Agnes Ranney stories – Reference blog

http://www.glenwoodcc.org/resource/stories/stories.htm
feb 10 2005 capture

The Long Blue Pencil
Friend from Forest Park
On Big Bear Mountain
What Good is A Mosquito?
Narcissa Whitman – Pioneer Missionary part 1
Narcissa Whitman – Pioneer Missionary part 2
Go to the Ant
Light Out of Darkness
He Keeps the Lower Lights
Small Woman From London
Quicksilver
The Bridge to Miner’s Island
Favorite Window
A Home for Little Wolf

The Long Blue Pencil

By Agnes Ranney

Jimmy was practicing his whistling, walking to school that sunny fall afternoon, when he spied something half hidden in the grass beside the pathway.

“A pencil!” he cried, picking it up. It was long, and bright blue, with a good sharp point. “Say, I can use this!”

He turned it around in his hand. No – there was no name on it. Just a little strip on one side, near the eraser, where the paint had been scraped off. Except for that, the pencil looked as if it had just come from the store. What a fine thing to find! Jimmy put the pencil in his pocket, picked up his tune where he had stopped, and went whistling on to school.

Jimmy was going to use the new pencil to do his numbers, but something happened that made him decide to leave it in his desk. Ricky, the boy behind him, had to ask the teacher for a pencil.

“No pencil again today, Ricky?” Miss Williams said, handing him a stubby blue one from the “lost and found” box.

“I had a pencil,” Ricky said. “A blue one, and it was brand new. I started from home with it, and I – I guess I lost it.”

“Well, do try to bring one tomorrow,” Miss Williams said.

So, thought Jimmy, Ricky had had a new pencil – and he had lost it! But that didn’t mean the pencil he had found was Ricky’s! Sometimes Ricky did walk along the path to school, but most of the time his mother brought him in the car. There was no reason, Jimmy told himself, why he shouldn’t keep the pencil.

But Jimmy left the blue pencil in his desk, and used the short red one from his pencil box. Somehow the numbers didn’t seem to go right. Jimmy kept making mistakes and having to erase. But he scrubbed away with the worn eraser on his old pencil, and didn’t take the blue one from the desk.

“Thou shalt not steal.” The words of last Sunday’s memory verse came to Jimmy from nowhere, it seemed, and at once he thought of the blue pencil.

“But I didn’t steal it!” Jimmy told himself, almost angrily. “I found it, so it’s mine!” But the words of the text kept coming into his mind.

“Rules!” Jimmy thought. “That’s what our teacher told us the Ten Commandments are – God’s rules for living. Seems as if all they tell you is what not to do!”

But he hadn’t broken any of the rules. Or had he? Suddenly Jimmy wished the blue pencil were not there in his desk. Of course he would never really steal anything. But if he kept something that wasn’t his when he had a good idea who the owner might be, wasn’t that the same thing?

At last his number work was done, and it was time for recess. But the jungle gym wasn’t as much fun as usual. Jimmy kept thinking about that long blue pencil and looking at Ricky. He could take the pencil home, and Ricky would never know – if it was Ricky’s.

But you would know, said a little voice deep inside him. And God would know.

Suddenly Jimmy knew what he must do. He was the first one back into the room when the bell rang. He met Ricky at the door, and the pencil was in his hand.

“Ricky -“, he began. He didn’t have a chance to say any more.

“My pencil!” said Ricky, his eyes wide.

“I found it by the path on the way to school,” Jimmy said, handing it to Ricky. Ricky turned it over in his hands.

“That’s mine, all right. See the little spot where Daddy scraped the paint off? He was going to write my name on it, but he had to answer the telephone, and I had to hurry to school. Thanks, Jimmy!” he said happily.

As Jimmy went back to his desk, his heart was strangely light. Now he knew he had done the right thing! He had obeyed God’s law, and he had done the thing that would please the Lord Jesus. The warm feeling in his heart was worth ever so much more than the long blue pencil!

Agnes Ranney wrote hundreds of stories and several books for children from the 1950s through the 1970s. Many of them were published in Sunday School papers. This story was originally published in 1964.

Friend from Forest Park

By Agnes Ranney

ONE WAY. DO NOT ENTER. WALK. DON’T WALK. KEEP OFF THE GRASS. NO BICYCLES. GO. STOP.

So many signs! Colleen stood at the corner, looking up and down the street. She waited for the light to turn green. Then she crossed and was on her way once more toward Central School.

“If I’d been a little faster I could have walked with Robert,” she said to herself. “He’s probably at school by now.” As it was, she walked alone. This was only her third day at Central, for they had come to the city just last week. Colleen found the big city school a little frightening. She longed for the country school she had left, and the big trees and open fields of her old home.

“God made the country, but man made the town.” She had heard that once, and she thought it was true. Everyone was in a hurry here, the traffic noisy, the signs confusing.

She’d have to hurry, or she’d be late. “I should be like my brother,” she went on to herself. “He already knows most of the boys and girls in his class. He thinks streetcars and elevators are fun. He’s as much at home here as he was back in Maplewood.”

But Colleen did not feel at home. The rooms and the children were strange. She forgot her lunch and had to go back. Then she had to stand at the end of the milk line. Only a few minutes of play time were left when the bell rang.

“It doesn’t matter, though,” she thought. “I don’t know anyone to play with.”

Colleen had always liked the walk home from school, back home. She would hear blackbirds singing and killdeers flying over the meadows. Sometimes she would think of God and of what the earth must have looked like when it was first made. But here, the freeway traffic would drown the song of any bird!

“Even God seems far away here,” she thought, as she went up to her room. She only half heard Robert climbing the stairs behind her.

They had been so busy she had not really looked to see what could be seen from her window. Looking down now, Colleen saw a narrow cement walk under her window, with a few shrubs next to the house and a strip of grass between it and the alley. Across the alley was a tiny park with grass and trees. It must have been someone’s garden once, for there was a gnarled old apple tree so big its branches almost reached the window. There were two maple trees, too, with mossy boughs and new green leaves. In the center of the park a round flower bed was bright with columbines and petunias.

“Why, it’s pretty!” Colleen said, throwing open the window.

“Pretty, maybe – but too small for a ball game,” Robert said, behind her. “I wish –“

“Shh!” Colleen said, holding up her hand. There, just outside the window, was a hummingbird! It hovered in the sunshine, so near she could almost touch it. The sun on the feathers of its throat made them glitter with ruby-colored fire. For several seconds it hung there. Then it was gone. But a moment later Colleen saw it again, darting from blossom to blossom in the little flower bed in the park.

“Oh, it’s beautiful!” she said. “And it wasn’t a bit afraid!”

“I never saw one so close,” said Robert.

Every day after that, Colleen watched for the hummingbird. She saw robins, too, and house sparrows, and once a crow. But the hummingbird was her favorite. Sometimes Robert came in to watch with her.

“Why, there are two!” Robert said one morning just before they left for school. Sure enough, a second small object, this one in modest gray-green feathers, had joined the other among the flowers.

“They are a pair,” Colleen agreed. “Wouldn’t it be fun if they built a nest where we could see it?”

School was better now that Colleen had something to look forward to at home. Robert walked home with her that day, and they climbed the stairs together.

“I don’t see the hummingbirds,” Colleen said, looking over the park and the shrubs below.

“Yes – there’s one! On those pink flowers!”

A flash of color told them they were watching the little male bird. But the mother bird was nowhere to be seen.

“I wonder – Oh, look! There she is! I thought she was a twig!” They watched the bird dart away to join her mate. Then Colleen looked back to the branch where she had been.

“Robert – look!” she cried. There, just below the window, was a tiny nest. It was covered with lichens from the tree branches, and the lining looked soft and white like thistle down. Inside were two bean-sized eggs.

“I’d never have seen it if it hadn’t been for the eggs,” Colleen said. “It looks like a knot on the branch.”

Each day, now, she and Robert watched the hummingbirds. The mother rarely left the nest. But once when she was gone they saw that the two eggs were still safe.

“Won’t it be fun when they hatch?” Colleen said.

“I looked up hummingbirds at school,” Robert said. “Their wings move 75 times a second. They weigh only a tenth of an ounce. And they can fly non-stop for five hundred miles!”

“Caw! Caw! Caw!” Colleen jumped, the noise was so close above her head.

“Oh, Robert, look!” she cried. There, just above them on a branch of the apple tree, was a huge crow. Did he have his eye on the nest? Colleen was sure he did. What could they do? She stood there, frozen with fear for the small precious nest.

Then it struck – the little feathered buzz-bomb. Zoom! The little male bird darted close to the crow’s head. Zoom! He came back again, nearer. The crow shook his head. Zoom! This time a black feather left the crow’s neck and floated away through the boughs.

“Caw! Caw!” called the surprised crow. He lifted his black wings. But not fast enough! The bird zoomed by again. His long sharp bill was much too close for the crow.

“Caw!” cried the crow again, and got into the air. He looked clumsy and slow compared with the hummingbird. But he made good time as he flew away through the trees, the hummingbird zipping at him from this side and that as he flew.

“Caw! Caw!” Colleen could barely hear him now above the noise of traffic. Soon the hummingbird was back among the flowers.

Colleen looked down. There sat the little mother on her nest.

“You’re safe, little bird,” Colleen said. Robert went to get his ball and bat, but she stayed there by the window, thinking.

How wonderful that God made the hummingbirds, small as they were, in a way that could keep them safe. To this tiniest of birds he had given great speed and strength of wing, great endurance. Their colors blended with their surroundings. They had sharp beaks to fight off enemies, and courage to face an enemy hundreds of times bigger than themselves.

Colleen knew that thousands of other creatures were as well fitted for their lives as the hummingbird was for his. Many had had to get used to new ways, new surroundings. Look how the birds had made their home here in the middle of the city.

“If God made all things – he made us, too,” Colleen thought. He can keep us, wherever we are. If God can keep the birds here in the city, he can keep me, too. I’m glad I found some friends in Forest Park!”

On Big Bear Mountain

By Agnes Ranney

Frost was one inch thick on twigs and fence wires that morning and sparkled in the sunshine like a million diamonds. The air was nippy and the fields covered with snow, but the sky was clear, the sun strong enough to show that spring was on the way.

I listened to the squeak of the sled runners and watched the trotting horses breathe out little puffs of steam. I was sure there was no place I’d rather be on a Saturday morning than out on the mountain with my chum Ken and my Sunday school teacher, Nels Larsen. We went to bring home a load of logs from Big Bear Mountain.

Ken had been my best friend ever since we moved to Bear Valley. He was the one who first invited me to Sunday school.

“Oh, I guess not,” I said when he asked me. “Sort of seems like it’s for little kids and old ladies.”

“Wait ‘til you meet our teacher, Roger,” Ken said. “He’s no little kid, nor old lady, either.” He grinned, just thinking about it. Out of curiosity, I went with him Sunday morning, and I saw just what he meant.

Nels is about six feet tall, with fair hair and a friendly grin, and the healthy outdoor look of people who live in the country. He knows how to talk to boys – he made the Bible stories come alive. I liked to listen to him, though I didn’t see exactly how the stories applied to me. Nels’ folks have a dairy farm not far from town, and sometimes he takes us boys out there for a picnic or a wiener roast. But best of all are the times like today, when he takes just a couple of us with him to the farm or on some job.

The tree Nels was after was a big pine standing on a slope. A few dead branches near the top showed that it was past its prime. Nels unhitched the team and tied them to the back of the sled where they could reach the hay he’d brought for them, then went to work on the tree. First he made a V-shaped cut with the ax on the side of the trunk toward the slope. Then he got the crosscut saw off the sled.

“Grab the other end of the saw, Roger,” he said, grinning at me. “Now you know why I brought you along.” We started sawing through the big trunk. I wondered why he hadn’t gone on sawing on the side where he’d made the cut with the ax, but I didn’t want to act stupid so I didn’t ask questions. I was soon out of breath, and when Ken begged for a chance to help Nels saw, I was glad to oblige. Nels sawed away, with first me and then Ken on the other end of the saw, until the tree was cut halfway through.

“Time out for lunch!” Nels announced, just when I thought I would collapse from hunger.

“Oh, ham sandwiches!” Ken said.

“And doughnuts, and apples!” I added.

“And am I hungry!” Nels poured steaming cocoa from a big thermos bottle into three thick mugs. It was the best lunch I ever ate.

I was satisfied sitting there against the sun-warmed tree trunk when we’d finished our lunch, and Nels got up too soon to suit me. But he didn’t expect us to go back to work right then.

“I’ve got a log to snake down from over the hill,” he said. Didn’t have time to get it yesterday. Better do it before the snow gets any softer. I’ll be back pretty soon.” He took Dick, one of the big horses, a log chain and a cant hook, and started up the hill. I guess the Vikings didn’t wear old plaid shirts and high boots, but Nels reminded me of one, anyway, as he and Dick disappeared into the timber. I was thinking of what a great fellow he was when I had my idea.

“Hey, Ken,” I said, “let’s finish cutting down this tree!”

“You think we should?” he said. “Nels didn’t tell us to.”

“He didn’t tell us not to,” I answered. “He wants it down, doesn’t he? Let’s finish cutting it down and surprise him!”

Ken was still uncertain, but I talked him into trying. We did surprise Nels – but not in the way we intended.

Ken and I sawed away at the tree trunk, pulling the saw back and forth between us as we’d done with Nels. At first we didn’t seem to make any headway at all, but after a little bit we got the hang of it and we could see that the cut was getting deeper.

“I think we’ll make it!” I panted. “Let’s hurry, before Nels gets back!” We worked faster, forgetting we were tired.

Then suddenly there was a creaking sound, and the big tree sort of shuddered.

“She’s going!” Ken cried. “Run, Roger, run!” He let go the saw handle and started down the hill. I started up the slope. Never once had I considered which way the tree would fall! As I looked at that immense trunk towering over me I was petrified. I had no idea which way to run and I was too frozen with fear to move.

The top branches quivered. Then the tree began falling – slowly, slowly, then faster and faster! It was coming right at me! In my mind I darted this way and that, but actually I was rooted. There was a rending creak, and the trunk got bigger and bigger as it came toward me!

Suddenly something hit me. It knocked me off my feet and half buried me in a snow bank. There was a swish and a thud. The snow swirled up in a white fog in my face as the great tree hit the ground. When the air and my head cleared a little, I saw Nels practically on top of me in the snow – and the rough-barked tree trunk not three feet beyond him!

I was still shaking half an hour later. I didn’t feel much like talking all the way home. I know I would have been killed by that falling tree if Nels hadn’t gotten back in time and pushed me out of the way. I knew he might have been killed doing it. I didn’t know what to say to him.

“Nels, I – I sure want to thank you for getting me out of the way of that tree,” I said finally. It didn’t sound right, but I had to say something. “You sure were brave. Why – you might have been killed!”

“I didn’t stop to think of that,” he said. “All I could think of was getting you out of the way. Never dreamed you kids would try to finish sawing it down. Scared me out of seven year’s growth when I came over the hill and saw the tree topple.”

I saw that tree coming at me in my sleep. I could still see it in Sunday school the next morning. The lesson was about the crucifixion of Christ. As I listened to Nels, I didn’t see him in his tie and dark suit, with his hair combed just right. I saw him in his plaid shirt, with his hair falling over his forehead, pushing me out of the way of the tree.

“He might have been killed,” I thought again. And suddenly I understood what Nels was saying about the Lord Jesus Christ. He was like Nels, who risked his life to save mine.

Only Jesus knew He was going to be killed. He had a long time to think about it, and He loved us enough to choose to give His life for us. This Jesus was gentle and kind – but He was no weakling. It took a strong, brave Man to do what He did.

Somehow it all started making sense. The more I thought about it the more I was sure it took a strong, brave man to follow Jesus the way Nels did. Right then I knew I had decided what to do.

What Good is A Mosquito?

By Agnes Ranney

In any “unpopularity poll” the mosquito would be sure to stand high on the list. Her persistent song and her annoying habit of biting are features of the summer we would gladly give up! But in the far north, even the unpopular mosquito serves a useful purpose.

In the cold reaches of northern Canada and Alaska, the lush pastures of warmer climates are replaced by low growing mosses and lichens. These provide food for the big caribou that roam the tundra as well as for the tiny mouselike lemmings that make their homes in this cold land.

For all their great size, the caribou would soon perish if the lemmings were not kept in check, for these little animals breed so rapidly that the country would soon be overrun with them and the mosses and lichens all eaten. But fortunately for the caribou, the lemmings have enemies, among them tiny shrews, the smallest of the predatory animals. Grown shrews catch and eat the lemmings. But their babies need softer food, and this is where the mosquitoes come in – their larva make up the staple food for the baby shrews! So, in a round-about but very real way, the great caribou is dependent upon the tiny mosquito.

“No wild animal walks on aimless feet,” says naturalist Gene Caesar. The delicate balance of nature appears again and again in the relationships among animals. Long ago, the Indians did little to upset this balance. They killed only the animals they needed, and used every part of those they took. Skins were made into clothing, moccasins, and coverings for their lodges. Tiny sharp bones became needles, horns were carved into spoons and other implements, rabbit hair was used with shredded cedar bark to make a kind of felt cloth.

When the first white men came to America, they found the land teeming with a wealth of wildlife. Sometimes for selfish reasons, sometimes with the best of intentions, they soon began to make changes. In doing so, they discovered some surprising things about the animals which share our world.

Perhaps the trappers made the biggest inroads on the wildlife they found. Three hundred years ago there were some 60 million beavers in North America – more beavers than people! But by 1800 there were few beavers left in New England, and by 1928 they had almost disappeared from the eastern part of the United States. Other animals suffered in proportion as trappers roamed the wilderness in search of the wealth the pelts brought at the fur trading posts.

As the beavers and their dams vanished, flood damage increased. Ponds where ducks and geese had paused to rest drained away, and no longer provided well-watered pasture along their margins for moose and elk. Little by little, the settlers came to realize that the beaver was good for other things besides making beaver hats!

Sometimes it is people who really want to save the animals that do them the most harm. In order to save the deer, wildlife authorities have often offered bounties for the destruction of their natural enemies – cougars, wolves, coyotes. If the deer could have been questioned, they would no doubt have thought this a fine idea.

But it has been discovered that the deer really need these enemies. Without them, they lose their swiftness and wariness, and become less able to look after themselves. When the snow grows deep in the mountains, deer tend to stay together in a small area of trampled snow. When browse is gone, the deer sometimes starve rather than brave the deep snow that lies between them and the slopes where they might find food. An attack by a wolf or wildcat would force them to scatter and so they would find moss or grass to eat. But in places where most of the predators have been killed off, spring often reveals the tragic sight of winter-starved deer.

We are only beginning to understand the delicate balance among animal and animal, and animal and plant life, which is a part of God’s plan for the world. So it is with our own lives. Sometimes the very difficulties we wish we didn’t have to solve prove to be just what we need to push us on to new efforts. Solving hard problems makes us stronger when the next test comes. And we know that nothing comes to us without God’s knowledge. How encouraging to know that the Heavenly Father who notes the sparrow’s fall holds our own lives in His hand!

Agnes Ranney wrote hundreds of stories and several books for children from the 1950s through the 1970s. Many of them were published in Sunday School papers.

Narcissa Whitman – Pioneer Missionary (part 1)

By Agnes Ranney

It was not a very cheerful time for a wedding, that dark Sunday evening in February of 1836. And in the little church in Angelica, New York, the family of Narcissa Prentiss entered into the wedding service with emotions that varied from joy to dark foreboding.

They had nothing against the groom. Ruggedly handsome young Doctor Marcus Whitman looked well able to support and very willing to cherish their beloved Narcissa. If he had planned to settle down with his bride in some small New York town near by they would have been quite happy.

Marcus and Narcissa, however, were firm in their conviction that it was God’s plan that they should take the gospel to the Indians of the far west. Marcus had already made one trip west, and had brought back two Indian boys. But no white woman had yet traveled overland across the continent. The opening of the Oregon Trail was still several years in the future. The west was inhabited by Indians, trappers, mountain men and explorers. Small wonder that Narcissa’s mother was tense and white-faced, that her sisters furtively wiped away their tears as they saw Narcissa’s golden head bowed before the minister, and that her father, Judge Prentiss, found his voice faltering as he led the hymns.

But the bride was happy. By the time the brief ceremony was over her voice alone rose to carry the words of the hymn:

“Can I bid you all farewell?
Can I leave you
Far in heathen lands to dwell?”

Then the wedding was over. It was hard for Narcissa to say good-bye, even though she loved Marcus dearly and the dream of becoming a missionary was one she had held since she was a girl of sixteen. But at last they were off.

They left their home town to the sound of jingling sleigh bells. Narcissa looked back from the crest of the last hill. There was the little white church, the homes dotted about the countryside. Would she ever see them again?

At Pittsburgh, a city of smoky blast furnaces, they took passage on the Siam. Narcissa took in every detail as the river boat swept down the Ohio – the Negroes stoking the furnaces, the black smoke belching from the stacks, the staterooms gaudy with gilt. At raw new settlements she watched families go ashore with their belongings and plunge into the wilderness to make homes.

The docks at Cincinnati were crowded with the products of the new country – corn, pork, hides – to be shipped to New Orleans. Then from the melee on the dock there strode a familiar figure – Henry H. Spalding, who with his wife Eliza was to be their fellow worker. Later William Gray, a lay worker, joined them.

Spalding showed them the sturdy wagon he had built and driven west from New York state. Marcus looked it over approvingly, and saw that it was loaded on the river boat that would take them to St. Louis. St. Louis was a melting pot. Indian chiefs and mountain men, Spanish gentlemen and French Canadians mingled on streets and docks. Here the two missionary couples boarded a steamboat for Liberty, Missouri, 300 miles up the river.

A cluster of houses, a store, a saloon – that was Liberty. Now in early spring it was a sea of mud. For ten long days they waited for the boat that was to take them to Council Bluffs, where they would overtake the fur caravan they would join for the dangerous trip across the plains. Narcissa and Eliza kept busy making a huge striped tent to use on their trip.

At last they could wait no longer. Spalding and Gray with the wagon and livestock started up the west bank of the river to join the caravan while the rest waited for the boat. But the only boat that came was already loaded to capacity.

“We’ll have to buy saddle horses, and a wagon for baggage,” Marcus decided. “We have to reach the caravan before we cross the plains!” At the corrals, Narcissa looked over the mounts. The Indian boys smiled approval when she chose a spirited horse instead of sure-footed mule. She sat her horse proudly, that first morning, her gaze on the horizon where the arch of sky met the sea of grass. But by night she drooped, aching in every muscle.

“You’ll get used to it – each day you’ll find it easier,” Marcus encouraged her. Narcissa did not feel much better by morning when she and Eliza crept stiffly from the striped tent. But by the end of the day things were better, and soon she rode like a veteran of the plains.

They overtook the rest of the missionaries on the south bank of the Platt, thirty miles west of the Missouri. The fur caravan was still four and a half days ahead. Only fast travel would bring them up with it before the hazardous Pawnee country was reached. They rose early and traveled as fast as the Indian boys could get the cattle to move.

The last day they traveled until twilight, stopped briefly to rest and bold a hurried meal, then pushed on. It was one o’clock when they reached the outpost fires of the sleeping camp. On the very edge of the Pawnee country they had caught up with the caravan!

At dawn Narcissa woke to the shouted call: “Arise! Arise! Arise!” Mules brayed, horses neighed, cattle bawled. Narcissa shook the sleep from her eyes and hurried to dress. Soon she was outside with Marcus.

In the caravan were seventy men, four hundred animals and seven huge wagons crammed with goods. Narcissa watched as six-mule teams were hitched to the wagons, pack animals were loaded, cook fires put out. The call to break camp was given, and wagons moved into line. The missionary wagons fell in at the rear, with Mr. Gray and the two Indian boys driving the cattle and Narcissa and Eliza on horseback. The men of the wagon train cast many curious looks at Narcissa and Eliza. But then there was a shouted greeting.

“Why, it’s Doctor Whitman!” someone called. “You cured me of the cholera last year!” There were other salutes as Marcus greeted one after another of the mountain men he had met the year before.

“What shall we do for food, Marcus?” Narcissa asked in a worried tone a few days later. “We’ve hardly started, and the flour is already getting low.”

“You forget the buffalo,” he told her. Soon they sighted the first scattering herd. The animals looked so harmless, for all their clumsy size, that Narcissa and Eliza climbed a small bluff to get a close look at an old bull. Suddenly he raised his head, snorted, and tore past them. It was hard to tell whether the buffalo or the sun-bonneted missionaries were the more startled!

Day followed day and wagon followed wagon, both seeming to crawl at a snail’s pace under the wide arch of sky. But the journey for all its discomforts of heat and cold, was a joy to Narcissa, for she had a natural curiosity and a great capacity for enjoyment. She grew fond of the Indian boy Richard, and learned Nez Perce from him as she helped him with English.

The monotony was broken when Fort Laramie, in what is now Wyoming, came into view. Here the caravan left their wagons and repacked their goods on mules. They reached the South Pass of the Great Divide on the Fourth of July. Narcissa had expected to find herself on some high peak and could hardly believe the gradual slopes had finally brought them to the summit of the Rockies. But it was with excitement that she saw the streams flowing west, and knew that they would finally empty into the great Pacific Ocean.

One morning Narcissa was startled to hear a great clattering of hoofs and a wild shrieking and yelling. Peering through the dust of the wagons she saw a long line of riders, gaudily beaded and feathered, coming at the wagon train. Indians! Where was Marcus? She called him frantically. Then, through the dust, he reached her side.

“This is the welcoming party from the Rendezvous!” he shouted. The Indians rode straight at them, then reined in their mounts at the last minute. There was a greeting of old friends among Indians and mountain men. Then the Indian riders escorted the train a few miles to the Rendezvous in the Green River Valley. Here were the tepees of two thousand Indians – Snakes, Flatheads, Nez Perces – and the camps of four hundred mountain men. They meet here each year to sell furs to the trader and buy the goods he brought from the east.

“And to have a good time,” Marcus added with a grin. It was easy to understand that men who had been alone in the wilderness for a year found the meeting cause for celebration. But it was the Indian women who touched the missionaries.

Dressed in their beautifully beaded white doeskin dresses, they gathered around Narcissa and Eliza. Soon Eliza had a group of them seated around her, reading the Bible to them – though they could not understand a word. They listened raptly, all the same, as though the very Book had a mystic power.

“They really do want us, don’t they, Marcus?” Narcissa said.

The last fur was traded, the last bit of calico bought, and the caravan turned east with its load of furs. The missionary party, guided by two British fur traders, once more turned west. At the beginning of August they reached Fort Hall. Now the trail followed the banks of the wild Snake River that swings across the southern part of what is now Idaho. Steep and rocky slopes, heat, mosquitoes – these Narcissa was to remember about the Snake River country. At Snake Fort, near what is now Boise, they rested briefly. Ten days more brought them to the rim of the Grande Ronde valley, where the Indians came to dig the blue-flowered camas. Beyond, the Blue Mountains proved a welcome change after the miles of desert. In the cool gloom of fir forests Narcissa saw flowers and birds that reminded her of home.

September 1 found the party at Fort Walla Walla, where the French Canadian factor’s Indian wife served them a breakfast of fresh salmon, potatoes, tea, bread and butter and muskmelon. Just to sit in a chair and eat from a table, Narcissa thought, was a delight, and the food a luxury after a diet of dried buffalo meat.

The trail’s end was near. The missionaries must decide on a mission site. But they would need supplies, which must come from Ft. Vancouver, 300 miles down the Columbia. They went by boat, delighting in the ferny coolness of the gorge.

At Ft. Vancouver they found flags flying on the fort and a British ship at anchor. Dr. John McLoughlin, the tall white-haired chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, stood on the dock to welcome them.

“Is it a holiday?” Narcissa asked, glancing at the flags.

“Those flags are flying in honor of you and Mrs. Spalding,” said Dr. McLoughlin with a smile. “You are the first white women to descend the Columbia River!”

Eliza and Narcissa stayed at the fort while Marcus and Henry Spalding looked for a mission site. When word came at last from the men, they made the boat trip back up the river to Walla Walla. It had been decided that two separate missions would be started. The Spaldings would go to Lapwai, near what is now Lewiston, Idaho, to work among the Nez Perce. Marcus and Narcissa would work among the Cayuse Indians, twenty-five miles north of Fort Walla Walla.

Once more Narcissa was on horseback, for the last stage of the journey. It was December 10, 1836, when she rode with Marcus to Waiilatpu – the Place of the Rye Grass – and caught her first glimpse of the little house among the trees on the peninsula formed by the branches of the Walla Walla River. Through the dusk she could see their trail-weary cattle, already fattening on the rye grass along the river.

At the cabin, Marcus held aside the blanket that served for a front door. A fire blazed on the hearth.

“Our own home at last, Marcus!” Narcissa exclaimed. “I don’t know how you’ve done so much in so little time!”

“But it’s not finished – no doors or windows, not even a chair or a table!”

It didn’t matter. The mission would be completed in time, a source of learning for the Indians and of comfort for the white people who would follow the missionaries on the long trail west. Narcissa could hardly imagine what toil and loneliness, what joys and satisfactions awaited them here. Nor could she guess that, years later, they would be called upon to lay down their very lives. For now, it was enough that she stood shoulder to shoulder with the man she loved, a partner in the great task of taking to the Indians the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Agnes Ranney wrote hundreds of stories and several books for children from the 1950s through the 1970s. Many of them were published in Sunday School papers.

Narcissa Whitman – Pioneer Missionary (part 2)

By Agnes Ranney

Narcissa gazed in pity at the little girl in front of her. The child’s dress hung in tatters. The wide dark eyes peered out fearfully from a small face framed by tangled black hair.

“Whose child is this?” she asked.

“Mine, Ma’am. She’s Helen Mar Meek. Her maw – my second Indian wife – ran away.”

The woman was Narcissa Whitman, wife of the missionary doctor Marcus Whitman and one of the first two white women to cross the plains to the Oregon Territory. The man was Joe Meek, famed mountain man, trapper, and Indian fighter. The year was 1840, and the mission at Waiilatpu had been established only four years before. The Oregon Trail was yet unheard of, but the heyday of the fur trappers had ended with the disbanding of the American Fur Company. Now Joe Meek and his group had stopped at the mission on their way to the Willamette Valley.

There was no place in the two battered wagons for a small motherless girl. Joe begged Narcissa to take the little girl and “civilize” her.

Narcissa looked at the weathered face of the buckskin clad trapper and remembered how the mountain man had helped the missionaries on their trip across the plains four years earlier. Then she looked at the bedraggled child and her heart was moved with compassion. She agreed to keep little Helen Mar.

“Whatever can she wear?” Narcissa pondered, when she had scrubbed, disinfected, shampooed and combed the frightened, reluctant child. The thought of the little dresses sent from her mother and sisters in far-off New York to her own little Alice brought the familiar pang, though it was over a year ago that her tiny daughter had drowned in the river. She could see Alice now as she had looked that June Sunday – a happy, rosy, blue-eyed child just past her second birthday, dressed for the morning service in a starched blue and white frock. The high sweet voice had joined with hers in “Rock of Ages.” Then, that very afternoon, little Alice had wandered off in her play and been drowned in the Walla Walla River.

Only hearts as deeply trusting as those of Narcissa and Marcus could accept the cruel loss of their only child as the will of God. Now, looking into the dark eyes of the little half-breed girl, so different from those of her own child, Narcissa’s mother heart was touched. She went to the trunk where the little clothes were stored, chose a bright dress, and found a gay ribbon for the black hair. A little later Narcissa took Helen Mar’s hand in hers.

“Come dear, we’ll go see your father.” Passively the child went with her. Joe Meek stared at his daughter.

“Why, Mrs. Whitman!” he cried. “She’s pretty!”

“Narcissa,” Marcus said as he saw her with the little girl, “this is just the first of many children you’ll be mothering.”

He spoke the truth. Little Helen Mar had a companion when Jim Bridger, Joe Meek’s former captain, brought his six-year-old daughter Mary Anne to Narcissa. Soon the two little half-Indian girls were learning to sew and keep house, to sing hymns in the Sunday services, and to know the joys of living in a real home.

Some months later, one snowy March day when Marcus was away, two Indian women came to the mission. With them was a little half-breed boy whom they begged Narcissa to adopt. His Spanish father was away in the mountains and his Indian mother had abandoned him. His small body shivered under the scrap of antelope skin that was his only covering. Narcissa looked into the soft frightened eyes.

“I cannot harden my heart against him,” she said at last. She washed, fed and clothed him. Little by little, love won his heart. By the time Marcus returned three weeks later the little boy had a firm place in Narcissa’s home. But what would Marcus say to this new addition to the family?

In long blue pantaloons and clean white shirt, the little boy watched in silence as the doctor was greeted by the little girls and the mission Indians. Then, as the big man turned to him, the dark eyes lighted. He spoke with a soft accent.

“Good day!” he said. Marcus took the small hand in his, his heart won by the little waif of the wilderness.

“I’m glad our children aren’t all to be girls!” he said, his eyes meeting Narcissa’s over the heads of the children.

“I’m calling him David Mallin after a childhood friend,” Narcissa told him. “He’s already learning to sing the hymns.”

In the winter of 1842 Marcus went east – the first such journey to be attempted in the winter. He had two reasons for haste. One was a startling letter from the American Board, which had sent him to the Oregon country. The letter directed that the mission be closed. It was a long way from the missionary office on Beacon Hill to the mission at Waiilatpu, Marcus and Narcissa told each other. How could they expect the members of the Board to understand that they must keep the mission open? A letter explaining their position might be effective. But the letter would have to go down the Columbia to Ft. Vancouver, then by ship around Cape Horn, with perhaps a side trip to the Sandwich Islands – Hawaii – as well. An answer could not be expected for a year. If Marcus could only talk to the Board! Surely he could make them understand that the work had only begun.

It was September. No one had heard of making the trip so late in the year. But this did not stop Marcus, for there was another reason he wanted to go East. The Oregon country was claimed by both England and the United States, and would belong to the nation that settled it first. Most easterners were vague about the value of Oregon to the United States, and there was talk that it might be traded to England for the Newfoundland fisheries. Marcus was determined to go to Washington and show the president that now was the time to claim the Oregon country for the United States.

Asa Lovejoy, one of the settlers who had brought the letter, agreed to return east with Marcus. They set out on October 3, hoping to reach St. Louis by Christmas. Bad weather and reports of hostile Indians forced them to choose a southern route. They grew used to cold and hunger. They forded icy rivers. It was March before they arrived in St. Louis. Later in the month, in the worn buffalo coat, fur cap and leather pants in which he had ridden across America, Marcus appeared before the Board.

The Board was startled. But after Marcus finished the story of the mission, it reversed its ruling about closing the mission.

Marcus also saw President Tyler. If he could open a wagon road to Oregon by leading an emigrant train across the mountains within the next year, the president told him, he would withhold any action that would give Oregon to the British.

By May, when the grass was growing on the prairie, the wagon train was ready to go. One hundred and eleven wagons, with over a thousand persons and two thousand animals left Independence, Missouri that May of 1843. It was the first Great Migration – the migration that opened the Oregon Trail.

No one was more excited than Perrin Whitman, Marcus’s 13-year-old nephew, who was to return to the mission with his uncle. Perrin was quick to learn and took in every detail along the way. At Waiilatpu, Narcissa greeted him warmly.

“Perrin Whitman!” she cried, “I’d know you in a moment, you look so like your uncle!”

“It’s true what they said about Aunt Narcissa!” Perrin blurted in a voice that was changing. “You are pretty!” Thus a son was added to the family. He quickly picked up the Nez Perce language used to teach the Indians, and was soon reading the scriptures at Sunday services.

By this time the mission was a beehive of activity. For hundreds of travelers it was combined campsite, store and information center. Some, because of illness or other reasons, spent weeks or even months at the mission. The school room, the blacksmith shop, even the kitchen had to furnish sleeping quarters.

Much of Narcissa’s work was taken for granted. Some of the travelers forgot to say thank you. But now and then someone like the boy named Nichols, who spent the winter at the mission, gave a lift to her spirits.

“Mrs. Whitman,” said the boy, just before he and his party left in the spring, “I’ll always remember how you are with the children. Coming in on that emigrant train, one meets a lot of roughness. I got to talking pretty rough myself. But Waiilatpu gentles people again. I’ll never forget the Sunday services,” he finished, half shyly, “and the wonderful prayers you’ve offered.”

In the spring the travelers went their ways. But there would be another horde to care for in the fall. September came and went, the crops were harvested and stored, and mission life settled down to relative quiet. But not for long.

Soon after October 1, wagons began to arrive. Marcus worked early and late, finding space for tents, giving out supplies, treating the ill and injured. Narcissa was equally busy. Besides little Helen Meek and Mary Anne Bridger, David Mallin, Perrin, Marcus and herself, the household consisted of two Methodist preachers, a blacksmith, a hatter and a school teacher. She baked bread, churned butter, washed and ironed clothes, cleaned and mended. And there was the school work and the Sunday services.

But this was not to be all. Near the end of the month the last emigrant train arrived, and the captain came to Narcissa.

“Ma’am,” he said, watching her stir a big kettle of stew on the stove,” “there’s a family of seven orphan children coming along. One’s a tiny baby. Their folks died of dysentery on the way. They sure do need a mother. I hope you can keep them.”

Seven children! Narcissa’s heart sank. How could she take care of seven more children?

Soon the children appeared. John, in the tatters of a red flannel shirt and buckskin trousers, had a worn face that looked far older than his fourteen years. His brother Francis, just as ragged, was twelve. Then there were Catherine, Elizabeth, Mathilda June, and Hannah Louise – all of them filthy and in rags, their faces pinched and sad. But it was the wolfskin bundle on John’s arm that drew Narcissa. She pulled aside the corner and gave a gasp of pity.

“Oh, the poor little baby! She’s too weak even to cry!”

Narcissa took the baby and shepherded the other children into the house. To the amazement of Mary Anne and Helen Mar, who were now quite proper little ladies, she seated the children at the table and fed them stew and bread and butter without even asking them to wash their hands. Later would come the task of bathing them and finding them clean clothing and places to sleep.

Before long the baby was in a warm bath. Then Narcissa wrapped her in a clean blanket and dripped warm milk between her blue lips. Only then was there a spark of life – a gasp, a flutter of movement to show that she still breathed. John threw his arms around Narcissa’s knees and burst into tears.

Late that night, when the last child was clean and fed and tucked into bed, Narcissa sat with the baby in her arms. Her eyes met her husband’s over the sleeping form of John, who had been unwilling even now to leave the baby sister he had cared for for five months.

“I love them already, Marcus,” she said. “I want to keep them.” Marcus thought of the burdens she already carried and shook his head.

“Not the baby, dear, I’m afraid,” he said. “The care of a tiny baby on top of everything else – it would be too much.”

“Yes, the baby, too,” Narcissa said softly. “I want her as a charm to bind the others to me.”

The Whitmans did keep the Sager children, all seven of them, adopting them as their own. John and Francis were a joy to Marcus as they helped with the farm and mission work, and the four little girls blossomed into happy, healthy children. In a year the pitiful baby – Henrietta, they named her – was a sturdy, venturesome toddler. How many times Narcissa, watching her, must of thought of Alice!

Marcus and Narcissa could not see ahead to the disaster that was to come only a few years later. In the fall of 1847 a measles epidemic broke out. It stuck whites and Indians alike, but the Indians had little resistance to the white man’s disease. Though Marcus worked in the tepees night and day, many Indian children died. A few of the Cayuses became convinced that the doctor was poisoning their children.

One gray November afternoon two Cayuse braves came to the mission asking for medicine. The doctor turned to get it. A tomahawk flashed, and Marcus Whitman lay dying. Thus began the massacre that ended with some fourteen people, including Narcissa, dead, and whites and most of the Indians horrified.

But now the mission was full – beds were in every corner, and there were thirteen at the table on even the few occasions when only the family were at home. Narcissa’s heart was full, too – full of her love for the children, and for the Lord Jesus, who said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.”

Agnes Ranney wrote hundreds of stories and several books for children from the 1950s through the 1970s. Many of them were published in Sunday School papers.

Go to the Ant

by Agnes Ranney

When we think of King Solomon, we think of the costly and beautiful temple he built, of his many wives, and of his great palaces and gorgeous clothing. But we should also remember how God, in answer to Solomon’s request for an understanding heart, “gave Solomon wisdom and understanding. … Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt … And he spoke of trees … also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.”

Part of Solomon’s wisdom came because he was a careful observer of the world around him. “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise; which having no guide, overseer, or ruler provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest,” Solomon writes in Proverbs 6:6-8. Just how the little ant does this has intrigued wise men for centuries!

Ants do many wonderful things. They build houses of tremendous size and construct in them hundreds of rooms and miles of tunnels. They care for their young and make war on their enemies. But perhaps the most fascinating of all their activities is the very thing Solomon spoke of – their provision of food.

The agricultural ants of Texas destroy all growing things near their home except a certain kind of grass: ant-rice. They let this grow to maturity, carefully nipping off any other kind of plant that comes up. When the ant-rice seeds are ripe, the ants gather them and carry them to their granaries below the ground.

Harvesting ants are fond of corn, grain, and flower seeds. But in their granaries where it is moist and dark, the stored seeds may start to sprout. If allowed to form long sprouts, they would soon be spoiled as food for the ants.

But the ants let the seeds form only a small sprout – just enough the change the composition of the seed and change some of the starch to sugar. Then they bite off the sprout and carry the grain into the sun to dry. Back in the underground storehouse, the seeds treated in this way stay fresh and sweet all winter, a food supply for hundreds of hungry ants.

The parasol ants grow underground vegetable gardens. They cultivate a kind of mushroom that thrives under the ground where it is damp and dark. But this mushroom needs fresh green leaves on which to grow. The ants carry these into their tunnels, marching along with the leaves overhead like small parasols.

Hung on the ceilings of the tunnels, the leaves are soon covered with the growth called mushroom cotton. Treated in a special way by the ants, the cotton grows clear, shiny beads of a mysterious substance that the ants find both delicious and nourishing.

But most interesting of all, perhaps, are the ants that keep “dairy farms.” All ants are fond of sweet things, and will eat sugar, syrup, bruised ripe fruit, or the nectar of flowers if they can get it. But the favorite sweet of many ants is honey dew, the sweet syrupy liquid made in the bodies of aphids, or plant lice. The ants get the honey dew by fondling and patting the small aphids until the liquid oozes out in little droplets on the aphid’s body. Then the ant sucks it up.

In order to be sure of a growing dairy herd the ants care for the eggs and young of the aphids as carefully as they do for their own, carrying them to safety in their underground tunnels in winter and up to be warmed by the sun in the spring. If enemy ants invade the nest, some of the workers seize the young aphids and carry them to a place of safety, along with their own immature young.

But even these measures do not satisfy some ants. Hungry wrens or chickadees might make serious raids on the herd if it were left unprotected, they seem to think; so they carry the aphids underground, and turn them out to graze on the roots of plants – corn is one of their favorites. The aphids to not seem to mind the darkness, but continue to produce honey dew as willingly as ever.

One type of honey-loving ant has a most surprising storage system. Living ants are the storage bottles! The ant who is to have this strange job begins when she is young, before the armor on her body becomes hard. Then her skin is flexible and can stretch. She hangs by her front feet from the ceiling, and accepts all the surplus honey she can hold from the worker ants who bring it to her. The rear section of her body stretches and stretches until it is as round and smooth as a grape. Then when honey dew becomes scarce she is ready to give a drink to any other ant who is hungry.

We can hardly hope to become “as wise as Solomon,” but if we keep our eyes and ears and minds open when we are outdoors we can learn a great deal about the fascinating beings that share the wonderful world God has given all His creatures for their home.

Agnes Ranney wrote hundreds of stories and several books for children from the 1950s through the 1970s. Many of them were published in Sunday School papers.

Light Out of Darkness

By Agnes Ranney

Until late in the eighteenth century the blind were considered hopelessly handicapped. Unless the family of a blind person was able to take care of him, his only means of support was to beg on the streets.

The honesty of a blind beggar in France was the spark of light that led to hope for all the blind in the world. A man named Valentin Hauy, who had for a long time been concerned with the misfortunes of blind people, stopped to hand a coin to a blind beggar. He had gone only a few steps when the blind man called him back.

“You have made a mistake, sir,” he said. “You have given me a crown instead of a penny.”

“Why, how can you tell?” Valentin asked, astonished, for the two coins were almost the same size.

“Oh,” said the beggar, “it is enough for me to pass my finger over it.”

This was the spark of inspiration to Valentin Hauy. If this blind beggar could distinguish at a touch the raised figures on the coin, why could not the blind man learn to read by the use of raised letters?

Valentin set to work and invented a method for teaching the blind to read. His first pupil was a blind boy who had begged at a church door. Soon Valentin was able to show the public what the boy could do. People were amazed when they saw the boy reading by passing his fingertips over raised letters; and they were glad to give money toward building the first school for the blind. It was established by Valentin Hauy in Paris in 1784.

One of the pupils at the school was Louis Braille, who later invented the system of raised points which has come to be used almost entirely by blind people.

The first school for the blind in America was opened in Boston, Massachusetts in 1829. It was here that Anne Sullivan, who was to become Helen Keller’s teacher, learned the method of teaching blind people. Helen Keller, in turn, has helped establish schools for the blind all over the world.

How little did the blind beggar in France know how much his act of honesty would mean to others afflicted as he was! Yet God used that small act to bring light into the dark world of the blind.

Agnes Ranney wrote hundreds of stories and several books for children from the 1950s through the 1970s. Many of them were published in Sunday School papers. This article was published in The High School Signal in 1964.

He Keeps the Lower Lights

By Agnes Ranney

“Brightly beams our Father’s mercy
From His lighthouse evermore,
But to us He gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore!”

Even to one brought up in an inland valley far from the ocean, the words of the old song bring visions of stormy nights with wild waves beating against treacherous coasts. And when you stand on a rocky beach with the spray in your face and the taste of salt on your lips as you look out across the darkening Pacific, you know that “lower lights” are as needful as ever!

If you’re on an Oregon beach, one of the keepers of those lights is Commander Roy Gill, captain of the Coast Guard cutter Mallow. Captain Gill lives with his wife and their three children in Astoria, Oregon, where they go to the First Baptist Church. Mrs. Gill has charge of 30 or 35 youngsters in Junior Church, and the captain has a class of high school young people.

Astoria, close to the mouth of the Columbia River, was the first settlement in the Columbia River Valley. Captain Gill’s Mallow is one of three vessels known as buoy tenders based at the Tongue Point Coast Guard station near Astoria.

“Oregon has some of the roughest and most treacherous coast you can find anywhere,” Captain Gill says. “Over 250 miles of it. Strung along the coast are nearly 70 light buoys-the “lower lights” that guide the skippers of all the vessels, from big freighters to tiny sail boats, that enter Oregon ports. Our biggest job is keeping these buoys in good working order and in their proper places.”

The larger buoys weigh about fifteen tons and measure ten by 39 feet. A heavy steel framework holds the battery powered light. A concrete “sinker” keeps the buoy upright and in position.

Each buoy has a gong or a whistle. The motion of the waves rings the gong by rocking the buoy. It also operates the whistle. As the wave raises the buoy high in the water, it fills with air. As it sinks, the air is forced out through the whistle.

Buoys are painted black or red, according to whether they mark the right or the left side of the channel into port. Lights may be flashing or steady, or perhaps a steady gleam and then a series of flashes.

“When a sailor sights a buoy, he can look at his chart and tell exactly where he is,” says Captain Gill. “By the color of the buoy, the tone of the gong or whistle, and the light, he knows just where he is located and where he can look for the next buoy.”

To make sure that the buoys are really reliable, the crew of the of the Mallow or one of her sister ships checks each buoy often. Once a year each buoy is completely serviced. If it doesn’t need too many repairs, it is hoisted to the deck of the cutter, painted and repaired, fitted with freshly charged batteries, and put back into position. Buoys may be very close to the beach or as much as a mile off shore.

But if the buoy needs more work, it is replaced by another and hauled back to Tongue Point for a real going-over. When this is finished and the buoy is back in service, it should take care of itself for another year. But a sudden storm can quickly undo the crew’s hard work.

In the living room of the house on Pleasant Avenue in Astoria, where the Gills live, is a large picture window. “The first time a real storm blew in from the Pacific, I could see that window bulging inward,” Mrs. Gill recalls with a smile. “I could just see that glass shattering all over the living room floor, and I scooted the children into that other room. Remembering that our house overlooks what is known as the ‘Graveyard of the Pacific’ didn’t make me feel any better about Roy being out in the storm, either! The window hasn’t shattered yet, though, and we’ve had some pretty bad storms. But I feel better since I bought drapes to cover it. Now I can’t see the glass bend when a seventy-mile gust strikes the house!” All the same, she knows that a storm means a busy time for the captain and his crew the next day.

“Calls come in from fishermen, Navy planes, and people who live along the coast, reporting buoys that have broken loose from their moorings,” Captain Gill says. “Then we have to round them up-like stray cattle after a stampede. Maybe we’ll find a buoy bobbing along ten miles from shore, with the light and the bell still working. You can imagine what that would do to a skipper who expected that particular buoy to be half a mile off shore! We have to hoist it aboard and haul it back to where it belongs.

“Some buoys wash up onto the beach. We found one with the heavy chain still attached. The chain had worked itself so deep into the sand I thought we’d have to abandon the buoy. We got a line on it and poured on all our power, and still it wouldn’t budge. But every time we went down the coast we’d stop and work on it, see-sawing back and forth. At last we pulled it loose! Buoys cost several thousand dollars, so we don’t like to see one get away!”

Commander Gill has other duties, too. Is a fishing boat in trouble? A cruiser caught in a sudden squall? A “land-lubber” tourist caught on an off-shore rock by the incoming tide? Call the Coast Guard! The search-and-rescue vessel will respond if it is not already out on a mission. But if the Mallow is closer to the scene of the emergency, it speeds to the rescue.

Coast Guard officers also inspect small boats to see that they have the proper life-saving and fire-fighting equipment, and warn their skippers if they seem to be heading for trouble. But advice is not always welcome.

“I remember one fellow with a motor boat,” the captain recalls. “He was used to boating on a little lake. He had his wife and a friend along, and they were bound to go fishing.

“Fog hung over the ocean, and there was a deep swell off shore. ‘You’ll never get beyond the end of the jetty,’ we told him. ‘And look how thick the fog is.’”

“’Oh, the fog will lift,’ he said, ‘and the ocean doesn’t look so bad to me.’ I turned away from him for a moment, and when I looked back he was gone. But we were right. he didn’t get beyond the jetty – a wave upended his boat and tossed them all into the sea. In spite of us, he and one of his passengers were drowned. Only one person was saved.”

In the back of Captain Gill’s mind there is always another lesson of “lower light.” For the young men in the Mallow’s crew, many of them away from home for the first time, sometimes find themselves in trouble. With patience and understanding – remembering the loneliness of his own young manhood after he lost his mother at the age of ten – the captain tries to point them to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only real and lasting answer to their problems.

Like the fisherman, they can go their own way, just as sailors can ignore the light buoys and trust themselves to find the safe channels and avoid the danger of hidden rocks. But many of these young men have been drawn to the Light of the World by the life and words of their Christian commander, one of the faithful keepers of the lights along the shore.

Agnes Ranney wrote hundreds of stories and several books for children from the 1950s through the 1970s. Many of them were published in Sunday School papers. This story was published in Power and Counselor in 1963.

Small Woman from London

By Agnes Ranney

Many missionaries have gone to China. But not one has gone as did Gladys Aylward – self-trained, her passage earned from her work as a parlormaid in London, her journey to the mission field taken through Russia in the midst of a war. For Gladys put Christ first in her life, and nothing would keep her from following Him.

Gladys was 26 when she was determined to go to China. She had no education, no money. Well, she would train herself! In Hyde Park, on her day off, she stood on a soapbox and told all who would listen of Jesus Christ. As she spoke, she thought of far-off China and wondered when she would be able to preach to crowds of Chinese people.

Money for her passage? That, too, she would provide! She went to a travel agency.

“The cheapest route? That would be overland through Russia to Tientsin via the Trans-Siberian Railway. Fare 47 pounds 10 shillings. But just now it is impossible to travel that route – Russia and China are at war!”

“I don’t really care about a war. If you’ll just book me a passage, I’ll pay you these three pounds on account and as much as I can every week,” Gladys said calmly. The clerk looked at her, amazed at the nerve of this five-foot girl.

“We do not,” he said, “like to deliver our customers dead!“

But Gladys won him over. Each week she paid every penny she could spare toward the ticket. Then a friend told her of Mrs. Jeannie Lawson, an elderly missionary in China who was looking for some younger woman to carry on her work.

“That’s me!” Gladys cried. “That’s me!” She wrote Mrs. Lawson at once. Could she join her?

Now she worked harder than ever to save the ticket money, working evenings and on her day off to earn a few extra shillings. Then came the letter from China! If she could get to Tientsin by herself, a messenger would take her to Mrs. Lawson!

“I’m going to China!” she told her friends. “I’m going to China!”

On Saturday, October 18, 1930, Gladys set off for China. She had ninepence in coin and a two-pound traveler’s check; an old fur coat made into a rug; and two suitcases, one with her clothes and the other stocked with canned fish and beef, crackers, coffee and tea, and a tiny alcohol stove. A kettle and a saucepan were tied jauntily to the handle.

Through Germany, Poland, the Steppes of Russia and across Siberia rattled the trains in which Gladys rode, wrapped in her fur rug and making sparing meals from her meager food supply. In Japan, kind missionaries housed her and found her passage on a Japanese ship. At last she set foot on the land she had dreamed of for so long – China! But her journey was not over. At the Tientsin mission they told her that Mrs. Lawson was at Yangcheng in north China. A month later, after traveling through the wild country by train, ramshackle bus and muleback, she reached Yangcheng.

Mrs. Lawson, a small, white-haired lady, met them at the mission door. Gladys ate ravenously of the noodles and chopped vegetables ladled into her bowl by Yang, the Chinese cook. After the meal she went to get her baggage off the mule. A group of Chinese children saw her and fled, howling. Two women picked up pieces of dried mud and flung at them.

“It happens to me every time I go out,” Mrs. Lawson told her calmly. “They hate us here. You’ll have to get used to it.”

“I’ve just rented this place,” she told Gladys a little later. “Got it cheap – I was able to pay the rent for a year. When the doors and windows are mended and the roof repaired, it will be quite livable. But how can we reach the people?”

“If we could only talk with the muleteers!” Gladys said. “They would carry our message all through the province!”

“That’s it – we’ll open an inn! Our house was built to be an inn – there’s room for at least 50 men. We already have a cook. Once we’ve got them inside we can tell them the gospel stories – the Chinese love stories.”

At last the inn was ready. The smell of Yang’s good food wafted through the rooms. But no one came.

“They don’t trust us,” Mrs. Lawson said. She pointed at Gladys. “You must drag them in!”

“Drag them in?”

“When the muleteer comes down the street, the innkeeper grabs the lead mule’s bridle and drags it toward his own inn. The other mules are tethered behind – they have to follow. You must lead in the first mule!”

So the parlor maid from London waited with fast-beating heart for the first mule train. Clip-clop! Clip-clop! Down the cobbled street they came. Gladys grabbed for the bridle. Soon the startled muleteers found themselves in the court of the Inn of Sixth Happiness. Yang hurried out.

“The foreign ladies will give you good food. And they will tell you stories – free of charge!” he hurried to explain. The men had little choice – nothing could make the mules budge before sunrise. As Yang brought in the steaming bowls of food, Mrs. Lawson perched on a stool.

“I want to tell you a story you will enjoy,” she said cheerfully, ignoring the suspicious looks on the dark faces. “It is about a man named Jesus Christ who lived a long time ago in a faraway country called Palestine. . . .”

There were many stories after that. Gladys learned the language, and at last the day came when she could take her turn telling the gospel stories – as she had to the crowds in London, long ago.

Sadness came with Jeannie Lawson’s sudden death. Could Gladys carry on alone? She did carry on, slowly winning the confidence of the Chinese people in the city. At last, on a triumphant day, the Mandarin himself called her to tell her that he had decided to become a Christian.

War came. Bombs leveled part of the city. It was Gladys who took charge of caring for the wounded. Later, she led a hundred Chinese children on an unbelievably long and dangerous trip across mountains and rivers to safety in Fufeng.

Gladys Aylward is still doing God’s work. Like Paul, she “counts not her life dear to herself.” Perhaps she remembers that day in London, when she first determined to give her life to God. Placing her few coins on her Bible, she cried: “Oh, God, here’s my Bible. Here’s my money. Here’s me. Use me, God!” The lives of thousands of Christians, in China and elsewhere, testify to God’s use of Gladys Aylward.

Quicksilver

By Agnes Ranney

THE FIRST TIME I saw the black mare I knew what her name would be. And I knew that somehow, sometime, she had to be mine. It didn’t make sense, of course. I was an orphan, working to earn my keep and money for school expenses. I had about as much chance of owning a horse as I had of being the first man on the moon. But that didn’t keep me from dreaming.

It was July, about 9:30 in the evening. I’d gone up to the hill pasture to turn old Rosie into the corral by the barn. A big silver moon was riding high over the live oaks at the top of the hill and lighting up the slope below.

Rosie wasn’t in the open, I could see that. So I was rambling around, peering into the shadows thrown across the hillside by the clumps of wild rose and blackberry vines.

“So, boss! So, boss!” I called, as I’d heard Mr. Karlson do. Then I saw her. Not Rosie — the black mare.

She came trotting down the hill, along the rail fence, from the shadow of the oaks. Her head was up, her ears pricked forward, her mane and tail flowing out in the breeze. She snorted softly when she saw me. Then she stopped and swung around, wary but curious, to get a good look. The moonlight washed over her, making little dancing lights where the muscles rippled under her glossy coat. Right then I knew her name — Quicksilver.

“What a beauty!” I said softly. “Where did you come from?” The mare wheeled and dashed up the hill again. But soon she circled back, closer this time, as if she thought we were having a great game. I kept talking to her every time she came near, and soon I had her smelling my fingers. She let me pet her and nuzzled at my shoulder.

It was getting late. I had to find Rosie. And I was burning up with curiosity as to where Mr. Karlson had come by the mare. I found the cow down by the creek and herded her into the corral. Quicksilver nickered to me as I swung the gate shut behind me.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” I promised, and she put her head over the gate for a final pat. When I got to the house Mrs. Karlson had gone to bed, and Mr. Karlson was reading the evening paper.

“Say, Mr. Karlson, there’s a dandy little black mare up there in the hill pasture,” I said. “I never saw her before. Is she supposed to be there?” Mr. Karlson is a tall, raw-boned man of few words. But the few he said dashed my hopes that the mare might be there to stay.

“Only until I sell her,” he said. “Man owed me some money he couldn’t pay. Offered me the mare instead. I took her rather than nothing. I’ll get part of the money, anyway, if I find someone who wants her.”

“But why sell her?” I asked. “Even I can see that she’s a little beauty! She’d make a keen saddle horse.”

Mr. Karlson gave me along straight look from under iron gray brows. Never in the weeks I’d been with the Karlsons had I given him a suggestion. I’d done my best to do what he wanted done, which was right as long as I was working for him. But I was so excited about the mare I forgot myself. I guess it surprised him.

“We’ve no use for a saddle horse, Bruce,” he said quietly. And that was that.

In bed in my room upstairs I dreamed about Quicksilver. Oh, I knew I was only dreaming — there was no hope of really owning her. But I was used to dreaming.

One longing 1’d had ever since I could remember was the desire to belong to someone. I was only four when I became an orphan — too little to remember much about my parents, too old to appeal to couples who wanted to adopt a baby. So I grew up at the Children’s Home. They were good to us there, and we had lots of fun. But I never quite stopped hoping that someday I’d get to live in a real home.

That was one reason I was so glad for the chance to spend the summer with the Karlsons. I’d get my room and board and enough money to buy clothes and books for school. But the best thing about it was that they lived on a farm. My imagination ran away with me again as I formed mental pictures of a red-faced farmer and his jolly wife, maybe with some children younger than I, all of us a big happy family. I saw myself playing with a dog in a big yard under some trees, going swimming in a creek, riding horseback. Especially riding horseback. But it was a picture I had to revise when I met the Karlsons, who came to the Home the Saturday after school was out to take me to the farm.

They lived about four miles out of town on a big dairy farm. The house looked well taken care of, and the big dairy barn and cow sheds were really up-to-date. The fences were in good repair, the fields lush and green, the Jersey cows sleek and contented.

“Anyone sure would be happy to live on a neat farm like this,” I thought as we drove up to the house under the big oak trees. But the Karlsons were a somber, hard-working couple who didn’t seem to get much pleasure out of life. They had no children and did all their own work except for some help in haying time. I was the first regular hand they’d had. Mr. Karlson had built up a fine herd of registered Jerseys and only last summer had finished the big new barn.

There’s plenty of work on a farm like that. Considering how green I was, having to learn everything from scratch, Mr. Karlson was pretty patient. I learned to run the milker, take care of the cows, drive the tractor, irrigate the pastures, and help put up hay. Mr. Karlson never got angry when I did things wrong. He just told me what I should have done. But if only he’d say something, once in awhile, when I did things right!

“What do you think they hired you for — to make you happy?” I asked myself. “You’re here to work, boy — and lucky to be here!” I tried to forget my daydreams and concentrate on learning my job.

One thing I looked forward to was Sunday school and church. The Karlsons went every Sunday, and they seemed really glad, in their sober way, that I was a Christian and wanted to go too. I soon got to know a friendly bunch of live-wire young folks who helped take the place of the kids at the Home. I missed them, even though I liked it on the farm. But I was too busy, most of the time, to think whether I was lonesome or not.

The weeks went by, and Mr. Karlson didn’t find a buyer for Quicksilver. That suited me, of course, and it seemed to agree with the mare too. She thrived in the hill pasture, where there was plenty of grass and shade trees and water. She’d come down to the gate whenever she saw me, and I’d go over and pet her.

“You can try out the little mare if you want to, Bruce,” Mr. Karlson said to me one afternoon. “Seems to be gentle — fellow who had her said she was a good saddle horse. There’s an old saddle in the tool shed. Bridle’s at the barn, near the door at the west end.”

“Oh, thanks, Mr. Karlson,” I said. I’d been wanting to ride Quicksilver, but I hadn’t known what Mr. Karlson would think of the idea.

I’d always liked to watch horses and read horse stories, but the only real experience I’d had with them was riding a weary old nag at the beach one time, when someone treated us kids from the Home to a trip. So I was glad no one was there to watch my awkward efforts at getting a saddle and bridle on Quicksilver. If she hadn’t been so gentle, I’d never have made it. Mr. Karlson came out just as I’d finished and checked the cinch to make sure it was tight. As soon as I was on her back, Quicksilver was off with a toss of her head and a swish of her tail. She was full of pep from all the good food and not having been ridden for so long. I bounced around a lot at first, but soon I began to get the hang of it. We got along fine, and after that I rode whenever I had half an hour to spare. That wasn’t often, though. Seemed like we just finished one job when the next one was yelling to be done.

“There was a phone call for you this morning, Bruce,” Mrs. Karlson said one noon when we came in, hot and sweaty, from putting alfalfa in the barn. “One of the young folks from the church wanted to know if you were coming to the party tonight. I told her I’d have you call. The number is there by the phone.”

“Oh, you’d just as well have told her I wouldn’t make it,” I said. “It’s going to rush us to get that alfalfa in. And there’s always the milking.”

“You could go, Bruce,” Mr. Karlson said. “We’ll get the hay in. I’ll milk tonight.”

“Sure, you haven’t had much time for fun this summer. You can catch the bus down on the highway,” Mrs. Karlson added.

It felt odd, that evening, to be dressed up and going to a party instead of running the milker. The party was outdoors, in one of the girl’s yards; and we had all the sandwiches, potato chips, and watermelon we could eat and lots of lemonade to drink. Still, we were warm. The leaves on the locust trees hung limp and motionless and there was an ominous feeling of a coming storm in the air.

In spite of the party, I felt depressed. I’d learned — or at least I thought I had — why the Karlsons had suggested I go to the party. They had a prospective buyer for Quicksilver.

“A fellow’s coming to look at the mare first thing in the morning,” Mr. Karlson had said that afternoon. “You might put her in the barn and brush her down before you leave.” Mr. Karlson knew I’d hate to see her go. I guessed he’d suggested the party to sort of make it up to me. Well, I couldn’t forget Quicksilver that easily! I hoped the man would decide not to buy her, but I didn’t see how he could turn her down.

Clouds piled up in the southwest, and just before the party broke up, the wind began to blow. While I waited for the bus I could see lightning dancing along the hills. The wind blew harder as we rolled down the highway, and I could see the lightning coming closer. Storms don’t scare me, as a rule, but somehow I felt uneasy. The trees were tossing, and twigs and branches were blowing down when I got off the bus at the end of the lane, half a mile from the house.

I hurried up the lane. It wound back and forth among the big oaks, and the way they were whipping around I wondered when one of them would come crashing down.

Suddenly, right overhead, lightning cracked! The flash lit up the trees around me and the ranch building ahead. Burned on my half-blinded eyes was the picture of the barn — with the jagged flash of lightning right above it!

“The barn'” I gasped. “The lightning struck the barn!”

I was running up the lane then, and the barn roof was ablaze. Did Mr. Karlson know? There wasn’t time to find out. The barn was closer to me than the house. The cows would be in the loafing shed at this end. I’d have to drive them out, shut them in the hill pasture with Quicksilver.

Then it came to me — Quicksilver wasn’t in the pasture! I had put her in the barn myself — at the opposite end from the cowshed!

The fire had spread in the few minutes it had taken me to run up the lane. The whole roof was ablaze. I could get the cows out. Or I could get Quicksilver. I didn’t see how I could do both.

Horrible indecision gripped me. Mr. Karlson’s herd of Jerseys? Or Quicksilver? Thoughts flashed through my mind faster than words. But I couldn’t just stand there. I had to act.

I scrambled over the fence. Half the cows were already up, bawling and looking around nervously. The roof of the loafing shed shielded them from the fire in the top of the barn. But they could smell the smoke. I wanted to get them out of there before they got scared and unmanageable. I threw open the gate to the hill pasture.

“Come on! Get along! Get a move on, Rosie! Out of there, Buttercup! Come on, there!” Puzzled at the disturbance, they got up, deliberately, awkwardly, hindquarters first. I kicked and pounded and yelled. I could hear the flames crackling and see the sparks drifting out over the pasture.

With maddening slowness the cows milled around, circling back toward the shed when I tried to get them through the gate. Finally Rosie made the break and the rest followed. I heaved a sigh of relief and slammed the gate shut behind them. I turned to see Mr. Karlson beside me.

“Come — get away from the barn. There’s nothing we can do. Fire department’s on the way,” he said. The whole barn was blazing now. We circled wide to get away from the heat. Mrs. Karlson stood by the house, staring at the fire, her coat on over her night clothes.

“The cows are safe,” Mr. Karlson said. “We can thank Bruce for that'”

“Oh, yes!” Mrs. Karlson said, “but your barn! Your fine new barn! And all the hay!”

The howl of the fire siren was a welcome sound. The firemen were too late to save the barn, but they got the fire under control and hosed down everything near it so the fire wouldn’t spread to the other buildings. Neighbors began coming then, in cars and pickups and trucks, ready to do what they could to help. There wasn’t much, except to offer the Karlsons sympathy in their misfortune.

“I’m so thankful they got the cows out!” Mrs. Karlson said over and over. I stared at the smoking ruin. Somewhere under that heap of smoldering timbers lay Quicksilver. It made me sick to think of it. I could only hope she had died quickly.

By and by the firemen rolled up their hoses and roared off down the lane. One by one the neighbors went home. We stood there, the Karlsons and I, looking at what had been, only a few hours before, the beautiful new barn. I was sorry for them. But how could they know how I felt about Quicksilver?

Mr. Karlson turned to me. “Bruce,” he said, “I never had a son. If I had, I’d be proud if he was like you. I’m going to need a lot of help this winter, building a new barn. If you want to stay here and go to high school and help me when you can, we’d like to have you.” I hadn’t thought about staying on with the Karlsons after school started. But suddenly I knew the answer.

“Why — why, yes,” I said, “I’d like that fine.”

“So would we,” Mrs. Karlson said quietly.

“Now you’d better go look at the horse,” Mr. Karlson said. “I guess she’s pretty nervous.”

I stared at him. “Horse?” I said. “Horse?“

“The little black mare.” Then he gave me a sharp look. “Did you think she was still in the barn?” he said.

I nodded.

“Oh, no!” Mrs. Karlson cried. “That would be dreadful!”

“I heard the lightning strike,” Mr. Karlson said. “When I got out here, I could see you driving the cows away from the barn. So I led the mare out. Sometimes a horse gets panicky and runs right back into a fire. So I tied her to the fence back of the tool shed, out of sight of the barn. Never thought about you not knowing she was out!”

I was still in a daze as I led Quicksilver around the ruins of the barn to the pasture gate. The smoldering embers cast a red light on her coat as she twisted, snorting nervously at the fire. Mr. Karlson’s words were still with me as I turned her loose and closed the gate behind her.

“Turn her back into the pasture, Bruce. We won’t sell her as long as you’re with us.”

I looked down at the Karlsons, still gazing at the ruined barn. I thought of what Mr. Karlson had said about not having a son. They had had dreams, too — dreams that had gone glimmering, like most of mine. But suddenly I knew that for me, not one dream, but two, had come true.

The Bridge to Miner’s Island

By Agnes Ranney

ALWAYS SPOILING things! That’s all he ever does!” Randy muttered the angry words to nobody in particular. But Freckles twitched his floppy ears and looked at Randy expectantly. Freckles was gold and white, with some slight claim to being a spaniel.

A sprinkle of black dots across his nose gave him his name, and he had an unfailingly sunny disposition. It didn’t matter to Freckles where Randy went, as long as he could go, too. But it mattered to Randy.

“Don’t go over the bridge to Miner’s Island! Don’t go to Center City with Flip and his brother! Don’t do anything that’s any fun!” Randy imitated his father, with no one but Freckles to hear him–unless you counted the chipmunk running along a high branch of a pine tree beside the trail.

Randy wasn’t being quite fair, but he was so angry it didn’t seem to matter. He really did lots of things that were fun. There were family outings with Dad and Mother and his sister Sharon. There were school and Sunday-school picnics and parties. And his friends were always welcome at his home. But something had happened Thursday that made these affairs seem tame.

“Guess what!” Randy said, coming home from school. “Flip asked me to go to Center City with him. For the whole weekend! Can I use your brown suitcase, Mom?”

Mother’s eyebrows went up in that way they had when she wasn’t quite happy about something. “Center City? How would you get there? Where would you stay? What’s the occasion? When would you be back?”

“His big brother is driving, and Flip’s going with him. We’ll stay with his aunt –or his cousin, or sump’n. We’ll get back Sunday evening–early Sunday evening.” “Then you’d miss Sunday school and church,” Dad said.

“Well–just this once,” Randy said. “I guess Flip’s just about the most popular fellow in school,” he went on.

“And the one most often in trouble,” Sharon said dryly.

“Well, anybody’d get in trouble with Old Lady Persimmon–I mean, with Miss Simmons,” Randy said. “She picks on Flip all the time. I can go, can’t I?” Randy hadn’t considered that Dad and Mother might not share his enthusiasm. But they just sat there, looking as if they disapproved of the whole affair. “It isn’t every day a fellow gets a chance to go to Center City. When you live ‘way out here in the sticks like we do and hardly ever get to go any place–” Randy’s voice trailed off in a way that made him sound very sorry for himself. No one spoke.

“Anyway, what have you got against Flip?” Randy went on.

“I haven’t anything against Flip. I wish you’d bring him out sometime so that we could meet him,” Mother said. “I just don’t like you going for a weekend with someone I don’t know anything about. And I don’t like you to miss Sunday school and church.”

“You mean–I can’t go?”

“We’d rather you didn’t,” Dad said. So Randy had had to tell Flip, next day, that his folks wouldn’t let him go to Center City. Randy had felt pretty low that evening, thinking of Flip. In his heart he knew his folks were right–from some of the things Flip said, Randy knew he wasn’t the sort of fellow he’d want for a best friend. But he couldn’t help wondering whether Flip had invited some other boy to take his place on the trip.

By Saturday noon, when his chores were done, things looked a little brighter. “Guess I’ll hike up to Lost Lake this afternoon, it’s such a neat day,” he said at lunch.

“It is a beautiful day,” Mother agreed. “Take along a few of those ginger cookies I baked, if you like.”

Randy and Freckles were all ready to go — in fact they’d started up the trail back of the ranch buildings that led toward the lake-when Dad had called to him.

“Don’t go near that old bridge that goes across to Miner’s Island!” he said. “It’s not safe-should be torn down. Stay away from it!”

So now Randy was going up the trail muttering to himself. The fickle sun had vanished behind dark clouds, and a cold wind had sprung up, but Randy hardly noticed. It wasn’t more than three miles to the lake, a lovely little pocket of water tucked away in pine-covered mountains. Most of the way the trail ran a few hundred yards above Miner’s Creek — a quiet stream in midsummer, but now swift and full with the spring runoff. Randy was better than halfway to the lake when he came abreast of Miner’s Island. He stopped where the trail branched, the dimmer trail leading toward the island. Freckles, ahead of him on the trail, looked back and barked.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Randy said impatiently. “Let’s just go look at the bridge first, though.” He started down the trail. Freckles raced back to join him. The roar of Miner’s Creek grew louder as they neared it.

“Boy, she’s really full!” Randy shouted, and could hardly hear himself above the roar of the stream. Around a couple of turns in the overgrown trail they came in sight of the island.

“Must have been fifty years ago the old miner lived here,” Randy said slowly. “I’ve heard Grandpa tell about it. He built the bridge, and the cabin on the island. He prospected up and down the creek–thought he’d strike it rich someday, I guess.” Freckles wasn’t interested in history, but he wagged his tail with pleasure whenever Randy talked to him. “The old miner disappeared without a trace. Nobody knew whether he drowned and was carried down the river, or whether a cougar or a bear got him–or what. He just vanished. Hey–there’s the bridge!”

They had come around the last bend in the trail now, and were in full view of the island. It was small-not more than four or five hundred feet long, and half as wide. The river channel was cut deep on either side, and the island rose in steep cliffs from the rushing water.

Above the water stretched the old suspension bridge–a spidery structure of rusty cables and weathered poles, with a handrail at one side of peeled saplings lashed together with rotting rope. It would never have won a prize for either beauty or safety–but to Randy, it was an invitation.

“Always did want to go over to the old cabin,” he muttered. “But whenever I’ve had a chance there was somebody who wouldn’t let me–like Dad. Or somebody who was scared to go, like Sharon. Rough-looking bridge, all right. Been here for fifty years, though. Guess it won’t pick on today to fall down!” Randy was at the bridge now. He gripped the handrail and shook.

The bridge rattled, but that was all. He stepped out on the bridge. “Sure are big things,” he said, eyeing the rusty cables that supported the structure. “Doesn’t look like they’d ever break!” He jiggled up and down. The bridge swayed a little, but only for a moment.

“Come on, Freckles, let’s go over. We’ll just stay a minute. Maybe the old miner left some gold there!” Cautiously, Randy started across the bridge. Freckles stood on the bank and whined.

“Aw, come on, Freckles! It’s all right! Come on, boy!” Randy called. But Freckles refused to leave the trail.

“Come on, fraidycat!” Randy said, a little angry now. He went back and took hold of Freckles’ collar. “Come on!” Once more he started across the bridge. Freckles was too big to carry, but even though he pulled back with all his might, he couldn’t keep Randy from dragging him across the bridge. “I should leave you behind!” Randy muttered. But they were almost across now.

Crack! The sound made Randy jump. He froze, still holding Freckles’ collar. But the bridge seemed as firm as it had ever been. Slowly, Randy resumed his inch-by-inch way across.

“We’ll only stay a minute,” he repeated as they reached the island. The trail was all but overgrown–Randy pushed through blackberry vines and mountain juniper. He was on the cabin almost before he knew it. It was tiny, weathered to a dark grey and almost covered with vines and bushes. Randy had to push aside the vines in order to go in the doorway. The door itself lay to one side, off its hinges and almost rotted to dust.

Randy blinked in the dimness. Vines made a green curtain over the only window, but holes in the shake roof let in enough light to make out the outlines of the room.

“Not much to see,” Randy grumbled. “I s’pose hikers have made off years ago with whatever the old fellow left. Old fireplace–guess that’s where he cooked. Bed frame, made of boards and rope–only the rope’s all rotted off. That’s about all. Seems kind of sad, that this was the best kind of a home the old boy had.”

Freckles was not feeling sad. Now that he was back on solid ground he had recovered his good humor and was busy investigating the sights and smells of the island. He dug at the root of a pine.

“Guess he’s found a gopher, or something,” Randy said, watching from the low door of the cabin. He turned back to look around once more. It wasn’t long before he heard Freckles barking.

“Maybe he’s cornered his gopher,” Randy said to himself. But Freckles was gone from the tree. The barking kept on.

“Here, Freckles! Here, Freckles!” Freckles kept right on barking. The sound came from the bridge side of the island.

“Guess I’d better go see what’s the matter,” Randy said, and began pushing his way along the ancient trail. Dark clouds covered the sky and the wind had risen to a gale. He pushed aside the last tangle of branches–and gasped.

The hanging bridge was breaking up! One of the two cables that held it up had already broken, near the middle of the bridge. The whole thing tilted crazily, and swayed in the wind.

“We’ve got to get back!” Randy cried. “Come on, Freckles, before the other cable breaks!” But this time Freckles fought with frantic strength to keep from being pulled across the bridge.

“Come on–we haven’t any time to lose!” Randy cried. “You stubborn dog, you!”

He heard the cracking of the bridge above the roar of the wind and the water. The second cable had snapped! Like a child’s structure of match sticks and string, the bridge began to pull apart. With the cables broken, the weight of poles and rails carried the bridge down toward the rushing water of Miner’s Creek. The stream reached for it, as if it had waited a long time to wipe out this trace of human intrusion. The water seized the timbers as they broke loose and swept them end over end down the stream. Soon all Randy could see of the bridge was a cluster of useless sticks of wood, bits of rope, and coils of rusty cable clinging to either side of the stream. For a long time he stared at the wreck.

“Gone–just like that!” he said at last.

“I-I guess our weight was just the last straw-it had been there a long time, and it was just ready to go. Now what do we do?”

Freckles had no answer. He only stared into the deepest juniper thicket and growled, deep in his throat.

“Great place to spend the night!” Randy said, trying to keep his voice light. It didn’t matter–the sound of wind and river swept it away.

“Guess we’d better investigate–there just might be another way to get off the island!” Randy said to himself. “Come on, boy.” But when they had circled the island, scrambling through brush and falling over rocks, they were no better off than before. The only faintly hopeful feature was a tiny sandbar on the downriver end of the island. Every other part of it rose steeply from the water.

“From there, I suppose we could swim if we just had to,” Randy thought. “But the stream’s awful swift. And cold!” Just the thought of that rushing icy water, fresh from the snow fields of the high mountains, made him shudder. “But how would anyone know where to look for us? And how would they get us off the island if they did?” The water was too rough for any boat, he was sure–even if anyone had a boat–and even if they knew where he was!

“Cold, isn’t it?” Randy said, and Freckles wagged his tail in agreement. “Guess we could go to the old cabin–we’d be out of the wind.” It was almost pitch dark under the trees now. But the roar of the wind wasn’t quite so loud when they got in the cabin.

“Better sit down and try to figure out what to do,” Randy said. There was nothing to sit on but the dirt floor, but he didn’t mind that. Freckles sniffed at Randy’s pocket.

“Hey, what’re you up to?” Randy said. “Oh–the cookies! I forgot. Sure glad I brought some–would have brought a lot more if I’d known–” He stopped as the wind raked a branch across the rough shakes with a mysterious scratching sound.

“Can’t let funny noises bother us,” he said, pulling Freckles a little closer. He gave the dog a cookie and watched him down it in one gulp. He munched one himself, trying to make it last. It only made him hungrier than before. But he’d better save the rest-no telling how long he’d have to stay here!

The night was pitch black. Randy was thankful for Freckles’ warm head and forepaws across his knees. He must have dozed off, finally, though he didn’t mean to. He opened his eyes to see an irregular square of light on the floor.

“Can’t be daylight,” he mumbled, stupid with sleep. “Must be moonlight.” He rose, stiff from sitting on the floor, and went to the door. Sure enough, the clouds had blown away and a full moon floated above the trees. “Must be after midnight,” he guessed.

“I s’pose it’s not very smart to stay holed up in the old cabin. If anybody was looking for us, they’d never see us there. Guess we’d better go over on the side of the island toward the trail. Dad knew I was planning to hike up to the lake–hey, is that a light?”

Freckles set up a great barking. Randy hurried through the tangle of bushes toward the spot where the bridge had been.

It was a light! He saw it again, flickering among the trees!

“Dad! Dad!” he shouted. But his shout was snatched away by the creek’s roar. Freckles started barking again. The light was coming nearer now! Randy could see it on the trees just across the stream. Then, on the dim trail, he could see Dad on his saddle horse, with Randy’s own Prince on a lead rope. Randy shouted and waved frantically. Ah–Dad saw him!

“You all right?” Dad voice came faintly above the noise of the water. Randy nodded. Dad motioned him to the lower end of the island. The water was a little quieter here.

“I’ll swim the horses across!” Dad shouted. Randy could hear them crashing through the brush along the bank of the stream. He and Freckles scrambled and slid down the steep bank toward the sandbar at the end of the island.

The horses wheeled and tried to turn back as they faced the icy water. But at last Dad got them started across. Then they were swimming toward the sand bar, fighting the current. At last they scrambled for a footing on the shore, and Randy grabbed Prince’s reins. In a moment he was in the saddle.

“What about Freckles?” Randy shouted.

“He’ll make it!” Dad shouted back. And sure enough, when the horses had swum the stream and scrambled to a footing on the bank below the trail, there was Freckles waiting for them. They got there just in time to get a shower bath as he shook out his thick coat.

Randy didn’t say much on the way home. The wind in the trees and the noise of the horses on the trail didn’t give him much chance to talk, even if he could have put his thoughts into words. But he did a lot of thinking.

Dad wasn’t just trying to spoil my fun, Randy said to himself. He was just telling me the truth! And I’ve got to admit he’s right about other things, too–like the weekend trip with Flip. I don’t know how I’ll tell Dad–but I’ll be glad to be with the family in church tomorrow! It’ll be a long time before I forget the bridge to Miner’s Island!

Agnes Ranney wrote hundreds of stories and several books for children from the 1950s through the 1970s. This story was published in Story Trails (Light & Life Press) in the July 28, 1963 issue.

Favorite Window

By Agnes Ranney

Donna sat up in bed. Was she dreaming? No – that was the fire siren! It was close, too. She slipped out of bed and ran to the window just as the fire engine passed the house. She looked up the street. Then she gasped in horror.

“Mother!” she called. “Mother! The church is burning!”

A few moments later, in robe and slippers, Donna stood in the front yard. Mother had rushed out, and her older brother Gregory. Her father had dressed hurriedly and had gone to see whether he could help.

“Can’t we go and watch?” Gregory begged.

“We’d only be in the way, Greg,” mother said. “We can see well enough from here. Let’s just pray that they’ll be able to put out the fire before the church is destroyed.”

But the men could not put the fire out. Donna could see fire glowing through the stained-glass windows. Then a tongue of flame broke through the shingle roof. Another – and another! Soon the whole roof was afire. Before long the rafters showed like great black ribs through the flames.

“My eyes burn,” Gregory said.

“Yes, the smoke is blowing this way,” said mother. Donna saw that her face was white and tense in the glow of the fire.

“The steeple’s going!” Greg exclaimed. “I can see it moving!” A moment later the steeple crashed to the ground, carrying with it what was left of the roof.
Donna felt like crying. She reached for her mother’s hand and found it cold and trembling.

“Let’s go in, Donna,” mother said. “It’s cold – and we can do no good here.”

Greg stayed outside to watch until his father came home. “The church is completely destroyed,” Dad said sadly. “No one knows how the fire started, but the firemen reached it too late to save the church.”

Back in bed at last, Donna could not sleep. “Our beautiful little church!” she thought. “Our church school room, and the window I loved so much, with the Shepherd and the lambs! Why did it have to burn?” Her thoughts circled round and round. At last she slipped into a troubled sleep.

Next morning she and Greg walked down to the corner where the church had stood. They could see nothing but a heap of charred timbers and gray ashes, with here and there a little wisp of smoke rising into the clear air of the May morning. How could the day be so lovely, Donna wondered, when the church was gone?

“Sure was an awful fire, wasn’t it?” Greg said. “Look what it did to that window!”

Donna looked where he pointed. A shapeless mass of melted colored glass, half covered with ashes, was all that was left of her favorite window! She turned away, trying to keep back the tears.

The next day was Saturday. The fire at the church had been the main topic of conversation ever since it happened. But at lunch Dad said something that surprised Donna. “We’ll have church at Hadley Hall tomorrow,” he said. “We’ve made arrangements to use it until plans can be made for building a new church.”

“Hadley Hall!” Donna exclaimed. “Why, we can’t have church there! That’s for ball games, and club meetings, and programs, and things. How could we have church there?”

“There’s plenty of room,” Dad said. “There are even rooms up貞tairs that we can use for church school. We can get them ready by next Sunday. I think it was the best arrangement that could have been made.”

It didn’t suit Donna. Thoughts of the bright, cheery room where her class had met filled her mind that Sunday morning as they walked the few blocks to Hadley Hall. She tried not to think of the window, for fear she would burst right out crying.

“Fine place to have church!” she thought, sitting in the folding metal chair in the big, boxlike hall. “There are the basketball hoops, and the guards over the lights.”

The minister announced the first hymn – The Church’s One Foundation – and the organist played the introduction.

“The music doesn’t even sound the same,” Donna thought. “That tinny piano she has to play can never take the place of our organ! This will never be a real church!”

As they began to sing, the music swelled up into the bare rafters of Hadley Hall. One by one, Donna recognized the familiar voices she had heard at church all her life – those of the minister’s wife, her teacher, her own mother and father.

“The singing sounds the same,” she thought, and joined in on the second verse. Somehow, her heart felt lighter than it had any time since the fire.

“My friends,” said the minister a little later, “for the last few days everyone in town has been saying that the church has been de貞troyed. Let’s change that a little. The church building has been destroyed. But the building is not the church.

“The church is made up of people, not wood and metal and stained glass. With Christ at the head, believers of every land and every age make up the church. We are a part of that church.

“You remember that the Israelites had a tabernacle in which they worshiped. It was made so that they could take it apart and carry it with them wherever they went. We are a little like those wanderers – we have brought the church with us. Our beloved little church was, after all, only a place to worship. As long as Jesus Christ is with us, we can worship anywhere!”

Suddenly, Donna saw that what he said was true. This was the real church – this gathering of people who believed in Christ, and he in the midst of them, as he promised to be. Her heart lifted in thankfulness that, much as she had loved her favorite window, it was only a picture that lay there under the gray drift of ashes, and that the real church could never be destroyed.

Agnes Ranney wrote hundreds of stories and several books for children from the 1950s through the 1970s. This story appeared in Journeys from April 19, 1964.

A HOME FOR LITTLE WOLF

By Agnes Ranney

THIS IS A TRUE story about a little half-Indian boy who, after his parents abandoned him, was adopted by Dr. and Mrs. Marcus Whitman, two of the first missionaries to come to the Northwest.

The Whitmans founded their mission at Waiilatpu, “The Place of the Rye Grass,” in 1836, seven years before the first emigrant train came West over the Oregon Trail. Little Wolf was neither the first nor the last of the children they sheltered and loved as their own. After Little Wolf there came eight others, to make eleven children around the family table.

The true names of the Whitmans, the two little girls, and the mission Indians are given. But it was necessary to give imaginary names to Little Wolf and his parents as their real names could not be found.

Little Wolf was born long ago in an Indian village in the Pacific Northwest. His mother was Flying Cloud, a young Indian woman, and his father was a Spanish adventurer named Rico.

The country looked very different then from the way it does now. There were no towns, no roads, no fences. There were no highways with signposts to point the way to this city or that city. There were no cities! No bright lights, no stores, no houses or hotels. There were no farms with clean white houses and red barns and cows and sheep grazing in the meadows.

But Little Wolf didn’t miss any of these things. He liked his home Just as it was. The woods were full of squirrels and bright songbirds and deer. Fish jumped in the rivers. Tall blue herons stood on one leg in the water near the shore. Only now and then did they see a white man–a trapper or prospector.

Little Wolf liked his warm bed of bearskin in the big tepee. He loved his mother, Flying Cloud, who took care of him, and his father, Rico, who sang songs by the campfire at night. Indians from other tepees came to listen to these strange songs that were so different from the ones they knew. Some of the young Indian women envied Flying Cloud because her husband was white. But the old women shook their heads. .

“She should not have married a white man. She will be sorry,” they said.

When the sun grew warm in the spring, the white trilliums blossomed like fallen stars in the deep woods. The yellow trout lilies came out, and the purple grass-flowers.

“It is time to dig the camas roots,” the women said. They took down the tepees and packed the cooking pots. The men rounded up the horses. There were many horses–even boys not much older than Little Wolf rode alone. Little Wolf sat in front of his mother on a spotted pony as they took the trail over the mountains to the valley where the camas roots grew. The valley was broad and covered with blue flowers, so that it looked like a lake on a summer day. The women set up the tepees. Then, with sharp sticks, they began to dig the plump camas roots from which the blue flowers grew. Little Wolf waited while some of the roots baked in the coals of the campfire. How good they tasted!

For days, the women worked. They dug many more roots than they could eat at once and dried them in the sun.

“We must have some for winter,” Flying Cloud told Little Wolf. Many bags of roots were gathered-yet, when the bags were loaded on the horses, the valley looked as blue as ever!

In the summer the braves fished in the rivers and streams. In the fall they hunted deer and antelope. The women dried some of the meat and tanned the skins for clothing and moccasins. They picked berries and dried them in the sun. It was a busy time! Little Wolf watched all that went on with round, dark eyes. Sometimes he helped Flying Cloud.

One day many of the braves went on a hunt. Rico was among them. They were gone for a long time. Every day Little Wolf watched for them to come back. He thought they would never come! He wanted his daddy to play with him and to sing songs by the fire.

At last he heard the braves returning. He ran to meet them. But Rico was not there!

“I think he will not come back,” one of the old women said. Little Wolf kept watching for Rico. But many days went by, and he did not come.

The leaves fell in a brown-and-gold carpet along the creeks. The songbirds flew away. Little Wolf woke in the night to hear the honking of the wild geese as they flew southward. Flying Cloud grew sad and silent. She was lonely too because Rico had not come back.

One day some strange Indians visited the village. Flying Cloud was very happy to see them. They were happy to see her too, for they had come from the village where she used to live. But they were not happy to see Little Wolf.

“He is not one of our children,” they said. “Let his father come and take care of him.”

When, Little Wolf woke the next morning, he was alone in the tepee.

Where was his mother? He went from one tepee to another, looking for her.

“She has gone back to her own people,” said one of the women. “You must wait for your father to come back and take care of you.”

Little Wolf was lonely and sad. At night he slept in the tepee. During the day he played with the other children. But they began to laugh at him and tease him.

“You are all alone,” they said. “Your father will never come back!”

While there was plenty of food, the Indian women shared with Little Wolf. A baked camas root from Snowbird, a piece of broiled deer meat from Spotted Fawn–he did not go hungry. But wandering from tepee to tepee was not like sitting by his own fire with his father and mother.

Little Wolf’s moccasins grew worn and dirty, his beaded leggings ragged. His deerskin shirt wore out, and there was no one to make him another. ‘When the wind began to blow cold from the north, Little Wolf found a scrap of antelope skin to wrap around his shivering shoulders. The other children pointed to him and laughed.

As winter deepened, food was not so plentiful. The supply of dried meat and roots and berries got low.

“We have only enough for ourselves,” said Spotted Fawn. “We cannot feed Little Wolf any longer. Can you not feed him, Snowbird?”

“If the winter lasts long, my own children will go hungry,” Snowbird said.

“We cannot let him starve,” said Spotted Fawn. “What shall we do?”

“There is a white woman at the mission at ‘The Place of the Rye Grass,'” said Snowbird. “Perhaps she will take Little Wolf.”

“I will go with you to take him,” Spotted Fawn offered.

The wind blew cold and raw across the open clearing near the river as Snowbird and Spotted Fawn and Little Wolf walked through the tall, dried grass. Little Wolf drew the bit of antelope skin closer around him.

Set back near the pine trees were some buildings, bigger than the biggest tepee in the village. Snowbird knocked at the door of the largest one. The woman who opened it looked at Snowbird, then at Spotted Fawn. Then she looked down at Little Wolf and smiled.

“Come in by the fire,” she said. The room was warm, and there was a good smell coming from the big, black kettle that hung near the fire in the big fireplace. Back in a corner were two little girls, not much older than Little Wolf, with hair as black as his. But the missionary lady’s hair was golden red.

“This is Little Wolf,” said Spotted Fawn. “His mother and father have left him. Can you not take him to live with you?”

“I have two children to care for already,” the lady said gently. “Then there is the Indian school to teach, and the Sunday services to prepare for. But I cannot turn him away,” she went on, putting her hand on Little Wolf’s head. “He may stay at least until the doctor comes back. Then we will see.” Snowbird and Spotted Fawn were gone then, hurrying so that they would reach’ the Indian village before dark.

Little Wolf had to learn many things at the mission — to sit at a table and eat with a spoon and fork, to bathe and comb his hair, to play the games the two little girls, Mary Anne and Helen, taught him. Some of them were fun. Some Little Wolf did not like at all.

But there was one thing Little Wolf loved, and of which he never grew tired. That was learning the wonderful songs Mrs. Whitman, the missionary lady, sang. Helen and Mary Anne knew some of them, and so did Margaret, the older Indian girl who helped Mrs. Whitman with the cooking, and also old John, who looked after the horses and cows. Little Wolf did not understand all the words, but he loved the songs just the same. Soon he was singing them too.

A good many days after Little Wolf came to live at the mission, Helen and Mary Anne came to him, very much excited.

“The doctor is coming home!” they cried. “He is coming today! What will he say when he sees that you are here?”

What would he say? Little Wolf wondered. He knew now that Dr. Whitman was a missionary and a doctor and that he often went to look after Indians and trappers who were sick or hurt. He knew that Helen’s father, and Mary Anne’s, had left them here at the mission for Mrs. Whitman to look after. But what would the doctor think about another child? Would he say, like the Indian women, that there was not enough food for him?

By afternoon everyone was ready to greet the doctor. Helen and Mary Anne had on clean calico frocks, and their hair was neatly braided. Little Wolf had on a pair of long blue trousers and a clean white shirt.

Suddenly there was a stamping outside, and then the door swung open. A tall man in a big overcoat and fur cap came in. The two little girls ran to greet him. They threw their arms about him, and he hugged each one. He kissed his wife and shook hands with old John.

Then he turned and saw Little Wolf, looking at him with big, dark eyes.

“Good day!” said Little Wolf softly. It was the one English greeting he knew. The doctor smiled at him and took Little Wolf’s hand in his. He looked at his wife.

“Well, I’m glad all our children aren’t to be girls!” he said.

“He is Little Wolf,” said Mrs. Whitman. “Only I want to call him David after a friend I had as a little girl. He is already learning to sing the hymns. I do want to keep him with us!”

In the group that gathered around the fire that evening for the hymns and the Bible story, Little Wolf sat next to the doctor. He would keep his old name-but he had a new name too and a new family. As he felt the doctor’s strong hand on his shoulder and saw Mrs. Whitman’s kind, loving face as she told the story of the Man called Jesus, who loves little children, Little Wolf knew that at last he was at home.

Agnes Ranney wrote hundreds of stories and several books for children from the
1950s through the 1970s.