Scarred for Life

“GWENDOLEN, we’re going to have fun today. I only wish you could go on our seventh-grade picnic with us,” June said excitedly. She hastily wrapped the last nut-bread sandwich and squeezed it into the tin lunch pail on the very top of all the other delicious home-cooked food. She thought how good it would taste at noon; fat whole-wheat bread-and-jelly sandwiches, round orange-nut-bread sandwiches, plump black olives and tiny sweet pickles from papa’s general merchandise store, and generous slices of sister Helen’s rich chocolate cake.

“I wish I could too, but I can’t. I’m only in the sixth grade. But I’ll be here by the time you’re home, so that you can tell me all about your trip,” Gwendolen answered.

“Do you think you’ll get back by five o’clock, Juney?” “I’m sure we will. Our teacher told us we’d try to return about four-thirty. She said she didn’t want to be out too late with a big hayrack full of youngsters.”

“No, and I don’t blame her one bit either. I wouldn’t want the responsibility of taking them in the first place,” soberly added Mother Dalton. The surprised girls saw that her usually smiling face looked grave. “Don’t act so worried, Mamma,” June spoke hastily.

“Why, we’ve got a good driver, and his horses are as gentle as can be. “Besides, we’re only going three or four miles from town. We’ll spend the day in Willow Grove and build a big bonfire on the riverbank so that we can toast marshmallows.” “Well, just the same, I can’t help worrying,” Mother Dalton continued.

“I think this is the first class picnic to be held so far from Burns and the first wagon ride for such a large group. You’ll be squeezed together like sardines.” “Well, if we are, some of us can be good little sardines. We’ll sit along the sides of the wagon so that our legs can hang over the edge.

That’ll be more fun than crowding together in the middle anyway,” June laughed. “Now, June, listen to me,” Mother Dalton warned. “You must promise me that whatever you do, you will not sit near the edge of the wagon. That is very dangerous.

The horses might become frightened and run away. Or you might be caught on the side of the wagon and dragged along. I have known of several very serious accidents that happened in just such a manner.” “I’ll be careful, Mamma.

Really I will. After all, I’m not a baby any more.

I can take care of myself!” June answered almost sharply, impatient to be on her way to the appointed meeting place. Giving her mother a hasty kiss, June grabbed her broad-brimmed straw hat and tin lunch bucket, and hurried out the door after Gwendolen.

It was not until the white picket gate had swung shut behind them that June spoke. “Whew! I was afraid that mamma’d call me back and make me promise point blank not to sit on the side of the wagon. And that’s exactly what some of us want to do.

Frank said it’s lots of fun. He said he’d ridden that way ever so many times on his uncle’s hayrack.” “But isn’t it really dangerous?”

Gwendolen questioned anxiously. “It would be dreadful if anything went wrong and you got hurt. O Juney! I couldn’t stand that.”

Tears sprang to her blue eyes as she looked at her friend. June laughed gaily as she flung her arms around her chum and gave her a hug. “Now, don’t be a fraidy cat! Nothing’s going to happen except things that are fun.

And I’ll be back this afternoon to tell you all about our seventh-grade picnic.” Gwendolen tried to look cheerful as she waved good-by, but her lips stopped smiling as soon as June rounded the corner on Main Street.

She tried hard to feel that all would be well with the day’s outing, but deep down inside she wished wholeheartedly that June had listened more closely to Mother Dalton. But June was not at all worried.

She hurried breathlessly on her way, quite unmindful of her mother’s warning, intent only on the fun-filled hours ahead. “Well, you’re here at last. Now we can start,” called Hazel. “We were beginning to wonder what had happened to you.”

“Nothing happened,” June sang out. “I just stopped to talk with Gwendolen for a few minutes. I’m all ready. Where’s the wagon?”

“Listen and you’ll hear the team coming now,” Frank answered. Amid choking dust swirls the big team of horses pulled the heavy wagon into view. With wild cries of joy the entire seventh-grade class clambered aboard and chose places for the gala ride. “Please, boys and girls, when you sit down be careful to stay away from the edge of the wagon,” the teacher warned.

“Although the horses are very gentle, it is still possible that they could become frightened. Since I’m responsible for your safety today I want to be very sure that you run no risks.” All during the ride several of the boys grumbled that “there’s always something to take the joy out of life.” But June saw that they, as well as the rest of the class, carefully followed their teacher’s advice and crowded together toward the center of the wagon bed.

June thought she had never had so much fun. The ride itself was thrilling, with the horse-drawn wagon lumbering along over the rutted road, past the tree-shaded Silvies River, up the steep gray sagebrush hills, and down into the green meadows of Willow Grove. The picnickers agreed that their camp treat of marshmallows toasted golden brown over the campfire’s red coals was surely a perfect dessert for a delicious noon meal. One and all moaned that they were simply too stuffed to play any more games.

But soon they began to run wildly here and there in the willow clumps, playing blindman’s buff, black man, and run, sheep, run. “Oh! I hate to leave,” sighed June as she and Frances and Hazel gathered up their lunch pails and climbed wearily into the waiting wagon. “Hasn’t it been fun?”

“It certainly has,” Hazel groaned, “but I’m so stiff and sore from running that I can hardly move. My! but we’ll all be tired tomorrow!”

“Well, we don’t have to go to school until afternoon to get our report cards,” Frances said cheerily. “So we can all sleep late in the morning.” “Yes, and I’m certainly going to,” agreed June. “Gwendolen’s going to stay all night at my house, and we’ll probably talk so long about the picnic that we won’t wake up very early in the morning.

“But say, girls, I expect I will get up fairly early, after all. I almost forgot that papa told me to come over to the store by nine o’clock. He wants me to look at some catalog pictures of high-laced hiking boots. He’s half-promised me a pair for my thirteenth birthday, June 1.

And how I hope I get them to wear on our Campfire girls camping trip!” “All aboard, everybody. We’re late now,” called out their smiling classmate, Harley, who had won permission to drive part of the way home. “Hurry up.

Here we go.” Quickly the girls took the same places they had occupied on the morning ride. With increasing weariness they watched as the lengthening shadows forecast the fast-falling eastern Oregon dusk. “I’m so tired I can’t stand up a minute longer.

I’m going to sit down,” June said. “Where?” inquired Hazel. “All the places in the middle of the wagon are taken.” “Then I’ll sit down right here,” June replied.

“Why can’t we sit cross-legged and lean back against each other? That wouldn’t be quite so tiresome as standing up for another two miles.” “Well, we can try, but it doesn’t look as though there’d be much room,” Hazel answered doubtfully.

June soon learned that Hazel was right. For squirm and turn as they could, they found no place for their knees without poking them into their classmates’ backs. “I’m going to turn around and let my legs dangle outside,” June finally announced in disgust.

“I’ll have to stand up if I don’t, and I’m simply too tired to do that.” “All right! Then I will too,” Hazel agreed, and soon whispers of “Me too” were heard, as weary picnickers stretched their cramped legs over the wagon’s edge and let them dangle limply.

“Better be careful, or teacher’ll see us!” warned Frank in a low voice. “You know she said not to do this, and the driver’d make us stop in a minute.” “Oh, teacher’s too tired even to turn around to look at us. And the driver’s so busy watching Harley that he’s not paying any attention either,” June scoffed.

“Anyway, what in the world could possibly happen to us out here on this country road? There isn’t a thing that could hurt us. It’ll be all” June felt the words jerked right out of her mouth as the frightened horses shied at a coiled rattlesnake, and the heavy wagon lurched toward the side of the lane. “Hang on!

Hang on tight,” she heard the driver yell frantically. As he grabbed the reins she saw that he and Harley were both pulling with all their might against the plunging, rearing horses. “Whoa there! Whoa!” she heard him shout above the children’s frightened screams as they hastily scrambled away from the wagon’s edge and toward the center safety zone.

As June tried desperately to loosen herself from her wedged-in position she felt the wagon slide sickeningly off the dirt road. Her terrified eyes stared in unbelieving horror as it swung in a deadly arc. Closer, ever closer it came to the cruel barbed-wire fence that at this exact spot ran close beside the country lane. Frantically she pushed against the wooden sideboards.

But even as her muscles strained with the effort, she knew despairingly that it was no use—no use at all. She saw that she was trapped—trapped as in a vise—with the tearing wire barbs coming nearer and nearer. And then June felt a dreadful tearing, searing agony across her legs.

“Help!” she screamed. “Help! I’m caught in the barbed wire.” But her voice was lost in the shouts and yells of the frightened seventh-grade pupils, whose eyes were turned toward the straining horses.

One! Two! Three! June felt herself dragged along the wire and against three fence posts.

Then great waves of pain swept over her and drowned the liquid fire in her bleeding legs. June never knew when the white-faced drivers pulled the lathered horses to a full stop.

From a great distance she heard the hushed voices of her classmates and teacher as they gently lifted her up onto the wagon and bent over the terrible gaping wounds almost encircling her legs. Fragments of their tearful conversation swirled dizzily through her head. She thought how strange it was to hear them speak so pityingly of someone named June Dalton. “We must get her to a doctor at once!”

“Poor child! I’m afraid she’ll never walk again.” “She’ll be in bed for months and months.

Oh, it’s dreadful!” “Shouldn’t we do something to stop the bleeding? Look! The barbed wire caught her right below the knees.”

Just as the wagon started on its swift jolting ride to Burns, June gritted her teeth and rolled over onto her stomach. Dimly she realized that if she must spend months in bed she could not permit her back to be bruised from the wagon’s jolting. She could never quite remember that terrible ride or how long it took to reach her white-faced mother and the sober-faced doctors who stood beside her hastily moved bed in the big front parlor. She knew only that before she floated into complete unconsciousness she must speak to them.

She must tell Mother Dalton how sorry she was to have ruined the crisp new gingham school dress and the long black cotton stockings, now torn to shreds. Vaguely she remembered hearing that one should never eat a meal before taking an anesthetic.

Her thick tongue struggled to warn them. “I—I ate——” she gasped.

“Now, now, June. Just lie still,” warned kind Dr. Griffith while Dr. Saurman carefully adjusted the chloroform mask.

“Don’t try to talk.” “Marshmallows! I ate ‘em!” June’s voice croaked triumphantly, and then she felt herself shooting out into a whirling boundless space full of shining stars.

June never knew when a sobbing Gwendolen was turned away from her door that evening. Nor did she hear the tearful voices of Father and Mother Dalton after their talk with the doctors.

“I can’t bear it, Mamma,” wept Mr. Dalton. “Just think! Our girl was going to have her hiking boots for a birthday present.

She wanted those more than anything in the world. But what good will boots do her if the doctors have to amputate one leg!”

“They can’t, Jim. We can’t let them do it today. I know they’re good doctors and they’ve done all they can, but still she’s burning up with fever.

I’m going to ask them to wait until tomorrow to decide. “Tomorrow all the school children of every church are meeting together for prayer for June’s recovery. They themselves have asked the ministers to arrange for this special service. Surely their faith will be rewarded.

We must wait!” Long weeks afterward, when June was safely out of the “Valley of the Shadow” she heard the story of the churches’ special services, when the prayers of all the school children and their parents ascended in her behalf.

June felt the tears streaking down her pale cheeks as she listened. But they were happy tears, for by now she knew that she would walk again and that she would be able to wear the beautiful new boots that papa had placed so proudly on the table near her bed.