CHAPTER XIII

ABRAM HAS A THEORY

The Arabian mare’s long cry reached Liza’s ear, also. She was putting her chickens in the basket, and having covered them, went toward the bars.

“There’s something wrong, the way that horse whinnies,” said Liza aloud. “Why, look at her now! He’s been thrown!”

Ballie was walking from one end of the bars to the other, resenting the saddle and dangling saddle-bags, resenting the bridle which hung to her feet, but more than all distressed by the absence of her master. As soon as she saw Liza she uttered another interrogative wailing cry.

A pair of small stockings hung across the fence: Bluebell’s figure was flying down the lane at the foot of the pine hill.

“O my gracious!” cried Liza, smiting her hands. “Now _she’ll_ go off and get killed. Come back, Bluebell! come back here! She runs right on and doesn’t hear me!”

Ballie heard intelligently, and jerked her bridle from under foot, seeming, as she did so, to fling a wail after Bluebell.

Liza got over the bars and mechanically relieved the mare, unfastening the pill-bags and saddle, and turning the bridle back over her neck. Leaving her tied to the post, Liza flung her apron over her head and started running towards Abram’s house. It was a mile to Abram’s. When she had passed the orchard and was nearly across the east meadow, she remembered Miss Calder had been left with only Rocco in the house, unconscious of what had happened. Still running, Liza dipped into a gulch-like hollow which divided the stony meadow in halves. It was oozy and slippery, and she climbed the other side nearly out of breath. Abram’s house appeared beyond its orchard.

When Liza had scaled the orchard fence, and recovering breath a little, came running towards the front of the house, she found Abram and his wife talking with a man in the road.

Bounce, the house-dog, had barked all the way up the orchard, but they had never turned their heads.

“Oh, Abram!” she cried. At this Abram looked around, and showed a face as distressed as her own.

“We’ve just heard the doctor’s been drowned,” said Samantha solemnly.

Liza was not prepared for this statement. Her burning face bleached.

“Who says so?” she exclaimed aggressively.

“The g’ography-teacher and him both tried to cross the Rocky Fork at the ford, and his horse acted up some way and got him off.”

Liza groaned.

“I don’t believe it,” she said next: “why didn’t you help him?”

The geography-teacher was splashed and muddied from head to foot. His face looked haggard, and on Pancost’s tall gray horse he appeared singularly gruesome. Liza despised him at first sight. She longed to pull him from his uncertain seat, and have him punished for this trouble for which she unreasonably held him accountable.

“I couldn’t help him, ma’am. I just escaped with my own life, and rode as hard as I could to the first house I saw, to give the alarm.”

“There’s four houses between this and the ford! His horse just came to the bars! Abram! Why don’t you stir yourself? Go and help him! He isn’t drowned, I know. Why, he can swim like a fish! If you’d only stopped to be of some account!” she cried, flashing her excited eyes up and down the geography-teacher.

“Liza,” said Abram, “I’m startin’ to the stable for a horse. But you hain’t heard the particulars.”

He cantered away, and Samantha, who had gone into the house, came out with a camphor-bottle. She bathed Liza’s face, while that good spinster held to the fence and denounced Mr. Runnels.

“Where’s your particulars, now? If you’d stood by him like a man, as he ’a’ stood by you! Where is he? What did he do after he got into the water?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am,” said Mr. Runnels, avoiding her eyes, and speaking in a dejected way without heat. “His horse got to plunging and the saddle slipped. The current was so strong we were both carried away below the ford, and when I got out, his horse had kicked him loose.”

“Ballie kick _him_! She never kicked him!”

“I can’t help that. She was climbing the bank and a heavy log hit him and he went under. I called for help, but nobody came. Then I put my horse to a gallop and rode as hard as I could to the first house I saw.”

“Sit down, Liza,” begged Samantha, pushing her upon a stool they used in picking fruit. Liza sat down. “There goes Abram to the ford fast as he can go. And if he don’t find anything he’ll warn out all the neighbors. Don’t take on so!” sobbed Samantha in her own apron.

Mr. Runnels turned his horse and followed Abram. Dripping and wretched and in need of hospitality as he certainly was, it had not occurred to either of the women to offer him anything. He faded from their view merely as the bearer of bad tidings.

But a capable woman like Liza could give up to smelling camphor for a moment only. Within half an hour she had created a revolution in her own house. The sitting-room was turned into a hospital ward, with every appliance for restoring wounded or half-drowned people. A fire made the black chimney-piece sparkle. Miss Melissa followed her around, awed and colorless, but anxious to help. She did marvels of lifting and carrying, scarcely knowing it. A chill struck through the air as the day closed. Only the baby, who sat in the big rocker with Georgiana and the soles of her own feet broadside to the fire, could sing with any enjoyment of life. The unusual bustle and the climbing fire seemed things of good cheer. Unconscious of any trouble and feeling in a musical mood, Rocco improvised recitative, crescendo and diminuendo, knitting her fine eyebrows with an artist’s concentration.

“O--my--GOOD--GWacious! Jawgeanno!--I neva’ turn back any mo’. An’ it WAINED: AND Juicy-crucy-fied ’im. Cap in my father’s HAN’! An’ the’ was a little guyl had a nice dolly b’ronged to her sisser B’uebell. O Jawge-ANNO!”

Liza-Robert came tiptoeing in on her heavy shoe-soles. She had got the news some way, and going nearly a mile up the run, found a narrow place where she could get across by the aid of rails and so reach the troubled house. She had been crying on the way, and when she saw Rocco toasting her soles with such musical satisfaction, the poor woman buried her face in her apron.

“Poor little innocent!” she said, passing her hand down Rocco’s head; “poor little innocent!”

Rocco was accustomed to Liza-Robert’s widowed expression, and laughed up in her face.

“Dreat big doll,” she said importantly, turning Georgiana for inspection.

Then, as if a peg had slipped in the music-box of her little chest, she straightway struck off again:

“On Missus--JORDAN STORMY Banks’s house, I cast a Rishful EYE!”

Miss Melissa came in from the banistered porch where she had been watching, and Liza from the kitchen.

“Did you see or hear anything?” inquired Liza. Her plump, well-preserved face looked shrunken.

“Nothing,” replied Miss Melissa, spreading her transparent, trembling hands to the fire.

“I’ll make you acquainted with my cousin’s widow, Miss Calder,” said Liza.

Miss Calder bowed to the raw-boned, sad woman. Liza-Robert inclined her head.

“How do ye do, ma’am?” Then she wiped off a rolling tear with her apron. There was a natural majesty in her which fully appreciated culture and delicacy in another; but now she met this lady without a thought of the difference between them.

“He stayed by me night and day when I had the lung fever, and the other doctors give me up to die. If it hadn’t been for him I wonder who’d be carin’ for my children now! I’m just a hard-workin’ woman that’s had trouble, but he always was as good as an angel to me and mine.”

Liza went to the door; then to the bars. The day was gone: she was startled to find it so near twilight.

Presently she came back with an heroic air, patted the prepared bed and laid it open, turned a stick on the fire-dogs over, and hurriedly brought in a candle.

“I thought I heard some one comin’,” she said.

It seemed to be the tramping of another horse at the bars. Ballie, still tied to the ignominious post, neighed to it interrogatively.

Abram came striding in.

“Where is he?” said Liza.

Abram looked at the three women piteously.

“I don’t know. We ain’t found him.”

“Who’s lookin’?” cried Liza with a sharp tone.

“All on this side the Fork. The men goin’ home from the Furnace all turned in.”

“I thought mebby ’twas only that curly-headed g’ography-teacher,” said Liza. She burst out sobbing in her apron again. Miss Calder sat down. Rocco was frightened, and got down with Georgiana hanging across her shoulder, to stare at Abram.

“We did get his hat,” said Abram, swallowing as if his very prominent Adam’s apple were choking him. “And I have a kind of a theory now.”

He proceeded, without much encouragement, to explain his theory:

“Mr. Runnels says a log hit him and he went down right by the ford. They’re gettin’ Ridenour’s canoe and ’ll drag over that spot. But I hev a kind of theory--I don’t know whether I’m right or not--”

The three women lifted their heads expectantly.

“My theory is, it didn’t stop there.”

The pronoun sent a shudder through his hearers.

“It’s down below the Narrows, and I’m goin’ to Mary Ann and warn out the men for a search there.”

At this hopeless view of the case, Liza walked the floor in a transport of grief, and Liza-Robert tried to repress her own sorrow and attend to Miss Calder, who seemed fainting.

“Oh, the poor boy! And him so noble-hearted! Night after night, day after day, through rain and shine and cold and heat he’s rode! And it made no difference whether it was to the rich or the poor! They was all alike to him if they needed doctrin’--and he never expected to get pay for half he done!”

Here Rocco raised her voice and howled.

“He was good to me,” said Abram. “I never knowed a man I thought more of.”

“Honey,” said Liza, coming to the baby, and trying to control herself, “Liza’ll put you to bed now.”

“I don’t want to go,” howled Rocco. “I want B’uebell to sit in the chair and wock me.”

Liza flashed a glance all around the room. Then a recollection ran over her face leaving it more faded.

“Oh, didn’t that child come back? She ran down the lane to hunt him. Abram, where’s Bluebell?”