Caddie Woodlawn (19 page)

to the lake and facing the highway which ran along by the lake at that place. Then he set a basket of oranges on one side of her and a basket of lemons on the other, and then he went and hid himself in the bushes near by. Pretty soon along came a man driving a coach and four black horses. When the man saw Pee-Wee's wife sitting beside the road, he stopped his horses and got down off the coach.

“ ‘Say, old lady, how do you sell your oranges?' he asked.

“Pee-Wee's wife didn't answer.

“ ‘How do you sell your lemons?' No answer.

“The man thought she was deaf, and he began to
shout as loud as he could: “Say, old lady,
how do you sell your oranges? How do you sell your lemons?'
Still no answer, and was he mad! Before he knew what he was doing, he reached out and gave her a punch, and the poor old woman fell over backward into the lake.

“Now Pee-Wee came out of the bushes, and he says, says he: ‘You've drowned my poor old wife, you rascal. I'll have the law on you.'

“ ‘Oh, please, sir,' says the driver of the coach, ‘don't do that. I didn't mean to drown her at all, at all. Here, I'll give you my coach and four black horses, if you'll say nothing more about it.'

“ ‘Very well,' says Pee-Wee, ‘but see you don't go around pushing any more old women into lakes.'

“Well, Pee-Wee's neighbors had said they'd never speak to him again, but when they saw him driving a fine coach and four prancing black horses, they couldn't help coming to ask him about them. Pee-Wee told them he'd accidentally killed his wife, and how he'd set her up by the roadside, and the coachman had given him the coach and four in exchange for her. So all of the farmers knocked their old wives on the head and set them up by the road to wait for a coach.”

“Good land, Tom!” cried Caddie. “They'd never do
that!”

“Say, who's telling this story anyway?” demanded Tom irritably.

“Well, go on.”

“Of course, the coach didn't come along,” continued Tom, “and the other farmers were good and mad, as you may well believe.”

“I should think so!” said Caddie.

“They began to plot how they could get rid of Pee-Wee. So they came to his farm one day and got him and put him in a big hogshead barrel. They headed it up with Pee-Wee inside, and they trundled it down to the lake, where they meant to drown him. Now, on the edge of the lake, there was a tavern like the one down to Dunnville, and before they drowned Pee-Wee, the farmers decided they'd go in an' get a drink to celbrate getting rid of him. So in they went, leaving Pee-Wee in the hogshead on the edge of the lake.

“ ‘Let me out! Let me out!' shouts Pee-Wee, pounding his fists on the sides of the hogshead.

“Now just at this time along comes an old shepherd, driving his flock of sheep. He was old and he had come a long way, an' he was mighty tired of life. So he asked Pee Wee what was the matter, and, when Pee-Wee told him, he says, ‘I'll change places with you, Pee-Wee. I'm old, I am, and mighty tired of life.' So he took the head off the barrel and let Pee-Wee out, and he got in himself. Well, Pee-Wee headed up the hogshead and went off, driving all the sheep before him to his own farm.

“Pretty soon out came the other farmers, feeling pretty gay. ‘Good-by, Pee-Wee,' says they. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,' and they up and pushed the hogshead into the lake. On their way home, they stopped by Pee-Wee's farm to divide up his things among themselves, an' there was old Pee-Wee himself with a fine new flock of sheep.

“‘How come you're here, an' where did you get those sheep?' asked the farmers. ‘We thought you were at the bottom of the lake.'

“ ‘So I was,' says Pee-Wee. ‘You put me there yourselves, didn't you? But 'tis a grand place at the bottom of the lake an' full o' sheep. I took only the smallest part for myself. There's flocks and flocks left for the rest of you.'

“ ‘Do tell!' says the rest of the farmers, and they were all so greedy that they ran and jumped in the lake to get flocks of sheep. Of course they never came back again, and Pee-Wee was lord and master of all their lands and cattle, and that's the end.”

Caddie heaved a deep sigh.

“That's a good story, Tom,” she said admiringly, “only I hope he didn't live happily every afterward.”

“Well, sometimes he used to have nightmares,” conceded Tom.

“My turn now,” said Warren, coming up from the second round.

Caddie set her hands to the handles of the plow and chirped to Betsy. As she went away down the field, she heard Tom beginning: “Once upon a time there was an old farmer named Pee-Wee—” How many times she was to hear it again! For that became the Woodlawn children's favorite story. Many years later Caddie, herself, laughing and protesting, had to tell it over and over to begging children and grandchildren.

One spring day a hoarse whistle sounded down the river. “The Little Steamer!” everybody cried. “The Little Steamer is back again!”

Father hitched up the wagon and the children all clambered in behind. Mother came out with her hands full of letters for Boston. On top was the one addressed to Miss Annabelle Grey.

“If the sugar and coffee have come in, Johnny, be sure to lay in a supply.”

“Yes, Harriet.”

“And don't forget the mail.”

“Oh, no, we won't forget the mail!” shouted everybody.

Only a few letters and papers got through by sledge
during the winter, and the first steamer in the spring was sure to be loaded with news from the outside world. The Little Steamer was a keel boat belonging to the lumber company and it was principally used to take men and goods up and down the river to different lumber camps. But for the settlers it meant something far more than this—it was the one thing that linked them up with the outside world.

The river bank was crowded with people to see the Little Steamer come in. Father drove up just as it reached the dock, and the children stood up in the back of the wagon and waved and cheered.

“What's the news, Skipper?” shouted someone on the bank. The captain tossed a coil of rope to the many eager hands on shore waiting to pull it in.

“General Lee has surrendered,” he shouted back.

“Lee surrendered? No! Can it be possible?
Lee surrendered!
Then, by golly, the war is ended! The abolitionists have won the war! Hooray! Hooray!” The people on the banks began tossing up their hats and shouting.

The Woodlawn children shouted, too. “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!”—until their throats were hoarse.

Hetty plucked Caddie by the skirt. “Why is the war over, Caddie?”

“Well, you see,” said Caddie, giving Hetty an excited
hug, “General Lee is the leader of the South, and when he surrenders, that means that our side and President Lincoln's side has won the war.”

“Hooray!” shouted Hetty. “Hooray!”

“Hooray for the slaves! Hooray for Abraham Lincoln!” shouted Tom. The name of the president caught the crowd's fancy.

“Hooray for Honest Abe!” they cried. “Long live Abe Lincoln!”

After the excitement of this news, even the piles of letters and papers from Boston for Mother were an anticlimax. But still there was the fun of breaking the news at home to Mother and Clara and Mrs. Conroy and the men. Father almost forgot the sugar and coffee in the excitement of politics, and Hetty had to remind him. But at last they were on their way homeward, chattering and bouncing, and shouting to make their voices heard above the rattling of the wheels.

What a day it was! There were so many letters to be read, so many of the world's doings to be caught up with. That night as they sat about the fire, even nuts and candle lighters were forgotten. They sat with wide eyes and clasped hands while Mother read aloud from the back numbers of
The Young Ladies' Friend
and
The Mother's Assistant,
and Clara turned the pages of
Godey's Lady's Book
and sighed over the
beautiful costumes. At bedtime, they knelt together as they did when the circuit rider came, and Father gave thanks for the end of the war and begged that Mr. Lincoln be made strong and wise to lead them back to peace and security.

Spring came quickly in the next few days, and what a happy spring it was, with no shadow of war to spoil its glitter! All through the woods sprang up a carpet of trilliums and wind flowers and hepaticas. They were delicate pink and blue and white, and there were so many of them that picking did not spoil them. The wild cherry trees put on dresses of white like brides or young ladies at their first ball. The tender new leaves on the trees were almost as many-colored as in autumn. Some were softly yellow, some pinkish-red, some like bronze or copper. Later they would all be green, and they would grow dusty with summer and look tired and languid in the heat. But now everything was fresh and young.

“A magic time of year,” Caddie called it to herself. She loved both spring and fall. At the turning of the year things seemed to stir in her that were lost sight of in the commonplace stretches of winter and summer.

One April afternoon she went by herself to gather flowers in the woods. The mourning doves had come back and they were making a little sad refrain
through the singing of the pines. The buckets hung empty on the sugar maple trees, for the syrup season was ended. There were some new pine slashings that filled the air with perfume. Like the birch smoke and the smell of clover, the pine smell was a Wisconsin smell, and because she loved them so, they were a part of Caddie Woodlawn.

There was a flash of red in the branches above her head, and Caddie caught her breath in sharply. The cardinals were back! Almost every year a pair of them nested in the woods, and Father always expressed his surprise at seeing them so far north.

“They've come from the South,” said Caddie to herself. “Maybe they saw Nero.”

With her hands full of flowers, she skirted around the farm through the woods until she came to the hill north of the house. There she could look down and see house and barnyard spread out beneath her, and Robert Ireton spading the garden and never guessing that someone watched him from the hill. Here in the edge of the woods on the north hill was little Mary's grave. Father had made a little white picket fence around it, to show that this was no longer woods but belonged to little Mary. It was hard to remember little Mary now. She had come with them from Boston, but she had died so soon and gone to rest on the north hill. No one missed her now, and it was hard to imagine
that she would have been near Hetty's age, if she had lived. But sometimes it was nice to come here and sit beside her, because it was so peaceful on this hill and one could see so far and think far thoughts. Caddie braided the stems of her flowers together into a garland and hung it across the little white fence for Mary. Then she leaned back on last year's autumn leaves and this year's flowers, and fell into a sort of happy daydream.

Presently she heard someone coming up the hill and she sat up to see who it was. Hetty's energetic, small legs were bringing her up the hill, her red pigtails bobbing and shining.

“Oh, bother!” said Caddie, “she's got something to tell.”

But today Hetty had nothing to tell. She came up quietly and sat down beside Caddie, her round face flushed with the climb. “I saw you up here, and I thought I'd come too,” she said.

“It's nice up here,” said Caddie.

“Yes, it is nice,” said Hetty. After a while she added: “It's kind of nice to be just us two alone, too, isn't it? Without the boys. But I guess it's more fun for you with the boys.”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Caddie. “Sometimes I get kind of tired of being with the boys all the time. I came off by myself today.”

“Maybe you'd ruther I hadn't come,” said Hetty. There was something unexpectedly wistful in her bright eyes.