You’ve got it there in that incinerator. You ain’t the Bee Master’s daughter any more than you are mine! Your mother had you when she vamped him into marrying her. You are trying to play you are Mary. You are trying to cheat to get this yet. See ’em closingin on you. See ’em coming closer! Hear ’em roar!”
The terrified girl looked on every side of her. Escape was cut off to the rear, the roaring hose was menacing her in front. If she left the incinerator with the papers she had consigned to it unburned, there was no hope for her claim, no chance for any proof she had brought with her to be effective. She must get the papers or be defeated. But the little fiend at the end of that roaring hose——Resolutely she bent over the incinerator and began with shaking hands to gather up the papers. In that instant the little Scout trained the hose, running full force, squarely in the back of the hives of Black Germans, trained it and so held it that they rocked on their foundations and there came pouring from them in distracted hosts the vilest tempered bees that the history of bee-keeping ever has known. The object most prominently in front of them was the smoking incinerator and the taint that was carried on the air, the most maddening taint that their experience knew, was the taint of the human being exhaling from every pore the odour of formic acid—the odour of fear. The Black Germans began to rise with a roar. The little Scout set the water tap wide open and manipulated the hose nozzle to its full strength and watched it beat a hole into a bed of marigolds, tearing them out of the earth. And above the roar of the bees, and above the rush of the water, the voice that matched the face that Jamie had seen the night before, the voice of a small pagan intent on wreaking justice, carried high and shrill: ‘Now you are surrounded! Now you got ’em on three sides! Now you got ’em all around youl Now you’ll get it! I’ll give you just one chance! Drop those papers!”
The girl looked up. Within a few yards of her roared the Italians on one hand. At her back another swarm was even closer, and down on her from the front came the Black Germans.“Turn that hose on me!” she shrieked. “Cover me with water! Beat ’em off with it!”
Then the little Scout stepped out in full view on tiptoes and kept the hose precisely where it was.
“Turn that hose on our bees, nice innocent bees, tending to their own business, making sweets to feed the world? Them bees is friends of mine! I’m the Bee Master’s partner. Half of this place he gave to me. You think you are going to steal it! You think you are going to burn his papers! Come clean now, or the bees will get you, and it will not be five minutes until you'll be deader, you'll be deader than any liar or anything ever was before! Look out! They are in front of yout Come cleanl Say you ain’t the Bee Master’s daughter!”
Clinging to the incinerator, the girl cast a terrified glance around her. She was in a circle of bees and she had heard of Black Germans. She knew them when she saw them. There had been bee gardens in her childhood when she had been an inmate of the home of the Bee Master. She screamed at the top of her voice.
“Stop your noise,” said the Scout Master. “Come clean, I say, come clean! Say ‘Michael Worthington was not my father.’”
At that instant the first Black German hit its victim on the head not far from the right ear and went into execution.
“No! No!” shrieked the girl. “He wasn’t my father!”
“Say you are trying to steal this place and you've got no right to it,” said the little Scout.The girl righted herself and tried to take a step forward. Another Black German hit her squarely on the forehead.
“Yes! Yes!” she cried. “I am trying to steal it! I have got no right to it!”
“Um-huh!” said the little Scour. “Now say you are trying to burn those papers to get rid of all the evidence that would keep you from being the thief you are trying to be! Say it, and say it damn quick!”
“Yes! Yes!” panted the tortured girl. “I’ll say anything! For God’s sake, turn that hose on me. Clear a way through! Quick! Quick, or you will be too late!”
“You will tell the truth about one thing more first,” said the little Scout.
At that minute the boiling hose was beating a hole big enough to have drowned a calf right in the marigold bed. The little Scout danced from one foot to the other, hanging to it with all the strength of a pair of unbelievably tough young arms.
“Tell the truth about little Mary yet! Say you pushed her! I know you did. The Bee Master knew you did, but he couldn’t prove it. I’ll let ’em sting the everlastin’ liver out of you if you don’t tell the truth about that yet!”
The third German got in its work in the tender muscles close to an eye.
“Yes! Yes!” panted the shrinking creature. “Yes! The hose for God’s sake! Turn the hose on me!”
“Drop flat on the ground!” shouted the Scout Master. “Get on your belly and crawl! Crawl like the worm you are! I won’t turn the hose on our bees. Get down, Nebuchadnezzar, get on your belly and eat grass! Eat dirt, for all I care! Then you can start inchin’! You can start inchin’ along like a poor inch worm! Head for me and I’ll juice you up enough that they’ll not get you! Turn the hose on my friends, I guess not! Hold your nose! It’s going to snow!”
Full force the hose struck the miserable object grovelling on the ground, struck her, played over her and knocked a few bees that were flying low out of the way. A pitiful creature came crawling up the mountain, gasping for breath, one eye slowly closing, the pain of three stings on the head almost unbearable torture, bees by the thousand roaring above her. Slowly the little Scout backed up the mountain, dragging the twisting hose, pausing every few seconds to play it again on the victim. By and by, sufficient distance was reached to permit an armistice.
“Now you stop right where you are!” commanded the Scout Master, with a deft twirl cutting down the water. “Stop right where you are!”
“No!” cried the girl, struggling to her knees. “I’ll not stop where I am! I’ll get you and I’ll wring the head right off of your neck. You little Devil! You vile little Devil!”
Flip went the nozzle, spang came the water squarely on the girl’s head and shoulders. Down she went.
“So that’s how you feel about it? That’s the way you thank me for savin’ you, all lyin’ and stealin’ like you are! You didn’t know I could magic bees, did you? You didn’t know I could run around on the other side of them and spray ’em gentle until I’d drive ‘em on you, did you? You didn’t know I got a better trick than that up my sleeve yet, did you?”
Once more the girl raised halfway to her knees, and once more the hose came roaring threateningly near.
“Now you pause,” said the lictle Scout, “pause in your mad career edzackly where you are until you get me right.”
From the soiled string around the neck of the little Scout the police whistle came into play. In reply to its shrill note there burst from behind the lilac bush, from behind the poinsettias, from behind the plumbago three wildeyed, wildly dancing young fiends tuned by what they had seen to the spirit of battle.
The Scout Master stuck the police whistle in the front of a soiled blouse.
“Scout One!” came the terse order, and Fat Ole Bill drew up and saluted.
“Scout Two!”
The Nice Child bounded into place.
“Scout Three!”
Angel Face ranged in line.
“Scout Three,” said the Scout Master, “get a-hold of this hose! It’s about wiggled the wind out of me. Help me train it close to the head of the young lady doing her devotions in our presence. My neck’s going to be wrung. ‘I shall holler for assistance. I shall meet her with resistancel’”“Yes, your neck’s goin’ to be wrung!” puffed Fat Ole Bill. “Yes, your neck’s goin’ to be wrung! Let her try it! Let her try it! What will she get, fellers?”
It was at that instant that the police whistle and the commotion awakened Jamie, and it was an instant later, as he came around Margaret Cameron’s house from the back, that he met John Carey coming around it from the front.
He said to him: “There’s something going on over in the bee garden. I think maybe the Scouts are having a sham battle. Keep behind the bushes and follow me. You might be interested in what you see and hear. Sometimes it gets good!”
So the two men slipped through the gate, and under cover of the shrubs and bushes, came down very close to the flower wall behind the jacqueranda, where they paused.
“Scout One!” commanded the Scout Master, “tell it to the probate judge. Did you hear the witness before you say that she was a liar?”
“I’ll tell the world I did! And she said she stole the papers, and she was tryin’ to burn ’em so she could steal this garden. You bet I’ll tell the judge!”
“Scout Two!” said the Scout Master, and Jamie and John Carey, with eyes as wide as the eyes of the young sters, leaned forward and peered through the bushes.
“Sure! Sure I heard her!” said Angel Face. “Sure I heard her say she lied, and she was trying to steal this place and she pushed little Mary. Sure I heard her! 
“You little devil! You
vile little devil!”
Sure we saw you sic the bees on her! Sure we saw 'em ping her on the dome! Sure we know she got what was comin' to her! Sure we'll tell the judge!”
“Scout Three,” said the Scout Master. “What are you good for? Pit it in Mamma's hand!”
In the excitement the hose was yielded to the manipulations of Scout Three and he had all he could do to manage it. The little Scout reached over and lowered the pressure.
“Same as the rest. Everything. From start to finish I heard it all. Sure I can. All about the lies. All about the stealing. All about the little girl she pushed. Sure I can tell any old judge!”
The Scout Master rocked from heel to toe and bent up and down and cupped a hand over each bony knee and emitted a war cry that would have reached fairly well around the circle of the globe had it been properly delivered into a rightly tuned radio transmitter.
“And I'll tell the world what the Bee Master told me, and the stuff in the incinerator is safe, with three swarms of bees standing guard, and if four of us can't handle you, I know where to get somebody that can ! Get up, worm. Get up, liar! Get up, thief! Get up, you nasty thing! Get on to your feet! Scout One, go to the telephone and call 0075. Call the taxi the Bee Master and I always take to come here quick . Scout Two, stay with Scout Three. Scout Three, you keep the hose right where you got it. If she moves let her have all of it. Don't be skimpy. The lady doesn't like California; it's too rough. So she wants me to pack her trunk. Excuse me!” and the Scout Master disappeared into the home of the Bee Master.
When the telephoning was finished, between Scout One and the Scout Master, the steamer trunk was dragged to the middle of the living room and the clothing of the interloper was thrown into it. Off Jamie’s dresser the toilet articles were swept into the toilet case. A hat and coat were snatched from the closet and the travelling paraphernalia was dragged on to the front porch, and with wide eyes behind a wall of honeysuckle, Jamie MacFarlane and John Carey stood half paralyzed and watched the proceedings.
Sooner than they would have believed, the taxi drew up at the gate and the Scout Master stepping like a half-drunken dandy doing an Irish reel, with a swagger and a sweep from side to side, and arms set akimbo when the hands were not busy distributing elaborate gestures on the atmosphere gave the command: “Put that trunk up on the seat beside you. Put that suitcase and that dressing bag in back. I’ll direct this picture just like my dad directs in the big studio. Mr. Taxi-man, take this coat and put it on the lady and take this hat and put it on her, and put your arm around her and if she can’t walk, carry her out and put her in the taxi. Take your taxi right down to the Santa Fe Station and if she needs help, help her get a ticket to any place in Pennsylvania she says she is going and be darned quick about it into the bargain!”
The Scout Master stood still until the taxi disappeared, then turned and said: “Scouts, I thank you! I’m off for to-day. I got business, but I’ll not forget that it’s my treat and I’ll make it a double header! I'll tell the world I'll make it a humdinger. A dollar won’t touch it. And don’t a one of you forget a word of what you’ve heard or what you’ve seen. There’s a slim chance that this may be the real thing. There’s just a chance that you go to court and tell it to the probate judge like I said, but just for this minute, I’m through with you and I want you to disband and speed. I’ll settle your score to-morrow and you can all step mighty high, ‘cause this day there ain’t been no make-believe. You been Scouts, and you been real Scouts what’s done a real job, and done it up brown! They’s just one thing. Remember your sakerd oaths. Remember your vitals and all that. Remember if you tell, you'll be cut an’ cast. Take my blessing and disband, And, Scout Three, if you would run down and turn off the hydrant before you go, I’d be glad, ‘cause I don’t care if I tell you fellows, that this has been some skirmish, and I’m all in! Now furnish your own music an’ march to it.”
The Scout Master stood straight, watching the gate and down the road until Scout Three and Scout Two, and Fat Ole Bill bringing up the rear, all gesticulating, all talking at once, disappeared. Then, headlong, the little Scout fell face down in the dirt and began to cry right out loud, sobbing, shuddering, shrill little screaming terrified cries that broke Jamie’s heart, and he tore through the honeysuckles and gathered the little Scout up in his arms and sat down on the bench under the jacqueranda and held his small burden tight and rained uncounted kisses all over the little face and head.
The tongue of a Scotsman is usually rather stiff, but in that tense instant Jamie’s ran away with him.
“You little thing!” he said. “You brave little thing! You’ve done it. You’ve saved the Bee Master’s gift for us. John Carey was with me back there and both of us saw and heard enough to send that woman to the penitentiary. So don’t you cry any more! Let me hold you tight and rest a minute. It was a big strain. It was too much for you, you poor little darling!”
Just for an instant Jamie thought the burden in his arms was going to spring entirely from him, the stiffening and the straightening were so abrupt.
“Little darlin’!’” scoffed the Scout Master. “‘Little darlin’! Next thing I reckon you’ll be callin’ me ‘Kiddo’! That’s what she called me. If anybody ever calls me ‘Kiddo’ in all this world again, I’ll kick their teeth in! That’s that!”
The Scout Master hunted for something that would be good to dry eyes on, and failing to find it, sat very still while Jamie used his handkerchief.
“I don’t know what you are goin’ to do with me,” gulped the little Scout. “I reckon I’ve just about wrecked the marigold bed, and it was on your side of the line.”
“Well, never mind the marigolds,” said Jamie. “We can make up the bed and sow some more seed. Never mind the marigolds! Tell me what happened.”
“It was just all I could do,” said the Scout Master, “to handle that hose when I had it turned on full and I was scared of my life it would bust. It just wriggled and twisted like a snake, and I had to keep it close to her because, if they really began to close in, I had to beat ’em off, but I wasn’t goin’ to do it for pinging on the bean only two or three times, ’cause she had to be hurt some or she wouldn’t’ve come clean. I wouldn’t have minded if it had ’a’ been on my own side, but I hated awfully to tear up yours. You can take the hose right now and go over to my side and beat up a hole just as big as I tore up on yours.”
“You surprise me,” said Jamie. “A head as level as yours usually is! How would it help me in getting back my marigold bed to tear up a hole as big as that on your land? It wouldn’t be sensible.”
The little Scout thought it over, then looked up at Jamie with wide, tired eyes.
“Well, I can see how it would be just,” came the reply.
“Possibly,” said Jamie, “but justice and good hard common sense don’t always agree.”
Suddenly the little Scout brightened.
“Well, anyway, you aren’t the only one that got some ruination worked on you. Look what she went an’ did to the Queen’s chest! Just go in and look what she went and did to my property!”
“To the ‘Queen’s chest’?” said Jamie, “What do you mean?”
“What do I mean?” cried the little Scout. “I mean she had been to the shed before you locked it up, an’ got the ax, and she had it hid in the house. She broke open the Queen’s chest prying it with the ax.”
"Oh, boy!” said Jamie, “that’s rough! But don’t you feel bad. I’ll have it repaired so you will never know the difference if I have to have the whole front reproduced.”
“She busted the top around the lock and where the secret spring went,” said the little Scout. “The thing about it is that I don’t like things smashed and patched up. I like ’em when they’re whole and the way you got ’em give to you by one you love."
“Well, don’t you mind,” said Jamie. “There couldn’t have been anything new about that chest. I think it must have been about five hundred years old to begin with, and anyway, people can do things so wonderfully these days in such repair work. If it’s only around the lock, I’m sure we can get it fixed so nobody will ever know it.”
The little Scout used Jamie’s handkerchief on a pair of red eyes.
"All right, then,” the assent came with one of the youngster’s lightning changes. “All right, then. We’ll get it fixed, but we didn’t need a patched chest to remember her by. We got the whole garden for a souvenir of that lady!”
Suddenly the little Scout began to laugh.
“My! didn’t she look wonderful when the taxi man put her hat and coat on her? Wasn’t she a spiffy lady? I wonder, if Nannette had seen her, if she would have said she looked keen?”
Jamie roared.
“No,” he said, “I don’t think Nannette’s favourite adjective would have worked. I don’t think even she would have thought the lady on her departure looked keen.”
“She’ll have to make a straight shot for the dressing room,” said the little Scout, “and put on her war paint and feathers the best she can.”
“Do you really think she will go?” asked Jamie.
The little Scout heaved a deep sigh.
“I don’t give two Apache war whoops whether she goes or whether she stays. The pony I’m bettin’ my money on in this race is one that tells me that that lady ain’t ever comin’ back to the Sierra Madre Apiary. She’s had her dose of treat ’em rough, and I bet she ain’t weepin’ for more, not a mountain pressure hose, nor Black Germans in the eye, nor nothin’! She got her share, if I did have to tear up your marigolds to give it to her!”
"For goodness sake! don’t worry about a hole as big as a wash tub when you have just got through saving me an acre!”
“All right, then,” said the Scout Master. “If that’s the way you feel about it, it suits me. Do you mind if I just fool around a little while?”
Jamie knew what that meant. It meant that his little partner would go and creep up on the foot of his bed and fall sound asleep, and he thought that would be the best thing that could possibly happen. So he said he did not mind in the least because he and John Carey were going back to hive the bees. The Scout Master slid to the ground. Suddenly Jamie felt a pair of small, wiry arms around his neck that hugged him up so tight that he did not know but that his head was going to be amputated. Then for the third time, squarely on his mouth, he got another little hard, hot kiss of a brand and delivery that he knew he was never going to forget.
The little Scout started toward the house, but only a few yards had been covered before there was a halt, and the small person whirled. “Quick! How goofy! We forgot the incinerator! There’s Highland Mary and little Mary and all the valuable papers soaking in the ashes and maybe some fire under them! You got to get ’em quick, if I have to turn the hose on you while you’re doin’ it! Whatever it was she wanted to burn up so bad, why that’s edzackly what we must have to prove that what’s give us is ours. You can’t tell it to the probate judge very good without the papers in the incinerator, and it doesn’t seem as if you’d be placid enough to tackle the incinerator right now without riskin’ a mixshure of Black Germans and Italians-—an’ Germans can shoot straight!”
“You go on to your fooling around,” said Jamie. “I’ll jump into the bee clothes. Maybe I’ll put the old raincoat over them, and I may take the bee mask, since things are so stirred up, but don’t you worry, I’ll reach the incinerator and I’ll get everything in it. I’ll not stop to hive the bees until everything is on the kitchen table and spread out to dry.”
Jamie raced to the back porch to prepare himself, and, as he rounded the corner of the house, John Carey came walking up the back steps trailing ashes in his wake, and set the incinerator on the back porch.
“I thought I’d better get this and start the stuff to drying out. I didn’t want the job of taking anything out for fear something might be lost or missing. I want you to do that yourself.”
So Jamie stepped to the living-room door and called in: “John Carey has gotten the incinerator for us. He’s a right real bee immune!”
“I’ll tell the world he is,” came the voice of the little Scout, but it sounded muffled as if it were coming from fairly deep in a pillow.
The two men gathered up some soft towels and, working swiftly, dried the documents, the bank books, the valuable papers, the letters and the pictures that they found, and spread them on the kitchen table. Then they hurried to the shed to arrange new hives for the swarming bees. By the time they reached them, the two swarms that had gone out were weighting down the branches around their queens and only needed a slight smoking to numb them so that their transference to the hives could be easily managed. As for the Black Germans, they were still nervous, but they were a distance away, the hot sun was rapidly drying the water around their hives, the roar of the hose had ceased, the scent they disliked had been removed, and so they were calming down as speedily as might have been expected of bees of their irritable temperament.
As they worked, the two men talked to each other, breathless exchanges, exclamations mostly. What a listener would have heard, ran like this:
“Can you beat it! That little Scout tackled her single-handed and made her come clean! I’d give a fifty-dollar bill to have seen the whole show!”
This from John Carey.
“Wager it would have been worth more,” from Jamie.
“Chances are you’ve been saved a lawsuit that might have dragged for months and cost a lot of money and made a lot of rotten publicity.”
“When we get these bees up, I’ll go over to Margaret Cameron’s and straighten everything up and bring home my stuff. I was going to camp there until Margaret got back.”
“You were a fool ever to have allowed that creature inside the house, to have walked out and turned things over to her!”
Jamie smiled, a slow Scot smile.
“You know,” he said, “we are no so verra well acquainted with ourselves in this world. I thought I had not earned this property; I thought I had no right to it; I thought it belonged to someone of blood kin; I thought I had not set my heart on it, and when I had walked out and started trying to give it up, I found it was almost going to kill me to do it. You can trust me, there’ll not be any more walking out for anybody, and that’s that!”
So they hived the bees that had swarmed, and went over the other hives to clip old queens and destroy queen cells and to search for moth webs on the comb, and when everything was in proper shape John Carey went home, and Jamie took a shovel and commenced repairing the damage to the marigold bed. After that, he went over and cleaned up Margaret Cameron’s house and brought home his belongings with a heart so full of thankfulness that he remembered to go on his knees and thank God.
When the little Scout awoke in mid-afternoon, Jamie was waiting to return his possessions to the chiffonier and closet. They went into the kitchen and gathered up the Bee Master’s effects which the crisp, dry air had done its work upon, carefully returned them to the chest, pushed the splintered wood into place, and took stock of the damages. Jamie thought he could find a man who could make the repairs skillfully so that no one ever would know that the beautiful thing had been broken. Then he went to his room to hang up his clothing and replace his things in the chiffonier.
No one had ever known the little Scout Master to waste very much time. There were no lazy bones in the small body. Jamie had assistance in folding the papers and putting them in the chest. He was now being assisted in returning his shirts, underclothing, and socks to their proper places. When they came to a small package, carefully pinned, the Scout Master ran a pair of small hands under it and lifted it, then looked at Jamie with speculative eyes.
“Feels like woman’s stuff.”
Jamie smiled at that comment.
“It is ‘woman’s stuff.’ It’s things that belonged to wee Jamie’s mother.”
The Little Scout stood very still holding the package toward Jamie, and Jamie saw the lips open and he knew that the question was going to be: “May I see?” And someway, he did not feel that he could stand to touch those things. So he reached his hand and said quickly: “Some day I’ll let you see what’s in that package.” It did not occur to the little Scout that Jamie did not know what was in it himself. So they put the package back in the drawer and covered it with clothing, and then they went down to the corner grocery and bought what the little Scout called a “party.”
After they had finished the “party,” and Jamie had been told every detail of what had occurred in the morning, the little Scout arose from the table and helped to put away the food and wiped the dishes.
“Now, what shall we do?” inquired Jamie.
“Well, I don’t know what you’re going to do,” said the small person, “but I know what I’m going to do. I’m going home to Mom and Jamie. I been taking care of him so much the last few days that he knows me better than he does anybody else, and he likes me better. I know how to fix his bottle now and get his milk just right with the thermometer and everything. The rest of the way I could take care of him myself if I had to. I’m pretty near doing it anyway.”
“But that’s girl’s work,” suggested Jamie.
“Yes, I know,” said the little Scout, “and if it’s what a girl really ought to do, it’s kind of funny that I’d want to do it, but I do want to take care of Jamie. I want to take care of him so bad I can’t hardly bear to see Mother touch him. It’s the funniest thing. I thought I liked a horse better than anything else in the world, but I don’t. I like our Jimmy better than any horse, and I like your Jamie about as well as I do ours. I don’t know but just as well, and I don’t care a bit who sees me takin’ care of him. And that’s strange, too. Girls don’t interest me. I have nothing in common with them. I never can think of anything to say to them. I don’t know how to play with them, and I don’t like the things they do, anyway. They’re so sissy. They got no pep to ’em. They got no kick and bang. They won’t play Indians or robbers or policeman or Scouts.
“Now, back up there,” said Jamie. “You’re mistaken, Girls do play Scouts. They not only play Scouts, but they are Scouts, and being is better than pretending any day. There are Girl Scout camps and there are girls that can ride hard and shoot straight and fish and do everything that a boy does, and do some things even better than a boy does and are all the prouder because they are girls.”
The little Scout did not seem deeply impressed.
“Aw, girls! I ain’t got any use for girls! But I’m going home and take a girl’s job ’cause I’m going to see for myself that Jamie’s all right. He’s so little and sweet. My! you’re goin’ to love him! My! you’re goin’ to be glad you got him!”
“Am I?” asked Jamie.
“Sure you are! You ought to see my dad with our Jimmy. He’s just crazy about him. He says that our Jimmy has got all the rest of the babies on the map lashed to the mast.”
“And you think my Jamie stands a chance of being as fine a baby as that?” asked Jamie.
“I don’t think anything about it,” said the little Scout. “I’m well acquainted with both of ’em and there ain’t a thing the matter with your Jamie. He don’t cry and he’s no fusser. He just takes his food and goes to sleep and lies there so little and so still it most breaks your heart ’cause he can’t help himself any, and no mother to cuddle him. He’s got some service due him and I’m going to see that he gets it.”
“Yes, I thought about that, too,” said Jamie. “He’s certainly a helpless little duffer.”
“Yes, he is,” agreed the Scout Master, heartily. “He’s a helpless little duffer And that’s where we come in, and so we got to get on the job and take care of him.”
“All right,” said Jamie, “we’ll get on the job and take care of him. Do the best you can for a few days more until Margaret Cameron comes.”
At the mention of Margaret Cameron they both looked her way, and at the same time they both saw her going in her back door and moving through the back part of the house.
“Why, there she is now!” cried the little Scout. “Shall go over and tell her about Jamie and ask her if she will take him?”
“No,” said Jamie, “let’s give her time to take her hat off and set her house in order, and maybe what I consider straight, she wouldn’t think was straight. Some time this evening I’ll talk with her, and then I’ll telephone you what she says.”
“All right,” said the little Scout.
Possibly in those two words lay the secret of the thing that made the little Scout so many friends; such an adorable little Scout. In the small person’s cosmos there was no time to argue. In training the Scouts the same teaching had been applied to personal experience. The Scout Master had learned how to obey. So Jamie watched the receding figure on the way to the car line, willing in one instance to take a girl’s job, because the “little duffer was so helpless.” Jamie smiled whimsically and started to interview Margaret Cameron.