Ruth Fielding Down in Dixie; Great Times in the Land of Cotton

“You’re so funny, Ruthie,” laughed Nettie.

“Lecture by Miss Ruth Fielding, the famous woman’s rights advocate,” groaned Helen.

“I am not sure I advocate it, my dear,” sighed Ruth. “‘I, too, would love and live in Arcady.’”

“Goodness! hear her exude sentiment,” gasped Helen. “Who ever thought to live till that wonder was born?”

“Maybe, after all, Ruth has the right idea,” said Nettie, timidly. “My cousin Mapes says that he finds lots of girls who are ‘good fellows’; but that when he marries he doesn’t want to marry a ‘good fellow,’ but a wife.”

“Horrid thing!” Helen declared. “I don’t like your cousin Mapes, Nettie.”

“I am not sure that a girl might not, after all, fill your cousin’s ‘bill of particulars,’ if she would,” Ruth said, laughing. “‘Friend Wife’ can still be a good comrade, and darn her husband’s socks. I guess, after all, not many young fellows would want to marry the kind of girl his grandmother was.”

The trio of girls did not spend all their rainy hours with Mammy Dilsey, or in such discussions as the above. Besides, now and then the sun broke through the clouds and then the whole world seemed to steam.

The girls had the big porch to exercise upon, and as soon as it promised any decided change in the weather there were plans for new activities.

Across the river was a place called Holloways – actually a small island. It was quite a resort in the summer, there being a hotel and several cottages, occupied by Georgetown and Charleston people through the hot season.

Mrs. Parsons thought that her young guests would become woefully lonely and “fair ill of Merredith,” if they did not soon have some social diversion, so it was planned to go to Holloways to the weekend “hop” held by the hotel guests and cottagers.

This was nothing like a public dance. Mrs. Parsons would not have approved of that. But the little coterie of hotel guests and the neighbors arranged very pleasant parties which the mistress of the Merredith plantation was not averse to her young folks attending.

As it happened, she herself could not go. A telegram from her lawyers in Charleston called Mrs. Parsons to the city only a few hours before the time set for the party to start for Holloways.

“Now, listen!” cried Aunt Rachel. “You girls shall not be disappointed – no, indeed! Mrs. Holloway will herself act as your chaperon and will take good care of you. We should remain at her hotel over night, in any case.”

“But we won’t have half so much fun if you don’t go, Mrs. Parsons,” Helen said.

“Nonsense! nonsense! what trio of girls was ever enamored of a strict duenna like me?” and Mrs. Parsons laughed. “I’ll send one of the boys on ahead with a note to Mrs. Holloway to look out for you and Jeffreys will drive you over and come after you to-morrow noon. I believe in girls sleeping till noon after a party.”

“But how are you going to the station, Aunt Rachel?” cried Nettie.

“I’ll ride Nordeck. And John shall ride after me and bring the horse back. Now, scatter to do your own primping, girls, and let Mammy Dilsey ’tend to me.”

In half an hour Mrs. Parsons was off – such need was there for haste. She went on horseback with a single retainer, as she said, riding at her heels. Although the weather appeared to have cleared permanently, the creeks were up and Mr. Lomaine reported the river already swollen.

Mrs. Parsons had been wise to ride horseback; a carriage might not have got safely through some of the fords she would be obliged to cross between the plantation and the railroad station.

On the other hand, the girls bound for Holloways were not likely to be held back, for there were bridges instead of fords. All in their party finery, Ruth and Helen and Nettie started away from the Big House in the roomy family carriage, and with them went Norma, Nettie’s own little colored maid, with her sewing kit and extra wraps.

The road to the bridge which spanned the wide river led directly past the cotton warehouse. Ruth had not been there since her conversation with Mr. Jimson; but the warehouse boss had sent her word twice that Curly Smith seemed to be contented and desired to remain.

Both of the Northern girls were extremely anxious to see the boy from Lumberton. Ruth looked every day, now, for a letter from Mrs. Sadoc Smith; and she hoped the stern old woman would relent and ask her grandson to return.

The river was, as Mr. Lomaine had said, very high. The brown, muddy current was littered with logs, uprooted trees, fence rails, pig-pens, hen houses, and other light litter wrenched from the banks during the last few days. Ruth said it looked quite as angry as the Lumano, at the Red Mill, when there was a flood.

Jeffreys had brought the carriage to a full stop on the bank overlooking the stream and the warehouse. The water surged almost level with the shipping platform. There had been a reason for Mr. Jimson’s shifting all the cotton in storage to the upper end of the huge building. He had foreseen this rain and feared a flood.

Suddenly, just as Jeffreys was about to drive on, Helen uttered a scream, and pointed to a drifting hencoop.

“See! See that poor thing!” she cried.

“What’s the matter now, honey?” asked Nettie. “I don’t see anything.”

“On the roof of that coop,” Ruth said quickly espying what her chum saw. “The poor cat!”

“Where is there a cat?” cried Nettie, anxiously. She was a little near-sighted and could not focus her gaze upon the small object on the raft as quickly as the chums from the North.

“Dear me, Nettie!” cried Helen, in exasperation. “If you met a bear he’d have to bite you before you’d know he was there.”

“Never mind,” drawled the Southern girl, “I am not being chased and knocked down by deer – Oh! I see the poor kitty.”

“I should hope you did!” Helen said. “And it’s going to be drowned!”

“No, no,” Ruth said. “I hope not. Can’t it be brought ashore? See! that coop is swinging into an eddy.”

“Well, Ruthie Fielding!” cried Helen, “you’re not going to jump overboard in your party dress, and try to get that poor cat, I should hope!”

“There’s a boy who can get her!” exclaimed Nettie, standing up in the carriage, and being able to see well enough to espy a figure on a small raft down by the loading dock.

“Oh, Nettie! ask him to try!” gasped Ruth.

“Hey, boy!” called Nettie. “Can’t you save that poor cat for us?”

The boy turned, and both Ruth and Helen recognized the curly head – if not the shockingly ragged garments – of Henry Smith. He waved a reassuring hand and pushed off from the platform.

Mr. Jimson came running from the interior of the warehouse and shouted after him.

“There! I hope we haven’t got him into more trouble,” mourned Ruth.

“And he can’t get the cat,” wailed Helen, in a moment. “The current is taking the raft clear out into midstream.”

Curly was working vigorously with the single sweep, however, and he finally brought the cumbersome craft to the edge of the eddy where the hencoop with its frightened passenger whirled under the high bank.

“Yo’ kyant git that cat, you fool boy!” bawled Jimson. “And yo’ll lose my raft.”

“Oh, Mr. Jimson!” cried Nettie. “We do want him to save that cat if he can.”

“But he’ll lose a mighty good oar, an’ that raft,” complained the boss.

“Never mind,” said Nettie, firmly. “You can make another oar and another raft. But how are you going to make another cat?”

“I’ll be whip-sawed!” exclaimed the long and lanky man. “Who ever heard the like of that? There’s enough cats come natcher’lly without nobody’s wantin’ t’ make none.”

The girls laughed at this, but they were anxious about the cat. And, the next moment, they began to be anxious about the boy.

Curly threw away the oar and plunged right into the eddy. He had little clothing on, and no shoes, so he was not greatly trammeled in swimming to the drifting hencoop. But once there, how would he get the cat ashore?

However, the boy went about his task in quite a manful manner. He climbed up, got one arm hooked over the roof and reached for the wet and frightened cat. The poor creature was so despairing that she could not even use her claws in defense, and Curly pulled her off her perch and set her on his shoulder.

There she clung trembling, and when Curly let himself down into the water again she only uttered a wailing, “Me-e-ou!” and did not try to scratch him. He struck out for the shore, keeping his shoulders well out of the water, and after a fight of a minute or two, brought the cat to land.

Once within reach of the land, the cat leaped ashore and darted into the bushes; while Jimson helped the breathless Curly to land.

“There! yo’ reckless creatuah!” exclaimed the man. “I’ve seen folks drown in a current no worse than that. Stan’ up an’ make yo’ bow t’ Miss Nettie, here,” and he turned to Nettie, who had got out of the carriage in her interest.

Ruth and Helen stayed back. They did not wish to thrust themselves on the notice of Curly Smith. Nettie told Jimson to see that the saturated boy had a new outfit.

“And don’t let him get away till Aunt Rachel returns from Charleston and sees him. She’ll want to do something for him, I know,” she added.

The boy glanced shyly up at the girls and suddenly caught sight of Ruth and Helen in the background. Like a shot he wheeled and ran into the bushes.

“Oh! catch him!” gasped Ruth. “Don’t let him run away, Mr. Jimson.”

“He’s streakin’ it for my shack, I reckon,” said the boss. “Mis Jimson’ll find him some old duds of mine to put on.”

“But maybe he won’t come back,” said Helen, likewise anxious.

“Ya-as he will. I ain’t paid him fo’ his wo’k here,” chuckled Jimson. “He’ll stay a while longah. Don’t fret about that.”

Nettie got back into the carriage, which went on toward the bridge. As they crossed the long span the girls saw that the current was roaring between the piers and that much rubbish was held upstream by the bridge. The bridge shook under the blows of the logs and other debris which charged against it.

“My! this is dangerous!” cried Helen. “Suppose the bridge should give way?”

“Then we would not get home very easily,” laughed Nettie.

It was not a laughing matter, however, when they came later to the shorter span that bridged the back water between the island where the hotel was situated, and the shore of the river. Here the rough current was level with the plank flooring of the bridge, and as the carriage rattled over, the girls could feel that the planks were almost ready to float away.

“We’ll be marooned on this island,” said Ruth, “if the water rises much higher.”

“Who cares?” laughed Nettie, to whom it was all an exciting adventure and nothing more. With all her natural timidity she did not look ahead very far.

Jeffreys and the footman were in a hurry to get back. The instant the girls and their little maid got out at the hotel steps, the coachman turned the horses and hastened away.

A little, smiling woman in a trailing gown came down the steps to welcome the party from Merredith. “I am Mrs. Holloway,” she said. “I am glad to see you, girls. Jake reached here about an hour ago and said Mrs. Parsons could not come. It is to be deplored; but it need not subtract any from your pleasure on the occasion.

“Come in – do,” she added. “I will show you to your rooms.”

CHAPTER XVI – THE “HOP”

It was not a large hotel, and altogether it could not have housed more than fifty guests. But in the dusk, as the girls from Merredith had ridden over in the carriage, they could see that there were several attractive cottages on the island. There was a deal of life about the caravansary.

Now there was just time for Ruth Fielding and her friends to take a peep in the mirror before running down at the sound of the dinner gong to take the places Mrs. Holloway had pointed out to them in the dining room.

The other guests came trooping in from the porches and from their rooms – most of the matrons and young girls already in their party frocks, like the girls from Merredith. Mrs. Holloway found an opportunity to introduce the trio of friends to several people, while Nettie Parsons was already known to many of the matrons present.

The affair was to begin early. Indeed, the girls heard the fiddles tuning up before dinner was ended.

“Oh! hear that fiddle. Doesn’t it make your feet fairly itch?” cried Nettie. Nettie, like most Southern girls, loved dancing.

There were some Virginia reels and some square dances, and all, old and young, joined in these. The reels were a general romp, it was true; but the fun and frolic were of the most harmless character.

The master of ceremonies called out the changes in a resonant voice and all – old and young – danced the square dance with hearty enjoyment. The girls from the North had never seen quite such a party as this; but they enjoyed it hugely. They were not allowed to be without partners for any dance; and the boys introduced to Ruth and Helen were nice and polite and – most of them – danced well.

“Learning to dance seems to be more common among Southern boys than up North,” Helen said. “Even Tom says he hates dancing. And it’s sometimes hard to get good partners at the school dances at Briarwood.”

“I think we have our boys down here better trained,” said Nettie, smiling.

The girls heard, as the time passed, several people expressing their wonder that certain guests from the mainland had not arrived. The dancing floor, which occupied more than half the lower floor of the hotel, was by no means crowded, although every white person on the island was in attendance – either dancing or looking on.

At the back, the gallery was crowded with blacks, their shining faces thrust in at the windows to watch the white folk. In fact, the whole population of Holloway Island was at the hotel.

The last few guests who had arrived from the cottages came under umbrellas as it had begun to rain again. When the fiddles stopped they could hear the drumming of the rain on the porch roofs.

“I’m glad we aren’t obliged to go home to-night,” said Nettie, with a little shiver, as she stood with her friends near a porch window during an intermission. “Hear that rain pouring down!”

“And how do you suppose the bridges are?” asked Helen.

“There! I reckon that’s why those folks from the other shore didn’t get here,” Nettie said. “I shouldn’t wonder if the planks of the old bridge had floated away.”

“Whoo!” Helen cried. “How are we going to get home?”

“By boat, maybe,” laughed Ruth. “Don’t worry. To-morrow is another day.”

And just as she said this the hotel was jarred suddenly, throughout its every beam and girder! The fiddles had just started again. They stopped. For a moment not a sound broke the startled silence in the ballroom.

Then the building shook again. There was an unmistakable thumping at the up-river end of the building. The thumping was repeated.

“Something’s broken loose!” exclaimed Helen.

“Let’s see what it means!” exclaimed Ruth, and she darted out of the long window.

Her chum and Nettie followed her. But when they found themselves splashing through water which had risen over the porch flooring, almost ankle deep, Nettie squealed and ran back. Helen followed Ruth to the upper end of the porch. The oil lamps burning there revealed a sight that both amazed and terrified the girls from the North.

The river had risen over its banks. It surged about the front of the hotel, but had not surrounded it, for the land at the back was higher.

In the semi-darkness, however, the girls saw a large object looming above the porch roof, and it again struck against the hotel. It was a light cottage that had been raised from its foundation and swept by the current against the larger building.

Again it crashed into the corner of the hotel. The roof of the porch was wrecked at this corner by the heavy blow. Windows crashed and servants began to scream. Ruth clutched Helen and drew her back against the wall as the chimney-bricks of the drifting cottage fell through the broken roof of the veranda.

CHAPTER XVII – THE FLOOD RISES

There was a doorway near at hand – the floor of the house being one step higher than the porch which was now flooded. Ruth was just about to drag her chum into this doorway when a figure plunged out of it – a thin, graceless figure in a rain-garment of some kind – and little else, as it proved.

“Oh! oh! oh!” screamed the stranger as she spattered into the water in her slippered feet. “I am killed! I am drowned!”

Helen began actually to giggle. It did not seem so tragic to her that the hotel on the island should become suddenly surrounded by water, or be battered by drifting buildings which the flood had uprooted. The surprise and fright the woman expressed as she halted on the porch, was calculated to arouse one’s laughter.

“Oh, oh, oh!” said the woman, more feebly.

“Come right back into the house – do!” cried Ruth. “You won’t get wet there.”

“But the house is falling down!” gasped the woman, and as she turned the lamplight from the hall revealed her features, and Helen uttered a stifled cry.

She recognized the woman’s face. So did Ruth, and amazement possessed both the girls. There was no mistaking the features of the irritable, nervous teacher from New England, Miss Miggs!

“Do come into the house, Miss Miggs,” urged Ruth. “It isn’t going to fall yet.”

“How do you know?” snapped the school teacher, as obstinate as ever.

The cottage that had been battering the corner of the porch was now torn away by the river and swept on, down the current. There sounded a great hullabaloo from the ballroom. Although the river had not yet risen as high as the dancing floor, the frightened revelers saw that the flood was fairly upon them. At the back the darkies added their cries to the screams of the hysterical guests.

Another drifting object struck and jarred the hotel. Miss Miggs repeated her scream of fear, and darted into the hall with the same impetuosity with which she had darted out.

“Who are you girls?” she demanded, peering at Ruth and Helen closely, for she did not wear her spectacles. “Haven’t I seen you before? I declare! you’re the girls who stole my ticket – the idea!”

At the moment – and in time to hear this accusation – Mrs. Holloway appeared from down the hall. “Oh, Martha!” she cried. “Are you out of your bed?”

She gave the two girls from the North a sharp look as she spoke to the teacher; but this was no time for an explanation of Miss Miggs’ remark. The school teacher immediately opened a volley of complaints:

“Well, I must say, Cousin Lydia, if I were you I’d build my house on some secure foundation. And calling it a hotel, too! My mercy me! the whole thing will be down like a house of cards in ten minutes, and we shall be drowned.”

“Oh, no, Cousin Martha,” said the Southern woman. “We shall be all right. The river will not rise much higher, and it will never tear the hotel from its base. It is too large.”

“Look at these other houses floating away, Lydia Holloway!” screamed Miss Miggs.

“But they are only the huts from along shore – ”

Her statement was interrupted by a terrific shock the hotel suffered as a good-sized cottage – one of the nearest of the summer colony – smashed against the hotel, rebounded, and drifted away down stream.

The two women and the two girls were flung together in a clinging group for half a minute. Then Miss Martha Miggs tore herself away. “Let go of me, you impudent young minxes!” she cried. “Are you trying to rob me again?”

“Oh! the horrid thing!” gasped Helen; but Ruth kept her lips closed.

She knew anything they could say would make a bad matter worse. Already the hotel proprietor’s wife was looking at them very doubtfully.

It had stopped raining, but the damp wind swept into the open door and chilled the girls in their thin frocks. Mrs. Holloway saw this and remembered that she had to answer to Mrs. Parsons for her guests’ well being.

“Come back into this room,” she commanded, and led Miss Miggs first by the arm into an unlighted parlor. The windows looked up the river, and as the quartette reached the middle of the room, the unhappy school teacher emitted another shriek and pointed out of the nearest unshaded window.

“What is the matter with you now, Martha Miggs?” demanded Mrs. Holloway, in some exasperation. “If I had known you were in such an hysterical, nervous state, I would not have invited you down here – and sent your ticket and all – I assure you. I never saw such a person for startling one.”

“And lots of good the ticket did – with these girls stealing it from me,” snapped Miss Miggs. “But look at that house next to yours. There! see it heave? And there’s a lighted lamp in that room.”

Everybody saw the peril which the school teacher had observed. A lamp stood on the center table in the parlor of the house next. This house was set on a lower foundation than the hotel and the rising river, surging about it, had begun to loosen it.

Even as they looked, the house tipped perceptibly, and the lighted lamp fell from the table to the floor.

The burning oil was scattered about the room. Although everything was saturated with rain outside, the interior of the cottage began to burn furiously and the conflagration would soon endanger the hotel itself.

Helen broke down and began to cry. Ruth put her arm about her chum and tried to soothe her. Some of the men came charging into the room, thinking by the sudden flare of the conflagration, that this end of the hotel was already on fire.

“Oh, dear! Goodness, me!” shrieked the school teacher, taking thought of her dishabille, and she turned at once and fled upstairs. Mrs. Holloway quietly fainted in an adjacent, comfortable chair. The men went out on the porch to see if they could reach the burning cottage; but the water was too deep and too swift between the two structures.

Ruth carefully attended the woman who had fainted. What had become of Miss Miggs she did not know. Mrs. Holloway regained consciousness very suddenly. She looked up at Ruth, recognized her, and shrank away from the girl of the Red Mill.

“Don’t – don’t,” she gasped. “I’m all right.”

Mrs. Holloway’s hand went to the bosom of her gown, she fumbled there a minute, and then brought forth her purse. The feel of the money in it seemed to reassure her; but Ruth knew what the gesture meant. What she had heard her cousin say had impressed the hotel keeper’s wife strongly.

Hearing the school teacher accuse the two Northern girls of stealing from her, Mrs. Holloway considered herself unsafe in Ruth’s hands.

“Oh, come away,” urged Helen, who had likewise observed the woman’s action. “These people make me ill. I wish we were back North again among our own kind.”

“Hush!” warned Ruth. But in secret she felt justified in making the same wish as her chum.

CHAPTER XVIII – ACROSS THE RIVER

As the night shut down and the rain began again, the party at Holloway’s had paid no attention to the rising flood. But on the other side of the river the increasing depth of the water was narrowly watched.

“It’s the biggest rise she’s showed since Adam was a small boy!” Mr. Jimson declared. “Looks like she’d make a clean sweep of some of these bottomland farms below yere. Mr. Lomaine’s goin’ t’ lose cash-dollars befo’ she’s through kickin’ up her heels – yo’ take it from me!”

Mr. Jimson’s audience consisted of his immediate family – a wife, lank like himself, and six white-haired, lank children, like six human steps, from the little toddler, hanging to the table-cloth and so getting his balance, to a lank girl of fifteen or thereabouts. In addition, there was Curly Smith.

Curly had been taken right into the Jimson family when he had first come along on a flatboat, the crew of which had treated him so badly that he had left it and applied at the cotton warehouse for work. He worked every day beyond his strength, if the truth were told, and for very poor pay; but he was glad of decent housing.

The world had never used a runaway worse than it had used Curly. All the way down the river from Pee Dee – where his money had run out, and his transportation, too – the boy had been knocked about. And farther north, as Ruth Fielding and Helen knew, Curly Smith’s path had not been strewn with roses.