Anxious Hours
“Help! Help!” shrieked Nealie.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!”
squealed Sylvia, while Ducky’s screaming rose
above the deafening roar that was all around them.
Rupert and Rumple fought and struggled
to throw off the mattress and the canvas and the oddments
of clothing in which they were entangled. They
were choked and nearly suffocated, frightened almost
out of their wits by the crying of the girls, to which
was now added the lusty howling of Don and Billykins,
who were being rolled and punched and pummelled like
their elders.
It was Rumple who got disentangled
first, and when his head was free, and he had managed
to scramble to his feet, he gave a horrified shout
of amazement; for the wagon was lying on its side,
there was the sound of galloping in his ears, and
everywhere he turned there was nothing to be seen
but rushing cattle and tossing horns.
They had seen so much of the fierceness
of the cattle on the previous day that in a minute
his hand was on Rupert’s head, and he was pressing
his brother back into the comparative shelter given
by the projecting wagon wheel.
“Stay where you are! Don’t
attempt to move! It can’t last much longer!”
he shouted, holding Rupert down by main force now,
for those tossing horns were such a frightful menace,
and the mob of cattle pressed close on either side
as they poured past the overturned wagon in their mad
flight towards the hills.
“Oh, Rumple, what has happened?
Is it an earthquake?” cried Nealie, who was
somewhat reassured by hearing Rumple shout to Rupert.
At least the boys were all alive, though, judging
by the noise Don and Billykins were making, some of
them might be rather badly damaged.
“I don’t think that it
is anything except the cattle on the move, only they
are going as if they have been pretty badly scared,”
replied Rumple, trying to stand up by hanging on to
the wagon wheel. Then he cried out sharply:
“Look out, Nealie! Get in under the tilt
quick, for here come a fresh lot! Oh, I say,
we shall all be smashed flat!”
It really looked as if they would
be flattened out, for the next lot of cattle, charging
down the steep hillside, came straight for the camp,
and but for a lucky accident would most likely have
gone straight over the wagon, which lay on its side.
But one big bullock caught its long horns in the spokes
of the wheel, the next blundered on to it and forced
it to its knees, another blundered on to that, until
in about a minute and a half there was piled up a
most effectual rampart of struggling beasts, which
effectually checked the onrush from behind, diverting
it to either side.
It was to this accident that some,
at least, of the seven owed their lives, for Don and
Billykins lay right in the path of the stampeding
herd, while Rupert, scrambling painfully to his feet,
would most certainly have been knocked down and trampled
underfoot.
But the noise and the confusion, the
snorting, bellowing, and blowing of all those hundreds
of terrified beasts, were quite beyond description.
After the first frightened outcry Ducky lay still and
shivering in the arms of Sylvia, who was sitting on
the side of the wagon tilt, amid the ruins of crockery
and the contents of the grocery box, which had been
spilled all over her. Nealie had crawled to the
front opening of the tilt, and, regardless of her
possible danger, had succeeded in fishing Don and
Billykins from the debris of canvas and torn mattress
under which they were being slowly smothered, and
had dragged them into the comparative safety of the
overturned wagon. Then Rupert and Rumple struggled
into the same refuge, and the seven sat close together,
wondering what was going to happen next, while the
wild uproar raged on around them, and it seemed as
if the rush of cattle would never cease.
“There must have been thousands
and thousands of cattle that have gone past,”
said Rupert, rubbing his lips with his hand before
he ventured to speak, because of the thick dust upon
them.
“I should think that every one
of those great mobs we have been passing all day must
have turned round and bolted back by the way they came,”
said Sylvia. “But what I don’t understand
is how it came about that the wagon was bowled over.”
“That is my fault,” groaned
Nealie. “I made Rocky back it on to the
slope, because I thought that we should be more sheltered
from the terrible wind, and I knew that the boys would
not be in so much danger of a wetting if it rained.
Then the cattle, charging down the side of the hill
in the dark, must have blundered up against the wagon
and just bowled it over. They are so big and
clumsy, you see, and when once they start there is
no stopping them. Now, if the wagon is badly damaged,
we shall be put to no end of expense because of my
carelessness.”
“But it was not carelessness
if you did it for our comfort, and it is no use thinking
that the wagon is badly damaged, and getting worried
about it, until you know,” said Rupert.
“Of course we can’t do anything towards
finding out, or putting it straight, until morning,
for we might only make matters worse, and invite more
disaster still.”
“Will it be long before it is
morning?” asked Billykins in a voice of misery.
“I am quite dreadfully cold, and most horribly
hungry.”
“So am I, and I wish that we
were back at Mrs. Warner’s,” said Don in
a dismal tone.
“I don’t expect that it
will be very long now, and if you curl up under this
rug, if it is a rug, you may go to sleep, and then
you will forget about being hungry,” said Nealie,
gripping something which felt like drapery, and dragging
it towards her.
“That is my frock!” cried
Sylvia. “Creep in here, close to me, Billykins,
and then you will help to keep poor Ducky warm.
There is room for Don too. Don’t sit on
more of the lump sugar than you can help, as it is
very uncomfortable, I find; but if you were to eat
some of the lumps, perhaps they would warm you a little,
for I have heard somewhere that there is a great deal
of warmth in sugar.”
“I have found a lump. Will
you have it, Nealie?” asked Ducky, groping in
the darkness for her elder sister, and feeling that,
of them all, it was Nealie who most needed comfort
just then.
“I don’t want it, thank
you, dearie,” answered Nealie, her anxieties
being too heavy for sugar to alleviate.
“Here is another; and oh,
I say, I have just put my fingers into something horribly
sticky! What can it be?” and Ducky stuffed
her fist in the face of Billykins, for it was so dark
that she could not see where she was thrusting it.
“Look out!” he exclaimed
in an offended tone, then suddenly changed to a shout
of joy. “Oh, it is marmalade, and it is
all over my mouth! Have you got any more of it,
Nealie?”
“Of course. There was a
pot in the grocery box, and I had forgotten about
it, or we would have had it to help out with supper,
and then it would not have been wasted in this fashion,”
replied Nealie, feeling that she would like to indulge
in a good cry over the ruin which had come upon them.
“It won’t be wasted if
only I can find where that pot is. Can you guide
my hand, Ducky, to find it?” asked Don eagerly.
“It seems to be all over me the
marmalade, I mean but I don’t know
where the pot is, and I am most horribly sticky!”
cried Ducky, who was a most fastidious little maiden.
“Where is your fist? I
will suck it clean for you,” volunteered Don,
with such an air of brotherly self-sacrifice that Nealie
burst out laughing, which was much better for her
than the tears she longed to shed, and which had been
smarting under her eyelids only a minute before.
For a few minutes there was great
competition between Don and Billykins for the privilege
of sucking Ducky’s fists clean of marmalade,
and, the comical side of the picture presenting itself
to the little girl, she laughed as much as Nealie;
then Sylvia joined in, and at length they were all
making the best of things, groping in the dark for
lumps of sugar and dabs of marmalade, until they lighted
on some that had uncomfortably mixed itself up with
the pepper, when a chorus of ohs! and ahs! sounded
from the group of explorers, and everyone immediately
decided that they had had enough marmalade for the
present.
The cattle had all gone, and the night
was entirely silent again, when Rupert said anxiously:
“I wonder where Rockefeller has gone? We
shall be in a pretty bad case if anything happens
to the old horse.”
“I will go in search of him
when morning comes; the worst that could happen would
be that he would stampede with the cattle, and we shall
have the men in charge of the droves coming past presently,”
said Rumple, who had made a sort of shelter for himself
and Rupert from the wreckage of the canvas which had
been draped round the wagon.
“Perhaps the horse has not been
upset at all by the panic of the cattle. It is
not as if it had been a lot of horses rushing across
the encampment in the middle of the night,”
said Sylvia, who had succeeded in making Ducky so
warm and comfortable that the little girl was falling
off to sleep again, although the rest of them were
very wide-awake indeed.
“I wish that I knew what the
time is, but I don’t know where to find the
matches, and it is too dark to see the face of my watch,”
said Rupert. He was feeling the situation rather
keenly, because he could do so very little to help
the others, when, by right of his position as eldest
of the family, he ought to have done so much.
“Don’t worry about the
time, dear; try to get a little sleep if you can.
You will need it so badly when the morning comes,”
said Nealie, moving a little because she found that
she was sitting in the frying pan, and she remembered
that it had only been rubbed with a bit of paper after
being used for frying bacon on the day before yesterday.
“I vote that we all go to sleep,
seeing that we can do no good by keeping awake.
We can’t even sort up this mess of marmalade
and pepper,” said Rumple, whose tongue was still
on fire from the last lick of marmalade which had
been so liberally mixed with pepper.
“Someone is coming. I wonder
if it is one of the cattle men?” said Rupert,
thrusting his head farther out from the canvas and
getting the full benefit of the cold wind which came
howling and moaning out of the south.
“There are two or three, judging
by the noise. Shall we hail them, do you think?”
asked Nealie; but her voice had a nervous ring which
gave Rupert a sudden inspiration and made him say
sharply:
“No, no. If they are the
cattle men they will most likely hail us, and if they
are not it may be better that they should not take
any notice of us. Lie low, all of you, and don’t
make a sound while they go by.”
“I am horribly afraid that I
shall sneeze, for that pepper has got into my nose!”
gasped Don, then went off into a paroxysm of sneezing
so violent that Billykins gurgled with laughter, until
Nealie found it necessary to cover the pair of them
with a cushion which she had found by groping among
fragments of broken cups, lumps of sugar, and debris
of all sorts.
The riders, of which there were two
or three, checked their horses to descend the hill
past the overturned wagon; but as they did not trouble
to lower their voices, every word they said was perfectly
audible through the hush of the night.
“As neat a job of stampeding
as ever I saw,” said a hoarse voice.
“We got them away so quietly
too. That was a bright idea of yours, Alf, to
make friends with the watchman last night,” said
another, whose tones had a boyish ring, as if he were
hardly grown up as yet.
“Alf always did understand making
friends at the right time, and if I know anything
about it, there was something more than whisky in that
bottle from which you offered him a drink,” said
a third man, whose voice had such a horrid ring that
Nealie could not repress a shudder, and she pressed
the cushion down with a warning air upon the two boys
as the beginning of another gurgle sounded from them.
“What is that in the hollow
there?” demanded the first speaker, whom the
others had called Alf.
“It looks like a wagon that
has come to grief and been deserted,” said the
third man in a casual tone, and then they put their
horses to a canter again and swept past the wagon
without troubling more about it.
“Cattle thieves!” murmured
Nealie, and there was a shaky sound in her voice which
made Rupert reach up to grip her hand, as if he would
give her more courage that way.
“What a mercy that the cattle
charged down upon us and upset us in this fashion,
or we might have had something even more unpleasant
to bear,” whispered Sylvia, clasping Ducky closer
in her arms and feeling grateful for what at first
had seemed such an awful disaster.
“Cattle thieves? But how
will they manage to get clear away without the proper
drovers finding which way they have gone?” asked
Rupert, who had been straining his ears to discover
the route taken by the men who had just ridden past.
“Here comes Rockefeller.
I say, Nealie, let me ride a little way after those
men and find out which way they have gone? It
is a bit lighter now. I expect that the moon
is getting up; there is the end of a moon that shows
somewhere near morning, I know,” said Rumple,
then he thrust out his head and called softly to a
shape which he had seen faintly outlined against the
dark hillside, and he was immediately answered by a
cheerful whinny, and a moment later Rockefeller shuffled
up, his hobbles not permitting much in the way of
pace, although he could get about sufficiently to
feed during the night.
“Oh no, indeed you must not!
I should be so horribly frightened lest they should
shoot you or the horse!” cried poor Nealie, who
had privately made up her mind that she could never
let Rumple out of her sight again, because he was
always getting into pickles.
“I would let him go, Nealie.
He may be able to track those men and save the drovers
hours of vain searching; then in return, perhaps, they
will help us right our wagon. And we shall want
some help there; I can see that plainly enough,”
said Rupert quietly. Then Nealie gave way at once,
as she mostly did when Rupert undertook to advise her,
for he certainly made up in wisdom what he lacked
in bodily strength.
She struggled out of the wreckage
of the wagon, and, having caught Rockefeller, no difficult
task, since she never went empty handed to the work,
she hoisted Rumple on to his back, then, slipping the
hobbles, saw the two slink off in the darkness by
the way the men had gone.