Part 30

Acknowledging the presence of the cows only by a friendly "Shoo, there!" he established himself beside his waiting guest upon the settle, his long legs crossed, by way of a table.

"Can you draw?" he asked.

"No; I don't know my letters," she replied, with unconscious irrelevance.

"How would you like to have me learn you?"

"I'd like it."

"Well; I'll learn you O first. That's the first letter I learned;" and he made a phenomenally large and round O in the upper left-hand corner of the sheet. The paper, finding insufficient resting-place upon the bony knee, took occasion to flap idly in the gentle southerly breeze; upon which the child took hold of it with a quaint air of helpfulness which was singularly womanly.

"Now I've learned O," she remarked, "I'd like to learn another."

"Well, there's an I; see, there?"

"The other one looks more like an eye," she observed critically.

"So it does, so it does!" Amberley admitted, much impressed by the discovery. "But then it's an O all the same, and this one is an I."

"Yes; well, I've learned that. Now, make another."

Thus unheralded and unawares come the great moments of life. When little Eliza mounted that wooden settle, her mind was innocent of artificial accomplishments; before she again stood on her round fat legs, she had begun the ascent of that path which leads away up to the heights of human knowledge. It is a long ascent and few accomplish it, but the first essential steps had been taken: little Eliza had become a Scholar!

Not only had she learned to recognize an O and an I, an S, an M, and an N, but she had laboriously made each one of them with her own hand. And, furthermore, she had seen them combined in a wonderful group which, if her teacher was to be credited, stood for Simon! It was better than drawing, infinitely better! Anybody could make a round thing with four crooked legs and a thin tail, and call it a calf--but only a scholar could put five letters together and make them stand for a man and a calf beside; a man with a kind voice and a big beard, and a calf that would lick a person's hand! Oh, but life had grown a wonderful thing to little Eliza, when she trotted down the hillside, clinging to the fingers of her new friend, and holding the sturdy little daisy in the other sturdy little hand.

And life had grown even more wonderful to Simon Amberley. He had not passed such a pleasant day since he could remember, and he had certainly never in his life had so much to look forward to; for had not Eliza promised to come again the next day, and to bring Bella Jones with her?

He went into the cabin after his chores were done, and pulled out an old cowhide trunk with the hair pretty well worn off it, and there, inside, he found the battered family Bible which had been sent out, at his request, when his mother died; and a copy of Shakespeare's Plays in one volume which he had got as a prize at school. There, too, were Miss Edgeworth's Rosamond, and Nathaniel P. Willis' Poems, and one volume of Dr. Kane's Explorations at the North Pole. "Quite a library," he said to himself, with conscious pride. He had not read in a book for twenty years; not since the time, back in Ohio, when he had bought Scott's complete Works at auction, and had to sell them again to pay his way to Missouri, whither he had gone in obedience to that mysterious prompting of the setting sun.

By and by he strolled up the hill to get the sunset light. It was very splendid on the glittering snow of the heights over yonder. After all, he reflected, the mountains knew pretty well what they were about. If they had not let the enemy through, those little girls would not have got in, and he should not have felt as if he were beginning life all over again.

Before a month had passed, Simon found himself established in the new character of Lame Gulch Professor. So, at least, Enoch called him, and it was not displeasing to the subject of Enoch's pleasantry to know that others had adopted the suggestion and bestowed upon him that honorable title. His little class numbered fifteen or twenty children of assorted ages and dispositions, who came, lured by rumors of pleasant things, and remained to imbibe learning with more or less avidity. There was an absence of restraint about this novel school which appealed strongly to the childish heart. The scholars were free to come and go as they pleased, a privilege which, once established, they were not inclined to take undue advantage of. They sat on the most amusing seats, improvised from fallen tree trunks, or small wood-piles, or cocks of hay. They called their teacher what they pleased: sometimes Simon, sometimes Teacher, sometimes Mister! Bella Jones always said "Perfessor." They studied from whatever book they liked best, each child bringing the "Reader" or "Speller" he could most easily lay hands on. But they learned more from Simon's books than from their own. That book of William Shakespeare's stood easily first in their estimation, for when the "perfessor" read from it, they somehow understood the story, in spite of the hard words which, taken by themselves, seemed to mean nothing at all.

If a ground squirrel scuttled across the clearing, no one was so quick to observe him as the teacher himself, and before Fritz Meyer could seize a stone to fire at the tame little chap, the young sportsman had become so interested in something Simon was saying about its ways and nature, that he forgot what he wanted of the stone.

"How do you spell squirrel?" asked a sharp-featured boy one day, as he watched the twinkling eyes of one of the tiny creatures.

Simon drew his brows together over his mild eyes, with a mighty effort at thinking.

"How do you spell squirrel?" he repeated. "How do you spell it? Well; you begin with an sk, of course--and then there's a w.--I don't know, Tim, but that's too hard a word to spell until you're growed up. But I'll learn you to spell woodchuck! We used to go after woodchucks when I was a youngster."

What boy could insist upon the spelling of a paltry little ground squirrel, with beady eyes and nervous, inconsequent motions, when there was talk of a woodchuck, lowering in his black hole, ready to fix his sharp teeth in the nose of the first intruding terrier? If they learned in after years that the spelling-books knew nought of a k or a w in squirrel,--and some of them never did!--we may be very sure that it was not Simon Amberley that fell in their estimation!

Sometimes Simon Jr. came to school, and there was a sudden, exhilarating scramble in pursuit of his tail; now and then a hard-worked mother would bring her baby and sit as guest of honor in Simon's solitary "cane-bottom," where she would inadvertently learn items of interest with regard to "yon Cassius," or "bluff Harry," or a certain young lady who was described as being "little" but "fierce,"--a good deal like Molly Tinker whose "man" kept the "Golden Glory Saloon." On one occasion a rattlesnake lifted its head drowzily from behind a rock near by, and was despatched offhand by Simon. It was this exploit which filled the measure of Simon's fame.

"Any fool kin learn readin' an' writin'," said Patsy Linders, the eldest of the band, who, by the way, had yet to prove himself fool enough to do so. "But I'll be durned if I ever seen a stun fired as neat as that!"

"Simon's smarter 'n anybody," little Eliza declared in reply. "He's smarter 'n you nor me, 'n he's smarter 'n David an' Goliath, 'n he's my Simon!"

No one was disposed to question Eliza's prior claim to Simon. She always sat beside him on the original settle against the lean-to. She would not abdicate the seat even when the ground grew hot and pleasant and she saw half her mates lying on the short sparse grass with their heels in the air, conning their books, or falling asleep over them, as the case might be. She felt it her prerogative to sit right there, with her chubby legs sticking out in front of her; there, where she could pull at Simon's sleeve and interrupt his discourse as often as she pleased.

And so it came about, that by the time spring had passed into summer, sumptuous wildflowers succeeding the first little scrubby daisy, a blessed idyl of quaint child life, dear to Simon's heart, had grown out of the chance meeting on the hillside. It was as if Simon's clearing were a charmed circle into which no evil could enter, to which no echo of the greed and brutality of the mining-camp could make its way. When his permission was respectfully asked to sink a few prospect holes on his land, Simon unhesitatingly rejected the proposal, with all its glittering possibilities. As soon would the President and Fellows of Harvard College permit the sinking of prospect holes in the sacred "yard" itself, as the Lame Gulch Professor allow his "school" to be molested.

But, alas! it is written in the books that no earthly circle shall be forever charmed, no human enterprise exempt from evil. And it was little Eliza herself, Simon's champion and dictator, faithful, plucky little Eliza, by whom the evil entered in.