Chapter III: The Pendletons’ Troubles

They came to the fence, as Neale O’Neil had said they would, and then, after following it a little way, Margy shouted aloud and ran ahead.

“Here he is! Here is daddy!” she cried.

Her brother and sister followed closely on her heels, and the Kenway party came afterward, but almost as quickly. They saw a man lying on the ground, and at first he lay so still that the older girls and Luke and Neale did fear that Mr. Pendleton was dead.

Then——

“Oh!” gasped Agnes, with a sudden intake of breath. “His eyes are open.”

“He’s alive, all right,” said Luke Shepard.

“Oh, Daddy! Daddy!” Margy cried, over and over.

“Margy,” the man murmured, “and Carrie, and Reggy——”

“No, Daddy,” said the little boy very decidedly, “I’m going to be Shot Pendleton after this. This boy says it’s a better name, and I like it. ‘Reggy’ sounds as if I ought to have curls.”

At another time Mr. Pendleton would very likely have laughed, for he was a man who had tiny, humorous lines about his eyes, and the corners of his mouth more often turned up than down. So Ruth said, at least, and she was very observant.

She went forward with Agnes and stooped over the man on the ground. Agnes clung to her sister’s hand. The older boys stood back a little.

“Are you hurt?” Ruth Kenway asked softly.

“I believe I am. But I do not know how badly. I cannot move without feeling the most terrible pain in my back. I fell from that limb up there,” and he pointed up into the tree under which he lay.

“I bet he’s broken all his bones,” stated Sammy Pinkney with much confidence.

“Oh, hush!” cried Agnes pityingly.

“Sammy Pinkney!” exclaimed Tess, “you sound as though you hoped he had.”

“Well, folks do break their bones falling from trees. My mother says so.”

“That’s to keep you from climbing them,” Tess rejoined decidedly. “Of course this little girl’s father isn’t badly hurt.”

“Tess would make the best of any catastrophe,” chuckled Luke. “Let’s see if we can lift him, Neale.”

“Wait!” commanded Ruth. “Can you bear to stay as you are for a while?” she asked Mr. Pendleton.

“If I lie still—don’t try to move—I seem to be all right,” he said.

“Then,” said the oldest Corner House girl, “you run and bring the car, Neale. Get it in here just as close as you can. Then when you and Luke lift him you will not have so far to carry the poor man, and,” she whispered the rest in Luke’s ear, “if he is seriously hurt it will not rack him so badly.”

“Thoughtful girl,” said Luke proudly. “Go ahead, Neale.”

“I’ll bring the car around to this other road. It is not far out to the quarry. And maybe I can drive in to the burned cabin. There used to be a road to it.”

He started on the run as soon as he had spoken. The others gathered around the fallen man. Dot hugged up her Alice-doll, and remarked:

“I’m glad he isn’t dead. I don’t think I should like dead folks. And isn’t it lucky Sammy’s wolves didn’t find him here while his children were hunting for us?”

Carrie, the smallest Pendleton, gasped a horrified “Oh!” Then she asked: “Are there wolves in the chestnut woods—like the wolf in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’?”

“The wolves are in Sammy’s mind,” said Agnes cheerfully. “And wolves in your mind never bite.”

“Huh!” grumbled Sammy, “how do you know there aren’t really, truly wolves here?”

“You never saw any, Sammy Pinkney!” exclaimed Tess.

“Well, I never looked for any,” he declared.

“Anyway,” said Dot with determination, “they shan’t have my Alice-doll. I won’t save our lives by throwing her to ’em, so there.”

“There aren’t wolves here, are there, Daddy?” asked Margy Pendleton of the injured man.

“I don’t expect ever to see any,” he said faintly. “I—I don’t know what your mother will say to this, Reginald——”

“I’m not Reginald,” exclaimed the little boy anxiously. “Do call me Shot. Please, Daddy!”

This time his father managed to call up a smile. “All right, my boy. As you had nothing to do with choosing your name, I don’t know but you should be allowed to use it as you see fit. Your great-uncle, Silas Shotford, was a very good man. Oh!”

“Does it hurt you, Mr. Pendleton?” asked Ruth at this point. “Are you in pain? Can we help you?”

“I am afraid there is nothing you can help me about, Miss,” said the man. “If I move that arm it seems to send a shock through my nerves. This is going to be awful,” he murmured, “if I am made helpless.”

“What is your business, Mr. Pendleton?” asked the collegian bluntly. “If you are laid up will it matter seriously in your domestic affairs?”

“I tell you right now, young man,” said Mr. Pendleton more vigorously, “that nothing could be worse than this accident, it seems to me. Oh! nothing could be worse.”

“I’m sorry to hear you say that,” Luke rejoined, but cheerfully. Ruth gave him an illuminating look. “You know, Mr. Pendleton, this is a time when friends come mighty handy to a man——”

The man’s face fell. He shook his head despondently.

“I’ve got very few friends just now, and no work at all. I—I was discharged from my last position two months ago and have been unable to find anything to do at all. I tell you frankly that I am in the worst possible shape to endure a sick spell.”

“Don’t feel downhearted, Mr. Pendleton,” Ruth said quickly. “Perhaps you will not be laid up long after all. And when you are well I am sure we can find something to do. My name is Kenway. I live with my sisters in the old Corner House.”

“I know you do, Miss,” said Mr. Pendleton. “I have seen you girls before. But I doubt if you could find me work.”

“Oh, yes, we can,” she said. “Or, at least, our guardian can. Mr. Howbridge, the lawyer, is our guardian.”

The man again shook his head, and his brow was furrowed.

“You can’t help me in that way, Miss Kenway,” he said. “And I doubt if your guardian would let you.”

“Why, what do you mean?” cried Ruth.

He looked about quickly. His three children were with Tess and Dot and Sammy, a little distance away. The look in his eyes now was one of mental pain, not physical.

“No, Miss Kenway. I will be frank with you. I was discharged from Kolbeck and Roods because goods were lost from the storeroom—stolen. They accused me. And although they could not prove it, neither can I disprove it. Nobody else in Milton will give me work.”

“Oh, Mr. Pendleton!” cried tender-hearted Ruth, “isn’t that too bad? But of course Mr. Howbridge will find something for you to do just the same, and as soon as you get well.”

“Why didn’t you go away from Milton and get work where folks didn’t know about this trouble?” asked Luke bluntly.

“You see, we partly own the home we live in on Plane Street,” explained the man, with a groan, as he moved restlessly. “Ah! That hurts. I’ve done something to my back, I fear. And my poor wife——

“Well, it’s that way. We were paying for our home on the installment plan. If we move away we shall lose all we have put into it, for we could not sell our equity at this time. Real estate sales are at a low ebb, you know. I don’t know what to do.”

“I think those folks who say you stole are real mean!” cried Agnes warmly.

“Thank you,” returned Mr. Pendleton. “I know that no Pendleton was ever a thief. But there are things about the robbery that look bad for me. I admit that. But when they turned me out without waiting to see if the real thief would not be found, I think they did treat me pretty mean.”

“I’ll say they did!” exclaimed Luke.

They heard then the horn of the Kenway car, and a minute or two later Neale came hurrying through the woods.

“It’s only a little way to the burned cabin,” he said. “I’ve turned the car around, and if we can lift him easily I am sure the car won’t jounce very much getting back to the main road. Come on, Luke.”

“Do be careful, Neale!” begged Agnes.

“You girls take the little folks on ahead,” advised Luke. “Then Neale and I will bring Mr. Pendleton.”

The boys waited until the others were gone before touching the injured man. The latter muttered:

“I am afraid something is broken. I don’t know how much handling I can stand. Ah! This is awful!”

And it was true that when Luke and Neale raised him from the ground the poor man screamed aloud and instantly fainted.

The injured man remained unconscious until the boys got him into the automobile. The Kenway car was a big, seven-passenger machine. But when the whole party was in it, it certainly was crowded.

Luke held the sinking form of Mr. Pendleton upright against the cushions. He was glad the man was unconscious. The older girls tried to hush the weeping Pendleton children. The three other little folks were in front with Neale O’Neil, and even Sammy Pinkney was subdued.

Neale drove the car as carefully as possible, and in half an hour it stopped before the little cottage on Plane Street. There was a telephone next door, and before even the older boys carried the injured man into the house, Ruth had called their family physician, Dr. Forsyth.

“And remember, Doctor,” the girl said firmly, “whatever the bill is, it is a Kenway bill. You understand?”

“I understand that Ruth Kenway is up to one of her usual blessed tricks,” rejoined the doctor over the wire. “I will be right over.”

Neale drove Luke and the little folks home, while Ruth and Agnes remained with the frightened Mrs. Pendleton until Dr. Forsyth arrived and had made his examination. He soon had Mr. Pendleton much more comfortable both in mind and body.

“Nothing broken,” the physician said comfortingly. “Your back is strained and you’ve got to lie quiet. But we’ll have you up in a couple of weeks, Mr. Pendleton.”

He could see, as well as the girls, that the little family were in straitened circumstances. He gave Mrs. Pendleton a warm handclasp as he left and said:

“I will come in once in a while to see how he does. But do not let my coming worry you, Mrs. Pendleton. I understand your circumstances, and you tell your husband that he can be of easy mind. If there should be anything due for my services, its payment has already been arranged for.”

“Those blessed Kenway girls!” exclaimed Mrs. Pendleton. “I don’t know how I can ever thank them.”