A Summer in a Canyon Part 6

I know a little girl who crossed the plains in that great ungeneraled army of fifteen or twenty thousand people that made the long and weary journey to the land of gold in 1849. She tells her children now of the strange, long days and months in the ox-team, pa.s.sing through the heat and dust of alkali deserts, fording rivers, and toiling over steep mountains. She tells them how at night she often used to lie awake, curled up in her grey blanket, and hear the men talking together of the gold treasures they were to dig from the ground--treasures, it seemed to her childish mind, more precious than those of which she read in The Arabian Nights. And from a little hole in the canvas cover of the old emigrant wagon she used to see the tired fathers and brothers, worn and footsore from their hard day's tramp, some sleeping restlessly, and others guarding the cattle or watching for Indians, who were always expected, and often came; and the last thing at night, when her eyes were heavy with sleep, she peered dreamily out into the darkness to see the hundreds of gleaming camp-fires, which dotted the plain as far as the eye could reach.

You will have noticed that this first week of camp-life was a quiet one, spent mostly by the young people in getting their open-air home comfortably arranged, making conveniences of all kinds, becoming acquainted with the canyon so far as they could, and riding once or twice to neighbouring ranches for hay or provisions.

Dr. Wins.h.i.+p believed in a good beginning; and, as this was not a week's holiday, but a summer campaign, he wanted his young people to get fully used to the situation before undertaking any of the exciting excursions in prospect. So, before the week was over, they began to enjoy sound, dreamless sleep on their hard straw beds, to eat the plain fare with decided relish, to grow a little hardy and brown, and quite strong and tough enough for a long tramp or horseback ride.

After a religious devotion to cold cream for a few nights, Polly had signified her terrible intention of 'letting her nose go.' 'I disown it!' she cried, peeping in her tiny mirror, and lighting up her too rosy tints with a tallow candle. 'Hideous objick, I defy thee! Spot and speckle, yea, burn to a crisp, and shed thy skin afterwards! I care not. Indeed, I shall be well rid of thee, thou--h'm--thou-- well, leopard, for instance.'

One beautiful day followed another, each the exact counterpart of the one that had preceded it; for California boys and girls never have to say 'wind and weather permitting' from March or April until November.

They always know what the weather is going to do; and whether this is an advantage or not is a difficult matter to settle conclusively.

New England boys affirm that they wouldn't live in a country where it couldn't rain any day it felt like it, and California lads retort that they are glad their dispositions are not ruined by the freaks of New England weather. At all events, it is a paradise for would-be campers, and any one who should a.s.sert the contrary would meet with energetic opposition from the loyal dwellers in Camp Chaparral.

Bell returned one day from a walk which she had taken by herself, while the other girls were off on some errand with the Doctor. After luncheon she drew them mysteriously into the square tent, and lowered the curtains.

'What is it?' Polly whispered, with an anxious expression of countenance. 'Have you lost your gold thimble again, or your temper, or have you discovered a silver mine?'

'I have found,' she answered mysteriously, 'the most beautifully secret place you ever beheld. It will be just the spot for us to write and study in when we want to be alone; or it will even do for a theatre; and it is scarcely more than half a mile up the canyon.'

'How did you find it?' asked Margery.

'As I was walking along by the brookside, I saw a snake making its way through the bushes, and--'

'Goodness!' shrieked Polly, 'I shall not write there, thank you.'

'Goose! Just wait a minute. I looked at it, and followed at a distance; it was a harmless little thing; and I thought, for the fun of it, I would just push blindly on and see what I should find, because we are for ever walking in the beaten path, and I long for something new.'

'A bad instinct,' remarked Madge, 'and one which will get you into trouble, so you should crush it in its infancy.'

'Well, I took up my dress and ploughed through the chaparral, until I came, in about three minutes of scratching and fighting, to an open circular place about as large as this tent. It was exactly round, which is the curious part of it; and in the centre was one stump, covered with moss and surrounded by great white toadstools. How any one happened to go in there and cut down a single tree I can't understand, nor yet how they managed to bring out the tree through the tangled brush. It is so strange that it seems as if there must be a mystery about it.'

'Certainly,' said Margery promptly. 'A tragedy of the darkest kind!

Some cruel wretch has cut down, in the pride and pomp of it beauty, one sycamore-tree; its innocent life-blood has stained the ground, and given birth to the white toadstools which mark the spot and testify to the purity of the victim.'

'Well,' continued Bell, impressively, 'I knew I could never find it again; and I wanted so much you should see it that I took the ball of twine we always carry, unrolled it, and dropped the thread all the way along to the brookside, like Phrygia, or Melpomene, or Anemone, or whatever her name was.'

'Or Artesia, or Polynesia, or Euthanasia,' interrupted Polly. 'I think the lady you mean is Ariadne.'

'Exactly. Now we'll take papa to see it, and then we'll fit it up as a retreat. Won't it be charming? We'll call it the Lone Stump.'

'Oh, I like that; it makes me s.h.i.+ver!' cried Polly. 'I'm going to write an ode to it at once. Ahem! It shall begin--let me see -

'O lonely tree, What cruel "he"

Did lay thee low?

Tell us the facts; Did cruel axe Abuse thee so?'

'Sublime! Second verse,' said Bell slowly, with pauses between the lines:-

'Or did a gopher, The wicked loafer, Gnaw at thy base, And, doing so, Contrive to go, And leave no trace?'

'Oh dear!' sighed Margery; 'if you will do it, wait a minute.

'O toadstools white, Pray give us light Upon the question.

Did gopher gnaw, And live in awe Of indigestion?'

'Good!' continued Bell:-

'Or did a man Malicious plan The good tree's ruin, And leave it so Convenient low, A seat for Bruin?

For travelling grizzlies, you know. We may go there and see a hungry creature making a stump-speech, while an admiring audience of gra.s.shoppers and tarantulas seat themselves in a circle on the toadstools.'

'Charming prospect!' said Madge. 'I don't think I care to visit the Lone Stump or pa.s.s my mornings there.'

'Nonsense, dear child; it is just like every other part of the canyon, only a little more lonely. It is not half a mile from camp, and hardly a dozen steps from the place where the boys go so often to shoot quail.'

'Very well,' said the girls. 'We must go there to-morrow morning; and perhaps we'd better not tell the boys,--they are so peculiar.

Jack will certainly interfere with us in some way, if he hears about it.'

'Now let us take our books and run down by the pool for an hour or two,' said Bell. 'Papa and the boys are all off shooting, and mamma is lying down. We can have a cool, quiet time; the suns.h.i.+ne is so hot here by the tents.'

Accordingly, they departed, as they often did, for one of the prolonged chats in which school-girls are wont to indulge, and which so often, too, are but idle, senseless chatter.

These young people, however, had been fortunate in having the wisest and most loving guardians.h.i.+p, so that all their happy young lives had been spent to good purpose. They had not s.h.i.+rked study, and so their minds were stocked with useful information; they had read carefully and digested thoroughly whatever they had read, so that they possessed a good deal of general knowledge. The girls were bright, sensible, industrious little women, who tried to be good, too, in the old-fas.h.i.+oned sense of the word; and full of fun, nonsense, and chatter as they were among themselves, they never forgot to be modest and una.s.suming.

The boys were pretty well in earnest about life, too, with good ambitions and generous aspirations. They had all been studying with Dr. Wins.h.i.+p for nearly two years; and that means a great deal, for he was a real teacher, entering into the lives of his pupils, sympathising with them in every way, and leading them, through the study of nature, of human beings, and of G.o.d, to see the beauty and meaning of life.

Geoffrey Strong, of course, was older than the rest, having completed his junior year at college; but Dr. Wins.h.i.+p, who was his guardian, thought it wiser for him to rest a year and come to him in California, as his ambition and energy had already led him into greater exertions than his age or strength warranted. He was now studying medicine with the good Doctor, but would go back to the 'land of perpetual pie' in the fall and complete his college course.

A splendid fellow he was,--so earnest, thoughtful, and wise; so gravely tender in all his ways to Aunt Truth, who was the only mother he had ever known; so devoted to Dr. Wins.h.i.+p, who loved him as his own elder son.

What will Geoffrey Strong be as a man? The twig is bent, and it is safe to predict how the tree will incline. His word will be as good as his bond; he will be a good physician, for his eye is quick to see suffering, and his hand ready to relieve it; little children with feverish cheeks and tired eyes will love to clasp his cool, strong sand; he will be gentle as a woman, yet thoroughly manly, as he is now, for he has made the most of his golden youth, and every lad who does that will have a golden manhood and a glorious old age.

As for Philip n.o.ble, he was a dear, good, trustworthy lad too; kindly, generous, practical, and industrious; a trifle slow and reserved, perhaps, but full of common sense,--the kind of sense which, after all, is most uncommon.

Bell once said: 'This is the difference between Philip and Geoffrey,--one does, and the other is. Geoff is the real Simon-pure ideal which we praise Philip for trying to be,'--a very good description for a little maiden whose bright eyes had only looked into life for sixteen summers.

And now we come to Jack Howard, who never kept still long enough for any one to write a description of him. To explain how he differed from Philip or Geoffrey would be like bringing the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer together for purposes of comparison.

If there were a horseback ride, Jack rode the wildest colt, was oftenest thrown and least often hurt; if a fis.h.i.+ng-party, Jack it was who caught all the fish, though he made more noise than any one else, and followed no rules laid down in The Complete Angler.

He was very often in trouble; but his misdemeanours were those of pure mischief, and were generally atoned for when it was possible.