Read the book: «The Girls of Central High on Track and Field», page 4

CHAPTER IX – THE GYPSIES AGAIN

When the rain stopped, Bobby went around to the other entrance and reported herself to Miss Carrington. That teacher always doubted Bobby’s excuses, and this time she shook her head over the girl’s tardiness.

“You told me you had plenty of time to do your errand within the limit of the recess, Miss Hargrew,” said Gee Gee. “Do better next time, please.”

“She always acts as though she thought I had an India rubber imagination,” muttered Bobby, to her nearest seatmate, “and that I was always stretching it.”

“Miss Hargrew, please refrain from communicating in lesson time!” snapped the ever-watchful teacher.

“Dear me!” murmured Bobby. “She’s got me again. I do have the worst luck.”

And then she wondered what Miss Carrington knew about the strange Gypsy girl, or what Margit knew about Gee Gee.

“I’d like to get better acquainted with that girl,” thought Bobby. “There is a mystery about her – and Gee Gee is in it.”

But she said nothing to any of the other juniors, judging it best to keep her own counsel. Meanwhile she kept a keen lookout for the girl to appear about the school building again. Several days passed, however, and Bobby saw nothing of her.

Meanwhile the girls who were earnest in the work of putting Central High ahead in the inter-school athletic competition worked hard on the field and under Mrs. Case’s eye in the gymnasium.

Bobby was really doing her best on the track. Never had she settled down to such thorough work in any branch of athletics as she had in this effort to make a record for the quarter-mile. Central High needed the points that a champion sprinter could win, just as the school needed the points putting the shot, and the broad jump, would add to its record.

Bobby, the year before, had acted as coxswain of the eight-oared crew; and she had played all season on the big basketball team – the champion nine. But this running was different work.

Now she had no teammates to encourage her, or to keep her up to the mark. It was just what she could do for the school by herself.

“Just by your lonesome, Bobby,” Laura Belding told her. “To win the quarter-mile will mean two whole points in June. Think of that! And you can do it.”

“I don’t know,” returned the other girl, in some despondency. “Gee Gee’ll likely get something on me before the June meet, and then where’ll we be?”

“But you don’t have to do things to make Miss Carrington give you demerits.”

“Bah! I don’t have to do anything at all to get demerits. She’s just expecting me to do something all the time, and she ‘jumps’ me without giving me a chance. Any other girl in the school can cut up much worse than I do and never get a sour look; but I – oh, dear!”

“You see what it is to have a reputation for mischief,” said Laura, half inclined to laugh. “Can’t you cut out the frolic for this one term? Cure yourself of practical joking and ‘joshing’ poor Miss Carrington.”

“Great Cæsar!” ejaculated Bobby. “How could I ever do it?”

Nevertheless, with all her reckless talk, she was really trying her very best to keep out of difficulties in school, and on the other hand to make the best time possible on the cinder track.

Mrs. Case began to try her out now and then, and held the watch on her. Bobby wanted to know how fast she made the quarter; but the instructor put up her watch with a smile and a head-shake.

“That I sha’n’t tell you, Miss Hargrew. Not yet. You do your best; that’s what you are to do. If you fall back, or I see you losing form, you’ll hear about it soon enough.”

One morning before school-time Bobby heard Mrs. Ballister scolding at the back door. The old housekeeper did not often scold the maid, for she was a dear old lady and, as Bobby herself said, “as mild-tempered as a lamb.” But she heard her say:

“Be off with you! We’ve nothing for you. Scalawags like you shouldn’t prosper – filling a girl’s silly head full of more silliness. Go on at once!”

Somehow Bobby had a premonition of what the trouble was about. She ran out upon the side porch and saw two Gypsy women coming around the path from the fear of the house. They were the two who had been at Queen Grace Varey’s camp that day on the ridge when the girls of Central High had had their adventure.

“Here is a little lady,” whined the old woman. “She will buy of us,” lifting up her baskets.

“No, no,” said Bobby, shaking her head vigorously.

The other woman recognized her and touched the arm of her companion warningly.

“Surely the little lady will not be unkind to the poor Romany,” she whined. “She does not forget what Queen Grace told her?”

“I want to forget it,” declared Bobby, with flushed face. “I have nothing for you. Go away – do!”

“Ah-ha, little lady!” chuckled the woman, with a leer. “You are mistress here now – and you can send us away. But remember! Your father will bring home another mistress before mid-summer.”

The two women laughed harshly, and turned away, going slowly out of the yard. Bobby remained upon the porch until she had winked back the tears – and bitter tears they were, indeed – and so went slowly in to breakfast.

“Those horrid ’Gyptians,” Mrs. Ballister was saying. “I caught them out there trying to tell Sally’s fortune. They’d make her believe she was going to fall heir to a fortune, or get a husband, or something, and then we’d lose the best kitchen girl we ever had.”

But Bobby felt too serious to smile at the old lady’s sputtering. Despite what Laura Belding said, there must be something in the fortunes the Gypsy queen told! How did she know so much about her? Bobby asked herself.

She knew that Bobby had no mother and that she was sure to get into trouble with her teachers. And now the prophecy she had made that her father would bring home a new wife before mid-summer rankled in Bobby Hargrew’s mind like a barbed arrow.

For Bobby loved her father very dearly, and had been for years his confidante. It had long been agreed between them that she was going to be his partner in the grocery business, just as though she had been born a boy. And as soon as the little girls were big enough they were to go away to boarding school, Mrs. Ballister should be relieved of the responsibility of the house, and Bobby was going to be the real mistress of the Hargrew home.

And suppose, instead of all these things Father Tom should bring home a new mother to reign over them? The thought was ever in Bobby’s mind these days. Not that she had any reason to fear the coming of a step-mother. The only girl at Central High whom she knew that had a step-mother loved her very dearly and made as much of her as though she had been two real mothers. Sue Blakesley had been without a mother long enough to appreciate even a substitute.

But Bobby and Mr. Hargrew had been such close friends and comrades that the girl was jealous of such a possibility as anybody coming into her father’s life who could take her place in any degree. She worried over the Gypsy’s prophecy continually; she wet her pillow at night with bitter tears because of it, and it sobered and changed her to her schoolmates, as we have seen.

It was a very serious and imminent trouble indeed to the warm-hearted, impulsive girl.

On her way to school that morning she chanced to turn the corner into Whiffle Street just as a dark-browed, shuffling fellow crossed from the other side and trailed along ahead of her toward the schoolhouse. Bobby knew that black face, and the huge gold hoops in his ears, at once. It was the husband of the Gypsy queen.

“Oh, I wonder if the whole encampment is in town hunting for that poor girl, Margit?” thought Bobby. “They are such strange, wicked folk. And look at him – why, that’s Gee Gee!”

The lady ahead on the walk, behind whom the Gypsy was walking so stealthily, was none other than Miss Carrington herself. Instantly Bobby’s thought flashed to the mysterious inquiries of the girl, Margit Salgo, about the teacher at Central High.

Bobby involuntarily quickened her steps. She was afraid of these Gypsies; but she was curious, too. The whole block was deserted, it seemed, save for herself, Gee Gee, and the man.

Suddenly he hastened his long stride and overtook the teacher. Bobby knew that the fellow accosted Miss Carrington. The lady halted, and shrank a little. But she did not scream, or otherwise betray fear.

“No, lady. Ah’m no beggar. Ma nyme’s Jim Varey an’ ah’m honest man, so I be. Ah come out o’ Leeds, in Yorkshire, an’ we be travelin’, me an’ mine. Wait, lady! Ah’ve summat tae show ye.”

He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a card. He held this card so that Miss Carrington could read what was printed, or written, on it. And she did so, as was evident to Bobby, for she started back a little and uttered a murmured exclamation.

“Ah sees ye knaw ye’r awn nyme, lidy,” said Jim Varey, shrewdly. “Yer the lady we’re lookin’ for, mayhap. ’Tis private business – ”

“I can have no business with you, man,” exclaimed Miss Carrington. “Why, you’re a Gypsy!”

“Aye. I’m Gypsy. An’ so was ma fawther an’ mither, an’ their fawthers an’ mithers before ’em. We’m proud of the Romany blood. An’ more’n ’us, lady, has mixed with the Romany – an’ in other climes aside Yorkshire. But all Romany is one, wherever vound. Ye knaw that, lidy.”

“I don’t know what you mean! I don’t know what you are talking about! What do you want of me?” cried Miss Carrington, quite wildly.

The man drew closer. Bobby was really frightened, too. She opened her own mouth to shriek for help. But the Gypsy did not touch the teacher. Instead, he said in a low, but perfectly clear, voice, so that Bobby heard it plainly:

“I would speak to you, lidy, of the child of Belas Salgo.”

Miss Carrington uttered a stifled shriek. Bobby sprang forward, finding her own voice now, and using it to good purpose, too. A door banged, and a gentleman ran out of his house and down to the gate, where the Gypsy had stopped Miss Carrington.

It chanced to be Franklin Sharp, the principal of Central High. Jim Varey saw him coming, glanced swiftly around, evidently considered the time and place unfavorable for further troubling the teacher, and so broke into a run and disappeared.

Mr. Sharp caught Gee Gee before she fell. But she did not utterly lose consciousness. Bobby had caught her hand and clung to it. The girl heard Gee Gee murmur:

“There was no child! There was no child! Oh! Poor Anne! Poor Anne!”

“Let us take her into the house,” said Mr. Sharp, kindly. “That ruffian has scared her, I believe. Could you identify him, do you think, Miss Hargrew?”

“Yes, sir,” declared Bobby, tremblingly.

But Miss Carrington cried: “Oh, no! Oh, no! Don’t go after him – do nothing to him.”

And she continued to cry and moan while they took her into the house and put her in the care of Mrs. Sharp. That forenoon Gee Gee did not appear before her classes at Central High. But she was present at the afternoon session and Bobby thought her quite as stern and hard as ever. Nor did the teacher say a word to the girl about the Gypsy, or mention the occasion in any way.

CHAPTER X – EVE’S ADVENTURE

Eve Sitz had plenty to do out of school hours when she was at home. Nobody could afford to be idle at the Sitz farm. But she found time, too, to put on an old skirt, gym. shoes, and a sweater, and go down behind the barn to practice her broad jump and to throw a baseball at the high board fence behind the sheepfold.

She grew expert indeed in ball throwing, and occasionally when Otto, her brother, caught her at this exercise, he marvelled that his sister could throw the horsehide farther and straighter than he.

“Dot beats it all, mein cracious!” gasped Otto, who was older than Eve by several years, had never been to school in this new country, and was one who would never be able to speak English without a strong accent. “How a girl can t’row a pall like dot. I neffer!”

“You wait till June, Otto,” replied his sister, in German. “If you come to the big field the day of the Centerport High Schools, you will see that girls can do quite well in athletics. You know how we can row, and you saw us play basketball. Wait till you see the Central High girls on track and field!”

“A lot of foolishness,” croaked Otto. “You go to the school to learn to be smart, no?”

“No,” replied Eve, laughing at him. “I am smart in the first place, or I would not go. And don’t I help mother just as much – and milk – and feed the pigs and chickens – and all that? Wait till you see me put the shot. I am going to win a whole point for the school if I am champion shot-putter.”

“Ach! It is beyond me,” declared Otto, walking off to attend to his work.

The family – plain Swiss folk as they were – thought Eve quite mad over these “foolish athletics.” They had no such things in the schools at home – in the old country. Yet Father and Mother Sitz were secretly proud of their big and handsome daughter. She was growing up “American.” That was something to be achieved. They had come of peasant stock, and hoped that their girl, at least, would mix with a more highly educated class of young folk in this new country.

So, if Eve thought that the tasks which usually fell to her nights and mornings, and on Saturdays, were not sufficient to keep her in what she called “condition,” her parents made no objection to her throwing baseballs, or jumping, or taking long walks, or riding on the old gray mare’s back over the North pasture.

And it was upon one of these rides that she fell upon her second adventure that Spring with the Gypsies – or, at least, with one of the tribe.

It occurred on the Saturday morning following Miss Carrington’s meeting with Jim Varey, husband of the Gypsy queen. Of course, Bobby Hargrew had said nothing about this mysterious connection of the martinet teacher with the roving band of “Egyptians”; it was not her secret, and although Bobby might be an innocent gossip, she was no tale-bearer.

Eve finished her morning’s work, “pegged” the baseball at the target she had marked with a brush on the sheep fold fence, managing to scare all the woolly muttons out of at least half of their senses, and then grabbed up a bridle and ran down to the pasture bars and whistled for the mare.

The old horse came cantering across the field. Eve never failed to have a lump of sugar in her pocket, and the old girl nuzzled around for it and would not be content until she had munched it. Meanwhile Eve slipped on the bridle and sprang upon the creature’s back.

Hester Grimes, and Lily Pendleton, and some of the wealthier girls who went to Central High, rode horseback in the parks. They went to a riding school and cantered around a tanbark ring, and then rode, very demurely, two and two, upon old broken-kneed hacks through the bridle-paths. Mrs. Case approved of horseback exercise for girls, either astride or side-saddle, as they pleased; but she certainly would have held her breath in fear had she seen Eve Sitz career down the rocky pasture upon her mount on this keen-aired morning.

It had rained over night and the bushes were still dripping. Every time a sharp hoof of the unshod mare tore up a clod as she cantered, Eve got the scent of the wet earth in her nostrils, and drank it in with long and deep inhalations. She rode the mare with a loose rein and let her take her head.

They dashed down the hill and through the narrow path that crossed a piece of Mr. Sitz’s swamp land. Here the dogwood was budding and a few Judas-trees displayed a purple blush, as though a colored mist hung about them. In a few days the bushes would burst forth in full flower. Eve rode fast along the swamp path. It was narrow, and to have ventured three yards upon either side would have been to sink, horse and all, into the quagmire. This was a waste piece of the farm that her father hoped to drain at some time, but now it was only a covert for birds and frogs.

But suddenly, as the girl rode fast, she thought she heard a cry. She half checked her mount; but the sound was not repeated.

A minute later the gray mare was through the marsh-piece and out upon the field beyond. Eve intended circling around by Peveril Pond and so reach home again by another path; yet the mysterious cry she had heard back there in the swamp-piece kept returning to her mind.

Suppose it had been a real cry – a human cry – a cry for help?

The thought came back to her again and again. She was in sight of the pond, when she could stand it no longer, but pulled the mare about.

“Come, old girl! We’ve got to be sure of this,” cried Eve. “Back you go!”

Her mount cantered back again. They reached the edge of the swamp and Eve pulled the mare down to a walk. Stepping daintily, the steed followed the narrow path through the over-bushed swamp. One could not see a dozen feet on either hand, so tall were the bushes, and so thick – not even at the height Eve rode.

She halted her horse and called aloud:

“Ahoy! Hullo! Who called?”

No answer – for half a minute. The farmer’s daughter shouted again. Then she heard it again – a half-stifled cry – a cry that ended in a choking gasp and which chilled the blood in her veins and made her hold her own breath for a moment.

Was it an actual voice calling for help that had answered her? Or had she imagined the cry?

She held in the anxious horse, and waited. Again the muffled shriek reached her ears. Somebody was caught in the quagmire – in the quicksand. It was off to the left, and not many yards from the path.

CHAPTER XI – BOBBY IS INTERESTED

Indeed, one could not have ventured many feet from the path at this season of the year, when the heavy Spring rains had filled the swamp, without sinking into the mire. Eve knew this very well, and it was with fast-beating heart that she slipped from her horse, tied the bridle-rein to a sapling, and ventured cautiously in the direction of the half-choked cries.

“I’m coming! Where are you?” she called.

The cry for help came for a third time. Eve parted the bushes before her, and then shrank back. She had been about to put her foot upon a bit of shaking moss which, when she disturbed the branches of the bush, sank completely out of sight in the black mire.

Another step might have proved her own undoing!

But on the other side of this dimpling pool of mire a willow tree of the “weeping” variety stood with its roots deep in the swamp. And clinging to a drooping branch of this tree were two sun-browned hands – muscular, but small.

“A woman!” gasped Eve. Then, the next moment, she added: “A girl!”

And a girl it was – a girl no older than herself. The victim was all but shoulder deep in the mire. She was clinging desperately to the branch of the tree. Her face was half hidden by the twigs and leaves, and by her own disarranged hair, which hung in black elf-locks about it.

But even in that moment of surprise and fear, Eve identified her. It was the girl who had been a fugitive from the Gypsy camp.

The identity of the person in peril did not claim Eve’s attention for half a moment, however. It was her necessity, and the fact that she must be rescued immediately that spurred the farm girl to action.

“Hold on! I’ll save you!” she shouted, and even as she spoke she saw the girl slip down a hand’s breadth deeper into the ooze. If she was to save the victim Eve must indeed work rapidly, and to the purpose.

She saw how the girl had come into her evil plight. Beside the tree ran a narrow strip of grassy hummock. It looked sound, but Eve well knew that all such places were treacherous.

The Gypsy girl had trusted to it, venturing off the regular and beaten path. She had slipped, or the edge of the hummock had caved in with her. Only by chance had she caught at the branch of the willow and so stayed her descent into the bottomless morass.

Fleet of foot, Eve sprang back to the bridle-path where the mare was tied. She wanted the only thing which, in this emergency, could be of help to her – and to the girl sinking in the mire.

There was no time to go for help. There was no fence near where she could obtain rails, even. Nor did she have anything with which to cut down saplings to aid the girl.

Quickly her nimble fingers unbound the leather bridle from the tree. Then she unbuckled the reins and removed them entirely, letting the mare go free if she would. But the wise old horse stood and watched her, without offering to run away.

“That’s right! Stand still, old girl!” exclaimed Eve Sitz. “I’ll want you mighty bad in a minute, or two, perhaps.”

She sprang upon the tussock on which the victim of the accident had evidently been before her. But she was cautious. She came to the place where the poor girl clung to the tree branch. Those twigs were slowly slipping through her cramped fingers. In a few seconds she would slip entirely from her hold. Already she was too far gone to speak, and her eyes were closed.

It was no use calling again. Eve bent forward and with a little prayer for help, cast the loop of the strong rein over the victim’s head and shoulders.

As she did so the girl’s hands slipped entirely from the tree branch.

Eve screamed. But she threw herself back, too, as the weight of the sinking girl came upon the bridle-rein. Eve easily held her up. She could sink no farther. But the question that troubled the farmer’s daughter was: Could she draw the unconscious girl out of the mire?

But Eve was the heavier of the two, and far stronger. The Gypsy girl could run and leap like a hare – as she had proven the day the girls of Central High had seen her escaping from the encampment of her Romany companions. But she had not been strong enough to scramble out of the mud when she had once fallen into it.

Now Eve, sure that the bridle-rein would hold, flung herself back and dragged the girl up. She came out upon the narrow tussock slowly, but surely.

Eve wrapped the lines about her wrists and tugged with all her weight and strength; and she was not many seconds in accomplishing the rescue.

The unfortunate girl lay helpless on the edge of the morass. She was a mass of mud, and her eyes were still closed. Eve seized her under the arms and dragged her across the trembling hummock to firmer ground. Once Eve herself stepped over the edge of the solid ground and plunged – knee-deep – into the mire.

But she recovered herself and quickly brought her burden, breathless though she herself was, to the bridle-path. The old gray mare looked upon the muddy figure on the ground with ears pricked forward. But Eve spoke softly to her, and the creature stood still, as though she knew her help was needed.

Eve did not trouble to put on the rein again. When she got her breath she raised the girl, who was still only half conscious, in her arms, and managed to get her on the horse.

“You’ve got to carry double; but you can go just as slow as you want to, old girl!” Eve exclaimed, as she leaped upon the mare herself, sitting behind the other girl, and holding her on.

Then she spoke again to the mare, and the latter picked her way carefully over the narrow path and so to the North pasture. In fifteen minutes Eve had the strange girl at the farmhouse, where her kind-hearted mother helped put the visitor to bed. They were true Samaritans in that house. They reserved all questioning until after the needy had been aided.

Eve went to town that afternoon, for she was due for practice at the athletic field, full of this adventure. The strange girl had not said a word about herself save that she had been traveling through the marsh early that morning and had mistaken the path.

Eve had told her mother her suspicions as to who the girl was, and it was plain that the young Gypsy would be unfit for travel for some days. The Sitzes would try to find out something about her condition and why she was striving to escape from her companions.

“But, it’s plain why she left town so hurriedly,” declared Jess Morse, one of those to whom Eve told her story. “I’ve seen those Gypsy women in town myself this week. I saw the queen – Grace Varey, did you say her name is?”

“That’s the name she gave us last year,” said Eve.

“Well, I saw her only this morning. The Gypsies have come to town to search for that girl. She knows it and was escaping into the country when she got into that swamp. My! It was lucky you rode that way, Eve.”

But it was Bobby Hargrew who showed the most interest in the affairs of the mysterious Gypsy girl. She asked Eve a hundred questions about her and finally admitted that she had reasons for wishing to know all about her that she did not feel free to divulge.

“I tell you honestly, Eve, I wish you’d let me go home with you so that I can see that girl before Monday morning,” said Bobby, bluntly.

“Well, why not?” returned the farm girl, laughing. “You’d be welcome, Clara.”

“I’ll telephone father at the store and run home and pack a bag and meet you at the station,” announced Bobby, greatly excited.

“Why, we’ll be more than pleased,” urged Eve. “I’d like to know what the matter is with that girl, too. If you find out, will you tell me?” and she laughed again.

“If it’s only my secret I’ll tell you in a minute,” promised Bobby. But in her heart she believed that it would prove to be partly Miss Carrington’s secret, and she could not speak ofher affairs, that was sure.