I never went around my milk route so fast in my life. By quarter past seven I was on my way to Carl Henry’s. And I didn’t go by the roads, either. I crossed the river at the dam below our house, went through the Sunday-school picnic grounds, and then took a beeline for the highest point on Mount Morrison. That took me through half a dozen market gardens on the river bottom, up through Judge Rucker’s south pasture, past the end of Marston Lake, and out at the corner of Carl’s ranch.
As I came up the road toward his buildings, I could see his Berkshire hogs in their pens down through the alfalfa field, the big black Jersey bull in the bull pen beside the barn, and his bay driving team switching flies off each other in the pole corral, but there wasn’t a person in sight anywhere. Of course, I knew that Carl often went sparking the girls around Littleton or Englewood on Sundays—he was an old bach—but I never knew him to leave the place without at least a hired man around, or his housekeeper. I didn’t whistle when I went into the yard, but went right up to the back door of the house and knocked good and loud. I might just as well have been rapping on an empty box.
I didn’t know just what I ought to do. I could probably find Lady all right, but I couldn’t just go and take her off home without saying anything to anybody. I knew Mother hadn’t seen Carl since the cookery wagon tipped over, so she couldn’t have told him I was coming to get Lady. I sat down on the back steps to wait for somebody to show up, but I didn’t stay there long.
After a few minutes I decided that, even if it was Sunday, one of his hired men might be somewhere out around the fields, or maybe sleeping in the barn. I made up my mind that I’d never leave the place until I’d found Lady and somebody that I could tell I was going to take her home. If I just found her, I’d wait till noontime, then, if nobody showed up, I’d write a note and put it under the back door.
There was no use looking in the barn for Lady. The feed panels were all down in front of the stalls, and I could see there weren’t any horses in there. I had my head down and was kicking up dust with my toes as I went past the end of the granary. Right then the air exploded all around me: “Hiiiii-YA! Little Britches!” It sounded as though all the Indians on the reservation had got loose and were on my trail. Hi’s voice was the loudest in the whole gang.
My heart nearly jumped out of my mouth, and when it missed, it just stuck in my throat and pounded like a broken piston. Carl and Hi swooped me up by the arms and gave me the giant swing around the corner of the granary. When I came down I was sitting in the finest, brand-new saddle I ever saw—right on Lady’s back. All the Y-B fellows were there, and Fred Aultland, and Jerry Alder, and even Mr. Batchlett. They’d all been bunched up behind the granary with their horses, just waiting for me.
Everybody kept slapping me on the legs or on the back and asking me how I liked my saddle, but I couldn’t say a word. My throat felt as if it had a rock in it as big as my head.
Of course, I did get straightened out enough to say “thank you,” after a little while, but Hi didn’t any more than let me get started. “By doggies, Little Britches, we ain’t got no thank-you’s comin’,” he told me; “leastways, nobody but Batch. You got any idee how much yella spendin’ money you made us at the fairgrounds? Dang my hide if half the cash money in Jefferson County wasn’t swingin’ from the end o’ your snub nose that day.”
Carl’s housekeeper must have been in the house all the time I was pounding on the back door. She started ringing the dinner bell before I’d had hardly any chance to really try out my new saddle. We ate at a long table on the side porch of the house, and I thought my stomach would pop before I finished the second piece of watermelon. Carl had a cold well where he could get them almost freezing.
The fellows saved my new ten-gallon hat till after we’d eaten. Then Hi went into the house with Carl to bring it out. It was fawn gray—that’s what it said on the Sears Roebuck hat box—and it fitted me to a T. I didn’t have to put even one fold of paper inside the sweatband.
I think the fellows all guessed I wanted to get right home to show the other youngsters my saddle and hat, so they let me go as soon as they’d given me the hat.
At first I thought I’d cut right down past the lake, follow the River Road, and take the trail along the mill ditch to our place. It would have been the quickest way, but I didn’t take it. Lady was as smooth and silky as if she hadn’t been doing any work all summer. She was all full of life and go, and I knew we must look pretty fine with my new hat and saddle, so I took the road that comes into the north end of Littleton from Fort Logan. That way, I had to go right down the main street and follow the highroad along to our place.
Of course, I had to let all the other youngsters, even Hal, put on my new hat and ride Lady around the square. She was so gentle that any baby could ride her. I knew Mother must have been in on hatching up the plans with Hi and Carl—or else, how would she have known to send me up there at just the right time?—but she wouldn’t admit it. She just put her arm around my shoulder, and said, “It makes me so glad to have all the men like you, Son.”
With Lady and the spring wagon, the cookery route was easy for Philip and me, but Mother was working terribly hard and was having dizzy spells. The first Saturday order we delivered with the wagon was the biggest we’d ever had. In getting it ready, Mother and Grace worked till they were nearly ready to drop. Every time Mother straightened up from the oven, she’d bite her underlip and put both hands to the small of her back.
When I had the last pie loaded on the wagon, she came out on the top step, and said, “You tell the ladies that you won’t be making your deliveries for the next couple of weeks, the Moodys are going to take a little summer vacation.”
Mother certainly didn’t act as if she were taking any summer vacation. She didn’t read to us at all that Sunday, but worked as hard as she could go around the house all day. Neither Grace nor I went to Sunday school, and she let us help her with the house cleaning. Anyone would have thought the President of the United States was coming to call on us. Mother had me wash the windows—both inside and out—beat all the rugs, and polish the cookstove. She and Grace cleaned every closet in the house, swept, dusted, and scrubbed floors.
I spent all day Monday pulling carrots at Wilke’s. The carrot patch was between our house and Roberts’. Every time I looked up, it seemed as though Mother were either hanging out clothes or taking them in from the lines. At noon the kitchen was all steamy and there were two big boilers of clothes bubbling on the stove. We just had cheese sandwiches, doughnuts, and milk.
Before I went back to work, Grace nudged me and jerked her head toward the barn, so I waited on the bran box till she came out. “What in the world do you think is the matter with Mother?” she whispered. “She’s been humming ‘On the Other Side of Jordan,’ all morning, and I can’t get her to say a word. And besides, that business about the Moodys taking a vacation was make-believe. Have you noticed how she’s been staggering around when she gets those dizzy spells? You know, it could be that something’s happening to her head from cooking so much over the hot stove. You don’t think Mother is going to have fits, do you? I think you’d better climb right on Lady and go into Denver and tell Doctor Browne about the way she’s been acting.”
I was just about as worried as Grace, but I told her she was the crazy one, that there was nothing the matter with Mother’s head, and it was just that she was wound up so tight she couldn’t stop going. That made Grace feel a little better, but she still thought I should ride in and talk to Doctor Browne. I had to tell her that Doctor Browne couldn’t do Mother any good unless he could see her and take her pulse. Grace could see I was right about that, but she made me promise that I’d ask Mother to go and see Doctor Browne. He’d been our friend ever since we moved to Colorado.
I tried it right after we finished eating supper, but Mother just patted me on the head, and said, “Good Heavens! Why, I couldn’t possibly ride in to Denver tomorrow. No . . . no . . . but this is what I will do: I’l
l rest in my chamber for the next couple of days. Then, if I don’t feel any better by the end of the week, you may telephone and ask Doctor Browne to come out to see me. Will that be all right?”
I looked over at Grace and she nodded, so I told Mother I guessed that would be all right if she’d really do it. She wasn’t really crying, but a couple of tears welled up in her eyes and tumbled out over her lids. “My, my, I don’t know what I would ever do without you children to look out for me,” she said. “Why, you do twice as much to take care of me as I do for you. I really think you could get along quite all right by yourselves. Who would have thought that within less than six months after Father died, we’d be self-supporting and have money in the bank? By the way, I’m afraid we’ll have to use some of it these next couple of weeks . . . with nothing coming in from the cookery route. Now let’s get the supper dishes cleared up. I want you all to go right off to bed early. There’s a little ironing I shall have to get out of the way if I’m to stay in my chamber tomorrow.” Mother never called an upstairs room anything but a chamber.
Grace wanted to stay up and help with the ironing, but Mother wouldn’t let her. “Why, dear, I’m perfectly all right,” she said. “All I need is a day or two of rest and quiet. If you’ll run along to bed now, I’ll promise to stay right in my chamber for two whole days. You can take care of the house and cook the meals, and I won’t even come down to the table. You or Muriel can bring my food up to me on a tray. I’ll just sit quietly and do a little sewing. Is that fair enough?”
The moon was clear over by the mountains when I woke up; so it must have been two or three o’clock. I was lying there wondering if maybe there really was something going wrong with Mother’s head to make her act and talk so funny all of a sudden. Then I realized that I was hearing a steady squeak, squeak, squeak from somewhere downstairs. At first I couldn’t guess what it was, and then I knew. It was Mother’s ironing board squeaking under the weight of her iron as she pushed it back and forth. I hopped out of bed as fast as I could go, and started down the stairs in my nightshirt. Mother heard me when my feet hit the floor, and called, “Don’t come down, Ralph. I’m just putting my irons away now, and I’ll be up to bed in five minutes. Good night, Son.”
Mother did stay in her room for the next two days, but I don’t think she did very much resting. Grace and Muriel said she had every stitch of clothes we owned spread out on her bed and over chairs, dresser, and even the floor. Grace and I were both getting more worried about her. Two or three times Grace tried to find out why she had to be mending even our heavy winter underwear in the middle of the summer, but Mother would only say, “It’s just to have something to do with my fingers, you know I can’t sit idle.”
Wednesday, the second day Mother stayed in her room, Grace and I sat up long after the other children went to bed. My little rabbits had grown so big they needed to be taken away from their mothers, and I had to build more hutches to hold them. Then, after I was through, Grace wanted me to help her with some of the flowers in the rug we were hooking. Really, she wasn’t so anxious about getting the flowers hooked into the rug as she was about finding out what I thought about Mother. And of course, we couldn’t see each other. I had to stand behind the rug and feed the strips of colored rag up so she could hook them through. And we just whispered back and forth. We knew Mother was still up and didn’t want her to hear us.
It must have been about ten o’clock when Mother spoke from the head of the stairs. Her voice was only loud enough so we could hear it, and she said, “Gracie, would you and Ralph like to come up to my chamber for a few minutes?” Then we heard her go back into her room again.
When we went in, she said, “I know you children have been wondering what I’ve been doing up here for the last couple of days. Well, I did worry a little about those dizzy spells I’d been having, and I was sure it was nothing more than a little reaction from the heat. That must have been just what it was, because I haven’t had the least bit of trouble either yesterday or today. Then, too, you see, one never knows. Possibly Cousin Phil might hear about our having a vacation, and might come and take us for a nice long ride in his new automobile. I’d hate like everything to have him come and not find us all clean and ready. It’s always best to be ready for a journey, whether one actually goes or not—don’t you think? Now, come and let me show you all the things I’ve accomplished in these two days.”
With the exception of the things we had worn that week, each one’s clothes had been washed, mended, and folded, and were stacked away in her closet in separate piles. Our best clothes and a set of clean underwear were on the top of each pile. She opened her second bureau drawer and showed us where the black dress she had for Father’s funeral, freshly pressed, was laid out; along with chemise, petticoats, black stockings—and the new corset I had bought her at the O.P.C.H.
Grace looked frightened as Mother took us around and showed us the things. I suppose I looked the same way. There was nothing about any of it that seemed like Mother.
Mother must have noticed that we looked funny. After she’d closed the bureau drawer, she sat down on the edge of the bed and drew us both up so we were standing by her knees. “I wish you children wouldn’t worry about Mother,” she said. “There’s nothing to worry about, and I’m going to be perfectly all right. But if it will make you feel any better, I’ll drop a note to Doctor Browne and ask him to come out to see me next week. My, you are all such fine little men and women, and I am so proud of you. Now scamper along and get your rest.” Mother didn’t kiss us a lot like some women do, but she drew both our faces in against hers and kissed first Grace and then me. “Good night, dears,” she said. “Be sure to say your prayers before you go to sleep.”
After we were out in the hall Grace looked at me and wagged her head. She didn’t make a sound, but her lips said, “Do you believe what she said about Cousin Phil?” I didn’t know what I did think, so I just lifted up my shoulders a little and went on into my room.
The next morning it was raining, and the sky looked as though the whole day would be rainy. Mother was in the kitchen when I came downstairs. She wasn’t dressed, but had her kimono on over her nightgown. She must have been down there for quite a little while before me. A fire was burning in the cookstove, and the teakettle was boiling like mad.
“My, it’s a rainy morning, isn’t it?” she said, as I came into the kitchen. “Do you think it’s going to settle down to an all-day rain?”
I looked out the window toward the east, and said, “It kind of looks like it. I’m afraid it’ll be too wet for me to work at Mr. Wilke’s.”
“That’s good,” Mother said. “I shall be glad to have you at home today. I wonder if you’d like to bring in the washboiler and fill it with water before you go out to milk. Then, afterwards, it would be nice if I could have three or four armfuls of nice dry wood for a quick, hot fire. And would you call Gracie and the other children? I’ve got a lot of letters I’d like to get written today, and don’t want to be disturbed. Wouldn’t it be a nice day for you to have an all-day picnic up in the barn loft? Gracie could put you up sandwiches and milk . . . and, let me see . . . I believe there is a package of fig bars up there on the top shelf of the cupboard.”
I went up to call the children, but I was careful not to make enough noise to wake any of the others till I’d had a chance to whisper to Grace. “She’s worse this morning,” I told her. “She’s all humped over, and I’m sure something’s getting funny with her head. She wants us all to stay up in the barn loft all day, because she says she’s got to write some letters and doesn’t want to be disturbed. But she had me put the washboiler on and fill it clear up with water. She can’t wash with it raining, and how can she use hot water to write letters? Besides, she said she was glad it was raining, because she wanted me to stay home today. Don’t you think I’d better go over to Roberts’ and call up Doctor Browne on the telephone?”
Muriel turned over and started to wake up, so Grace just shook h
er head at me, and put her finger up over her lips. “She’ll be awful cross if you do it without telling her,” she whispered back. “Let’s wait and see what she’s going to do with the hot water.”
After I’d finished the milking I brought in half a dozen armfuls of wood, and put four good-sized lumps of coal behind the stove. Mother didn’t eat a bit of breakfast. She wouldn’t even sit down at the table, but kept moving around the kitchen with a cup of hot tea in her hand. Twice, she asked me if I thought the Robertses would be up that early, and she kept telling Grace what to put up for our lunch. “And Gracie,” she said, “why don’t you take some paper and pencils when you go to the barn? This would be a lovely day to play school, wouldn’t it? And you could cut some stencils for painting a border around the boys’ chamber.”
Before I started on my milk route, Mother gave me a note and told me to take it to Mrs. Roberts. “If it looks to you as though they’re up,” she said, “leave it there right away, but if not, I’m sure Mrs. Roberts will be about by the time you’ve finished your route, and you may leave it then.”
There wasn’t any sign of life around their house when I went out, but Mrs. Roberts was in the kitchen getting breakfast when I came back. I took the note in to her, and told her the same thing I’d told Grace that morning. Then I asked her if she wouldn’t come over and see Mother as soon as she could, because I thought she ought to have the doctor. Mrs. Roberts turned around back to me while she read Mother’s note. Then she told me that she’d come to see Mother just as soon as her breakfast was over. When I was going down their steps, she opened the kitchen door again, and said, “Now, you be sure and keep all the children out to the barn all day, and don’t you go into the house for anything. Your mother’s got a busy day ahead of her, and she can’t be bothered with you kids running in an’ out.”