The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit Part 16

"Do you know of anyone who would take him?" asked Nyoda.

The old man considered, with his head in his hands. "Oh, Mis' Elizabeth, you-all ain't goin' ter give dat goat away?" he broke out pleadingly.

"'At goat's lived here all his life, deed he has, Mis' Elizabeth, an' he wouldn' feel to home nowheres else!"

But for once Nyoda stood her ground and refused to be cajoled.

"Mis' Elizabeth," said old Hercules solemnly, when all pleading had been in vain, "you-all ain' goin' ter give 'at goat away, because you-all _can't_ give him away! Ain't anybody _livin_' 'at can give dat goat away! He'd come back just as fast as you'd give him away! 'At ol'

Kaiser's a mighty foxy goat. Ain't no door bin _invented_ 'at _he_ can't break down!"

The old man's voice quavered triumphantly, and he winked at the goat solemnly. Nyoda had a mental vision of Kaiser Bill putting on a Return from Elba act every day in the future, and her resolution took a sudden hardy turn.

"You're right," she said. "It wouldn't do any good to give him away.

He'd come back. The only way to get rid of him is to kill him. Then we'll be sure he can't come back."

Hercules looked at her unbelievingly, and shook his head.

"I mean it," repeated Nyoda. "I'm going to get rid of that goat."

She stood still, waiting for the torrent of dissuading argument that would presently come from Hercules' lips, intending to cut it short, but the flow never came. Just when Hercules had his mouth open to begin there came a sudden earthquake shock from behind, and he found himself sitting in a flower bed a dozen feet away, rubbing his bruised knees and struggling to regain his breath. His first impression was that he had been run over by a locomotive.

When he could finally be persuaded that Kaiser Bill, base and ungrateful animal, had rewarded his champions.h.i.+p of him by deliberately a.s.saulting him with the full force of his concrete forehead, his heart was broken, and he mutely bowed to the decision of the judge.

"'T's all one ter me now," he said sadly. "Kaiser Bill done turn agin'

ol' Hercules; ol' Hercules' heart broke now. Don' care whether you kill him er not. 'T's all one ter me."

"We'll have a Court Martial," announced Sahwah.

The Court Martial duly sat, and in a most formal manner Kaiser Bill was tried and convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and of traitorously destroying the American flag, and was sentenced to be shot at sunrise the next morning.

"Who's going to shoot him?" asked Hinpoha.

"Oh, we'll get Slim and the Captain to do it," replied Sahwah.

With the death sentence hanging over his head, the Kaiser was led away to await his execution.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PARTY

Dinner hour was over in Oakwood and the evening life of the stately old town was beginning to stir when Mr. Wing stepped off the train and walked briskly through the softly falling twilight toward his home. Not far from the station he met the artist, Eugene Prince, strolling about admiring the landscape, and hailed him cordially. "I've just come home on a flying trip over night," he explained. "Have to go to Was.h.i.+ngton in the morning. I wonder if the folks are at home; I should have telephoned them I was coming, I suppose." Mr. Wing seemed very much elated about something.

"How's the big case coming?" asked the artist. He had always been such a ready listener while Mr. Wing expressed his various theories About the matter and showed such a lively interest that Mr. Wing had gotten into the habit of talking about it to him by the hour and listening to him express _his_ theories.

Now when the artist mentioned the big case Mr. Wing could not conceal his triumph, for _his_ theory had been right after all, and the artist's had been wrong. "It's exactly what I expected," he said jubilantly, and spoke in a low, confidential tone for some minutes.

The artist whistled in blank surprise.

The two men pa.s.sed up the street, talking in low tones. "Come up to the house with me," said Mr. Wing presently, "and I'll show you--h.e.l.lo, what's this?"

A creaking rumble behind them made them start and turn around, and a singular sight greeted their eyes. Down the street puffed an immensely fat negro woman clad in a calico wrapper and a bright red turban, pus.h.i.+ng a wheelbarrow in which sat a negro baby somewhat larger than its mammy. In the wheelbarrow beside the baby stood a feeding bottle of gigantic proportions, being in very truth a three-gallon flask designed to hold a solution to spray trees with; six feet of garden hose const.i.tuted the tube, and a black rubber diving cap at the upper end of it completed the feeding apparatus.

"_Pour l'amour de Mique!_" laughed Mr. Wing, as the unique outfit rumbled by. "What on earth do you suppose _that_ is?" They followed the progress of the billowing mother and her husky infant with amused eyes, and at the corner of the street she attempted to turn the barrow, ran into a stone, upset the barrow and spilled the infant on the ground.

The infant immediately sprang up, clutching the Gargantuan feeding bottle, and berated his mother in emphatic terms, delivered in a deep ba.s.s voice, addressing her as "Captain." "Look out, you'll break the bottle, dumping the wheelbarrow over like that," he remarked warningly.

The old mammy stooped over to readjust him in the barrow and as she did so several feet of masculine garments became visible under her short skirt.

"Minstrel show in town," remarked Mr. Wing with another laugh of amus.e.m.e.nt. His amus.e.m.e.nt turned to surprise when the picturesque pair preceded him up the street and turned in at his own yard. The house was lighted from one end to the other; groups of young people were visible everywhere, on the porches, on the lawn, in the doorways.

"Seems to be a party going on here," remarked Mr. Wing.

"Father!" exclaimed a voice from the crowd, and Agony darted forward to embrace him. "Why didn't you tell us you were coming? You're just in time for the party."

Mr. Wing greeted the guests affably and after a short interval escaped with the artist to his study on the second floor, where they spent an hour in close consultation behind a locked door.

"Now let's go down and look in on the party," said Mr. Wing, locking a package of letters carefully into a small drawer in his desk. Before going down he went to his own room and changed to a suit of white flannels in honor of the occasion.

As he was finally making for the stairway he met Veronica Lehar in the upstairs hall. "May I use the telephone in the study?" she asked.

"Certainly," he replied, and went in and turned the light on for her and then went on downstairs.

Shouts of laughter filled the air; the negro mammy and the gigantic infant, together with the wheelbarrow and the feeding bottle, were holding the stage at the end of the s.p.a.cious sitting room. Slim was being given his birthday presents and was surrounded with nonsensical articles of every kind--toys, rattles, all-day suckers, and so forth, and was convulsing the crowd with his antics.

The merriment went on until somebody called for Veronica to play on her violin and she came downstairs with her violin in her hands. Then a hush fell on the crowd, and the merrymakers listened, spellbound and dreamy-eyed, to the strains which the pa.s.sionate-eyed little Hungarian girl drew from the fiddle resting so caressingly in the hollow of her shoulder.

It was a plaintive, melancholy melody she played first, throbbing with unsatisfied longing and quivering with pain and heartbreak. Sahwah s.h.i.+vered and thought of ice cold rain drops falling on long dead leaves, and the restless unhappiness seized upon her again. The melody wandered on, and in its weird minor thirds there seemed to be all the anguish of an oppressed people, hopeless of release from bondage; condemned to toil in darkness forever.

Then a new note crept into the music, a note of protest, of rebellion.

Fury took the place of hopelessness; dumb resignation gave way to angry stirrings. Fiercely the storm raged for a moment, and then subsided into feeble murmurs, and flickered out into hopelessness again, blacker and deeper than before. Then came flight, sudden and headlong, hurried and confused; and days of wandering by land and sea, hours of loneliness and homesickness, of mingled hope and fear, of faith and perplexity, ending in a magnificent hymn of thanksgiving and praise for deliverance. It made Sahwah think of the persecuted Jews in Russia, fleeing from a ma.s.sacre and coming to America for refuge.

But now the music had taken a gayer, brighter turn. Everywhere there was the hum of industry, a contented sound like the buzzing of bees intent upon gathering honey. Songs of happiness rose on every side, mingled with the sound of joyful feet pa.s.sing in a gay dance. The music took on an irresistible lilt; the feet of the listeners itched to join in the measure and tapped out the time involuntarily.

Suddenly the dance turned into marching, the earth resounded with the tramp, tramp of advancing feet, the music became a martial strain; it stirred the blood to fever heat and set the pulses leaping madly. Louder and more triumphant swelled the strain, louder came the tramp of the victorious armies following in the wake of trumpets, until the whole earth seemed to mingle its voice in one great shout of victory.

Without knowing it the listeners were on their feet, clutching each other with tense fingers, their eyes blurred with tears, their throats aching with emotion, their hearts burning to perform deeds of valor for their country, to fight to the last ditch, to die as heroes for their native land.

They hardly realized when Veronica had stopped playing and slipped quietly out of the room.

"G.o.d, what playing!" breathed Mr. Wing to the artist. "Music like that would turn cowards into heroes and heroes into demi-G.o.ds; would inspire a wooden dummy to fight to the last ditch for freedom and native land.

Daggers and Dirks! What a red-hot little American she is! Why, if a _dead_ man heard her play the 'Star Spangled Banner' the way she just played it, he'd rise up to protect his country. Yes, and his very _monument_ would shoulder a gun and get into the ranks against the foe!"

Refreshments were brought in and the babel of tongues broke loose again.

Everyone asked for Veronica, wanted to sit beside her and tell her what a wonderful genius she was, but she was nowhere to be found.

Grandmother Wing came in presently and said that Veronica had slipped out and gone home because she had a sick headache and wanted to be alone.

"She has those headaches so often," said Migwan in a tone of concern. "I wonder if I hadn't better go home after her."