Read Ebook: Bunch Grass: A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch by Vachell Horace Annesley

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Ebook has 2654 lines and 85284 words, and 54 pages

"I'll have him in a jiffy," said my brother.

As he spoke I happened to be watching the schoolmarm. Her face was painfully white, but her eyes were shining, and her lips set above a small, resolute chin.

"Let me kill him," she said, in a low voice.

"You, Miss Buchanan?"

"Yes."

"It's easy enough, but one mustn't--er--miss."

"I shan't miss."

She took the willow stick from my brother's hand. Every movement of his she reproduced exactly, even to the setting of her heel upon the serpent's head. Then she smiled at us apologetically.

Ajax, who has a trick of saying what others think, blurted out--

"What do you mean by conquering--Belle?"

We sat down.

"My name is Alethea-Belle, a double name. Father wanted to call me Alethea; but mother fancied Belle. Father, you know, was a Massachusetts minister; mother came from way down south. She died when I was a child. She--she was not very strong, poor mother, but father," she spoke proudly, "father was the best man that ever lived."

All her self-consciousness had vanished. Somehow we felt that the daughter of the New England parson was speaking, not the child of the invertebrate Southerner.

"A rose silk dress?" repeated Ajax.

"It was just too lovely--that dress," said the little schoolmarm, reflectively.

She blushed, and her shyness, her awkwardness, returned.

"Alethea had to pay for it," she replied primly. "I ask your pardon for speaking so foolishly and improperly of--myself."

After this, behind her back, Ajax and I invariably called her Alethea- Belle.

School began at nine sharp the next morning. We expected a large attendance, and were not disappointed. Some of the boys grinned broadly when Alethea-Belle appeared carrying books and maps. She looked absurdly small, very nervous, and painfully frail. The fathers present exchanged significant glances; the mothers sniffed. Alethea- Belle entered the names of her scholars in a neat ledger, and shook hands with each. Then she made a short speech.

"Friends," she said, "I'm glad to make your acquaintance. I shall expect my big boys and girls to set an example to the little ones by being punctual, clean, and obedient. We will now begin our exercises with prayer and a hymn. After that the parents will please retire."

That evening Alethea-Belle went early to bed with a raging headache. Next morning she appeared whiter than ever, but her eyelids were red. However, she seemed self-possessed and even cheerful. Riding together across the range, Ajax said to me: "Alethea-Belle is scared out of her life."

"You mean Belle. Alethea is as brave as her father was before her."

But the ructions did not take place that day. It seems that Alethea- Belle told her scholars she was suffering severely from headache. She begged them politely to be as quiet as possible. Perhaps amazement constrained obedience.

"These foothill imps will kill her," said Ajax.

Within a week we knew that the big boys were becoming unmanageable, but no such information leaked from Alethea-Belle's lips. Each evening at supper we asked how she had fared during the day. Always she replied primly: "I thank you; I'm getting along nicely, better than I expected."

Mrs. Spafford, a peeper through doors and keyholes, explained the schoolmarm's methods.

"I jest happened to be passin' by," she told me, "and I peeked in through--through the winder. That great big hoodlum of a George Spragg was a-sassin' Miss Buchanan an' makin' faces at her. The crowd was a- whoopin' him up. In the middle o' the uproar she kneels down. 'O Lord,' says she, 'I pray Thee to soften the heart of pore George Spragg, and give me, a weak woman, the strength to prevail against his everlastin' ignorance and foolishness!' George got the colour of a beet, but he quit his foolin'. Yes sir, she prays for 'em, and she coaxes 'em, an' she never knows when she's beat; but they'll be too much for her. She's losin' her appetite, an' she don't sleep good. We won't be boardin' her much longer."

But that night, as usual, when I asked Alethea-Belle how she did, she replied, in her prim, formal accents: "I'm doing real well, I thank you; much, much better than I expected."

Two days later I detected a bruise upon her forehead. With great difficulty I extracted the truth. Tom Eubanks had thrown an apple at the schoolmarm.

"And what did you do?"

Her grey eyes were unruffled, her delicately cut lips never smiled, as she replied austerely: "I told Thomas that I was sure he meant well, but that if a boy wished to give an apple to a lady he'd ought to hand it politely, and not throw it. Then I ate the apple. It was a Newtown pippin, and real good. After recess Thomas apologised."

"What did the brute say?"

"He is not a brute. He said he was sorry he'd thrown the pippin so hard."

Next day I happened to meet Tom Eubanks. He had a basket of Newtown pippins for the schoolmarm. He was very red when he told me that Miss Buchanan liked--apples. Apples at that time did not grow in the brush- hills. Tom had bought them at the village store.

But Alethea-Belle grew thinner and whiter.

Just before the end of the term the climax came. I happened to find the little schoolmarm crying bitterly in a clump of sage-brush near the water-troughs.

"It's like this," she confessed presently: "I can't rid myself of that weak, hateful Belle. She's going to lie down soon, and let the boys trample on her; then she'll have to quit. And Alethea sees the Promised Land. Oh, oh! I do despise the worst half of myself!"

"The sooner you leave these young devils the better."

"What do you say?"

She confronted me with flashing eyes. I swear that she looked beautiful. The angularities, the lack of colour, the thin chest, the stooping back were effaced. I could not see them, because--well, because I was looking through them, far beyond them, at something else.

"You won't quit," said I, with conviction.

"To-morrow," said she, "they've fixed things for a real battle."

She refused obstinately to tell me more, and obtained a solemn promise from me that I would not interfere.

Afterwards I got most of the facts out of George Spragg. Three of the biggest boys had planned rank mutiny. Doubtless they resented a compulsory attendance at school, and with short-sighted policy made certain that if they got rid of Alethea-Belle the schoolhouse would be closed for ever. And what chance could she have--one frail girl against three burly young giants?

A full attendance warned her that her scholars expected something interesting to happen. Boys and girls filed into the schoolroom quietly enough, and the proceedings opened with prayer, but not the usual prayer. Alethea-Belle prayed fervently that right might prevail against might, now, and for ever. Amen.

Within a minute the three mutineers had marched into the middle of the room. In loud, ear-piercing notes they began to sing "Pull for the Shore." The girls giggled nervously; the boys grinned; several opened their mouths to sing, but closed them again as Alethea-Belle descended from the rostrum and approached the rebels. The smallest child knew that a fight to a finish had begun.

Out of the basket, quite slowly and stealthily, came the head of a snake, a snake well known to the smallest child--known and dreaded. The flat head, the lidless, baleful eyes, the grey-green, diamond- barred skin of the neck were unmistakable.

"It's a rattler!" shrieked one of the rebels.

They sprang back; the other children rose, panic-stricken. The schoolmarm spoke very quietly--

"Don't move! The snake will not hurt any of you."

As she spoke she flicked again the lid of the basket. It fell on the head of the serpent. Alethea-Belle touched the horror, which withdrew. Then she picked up the basket, secured the lid, and spoke to the huddled-up, terrified crowd--

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