“Seems to me you kiddies go to bed earlier than you used to,” their father remarked one evening when Bobby and Alice and Pink interrupted his reading to kiss him good night.
“We don’t go to bed,” Pink explained. “We go to Grandma’s room. She tells us a story every night.”
“Why, of course, I remember now. Isn’t that fine, though? A story every night! Did she ever tell you a wolf story? Grandma knows a pippin of a wolf story. She used to tell it to me when I was a little boy. Ask her to tell you about the time she was chased by wolves.”
And a few minutes later Grandma began the story.
“It was in the spring. Father was making garden, and he broke the hoe handle. All the boys were away from home helping a neighbor, so Father wanted Aggie or Belle to take the hoe to have a handle put in at the blacksmith shop at Nebo Cross Roads a mile away. But the girls were getting ready to go to a quilting, and I begged to be allowed to take the hoe to the blacksmith shop.
“Mother was afraid at first, but Father said there was nothing to hurt me, and Mother finally gave in. So right after dinner, carrying the hoe and a poke of cookies to eat if I got hungry, I started out.
“I was to leave the hoe at the shop and go on down the road to Strangs’ to wait till the hoe was mended. I can remember yet how important I felt going off alone like that. I picked wild flowers and munched cookies and sang all the songs I knew.
“Mr. Carson, the blacksmith, said it would be a couple of hours before the hoe would be ready, and I went down to Strangs’ to wait. But when I got there I found the house all locked up and no one at home. I sat down on the steps to wait for some one to come, but the heat and the quiet made me sleepy so I got up and moved around the yard. I was lonely there by myself. I walked around looking at the flowers and the garden and the chickens and played a while with a kitten I found sleeping in the sun. I thought that afternoon would never end. Surely I had been there two hours. I started for the blacksmith shop. Maybe it would be closed. I ran all the way. Mr. Carson looked surprised when I asked for the hoe.
I played a while with a kitten
“‘Why, it’s only been a half-hour since you went away,’ he said.
“I went back to Strangs’, and this time I was determined to wait a long time. After a while Isabel Strang came home. She had been at the quilting, but all the rest of the family had gone away to stay several days. Isabel was going to our house to spend the night if she got through the evening’s work in time. She had come past our house, and Mother had told her to keep me all night with her for company if she could not get back before dark and to send me home early in the morning.
“Isabel hurried, and while she milked the cows and fed the pigs and chickens and got supper I went after the hoe.
“It was growing late when we were ready to start home, but Isabel said we could make it before dark.
“We followed the road half a mile and then took a short cut through the woods up Sugar Creek. We had come out of the woods and were halfway across a big pasture field when from behind us we heard a sound that made us stop in terror. We listened. It came again. It was the cry of a wolf! I had often heard a wolf howl, but I had always been safe at home, and even then it had scared me.
“Again and again came the long drawn-out howl from the woods we had just left.
“Isabel took my hand and we ran as fast as we could toward the little creek that ran through the field. It had been years and years since a pack of wolves had been seen in our neighborhood, but before we reached the foot-log another howl and another and another had been added to the first.
“Looking back over my shoulder as I ran, I saw a skulking form come out of the woods and start across the field. Isabel saw it, too.
“‘We’ll have to stop, Sarah,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to climb a tree.’
“There was a slender young hickory a little this side of the run. Isabel lifted me as high as she could and I caught a branch and pulled myself up into the tree. I turned to help Isabel when, to my horror, I saw that she could never make it. A whole pack of wolves loping across the field were almost upon her.
“Catching up the hoe, Isabel ran for the foot-log. She had barely reached the middle of it when the wolves halted at the creek bank. A few of them had stopped at my tree and were howling up at me. If all had stopped, it would have given Isabel a chance to get into one of the trees on the other side of the creek.
“But she couldn’t do it now. She walked back and forth on the log, brandishing the hoe in the cruel eyes of the wolves. The wolves that had stopped under my tree soon joined their friends on the bank, and Isabel called out to me, ‘Do not make any noise, Sarah, and they will forget you are there.’ I remembered hearing my father tell about some wolves that had gnawed a young tree in two, and I clung there in fear and trembling.
“Isabel held her own all right until one of the bolder wolves swam across the creek and was soon followed by others. Then Isabel had to fight them at both ends of the foot-log. It was dark now, and Isabel, striking at the wolves from first one side and then the other, tried to cheer me up all the time.
“‘Help will soon come, don’t be afraid,’ she said over and over again. She even tried to make me laugh by saying, ‘Now watch me hit this saucy old fellow on the nose. There, that surprised you, didn’t it, Mr. Wolf?’ as she hit him a sharp blow and he fell back.
“What if the wolves should leap on Isabel? Or she might get dizzy and fall in the water. When would help come to us in this lonely, out-of-the-way place? My folks would think I had stayed the night with Isabel, and there was no one at home at Isabel’s.
“Dared I get down and go for help? I peered through the darkness and shook all over when I thought that more wolves might be hidden there. Hardly knowing what I did, I let myself down to the lower limb and then dropped with a soft thud to the ground.
“Without waiting a second I started back the way we had come. How I ran and ran! I was nearly through the woods when I heard something running behind me. I went faster and it went faster, too. Suddenly I tripped and fell and I heard a friendly little whinny at my side. It was our pet colt that had been running behind me. I put my arm around his neck for a second until I got my breath. Then I climbed the fence and was on the road.
“I wasn’t quite so afraid here as I had been in the woods, but I never stopped running till I got home. I was so worn out that I fell panting on the kitchen floor, but I made them understand Isabel’s danger. Father and the boys caught up their guns and went hurrying across the hill to her aid.
“They drove the wolves away and brought Isabel home in safety, and that was the last pack of wolves ever seen around there.
“Well, well, see what time it is! Now run along to bed and go right to sleep without talking the least little bit, or I’m afraid Mother won’t let you come to see me tomorrow evening. That would be a pity, for I’ve got the best story for tomorrow evening about—well, you just wait and see.”