Caddie Woodlawn (15 page)

Tom laughed. “Baby!” he said. “I wouldn't hurt you. Don't you know that? But, listen, Caddie, I've got an idea.”

“Spit it out,” said Caddie calmly.

“Well, look,” said Tom. “All the children will want to see this scalp belt. Why don't we make some money on it?”

“Money?” echoed Caddie incredulously. “However could we make money on a scalp belt?”

“Well, maybe not exactly money. But we could charge pins or marbles or arrowheads or whatever anybody had to give us to let them take a peep. Do you see?”

“Yes,” said Caddie, her face brightening. “Yes, I see—a sort of peep show! But we couldn't let them handle it, Tom. John will come back for it in the fall, and it would be terrible if it were all worn out. It belonged to his father, who was a great chief and who cut off those scalps himself. John's so proud of him.”

“Hmm,” said Tom. “I'm glad I've got something better than that to be proud of
my
father for. But, listen, Caddie, we won't let them touch the old thing. When you said peep show, it gave me another idea. We'll hang it up in a box with a little curtain in front of it, and after the children have paid their admissions, we'll draw back the curtain and let them take a look.”

“What a bully idea!” shouted Warren.

Even Hetty forgot to look grieved and put-upon, and shouted: “Bully!”

“That's fine, Tom,” said Caddie, “and maybe we can get a candle end to light it up like a real stage. You 'member the torches at the medicine show we saw in St. Louis?”

“You bet!” cried Tom, “and we'll make a sign, too. What was John's father's name, Caddie?”

“I don't know. Couldn't we just make up a name?”

“Sure,” cried Warren. “How about Big Chief Sit-on-the-Fire-and-Put-It-Out?”

“Oh, that's
too
silly, Warren.”

“Big Chief Red-Bird-with-a-White-Feather-in-Its-Tail,” suggested Hetty.

“Too long and hard to print.”

“I know!” said Tom. “Chief Bloody Tomahawk! How's that? His tomahawk must have been bloody when he got done cutting off scalps.”

“Ooh! you give me the shivers, Tom,” wailed Hetty.

“All right,” agreed Caddie. “We'll call it Big Chief Bloody Tomahawk's favorite scalp belt.”

“As if he had lots more and just tossed this one off in a jolly moment,” chuckled Tom. “Let's have the show next Saturday afternoon.”

“All right. Let's.”

“Oh, please, may I tell?” begged Hetty.

Suddenly they all looked at her, and astonishment and delight dawned slowly over their faces. At last Hetty was going to be useful.

“Sure, Hetty!” cried Tom. “Tell everybody you see. Tell everybody in the whole country. The more children that come, the more we make. Go ahead and tell everybody.”

Hetty could not believe her ears, thus to be urged to tell, when usually they set upon her and held her mouth at the very suggestion of telling anything. She looked from one to another for confirmation.

“Go ahead,” said Caddie kindly. “Didn't you hear Tom say so?” They really meant it! With an exclamation of delight, Hetty raced away for her bonnet and mittens. What a lot of telling she could do before Saturday afternoon!

The next day was Thursday. Hetty had already done her work well. The school children crowded about Tom and Caddie and Warren asking questions. Was it true that they had a real Indian scalp belt? Did it have a hundred scalps on it? Had John really given it to Caddie to keep? What did it look like? Were there any light-colored scalp locks on it? When could they see it? How much would they have to pay? During the first questions the Woodlawn children maintained a mysterious silence. To the last two they deigned a reply.

“You can see it on Saturday afternoon in our barn, and you can pay a marble or a stick of candy or a
piece of flint, or anything you've got that you want to trade to see it.”

“I've got a good slingshot crotch. Will you take that?” shouted someone.

“I've got a picture card that came from back East. Will you take that?”

It appeared that business would be very good.

In the middle of the morning, through the sound of droning voices chanting the reading lesson, a timid knock was heard on the schoolhouse door. Miss Parker, on her throne at the other end of the room, did not hear it. It came again and the children began turning their heads around to look at the door. First the outer door opened and closed. There was a moment of silence. Then the cloakroom door opened every so softly, and an Indian woman entered the schoolroom in her silent moccasins. She stood a moment, troubled and ill at ease, searching the schoolroom with her bright black eyes. A large bundle which she carried, she rested beside the door. Caddie knew who she was. She was Sam Hankinson's wife, the mother of the little half-breed boys who traded lunches with the Woodlawns. Her little boys turned now and saw her, and the youngest one held out his arms and gave a little stifled cry. With a swift movement, like a bird alighting from a low bough, the Indian woman ran to her
children and knelt beside them, gathering first one and then another into her arms. She spoke to them in her own language, words guttural, broken, and soft as the chatter of a mother partridge to her brood. The boys answered in the same language, clinging to her and crying. By this time half of the white children were on their feet and Miss Parker had come down from her platform. The reading lesson was forgotten in a sudden sense of trouble and unrest.

“Ma! Ma!” cried the three little boys, clinging to the Indian woman and sobbing. Each of them in turn she pressed against her heart, then held each little brown head between her hands, pushing back the tangled hair and looking earnestly into the face as if she would fix its image in her mind forever. When she had done this, she kissed each one upon the forehead and stood up. They still clung around her skirts, crying: “Ma! Ma! Don't go! Don't!”

The Indian woman put them away from her, and stood straight and alone. The tears were running unheeded down her cheeks. To Miss Parker she said: “I go to my people.” Then she turned and left the schoolroom. At the door she took up her bundle and swung it onto her shoulders. She did not look back. The cloakroom door closed, and then the outside door. They saw her pass by the window, going toward the woods. For
a moment the only sound in the schoolroom was the sobbing of the three little boys.

Then Miss Parker said sharply: “Go on with your reading, please.”

The drone of voices rose again. But it was as if a dark shadow or an icy wind had gone through the schoolhouse and changed everything. Caddie went on reading, but three bright tears fell on the page of her book and made odd little blisters over the type.

That evening she spoke about it to Mother.

“Why did she go away like that, Mother? She didn't want to go and leave her children, and they didn't want her to go, either.”

“It is hard to explain to you, Caddie,” said Mother. “You see, Mr. Hankinson married her when there were very few white people in this country. He was not ashamed of her then. But now that there are more and more of his own people coming to live here, he is ashamed that his wife should be an Indian. I daresay the massacree scare had something to do with it, too. Folks seem to hate the red men more than ever they did before. Though why they should, I can't say. Goodness knows, the massacre was only in their own minds. But Sam Hankinson hasn't a very strong character. Now if your father had married an Indian—”

“Father marry an Indian?” cried Tom. “He never would!”

“Perhaps not,” said Mrs. Woodlawn, smiling a little and tossing her head, remembering how pretty she had been as a girl in Boston. “But, if he
had,
you may be sure that
he
would never have sent her off because he was ashamed of her. No, not a good man like your father!”

That night, after Caddie went to bed, she lay thinking for a long time. Hetty and Minnie were sound asleep. Presently she got up and lit the candle. On the chest of drawers stood her little trinket box. She opened it and looked inside. There was the silver dollar, safe and round and shining. She took it out and held it to the candlelight. It was really beautiful—beautiful in itself, aside from what it would buy. Then she knotted it securely into her handkerchief, and put the handkerchief into the pocket of her school apron. After that she climbed into bed and went to sleep.

At school the next morning the little Hankinsons were late. Their hair was untidy and their round faces were stern and unsmiling. They were never good at lessons, and this morning they were worse than ever. Their eyes were swollen with crying. But Miss Parker was tactful and did not ask too much of them.

Caddie's eyes kept wandering to them over her books. It was hard to keep her mind on spelling and sums, when she knew that they were sitting nearby, so quiet and so full of hurt bewilderment. Then she felt
her dollar, heavy in her pocket, and she was pleased that she had saved it for so long.

After school she laid her hand on Gussie's arm. He was not nearly so big as Warren and she had a motherly desire to pat his head, but she didn't.

“Gussie,” she said, “you and Pete and Sammie come with me to Dunnville store. I'm going to give you a surprise.”

The three little half-breeds looked at her in astonishment. For a moment they were surprised out of their sorrow.

“What for?” asked Gussie suspiciously.

“Just for fun,” said Caddie with a smile. “I've got a whole silver dollar to spend,” and she jingled it against a marble and a bit of slate pencil in her pocket.

“Candy?” suggested little Sammie, with a sudden glitter in his eye.

“Yes, sirree,” said Caddie importantly. “Come along and see.”

Mr. Adams of Dunnville store was accustomed to visitors after school. The children often came in with a penny or two, or sometimes only wishful looks, to examine the glass jars in which he kept brown hoar-hound sticks or sticks of striped peppermint or wintergreen lozenges. But today he was quite amazed when Caddie Woodlawn, with the air of a queen, ushered in
the three little half-breeds and laid a silver dollar on the counter.

“I want to spend it all, Mr. Adams,” she said, “so you'll have to tell me when I've used it up. I want some hoar-hound and peppermint and some pink wintergreens, and then I want three tops in different colors with good strong strings, and will you please tell me how much that is, because if there's anything left I want to get some more things?”

“Well, upon my word!” exclaimed Mr. Adams. “And bless my soul, too! But does your mother know you're spending a silver dollar, Caddie?”

“Not yet. But it's all right. It's my own dollar and Father said I could spend it as I liked, and I'll tell Mother as soon as I get home.”

The little Hankinsons looked on in amazement. The black mood of despair which had enveloped them all day had turned into wonder, and now wonder was rapidly giving way to incredulous delight. Candy! Tops! No one had ever bought such things for them before.

“Well, Miss Caddie, that comes to thirty cents,” said Mr. Adams, when the bewildered boys with the help of Caddie had selected the candy and tops.

They were grinning now from ear to ear, and Caddie thought that, with so much money left to spend, she