Chapter IX: Glimpses of Old America

When Uncle Si, getting “so’s to be ’round” again, heard all about Stella and the Wolcott bull, the immediate results were two.

First, the bull was promptly sold—a surprising occurrence to those who best knew Silas Wolcott and his deep-rooted objection to disposing of any “critter” whatsoever that had been raised on the home place. No fowl was too old or too tough for home consumption, and indeed Uncle had developed no mean skill in softening gallinaceous tissues and imparting a delicious flavor by braising for twelve hours or thereabouts, with peppercorns and sweet herbs, in an old-fashioned bean-pot. But superfluous calves and superannuated horses were said to owe their immunity from sale to the fact that they had been “born on the old farm,” a fact which to his mind appeared to constitute a lifelong claim upon its hospitality.

Consequence number two, our heroine was actually adopted, to the extent of being formally requested to call the old man “Uncle,” which she shyly but joyfully proceeded to do. It was one more milestone on her long and often lonely road to “some really true relations.”

Now among the strictly home-bred stock on the Wolcott acres was a small herd of deer, as jealously guarded and almost as tame as if they had adorned the stately park of some English earl. Stella heard with intense, though undemonstrative, interest of this unexpected renaissance of wild life among the New England hills.

“Why, Mother Waring,” she confided, “you know they’re almost gone from our Dakota prairies, where there used to be so many. Think how hard it is for the women to get any deerskin for moccasins! And how _can_ there be deer here where white people have lived for hundreds of years?”

“There weren’t any when I was a little girl,” Mrs. Waring observed. “I believe they have come back because for many years now they have been protected; that means, you know, that nobody is allowed to kill them. Seems to me I’ve heard that there are supposed to be several thousand in this State; and now a law has been passed that for one week this fall they may be shot,” she added, doubtfully.

“Uncle Si won’t have his shot,” insisted Stella. “He has printed signs up all over his woods, with something about ‘the penalty of the law.’ Mother, I do so want to see a deer! and he says there are three that come to drink at the Cold Spring almost every evening. We’ve seen their tracks—a buck, a doe, and a dear little fawn,” the sweet voice pleaded. “But we always have to come home early so’s to be in time for tea.”

“So you do, darling,” assented her foster-mother, her gentle, puzzled gaze upon Stella’s earnest face. She knew by instinct that the child had a special favor to ask—she who had always found it hard to ask favors.

Out it came at last. “Cynthia is just as wild about the deer as I am; and—and—Mother dear—Uncle Si says we can come some Saturday and he’ll show them to us if we can keep quiet enough; and Dr. Brown has promised to drive us out there and back—Doris too, though Doris is a teeny bit afraid of the old buck’s horns—if you’re willing, and don’t mind my being out after dark just this once.” She was quite breathless, now.

“Why, yes, I think so—if the Doctor is kind enough to take charge of you—” Mrs. Waring got no further, for the sentence was interrupted at this point with a strangling hug.

After Stella had actually seen the deer, which happened before many weeks, the four friends had an earnest discussion upon the subject of the coming week of slaughter.

Ethan had lately become quite an adept with bow and arrows, which suggested to him the bright idea of going into the merry greenwood with the romantic equipment of a Robin Hood or a Hiawatha. He rather looked for the admiration of the girls, and especially of Yellow Star, and had even gone so far as to picture himself triumphantly bringing in the deer on his shoulders, and gallantly throwing it down at Mrs. Waring’s kitchen door. Rather to the boy’s resentment, however, she proved most unsympathetic.

“How can you think of such a thing?” she protested, “and after we have all watched the darling things drinking out of Uncle’s spring! I don’t call it hunting to go out and kill them when they are so tame, almost like pets.”

“I hope you don’t think I propose to shoot on posted land,” remarked Ethan With some dignity. “I know just where I shall go; on the south side of the mountain there’s a regular deer path; and it isn’t like gunning, let me tell you, with the buckshot scattering every which way; and beside, the farmers down that way are glad enough to have the deer killed—they do no end of damage to the young fruit trees.”

“I should say so; why, those very deer that Uncle Si thinks so much of got into the garden one night, and ruined all his early peas,” chimed in sensible Doris. “If it had been his next-door neighbor’s calves, wouldn’t there have been a row, or even a lawsuit, may be.”

“Well, rather,” observed Ethan, glad of a champion. “That’s just why the law was passed providing for one week’s open season; the deer are getting to be regular nuisances all over this part of the state. Pretty soon the farmers will have to build high fences to keep them off the growing crops.”

“It’s letting them think no one is going to hunt them, till they forget to be afraid, and then turning an army of men and boys loose on the poor things all of a sudden, that _I_ don’t like,” broke in Cynthia impulsively. “It’s all very well talking about the law, but what do the deer know about your old law? It isn’t fair, and I hate anything that’s not fair.”

“And it has seemed so like home, ever since I knew for certain there were Wild deer in these woods,” breathed Stella. “Girls, I keep fancying we’ll come upon some wigwams, some time, of those old Indians who lived here two hundred years ago. I suppose there aren’t any bounties offered for their scalps nowadays; and just suppose _they_ should come back, like the deer!”

The young folks were picnicking, as usual, in the edge of that bit of first-growth pine that Uncle was so proud of, and at Stella’s words all glanced furtively about, as if half expecting to glimpse a ragged birch-bark dwelling, or even one of the soft-footed braves revisiting his native haunts in these venerable woods. After all, it was they who were the intruders. Ethan looked decidedly shaken, but matter-of-fact Doris remarked bluntly:

“If they did come back, they wouldn’t kill the deer for one week, but every day in the year. I thought Indians were always hunting, when they weren’t on the war-path killing people; and _you_ needn’t say anything, Stella Waring, so there!”

However, when the open season actually came round with November, Ethan decided that he was “too busy” to take a day off in the woods, which Stella’s fancy had peopled for him with stealthy shadows, and friendly wreaths of blue smoke from well-hidden wigwams. It was Thanksgiving before they all met again at Uncle Si’s place, and found him “as mad as a hatter.”

“Spent more’n half o’ that week patrolin’ the woods with a shotgun, and givin’ fools that couldn’t read plain English a piece o’ my mind,” he explained, grimly. “Howsomever, the blamed racket scared my deer so’t I’ve never seen ’em since, and most likely I sha’n’t agin.”

“What a shame!” cried Sin, and poor Stella looked too much distressed to speak. She had tried not to think of the timid creatures harried and wounded, of antlered heads laid low, of the blood-drops on the leaves.

“Have you ever noticed this big rock in the middle of the pasture?—noticed it very specially, I mean,” she suggested, as they made their way around the giant boulder, towering high above their heads like a rude altar. “I always think, what if it was right here the Indians used to make their prayers and offerings! Great-grandfather Inyan—that’s what we Dakotas call a rock like that. And there must have been water-spirits—what you call fairies—about uncle’s ever-flowing spring. Oh, Cynthia and Doris! I should think you girls would care more about the _old_ America. You’re proud of being Americans; and there may be prettier stories belonging to these very hills than those we read in school about the Roman nymphs and the old Norse thunder-gods.”

“But where would we find them?” asked Doris, much impressed.

“Try the Historical Society,” Ethan suggested.

“I’m going straight to the library,” proclaimed Cynthia, “and next time we come for a day in the woods, we’ll each of us tell an ‘Old America’ story. What do you say, girls?”

* * * * *

An hour later, they had scattered in search of princess-pine and Christmas ferns, squaw-berries and moss, and Stella, at some little distance from the others, was carefully lifting a clump of hepaticas for Miss Sophia’s fernery, when she suddenly thought she heard a faint, whimpering noise.

The blood fairly crinkled in her veins. Dropping basket and trowel, she set herself to follow up the cry which came again and yet again, a plaintive, muffled, half-human sound that was almost like a baby’s smothered wail. At last her quick eye detected a misplaced leaf. The faint trail led straight to a dense thicket of laurel where a small creature lay motionless, so near the color of the dead leaves in which it nestled that to most eyes it would have been invisible.

With one quick spring she was upon it, and had flung both arms around the neck of a half-grown fawn, which had been wounded in the side, and was too weak to struggle much. Then she raised her voice in a loud cry.

“Ethan! Cynthia! Oh, E—E—than!”

* * * * *

“It’s Stella’s fawn, now,” piped Uncle Si Wolcott. They were all in the big farmhouse kitchen; Stella on the floor with the fawn’s head on her lap, and a saucer of milk beside her; Cynthia swinging her long limbs from her favorite perch on the edge of the table, and the others standing around in admiring attitudes. “Doctor Ethan” had carefully washed the wound, and pronounced it not serious.

“Th’ game warden’s a pretty good friend o’ mine,” he went on, with a twinkle, “and I don’t guess there’ll be any trouble about her keepin’ it for a pet if she wants to.”

The three girls exploded in a simultaneous “Oh!” of delight, but next instant a look of almost laughable bewilderment overspread their faces. The same thought had occurred to them all at the same time. Miss Sophia!

“_Do_ you suppose she’ll let you?” queried Sin in awestruck tones, while the others held their breath. No one but Cynthia would dare to say things right out like that.

“You might have a little house for him, down by the chicken-coop,” quavered Doris.

Stella was thinking hard. No one knew how she wanted the waif for her own; and she felt sure that dear Mother Waring would not—could not refuse her. The question was, did Stella want her to pay the price?

They were all waiting for her to speak, and at last her clear voice broke the silence.

“The fawn is something like me,” it began, pitifully. “You see, don’t you? It’s wild; it hasn’t any relations. I know just how a wild orphan feels, and I’m afraid it wouldn’t want to live in Miss Sophia’s chicken-coop and have her all the time wishing it wasn’t there. Uncle Si, if you would only be willing to let the fawn stay in the barn-yard with the calves, and if I could just _call_ it mine, and come and feed it sometimes?”

There was a soft brightness in the black eyes, as if tears were not far off, and everybody began talking at once, trying to drown the thought of the two “wild orphans” clinging together, and the utter hopelessness of an appeal to Miss Sophia.

“Think the critter’d be most as unpop’lar as Ethan’s rattlesnakes, hey?” chuckled Uncle Si.

“_What?_” screamed Doris and Cynthia, together, and the boy blushed to the roots of his hair.

“Well, you know, that was a long time ago,” he muttered, but Uncle mercilessly continued:

“Said they wa’n’t dangerous at all, _if ye knew how to handle ’em_—pick ’em up by the scruff o’ the neck, like blind kittens; wa’n’t that it, Ethan? Studied a heap on the subjick, he had. ‘Uncle,’ says he, ‘they don’t need to eat a thing fer six months to a year;’ an’ I says, ‘There orter be a good bit o’ profit in boarding ’em,’ says I. But Ethan, he says as how he can get five dollars apiece from a _mu_seum; and he has a pair o’ boots made to come up to his waist, pretty nigh; an’ he tramps over to Rattlesnake Gulch one mornin’ afore daylight, so as to ketch ’em crawlin’ out o’ their holes, most likely.”

Every eye was fixed upon the speaker, except that of his victim, who wriggled uneasily and vainly tried to break into the conversation.

“Ethan allers did go in fer makin’ money, ye know,” pursued Uncle, enjoying his success. “Wouldn’t take along any whisky fer bites, though I offered him all I had left, sayin’ as how it was a wuss pizen than the snake’s an’ not accordin’ to modern methods. Wal, along about dark Ethan comes back pretty well tuckered out, carryin’ a gunny-sack over his shoulder on the end of a stick. Didn’t need to tell me there was a live rattler in that there gunny-sack! I could hear his tail a-goin’ like an alarm-clock, an’ every now an’ then he’d strike out kinder vicious an’ set the thing to wavin’ back an’ forth.”

“How did you ever get him into the sack, Ethan?” begged Cynthia, much excited. Doris shuddered, and hid her face in her hands, while Stella sat quite silent, with the fawn’s head in her arms.

“Mischief of it was to git him out agin,” remarked Uncle. “Ef Ethan ever got that five dollars, I will say he arned it. Just tell ’em what your aunt by marriage said when she stumbled over that gunny-sack in the woodshed an’ found out what was in it, Ethan.” But Ethan had slipped out to the barn, and was fixing up an unused box-stall for Stella’s fawn.

“Gone, is he? Wal, all I can say is, Miss Sophia Russell ain’t a circumstance to Mis’ Honey on that occasion. Don’t know as I blame her, neither. That pet o’ yourn’ll be safe enough with your old uncle, Stella, an’ you’ll be out to tend to it every Sat’day, or I’ll know the reason why.”