Camping -- Fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction; Scouting (Reconnaissance) -- Fiction; Scouts (Reconnaissance) -- Fiction
Rolf went that very day to the farm of Obadiah Timpany, and offered to
work by the day, hoeing corn and root crops. What farmer is not glad of
help in planting time 01 in harvest? It was only a question of what did
he know and how much did he want? The first was soon made clear; two
dollars a week was the usual thing for boys in those times, and when he
offered to take it half in trade, he was really getting three dollars a
week and his board. Food was as low as wages, and at the end of a week,
Rolf brought back to camp a sack of oatmeal, a sack of cornmeal, a
bushel of potatoes, a lot of apples, and one dollar cash. The dollar
went for tea and sugar, and the total product was enough to last them
both a month; so Rolf could share the wigwam with a good conscience.
Of course, it was impossible to keep the gossipy little town of Myanos
from knowing, first, that the Indian had a white boy for partner; and,
later, that that boy was Rolf. This gave rise to great diversity of
opinion in the neighbourhood. Some thought it should not be allowed,
but Horton, who owned the land on which Quonab was camped, could not
see any reason for interfering.
Ketchura Peck, spinster, however, did see many most excellent reasons.
She was a maid with a mission, and maintained it to be an outrage that
a Christian boy should be brought up by a godless pagan. She worried
over it almost as much as she did over the heathen in Central Africa,
where there are no Sunday schools, and clothes are as scarce as
churches. Failing to move Parson Peck and Elder Knapp in the matter,
and despairing of an early answer to her personal prayers, she resolved
on a bold move, “An' it was only after many a sleepless, prayerful
night,” namely, to carry the Bible into the heathen's stronghold.
Thus it was that one bright morning in June she might have been seen,
prim and proper--almost glorified, she felt, as she set her lips just
right in the mirror--making for the Pipestave Pond, Bible in hand and
spectacles clear wiped, ready to read appropriate selections to the
unregenerate.
She was full of the missionary spirit when she left Myanos, and partly
full when she reached the Orchard Street Trail; but the spirit was
leaking badly, and the woods did appear so wild and lonely that she
wondered if women had any right to be missionaries. When she came in
sight of the pond, the place seemed unpleasantly different from Myanos
and where was the Indian camp? She did not dare to shout; indeed, she
began to wish she were home again, but the sense of duty carried her
fully fifty yards along the pond, and then she came to an impassable
rock, a sheer bank that plainly said, “Stop!” Now she must go back or
up the bank. Her Yankee pertinacity said, “Try first up the bank,” and
she began a long, toilsome ascent, that did not end until she came out
on a high, open rock which, on its farther side, had a sheer drop and
gave a view of the village and of the sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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