Leppard, Lois Gladys - [Mandie 03] (8 page)

“John, are you going to permit this?” Elizabeth asked in disbelief. “You know I don’t want Amanda to go.”

“I never could resist blue eyes!” he laughed. “Especially when they’re so much like yours.”

The young people dashed out of the room and ran over to Polly’s house to ask her mother’s permission. After a lot of talking, they finally convinced her that it was not dangerous, and that they were only going to the wrecked train car. Polly went home with Mandie to spend the night so they could start out early the next morning.

Mandie was excited about the trip to the wrecked baggage car, but would they ever really find the gold again?

Chapter 9 - Off to Find the Gold

Before sunrise the young people quietly slipped out of bed and gathered in the kitchen. Jenny was busy preparing breakfast and food for the journey. Since Elizabeth was not going, Uncle John had told Liza she could go along to look after the three girls. Liza was so excited she danced around in circles among them while their conversation grew louder and louder.

Aunt Lou heard the commotion and came into the kitchen. “You best be quietenin’ down or Mr. John’ll be in here to see what’s goin’ on! Liza, ’member youse jest goin’ to take care of my chile and these heah other li’l girls.”

“Yessum,” Liza calmed down. “I behave. I see to Miss Amanda and Miss Sallie and Miss Polly. I see they behave, too.”

Mandie laughed. She knew the trip would be more fun with Liza along. “And I’ll see that Liza behaves,” she said mischievously.

“Lawsy, Missy,” Liza said. “I ain’t got nobody sweet on me to go smoochin’ with.”

Everyone broke into laughter.

“Git outa heah,” Aunt Lou said, shooing the young people out through the door. “Git yo’ breakfast in the dinin’ room. Liza be bringin’ it in a minute.”

Mandie was the last one out of the kitchen. “Can Liza eat with us, Aunt Lou?” she asked.

“Hesh yo’ mouth, chile. Liza don’t belong in the dinin’ room,” the big woman told her.

“But, Aunt Lou, Liza’s going to eat with us on the trip. She has to, or eat somewhere by herself,” Mandie insisted.

“Well, that won’t be under the roof of Mr. John’s house,” Aunt Lou told her. “While she under Mr. John’s roof, she gonna act like the servant girl she be. Now, git on in there wid yo’ friends.”

“I just don’t understand it, Aunt Lou,” Mandie argued. “Why can’t she eat with us? When I lived at my father’s house in Swain County everyone ate at the same table.”

“You’ll understand some day, my chile. Now git!” the old woman said.

Mandie sat down at the big dining room table with her friends. Before long her mother and Uncle John and Uncle Wirt joined them.

“Uncle John, why can’t Liza eat breakfast with us?” Mandie asked, as soon as her uncle was seated. “After all, she’ll have to eat with us on the trip.”

Liza came through the doorway with huge platters of scrambled eggs, bacon, ham, and grits. “Oh, you want Liza to eat with us?” Uncle John asked. Looking up at the young servant girl, he said, “Liza, you get a plate and sit down over there next to Mandie. We’re all in this thing together beginning today.”

Liza almost dropped the platters as she set them down. “What, Mister John?” she gasped.

“Mandie wants you to eat with us since you’re going on the journey too. So get yourself a plate and sit down,” Uncle John told her.

“Yes, Liza, sit right here next to me.” Mandie used her foot to push out the chair next to her.

“Missy, I can’t do that. Aunt Lou, she git all over me,” Liza protested.

“But Uncle John is the boss here. You heard what he said. Get your plate,” Mandie insisted.

Liza gave up. “Yes, Missy, I git me a plate and be right back,” the black girl said, returning to the kitchen.

Elizabeth looked at John.

“I told you I just can’t resist those blue eyes, especially when they look so much like yours,” John told her.

“First thing you know, you’ll have all the servants in an uproar,” Elizabeth protested. “The other servants won’t like the idea at all.”

“Leave it to me. I’ll take care of it if and when that time comes,” John told her. “After all, I’m half Indian. I’m not expected to act in the usual ‘white people’ fashion,” he laughed.

“Oh, John, you can be funny!” Elizabeth smiled.

Polly was sitting next to Mandie and gave her a nudge. “Mandie, you have some great parents!” she said.

“One parent,” corrected Mandie. “Uncle John is still my uncle, even though he is married to my mother.”

“They are very much in love,” Dimar said, helping himself to more eggs and bacon.

She missed her father so much, it was hard to sort out her feelings about all that happened.

Uncle John was the “richest man this side of Richmond,” according to Liza. Why hadn’t he shared his wealth with her father who was desperately poor? She would
always wonder about that.

Liza came back through the door with a plate in one hand and a platter of hot biscuits in the other. After putting the biscuits in the middle of the long table, she sat down next to Mandie.

“Here,” Mandie said. She reached for the platter of eggs and passed it to Liza.

Joe passed the bacon and ham.

Dimar watched in amusement from the other end of the table. “Eat,” he said.

“That’s one word that’s good in any language—eat,” Joe laughed.

Liza nervously helped herself to the food, and then sat there pushing the food around with her fork. She cast a sheltered glance now and then at the others at the table.

“Liza, eat,” Uncle John’s voice boomed from the other end of the table. “We’ve got to get going.”

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir, Mister John,” Liza answered and quickly shoved her mouth full of food.

Sallie looked across the table at Liza and felt sorry for her.
Poor Liza!
she thought.
She’s so nervous sitting at the big table that she can’t eat
. She almost choked on the food and hurried to wash it down with coffee that was too hot.

“Please do not worry. We are all on your side,” Sallie told her. “I felt the same way the first time I sat at this great table in this fancy house. You see, I live in a log cabin with my grandfather and grandmother.”

“I ain’t never lived in a log cabin, Miss Sallie,” Liza replied. “I wouldn’t know how to act in a log cabin.”

All the young people laughed.

“I also live in a log cabin,” Dimar told her.

“And so do I,” Tsa’ni added.

Turning to Mandie, Liza asked, “Where all these log cabins at?”

“Liza, haven’t you ever seen a log cabin?” Mandie asked. “You know I lived in a log cabin with my father, too. That’s how people live out in the country away from town. Log cabins are scattered all over the woods and fields.”

“I ain’t never lived in de country either. I be born right heah in this house,” Liza told them.

“You were?” Mandie said. “Where are your mother and father?”

“They be done dead with de new-moanie, long time ago, when I was a li’l tyke. Aunt Lou, she tuck care of me after that,” Liza told them.

“My father died from the same thing,” Mandie said.

Uncle John’s voice boomed out again. “Eat up, everyone! Whoever is going with me, be ready in fifteen minutes.”

He got up and left the table, with Elizabeth and Uncle Wirt following.

“You heard him. Eat,” Joe said. “Let’s hurry and get done!”

Liza tried her best to swallow the food. She
was
hungry, but to have to sit here with “Miss Amanda” and her friends was too much for her. She pushed her plate away and stood up.

“I’se done,” she said. “Let’s git our things and go.”

Mandie looked at the girl’s plate. “But, Liza, you hardly ate anything at all,” Mandie objected.

Liza turned to her and spoke softly. “To be honest ’bout it, Miss Amanda, I jest didn’t wanta eat in here with all these people. It’d be like you eatin’ with Mr. McKinley in the White House.”

“You really mean that, don’t you, Liza?” Mandie replied. “I’m sorry if I spoiled your breakfast. I won’t do it again.”

“That’s all right, Missy. Next time I eat in the kitchen where I belongs,” Liza replied.

When they got outside, Uncle John had horses and ponies tethered at the front gate, loaded with blankets, rope, lanterns, and food. The adults stood waiting on the front porch. Elizabeth caught Mandie by the arm.

“Amanda, you haven’t put on your riding outfit,” she reprimanded.

“But, Mother. Sallie doesn’t have one on, and neither do Polly and Liza,” Mandie protested.

“I told my mother we were riding in a wagon,” Polly explained. “I didn’t know we were going to ride ponies. But it’s all right. She won’t mind.”

Elizabeth frowned at her husband. “John, we need to teach Amanda some proper manners for young ladies,” she said.

John laughed. “Why don’t we let it go this time? It’ll be quicker and safer in that rough mountain terrain if they all ride astride. Seems like I remember
you
saying the same thing not too long ago.” He kissed Elizabeth on the cheek.

Elizabeth gave in. “It seems like I always come out on the losing end,” she said with a little laugh.

Mandie took her mother by the hand. “Please tell Uncle Ned we’ll be back soon,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake him this early in the morning to tell him good-bye.”

“Of course, dear,” Elizabeth answered. She gave her daughter a squeeze. “Be a good girl.”

“Everybody ready?” Uncle John asked. “Run and find yourselves a pony.”

Mandie picked up Snowball and rushed out to the road with the others to claim her pony. Mandie knew she had to help Liza feel comfortable with them. “Liza! Here! Get this pony next to mine!” she called.

Liza gratefully did as Mandie said.

Waving good-bye to Elizabeth, Aunt Lou, and Jenny, the group took off down the road.

A long time later, they approached the place in the railroad tracks where they knew the wrecked baggage car would be. As they drew rein and looked down the ravine, they spotted the wrecked baggage car still hanging onto the side of the mountain.

“We walk from here,” Uncle Wirt told them.

Dismounting, they followed him carefully down the slope.

“Watch for trail marking,” he said.

“Here is where we went down to the wrecked car,” Dimar said, pointing to the spot. “Then we split up, and Sallie and I went over this way,” he continued. “Tsa’ni took Mandie and Joe over that way and we all met at the river where we found Uncle Ned.”

“When we came in answer to your call, we must have taken almost the same path then, Dimar,” Uncle John replied. “That’s a lot of shoes making prints in the dirt.”

Suddenly, Uncle Wirt stooped to examine the ground. “Boot make this mark,” he said, pointing to a firm print in the dirt. “We no wear boot!”

Uncle John bent to look at it. “You’re right. That’s the print of a hard heel and pointed toe, like riding boots.”

“Him go this way.” Uncle Wirt walked closer to the baggage car. “Then on. All way to train car.”

“Great!” Joe said.

Mandie started looking around, holding Snowball
tightly in her arms. “Now if we can find the same prints going
away
from the car …”

The group fanned out and soon Dimar called, “Here is the same print going toward the river.”

Uncle Wirt found more. “Horses been here. Go up riverbank,” he said.

“Yes,” Mandie told him. “There were three of them. They came from all different directions.”

“Do you want to look inside the baggage car in case we missed something?” Joe asked.

“It looks like it might roll away,” Uncle John speculated.

“We went inside, and it did not move,” Dimar told him. “It is leaning against big bushes on the other side.”

Uncle Wirt headed for the broken place in the side of the car where the young people had entered before. He tried to shake the car, but it wouldn’t move. He climbed up and went inside. Uncle John, Dimar and Joe followed right behind him, but Tsa’ni stayed outside with the girls.

Liza surveyed the wreck. “Lawsy mercy, Missy. Thank the Lawd youse didn’t go down the mountain wid dat car,” she said.

“Yes, we have plenty to be thankful for,” Mandie replied.

“Did you see it fall down the mountain like that?” Polly asked.

“No, but we heard the crash. This is the car my grandfather was in,” Sallie told her.

“Oh, dat pore man!” Liza moaned. “So now we’s gonna find the bad men what wrecked the train and hurt your grandfather?”

“We will
try
to find them,” the Indian girl said.

“Won’t you be afraid if we do?” Polly asked.

“No, I will not be afraid. We have all these big, strong men with us now,” Sallie replied.

“I’d just like to catch up with them, for all the trouble they’ve caused,” Mandie said.

Tsa’ni clenched his fists. “But they were white men and we are Indians,” he said to Sallie. “We cannot do anything to them.”

“That’s what you think,” Mandie told him. “You just wait and see what happens if we find them. Uncle John will see to that.”

“Well, since he is living as a white man and not like an Indian, he can prosecute them, I suppose,” the Indian boy replied.

“You know he is half Cherokee, but he can live as he chooses. So can you and all the other Cherokees,” Mandie informed him.

“You certainly do not know much about it, do you?” the boy told her. “Someday you will find out what it means to be Indian by white people’s standards.”

When the men and the other boys came out of the wrecked car, the girls stared in amazement. Joe ran toward them wearing a tiger face mask like the bandits had worn.

“Joe, stop that!” Mandie gasped. “Was that mask in there?”

He nodded.

“It does not look so scary in the daylight,” Sallie told them.

“Well, I’d sure hate to meet that thing in the dark,” Polly declared.

“I’d be done passed out if that thing come toward me in de dark,” Liza told them, moving away from Joe.

Joe took another step toward her and raised his arms.

“Liza, there were three of them. And it was dark. And they wore long, flowing cloaks and big hats,” he teased.

Liza backed off. “Git ’way from heah!” she squealed.