Caddie Woodlawn (4 page)

“Golly! Tomorrow—no, Monday,” said Tom, “I'm going to make a canoe like that one the Indians were
making—a little one, with birch bark and pitch.” But Caddie and Warren did not bother to answer.

Presently their mother came to the door and called them in to family prayers. They were a little stiff and unaccustomed to their knees, for they were used to saying their prayers in bed. Everyone was there. Even Robert Ireton came in, too, looking uneasy and strange with neither a pitchfork nor a banjo in his hands. The yellow lamplight slanted across the bowed heads. Only half listening to the words, Caddie felt herself being lifted and borne along by the circuit rider's voice. It was a kind of music—different from the twanging of the banjo or the birds at dawn, more like the falling of water over the mill wheel or the chanting of the Indians. It aroused and stirred her. There was a silence after the deep “Amen.” And then the silence was broken by a gentle snore. Warren had gone to sleep with his head bent devoutly on the back of a chair. Caddie shook him hastily and the children trooped up to bed.

Caddie, Hetty, and little Minnie shared the same room. Caddie helped the younger ones with their difficult buttons and tumbled them into their beds. Then she sat a long time, drawing off her own clothes slowly and straining her ears to hear the conversation which went on below. Her father and Mr. Tanner were talking
about the war, with an occasional word from her mother. The Civil War seemed remote to the children of western Wisconsin; and yet Father had paid a man to fight in his place, and Tom Hill, one of the hired men, had gone away to fight in it, and, when visitors came to the farm, the grownups always sat late into the night discussing it. Once Caddie had seen President Lincoln—he was Mr. Lincoln then. She had been quite a little girl and they had taken her to St. Louis for a visit. There had been a torchlight procession and someone had held her up to watch it from a window. And Mr. Lincoln had been in the procession. She had never forgotten the deep-lined face of the great man. Caddie slipped on her nightgown and crept to the open window where she could hear the voices from below more clearly.

“If it weren't for my wife and children,” her father was saying, “Englishman and peace lover though I am, I should be out there fighting for abolition.”

“That's not the usual English sentiment, Woodlawn,” said Mr. Tanner. “The English aristocrats see no wrong in slavery.”

When he answered, her father's gentle voice was suddenly bitter. “Ah, the English aristocrats!” he cried. “I am proud to say that I do not see things from the aristocratic point of view.”

“Johnny!” cried her mother reproachfully, almost warningly, it seemed. His voice fell to a lower key, but it was still vibrant with emotion.

“God created all men free and equal,” he said, “and men themselves must come to understand that truth at last!”

Shivering in the chill night air of autumn, Caddie went to bed. She crept in with Hetty, who had made a warm nest for herself and was peacefully asleep. Sometimes Caddie envied Mother and Clara, who were so dark and calm and beautiful, who seemed to find it so easy to be clean and good. But tonight her father's words echoed in her ears. She did not quite understand them, nor know why Father was so bitter when he spoke of England. She only knew that whatever Father said was true, and that she loved him better than anybody else on earth. She was glad that her hair was rough and red like his.

The next day was Sunday, and, of course, the schoolhouse was opened and everyone went to church. Mrs. Woodlawn brought a bunch of her autumn flowers to decorate the desk. She had driven over early with her husband and Mr. Tanner to open and air the schoolhouse which had been closed since summer. The children followed on foot. They had a mile to go, across a field and along a dusty road. They rubbed their feet through the tall grass by the schoolhouse gate to take the dust off their Sunday shoes. People from all the surrounding farms and homesteads had come to hear the circuit rider speak. Even Sam Hankinson was there, sitting in a back seat with his three little half-breed children about his knees. But his Indian wife
stayed outside. Caddie peeped at them curiously through her fingers when Mr. Tanner's prayer grew very long. How would it be to have an Indian for a mother, she wondered? Then she looked at Mrs. Woodlawn, so fine in her full black silk with the cameo brooch and earrings and the small black hat, and she was glad that this was Mother. And yet, she thought, she would not be ashamed of an Indian mother, as Sam Hankinson seemed to be ashamed of his Indian wife.

The next day the circuit rider rode away on his horse. Father set his clock upon the shelf to be mended later, and life went on again as usual. But now the children began to talk about when Uncle Edmund would come, for Uncle Edmund always came with the pigeons in the fall. He made his annual visit when the shooting was at its best, for he was an eager if not a very skillful sportsman.

Mrs. Woodlawn sighed. “No one can say that I am not a devoted sister,” she said, “but the prospect of a visit from Edmund always fills me with alarm. My house is turned upside down, my children behave like wild things, there is nothing but noise and confusion.”

“But Ma—” cried Tom.

“Don't Ma me, my child,” said Mrs. Woodlawn calmly.

“But, Mother,” persisted Tom, defending his hero.

“Uncle Edmund knows the most tricks——”

“And jokes!” cried Caddie.

“Remember when he put the hairbrush in Caddie's bed?” shouted Warren.

“And the time he put a frog in a covered dish on the supper table, and when Mrs. Conroy lifted the cover——”

“That is enough, Tom,” said his mother. “We remember Uncle Edmund's tricks very well, and I've no doubt we'll soon see more of them.”

But she looked forward to her younger brother's coming just the same, and when the pigeons came and there was no Uncle Edmund everyone felt surprised and concerned.

One night when they went to bed the sky was clear and the woods were still. But when they awoke in the crisp autumn morning the air was full of the noise of wings, and flocks of birds flew like clouds across the sun. The passenger pigeons were on their way south. They filled the trees in the woods. They came down in the fields and gardens, feeding on whatever seeds and grains they could find. The last birds kept flying over those which were feeding in front, in order to come at new ground, so that the flock seemed to roll along like a great moving cloud.

“The pigeons have come!” shouted the little Woodlawns. “The pigeons have come!” Even baby Joe waved his arms and shouted.

Tom and Warren armed themselves with sticks and went out with the hired men. But for once Caddie stayed indoors. She liked hunting as well as the boys. But this was too easy. This was not hunting—it was a kind of wholesale slaughter. She knew that the Indians and the white men, too, caught the birds in nets and sent them by thousands to the markets. She knew that wherever the beautiful gray birds went, they were harassed and driven away or killed. Something of sadness filled her young heart, as if she knew that they were a doomed race. The pigeons, like the Indians, were fighting a losing battle with the white man.

But John Woodlawn was not a glutton as some of his neighbors were. He said to Tom and the hired men: “There is not much grain left in the fields now. Drive the birds off and keep them from doing harm as well as you can, but don't kill more than we can eat. There is moderation in all things.”

And so that night there was pigeon pie for supper. But on the Woodlawn farm no more birds were killed than could be eaten. After supper Robert Ireton, strumming his banjo out by the barn, sang the song
that everybody had on his lips at this time of the year:

“When I can shoot my rifle clear

At pigeons in the sky,

I'll bid farewell to pork and beans

And live on pigeon pie”

The three children, huddled around him on the chilly ground, hummed or sang with him, and all about them in the darkness was the rustle and stir of wings.

A few days later the passenger pigeons had disappeared as suddenly as they had come. They had taken up their perilous journey toward the South. It was as if they had never passed by—except that the woods were stripped of seeds and acorns and dried berries, and some folks still had cold pigeon pie in their kitchens or dead birds on their truck heaps.

Then, after the pigeons were all gone, came a letter from Uncle Edmund announcing his arrival on the next steamer. The “Little Steamer,” as everyone called it, came up the Menomonie River once a week as far as Dunnville. Its arrival was a great event, for all the letters from the East, all the news from the great world, most of the visitors and strangers and supplies came up the river on the Little Steamer.

The Woodlawn children begged to be allowed to go and meet Uncle Edmund.

“Certainly we can't take all of you!” said Mrs. Woodlawn calmly. “I shall let Clara and Tom go, because they are the eldest.”

Tom looked at Caddie and Warren with a superior smile. “Too bad you little children have to stay at home,” he said, “but we can't take all of you.”

“All right for you, Tom,” said Caddie, “talking like that!”

She and Warren withdrew. They crossed the barnyard and climbed to the haymow. Nero went with them to the bottom of the ladder. He was quick to sense trouble of any sort and his tail wagged in mournful sympathy. Caddie and Warren buried themselves in the hay and talked things over. When Father or Mother made a decision, the Woodlawn children accepted it as final. There was very little teasing for favors in a large pioneer family. But not to meet Uncle Edmund was unthinkable.

“It's just because they haven't room for us in the wagon,” said Caddie at last, “but if we walked——”

“Sure,” said Warren, his face brightening, “and let's not tell them we're walking either. Let's save it for a—a surprise.”

“Or maybe we could take one of the horses,” suggested Caddie.

“Pete's the fastest,” said Warren.

“Better take Betsy. Pete always runs for the low shed behind the barn and scrapes us off.”

“Sure,” said Warren, “we'll take Betsy!”

When the time came to meet the steamer, Clara and Tom, in their Sunday clothes, climbed into the wagon behind Mr. and Mrs. Woodlawn. Tom was a little sorry for Caddie and Warren, but he couldn't resist a smirk of satisfaction. Only, strangely enough, Caddie and Warren did not seem as depressed over being left behind as they should have been. They stood beside the wagon, grinning like two Cheshire cats. Hetty and little Minnie stood with them, looking properly wistful. The moment the wagon started Caddie and Warren made a beeline for the barn to get old Betsy and ride across the fields and through the woods.

Hetty saw them go, and instant realization of what they were going to do flashed across her mind. Here was something important to tell. “Father! Mother!” she shouted, running down the lane behind the wagon. “Stop! Stop! Father! Mother!” But her voice was lost in the rattle of wheels, and in a cloud of dust the wagon disappeared. Across the field in the other direction flew Betsy, the black mare, with only a rope and halter, and Caddie and Warren clinging like monkeys to her bare back.

Dunnville consisted of the schoolhouse which the
children attended in winter and summer, a few log cabins, a store, and two taverns, one on either side of the river where the Little Steamer docked and turned around. As the Little Steamer came into sight, Mr. and Mrs. Woodlawn, Clara and Tom were standing on the dock ready with handkerchiefs to wave at sight of Uncle Edmund. Yes, Uncle Edmund was there. His round face was creased with smiles. His round eyes, behind his spectacles, twinkled with delight.

As soon as his voice could be heard over the sound of churning water, he shouted: “Hello there! Hello, Harriet and John! Hello, Tom and Clara! Hey, there, Caddie and Warren! Why don't you come on down?”

Caddie and Warren! The Woodlawns on the dock turned sharply around. There they were, Caddie and Warren, sitting on the bank above, their bare legs dangling, their red heads shining. They grinned sheepishly.

“Well, of all things!” cried Mrs. Woodlawn, her clear brow darkening ominously. She was going to say a great deal more, but suddenly the Little Steamer docked with a bump and she was obliged to catch her husband's arm to keep her balance. Then they were all in Uncle Edmund's large, enthusiastic embrace—even Caddie and Warren. Uncle Edmund was so delighted that they had all come to meet him that nobody