Caddie Woodlawn (16 page)

had better be a little wise. “I'd like to see some combs now, if you please. I'd like three small ones if they aren't too dear.”

“Here you are, my girl,” said the storekeeper, bringing down a dusty box from a shelf. He was smiling, too, by now, and almost as eager as the little Hankinsons to see what Caddie would buy next.

“I think,” said Caddie, presenting the three combs, “that your mama would like you to keep your hair combed nice and tidy, and it'll be more fun if you've got combs of your own.”

Unused to gifts of any sort, the small brown boys beamed as delightedly over combs as over tops and candy. Caddie looked inquiringly at Mr. Adams.

“It's not gone yet,” he said encouragingly. “You've still got thirty cents.”

Caddie examined her protégés with maternal eyes. Certainly their noses needed attention as well as their hair.

“I guess handkerchiefs had better come next,” she said thoughtfully. “Thirty cents' worth of nice, cheerful, red handkerchiefs, if you please.”

Mr. Adams had the very thing, large enough to meet any emergency, and of a fine turkey red. Caddie was satisfied, and the little Hankinsons were speechless with delight. The red was like music to their half-savage eyes. They waved the handkerchiefs in the air. They capered about and jostled each other and
laughed aloud as Caddie had never heard them do before.

“Now you can go home,” said Caddie, giving each of them a friendly pat, “and have a good time, and mind you remember to have clean noses and tidy hair on Monday when you come to school.”

Dazed with their good fortune, they tumbled out of the store, whooping with joy and entirely forgetting (if they ever knew) that thanks were in order. Caddie and the storekeeper watched them race away, the red handkerchiefs flapping joyously in the breeze.

“Well, young lady,” said Mr. Adams with an amused twinkle in his eye, “now your dollar's gone, and you didn't get a thing out of it for yourself.”

“Oh, yes, I did, Mr. Adams!” she cried, and then she stopped. It was no use trying to tell a grownup. It was hard even to explain to herself. And yet she'd had her dollar's worth.

She found more words for it later when Tom, feeling himself for once the thrifty one, protested.

“But Caddie, you needn't have spent your whole dollar. You could have got them each a top or a hoar-hound stick, and kept the rest for yourself.”

“No, Tom, it had to be all of it. I wanted to drive that awful lonesome look out of their eyes, and it did, Tom. It did!”

On Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Woodlawn looked out of the window and cried: “Great sakes! Whatever has happened? Don't tell me there's another massacre scare!” Clara ran to the window and looked out, too. A whole procession of children was straggling up the road and into the farmyard.

Clara began to laugh.

“Oh, Mother,” she said, “it's only the scalp belt. Caddie and Tom are exhibiting it this afternoon.”

Indeed, Tom and Caddie were busy at that very moment taking admissions at the barn door. Inside the barn Warren and Hetty were seating the guests on barrels and boxes or old wagon seats and trying to
maintain order. Little Minnie stood at one side with her finger in her mouth, too overwhelmed to speak. It was an important occasion.

Fastened up against the harness rack was a box with a calico curtain strung across it. Here was the “show” and all eyes fixed themselves upon it. A sign in straggling letters on a piece of board assured the audience that these were the “favorite scalps of Bloody Tomahawk.”

At last, after the audience had begun to shuffle its feet and utter impatient “me-ows,” Tom came forward with the fine assurance of an old showman.

“Ladies and gents,” he said, “you are now about to see one of the seven wonders of Dunnville. I don't know what the other six are, but anyway, I guess you'll agree that this is the best of the lot. Curtain, please! Light, please!”

Hetty and Warren struggled with the complicated strings of the small curtain. Caddie held up a candle stub and one of Mother's precious sulphur matches. There was a scratch, a spurt of blue flame, a strong odor of sulphur, and then the interior of the box was flooded with candlelight. The audience pressed forward to gaze in awe at the three tails of black hair, which had once adorned the heads of three unfortunate savages.

“The one and only,” intoned Tom, who was now in
his element, “the favorite and best scalp belt of that ferocious chief, Bloody Tomahawk. He scalped Indians, he slew a thousand buffalo, he burned down white men's houses and barns—”

“Faith, Tom Woodlawn, and ye'll do the same,” cried an indignant voice. “Wurra-wurra! Do ye not know better than to light a candle in yer father's barn?” Robert Ireton stood in the barn door, his good-natured face as stormy as a thunder cloud. Caddie hastened to snuff the candle.

“Oh, Robert,” she said, “we've done no harm. We're only having a show. Look! I've put out the candle and the barn's not burned down, either. Please, Robert, get your banjo and sing us a song. It will be a part of the show.”

“Please, Robert, do,” begged all the children, for Robert's fame as a musician had gone all through the neighborhood. Robert never had to be coaxed to sing. A smile broke through the clouds of disapproval on his face. In a moment he had fetched his banjo and seated himself in their midst.

There was another moment of delightful suspense as he tuned the instrument and twanged a few preliminary chords.

“Sing ‘Paddy's Leather Breeches,' ” cried Tom, who was glad to give up the center of the stage when the next performer was Robert.

“Yes, yes! ‘Paddy's Leather Breeches,' ” shouted the children.

“Faith, then! ‘Paddy's Leather Breeches' it shall be,” said Robert, “but, mind, you must all join in on the ‘fol de rol-lols.' “

“We will! we will!” shouted the children. Twang! twang! twang! went the banjo.

“On the road to Clonmel
[sang Robert],

At the Sign of the Bell,

Paddy Haggerty kept a nate shanty.

He kept mate, figs, an' bread

An' a nate lodgin' bed.

Well liked for the country he lived in.

Sing fol de rol-lol.

Sing fol de rol-lol.

Sing fol de rol-lol, de rol lido!”

A swelling chorus of voices flung the “fol de rol-lols” as high as the rafters.

“One night the snow fallin' down

He could not get to town

An' Paddy was ate out completely.”

Here something always seemed to be left out or added on to spoil the meter, but Robert twanged on as gayly as ever, fitting his music to the words as he
knew them with never a care for rhyme or reason.

“That night as he lay dreaming of fairies and witches,
He heard an uproar
Outside of his door
And he jumped up to strail on his breeches.”

“Sing fol de rol-lol,” shouted the children.

“The words were scarce spoke

When the door came unbroke

And they gathered 'round Paddy like leeches.

Sayin', ‘By the Big Matchel Gob

If ye don't give us grub

We'll ate ye clean out o' your breeches!' ”

“Sing fol de rol-lol! Sing fol de rol-lol!”

“ ‘Sure, they've got to be fed!'

He slipped up to the bed

Which held Judy his own darlin' wife in,

An' 'twas there they agreed

How to give 'em a feed,

So he stepped out an' brought a big knife in.

Sing fol de rol-lol.

Sing fol de rol-lol.

Sing fol de rol-lol, de rol lido!

“They cut up the waist

Of the breeches the best

And they ripped off the buttons and stitches.

They cut 'em in strips,

By the way they was striped,

An' they boiled up the old leather breeches.”

“Sing fol de rol-lol!” roared the audience. “Fol de rol-lol, de rol lido!”

“When it was stewed

An on a dish strewed,

The boys cried out, ‘Lord be thankit!'

But 'twas little they knew

That 'twas leather-be-goo

B'iled out o' Paddy's old breeches.

Sing fol de rol-lol.

Sing fol de rol-lol.

“As they messed on the stuff,

Says Andy,‘ 'Tis tough.'

Says Paddy, ‘Ye're no judge o' mutton.'

Then Brian McQuirk,

On the p'int of his fork,

Held up a large ivory button.

Sing fol de rol-lol.

Sing fol de rol-lol.

Sing fol de rol-lol, de rol lido!

“ ‘They've p'isoned the feast

Let's send for a priest!'

They jumps on their legs an' they screeches,

An' from that very night

They'd knock out yer daylight

If ye'd mention the old leather breeches.”

Such a joyous howl of “fol de rol-lols” marked the end of the song as set the horses to jumping and pawing in their stalls and John's dog to barking like a mad thing. And so ended in music the show which had begun with scalp locks.

On counting up the gate receipts, the Woodlawn children discovered that they had a tidy collection of marbles, old birds' nests, butternuts, pins with colored heads, slingshot crotches, and various other objects of interest or art.

“I guess we did pretty well,” said Caddie pleasantly as she divided the spoils.

But Tom pocketed his share in silence. Some disturbing thought seemed to have occurred to him. “Katie Hyman didn't come to the show,” he said. “I guess she's about the only one who didn't.”

“What do you expect?” demanded Caddie with a little touch of scorn in her voice. “She'd be scared to death of a scalp belt.”

“She hasn't been to school since the massacree scare,” volunteered Hetty.

“I know it,” said Tom.

Caddie stopped to think. “No, she hasn't,” she said slowly. She had thought so much about John and the little Hankinsons that Katie had never entered her head. Now a series of vivid pictures flashed across her mind. Katie standing in the barn, her eyes wide with fear, her hands pressed to her breast, saying, “Cross my heart”; Katie fainting when Caddie returned from her wild ride; Katie pale and silent the next day, starting for home, holding her mother's hand; and last of all Katie's place on the bench in the corner of the schoolroom,
empty!
“I wonder,” said Caddie.

“Maybe she's sick,” said Tom, trying to seem careless about it.

“Maybe she is,” said Caddie, “and, if she is, I guess it's my fault. We'd better go and see her.”

They ran to the house for permission.

“Yes, do go,” said Mrs. Woodlawn. “I've worried about the poor little thing myself. Here, take her some of these molasses cookies, and see that you get back before dark.”

“Couldn't we take the scalp belt to show her, Caddie?” inquired Tom.

“I'll let you,” said Caddie, “but she won't like it.”

“Aw, golly! I bet she would. She's the only one who hasn't seen it. I'd hate to be the only one who hadn't seen it, wouldn't you?”

Caddie wrapped up the scalp belt in a piece of brown paper, and away they went.

“You go up to the door and knock, Caddie,” said Tom when they reached the little log house where Katie and her mother lived. “I just came along to keep you company, you know.”