“What could be keeping your Daddy and Robbie so late?” queried a worried Mamma in the deepening dusk. The kerosene lamps had long been primed wicks trimmed and chimneys sparkling. Now the glowing light shone forth in a brave effort to dispel the lowering darkness. The kitchen stove burned cozy and warm and the tea kettle sung its happy little tune. Empty buckets clattering on the back porch proclaimed that the calves had just been fed their portion of foaming skimmed milk left from the cream separation.
Mary Jane and Ellen, who had dispatched this work, entered the kitchen to wash at the little stand near the door.
“Mommy, I’m starved! If Daddy doesn’t come soon, can’t we eat anyway? Did you say he went to the school section to work?” asked Mary Jane. She was eager to get to her library book, besides being hungry.
“I just can’t imagine them being so late. No dear, we can surely wait a little longer. Is that the headlights? – Yes! Here they come! Pour the milk now, honey,” and Mamma looked relieved.
Ellen called her sisters from their homework, adding, “Jennie, we fed the calves; so you have to wash the supper dishes – you and Lori! What – why – I thought I heard a baby crying! Mary Jane come quick! Daddy has some people with him and there’s a baby!”
Sure enough! They were on the front porch – a bedraggled couple carrying a baby and an old duffel bag.
“Here we are, Slim,” Daddy was saying. “Let’s get that baby in out of the cold and have us some hot supper. Mom, I come across Slim and Pat Rogers and their baby here. I figured it was too late and cold fer ‘em to be out on the road – with the baby and all. We can put ‘em up tonight, cain’t we?”
“Oh, of course, Ned! How do you do? Come right in. Oh what a dear baby boy you have! How old is he?”
Both parents beamed. “Charlie’s his name.” Just then little eight month old Charlie coughed a dreadful cough. The ring of children on the fringes looked startled and Lori whispered, “I think he’s got pneumonia.”
Ellen ran to put more places on and before long they were seated at the table.
“Yep,” Slim was saying, “times is mighty hard these days. I been outa work since August. So I says to Pat, Let’s get on back home to Nebraska where we come from. My old uncle kin maybe use a hand.”
Pat was thin and pale and shy. Baby Charlie whimpered and grabbed at everything in sight, refusing most of the food offered to him.
Now a baby with golden ringlets all over its head, darling dimples, and blue eyes was the answer to any little girl’s dream. Mary Jane had actually day-dreamed of just such a baby being left on their doorstep. How lovely it would be to love and care for it! She was now wolfing her food down, scarcely chewing each bite twice, in order to take Charlie from his weary little mother. Permission was readily granted.
“Honey, there’s a bottle in the bag over there agin the wall. If you’ll just put some milk in it –. No, no need to warm it.”
Mary Jane warmed it and was soon off in the living room with Charlie all to herself. He was a sick baby, but surprisingly good natured in spite of it all. His little nursemaid found the diapers and changed him.
“Just as I thought! All chafed and sore! Poor little Charlie! Oh, I hope you stay with us a long time. Maybe your folks will run away in the night.... My favorite name too. But they named you for Charles Lindberg, you little darling!”
“Now, Slim – I’ll make a deal with you,” Daddy was saying. “If you’ll promise to keep that woman and baby off the highways, I’ll guarantee you a job in these parts and put you up in the meantime. You’d ought to know how treacherous the weather can be this time of year; a blizzard could blow in tomorrow. If I ain’t mistooken you’ve a sick boy there. Is that a deal?”
“Wall – I reckon yer mighty good to be so generous. I’ll work – do anything at all that is offered – in the ranching line that is.”
Pat looked relieved and the pair became almost jovial. The party removed from the dining room, and Mary Jane had to give up her charge.
“Toss ole Charlie over to me, Pat,” ordered Slim. And toss him she did. Slim was standing about five or six feet away, and he caught the baby in mid-air. The two enjoyed a game of “catch the baby.” Charlie coughed his little “bootheels” and burped up most of his bottle.
Out in the kitchen, clearing up the supper things, the girls stormed. What a way to treat a baby! They were sure he’d be dead by morning.
“Mom, girls, come on now!” Daddy called. “Slim, we generally have a little Bible reading of evenings. We’d admire to have you join us.”
Bibles were passed. Slim and Pat looked rather as if they wanted to escape but there being no avenue open, resigned themselves to listen. To all appearances, the gracious words fell on unreceptive ears and hearts. Charlie was fussy, so the reading was short.
No problem waking up next morning. As Mary Jane’s feet hit the little rug beside their bed, she swallowed hard to test for any hint of soreness in her throat – an excuse to stay home and take care of the baby. But she was hale and well.
“Ellen, wake up! I hear the baby downstairs. See ya!” and she was out the door, shoes untied and apron half buttoned.
Mamma was all pink over the stove frying sausages and eggs for thirteen hungry mouths. Charlie was being fed some warm oatmeal.
“Mamma,” whispered Mary Jane after greeting them all, “I’m ahead in my English and History lessons at school and, well, you’d need me today to help with the baby. Do you suppose I could –?”
But Mamma laughed. “Sorry, honey. Daddy has already arranged for Slim to go to the Gammon ranch by Simla. They’re all leaving just after breakfast.”
How disappointing! To all appearances the chances were slim that Slim and Pat would sneak away without their baby. All Mary Jane got out of it was a running nose and cough the next day – baby Charlie’s present to her.
To make the story even more depressing, next time Daddy went to town and inquired after their erstwhile friends, he learned that Slim had broken his promise after two days and had hit the road East.
“Not much surprised,” Daddy sniffed. “He had a shifty look in his eyes. Any man that’d take a woman and baby hitchhiking in December in this country, ain’t much of a man in my estimation. My guess is that baby won’t grow to maturity. There’s comfort in rememberin’ that the pore little thing is ‘one for whom Christ died.’ They’ll be many such lambs up there, I’m thinkin’, Mary Jane. Don’t look so sad, honey. I give ‘em a New Testament too, and there’s no telling what good may come. Can you quote Daddy a verse along that line, pet?”
“My Word shall not return unto Me void?”
“Exactly. So cheer up. We done what we could.” And Daddy drew her close for a little comforting squeeze.
It was the Hillman’s policy never to turn anyone away who seemed in need. Mrs. Hillman’s hospitality, however, was sorely strained one morning soon after. It was Saturday, and Mamma had been having a rather trying morning with two of her younger girls, Mary Jane and Ellen. It was just that absolutely everything that was said by anyone, but mostly by themselves, seemed too funny for words. It was giggle, giggle, until Mamma’s head was fairly aching. Throw in a good water fight besides and you have reason enough for the unmistakable trace of annoyance in Mamma’s voice as we hear her saying, “I declare! If you girls don’t finish in the next fifteen minutes, we won’t have clean dishes for lunch! That’s disgraceful! Now get busy!”
Suddenly the dogs began barking fiercely. Someone was approaching – a stranger. Mamma opened the back door, and a swarthy, angry looking man fairly ordered, “Call off your dogs, will you?”
Mamma did so. “Put them in the porch room, Clara.” Then rather coolly, “What is your business here?”
Hardly looking her in the face, he sullenly answered, “I’m hungry, ma’am. Could you give me a bite to eat?”
“Go sit on that box by the woodpile there, and we’ll bring you a sack lunch,” Mamma ordered, observing to herself that he kept his right hand well-hidden in his coat. He was not ragged.
“Now, girls,” she whispered. “Watch him, carefully. Someone be ready to let the dogs out if necessary. One of you, Lori, run set this lunch I’m making on the stump there in front of him and I’ll stand on the porch to watch.”
Within minutes these orders were carried out. The man continued to hide his right hand and did not have the civility to say “thank you” for the lunch which he picked up with his other hand.
“Now be on your way, please!” Mamma said firmly, but not unkindly. Turning to the girls who were watching from the window, she later observed: “I put some good gospel tracts in the lunch bag. We must pray for blessing, girls. Keep watching him, though.”
“He’s stopping at the windmill and pond,” sang out Jennie. “He’s – yes – he’s washing his right hand under the water running out of the pipe. I can’t see, but it’s probably wounded. Now he’s sitting down to eat. No, he isn’t using his right hand.”
This running news account was hardly necessary, as everyone was gathered at the window. When Mamma saw that he sat down to eat, she retired to the kitchen to continue lunch preparation.
Mary Jane’s curiosity was getting out of hand. She sneaked back to the kitchen, finished putting the dishes away quickly, and slipped out the back. She intended to skirt northward out of vision from the window, slip over to the gulch and then scout on the stranger from there. The gulch followed over quite close to the pond area. She was just shutting the door as quietly as possible, when a hand reached out from the porch room.
“Gotcha!” a voice said.
Mary Jane’s shattered nerves sent her a foot off the floor.
The voice laughed heartily. It was Clara.
“Now, missey, where might you be pussyfooting to in this secret, sneaky way?”
Mary Jane tried to look innocent. “Just to the barn, and look at the new kittens. Maybe their eyes are open.”
“C’mon and fess up! You listen here! Just leave the detectin’ to old Sherlock. You can’t fool me; I know you was headin’ out fer the crick!”
“Well, why don’t you come with me, if you’re so big and smart.”
“I reckon I’m smart enough to stay right here. Furthermore, I’m here to say you’re not going out of this house. I may not be as good at books as you, but my good old common sense sez we should stay plumb away from that bum out there! Course if you want to get shot ‘er somethin’ ‒.”
“Well, all right. Nobody has any spirit around here.”
“Yeah? You get too spirited, and you’ll get spirited right out of your skin.”
“There he goes, up the hill to the old Zike house!” rang out from the looking post.
It was now too late anyway to spy on the stranger, so Mary Jane slipped back in the house, hoping Clara would keep quiet. And Clara did.