Viola Gwyn | Page 4

yard. He called to her, but she did not appear.
No one appeared. The house was silent. "Auntie" Rachel was not there.
Even the dogs were gone, and Mr. Carter's horses and his wagon. He
could not understand. Only yesterday he had played in the barn with
Minda.
Then his grandma came hurrying through the trees from his own home,
where she had been with grandpa and Uncle Fred and Uncle Dan since
breakfast time. She took him up in her arms and told him that Minda
was gone. He had never seen his grandma look so stern and angry.
Biddy Shay had been there all morning too, and several of the
neighbours. He wondered if it could be the Sabbath, and yet that did
not seem possible, because it was only two days since he went to
Sunday school, and yesterday his mother had done the washing. She
always washed on Monday and ironed on Tuesday. This must be
Tuesday, but maybe he was wrong about that. She was not ironing, so it
could not be Tuesday. He was very much bewildered.
His mother was in the bedroom with grandpa and Aunt Hettie, and he
was not allowed to go in to see her. Uncle Fred and Uncle Dan were

very solemn and scowling so terribly that he was afraid to go near
them.
He remembered that his mother had cried while she was cooking
breakfast, and sat down a great many times to rest her head on her arms.
She had cried a good deal lately, because of the headache, she always
said. And right after breakfast she had put on her bonnet and shawl,
telling him to stay in the house till she came back from grandpa's. Then
she had gone away, leaving him all alone until Biddy Shay came, all
out of breath, and began to clear the table and wash the dishes, all the
while talking to herself in a way that he was sure God would not like,
and probably would send her to the bad place for it when she died.
After a while all of the men went out to the barn-lot, where their horses
were tethered. Uncle Fred and Uncle Dan had their rifles. He stood at
the kitchen window and watched them with wide, excited eyes. Were
they going off to kill Indians, or bears, or cattymunks? They all talked
at once, especially his uncles,--and they swore, too. Then his grandpa
stood in front of them and spoke very loudly, pointing his finger at
them. He heard him say, over and over again:
"Let them go, I say! I tell you, let them go!"
He wondered why his father was not there, if there was any fighting to
be done. His father was a great fighter. He was the bestest shot in all
the world. He could kill an Injin a million miles away, or a squirrel, or
a groundhog. So he asked Biddy Shay.
"Ast me no questions and I'll tell ye no lies," was all the answer he got
from Biddy.
The next day he went up to grandpa's with his mother to stay, and
Uncle Fred told him that his pa had gone off to the war. He believed
this, for were not the rifle, the powder horn and the shot flask missing
from the pegs over the fireplace, and was not Bob, the very fastest
horse in all the world, gone from the barn? He was vastly thrilled. His
father would shoot millions and millions of Injins, and they would have
a house full of scalps and tommyhawks and bows and arrers.
But he was troubled about Minda. Uncle Fred, driven to corner by
persistent inquiry, finally confessed that Minda also had gone to the
war, and at last report had killed several extremely ferocious redskins.
Despite this very notable achievement, Kenneth was troubled. In the
first place, Minda was a baby, and always screamed when she heard a

gun go off; in the second place, she always fell down when she tried to
run and squalled like everything if he did not wait for her; in the third
place, Injins always beat little girls' heads off against a tree if they
caught 'em.
Moreover, Uncle Dan, upon being consulted, declared that a good-sized
Injin could swaller Minda in one gulp if he happened to be 'specially
hungry,--or in a hurry. Uncle Dan also appeared to be very much
surprised when he heard that she had gone off to the war. He said that
Uncle Fred ought to be ashamed of himself; and the next time he asked
Uncle Fred about Minda he was considerably relieved to hear that his
little playmate had given up fighting altogether and was living quite
peaceably in a house made of a