"You are getting along a great deal better than you think, Puss, and people don't hate you. They like you more every day, which is better than going to boarding school, isn't it?"

"Y-e-s," hesitatingly, "but I would like mighty well to go with Carrie."

"Well, I think some day maybe you can. Come home now, it is getting dark and pretty soon we won't be able to see our way down through the mesquite."

CHAPTER XI

A FIRE IN THE NIGHT

"Aunt Maria, will you let me make some mola.s.ses taffy? Monday is Carrie's birthday and I haven't anything else to send her. She always gives me something on my birthday. I will be real careful and clean up everything when I am through."

"Well, I suppose you can try it, though I hate to have you messing around while I am getting your father's things ready for his trip."

"I won't mess, truly, Aunt Maria," and thankful at receiving even this grudging permission, she flew out into the tiny kitchen to the pleasant task of candy-making, reciting, as she rattled among the pots and pans:

"Lars Porsena of Clusium, By the Nine G.o.ds he swore That the great house of Tarquin Should suffer wrong no more.

One cup of mola.s.ses, one cup of sugar--that mola.s.ses looks awfully black; I wonder if the taffy will be dark. I like the light-colored best.

'Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, With all the speed ye may; I, with two more to help me, Will hold the foe in play.'

A lump of b.u.t.ter and a tablespoon of vinegar. How pretty the stuff looks boiling up higher and higher every minute. Hm, but it's hot work bending over this stove.

Four hundred trumpets sounded A peal of warlike glee, As that great host, with measured tread, And spears advanced, and ensigns spread, Rolled slowly toward the bridge's head, Where stood the dauntless Three.

My! I would like to have been there and watched them. Isn't Horatius a splendid name! And Herminius--isn't it grand! But they are like Dionysius, no one ever uses them nowadays. I believe that candy is almost done. It is brittle when I put it into water.

Round turned he, as not deigning Those craven ranks to see; Naught spake he to Lars Porsena, To s.e.xtus naught spake he."

She seized the kettle of boiling syrup and lifted it off the stove, still speaking the impa.s.sioned lines of that stirring poem, and gesticulating wildly, heedless of the utensils in her hands.

"So he spake, and speaking sheathed The good sword by his side, And with his harness on his back, Plunged headlong in the tide."

Bang! went the kettle against a chair-back, and the seething, bubbling mess of sticky brown syrup poured in a flood over furniture, girl and floor, and trickled in a rivulet around the brim of her father's hat carelessly laid on the table while he wrestled with a refractory buckle on his grip, packed ready for his departure. A gasp of dismay escaped her lips, and Tabitha stood aghast in the midst of the ruin.

"Tabitha Catt!" exclaimed the aunt, appearing that moment in the doorway.

"Tabitha Catt!" echoed the father, looking up at the sound of the crash.

"I never saw such carelessness in my life. Look at that hat! My best, too!"

"You needn't have left it on the table; that's no place for your wardrobe," burst out the indignant Tabitha, sucking one blistered finger, and frantically shaking her foot where the hot drops of syrup had clung and burned.

Her unfortunate words were like oil to a flame.

"I'll have none of your impertinence, young lady," cried the irate father, seizing her by the shoulder none too gently and giving her a shake. "You deserve to be trounced."

Tabitha's heart stood still. The day of the licking had come at last! He looked around for a stick, but the woodbox contained nothing but heavy billets, and her sentence might have been suspended had his eyes not rested upon his house slippers still lying in the middle of the floor where he had thrown them upon discovering that fussy Aunt Maria had packed them among his belongings for his journey to the east. Grabbing one of these, he struck the trembling girl half a dozen light blows across the shoulders, and then dropped it, ashamed of himself and startled at the frightened, pleading look in the black eyes raised to his in mute appeal. As the first blow descended, the terror in the thin face gave way to anger, intense, unreasoning; but she stood like a statue, silent and dry-eyed, until the slipper fell from her father's hands and he pushed her from him, saying sternly,

"What have you to say for yourself?"

She wheeled and looked at him with scornful eyes; then without a word of reply, gathered up both slippers from the floor, walked deliberately to the stove and threw them into the bed of live coals before either father or aunt could prevent.

"There, Lynne Maximilian Catt!" she exclaimed in a voice tense with pa.s.sion, "you will never use that pair to larrup me with again."

He looked at her in silent amazement, and the rage died in his heart.

She was the image of him. How could he blame her for displaying the pa.s.sions that he himself had not learned to control? He turned back to his satchel on the floor and she, surprised that no further punishment followed her open rebellion, rushed away to her room, dribbling taffy as she ran.

"Oh, dear, Mrs. Vane's rule doesn't work at all," she moaned, nursing her blistered fingers and smarting foot, heedless of the mola.s.ses trickling down the front of her dress. "I never remember to count ten, and I suppose if I did get that far, I would let the hateful words fly after them. It is just like me. That is what comes of being a Catt! If I only had a different name maybe it would be easier; but with a whole cat name, how is anyone going to keep from scratching?"

The hot tears came, and for a long time she lay sobbing into the fat pillow which had seen so many floods of this kind that it had grown very much accustomed to it.

She heard the door open and shut and her father's footsteps died away in the distance. He had gone without another word to her; but then this was nothing unusual. He never said good-by to anyone when he left home--that is, he had never done so but once. When he had started on his last trip, he had waved his hand to her, and called, "Good-by, Tabitha. Be a good girl." She had been startled at the unexpected words, and little thrills of joy had crept through her heart every time she thought of them. They were one of the h.o.a.rded treasures in her memory book, and she had hoped he would always remember to wave a farewell when he went away again. Now she had made him angry. Well, he had made her angry, too. She didn't intend to spill the candy; he ought to know that; but he had struck her.

She was twelve years old now and this was the first licking. She had dreaded it all her life; and was just beginning to think she had grown beyond the age of whippings when the dreadful punishment had befallen her. No, it didn't hurt much, the blows were not heavy enough for that, but the ignominy of it!

Why couldn't her father be like Carrie's? When he had waved his hand at her, she had thought maybe in time he might become like Mr. Carson, and now he had punished her with the licking that had threatened her ever since she could remember. She hated him!

"But I was impudent," she told herself as her fierce anger abated somewhat. "I needn't have said anything about his hat. Maybe then he wouldn't have struck me at all. Perhaps if I had said I was sorry and had cleaned up his hat again, he would have waved good-by to me.

Perhaps--_just_ perhaps he might have kissed me as Carrie's father does.

But I suppose it would be too soon to expect kisses."

"Tabitha, have you gone to bed?" It was Aunt Maria's voice nervous and shaking.

"Not yet. What's the matter?" she asked.

"I thought maybe you would just as soon sleep in Tom's room tonight.

There's a band of gypsies camping a little way up the road, and I don't like the idea of us two women folks being left alone all night. I tried to get Max to stay until morning, but he said he couldn't make connections if he did. I don't suppose there is anything to be afraid of, but this is our first night without a man in the house, and I am as nervous as a witch." This was a long speech for Aunt Maria, but she had a bad attack of the fidgets, and found relief in words.

Tabitha had forgotten that her father's departure would mean she and Aunt Maria must stay alone on the desert, for Tom had gone away to college ten days before; and now at her aunt's words she felt a little tremor of fear pa.s.s over her. She had never quite outgrown the feeling of oppression these black nights on the desert gave her, for the hills shut out the lights of town, and Carson's house was the only tenanted one near them. Somewhere she had heard that a man had died in the other little cottage in their neighborhood which had stood vacant ever since their arrival at Silver Bow, and it was even hinted that his ghost had come back to haunt it. True, she had never seen anything to warrant her believing these stories, but she stood in awful dread of that house beyond them; so she was only too glad for her aunt's suggestion that she sleep in Tom's bed.

Trying to put these things out of her mind and to think of more cheerful subjects, she gathered up her belongings, and crept into the little box-like room, hardly big enough to turn around in, saying in rea.s.suring tones to Aunt Maria,

"Of course there is nothing to be afraid of. Those campers aren't gypsies, but a lot of prospectors, and I think they moved on after they had cooked supper. At least, I saw them going towards town, horses and all. I reckon they had to lay in some more supplies and so camped near the stores to get an early start in the morning."

"Well, I wish there was a man in the house. I never did like to stay alone at night, and this desert is the blackest place I ever got into. I don't believe I shall ever get used to it."

"You aren't alone. I'm here, and I'm past twelve. There isn't anything to hurt us, and we haven't anything that robbers would want if they should come along. Thieves would know better than to visit a desert town, Aunt Maria."

Nevertheless, the woman's nervous terror found an echo in Tabitha's heart, and instead of undressing, she exchanged her soiled dress for a fresh one, removed her shoes, and climbed into bed with her clothes on.

For a long time she lay tossing on the unfamiliar couch, listening to the night sounds without, and the hideous brays of the wandering burros; but at last she fell into an uneasy slumber, and dreamed that she had gone away to boarding school, but instead of having Carrie for a playmate, her companions were two blazing shoes who kept offering her mola.s.ses taffy out of her father's hat. She awoke with a start, trembling in every limb, and frightened at her strange surroundings.

Then she remembered how she came to be there, and lay down again on her pillow; but she could not sleep.

In the distance she heard the sound of a dog's insistent barking, and was annoyed by the plaintive howls. She stopped her ears but could not shut out the sound, and in desperation she sat up and looked out of the window, wishing that morning would dawn.

The night was very dark, but the starlight seemed to break the heavy blackness that hung like a pall over the landscape. Off toward the horizon, in the direction of the dog's barking was a faint glimmer of wavering light, and Tabitha watched it idly for a moment, wondering if there were campers in that little hollow, too. Then the light grew brighter and more flickering, the barking more frantic, and Tabitha started up in terror.