Peak and Prairie Part 16

As the elder Simon strolled down the hillside on this particular spring day, calling and peering from side to side, his eye fell upon the first daisy of the season, nestling close at his feet,--a single blossom among a crowded group of little short-stemmed scrubby buds. He stooped to pick it, and was standing, lost in wonder over its frailty and its hardihood, when a child's voice struck his ear, calling, "Come Bossie, come!"

Stepping around a projecting rock close at hand, Amberley came upon a pretty scene. On a wide level sunny s.p.a.ce, where young gra.s.s was already springing, stood a little figure in blue, with yellow hair flying about in the breeze; a tiny hand filled with gra.s.s, held out toward the doubtful yet covetous Simon Jr. The child stood perfectly still, her square little back turned to her new observer, while the calf stumped cautiously toward her. At a safe distance he stopped and sniffed at the tiny hand, then kicked up his heels and pranced away again. The little drama repeated itself several times, the child standing always motionless, with extended arm, and calling upon "Bossie" in enticing tones to come.

Won over at last by her constancy,--or by his own greed,--"Bossie"

ventured near enough to s.n.a.t.c.h the proffered tidbit; then off he scampered, in ungrateful haste, mouthing the delicate morsel.

A sigh of relief and satisfaction went up from the little figure, while one small hand gravely rubbed and kneaded the arm which had so pluckily maintained its uncomfortable position. Amberley approached with his short-stemmed daisy.

"How do you do, little girl?" he inquired in his most polite manner.

"Would you like a daisy?"

"Yes," was the reply, spoken with a slight lisp.

"You are very good to feed Simon," Amberley proceeded, quite set at ease by the gracious acceptance of his offering.

"Yes;" said the child once more, this time with a rising inflection.

"Simon is my calf, you know," Amberley went on. "Here, Simon, come along."

Simon Jr., was already approaching, with an eye to business, and even as his master spoke, he had got his nose into a certain wide, baggy pocket in the old army trousers, and was poking it about in very familiar fas.h.i.+on.

"Wait a minute, Simon," said Amberley, drawing himself gently away.

"Here, little girl, you take a bit of the salt in your hand and he'll come for it."

"Yes," came the a.s.senting voice; and Simon Jr., once convinced that the pocket was closed to him, approached the child with easy confidence, and not only devoured the proffered salt, but continued to lick the grimy little palm when it was quite bare of that pleasing stimulant.

Then the child laughed, a queer little short, grown-up laugh, and declared: "I like Simon."

"So do I," said Amberley, casting about for some new blandishment.

"Let's come up to the shanty and draw a picture of him."

"Yes," the little sphinx replied.

Amberley held out his hand, with a poignant dread lest she should refuse to take it; a thrill of pleasure, almost as poignant, went up his arm and so on to his heart, as the tiny hand rested in his own.

"What is your name?" he asked. They were rounding the big boulder and beginning the short ascent to the cabin.

"Eliza Christie, and I'm six years old," she replied, tugging the while at his hand, to help herself over a rough place. Then,--"What's yours?"

she asked.

"Simon Amberley."

"Same's the calf," she commented. "Was either of you named for the other?"

"Yes; the calf was."

"I was named for my sainted grandmother. Bella Jones says Eliza's an ugly name, but Ma says if 't was good enough for my sainted grandmother it's good enough for me."

"_I_ think Eliza's a real pretty name," Amberley declared in a tone of conviction, as he warded off the renewed advances of Simon. "If ever I have another calf I shall call it Eliza."

"I like both the Simons," Eliza announced, with flattering openness.

To such a declaration as this, modesty forbade any reply, and the two went on in silence to the cabin door, closely followed by the white-nosed gourmand.

Outside the lean-to was a bench, roughly modelled on Amberley's recollection of the settle outside his mother's kitchen door.

"You'd better set there, Eliza," he said; "It's prettier outside than in;" and he lifted her to the seat, and left her there, with her fat little legs sticking straight out in front of her.

She seemed to take very naturally to the situation, and indeed her small, st.u.r.dy person looked as much a part of the homely scene as the stubby little daisy she held in her hand. As she sat there in the suns.h.i.+ne, placid and self-contained, a mysterious trampling and crackling began among the trees close at hand, and one after another, three solemn-eyed cows emerged into the clearing and fixed a wondering gaze upon the little visitor. She, nothing daunted, calmly returned their gaze, only holding the daisy a little more tightly, lest one of the new-comers should take it into her head to dispute the prize; and Simon found her, upon his return, confronting the horned monsters with unruffled tranquillity.

Acknowledging the presence of the cows only by a friendly "Shoo, there!"

he established himself beside his waiting guest upon the settle, his long legs crossed, by way of a table.

"Can you draw?" he asked.

"No; I don't know my letters," she replied, with unconscious irrelevance.

"How would you like to have me learn you?"

"I'd like it."

"Well; I'll learn you _O_ first. That's the first letter I learned;" and he made a phenomenally large and round _O_ in the upper left-hand corner of the sheet. The paper, finding insufficient resting-place upon the bony knee, took occasion to flap idly in the gentle southerly breeze; upon which the child took hold of it with a quaint air of helpfulness which was singularly womanly.

"Now I've learned _O_," she remarked, "I'd like to learn another."

"Well, there's an _I_; see, there?"

"The other one looks more like an eye," she observed critically.

"So it does, so it does!" Amberley admitted, much impressed by the discovery. "But then it's an _O_ all the same, and this one is an _I_."

"Yes; well, I've learned that. Now, make another."

Thus unheralded and unawares come the great moments of life. When little Eliza mounted that wooden settle, her mind was innocent of artificial accomplishments; before she again stood on her round fat legs, she had begun the ascent of that path which leads away up to the heights of human knowledge. It is a long ascent and few accomplish it, but the first essential steps had been taken: little Eliza had become a _Scholar_!

Not only had she learned to recognize an _O_ and an _I_, an _S_, an _M_, and an _N_, but she had laboriously made each one of them with her own hand. And, furthermore, she had seen them combined in a wonderful group which, if her teacher was to be credited, stood for _Simon_! It was better than drawing, infinitely better! Anybody could make a round thing with four crooked legs and a thin tail, and call it a calf--but only a scholar could put five letters together and make them stand for a man and a calf beside; a man with a kind voice and a big beard, and a calf that would lick a person's hand! Oh, but life had grown a wonderful thing to little Eliza, when she trotted down the hillside, clinging to the fingers of her new friend, and holding the st.u.r.dy little daisy in the other st.u.r.dy little hand.

And life had grown even more wonderful to Simon Amberley. He had not pa.s.sed such a pleasant day since he could remember, and he had certainly never in his life had so much to look forward to; for had not Eliza promised to come again the next day, and to bring Bella Jones with her?

He went into the cabin after his ch.o.r.es were done, and pulled out an old cowhide trunk with the hair pretty well worn off it, and there, inside, he found the battered family Bible which had been sent out, at his request, when his mother died; and a copy of Shakespeare's _Plays_ in one volume which he had got as a prize at school. There, too, were Miss Edgeworth's _Rosamond_, and Nathaniel P. Willis' _Poems_, and one volume of Dr. Kane's _Explorations at the North Pole_. "Quite a library," he said to himself, with conscious pride. He had not read in a book for twenty years; not since the time, back in Ohio, when he had bought Scott's complete Works at auction, and had to sell them again to pay his way to Missouri, whither he had gone in obedience to that mysterious prompting of the setting sun.

By and by he strolled up the hill to get the sunset light. It was very splendid on the glittering snow of the heights over yonder. After all, he reflected, the mountains knew pretty well what they were about. If they had not let the enemy through, those little girls would not have got in, and he should not have felt as if he were beginning life all over again.

Before a month had pa.s.sed, Simon found himself established in the new character of Lame Gulch Professor. So, at least, Enoch called him, and it was not displeasing to the subject of Enoch's pleasantry to know that others had adopted the suggestion and bestowed upon him that honorable t.i.tle. His little cla.s.s numbered fifteen or twenty children of a.s.sorted ages and dispositions, who came, lured by rumors of pleasant things, and remained to imbibe learning with more or less avidity. There was an absence of restraint about this novel school which appealed strongly to the childish heart. The scholars were free to come and go as they pleased, a privilege which, once established, they were not inclined to take undue advantage of. They sat on the most amusing seats, improvised from fallen tree trunks, or small wood-piles, or c.o.c.ks of hay. They called their teacher what they pleased: sometimes Simon, sometimes Teacher, sometimes Mister! Bella Jones always said "Perfessor." They studied from whatever book they liked best, each child bringing the "Reader" or "Speller" he could most easily lay hands on. But they learned more from Simon's books than from their own. That book of William Shakespeare's stood easily first in their estimation, for when the "perfessor" read from it, they somehow understood the story, in spite of the hard words which, taken by themselves, seemed to mean nothing at all.

If a ground squirrel scuttled across the clearing, no one was so quick to observe him as the teacher himself, and before Fritz Meyer could seize a stone to fire at the tame little chap, the young sportsman had become so interested in something Simon was saying about its ways and nature, that he forgot what he wanted of the stone.

"How do you spell squirrel?" asked a sharp-featured boy one day, as he watched the twinkling eyes of one of the tiny creatures.