Chapter VIII: The Right Stuff

When September came round, Stella entered the old academy with Doris and Cynthia and the rest, and found a new and absorbing world opening before her. Laurel academy was an endowed school, and a really good one, with better-paid teachers and more up-to-date equipment than the little town could have provided out of its own slender resources.

Ethan had been duly graduated and was going away to college, where for two or three momentous years the girls were seldom to see him, since he was “working his way through,” and found it necessary to devote the long vacations to more paying, though not half so pleasant things as doing “chores” for kind old Uncle Si.

The girls had now fairly entered upon a period of life in which boys cease to be “horrid things,” and girls are no longer considered “too silly for anything,” and it soon became evident that, of the three friends, Doris was by far the most mature socially. She was undoubtedly a pretty girl, with big blue eyes, fascinating hair of an amber tint, and a skin like a rose-leaf—a belle and a flirt in her demure, village fashion long before her sixteenth birthday.

Cynthia, to her languid mother’s discontent, but her father’s secret satisfaction, was at the same age a long-limbed, lanky, boyish-looking girl, with decidedly boyish manners, and only the frankest and least flattering interest in the ruder sex. As for Stella, the country youths admired her from a distance, while she, for her part, had no time for them.

“I do despise long skirts; they get in your way so!” Sin complained, as the three were scaling a friendly stone wall on a pleasant Saturday in the following spring, taking their favorite “short cut” to Wolcott’s Woods.

The others laughed. “You do act just like a boy in petticoats,” reproved Doris. “You don’t seem to know how to manage them a bit. There—you’re caught again!” as Cynthia sprang recklessly from the top of the wall, to the accompaniment of a sharp sound of rending cloth.

“I don’t care!” Sin was bent on braving the matter out, and, to her friends’ horror, she calmly tore off a long strip of blue serge and threw it away. “Nonsense; I never mend. Daddy’ll give me a new skirt out of the store any time I ask him. I hate clothes, and I hate sewing. I’m sure I don’t know why I was born a girl.”

“What shall you wear to the dance?” asked Doris of Stella, as they strolled lovingly side by side. Cynthia, her friends thought, was in a mood that would best be ignored.

“My dotted swiss, I suppose; do you think it will do?”

“Mother is making me a new silk muslin—pale blue; and I’ve got a sash to match and new slippers. It’s two inches longer than my last.” Doris’ voice was full of innocent satisfaction. “You look perfectly stunning in white, Stella,” she added, generously. “And you’re the best dancer of anybody in our set. Isn’t she, Sin?”

Mrs. Waring had insisted upon giving Stella two terms of dancing lessons, with the others, much to her sister’s disgust; and here the native grace of the Indian girl stood her in good stead. It must be admitted that, if she did not particularly care for boys, she did love dancing; it was almost like flying, she thought.

“Um, h’m,” assented Sin, who was born without a sense of rhythm, and never seemed to know what to do with her arms and legs. “I don’t see what either of you want to dance for, though; I hate it, myself. Catch me going to their old party! Give me a warm corner and an interesting story, when it’s too dark to go out. Scotty! Come here at once—here, sir!”

But, as usual, the obstreperous Sir Walter declined to budge, and his mistress found it necessary to follow up and forcibly detach him from a promising burrow.

“What a tom-boy she is! I don’t believe Sin will _ever_ grow up,” Doris lamented. “Are you looking for anything in particular to-day, Jibby, dear?”

“Trailing arbutus for Miss Sophia. I believe she’d rather have it than anything; and you know that little warm nook in the pines, south of our House in the Woods? It _ought_ to be out, just there,” answered Yellow Star, eagerly, looking as if she would coax the pale buds open with the warm shining of her dusky face.

“Too early; and besides, I don’t see why you’re always wanting to do something special for that cross old maid, Jibby,” objected Sin, who had come back within ear-shot. “_She_ never does anything for _you_, does she? I’m going to get some flowers for Doris’ mother, if there are any. Her cookies are awfully good.”

“I shall take mine to Miss Morrison,” observed Doris. “But I’ve got to go round by Uncle Si’s first; mother said he wasn’t feeling very well the last she heard, and she told me to be sure and stop. Will you come too, girls, or would you rather go on?”

“I will come,” agreed Stella, at once.

“I won’t, then,” remarked Sin, who was unusually contrary to-day, the others thought. “I can’t bear sick people, and he may be awfully sick for all we know! And then, you never can tell what Uncle Si is going to say next.”

It was quite true. You never could tell; and his first words to-day made both girls jump, coming unexpectedly, as they did, in Uncle’s small, squeaky voice, through the open window of the “kitchen chamber,” where he always slept.

“Look out for the bull, gals! Dunno ’zactly where he is, but he’s certain on the rampage, ’n’ _I_ can’t do a thing. Been under the weather these two days. No, no breakfast, nor supper neither; didn’t want it bad enough to git up ’n’ git it. What’s that, Doris? Wa’al, the door ain’t locked, if ye _will_ come in.”

In five minutes Stella had a brisk fire going in the kitchen stove, and in ten more the tea-kettle was singing cheerily, toast made, tea put to draw, and two fresh eggs from the hay-mow “coddled” to perfection. She had been well trained in waiting upon a fussy would-be invalid.

Doris had found her uncle lying, fully dressed, upon the bed, covered with a gay patchwork quilt, and looking worried and feverish. She succeeded in arranging his pillows and putting the room to rights before the arrival of the tray; and while Stella deftly helped the old man to take some nourishment, Doris prudently closed both doors and telephoned to her mother.

“There! she’ll see that he’s taken care of properly, if he _is_ ‘queer as Dick’s hat-band,’ as Grandma says,” observed his niece. “She’s always saying that ‘for a man to live alone as he does and cook his own vittles is flyin’ in the face of Providence,’ and she ‘hasn’t no manner of doubt that Silas’ll be found dead in his bed, some fine morning.’ Well, I hope not, I’m sure! Now we must go right away and find Cynthia; no telling what mischief _she’s_ up to, by this time.”

“Or the bull, either,” thought Yellow Star; but she said nothing, for she knew her friend’s weakness. In the excitement of taking care of Uncle Si, his niece had forgotten all about the bull. If not, Stella knew well that poor Cynthia would be left to her fate, so far as timid Doris was concerned. Why, even the most harmless cow that ever lowed would send her flying from the huckleberry pasture, and folks said the Wolcott bull was dangerous.

So only one of the girls kept a sharp lookout as they passed the open barn-yard gate and crossed the pasture toward Wolcott’s Woods. On its distant verge, a fleck of scarlet showed plainly—Cynthia’s old red cape. And—yes! A lumbering, dark shape had already started leisurely in pursuit of the scarlet fleck.

Stella saw the bull first, and walked on faster. Then Doris saw, grew white as a sheet and instantly turned to run, oblivious of the fact that Taurus had his back toward them, and his eye too evidently upon Cynthia.

“Help! help!” she screamed, as she fled; but there was neither house nor man within half a mile.

Stella resolutely advanced, keeping close to the wire fence that separated the big pasture from their much-loved woods. Cynthia had discovered her danger and was running gallantly, but had not thought to drop her red cape. And she had been caught in the open field, far from fence or tree. Sir Walter had left her side, and was barking hoarsely and making little ineffectual dashes at the bull, that, together with her headlong flight, merely served to provoke his curiosity into wrath. Giving a terrifying bellow, he set off at full speed.

Yellow Star had seen much of wild Texas cattle at the agency, where they are issued to the Indians “on the hoof,” as a monthly ration. Furthermore, Sir Walter had long since learned to obey the girl from Dakota as he never dreamed of obeying his impetuous little mistress. Her flute-like whistle was enough to bring him galloping to her side. Cynthia, too, turned half-way toward her at the sound, stumbled and fell at full length.

The bull was still plunging heavily along, and Stella, who had hoped to draw him off in her direction and then slip through the wire fence out of reach, found scant time for any such maneuver. Desperately she sent Sir Walter flying back to bark and snap at his heels, while she herself stood still and uttered a long ringing cry.

He stumbled, half turned—and hark! the strange, challenging cry was repeated again and again, until it actually brought him to a halt but a few paces from poor Sin, who had struggled to her feet and was sobbing aloud as she tried to run with a twisted ankle. And now the bewildered animal stood pawing the sod and bellowing in hoarse response, until both girls had reached a place of safety.

* * * * *

“Well, that _was_ a close call, and no mistake!” Cynthia had quite recovered her spirits in the course of an hour or so, and was obviously enjoying her own importance as the heroine of so rare an adventure, while she nursed her sprained ankle on the shabby cushions of Doctor Brown’s top-buggy. Poor Doris, still pale and tearful, was squeezed in between Cynthia and the Doctor, while Mrs. Brown remained in temporary charge of her protesting brother, and Stella, who had insisted upon walking, was already far ahead.

The gruff Doctor assented, with an appraising eye, meanwhile, upon the solitary girlish figure moving so rapidly before them, along the hilly country road. The Doctor was not a man of unnecessary words; but if he had spoken out his thought just then, it would have sounded something like this:

“There’s the right stuff in that girl—no question about it! I wonder—”