Ruth Fielding At Sunrise Farm; What Became of the Raby Orphans

Sadie Raby went with Ruth doubtfully. The latter was somewhat disturbed herself when she saw Mr. Steele’s serious visage.

“You’ll excuse me, Mr. Steele?” suggested Ruth, timidly. “But she is all alone – and I thought it would encourage her to have me here – ”

“That is like your kind heart, Ruth,” said the gentleman, nodding. “I don’t mind. Madge has told me her story. It seems that the child is rather wild – er – flighty, as it were. I suppose she wants to run away from us, too?”

“I ain’t figurin’ to stay here,” said Sadie, doggedly. “I’m obleeged to you, but this ain’t the house I was aimin’ for.”

“Humph! no. But I am not sure at all that you would be in good hands down there at Caslon’s.”

Ruth was sorry to hear him say this. But Sadie broke in with: “I don’t keer how they treat me as long as I’m with my brothers. And they are down there, this Ruth girl says.”

“Yes. I quite understand that. But we all have our duty to perform in this world,” said Mr. Steele, gravely. “I wonder that you have fallen in with nobody before who has seen the enormity of letting you run wild throughout the country. It is preposterous – wrong – impossible! I never heard of the like before – a child of your age tramping in the open.”

“I didn’t do no harm,” began Sadie, half fearful of him again.

“Of course it is not your fault,” said Mr. Steele, quickly. “But you were put in the hands of people who are responsible to the institution you came from for their treatment of you – ”

“Them Perkinses?” exclaimed Sadie, fearfully. “I won’t never go back to them – not while I’m alive I won’t! I don’t care! I jest won’t!”

She spoke wildly. She turned to run from the room and would have done so, had not Ruth been there to stop her and hold her in her arms.

CHAPTER XVII – THE BLACK DOUGLASS

“Oh, don’t frighten her, Mr. Steele!” begged Ruth, still holding the half wild girl. “You would not send her back to those awful people?”

“Tut, tut! I am no ogre, I hope,” exclaimed the gentleman, rather put out of countenance at this outburst. “I only mean the child well. Doesn’t she understand?”

“I won’t go back to them Perkinses, I tell you!” cried Sadie, with a stamp of her foot.

“It is not my intention to send you back. I mean to look up your record and the record of the people you were placed with – Perkins, is it? The authorities of the institution that had the care of you, should be made to be more careful in their selection of homes for their charges.

“No. I will keep you here till I have had the matter sifted. If those – those Perkinses, as you call them, are unfit to care for you, you shall certainly not go back to them, my girl.”

Sadie looked at him shrewdly. “But I don’t want to stay here, Mister,” she blurted out.

“My girl, you are not of an age when you should be allowed to choose for yourself. Others, older and wiser, must choose for you. I would not feel that I was doing right in allowing you to run wild again – ”

“I gotter see the twins – I jest gotter see ’em,” said Sadie, faintly.

“And whether that Caslon is fit to have charge of you,” bitterly added Mr. Steele, “I have my doubts.”

“Oh, surely, you will let her see her little brothers?” cried Ruth, pleadingly.

“We will arrange about that – ahem!” said Mr. Steele. “But I will communicate at once – by long distance telephone – with the matron of the institution from which she came, and they can send a representative here to talk with me – ”

“And take me back there?” exclaimed Sadie. “No, I sha’n’t! I sha’n’t go! So there!”

“Hoity-toity, Miss! Let’s have no more of it, if you please,” said the gentleman, sternly. “You will stay here for the present. Don’t you try to run away from me, for if you do, I’ll soon have you brought back. We intend to treat you kindly here, but you must not abuse our kindness.”

It was perhaps somewhat puzzling to Sadie Raby – this attitude of the very severe gentleman. She had not been used to much kindness in her life, and the sort that is forced on one is not generally appreciated by the wisest of us. Therefore it is not strange if Sadie failed to understand that Mr. Steele really meant to be her friend.

“Come away, Sadie,” whispered Ruth, quite troubled herself by the turn affairs had taken. “I am so sorry – but it will all come right in the end – ”

“If by comin’ right, Miss, you means that I am goin’ to see them twins, you can jest bet it will all come right,” returned Sadie, gruffly, when they were out in the hall. “For see ’em I will, an’ him, nor nobody else, won’t stop me. As for goin’ back to them Perkinses, or to the orphanage, we’ll see ‘bout that,” added Sadie, to herself, and grimly.

Ruth feared very much that Mr. Steele would not have been quite so stern and positive with the runaway, had it not been for his dislike for the Caslons. Had Sadie’s brothers been stopping with some other neighbor, would Mr. Steele have delayed letting the runaway girl go to see them?

“Oh, dear, me! If folks would only be good-natured and stop being so hateful to each other,” thought the girl of the Red Mill. “I just know that Mr. Steele would like Mr. Caslon a whole lot, if they really once got acquainted!”

The rain had ceased falling by this time. The tempest had rolled away into the east. A great rainbow had appeared and many of the household were on the verandas to watch the bow of promise.

It was too wet, however, to venture upon the grass. The paths and driveway glistened with pools of water. And under a big tree not far from the front of the house, it was discovered that a multitude of little toads had appeared – tiny little fellows no larger than one’s thumbnail.

“It’s just been rainin’ toads!” cried one of the younger Steele children – Bennie by name. “Come on out, Ruthie, and see the toads that comed down with the rainstorm.”

Tom Cameron had already come up to speak with Sadie. He shook hands with the runaway girl and spoke to her as politely as he would have to any of his sister’s friends. And Sadie, remembering how kind he had been to her on the occasion when the tramps attacked her near Cheslow, responded to his advances with less reluctance than she had to those of some of the girls.

For it must be confessed that many of the young people looked upon the runaway askance. She was so different from themselves!

Now that she was clean, and her hair brushed and tied with one of Ruth’s own ribbons, and she was dressed neatly, Sadie Raby did not look much different from the girls about her on the wide porch; but when she spoke, her voice was hoarse, and her language uncouth.

Had she been plumper, she would have been a pretty girl. She was tanned very darkly, and her skin was coarse. Nevertheless, given half the care these other girls had been used to most of their lives, and Sadie Raby would have been the equal of any.

Ruth came strolling back to the veranda, leaving Bennie watching the toads – which remained a mystery to him. He was a lively little fellow of six and the pet of the whole family.

As it chanced, he was alone out there on the drive, and the others were now strolling farther and farther away from him along the veranda. The boy ran out farther from the house, and danced up and down, looking at the rainbow overhead.

Thus he was – a pretty sight in the glow of the setting sun – when a sudden chorus of shouts and frightened cries arose from the rear of the house.

Men and maids were screaming. Then came the pounding of heavy hoofs.

Around the curve of the drive charged a great black horse, a frayed and broken lead-rope hanging from his arching neck, his eyes red and glowing, and his sleek black body all a-quiver with the joy of his escape.

“The Black Douglass!” ejaculated Tom Cameron, in horror, for the great horse was charging straight for the dancing child in the driveway.

It was the most dangerous beast upon Sunrise Farm – indeed, almost the only savage creature Mr. Steele had retained when he bought out the former owner of the stock farm and his stud of horses.

The Black Douglass was a big creature, with an uncertain temper, and was handled only by the most careful men in Mr. Steele’s employ. Somehow, on this occasion, the brute had been allowed to escape.

Spurring the gravel with his iron shod hoofs, the horse galloped straight at little Bennie. The child, suddenly made aware of his peril by the screams of his brothers and sisters, turned blindly, staggered a few steps, and fell upon his hands and knees.

Mr. Steele rushed from the house, but he was too far away. The men chasing the released animal were at a distance, too. Tom Cameron started down the steps, but Helen shrieked for him to return. Who was there to face the snorting, prancing beast?

There was a flash of a slight figure down the steps and across the sod. Like an arrow from a strong bow, Sadie Raby darted before the fallen child. Nor was she helpless. The runaway knew what she was about.

As she ran from the veranda, she had seized a parasol that was leaning against one of the pillars. Holding this in both hands, she presented it to the charging horse, opening and shutting it rapidly as she advanced.

She leaped across Bennie and confronted the Black Douglass. The flighty animal, seeing something before him that he did not at all understand, changed his course with a frightened snort, and dashed off across the lawn, cutting out great clods as he ran, and so around the house again and out of sight.