Caddie Woodlawn (22 page)

“I suppose he bucks,” said Cousin Annabelle. “All Western horses do, don't they? Shall I be hurt?”

“He's pretty gentle,” said Tom. “You better get on and you'll find out.”

“Bareback and astride?” quavered Annabelle. “Dear me! How quaint and rustic!”

Caddie and Tom helped her on.

“He hasn't started bucking yet,” said Annabelle proudly. “I
knew
that I should be a good rider!”

“Just touch him with the switch a little,” advised Tom.

At the touch of the switch, Pete swung into a gentle canter, but instead of following the road, he made for a particular shed at the back of the barn. It was Pete's one accomplishment.

“How do I pull the rein to make him go the other way?” queried Annabelle, but already Pete was gathering momentum and, before they could answer, he had swung in under the low shed, scraped Annabelle neatly off into the dust, and was standing peacefully at rest inside the shed picking up wisps of hay.

Annabelle sat up in a daze. The little straw sun hat which she had insisted on wearing was over one ear and she looked very comical indeed.

“I don't yet understand what happened,” she said politely. “I thought that I was going along so well. In Boston, I'm sure the horses never behave like that.”

“Would you like to try another horse?” said Tom.

“Oh no!” said Annabelle hastily. “Not today, at least. Couldn't we go and salt the sheep now, perhaps?”

“Do you think we could, Tom?” asked Caddie doubtfully.

“Why, yes, I believe we could,” said Tom kindly. “Here let me help you up, Cousin Annabelle.”

“I'll get the salt,” shouted Warren, racing into the barn.

Hetty looked on in silence, her eyes round with surprise. Annabelle rose, a bit stiffly, and brushed the back of her beautiful dress.

“She's not a crybaby at any rate,” thought Caddie to herself. “Maybe it's kind of mean to play another trick on her.”

But Warren had already returned with the salt, and he and Tom, with Annabelle between them, were setting out for the woodland pasture where Father kept the sheep. Caddie hastened to catch up with them, and Hetty, still wondering, tagged along behind.

“Will they eat out of my hand, if I hold it for them?” asked Annabelle, taking the chunk of salt from Warren.

“Sure,” said Tom, “they're crazy about salt.”

“But you mustn't
hold
it,” said Hetty, coming up panting. “You must lay it down where the sheep can get it.”

“Now, Hetty,” said Caddie, “what did I tell you about keeping perfectly quiet?”

“You do just as you like, Annabelle,” said Tom kindly.

“Well, of course,” said Annabelle, “I should prefer to hold it and let the cunning little lambs eat it right out of my hands.”

“All right,” said Tom, “you go in alone then, and
we'll stay outside the fence here where we can watch you.”

“It's so nice of you to let me do it,” said Cousin Annabelle. “How do you call them?”

Tom uttered a low persuasive call—the call to salt. He uttered it two or three times, and sheep began coming from all parts of the woods into the open pasture.

Annabelle stood there expectantly, holding out the salt, a bright smile on her face. “We don't have sheep in Boston,” she said. But almost immediately the smile began to fade.

The sheep were crowding all around her, so close that she could hardly move; they were treading on her toes and climbing on each other's backs to get near her. Frightened, she held the salt up out of their reach, and then they began to try to climb up
her
as if she had been a ladder. There was a perfect pandemonium of bleating and baaing, and above this noise rose Annabelle's despairing shriek.

“Drop the salt and run,” called Tom, himself a little frightened at the success of his joke. But running was not an easy matter with thirty or forty sheep around her, all still believing that she held the salt. At last poor Annabelle succeeded in breaking away and they helped her over the fence. But, when she was safe on the other side, everybody stopped and looked at her in
amazement. The eight and eighty sparkling jet buttons had disappeared from her beautiful frock. The sheep had eaten them!

“Oh! my buttons!” cried Annabelle. “There were eight and eighty of them—six more than Bessie Beaseley had! And where is my sun hat?”

Across the fence in the milling crowd of sheep, the wicked Woodlawns beheld with glee Annabelle's beautiful sun hat rakishly dangling from the left horn of a fat old ram.

If Annabelle had rushed home crying and told Mother, the Woodlawn children would not have been greatly surprised. But there seemed to be more in Annabelle than met the eye.

“What a quaint experience!” she said. “They'll hardly believe it when I tell them about it in Boston.” Her voice was a trifle shaky, but just as polite as ever, and she went right upstairs, without speaking to Clara or Mother, and changed to another dress. That evening she was more quiet than she had been the night before and she had almost nothing to say about the superiority of her native city over the rest of the uncivilized world. Caddie noticed with remorse that Annabelle
walked a little stiffly, and she surmised that the ground had not been very soft at the place where Pete had scraped her off.

“I wish I hadn't promised Tom to play that next trick on her,” Caddie thought to herself. “Maybe he'll let me off.”

But Tom said, no, it was a good trick and Annabelle had asked for it, and Caddie had promised to do her part, and she had better go through with it.

“All right,” said Caddie.

After all it was a good trick and Annabelle
had
asked for it.

“Let's see,” said Tom the next day. “You wanted to turn somersaults in the haymow, didn't you, Cousin Annabelle?”

“Well, I suppose that's one of the things one always does on a farm, isn't it?” said Cousin Annabelle, a trifle less eagerly than she had welcomed their suggestions of the day before. The beautiful eight-and-eighty-button dress had not appeared today. Annabelle had on a loose blouse over a neat, full skirt. “Of course, I never turn somersaults in Boston, you understand. It's so very quaint and rustic.”

“Of course, we understand that,” said Caddie.

“But out here where you have lots of hay—”

“It's bully fun!” yelled Warren.

“Now, Hetty,” directed Tom, “you better stay at
home with Minnie. A little girl like you might fall down the ladder to the mow and hurt herself.”

“Me fall down the haymow ladder?” demanded Hetty in amazement. “Why, Tom Woodlawn, you're just plumb crazy!”

“Well, run into the house then and fetch us some cookies,” said Tom, anxious to be rid of Hetty's astonished eyes and tattling tongue. Hetty departed reluctantly with a deep conviction that she was missing out on something stupendous.

When she returned a few moments later with her hands full of cookies, she could hear them all laughing and turning somersaults in the loft above. She made haste to climb the ladder and peer into the loft. It was darkish there with dust motes dancing in the rays of light that entered through the chinking. But Hetty could see quite plainly, and what she saw was Caddie slipping an egg down the back of Annabelle's blouse, just as Annabelle was starting to turn a somersault.

“I can turn them every bit as well as you can already,” said Annabelle triumphantly, and then she turned over, and then she sat up with a surprised and stricken look upon her face, and then she began to cry!

“Oh, it's squishy!” she sobbed. “You're horrid and mean. I didn't mind falling off the horse or salting the sheep, but oh, this—this—
this
is
squishy!”

Hetty climbed down from the haymow and ran to the house as fast as she could go.

“Mother, if you want to see something, you just come here with me as fast as you can,” she cried.

On the way to the barn she gave Mrs. Woodlawn a brief but graphic account of the riding lesson and the sheep salting. When they reached the haymow, Annabelle was still sobbing.

“Oh, Aunty Harriet!” she cried. “I don't know what it is, but it's squishy. I can't—oh dear! I
can't
bear squishy things!”

“You poor child!” said Mrs. Woodlawn, examining the back of Annabelle's blouse, and then, in an ominous voice, she announced: “It's egg.” With a good deal of tenderness Mother got Annabelle to the house and put her into Clara's capable hands. Then she turned with fury on the three culprits. But it was Caddie whom she singled out for punishment.

“Caroline Woodlawn, stand forth!” she cried. Caddie obeyed.

“It was only a joke, Mother,” she said in a quivering voice. Mrs. Woodlawn took a little riding whip which hung behind the kitchen door and struck Caddie three times across the legs.

“Now go to your bed and stay until morning. You shall have no supper.”

“Ma, it was as much my fault as hers,” cried Tom, his ruddy face gone white.

“No, Tom,” said Mrs. Woodlawn. “I cannot blame
you
so much. But that a
daughter
of mine should so far forget herself in her hospitality to a guest—that she should be such a hoyden as to neglect her proper duties as a lady! Shame to her! Shame! No punishment that I can invent would be sufficient for her.”

As Caddie went upstairs, she saw Father standing in the kitchen door and she knew that he had witnessed her disgrace. But she knew, too, that he would do nothing to soften the sentence which Mother had spoken, for it was an unwritten family law that one parent never interfered with the justice dealt out by the other.

For hours Caddie tossed about on her bed. The upper room was hot and close, but an even hotter inner fire burned in Caddie. She had some of her mother's quick temper, and she was stung by injustice. She would have accepted punishment without question if it had been dealt out equally to the boys. But the boys had gone free! All the remorse and the resolves to do better, which had welled up in her as soon as she had seen Annabelle's tears, were dried up now at the injustice of her punishment. Hot and dry-eyed, she tossed about on the little bed where she had spent so

many quiet hours. At last she got up and tied a few things which she most valued into a towel. She put them under the foot of her mattress and lay down again. Later she would slip down to the kitchen and get a loaf of bread and Father's old water bottle which she would fill at the spring. At least they could not begrudge her that much. They would soon cease to miss her. Perhaps they would adopt Annabelle in her place.

Her anger cooled a little in the fever of making plans. It would have been much easier if she had known just where the Indians were. But at this season the woods were full of berries and there would soon be nuts. John's dog would protect her and she could live a long time in the woods until she could join the Indians. She knew that they would take her in, and then she would never have to grow into that hateful thing which Mother was always talking about—a lady. A lady with fine airs and mincing walk who was afraid to go out into the sun without a hat or a sunshade! A lady, who made samplers and wore stays and was falsely polite no matter how she felt!