Ruth Fielding At Sunrise Farm; What Became of the Raby Orphans

CHAPTER VIII – TRAVELING TOWARD SUNRISE FARM

Tom Cameron thought a great deal of Ruth, and for that reason alone was sorry he had not stayed the departure of the runaway girl, Sadie Raby, from the vicinity of Cheslow. Then, as he thought of it more, and heard the girls talk about the tramping girl’s circumstances as they knew them, Tom was even more disturbed.

He and Reno had gotten into the tonneau of the car, which rolled away toward the Red Mill at a slower pace. He leaned his arms on the back of the front seat and listened to Ruth’s story of her meeting with Sadie Raby, and her experience with Sim Perkins, and of her surprise at finding that Sadie had worked for a while at the Red Mill.

“If we had only been a few days earlier in getting home from school, there she would have been,” finished Ruth, with a sigh.

“That’s so,” agreed her chum. “And she even stayed night before last with Mercy’s mother. My! but she’s as elusive as a will-o’-the-wisp.”

“We could telegraph to Campton and have her stopped,” suggested Tom.

“By the police?” demanded his sister.

“Oh! what for?” asked Ruth.

“There! nothing I suggest is any good,” said the boy.

“Not unless you suggest something better than that,” laughed Ruth. “The poor thing doesn’t need to be arrested. And she might refuse any help we could give her. She’s very independent.”

“She sure is,” admitted Tom, ruefully.

“And we don’t know why she wanted to go to Campton,” his sister remarked.

“Nor if she got there safely,” added Ruth.

“Pshaw! if that’s worrying you two, I’ll find out for sure to-morrow,” quoth Master Tom.

He knew the conductor of the freight train with whom he had entrusted the strange girl. The next day he went over to the tank at the right hour and met the conductor again.

“Sure, I got her on to Campton – poor kid,” said the man. “She’s a smart one, too. When the boys wanted to know who she was, I said she was my niece, and she nodded and agreed to it. We had a big feed back here in the hack while she was aboard, and she had her share.”

“But where was she going?” asked Tom.

“Didn’t get much out of her,” admitted the conductor. “But she’d lived in Harburg, and I reckon she had folks in or near Campton. But I’m not sure at all.”

This was rather unsatisfactory; but whatever point the strange girl was journeying to, she had arrived safely at Campton. This Tom told Ruth and the latter had to be content with this information.

The incident of the runaway girl was two or three days old when Ruth received a letter from Madge Steele urging them all to come on soon – that Sunrise Farm was ready for them, and that she was writing all the girls to start on Monday.

The train would take them to Darrowtown. There a conveyance would meet and transport the visitors fifteen miles through the country to Mr. Steele’s big estate.

Mercy Curtis joined the Camerons and Ruth at the Cheslow Station, and on the train they boarded were Heavy Stone and The Fox. The girls greeted each other as though they had been separated for a year.

“Never was such a clatter of tongues,” declared the plump girl, “since the workmen struck on the tower of Babel. Here we are – off for the sunrise – and traveling due west. How do you make that out?”

“That’s easy – anybody could see it with half an eye,” said The Fox.

“Half an eye, eh?” demanded Heavy. “And Cyclops had a whole one. Say! did you hear about the boy in school who was asked by his teacher (he must have been in Tommy’s class) ‘Who was Cyclops?’ He was a bright boy. He answered: ‘The man who wrote the encyclopædia.’ The association of ideas was something fierce – eh?”

“Dear me, Jennie,” admonished The Fox, “you are getting slangier every day.”

“Never mind; I’m not losing flesh over it. Don’t you,” returned the careless “heavyweight.”

It was a long, but not a tedious, ride to Darrowtown. The young folk had left Cheslow just before dark, and their sleeper was sidetracked at the end of the journey, some time in the very early morning. When Ruth first opened her eyes she could scarcely – for the moment – think where she was.

Then she peered out of the narrow window above her berth and saw a section of the railroad yard and one side of Railroad Avenue beyond. The right of way split Darrowtown in two halves and there were grade crossings at the intersections of the principal cross streets.

Long as she had been away from the place, the girl recognized the houses and the stores, and every other landmark she could see. No further sleep for her, although it was scarcely dawn.

She hopped softly out of the berth, disturbed none of her companions or even the porter nodding in his corner, and dressed hurriedly. She made her toilette and then went into the vestibule and from thence climbed down to the cinder path.

There was an opening in the picket fence, and she slipped through in a moment. Dear old Darrowtown! Ruth’s heart throbbed exultantly and she smiled, although there were tears in her eyes.

There was the Brick Church on the corner. The pastor and his wife had been so kind to her! And up this next street was the way to the quiet cemetery where her father and mother were buried. Ruth turned her steps in that direction first of all.

The sun came up, red and jovial; the birds twittered and sang in the great maples along the way; even in the graveyard a great flock of blackbirds “pumped” and squeaked in noisy, joyous chorus.

The dew sparkled on leaf and bush, the flowers were fragrant, the cool breeze fanned her cheek, and the bird chorus rose higher and higher. How could one be sad long on such a beautiful, God-made morning?

Impossible! Ruth plucked a spray of a flowering shrub for both graves, and laid them on the mounds tenderly, with a little prayer. Here slept the dead peacefully, and God had raised her up many, many friends!

The early chimneys were smoking in the suburbs of the town. A screen-door slammed now and then. One man whom she knew slightly, but who did not remember her, was currying his horse in an alley by his stable. Mrs. Barnsworth, notably the smartest housewife in Darrowtown, was starting already with her basket for market – and woe be to the grocer or marketman if the shops were not open when she arrived!

Stray cats ran along the back fences. A dog ran out of a yard to bark at Ruth, but then thought better of it and came to be patted instead.

And then, suddenly, she came in sight of the back garden of Miss True Pettis!

It was with that kind-hearted but peculiar spinster lady that Ruth had lived previous to being sent to the Red Mill. Miss Pettis was the neighborhood seamstress and, as she often had told Ruth, she worked hard “with both tongue and needle” for every dollar she earned.

For Miss True Pettis had something more than dressmaking to do when she went out “by the day” to cut and fit and run the sewing machine. Darrowtown folk expected that the seamstress should have all the latest gossip at her tongue’s end when she came to sew!

Now, Miss True Pettis often laid down the law. “There’s two kinds of gossip. One the Bible calls the seventh abomination, an’ I guess that’s right. But for shut-in folks like most housekeepers in Darrowtown, a dish of harmless gossip is more inspiritin’ than a bowl of boneset tea!

“Lemme have somethin’ new to tell folks about folks – that’s all. But it must be somethin’ kind,” Miss Pettis declared. “No backbitin’, or church scandal, or neighborhood rows. If Si Lumpkin’s cat has scratched Amoskeag Lanfell’s dog, let the cat and the dog fight it out, I say; no need for Si and Amoskeag, who have been friends and neighbors for years an’ years, gettin’ into a ruction over it.

“I never take sides in any controversy – no, ma’am! If ye can’t say a good word for a neighbor, don’t say nothin’ to me. That’s what I tell ’em. But if ye know anythin’ good about ’em, or they’ve had any streak o’ good luck, or the like, tell me. For the folks in this town – ‘specially the wimmen folks that don’t git out much – is just a-honin’ for news, and True Pettis, when she goes out by the day, has gotter have a full and plenty supply of it.”

Ruth, smiling quietly to herself, remembered how the thin, sallow, quick spoken lady looked when she said all this. Miss Pettis’s eyes were black and snapping; her nose was a beak; she bit off threads as though her temper was biting, too. But Ruth knew better. A kinder-hearted mortal never lived than the little old seamstress.

Now the visitor ran across the garden – neatly bedded and with graveled paths in which the tiniest weed dared not show its head – and reached the kitchen porch. Miss Pettis was always an early riser, and the smoke of her chimney was now only a faint blue column rising into the clear air.

Yes! there was a rattle of dishes in the kitchen. Ruth tiptoed up the steps. Then she – to her amazement – heard somebody groan. The sound was repeated, and then the seamstress’s voice murmured:

“Oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, dear, oh, dear! whatever shall I do – ”

Ruth, who had intended opening the door softly and announcing that she had come to breakfast, forgot all about the little surprise she was bent on giving Miss Pettis. Now she peered fearfully in at the nearest window.

Miss Pettis was just sitting down in her rocker, and she rocked to and fro, holding one hand with the other, continuing to groan.

“Oh, dear, me!” cried Ruth, bursting in at the door. “What in the world is the matter, my dear?”

“It’s that dratted felon – Why, Ruthie Fielding! Did you drop from the sky, or pop up out o’ the ground? I never!”

The dressmaker got up quickly, but struck her hand against the chair-arm. Instantly she fell back with a scream, and Ruth feared she had fainted. A felon is a terribly painful thing!

Ruth ran for a glass of water, but before she could sprinkle any of it on Miss Pettis’ pale face the lady’s eyes opened and she exclaimed:

“Don’t drop any of that on my dress, child – it’ll spot. I’m all right now. My mercy! how that hurt.”

“A felon, Miss Pettis? How very dreadful,” cried Ruth, setting down the glass of water.

“And I ain’t been able to use my needle for a week, and the dishwashin’ – well, it jest about kills me to put my hands in water. You can see – the sight this kitchen is.”

“Now, isn’t it lucky that I came this morning – and came so early, too?” cried Ruth. “I was going to take breakfast with you. Now I’ll get the breakfast myself and fix up the house – Oh, yes, I shall! I’ll send word down to the hotel to my friends – they’ll take breakfast there – and we can have a nice visit, Miss True,” and Ruth very carefully hugged the thin shoulders of the seamstress, so as not to even jar the felon on her right fore-finger.

CHAPTER IX – THE SUNRISE COACH

Ruth was determined to have her way, and really, after one has suffered with a felon for a week, one is in no shape to combat the determination of as strong a character as that of the girl of the Red Mill!

At least, so Miss True Pettis found. She bowed to Ruth’s mandate, and sat meekly in the rocking chair while that young lady bustled about, made the toast, poached eggs, made a pot of the kind of tea the spinster liked, and just as she liked it – Oh, Ruth had not forgotten all her little ways, although she had been gone so long from the seamstress’s tiny cottage here in Darrowtown.

All the time, she was as cheerful as a bluebird – and just as chatty as one, too! She ran out and caught a neighbor’s boy, and sent him scurrying down to the sidetracked sleeping car with a note to Helen. The rest of the crowd expected at Sunrise Farm would arrive on an early morning train on the other road, and both parties were to meet for breakfast at the Darrowtown Inn.

The vehicle to transport them to the farm, however, was not expected until ten o’clock.

Therefore, Ruth insisted, she had plenty of time to fix up the house for Miss Pettis. This she proceeded to do.

“I allus did say you was the handiest youngun that ever was born in Darrowtown,” said the seamstress, with a sigh of relief, as Ruth, enveloped in a big apron, set to work.

Ruth did more than wash dishes, and sweep, and clean, and scrub. All the time she told Miss Pettis about her life at the Red Mill, and her life at the boarding school, and of many and various things that had happened to her since, two years before, she had gone away from Darrowtown to take up her new life with Uncle Jabez.

Not that she had not frequently written to Miss Pettis; but one cannot write the particulars that can be told when two folks are “gossiping.” Miss True Pettis had not enjoyed herself – felon and all! – so much for ages as she did that forenoon.

And she would have a long and interesting story to tell regarding “Mary Fielding’s little girl” when again she took up her work of going out by the day and bringing both her nimble needle and her nimble tongue into the homes of the busy Darrowtown housewives.

On the other hand, Miss Pettis told Ruth all the news of her old home; and although the girl from the Red Mill had no time then to call upon any other of her one-time friends – not even Patsy Hope – she finally went away feeling just as though she had met them all again. For little of value escaped Miss Pettis, and she had told it all.

The Brick Church clock was striking ten when Ruth ran around the corner and came in sight of the Darrowtown Inn. There was a crowd of girls and boys on the porch, and before it stood a great, shiny yellow coach, drawn by four sleek horses.

“Bobbins” himself – Madge Steele’s big, white-haired brother, who attended the military academy with Tom Cameron, was already on the coachman’s seat, holding the reins in most approved style. Beside him sat a man in livery, it was true; but Bob himself was going to drive the four-in-hand.

“Isn’t that scrumptious, Ruth?” demanded Belle Tingley, one of those who had arrived on the other railroad. “Where have you been all the time? Helen was worried for fear you wouldn’t get here.”

“And here’s Ralph!” exclaimed Ruth, heartily shaking hands with one of Belle’s brothers. “I’m all right. I used to live here in Darrowtown, you know, and I was making calls. And here is Isadore!”

“Oh, I say, Ruth!” exclaimed the chap in knickerbockers, who was so sharp and curious that he was always called “Busy Izzy” Phelps. “Where have you been all the time? We were going to send a searching party after you.”

“You needn’t mind, sir. I can find my way around a bit yet,” laughed Ruth.

“All ready, now!” exclaimed Bob, importantly, from the high seat. “Can’t keep these horses standing much longer.”

“All right, little boy,” said his sister, marshaling the girls down the steps of the hotel. “Don’t you be impatient.”

“It’s the horses,” he complained. “See that nigh leader beginning to dance?”

“Tangoing, I suppose? – or is it the hesitation?” laughed Lluella Fairfax. “May anybody sit up there beside you, Mr. Bob?”

“I’m afraid not. But there’s room on top of the coach for all of you, if you’ll crowd a bit.”

“Me behind with the horn!” cried Tom, swinging himself up into the little seat over the luggage rack.

“Now, girls, there are some steep places on the road,” said Madge. “If any of you feel nervous, I advise you to come inside with me.”

“Ha!” ejaculated Heavy. “It’s not my nerves that keep me from climbing up on that thing – don’t think it. But I’ll willingly join you, Madge,” and the springs creaked, while the girls laughed, as Heavy entered the coach.

They were all quickly seated – the boys of course riding on the roof. Ruth, Helen, Lluella and Belle occupied the seat directly behind the driver. Jane Ann Hicks, who had been spending the intervening week since school closed with Heavy, and would return to Montana after their sojourn at Sunrise Farm, was the only other girl who ventured to ride a-top the coach.

“All ready?” sang out Bobbins, with a backward glance.

Tom put the long silver horn to his lips and blew a blast that startled the Darrowtown echoes, and made the frisky nigh leader prance again. Bob curled the long lash of the yellow whip over the horses’ ears, and at the crack of it all four plunged forward.

There was a crowd to see the party off. Darrowtown had not become familiar with the Steeles’ yellow coach. In fact, there were not many wealthy men’s estates around the town as yet, and such “goings-on” as this coaching party of girls and boys was rather startling to the staid inhabitants of Darrowtown.

The road through the town proper was very good, and the heavy coach wheels rolled over it smoothly. As soon as they reached the suburbs, however, the way was rough, and the horses began to climb, for Darrowtown was right at the foot of the hills, on the very highest of which Sunrise Farm lay.

There were farms here and there along the way, but there was a great deal of rough country, too. Although it was a warm day, those on top of the coach were soon well shaded by the trees. The road wound through a thick piece of wood, where the broad-branched trees overhung the way and – sometimes – almost brushed the girls from their seats.

“Low bridge!” called Bobbins, now and again, and they would all squeal and stoop while the leafy branches brushed above them.

Bobbins had been practicing a good deal, so as to have the honor of driving his friends home from Darrowtown, and they all praised him for being so capable.

As for Tom, he grew red in the face blowing that horn to warn the foxes in the hills and the rabbits in the bushes that they were coming.

“You look out, Tommy!” advised Madge from below. “You’ll blow yourself all away tooting so much, and goodness knows, we don’t want any accident before luncheon. Mother is expecting all manner of things to happen to us after we get to the farm; but I promised faithfully I’d bring you all home to one o’clock luncheon in perfect order.”

“A whole lot you’ve got to do with it,” grunted Busy Izzy, ungallantly. “It’s Bobbins that’s doing the chief work.”

Three hours to Sunrise Farm, yet it was only fifteen miles. The way was not always uphill, but the descents were as hard to get over as the rising ground, and the coach rolled and shook a good deal over the rougher places.

Bye and bye they began to look down into the valleys from the steeps the horses climbed. At one place was a great horseshoe curve, around which the four steeds rattled at a smart pace, skirting a precipice, the depth of which made the girls shriek again.

“I never did see such a road,” complained Lluella.

“We saw worse at Silver Ranch – didn’t we, Ann?” demanded Ruth of the Montana girl.

“Well, this is bad enough, I should hope,” said Belle Tingley. “Lucky there is a good brake on this coach. Where’d we be – ?”

As it chanced, the coach had just pitched over the brow of another ridge. Bob had been about to point out proudly the white walls of the house at Sunrise Farm which surmounted the next hill.

But there had been a rain within a week, and a hard one. Right here there was a small washout in the road, and Bob overlooked it. He did not swerve the trotting horses quickly enough, and the nigh fore-wheel dropping into this deep, deep rut.

It is true Bob became a little excited. He yelled “Whoa!” and yanked back on the lines, for the nigh leader had jumped. The girls screamed as the coach came to an abrupt stop.

The four horses were jerked back by the sudden stoppage; then, frightened, they all leaped forward together.

“Whoa, there!” yelled Bob again, trying to hold them in. Something broke and the nigh leader swung around until he was at right angles with his team-mate.

The leader had snapped a tug; he forced his mate over toward the far side of the road; and there the ground broke away, abruptly and steeply, for many, many yards to the bottom of the hill.

There was neither fence, nor ditch, to guard passengers on the road from catastrophe.

CHAPTER X – “TOUCH AND GO”

As it chanced, Mr. Steele’s groom, who had been sent with the coach and who sat beside Bob, was on the wrong side to give any assistance at this crucial moment. To have jumped from the seat threatened to send him plunging down the undefended hillside – perhaps with the coach rolling after him!

For some seconds it did seem as though the horses would go down in a tangle and drag the coach and its occupants after them.

Bob was doing his best with the reins, but the frisky nigh leader was dancing and plunging, and forcing his mate off the firm footing of the road. Indeed, the latter animal was already slipping over the brink.

“Get him!” yelled Bob, meaning the horse that had broken the trace and had stirred up all the trouble.

But who was to “get him”? That was the difficulty. The groom could not climb over the young driver to reach the ground.

There was at least one quick-witted person aboard the Sunrise coach in this “touch and go” emergency. Ruth was not afraid of horses. She had not been used to them, like Ann Hicks, all her life, but she was the person now in the best position to help Bob.

To reach the ground on the nigh side of the coach Ann Hicks would have to climb over a couple of boys. Ruth was on that end of the seat and she swung herself off smartly, and landed firmly on the road.

“Look out, Ruth!” shrieked her chum, “you’ll be killed!”

Ruth had no intention of getting near the heels of the horse that had broken its harness. She darted around to his head and seized his bridle. His mate was already scattering gravel down the hillside as he plunged.

Ruth, paying no attention to the shrieks of the girls or the commands of the groom and the boys, jerked the nigh horse’s head around, and so gave his mate a chance to obtain firm footing again. She instantly led both horses toward the inside of the road.

Tom was off his perch by now and had dashed forward to her aid. Amid the gabble of the others, they seemed the only two cool persons in the party.

“Oh! hold them tight, Tom!” cried his sister. “Don’t let them run.”

“Pshaw! they don’t want to run,” growled Bobbins.

The groom climbed carefully over him and leaped down into the road. Tom was looking at Ruth with shining eyes.

“You’re the girl for me, Ruthie,” he whispered in a sudden burst of enthusiasm. “I never saw one like you. You always have your wits about you.”

Ruth smiled and blushed. A word of approbation from Tom Cameron was sweeter to her than the praise of any other of her young friends. She gave him a grateful look, and then turned back to the coach, where the girls were still as excited as a swarm of bees.

They all wanted to get down into the road, until Madge positively forbade it, and Ruth swung herself up to her seat again.

“You can’t do any good down there, and you’d only be in the way,” Madge said. “And the danger’s over now.”

“Thanks to Ruthie!” added Helen, squeezing her chum.

“Oh, you make too much fuss about it,” said Ruth. “I just grabbed the bridle.”

“Yes,” said Mercy, from inside. “I thought I’d need my aeroplanes to fly with, when that horse began to back over the edge of the hill. You’re a good child, Ruthie. I always said so.”

The others had more or less to say about Ruth’s action and she was glad to turn the conversation to some other subject.

Meanwhile the groom had mended the harness, and now he and Tom led the leaders to straighten out the team, and the four horses threw themselves into their collars and jerked the coach-wheel out of the gutter.

The trouble had delayed them but slightly, and soon Tom was cheerfully winding the horn, and the horses were rattling down a more gentle descent into the last valley.

From this to the top of the hill on which the Steele home stood was a steady ascent and the horses could not go rapidly. Bob and Madge pointed out the objects of interest as they rolled along – the farmhouses that were to be torn down, the fences already straightened, and the dykes and walls on which Mr. Steele’s men were at work.

“When this whole hill is father’s, you’ll see some farm,” crowed Bobbins.

“But whose place is that?” demanded one of the girls, behind him, suddenly.

The coach had swung around a turn in the road where a great, bald rock and a border of trees on the right hand, hid all that lay beyond on this gentle slope. The other girls cried out at the beauty of the scene.

A gable-roofed farmhouse, dazzlingly white, with green blinds, stood end to the road. There were great, wide-branched oaks all about it. The sod was clipped close and looked like velvet. Yet the surroundings of the homestead were rather wild, as though Nature had scarcely been disturbed by the hand of man since the original clearing was made here in the hillside forest.

There were porches, and modern buildings and “ells” added to the great old house, but the two huge chimneys, one at either end, pronounced the building to be of the architecture of the earliest settlers in this section of the State.

There were beds of old-fashioned flowers; there was a summerhouse on the lawn, covered with vines; altogether it was a most beautiful and “homey” looking place.

“Whose place is it?” repeated the questioner.

“Oh, that? Caslon’s,” grunted Bob. “He’s the chap who won’t sell out to father. Mean old thing.”

“Why, it’s a love of an old place!” exclaimed Helen.

“Yes. It is the one house father was going to let stand on the hill beside our own. You see, we wanted to put our superintendent in it.”

Just then an old gentleman came out of the summer house. He was a portly, gray mustached, bald-headed man, in clean linen trousers and a white shirt with a short, starched bosom. He wore no collar or necktie, but looked clean and comfortable. He smiled at the young people on the coach jovially.

Behind him stood a motherly lady some years his junior. She was buxom and smiling, too.

Bobbins jerked his head around and snapped his whip over the leaders’ ears. “These are the people,” he said.

“Who?” asked Belle Tingley.

“The Caslons.”

“But they’re real nice looking people,” Helen exclaimed, in wonder.

“Well, they’re a thorn – or a pair of thorns – in my father’s flesh. You’d better not boost them before him.”

“And they don’t want to sell their old home?” queried Ruth, softly. Then to herself, she whispered: “And who could blame them? I wouldn’t sell it, either, if it were mine.”