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CHAPTER XIX
LOOKING BACKWARD

Doctor Morrison declared that it was due to Betty’s skill in nursing more than to his drugs, but it is certain that, once started, the aunts gained steadily. In two or three days from the time they first sat up he pronounced it safe for them to be dressed, and while they were still a bit shaky, they took great delight in walking about the house.

Bob was introduced to them off-handedly one morning by the doctor, and though both old ladies started at his name, they said nothing. After the physician’s car had gone, Miss Hope came out on to the back porch where Betty was peeling potatoes and Bob mending a loose floor-board.

“My sister and I – ” stammered Miss Hope, “we were wondering if you were a neighbor’s boy. We’ve seen so little of our neighbors these last few years, that we haven’t kept track of the new families who have moved into the neighborhood. I don’t recollect any Hendersons about here, do you, Sister?”

Miss Charity, who had followed her, shook her head.

Bob looked at Betty, and Betty looked helplessly at Bob. Now that the time had come they were afraid of the effect the news might have on the sisters. Bob, as he said afterward, “didn’t know how to begin,” and Betty wished fervently that her uncle could be there to help them out.

“A long time ago,” said Miss Hope dreamily, “we knew a man named Henderson, David Henderson. He married our younger sister.”

Caution deserted Bob, and, without intending to, he made his announcement.

“David Henderson was my father,” he stated.

Miss Hope turned so white that Betty thought she would faint, and Miss Charity’s mouth opened in speechless amazement.

“Then you are Faith’s son,” said Miss Hope slowly, clinging to the door for support. “Ever since Doctor Morrison introduced you, I wanted to stare at you, you looked so like the Saunders. Faith didn’t – she was more like the Dixons, our mother’s people. But you are Saunders through and through; isn’t he, Charity?”

“He looks so much like you,” quavered Miss Charity, “that I’d know in a minute he was related to us. But Faith – your mother – is she, did she – ?”

“She died the night I was born,” said Bob simply. “Almost fifteen years ago.”

The sisters must have expected this; indeed, hope that their sister lived had probably deserted them years ago; and yet the confirmation was naturally something of a shock. They clung to each other for a moment, and then Miss Hope, rather to Bob’s embarrassment, walked over to him and solemnly kissed him.

“My dear, dear nephew!” she murmured.

Then Miss Charity, more timidly, kissed him too, and presently they were all sitting down quietly on the porch, checking up the long years.

When Bob’s tin box was finally opened, and the marriage certificate of his parents, the picture of his mother in her wedding gown, and a yellowed letter or two examined and cried over softly by the aunts, Miss Hope began to piece together the story of their lives since Bob’s mother had left them. Bob and Betty had found Faith’s photograph in the family album, but Miss Hope brought out the old Bible and showed them where her mother had made the entry of the marriage of his mother and father.

“They went away for a week for their wedding trip, and then came back to get a few things for housekeeping,” said the old lady, patting Betty’s hand where it lay in her lap. Bob was still looking over the Bible. “Then they said they were going to Chicago, and they drove away one bright morning, eighteen years ago. And not one word did we ever hear from Faith, or from David, not one word. It killed father and mother, the anxiety and the suspense. They died within a week of each other and less than a year after Faith went. Charity and I always wanted to go to Chicago and hunt for ’em, but there was the expense. We had only this farm, and the interest took every cent we could rake together. How on earth we’ll pay it this year is more than I can see.”

“What do you think was the reason they didn’t write?” urged Miss Charity, in her gentle old voice. “There were almost three years ’fore you came along. Why couldn’t they write? I know David was good to Faith – he worshiped her. So that couldn’t have been the reason. Bob, is your father dead, too?”

“I’ll tell you, though perhaps I shouldn’t,” said Bob slowly. “If I give you pain, remember it is better to hear it from me than from a stranger, as you otherwise might. Aunt Hope – and Aunt Charity – I was born in the Gladden county poorhouse, in the East.”

There was a gasp from Miss Hope, but Bob hurried on, pretending not to hear.

“My father, they think, was killed in a railroad wreck,” he said. “At least there was a bad wreck several miles from where they found my mother nearly crazed and with no baggage beyond this little tin box and the clothes she wore. Grief and exposure had driven her almost out of her mind, and in her ravings, they tell me, she talked continuously about ‘the brakes’ and ‘that glaring headlight.’ And then, toward the end, she spoke of her husband and said she couldn’t wake him up to speak to her. There is small doubt in my mind but that he died in the wreck. Mother died the night I was born, and until I was ten I lived in the poorhouse. Then I was hired out to a farmer, and the third year on his place I met Betty, who came to spend the summer there. An old bookman, investigating a pile of old books and records at the poorhouse, found that Saunders was my mother’s maiden name and he traced my relatives for me.”

Bob briefly sketched his trip to Washington and his experiences there, and during the recital the aunts learned a great deal about Betty, too. Their first shock at hearing that their sister had died in the poorhouse gradually lessened, but they were still puzzled to account for the three years’ silence that had preceded his birth.

“I’ll tell you how I think it was,” said Bob. “This is only conjecture, mind. I think my father wasn’t successful in a business way, and he must have wanted to give my mother comforts and luxuries and a pleasant home. He probably kept thinking that in a few weeks things would be better, and insensibly he persuaded her to put off writing till she could ask you to come to see her. If she had lived after I was born, I am sure she would have written, whether my father prospered or not. But I imagine they were both proud.”

“Faith was,” assented Miss Hope. “Though dear knows, she needn’t have hesitated to have written home for a little help. Father would have been glad to send her money, for he admired David and liked him. He was a fine looking young man, Bob, tall and slender and with such magnificent dark eyes. And Faith was a beautiful girl.”

All the rest of that day the aunts kept recalling stories of Bob’s mother, and in the attic, just as Betty had known there would be, they opened a trunk that was full of little keepsakes she had treasured as a girl.

Bob handled the things in the little square trunk very tenderly and reverently and tried to picture the young girl who had packed them away so carefully the week before her wedding.

“They’re yours, Bob,” said Miss Hope. “Faith was going to send for that trunk as soon as she was settled. Of course she never did. The farm will be yours, too, some day; in fact, a third of it’s yours now, or will be when you come of age. Father left it that way in his will – to us three daughters share and share alike, and you’ll have Faith’s share. Poor Father! He was sure that we’d hear from Faith, and he thought he’d left us all quite well off. But we had to put a mortgage on the farm about ten years ago, and every year it’s harder and harder to get along. Charity and I are too old – that’s the truth. And some stock Father left us we traded off for some paying eight per cent., and that company failed.”

“You see,” explained Miss Charity in her gentle way, “we don’t know anything about business. That man wasn’t honest who sold us the stock, but Hope and I thought he couldn’t cheat us – he was a friend of Father’s.”

“Well, don’t let any one swindle you again,” said Bob, a trifle excitedly. “You don’t have to worry about interest and taxes, any more, Aunts. You have a fortune right here in your own dooryard; or if not exactly out by the pump, then very near it!”

The sisters looked bewildered.

“Yes, yes,” insisted Betty, as they gazed at her to see if Bob were in earnest. “The farm is worth thousands of dollars.”

“Oil!” exploded Bob. “You can lease or sell outright, and there isn’t the slightest doubt that there’s oil sand on the place. Betty’s uncle will know. Uncle Dick is an expert oil man.”

Miss Hope shook her head.

“My dear nephew,” she urged protestingly, “surely you must be mistaken. Sister and I have seen no evidences of oil. No one has ever mentioned the subject or the possibilities to us. There are no oil wells very near here. Don’t you speak unadvisedly?”

“I should say not!” Bob was positive if not as precise as his aunt. “There’s oil here, or all the wells in the fields are dry. The farm is a gold mine.”

Betty rose hurriedly and pointed toward the window in alarm. They had been sitting in the parlor, and she faced the bar of late afternoon sunlight that lay on the floor.

“I saw the shadow of some one,” she whispered in alarm. “It crossed that patch of sunlight. Bob, I am afraid!”

CHAPTER XX
BETTY IS STOPPED

“Doctor Morrison, maybe,” said Bob carelessly. “Gee, Betty, you certainly are nervous! I’ll run around the house and see if there’s any one about.”

He dashed out, and though he hunted thoroughly, reported that he could find no one.

“It wasn’t the doctor, that’s sure,” he said. “And the grocer’s boy would have gone to the back of the house. Are you sure you saw anything, Betty?”

“I saw a man’s shadow,” averred Betty positively. “I was sitting facing the window, you know, and watching the million little motes dancing in the shaft of light, when a shadow, full length, fell on the floor. It was for only a second, as though some one had stepped across the porch. Then I told you. Bob, I know I shan’t sleep a wink to-night.”

“Nonsense,” said Bob stoutly. “Who could it have been? Goodness knows, there’s nothing worth stealing in the house.”

“Those sharpers,” whispered Betty. “They might have come back and be hanging around hoping they can make your aunts sell the farm to them.”

“I’d like to see them try it,” bristled Bob. “Isn’t it funny, Betty, we can’t make the aunts believe there is oil here? I think Aunt Charity might, but Aunt Hope is so positive she rides right over her. Well, I hope that Uncle Dick comes back from the fields mighty quick and persuades them that they have a fortune ready for the spending.”

Despite Bob’s assurances that he could find no one, Betty was uneasy, and she passed a restless night. The next day and the next passed without incident, save for a visit from Doctor Morrison in the late afternoon. He did not come every day now, and this call, he announced, was more in the nature of a social call. He had been told of Bob’s relationship to the old ladies and was interested and pleased, for he had known them for as long as he had lived in that section. He carried the good news to Grandma Watterby, too, and that kind soul, as an expression of her pleasure, insisted on sending the aunts two of her best braided rugs.

“I have a note for you from your uncle, Betty,” said the doctor, after he had delivered the rugs.

People often intrusted him with messages and letters and packages, for his work took him everywhere. He had been to the oil fields and seen Mr. Gordon and had been able to give him a full account of Betty’s and Bob’s activities. In a postscript Mr. Gordon had added his congratulations and good wishes for “my nephew Bob.” The body of the letter, addressed to Betty, praised her for her service to the aunts and said that the writer hoped to get back to the Watterbys within three or four days.

“I’ll need a little rest by then,” he went on to say, “for I’ve been in the machine night and day for longer than I care to think about. We’re clearing away the debris of the fire, and drilling two new wells.”

The doctor was persuaded to stay to supper, which was a meal to be remembered, for Miss Hope was a famous cook and she spared neither eggs nor butter, a liberality which the close-fisted Joseph Peabody would have blamed for her poverty.

There was no mistaking the strained financial circumstances of the two old women. Every day that Bob spent with them disclosed some new makeshift to avoid the expenditure of money, and both house and barns were sadly in need of repairs. Bob himself was able to do many little odd jobs, a nail driven here, a bit of plastering there, that tended to make the premises more habitable, and he worked incessantly and gladly, determined that his aunts should never do another stroke of work outside the house.

They were normal in health again and Betty had suggested that she go back to the Watterbys. But they looked so stricken at the mention of such a plan, and seemed so genuinely anxious to have her stay, that she promised not to leave till her uncle came for her. Bob, too, was relieved by her decision, for his promise to Mr. Gordon still held good, and yet he felt that his place was with his aunts.

The shades all over the house were up now, and the four bedrooms on the second floor in use once more. They were sparsely furnished, like those downstairs, but everything was neat and clean. Miss Charity confided to Betty that she and her sister had been forced to sell their best furniture, some old-fashioned mahogany pieces included, to meet a note they had given to a neighbor. The two poor sisters seemed to have been the prey of unscrupulous sharpers since the death of their parents, and Betty fervently hoped that Bob would be able to stave off the pseudo real-estate men till her uncle could advise them.

A few days after the doctor’s call Betty decided that what she needed was a good gallop on Clover. She had had little time for riding since she had been nurse and housekeeper, and the little horse was becoming restive from too much confinement.

“A ride will do you good,” declared Miss Hope, in her eager, positive fashion. “I suppose you’ll stop in at Grandma Watterby’s? Tell her Charity and I thank her very much for the rugs and for the beef tea she sent us.”

The road from the Saunders farm was the main highway to Flame City, and Bob, who in his capacity of guardian felt his responsibility keenly, saw no harm in Betty’s riding it alone. It was morning, and she would have lunch with the Watterbys and come back in the early afternoon. Everything looked all right, and he bade her a cheerful good-bye.

“Isn’t it great, Clover, to be out for fun?” Betty asked, as the horse snuffed the fresh air in great delight. “I guess you thought you were going to have to stay in the stable, or be turned out to grass like an old lady, for the rest of your life, didn’t you?”

Clover snorted, and settled down into her favorite canter. Betty enjoyed the sense of motion and the rush of the wind, and horse and girl had a glorious hour before they drew rein at the Watterby gate.

“Well, bless her heart, did she come to see us at last!” cried Grandma Watterby, hurrying down to greet her. “Emma!” she called. “Emma! Just see who’s come to stay with us.”

The old woman was greatly disappointed when Betty explained that she must go back after lunch, dinner, as the noon meal was made at the Watterby table, but the girl was not to be persuaded to stay over night. She had promised Bob.

Every one, from Grandma Watterby to the Prices, had an innocent curiosity, wholly friendly, to hear about Bob and his aunts, and Betty was glad to gratify it. She told the whole story, only omitting the portion that dealt with the death of Bob’s mother in the poorhouse, rightly reasoning that the Misses Saunders would want to keep this fact from old neighbors and friends. The household rejoiced with Bob that he had found his kindred, and Grandma Watterby expressed the sentiments of all when she said that “Bob will take care of them two old women and be a prop to ’em for their remaining years.”

Ki, the Indian, had the fox skin cured, and proudly showed it to Betty. She was delighted with the silky pelt and ran upstairs to put it in her trunk while Ki saddled Clover for the return trip. She knew that a good furrier would make her a stunning neck-piece for the winter from the fur.

It was slightly after half past one when Betty started for the Saunders farm, and as the day was warm and the patches of shade few and far between, she let Clover take her own time. In a lonely stretch of road, out of sight of any house or building, two men stepped quietly from some bushes at the side of the road, and laid hands on Clover’s bridle. Betty recognized them as the two men dressed in gray whom Bob had followed on the train, and who had interviewed him while the aunts were ill.

“Don’t scream!” warned the man called Blosser. “We don’t go to hurt you, and you’ll be all right if you don’t make trouble. All we want you to do is to answer a few questions.”

Betty was trembling, more through nervousness than fright, though she was afraid, too. But she managed to stammer that if she could answer their questions, she would.

“That fresh kid we saw with you the other day, back at the Saunders farm,” said Blosser, jerking his thumb in the general direction of the three hills. “Is he going to be there long?”

Betty did not know whether anything she might say would injure Bob or not, and she wisely concluded that the best plan would be to answer as truthfully as possible.

“I suppose he will live there,” she said quietly. “He is their nephew, you know.”

Fluss looked disgustedly at his companion.

“Can you beat that?” he demanded in an undertone. “The kid has to turn up just when he isn’t wanted. The old ladies never had a nephew to my knowledge, and now they allow themselves to be imposed on by – ”

A look from Blosser restrained him.

“Well,” Fluss addressed himself to Betty, “do you know anything about how the farm was left? Where’s the kid’s mother? Disinherited? Was the place left to these old maids? It was, wasn’t it?”

“What he means,” interrupted Blosser, “is, do you know whether this boy would come in for any of the money if some one bought the farm? We’ve a client who would like to buy and farm it, as I was saying the other day.”

“Bob is entitled to one-third,” said Betty coolly, having in a measure recovered her composure.

“Oh, he is, is he?” snarled the older man. “I thought he had a good deal to say about the place. Did the old maids get well? Are they up and about?”

“Miss Hope and Miss Charity are much better,” answered Betty, flushing indignantly. “And now will you let me go?”

“Not yet,” grinned Fluss. “We haven’t got this relation business all straightened out. What I want you to tell me – ”

But Betty had seen the opportunity for which she had been waiting. Fluss had removed his hand from the bridle for an instant, and Betty pulled back on the reins. Ki had taught Clover to rear at this signal and strike out with her forefeet. She obeyed beautifully, and involuntarily the two men fell back. Betty urged Clover ahead and they dashed down the road.

Betty forced her mount to gallop all the way home and startled Bob by dashing into the yard like a whirlwind. The horse was flecked with foam and Betty was white-faced and wild-eyed.

“Oh, Bob!” she gasped hysterically, tumbling from the saddle, “those sharpers are still here! They stopped me down the road!”

CHAPTER XXI
WHERE IS BOB?

Bob’s chief feeling, after hearing the story, was one of intense indignation.

“Pretty cheap, I call it,” he growled, “to stop a girl and frighten her. The miserable cowards! Just let me get a crack at them once!”

“Bob Henderson, you stay right on this farm,” cried Betty, her alarm returning. “They weren’t trying to frighten me – at least, that wasn’t their main purpose. They wanted to find out about you. They’ll kidnap you, or do something dreadful to you. I wish with all my heart that Uncle Dick would come.”

“Well, look here, Betty,” argued Bob, impressed in spite of himself by her reasoning, “I’m pretty husky and I might have something to say if they tried to do away with me. Besides, what would be their object?”

Betty admitted that she did not know, unless, she added dismally, they planned to set the house on fire some night and burn up the whole family.

Bob laughed, and refused to consider this seriously. But for the next few days Betty dogged his footsteps like the faithful friend she was, and though the boy found this trying at times he could not find it in his heart to protest.

Miss Hope and Miss Charity were very happy these days. For a while they forgot that the interest was due the next month, that no amount of patient figuring could show them how the year’s taxes were to be met, and that the butter and egg money was their sole source of income. Instead, they gave themselves up to the enjoyment of having young folk in the quiet house and to the contemplation of Bob as their nephew. Faith had died, but she had left them a legacy – her son, who would be a prop to them in their old age.

Miss Hope and Miss Charity were talking things over one morning when Betty and Bob were out whitewashing the neglected hen house. Though the sisters protested, they insisted on doing some of the most pressing of the heavy tasks long neglected.

“I really do not see,” said Miss Hope, “how we are to feed and clothe the child until he is old enough to earn his living. Of course Faith’s son must have a good education. Betty tells me he is very anxious to go to school this winter. He is determined to get a job, but of course he is much too young to be self-supporting. If only we hadn’t traded that stock!”

“Maybe what he says about the farm being worth a large sum of money is true,” said Miss Charity timidly. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there should be oil here, Sister?”

Miss Hope was a lady, and ladies do not snort, but she came perilously near to it.

“Humph!” she retorted, crushing her twin with a look. “I’m surprised at you, Charity! A woman of your age should have more strength of character than to believe in every fairy tale. Of course Bob and Betty think there is oil on the farm – they believe in rainbows and all the other pretty fancies that you and I have outgrown. Besides, I never did take much stock in this oil talk. I don’t think the Lord would put a fortune into any one’s hands so easily. It’s a lazy man’s idea of earning a living.”

Miss Charity subsided without another reference to oil. Truth to tell, she did not believe in her heart of hearts that there was oil sand on the old farm, and she and her sister had been out of touch with the outside world so long that to a great extent they were ignorant of the proportions of the oil boom that had struck Flame City.

Bob had the stables in good order soon after his arrival, and a day or so before Mr. Gordon was expected he took it into his head to tinker up the cow stanchions. The two rather scrubby cows were turned out into the near-by pasture, and Bob set valiantly to work.

Betty was helping the aunts in the kitchen that afternoon, and the three were surprised when Bob thrust a worried face in at the door and announced that the black and white cow had disappeared.

“I’m sure I pegged her down tightly,” he explained. “That pasture fence is no good at all, and I never trusted to it. I pegged Blossom down with a good long rope, and Daisy, too; and Daisy is gone while Blossom is still eating her head off.”

“I’ll come and help you hunt,” offered Betty. “The last pan of cookies is in the oven, isn’t it, Aunt Hope? Wait till I wash my hands, Bob.”

Betty now called Bob’s aunts as he did, at their own request, and anyway, said Miss Hope, if Betty’s uncle could be Bob’s, too, why shouldn’t she have two aunts as well as he?

“Where do you think she went?” questioned Betty, hurrying off with Bob. “Is the fence broken in any place?”

“One place it looks as though she might have stepped over,” said Bob doubtfully. “The whole thing is so old and tottering that a good heavy cow could blow it down by breathing on it! There, see that corner? Daisy might have ambled through there.”

“Then you go that way, and I’ll work around the other end of the farm,” suggested Betty. “In that way, we’ll cover every inch. A cow is such a silly creature that you’re sure to find her where you’d least expect to. The first one to come back will put one bar down so we’ll know and go on up to the house.”

Betty went off in one direction and Bob in another, and for a moment she heard his merry whistling. Then all was silent.

Betty, for a little while, enjoyed her search. She had had no time to explore the Saunders farm, and though much of it was of a deadly sameness, the three hills, whose shadows rested always on the fields, were beautiful to see, and the air was wonderfully bracing. Shy jack rabbits dodged back and forth between the bushes as Betty walked, and once, when she investigated a thicket that looked as though it might shelter the truant Daisy, the girl disturbed a guinea hen that flew out with a wild flapping of wings.

“I don’t see where that cow can have gone,” murmured Betty uneasily. “Bob is never careless, and I’m sure he must have pegged her down carefully. Losing one of the cows is serious, for the aunts count every pint of milk; they have to, poor dears. I wish to goodness they would admit that there might be oil on the farm. I’m sure it irritates Bob to be told so flatly that he is dreaming day-dreams every time he happens to say a word about an oil well.”

Betty searched painstakingly, even going out into the road and hunting a short stretch, lest the cow should have strayed out on the highway. The fields through which she tramped were woefully neglected, and more than once she barely saved herself from a turned ankle, for the land was uneven and dead leaves and weeds filled many a hole. Evidently there had been no systematic cultivation of the farm for a number of years.

The sun was low when Betty finally came out in the pasture lot. She glanced toward the bars, saw one down, and sighed with relief. Bob, then, had found the cow, or at least he was at home. She knew that the chances were he had brought Daisy with him, for Bob had the tenacity of a bull-dog and would not easily abandon his hunt.

“Did Bob find her?” demanded Betty, bursting into the kitchen where Miss Hope and Miss Charity were setting the table for supper.

The aunts looked up, smiled at the flushed, eager face, and Miss Charity answered placidly.

“Bob hasn’t come back, dearie,” she said. “You know how boys are – he’ll probably look under every stone for that miserable Daisy. She’s a good cow, but to think she would run off!”

“Oh, he’s back, I know he is,” insisted Betty confidently. “I’ll run out to the barn. I guess he is going to do the chores before he comes in.”

She thought it odd that Bob had not told his aunts of his return, but she was so sure that he was in the barn that she shouted his name as she entered the door. Clover whinnied, but no voice answered her. Blossom was in her stanchion. Bob had placed her there before setting out to hunt, and everything was just as he had left it, even to his hammer lying on the barn floor.

Betty went into the pig house, the chicken house and yard, and every outbuilding. No Bob was in sight.

“But he put the bar down – that was our signal,” she said to herself, over and over.

“Don’t fret, dearie. Sit down and eat your supper,” counseled Miss Hope placidly, when she had to report that she could not find him. “He may be real late. I’ll keep a plate hot for him.”

The supper dishes were washed and dried, the table cleared, and a generous portion of biscuits and honey set aside for Bob. Miss Hope put on an old coat and went out with Betty to feed the stock, for it was growing dark and she did not want the boy to have it all to do when he came in tired.

“I’ll do the milking,” said Betty hurriedly. “I’m not much of a milker, but I guess I can manage. Bob hates to milk when it is dark.”

In the girl’s heart a definite fear was growing. Something had happened to Bob! Milking, the thought of the sharpers came to her. Oddly enough they had not been in her mind for several days. The bar! Had they anything to do with the one bar being down?

Neither she nor Bob had ever said a word to his aunts on the subject of the two men in gray, arguing that there was no use in making the old ladies nervous. Now that the full responsibility had devolved upon Betty, she was firmly resolved to say no word concerning the men who had stopped her in the road and asked her questions about Bob.

She finished milking Blossom, and fastened the barn door behind her. Glancing toward the house, she saw Miss Hope come flying toward her, wringing her hands.

“Oh, Betty!” she wailed, “something has happened to Bob! I heard a cow low, and I went out front, and there Daisy stood on the lawn. I’m afraid Bob is lying somewhere with a broken leg!”