Children's Book Classics - Kate Douglas Wiggin Edition: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories for Children. Kate Douglas Wiggin
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lifted from their hearts; and Mrs. Howard especially felt that she loved every rock and tree in the cañon.
It was a charming morning, and Polly was seated at the dining-room table, deep in the preparation of a lesson in reading and pronunciation for Hop Yet. Her forehead was creased with many wrinkles of thought, and she bit the end of her lead-pencil as if she were engaged in solving some difficult problem; but, if that were so, why did the dimples chase each other in and out of her cheeks in such a suspicious fashion? She was a very gentle, a very sedate Polly, these latter days, and not only astonished her friends, but surprised herself, by her good behaviour, her elegant reserve of manner, her patience with Jack, and her abject devotion to Dicky.
‘I’m afraid it won’t last,’ she sighed to herself occasionally. ‘I’m almost too good. That’s always the way with me—I must either be so bad that everybody is discouraged, or else so good that I frighten them. Now I catch Bell and Elsie exchanging glances every day, as much as to say, “Poor Polly, she will never hold out at this rate; do you notice that nothing ruffles her—that she is simply angelic?” As if I couldn’t be angelic for a fortnight! Why I have often done it for four weeks at a stretch!’
Margery was in the habit of giving Hop Yet an English lesson every other day, as he had been very loath to leave his evening school in Santa Barbara and bury himself in a cañon, away from all educational influences; but she had deserted her post for once and gone to ride with Elsie, so that Polly had taken her place and was evolving an exercise that Hop Yet would remember to the latest day of his life. It looked simple enough:—
1. The grass is dry.
2. The fruit is ripe.
3: The chaparral is green.
4. The new road is all right.
5. The bay-‘rum’ tree is fresh and pretty.
But as no Chinaman can pronounce the letter ‘r,’ it was laboriously rendered thus, when the unhappy time of the lesson came:
1. The-glass-is-dly.
2. The-fluit-is-lipe.
3. The-chap-lal-is-gleen.
4. The-new-load-is-all-light-ee.
5. The bay-lum-tlee-is-flesh-and-plitty.
Finally, when she attempted to introduce the sentence, ‘Around the rough and rugged rock the ragged rascal ran,’ Hop Yet rose hurriedly, remarking, ‘All lightee; I go no more school jus’ now. I lun get lunchee.’
Bell came running down the path just then, and linking her arm in Polly’s said, ‘Papa has the nicest plan. You know the boys are so disappointed that Colonel Jackson didn’t ask them over to that rodeo at his cattle ranch—though a summer rodeo is only to sort out fat cattle to sell, and it is not very exciting; but papa promised to tell them all about the old-fashioned kind some night, and he has just remembered that to-morrow is Admission Day, September 9, so he proposes a real celebration round the camp-fire to amuse Elsie. She doesn’t know anything about California even as it is now, and none of us know what it was in the old days. Don’t you think it will be fun?’
‘Perfectly splendid!’
‘And papa wants us each to contribute something.’
‘A picnic!—but I don’t know anything.’
‘That’s just what I’m coming to. I have such a bright idea. He said that we might look in any of his books, but Geoff and Jack are at them already, and I’d like a surprise. Now Juan Capistrano, an old vaquero of Colonel Jackson’s, is over here. He is a wonderful rider; papa says that he could ride on a comet, if he could get a chance to mount. It was he who told the boys that the rodeo was over. Now I propose that we go and interview Pancho and Juan, and get them to tell us some old California stories. They are both as stupid as they can be, but they must have had some adventures, I suppose, somewhere, sometime. I’ll translate and write the things down, for my part, and you and Margery can tell them.’
‘Lovely! Oh, if we can only get an exciting grizzly story, so that
Every one’s blood upon end it will stand,
And the hair run cold in their veins!
And was Dr. Paul out here when California was admitted into the Union—1850, wasn’t it?’
‘Of course; why, my child, he was one of the delegates called by General Riley, the military governor, to meet in convention at Monterey and make a State constitution. That was September, too—the first day of September 1849. He went back to the East some time afterwards, and stayed ten or fifteen years; but he was a real pioneer and “forty-niner” all the same.
The next night, September 9th, was so cool that the camp-fire was more than ordinarily delightful; accordingly they piled on more wood than usual, and prepared for a grand blaze. It was always built directly in front of the sitting-room tent, so that Mrs. Howard and Mrs. Winship could sit there if they liked; but the young people preferred to lie lazily on their cushions and saddles under the oak-tree, a little distance from the blaze. The clear, red firelight danced and flickered, and the sparks rose into the sombre darkness fantastically, while the ruddy glow made the great oak an enchanted palace, into whose hollow dome they never tired of gazing. When the light streamed highest, the bronze green of the foliage was turned into crimson, and, as it died now and then, the stars winked brightly through the thousand tiny windows formed by the interlacing branches.
‘Well,’ said the doctor, bringing his Chinese lounging-chair into the circle, and lighting his pipe so as to be thoroughly happy and comfortable, ‘will you banish distinctions of age and allow me to sit among you this evening?’
‘Certainly,’ Margery said; ‘that’s the very point of the celebration. This is Admission Day, you know, and why shouldn’t we admit you?’
‘True; and having put myself into a holiday humour by dining off Pancho’s dish of guisado (I suppose to-night of all nights we must call beef and onion stew by its local name), I will proceed to business, and we will talk about California. By the way, I shall only conduct the exercises, for I feel rather embarrassed by the fact that I’ve never killed, or been killed by, a bear, never been bitten by a tarantula, poisoned by a rattlesnake, assaulted by a stage-robber, nor anything of that sort. You have all read my story of crossing the plains. I even did that in a comparatively easy and unheroic fashion. I only wish, my dear girls and boys, that we had with us some one of the brave and energetic men and women who made that terrible journey at the risk of their lives. The history of the California Crusaders, the thirty thousand or more emigrants who crossed the plains in ’48, more than equals the great military expeditions of the Middle Ages, in magnitude, peril, and adventure. Some went by way of Santa Fé and along the hills of the Gila; others, starting from Red River, traversed the Great Stake Desert and went from El Paso del Norte to Sonora; others went through Mexico, and, after spending over a hundred days at sea, ran into San Diego and gave up their vessels; others landed exhausted with their seven months’ passage round the Horn; and some reached the spot on foot after walking the whole length of the California peninsula.’
‘What privations they must have suffered!’ said Mrs. Howard. ‘I never quite realised it.’
‘Why, the amount of suffering that was endured in those mountain passes and deserts can never be told in words. Those who went by the Great Desert west of the Colorado found a stretch of burning salt plains, of shifting hills of sand, with bones of animals and men scattered along the trails; of terrible and ghastly odours rising in the hot air from the bodies of hundreds of mules, and human creatures too, that lay half-buried in the glaring white sand. A terrible journey indeed; but if any State in the Union could be fair enough, fertile enough, and rich enough to repay such a lavish expenditure of energy and suffering, California certainly was and is the one. Now who can tell us something of the name “California”? You, Geoffrey?’
‘Geoffrey has crammed!’ exclaimed Bell, maliciously. ‘I believe he’s been reading up all day and told papa what question to ask him!’