On the Crooked Esses
GARRY came in bare headed from the mailbox, two bulky envelopes in her hand.
“Seed catalogues already. Didn’t I tell you it smelled like spring today?” She paused by the drawing board where Kay sat sharpening pencils with a critical air. “You going to be busy working? I thought I’d go for a walk.”
“Fine.”
With Garry a walk meant a walk. Every once in so often she felt the need to get out alone in the open air and work off her accumulated energy in a long cross-country tramp.
The snow had almost gone—for the time being anyway. Only February, but there was a new blueness in the air, the ground felt elastic underfoot, and runnels of water trickled again in the roadside ditches. Willow shoots were already showing a trace of gold. In the pasture the Rowe cows, turned out for exercise, stood sniffing the breeze, their coats rough and dingy after long weeks in the stable.
Garry set out briskly over the hill. She had planned to go as far as Flat Top, a walk she had taken once with Mary in the early fall. It was a good four and a half miles, past the sugar-maple grove and the old Sullivan house at the crossroads, then up a narrow back road through woods with only a few scattered houses here and there on the way. Snow still lay in patches in the hollows; where the ground had begun to thaw there were deep ruts of mud that made slow going, and it was almost sunset before she passed the last belt of trees and came out on the open wind-swept plateau that gave the hill its name. Time only for a few minutes rest and a hurried look at the view before her before she must turn back.
Three roads met on the top of the hill; it seemed to Garry that it was the right-hand fork she and Mary had taken last fall when they turned to come home. The leaves were still on the trees, then, and she remembered the blaze of red and yellow that had lined the path. Now everything looked different with ground and bushes bare; it was hard to recognize landmarks again, but it did seem, after she had been walking some ten minutes, that the road was a good deal steeper and narrower than she remembered. There were no houses on it, and she was sure they had passed a white-painted house not so very far down. Anyway if it wasn’t the same road it led more or less in the right direction; it would bring her out somewhere at the foot of the mountain, and she pushed on, quickening her pace a little, for dusk was coming on and with sunset the air had turned suddenly sharp and cold.
There was no mistake about it now; she had never been on this road before. It took a sudden zigzag twist, and as she peered down she could see the hillside drop away in a series of steep ledges.
“Well, here goes,” Garry thought. “Good thing I’m on foot and not in a car; no car could ever take that turn.”
As she stood, looking about, there was a stir and a crash in the bushes, something leaped out to dash past her. A deer, and a big one too; she caught the white bobbing flash of its tail as it sped down and round the bend. A moment later she heard the clatter of shod hoofs on the road below, and the sound of a girl’s voice.
“Scared the horse and no wonder,” sprang to her mind as she ran hurriedly down, for there was no mistaking that sudden startled scraping of iron on stones. “What a place to bring a horse up anyway!”
Rounding the next corner she came upon them; a pretty bay with a white blaze on his forehead, pulling at the end of the reins as his rider, her feet braced in the middle of the road, tried desperately to hold him back. The girl turned a frightened face as Garry ran down—and with reason: if the horse went over the edge of the road he would plunge straight down the ledges to the foot of the mountain.
Garry caught at the reins, and together they pulled him to a standstill. She knew the rider at once; it was the girl she had seen from the window of the old house that day last fall. There was dirt on her scarlet coat and leather breeches, blood oozing from a deep scratch over one eye. She had taken a nasty fall but had kept hold of the reins, and the horse must have dragged her as he plunged.
They looked at one another and drew breath.
“A close call,” said Garry. “I bet that deer scared him out of a year’s growth! He must have run square into you.”
“It looked as big as a church!” There was a little catch in her voice; she reached up to pat the horse’s trembling neck. “I’m lucky you came. I couldn’t have held him alone another second, and if I once stopped pulling he’d have backed over the edge.”
“Good thing you fell off, or you’d both have gone.” Garry glanced at the drop before them. “How did you get on this road in the first place?”
“We were following an old wood track and it came out right above here. It was getting late and I thought this would bring us down the hill all right.”
“It pretty nearly did, at that!”
She admired the girl’s pluck, for it had nearly been a nasty accident and it was only chance that Garry had arrived when she did. Probably this road was never traveled from one year’s end to another. For the first time she felt glad she had missed her own way that afternoon.
“Are you hurt much?”
“Only bruised, I guess. Starlight slipped too, that’s the only reason I managed to keep hold of him. It doesn’t matter about me, but I’m scared he’s strained a muscle somewhere, and he isn’t my own horse, worse luck. I’m just staying with some friends for a few days, and they let me take him out.” She ran a hand anxiously down the satiny sweat-marked leg. “See that? It isn’t much, but it’ll stiffen up with the cold. I guess I’ll have to begin walking him before it does.”
Garry helped to brush her off, wiped the blood that had dried on her forehead, and together they began to lead the horse down hill. He set his feet cautiously, limping a little at each step.
“My name’s Jane Bassett.”
“Mine’s Margaret Ellis, but they call me Garry.”
“I like that. The worst of my name is that you can’t do anything with it; it’s too short. Have you any idea where this road goes to?”
“Only vaguely. I was walking over Flat Top and I got onto it by mistake coming back. I suppose it leads somewhere, but it doesn’t look as if anyone ever used it, and I don’t blame them.”
“It’s for all the world like a letter S, only crookeder.”
Garry stopped short. Suddenly it came to her mind—the Crooked Esses. Neal had spoken once of a place called the Crooked Esses, somewhere the other side of Flat Top. But if this was it, she must be miles out of her way.
“I believe I do know, now,” she said. “Your saying that made me think of it. Neal Rowe was telling us once. It used to be an old wagon road, and it ought to come out somewhere near a place called East Warley. But if it’s the one I’m thinking of it gets a lot worse further on.”
“We’ll take a chance on it anyhow. East Warley is near where I’m staying.” Jane took a fresh grip on the bridle, trying to conceal the fact that she was limping more than a little herself.
“Couldn’t you ride if I give you a hand up?”
“It would put too much weight on him. I don’t mind walking. But I’m awfully glad you came along. I’d hate to be in a fix like this all alone, and not knowing the country. Whereabouts do you live?”
Garry told her.
“My brother has just got a place right near there. We haven’t moved in yet; there’s a lot to be done to the house first, but I expect we’ll be up there this spring. We’ll be neighbors—isn’t that grand?”
“I know.” Garry laughed. “You see, we’re the people he rented the little house to.”
“You … ? Why on earth didn’t he tell me! He just said there was a family there but he never told me a word about them.”
“We never even met him. Mother took the house through an agent. But I did see you once before.” And Garry told her about the time she had been so nearly trapped in the old house. She left out the overheard conversation but made an amusing story of her ignominious escape over the woodshed roof and of Suzanne’s scandalized face below. Jane was eager to hear more about the family and Garry had to give her a brief picture of Kay and Martin and Caroline, of their Christmas and the time they had during the cold spell, ending up with her own adventure at Roadside Nurseries, feeling that since Jane was so inclined to be friendly she might as well know the worst, as Kay would have called it, right from the beginning.
It was growing darker every minute. Garry had hoped to reach the bottom of the hill before the winter dusk shut in entirely, but already the daylight had gone. The road sloped more steeply at every turn. Here and there it was washed out in places and they had to pick their way across fissures and over loose rocks. Worst of all, a thin skim ice was beginning to form after the day’s thaw, making it hard to keep one’s footing.
Presently they came to a halt altogether, and even Garry looked dismayed. It was as though the road in front dropped away entirely, leaving only dark space before them.
“Looks like a bad bit,” she said doubtfully. “You wait here while I go on ahead a little way and see what it’s like.”
She walked on cautiously, feeling her way foot by foot. The road was there all right, but it took a steep corkscrew turn that felt more like a staircase than a road. By daylight it mightn’t have been so bad, but in this blackness one had to trust to luck for the next step.
“If the worst comes to the worst we can sit down and slide,” she thought, prospecting a few paces further before turning back to where Jane stood waiting by the shivering horse.
“It’s pretty steep, but I think we can get him down it.”
They took hold of the bridle, one on each side, but for all their coaxing Starlight now refused to budge. He had seen what lay ahead and he didn’t trust it, and the icy skim underfoot was making him increasingly nervous.
“Tell you what we’ll do.” Garry might not know much about horses but she generally found some inspiration in emergencies. “It’s the slippery ground that worries him. We’ll tie something over his feet so he can get a better grip.”
Right then was the moment when a good old-fashioned petticoat would have come in useful, she decided, glancing down at her shabby corduroy breeches and woolen socks, while Jane feeling in the pockets of her own smart red jacket could only produce a silk handkerchief, so small and wispy that it set them both giggling as she pulled it out.
“Wait a minute.” Garry stripped off windbreaker and sweater and began tugging at the faded hickory shirt she wore underneath.
“You can’t—you’ll catch cold!”
“No I won’t.” She set a foot on one sleeve and gave a yank, tearing the stuff neatly from neck to hem. “We’ll tie it over his front hoofs and see how it works.”
It was a bungling job but they managed somehow. “Patent non-skids!” said Garry as she tied the last knot. “Now, old boy, let’s see how you like it.”
Starlight didn’t like it at all, but after some pawing and fidgeting he found he could at least set hoof to the ground now without slithering, and little by little they coaxed him down the slope. It proved to be the steepest zigzag and the last; at the bottom they struck level ground and the worst of their troubles were over, though not all. The road continued a short distance only to lose itself in a grass-grown track that seemed to lead presently through a swamp, for they could feel rather than see the half-rotted planks that had been laid underfoot across the worst places. Here in the hollow it was blacker than ever; more than once they thought they had lost the narrow track entirely. Jane’s riding boots, never meant for walking, had blistered her heel so that every step produced a raw twinge, and Garry had gone ankle-deep through skim ice into the thick mud. They had to fight their way through undergrowth that closed in on either side and as Garry pushed the stiff bushes apart she exclaimed: “I’ll say no one has been over this road in years! It’s worse than the jungle.”
“Don’t you ever have a moon up here?” Jane wailed.
“Not when you want it you don’t. It’s due to rise tonight about two-thirty. We might see it yet!” She was thinking of Kay, probably worried to death at home.
At last the track widened. They came out on a gravel road and saw lights in the distance—East Warley.
In the little general store, smelling of cheese and bacon and hot stove, Jane ran to the telephone while Garry talked to the storekeeper, who looked surprised to see the two scratched and muddy figures that burst in upon him, blinking at the light.
“East Warley. That’s seven miles from home,” she said. “Guess I’ll call Kay up if you’re through.”
“They’re sending a car right over for me,” Jane told her. “We can drive you home first. Heavens, but I’m hungry!” She looked at her wrist watch for the first time. “Do you know that we were two hours and a half coming down that road?”
She found change in her pockets, and they bought crackers and cheese and chocolate, and ate them sitting by the stove while they waited. The house where Jane was staying was not very far off; it seemed only a few minutes before they heard the crunch of tires outside. A groom took charge of Starlight, who had been sheltered in the wagon shed behind the store, and the two girls climbed into the station wagon.
After that long slow walk it felt strange to be spinning so swiftly through the darkness.
“Drop me just at the turn of the road by Roadside Nurseries,” said Garry. “I’ll walk up the hill.”
Jane protested, but Garry was firm. “It’s only a short bit, and if I don’t stretch my legs a little now I’ll be all stiffened up. Thanks a lot, and remember the Crooked Esses!”
“As long as I live.” Jane reached out a hand from the car. “So long. I’ve got to go back tomorrow, worse luck, and I’m joining mother in Bermuda. But first chance I get I’ll be over to see you, and don’t forget it!”
Jane went back to the comfort of a steaming bath and tray dinner on the library sofa; Garry to lounge at ease in the armchair beside Big Bertha, while Martin pulled off her sodden shoes, Kay ran to make hot tea, and Caroline hunted and warmed her slippers.
“Heavens, you’d think I’d been to the North Pole,” she grumbled, secretly pleased with these little attentions, since she was not usually the one to get them.
“We kept some supper in the oven for you,” Caroline said, “but it got all dried up while we were busy worrying.”
This announcement, so typical of the household, set everyone laughing, and Garry exclaimed: “Do you remember the time Penny and I took that long walk and got lost? All the way home we kept our spirits up thinking about supper, and when we got back the kitchen stove was cold and you were all out on the road hunting for us! Never mind; I ate up half the grocery store while we were waiting, so I’m all right this time.”
“Tell me about this girl.” Kay set the teapot down and pulled her chair up to the stove.
“Nice, and no nonsense; you’ll like her. If the rest of the family are anything like she is we’ll be lucky. Charles sounds all right, even if he was snooty about renting the house to us. There is a sister-in-law that’s a pain in the neck—bossy kind, but Jane seems to get along with her all right. Maybe she won’t be up here much; I think they travel a lot, anyway, from what Jane told me.” For the half hour in the grocery store had covered quite a little exchange of confidences. “It’s going to seem strange with other people living up here, after all this time with just the Rowes and ourselves. I don’t know whether I’ll like it or not.”
She was thinking of the long quiet months when the hillside seemed just to belong to them, two friendly families hemmed round in their own little personal world.
“I shall. It’ll be a new place to visit,” returned Caroline, who was naturally social-minded and foresaw possibilities. “I like seeing people and going places, and up here there isn’t anybody but just us’n the Rowes, and all the girls at school live way off and if they did ask me I couldn’t ever go ’cause we haven’t any car.”
“Then you’d better learn to keep your hair brushed and your stockings pulled up,” Kay told her. “If you start practicing now you’ll be all ready by spring.”
Caroline looked ready to glower, but the smile in Kay’s eyes made up for her words, and Garry added quickly:
“Cheer up, Caroline. Here’s two strangers in my teacup this very minute, a great big fat one and a funny little thin one—see? Now shut your eyes and wish three times, and we’ll see which of them comes true!”