a straw hat half swallowed by a
mountain kid, did not seem to be a natural incident to an ordinary
walk to the schoolhouse. Her sisters thought her tastes "low," and
her familiar association with the miners inconsistent with their own
dignity. But Peggy went regularly to school, was a fair scholar in
elementary studies (what she knew of natural history, in fact, quite
startled her teachers), and being also a teachable child, was allowed
some latitude. As for Peggy herself, she kept her own faith unshaken;
her little creed, whose shibboleth was not "to be afraid" of God's
creatures, but to "love 'em," sustained her through reprimand, torn
clothing, and, it is to be feared, occasional bites and scratches from
the loved ones themselves.

The unsuspected contiguity of the "menagerie" to the house had its
drawbacks, and once nearly exposed her. A mountain wolf cub, brought
especially for her from the higher northern Sierras with great trouble
and expense by Jack Ryder, of the Lone Star Lead, unfortunately escaped
from the menagerie just as the child seemed to be in a fair way of
taming it. Yet it had been already familiarized enough with civilization
to induce it to stop in its flight and curiously examine the
blacksmith's shop. A shout from the blacksmith and a hurled hammer sent
it flying again, with Mr. Baker and his assistant in full pursuit. But
it quickly distanced them with its long, tireless gallop, and they were
obliged to return to the forge, lost in wonder and conjecture. For the
blacksmith had recognized it as a stranger to the locality, and as a
man of oracular pretension had a startling theory to account for its
presence. This he confided to the editor of the local paper, and the
next issue contained an editorial paragraph: "Our presage of a severe
winter in the higher Sierras, and consequent spring floods in the
valleys, has been startlingly confirmed! Mountain wolves have been
seen in Blue Cement Ridge, and our esteemed fellow citizen, Mr. Ephraim
Baker, yesterday encountered a half-starved cub entering his premises in
search of food. Mr. Baker is of the opinion that the mother of the
cub, driven down by stress of weather, was in the immediate vicinity."
Nothing but the distress of the only responsible mother of the cub,
Peggy, and loyalty to her, kept Jack Ryder from exposing the absurdity
publicly, but for weeks the camp fires of Blue Cement Ridge shook with
the suppressed and unhallowed joy of the miners,