Norton, Andre - Novel 32 (10 page)

Trouble at Ten Mile

showed
sparks of red stones. Her dress,
with
all its stiff
ruffles and
drapings
, was dark green,
her small boots black. And she did have gloves
on, while a swinging metal purse, very small,
was clipped to the belt of her dress. Around
her shoulders was a black velvet cape lined in
fur, and a small muff of the same fur had been
fitted over one of her hands.

"There's more in there." Neal pointed into
the box. "Let's see what it
is!" He tried to
reach
over Christie's shoulder.

"Be careful! Don't you dare touch anything
with those dirty hands!" she
commanded.
"Libby,
you hold Lady Maude." She passed
the doll to the Navajo girl and lifted up another layer
of packing. Again the sweet sandalwood smell was strong. What lay beneath were
Lady
Maude's
belongings.

There was a good-sized (for a doll) trunk with
a high, rounded top. It was covered with leather
and had a small gold-painted crown on the lid
with
M
below. With that were two round hat
boxes,
also doll size, two bags made of brightly
colored
flowered material like carpet, a parasol,
and a second, smaller trunk. Christie bounced
she was so excited.

"She has clothes, a lot of clothes!"

"Nothing more?"
Neal was plainly disap
pointed.
"Just
doll clothes.
Let's open some
thing else." He turned away to inspect the rest
of the boxes and bags.

Christie paid no attention to him but rather
spoke to Libby. "If we
washed our hands
maybe
we dare look at the rest."

Libby nodded, as eager as Christie. "Let's
just take all this outside!"

Christie was willing to leave the rest to the
boys. Lady Maude was too wonderful
to just
put aside all
at once. She picked up the box by
its rope handles. It was heavy, but she could
manage. Libby carried Lady Maude
and Perks tagged along.

Hunting up one of the canteens and a roll of
paper toweling, Christie washed her hands and
Perks then took the doll while Libby did the
same.

Sometime later they sat just staring at a
wealth of treasures. Christie had
thought that the doll Mrs. Edwards had shown them had
lovely things, but Lady Maude was
wealthier.
There was even a jewel case,
holding two more
pairs of earrings, a
necklace, three bracelets,
and a
little crown thing to wear in the hair, as
well as two jeweled pins.
There were stockings
folded into a case,
shoes, hats, a corset, dress
ing gown,
nightgown, comb, brush, mirror, a
very
tiny bottle, which must have been meant
for perfume, and hairpins so small Christie was
afraid they would be lost. Another purse held
foreign-looking coins, French maybe, and was
laid
away among dresses and petticoats all em
broidered,
tucked, and ruffled—even a pair of
eyeglasses
mounted on a stick fastened to a
chain.
And there were long gloves and short ones, all made to fit over the doll's kid
hands,
which were so perfectly made
that even the tiny
fingers were
separated by sewing.

"You know, Christie, even in those days,
when things were a lot cheaper,
Lady Maude
must have
cost a lot of money." Libby sur
veyed
all they had unpacked as if she could not
quite
believe what she saw.

"Maybe even hundreds of dollars," Perks
said. "Only—she's fun to
look at, but you
never could play with
her, could you? I'd rather
have Raggedy Ann."

"I don't think she was ever meant to be
played with, not really,"
Christie answered.
"The doll Mrs.
Edwards showed us didn't have
near as much as
this,
and her hair wasn't nice
anymore the way Lady Maude's is. I'll bet
Lady Maude is worth twice as much as that
doll! If she were put in a case, why, everybody
would want to come and see her!" Christie
thought of a big glass case set in the station.
Lady Maude would be better than any old ar
rowheads.

"I bet she was disappointed," she said
slowly.

"Who was disappointed?" Libby wanted to
know.

"Maude Woodbridge, the little girl Lady
Maude was going
to. I wonder what she thought
when
Lady Maude never got there."

"Maybe she never even knew the doll was
coming," Libby suggested.
"That letter was in
the box, so she never got it either."

"But
she would know about it after her father
got
home," Christie said. "I wonder if he told
her all about Lady Maude. If he did she must
have been so sorry she was lost. Why, it's over
a
hundred years ago! Lady Maude has been lost
a
long time."

"Look—" Libby had glanced up at gathering
clouds. "Rain's coming. We'd
better get back
under
cover."

They dared not hurry too fast in repacking
everything for fear they might
lose some of the
tiny
things, so the first big drops fell just as
Christie closed the box lid on Lady Maude. Now that she
had seen it all she felt that she simply could not leave that box in the cave
again. But they pulled it back
with them out of
the
beginning storm.

"We didn't find anything else but a lot of old
clothes and such stuff,"
Neal was plainly disappointed.

"Passengers' luggage."
Toliver
thumped a
small
trunk. "But people like to look at old
clothes—if they're as queer as some of these.
They do belong in a museum, I
guess. And we
have
the shotgun, that belt and holster out of
the rats' nest—"

"And the strongbox,"
Parky
reminded them.
"Maybe
it does have gold dust or something
like that in it."

Neal looked a little more cheerful. Christie
wondered what he had expected to
find. There
could not
be, she was sure, any more such
wonderful surprises as Lady Maude.

"There're some pictures. Look here!" Neal
snapped open a case. Fitted neatly into sections
made to hold them were a number of small boxes.
Some were square, some oval,
one
or
two round. Neal pried one out and opened it
so the girls could see a framed picture of a woman.
She wore clothes like those of Lady
Maude
and rested her elbow on a pillar so she
looked stiff and uncomfortable, as if having
one's picture taken hurt.

"All different
pictures."
Neal snapped the big case shut again. "This was inside with
them." He held out a card
covered with his
own
dusty fingerprints.

" 'Hiram
Peabody, Representative, Smith-
ers
and Son, Supplies for
Photography Stu
dios—'
"

"These must have been samples—the kind
of picture frames people liked
then. That's all—
just
clothes, the strongbox, and the mail sack.
Oh, yes, and the doll. We can't keep them here
in the cave to show off like we
thought—they'd
all
get too dirty."

"We could have cases—glass ones—in the
station
house," suggested Christie. Lady Maude
must
be protected.

"Have to be a lot of cases, maybe. And I don't know
about showing off old clothes,"
Neal answered doubtfully.

"Lady Maude's best! She's wonderful!"
Perks cried. "You didn't
see—but she has all
sorts
of things! Little, little hairpins, and hankies, and a bustle—that makes her
dress stick
out in
the back like the ladies' in the olden
days—Christie showed me. Anybody would
want to see Lady Maude!"

"Yeah?
She really comes with all
that?"
Neal
demanded of Christie, showing much
more interest.

"More things than I ever thought any doll
could—like a Barbie, only the
things are all old,
as
they had then and not now. She's just like
the doll Mrs. Edwards said was a 'museum
piece'—only better, because she
was never
handled
much or had her things lost. So—we
put her in a museum—our very own."

"We'd have to find out about getting a case.
And with everybody so busy, maybe
we'd bet
ter not
bother them about it now," Neal said
doubtfully.

Leave Lady Maude here! Christie could
hardly bear to think of that. But
she had been
safe for
a good many years, so perhaps a few
more days would not matter. Mother would be so surprised.
Christie wanted so much to show
her. She bent over to shove the box farther
back against the wall and the letter she put inside
her shirt prodded against her. Should she put that back in the box? Or would it
be better
to take it to the
station—maybe show it to
Mother?

"I'm hungry."
Parky
tugged at the fastening
on the picnic basket and Shan uttered one of
his sharp cries for immediate
attention.

Libby brushed a clean space on the floor with
one of the leafy branches and
Neal and
Toliver
went to the mouth of the cave to hold their
hands out into the now steadily
falling rain for
a
quick wash, herding
Parky
along to do like
wise. The girls opened the basket
and the bags
the
Wildhorses
had brought.

"That rain's so thick it looks like a wall,"
Neal reported, "and there's a
big stream running along out there."

"Won't last long,"
Toliver
said as the boys
wiped
their hands on the paper towels Christie
handed around.

When they settled down to eat, they faced
out into the rain. As Neal had
said, it was now
a
curtain. Somehow that seemed to make the inside of the cave a big safe room.

"You know"—
Toliver
licked a bit of mus
tard
from one brown finger—"
it's
funny Mr.
Toner hasn't been around yet to
see what's
going on
at the station."

"Who's Mr. Toner?"

"He's boss over at the ranch, wants the
water rights at the spring.
Looking at all that
rain
just going to waste made me think about
him. Pinto's had to be tough with old G.T. the
past few years. There was
something in the law
about
the station—it couldn't be sold for a long
time. Well, Pinto was worried about this year
'cause that law was running out, and he thought
G.T. would get it. Must have made him feel
good to have you folks arrive. Did your father
buy it from the company?"