EARTH AND WATER
Scrabbling for a meal took longer than they expected. In the first place they spent quite a bit of time in finding the food. The old house had so many odd cupboards and pantries that they had to hunt for what they wanted. Then, when their hunger was satisfied, Lettie wasn’t pleased with the appearance of the kitchen.
“What a mess!” she exclaimed, her nose wrinkled in disgust, “all these milky, sticky, eggy dishes. I’m going to wash them. It’s the first time I ever wanted to do such a thing. Maybe it’s because Mary Pete didn’t ask us to.”
Jo felt that washing the dishes might be a dangerous action. “She will expect you to the next time,” he said.
“You don’t have to. I’m going to,” Lettie announced.
She turned to the dishes and to her surprise Will joined her. She took the humming teakettle from the stove and poured hot water into the dishpan. Will refilled the kettle. Water came in a great leap from the iron pump by the sink as he moved the handle up and down although it did protest, oh, don’t, oh, don’t.
Before Jo left the house, he told them what direction he planned to go. They followed his route when they had finished the dishes. It took them through a tightly packed line of spruce trees along the far side of Mary Pete’s shop. Then they went over a tumbled stone wall. This brought them into an open field.
A flock of dipping, chattering goldfinch flew over. One Jersey cow with a mouthful of grass and daisies was the only occupant that they could see.
“Cow, Cow,” Lettie called, because she suddenly felt gay from being in this airy, open place, “can you tell us where the Indians made their shell heaps?” Not a moo came in answer. Lettie whirled on one heel to enjoy the complete circle of sky.
“Let’s go, Let,” said her brother impatiently.
They ran down the sloping pasture, in and out among great scattered boulders, toward the shore. Suddenly from a far corner came a hail. Jo was standing on a mound and waving excitedly.
Will paused only long enough to make a trumpet of his hands and shout through them, “Coming!” Then he and Lettie ran.
When they reached Jo they found him bent almost double. He was probing the mound with a stick.
“What luck?” asked Lettie.
In his excitement Jo stuttered. “P-p-lenty,” and straightened up. “This is one I’m on— an Indian shell heap, I mean!”
He waved the stick with which he had been digging among daisies and hawkweed. Will and Lettie climbed up beside him on the large ant heap of a mound. They peered into the hole. The exposed earth was very black and speckled quite evenly with bits of white broken shell.
“Jiminy!” said Will in an awed voice.
“Indians!” said Lettie in the same tone. After a pause she added, “Did they grind the shells all up like this?”
“Nope,” said Jo, “don’t imagine so. Probably they got that way from being here in all kinds of weather, you know, freezing and thawing and stuff, busted them up this way. Golly Moses, we ought to find most anything here—arrowheads, stone scrapers, fish weights!”
Once more he attacked the mound with his stick.
“I should think you’d get a shovel,” said Lettie. “Why don’t you go to the woodshed? There’s all sorts of tools there.”
“Okay,” said Jo, and he was off, running as if he meant to return before they could discover something valuable.
That was just what the other two hoped to do. They poked and prodded and sifted by hand. But when they sighted Jo returning they had found nothing larger or more interesting than a bird bone.
Jo flung the spade he carried onto the ground and himself beside it. “Got a stitch in my side from running,” he said with a groan. “You can use the shovel till it goes.”
Feverishly they set to work. By the time Jo’s stitch had gone they were knee deep in a crater and had found neither Indian nor Pilgrim leavings.
“How long would it take these Indians to eat all the clams or oysters or whatever was in the shells?” asked Lettie.
“Years and years, I guess,” Jo answered. “They used to come every year to the same place. I’ve read all about it. They would eat some of the clams right there. The women would dry the rest in the sun or smoke them over a fire.”
Jo joined them and, turn and turn about, they worked with the spade. They made a small mountain of freshly dug earth. But they found nothing.
Finally Lettie sat down to rest. “I’m so hot and tired and thirsty that I could drink a well dry. Let’s go to Mary Pete’s drugstore and get a coke.”
“Let’s,” said Jo, and drove the spade into the earth until it stood alone. “Whatever’s here in the heap will wait for us that long, I guess.” He led the race toward the drugstore.
Mary Pete’s old shop was built in the manner of all such from Augusta to Abilene to Alaska. Its roof was flat and the false front hid it from the road. A huge mortar and pestle with only a trace of its original gilt stood at the peak. The faded sign over the door read, “Jonas Tibbets, Druggist.” Sign and building were both a weathered gray. In fact, the only brightness on the outside was furnished by two teardrop glass globes that hung in the windows on either side of the door. One globe was filled with red liquid, the other blue. Their reflected colors stained the ledge beneath them red and blue.
The jingle of a bell hanging on the door told Mary Pete they had arrived. She parted a pair of curtains at the back of the shop and joined them.
“I’ll warrant you’ve come to ask me a question,” was her greeting. “I left in such a hurry that I forgot to tell you which room is the haunted one. Don’t worry it’s mine and I’ve never seen our ghost. Those that have report a lady with a red shawl over her head who climbs the front stairs laboriously at night and then opens a drawer in my bureau. I’ve never had the luck to meet her.”
“Poor ghost,” said Lettie with a delighted shiver, and her imagination went dancing off until she forgot why they were here.
Jo remembered. “That’s not really what we came for,” he told his cousin. “We wanted to tell you we’d found a shell heap and we’ve been digging in it so hard we’ve got to have a cold drink.”
While he spoke his eyes, like those of the other two, studied the store. The soda fountain they expected was not here. Neither were there postcard racks, magazine stands, sunglasses, or bathing caps.
Mary Pete read their puzzled expressions. She laughed. “I can see you don’t know what to make of my drugstore. That’s what it is, a drugstore, pure and simple. Nary an ice-cream soda or candy bar in the place. But let’s see now.” She turned to the shelf behind her. “Yes, here they are. This is what passed for candy in the old days. I still carry them because I like them—colt’s-foot rock and horehound drops. Help yourselves.”
She set two glass jars down on the counter and took off their wide stoppers.
Horehound
