Kitabı oku: «Ruth Fielding Down in Dixie; Great Times in the Land of Cotton», sayfa 9

CHAPTER XXI – THE NEXT MORNING

The fire was now at its height, and many of the men were fighting the flames as they leaped across from the burning cottage. Therefore, not many had been called to the help of the refugees from the wrecked bateau.

“I’ll be whip-sawed!” complained Jimson. “Foolin’ with their blamed old bonfire, they might ha’ let me an’ my negroes drown. This yere little Yankee boy is wuth the whole bilin’ of ’em.”

They carried Curly, who was quite unconscious now, into the house. On a couch in the office Ruth fixed a pillow, and straightened out his injured leg.

“Isn’t there a doctor? Somebody who knows something about setting the leg?” she demanded. “If it can only be set now, while he is unconscious, he will be saved just so much extra pain.”

“Let me find somebody!” cried Nettie, who knew almost everybody in the hotel party.

She ran out upon the veranda, forgetting her slippers and silk hose for the moment, and soon came back with one of the men who had been helping to throw water against the side of the building.

“This is Dr. Coombs. I know he can help you, Ruth – and he will.”

“Boy with broken leg, heh?” said the gentleman, briefly. “Is that all the damage?” and he began to examine the unconscious Curly. “Now, you’re a cool-headed young lady,” he said to Ruth; “you and Jimson can give me a hand. Send the others out of the room. We’re going to be mighty busy here for a few minutes.”

He saw that Ruth was calm and quick. He had her get water and bandages. Mr. Jimson whittled out splints as directed. The doctor was really a veterinary surgeon, but when the setting of the broken limb was accomplished, Curly might have thanked Dr. Coombs for a very neat and workmanlike piece of work. But poor Curly remained unconscious for some time thereafter.

The flames were under control and the danger of the hotel’s catching fire was past before the boy opened his eyes. He opened them to see Ruth sitting at the foot of the couch on which he lay.

“Old Scratch!” exclaimed Curly, “don’t tell Gran, Ruth Fielding. If you do, she’ll give me whatever for busting my leg. Ooo! don’t it hurt.”

He had forgotten for the moment that he had ever left Lumberton, and Ruth soothed him as best she could.

The bustle and confusion around the hotel had somewhat subsided. The regular guests had retired to their rooms, for it was past midnight now. The water was creeping higher and higher, and now began to run in over the floor of the lower story.

By Ruth’s advice, Helen and Nettie had gone up to their rooms. They had allowed Mrs. Holloway to put two young ladies in one of the beds there, for the hotel keeper had to house many more than the usual number of people.

Ruth alone stayed with Mr. Jimson to watch Curly. And when the water began to rise she insisted that the couch be lifted upon the shoulders of four powerful negroes, and carried upstairs.

One of the men who transferred the boy to the wide hall above, was the darkey whom Curly had saved from drowning. That negro was so grateful that he camped upon the stairs for the rest of the night, to be within call of Ruth or Mr. Jimson if anything was needed that he could do for “dat li’le w’ite boy.”

Mrs. Holloway found a screen to put at the foot of the couch, and thus made a shelter for the boy and his nurse. But Ruth knew that many of the ladies before they went to bed came and peeped at her, and whispered about her together in the open hall.

She wondered what they really thought of her and Helen. The positive Miss Miggs had undoubtedly made an impression on their minds when she accused Ruth and Helen of stealing.

“What they really think of us, we can’t tell,” Ruth told herself. “It is awful to be so far from home and friends, and have no way of proving that one is of good character. Here is poor Curly. What is going to become of him? His grandmother hasn’t answered my letters, and perhaps she won’t have anything to do with him after all. What will become of him while he lies helpless? He can’t have earned much money in these few days over at the warehouse, for they don’t pay much.”

Ruth Fielding’s sympathetic nature often caused her to bear burdens that were imaginary – to a degree. But it was not her own trouble that worried her now. It was that of the boy with the broken leg.

He was a stranger in a strange land, and with practically nobody to care how he got along. He had played a heroic part in the rescue of Mr. Jimson and the negro workman; but Ruth doubted greatly if either of the rescued men could do much for poor Curly.

Jimson was a poor man with a large family; the negro was, of course, less able to do anything for the white boy than the boss of the warehouse.

These thoughts troubled Ruth’s mind, sleeping and waking, all night. She refused to leave Curly; but she dozed a good deal of the time in the comfortable chair that the negro had brought her from the parlor downstairs.

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Holloway came to speak to her, or to see how Curly was, all night long. Yet Ruth knew that both were working hard, with the negroes in their employ, to make all their guests comfortable.

Back of the hotel on slightly higher ground were the kitchens and quarters. To these rooms the stores were removed and breakfast was begun for all before six o’clock.

By that time the clouds had broken and the sun shone. But the river roared past the hotel at express speed. Jimson said he had never seen it so high, or so furious.

“There’s a big reservoir above yere, up the creek; I reckon it’s done busted its banks, or has overflowed, or something,” the boss of the warehouse said. “Never was so much water in this yere river at one time since Adam was a boy, I tell yo’.”

The girls came for Ruth before breakfast, and made her lie down for a nap. The two strange girls who had been put in their rooms were still in bed, and Ruth was not disturbed until the negroes began coming upstairs with trays of breakfast for the different rooms.

There was great hilarity then. There was no use in trying to serve the guests downstairs, for the dining room had a foot of water washing through one end of it, and the rear was several inches deep in a muddy overflow.

The two girls who had slept with them awoke when Ruth did, and all five of the girls, with Norma to wait upon them, made a merry breakfast. Ruth ran back then to see how Curly was being served. She found the boy alone, and nobody had thought to bring him any food save the grateful negro laborer.

“That coon’s all right,” said Curly, with satisfaction. “He got me half a fried chicken and some corn pone and sweet potatoes, and I’m feeling fine. All but my leg. Old Scratch! but that hurts like a good feller, Ruth Fielding.”

“Dear me!” said Ruth. “Don’t speak of the poor man as a ’coon.’ That’s an animal with four legs – and they eat them down here.”

“And he wouldn’t be good eating, I know,” chuckled Curly. “But he’s a good feller. Say, Ruthie! how did you and Helen Cameron come ’way down here?”

“How did you come here?” returned Ruth, smiling at him.

“Why – on the boat and on a train – several trains, until I got to Pee Dee. And then a flatboat. Old Scratch! but I’ve had an awful time, Ruth.”

“You ran away, of course,” said the girl, just as though she knew nothing about the trouble Curly had had in Lumberton.

“Yep. I did. So would you.”

“Why would I?”

“’Cause of what they said about me. Why, Ruth Fielding!” and he started to sit up in bed, but lay down quickly with a groan. “Oh! how that leg aches.”

“Keep still then, Curly,” she said. “And tell me the truth. Why did you run away?”

“Because they said I helped rob the railroad station.”

“But if you didn’t do it, couldn’t you risk being exonerated in court?”

“Say! they never called you, ‘that Smith boy’; did they?”

“Of course not,” admitted Ruth.

“Then you don’t know what you’re talking about. I had no more chance of being exonerated in any court around Lumberton than I had of flying to the moon! Everybody was down on me – including Gran.”

“Well, hadn’t they some reason?” asked Ruth, gravely.

“Mebbe they had. Mebbe they had,” cried Henry Smith. “But they ought to’ve known I wouldn’t steal.”

“You didn’t help those tramps, then?”

“There you go!” sniffed the boy. “You’re just as bad as the rest of ’em.”

“I’m asking you for information,” said Ruth, coolly. “I want to hear you say whether you did or not. I read about it in the paper.”

“Old Scratch! did they have it in the paper?” queried Curly, with wonder.

“Yes. And your grandmother is dreadfully disgraced – ”

“No she isn’t,” snapped Curly. “She only thinks she is. I never done it.”

“Well,” said Ruth, with a sigh, “I’m glad to hear you say that, although it’s very bad grammar.”

“Hang grammar!” cried the excited Curly. “I never stole a cent’s worth in my life. And they all know it. But if they’d got me up before Judge Necker I’d got a hundred years in jail, I guess. He hates me.”

“Why?”

Curly looked away. “Well, I played a trick on him. More’n one, I guess. He gets so mad, it’s fun.”

“Your idea of fun has brought you to a pretty hard bed, I guess, Curly,” was Ruth Fielding’s comment.

CHAPTER XXII – SOMETHING FOR CURLY

Helen Cameron was very proud of Curly. She was, in the first place, deeply grateful for what the boy had done for her the time the stag frightened her so badly in the City Park at Norfolk. Then, it seemed to her, that he had shown a deal of pluck in getting so far from home as this Southern land, and keeping clear of the police, as well.

“You must admit, Ruth, that he is awfully smart,” she repeated again and again to her chum.

“I don’t see it – much,” returned Ruth Fielding. “I don’t see how he got away down here on the little money he says he had at the start. He bought the frock and hat and shoes he wore with his own money, and paid his fare on the boat. But that took all he had, and he had to get work in Norfolk. He worked a week for a contractor there. That’s when he saved you from the deer, my dear!”

“Oh, indeed? And didn’t he earn enough to pay his way down here? He says he rode in the cars.”

“I’ll ask him about that,” said Ruth, musingly.

But she forgot to do so just then. In fact there was another problem in both the girls’ minds: What would become of Curly when the water subsided and he would have to be taken away from the hotel?

“Nettie says there is a hospital in Georgetown. But it is a private institution. Curly will be laid up a long while with that leg. It is a compound fracture and it will have to be kept in splints for weeks. The doctor says it ought to be in a cast. I wish he were in the hospital.”

“I suppose he would be better off,” said Helen, in agreement. “But isn’t it awful that his grandmother won’t take him back?”

“I don’t understand it at all,” sighed Ruth. “I didn’t think she was really so hard-hearted.”

The marooned guests of the hotel and the servants were quite comfortable in their quarters; but the women and girls did not care to descend to the lower floor of the big house. The men waded around the porches; and two men who owned cottages on the island which had not been swept away by the flood, used a storm-door for a raft and paddled themselves over to inspect their property. Their families were much better off with the Holloways at the hotel, however.

There had been landings and boats along the shore of the island; but not a craft was now left. The river had risen so swiftly the evening before, while the dancing was in full blast, that there had been no opportunity to save any such property.

Every small structure on the island had been swept down the current; and only half a dozen of the cottages were left standing. These structures, too, might go at any time, it was prophesied.

Jimson and his negroes could not get back across the river, and not a craft of any description came in sight.

The two negroes who had climbed into the tree at the edge of the island, were rescued by the aid of the storm-door raft; and as Jimson said, in his rough way, they only added to the number of mouths to feed, for they were of no aid in any way.

The hotel keeper chanced to have a good supply of flour, meal, sugar and the other staples on hand; and they had been removed to dry storage before the flood reached its height. There was likewise a well supplied meat-house behind the hotel.

Naturally the ladies and girls, marooned on the upper floor of the hotel, were bound to become more closely associated as the hours of waiting passed. The two girls who roomed with Nettie and her party, learned that Ruth Fielding and Helen Cameron were very nice girls indeed. They did not have to take Nettie’s word for it.

Perhaps they influenced public opinion in favor of the Northern girls as much as anything did. Miss Miggs was Northern herself, and not much liked. Her spitefulness did not compare well with Ruth’s practical kindness to the boy with the broken leg.

Before night public opinion had really turned in favor of the visitors from the North. But Ruth and Helen kept very much to themselves, and Nettie was so angry with Mrs. Holloway that she would scarcely speak to that repentant woman.

“I don’t want anything to do with her,” she said to Ruth. “If Aunt Rachel had been here last night I don’t know what she would have done when that woman seemed to side with that crazy school teacher.”

“You could scarcely blame her. Miss Miggs is Mrs. Holloway’s cousin.”

“Of course I can blame her,” cried Nettie. “And I do.”

“Well, I think it was pretty mean, myself,” said Helen. “But I didn’t suppose you would hold rancor so long, Nettie Sobersides! Come on! cheer up; the worst is yet to come.”

“The worst will certainly come to these people at this hotel,” threatened the Southern girl. “Aunt Rachel will have the last word. You are her guests and a Merredith or a Parsons never forgives an insult to a guest.”

“Goodness!” cried Ruth, trying to laugh away Nettie’s resentment. “It is fortunate you are not a man, Nettie. You would, I suppose, challenge somebody to a duel over this.”

“There have been duels for less in this county, I can assure you,” said Nettie, without smiling.

“How bloodthirsty!” laughed Ruth. “But let’s think about something pleasanter. Nettie is becoming savage.”

“I know what will cure her,” cried Helen and bounced out of the room. She came back in a few minutes with a battered violin that she had borrowed from one of the negroes who had been a member of the orchestra the night before. It was a mellow instrument and Helen quickly had it in tune.

“Music has been known to soothe the savage breast,” declared Helen, tucking the violin, swathed in a silk handkerchief, under her dimpled chin.

“I’ll forgive anybody – even my worst enemy – if Ruth will sing, too,” begged Nettie.

So after a few introductory strains Helen began an old ballad that she and Ruth had often practised together. Ruth, sitting with her hands folded in her lap and looking thoughtfully out on the drenched landscape, began to sing.

Nettie set the door ajar. The two girls came in from the other room. Norma, wide-eyed, crouched on the floor to listen. And before long a crowd of faces appeared at the open door.

Quite unconscious of the interest they were creating, the two members of the Briarwood Glee Club played and sang for several minutes. It was Helen who looked toward the door first and saw their audience.

“Oh, Ruth!” she exclaimed, and stopped playing. Ruth turned, the song dying on her lips. The crowd of guests began to applaud and in the distance could be heard Curly Smith clapping his hands together and shouting:

“Bully for Ruth! Bully for Helen! That’s fine.”

“Shut the door, Nettie!” cried Helen, insistently. “I – I really have an idea.”

“The concert is over, ladies,” declared the Southern girl, laughing, and shutting the door.

“What’s the idea, dear?” asked Ruth.

“About raising money for poor Curly.”

“We can give him some ourselves,” Nettie said, for of course she had been taken into the full confidence of the chums about the runaway.

“I can’t,” confessed Helen. “I have scarcely any left. If my fare home were not paid I’d have to borrow.”

“I can give some; but not enough,” said Ruth.

“That’s where my idea comes in,” Helen said. “That’s why I said to shut the door.”

Nettie ejaculated: “Goodness! what does the child mean?”

But Ruth guessed, and her face broke into a smile. “I’m with you, dear!” she cried. “Of course we will – if we’re let.”

“Will what?” gasped Nettie. “You girls are thought readers. What one thinks of the other knows right away.”

“A concert,” said Ruth and Helen together.

“Oh! When?”

“Right here – and now!” said Helen, promptly. “If the Holloways will let us.”

“Oh, girls! what a very splendid idea,” declared Nettie. Then the next moment she added: “But the piano is downstairs, and they could never get it up here. And there’s no room big enough upstairs, anyhow.”

Ruth began to laugh. “I tell you. It shall be a regular chamber concert. We’ll have it in the bed chambers, for a fact!”

“What do you mean?” asked the puzzled Nettie.

“Why, the audience can sit in their rooms or on the stairs or in the long hall up here. We will give the concert downstairs. I don’t know but we’ll have to give it barefooted, girls!”

The laughter that followed was interrupted by a shout from below. They heard somebody say that there was a boat coming.

“Well, maybe there will be something for Curly after all,” Helen cried, as she followed Ruth out of the room.

Through the wide doorway they could see the boat approaching. And they could hear it, too, for it was a small launch chugging swiftly up to the submerged island.

“Oh, goody!” cried Nettie. “Maybe we can get across the river and back to Merredith.”

It looked as though the launch had just come from the other side of the swollen stream. Jimson and several of the negroes were on the porch to meet the launch as it touched.

There were but two men in it, one at the wheel and the other in the bow. The latter, a gray-haired man with a broad-brimmed hat, blue clothes, and a silver star on his breast, stepped out upon the porch in his high boots.

“Hullo, Jimson,” he said, greeting the warehouse boss. “Just a little wet here, ain’t yo’?”

“A little, Sheriff,” said Jimson.

“I’m after a party they told me at your house was probably over here. A boy from the No’th. Name’s Henry Smith. Is he yere? I was told to get him and notify folks up No’th that the little scamp’s cotched. He’s been stealin’ up there, and they want him.”

CHAPTER XXIII – “HERE’S A STATE OF THINGS!”

The words of the deputy sheriff came clearly to the ears of Ruth Fielding and her two girl friends as they stood on the lower step of the broad flight leading to the second floor of the hotel.

Jimson, the warehouse boss, who had already shown his interest in Curly, looked quickly around and spied the girls. He made a crooked face and began at once to fence with the deputy.

“What’s that?” he said. “Said I got an escaped prisoner? Who said that, Mr. Ricketts?”

“Yo’ wife, I reckon ’twas, tol’ me the boy was yere.”

“She’s crazy!” declared Jimson with apparent anger. “I dunno what’s got into that woman. I ain’t seen no convict – ”

“Who’s talkin’ about a convict, Jimson?” demanded Mr. Ricketts. “D’ yo’ think I’m after some desperado from the swamps? I reckon not.”

“Well, who are you after?” demanded the boss, in great apparent vexation. “I ain’t got him, whoever he is!”

“Not a boy named Henry Smith?”

“What’s he done?”

“I see you’re some int’rested,” said Ricketts, drily. “Come on now, Jimson! I know you. The boy’s a bad lot.”

“Your say-so don’t make him so. And I dunno as I know the boy you mean.”

“Come now, your wife tol’ me all about him. He’s a curly-headed boy. He come along on a flatboat. You took him on as a hand in the warehouse.”

“Huh? I did, did I?” grunted Jimson, not at all willing to give in that he knew whom the deputy sheriff was talking about.

“I mean a curly-headed Yankee boy that come over yere last night in that old boat of yours, Jimson,” said the deputy sheriff, chuckling. “And your woman wants to know when you’re going to bring the boat back?”

“Huh?” growled Jimson.

“Don’t yo’ call him Curly?”

“Oh! you mean him?” said the boss. “Wal – I reckon he’s yere. Got a broken laig. Doctor won’t let him be moved. Impossible, Mr. Ricketts. Impossible!”

“I reckon I’ll look to suit myself, Jimson,” said Ricketts, firmly. “This ain’t no funnin’, you know.” Then he turned to the man in the boat. “Tie that rope to one o’ these posts, Tom, and come ashore. I may need you to hold Jimson,” and he winked and chuckled at the chagrined warehouse boss.

The big deputy sheriff strode across the porch, in at the door, scattering the wide-eyed negroes right and left, and came face to face with three pretty young girls, dressed in the party frocks donned for the ball the night before, all the frocks they had to wear on this occasion.

“Bless my soul, ladies!” gasped the confused Ricketts, sweeping off his hat. “Your servant!”

“Oh, Mr. Ricketts!” exclaimed Nettie Parsons, her hands clasped, and looking in her most appealing way up into the big man’s face. Although Nettie stood a step up from the hall floor, the deputy sheriff still towered above her head and shoulders. “Oh, Mr. Ricketts!”

“Ya-as, ma’am! that’s my name, ma’am,” said the embarrassed deputy.

“We heard what you just said,” pursued Nettie. “About Curly Smith, you know.”

“I – I – ”

“And we’re awfully interested in Curly,” put in Helen, joining in the attempt to cajole a perfectly helpless officer of the law from the path of duty.

“Your servant, ma’am!” gasped the deputy, very red in the face now, and bowing low before Helen.

“There are three of us, Mr. Ricketts,” suggested Ruth, her own eyes dancing with fun, despite the really serious distress she felt over Curly’s case.

“Bless my soul!” murmured Mr. Ricketts, bowing in her direction, too. “So there are – so there are. Your servant, ma’am.”

“Then, Mr. Ricketts, if you are the servant of all of us, I know you will do what we ask,” and Nettie laughed merrily.

Little drops of perspiration were exuding upon the deputy’s broad, bald brow. He was not used to the society of ladies – not even extremely young ladies; and he felt both ridiculous and in a glow of delight. He chuckled and wabbled his head above his stiff collar, and looked foolish. But there was a grim firmness to his smoothly shaven chin that led Ruth to believe that he would not be an easy person to swerve from his path.

“You know,” repeated Nettie, taking her cue from Helen, “that we are awfully interested in that boy that you say you have come after.”

“The young scamp’s mighty lucky, then – mighty lucky!”

“But he has a broken leg – and he’s awfully sick,” said Nettie, her lips drooping at the corners as though she were about to cry.

“Tut, tut, tut! I’m awfully sorry miss. But – ”

“And he’s had an awfully bad time,” broke in Helen. “Curly has. He’s ragged, and he has been ill-treated. And we saw him jump overboard and swim from that steamer before it reached Old Point Comfort, and he was picked up by a fishing boat. Oh! he is awfully brave.”

Mr. Ricketts stared and swallowed hard. He could not find voice to reply just then.

“And he saved that cat from drowning. Oh! I had forgotten that,” said Nettie, chiming in. “He really is very kind-hearted, as well as brave.”

“And,” said Ruth, from the stair above, “I am sure he never helped those men rob the Lumberton railroad station. Never!”

“My soul and body, ladies!” exclaimed the deputy sheriff. “You are sho’ more knowin’ about this yere boy from the No’th than I am. I only got instructions to git him – and git him I must.”

“Oh, Mr. Ricketts!” gasped Helen.

“Please, Mr. Ricketts!” begged Nettie.

“Do consider, Mr. Ricketts!” joined in Ruth. “He’s really not guilty.”

“Who says he ain’t?” demanded the deputy sheriff, shooting in the question suddenly.

“He says so,” said Ruth, firmly, “and I never knew Curly Smith to tell a story.”

Mr. Ricketts was undoubtedly in a very embarrassing position. He was the soul of gallantry – according to his standards. To please the ladies was almost the highest law of his nature.

Behind him, Jimson, his companion, Tom, and the negroes had gathered in a compact crowd to listen. Mr. Ricketts, hat in hand, and perspiring now profusely, did not know what to do. He said, feebly:

“My soul and body, ladies! I dunno what t’ say. I’d please yo’ if I could. But I’m instructed t’ bring this yere boy in, an’ I got t’ do it. A broken laig ain’t no killin’ matter. I’ve had one myself – ya-as, ma’am! We kin take him in this yere little launch that b’longs t’ Kunnel Peters. He’ll be ’tended to fust-class.”

“Not in your old jail at Pegburg!” cried Nettie. “You know better, Mr. Ricketts,” and she was quite severe.

“I know you, Miss Nettie,” Mr. Ricketts said, with humility, “You’re Mrs. Parsons’ niece. You say the wo’d an’ I’ll take the boy right to my own house.”

Ruth had been watching one of the negroes who had stood on the outskirts of the group. He was a big, burly, dull-looking fellow – the very man whom Curly had risked his life to save from the river the night before.

This man stepped softly away from the crowd. He disappeared toward the front of the porch. By craning her neck a little Ruth could see around the corner of the door-jamb and follow the movements of this negro with her eyes.

The man, Tom, had tied the painter of the launch to a post there. The negro stood for a moment near that post; then he disappeared altogether.

Ruth’s heart suddenly beat faster. What had the negro done? She leaned forward farther to see the launch tugging at its rope. The craft was already a dozen yards away from the hotel!

“I’m awful sorry, ladies,” declared the deputy sheriff, obstinately shaking his head. “I’ve got t’ arrest that boy. That’s my sworn and bounden duty. And I got t’ take him away in this yere launch of Kunnel Peterses.”

He turned to wave a ham-like hand toward the tethered launch. The gesture was stayed in midair. Jimson, turning likewise, burst into a high cackle of laughter.

“Here’s a state of things!” roared the deputy, and rushed out upon the porch. The launch was whirling away down the current, far out of reach. “Here, Tom! didn’t you hitch that boat?”

“I reckon ye won’t git away with that there little Yankee boy as you expected, Mr. Ricketts,” cried Jimson. “Er-haw! haw! haw!”