Читать книгу Cole of Spyglass Mountain - Arthur Preston Hankins - Страница 3

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Four boys, ranging from eleven to fifteen years of age, squatted close to earth in a wet, weed-rank city lot. It was spring, and the new warmth of the season’s birth was in the air. The lot was a vacant one, and perhaps would remain so for many years to come, because it was low, and the spring rains had made of it a veritable swamp.

One boy was master of ceremonies, and the eager eyes of his companions were fixed on a chip of wood that he held in his hand, four inches above the ground. The chip was perhaps five inches square, and over it crawled a slug, a slimy, repulsive, helpless creature of the earth. Limax Campestris was the slug’s rather important-sounding name, but of this the boys knew nothing.

“Aw, bet ye an agut he can’t get down!” volunteered one boy.

“Which one o’ yere agates?” asked the one who held the chip.

“My ole moony one,” was the reply. “Bet ye my moony agut against yer black-’n’-white one!”

“Aw, his black-an’-white one’s half glass,” put in a would-be spoilsport.

To show that he accepted the wager, the black-haired boy who had imprisoned the slug on the chip reached his right hand into his trousers pocket and laid a white-and-black-striped agate marble on the ground beside him. The tow-headed gambler who had offered the wager laid beside the black-and-white marble a milky-colored one, which was soft and showed tiny half-moons, the result of countless collisions with other “taws.”

“Anybody else?” invited the boy who held the chip and its crawling inhabitant.

Several bets were offered, ranging from so many “chinies” or “commies” or “glassies” to collections of jack-stones and other treasures dear to the heart of a boy, all of which the master of ceremonies accepted to the extent of his pockets’ contents. All eyes were again fixed on the slowly moving gastropod.

“Now, lissen, Cole,” said one. “Ye’re bettin’ he c’n git down offen that chip ’thout jumpin’, eh? Is that it?”

“Yes,” replied the dark-haired boy.

“Er fallin’?” questioned another.

“Er fallin’ either,” was the reply.

“Aw, they’s a ketch in it somewheres, fellas,” was the warning of the third youthful sportsman. “He’ll let the chip down er somethin’.”

“They ain’t any such thing,” retorted the boy called Cole. “I’m bettin’ just like what I said. This here slug’ll let ’imself down on the ground an’ go on about his business ’thout me helpin’ ’im, er him jumpin’ er fallin’ er anything like that. An’ I’ll keep the chip four inches above the ground all the time, just like I got her now. Now you watch what I’m tellin’ you! Watch ’im!”

“Aw, ye’re crazy!” derided the tow-headed boy, “Ye’re crazy, Cole!”

The boy called Cole made no reply to this, but kept his fine gray eyes on his captive.

A studious observer would have noted this boy’s remarkable face. His hair was coal-black and of heavy growth. In sharp contrast, his large eyes were a deep gray, almost blue, and the lashes that covered them were long and black as soot. The face was decidedly ascetic, the nose thin and almost Grecian. One noticed the mouth. It was youthful still, but even now there were settling about it faint traceries that bespoke determination. His was the face, almost, of a youth of twenty. But he had barely turned fourteen.

Joshua Cole was the boy’s name. His schoolmates called him Cole, not because of his precocious gravity, but after the manner of boys of the age of twelve or thereabout as they begin to assume the ways of men. When they called him Josh they were in a frivolous mood and set on teasing him. But teasing Joshua Cole was fruitless. He merely smiled and looked steadily at his would-be tormentors out of his tolerant, grave gray eyes—eyes at the same time so serious and so whimsical as to baffle them to silence. A strange boy was Joshua Cole, always deep in some original, boyish experiment, as in the present instance, but universally liked by his associates.

“We gotta be gettin’ to school,” Towhead announced, after the four had watched the circular progress of the slug in silence for a time.

“Gee whiz! There goes the second bell now!”

“C’m’on, Cole! Ole Madmallet won’t do a thing to us!”

“Wait a minute,” said Joshua Cole softly. “He’s gone pretty near round the chip now. When he gets clean back to where he started from, you fellas might’s well say good-by to yer ole marbles.”

“But I ain’t gonta be tardy!” expostulated Towhead, and grabbed up the moony agate.

“All right. Go ahead. You’re a hot sport, you are!”

“Ne’mind, Cole. Wait’ll Ole Hothatchet grabs you by the neck!”

So saying, Towhead ran off toward the nearby brick schoolhouse, where already the scholars were filing in to the time of the principal’s tapping with a ruler on a window sill.

Two more of the boys grabbed up their marbles and strapped books, and followed Towhead, oblivious to the fate of the imprisoned slug.

But one doggedly remained with the experimenter. And this one, too, was a black-haired boy, Joshua’s younger brother Lester. Lester Cole had made his bet that the slug could not reach the ground after Joshua had lifted him from his earthly home on the chip; and the Coles were famous as stickers. He set his lips and watched the slug intently. But presently he said:

“Aw, le’s be gettin’ to school, Josh! Old Madmallet’ll raise the devil. We c’n watch an ole slug any ole time.”

“No, we can’t. Don’t know when we’ll find another slug,” replied his brother. “It’s gettin’ so hot we won’t see many more of ’em pretty soon. They can’t stand hot weather; it kills ’em. But you take yer ole marbles and go. I don’t care about any ole bet. I’m gonta stay an’ watch this ole slug, myself. Can’t tell when I’ll get another chance.”

“I won’t go ’less you do, Josh,” said Lester. “You can’t bluff me out on any ole bet. D’ye think I’m scared o’ Ole Madhouse? Not on yer life!”

“Look! Look!” Joshua almost shouted. “Now watch ’im, Les! Looky—he’s been all ’round the chip, reachin’ out his feelers and crawlin’ over the edge, ain’t he? And now he knows he can’t get off the chip just by crawlin’ er anything like that. Now watch what he’ll do!”

Lester glanced nervously at the brick schoolhouse, into which the tail end of the cue of scholars was now marching. Then an excited cry from his brother caused him to turn his eyes on the slug once more.

And, lo and behold, the brainless crawling thing had begun to prove that Nature had endowed it with powers unknown to ordinary, unobservant man. It had crawled almost entirely over the edge of the chip, and was holding by the tip end of its tail.

“He’s gonta fall!” cried Lester, forgetting austere old Silvanus Madmallet, the teacher.

“No, he ain’t! You watch, Les! Now! Look at ’im!”

And lo and behold again, a thin stream of slime came from a gland at the rear end of the pitiful creature, and it descended slowly, head down, reeling out its rope of mucus as it went.

Lester Cole watched in boyish awe as the poor earthling drew nearer and nearer to the ground, the string of mucus ever lengthening above it.

“I wouldn’t think it ud hold ’im,” he marveled.

And then the slug reached the earth and began slowly assuming a horizontal position.

“Lift ’im up again, Josh,” suggested Lester.

“No,” said Joshua, dropping the chip. “That wouldn’t be fair. You lose, kid!”—and he scraped into his hand an assortment of “glassies” and “chinies.” “C’m’on—we gotta be gettin’ there!”

Side by side the brothers ran toward the schoolhouse.

“You oughtn’t to’ve stayed, Les,” puffed Joshua.

“An’ how ’bout you?” Lester retorted.

“It’s different with me,” stated Joshua.

“Like the dickens it is! What d’ye mean?”

“I gotta kinda look at things like that. You don’t care nothin’ about ’em, much. But don’t you let Ole Sorehammer get you. You been tardy a lot here lately. He’ll feel like bustin’ you wide open. But I’ll stick with you. Don’t let him bluff ye, kid.”

“How’d ye know that thing could do that, Josh?” asked Lester.

“ ’Cause I’ve made ’em do it before now,” Joshua told him.

“You’re a devil of a kid—always doin’ somethin’ like that.”

“I like to,” was all that Joshua said in explanation.

Silvanus Madmallet, called variously by the boys “Ole Hothatchet,” “Ole Sorehammer,” or “Ole Madhouse,” was a tall, long-beaked, austere pedagogue, who fairly exuded scholastic dignity. He was of the old school—not so old in that day, either—who dispensed learning under the well-known maxim, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

He was seated at his desk when Joshua and Lester Cole hurried on tiptoe into the cloak room, deposited their caps on hooks, and, grinning guiltily at each other, walked into the classroom and tried to appear unconcerned. Their classmates giggled and looked in Pharisaic triumph at one another as the two culprits found their desks and screwed themselves into the seats behind them. “Behold these publicans,” said their eyes, “for they are tardy, and we were not!”

Old Silvanus Madmallet maintained a severe and portentous silence until the brothers were established in their seats, casting sheepish glances at each other, not daring to face the despot on the platform or the hypocritically condemnatory eyes of their classmates. Then suddenly Old Madmallet spoke.

“Joshua and Lester Cole, why are you tardy?”

Neither brother volunteered an explanation.

“This has been occurring altogether too frequently of late,” went on the stern voice of old Silvanus. “Speak out, Joshua!”

Joshua parted his lips.

“Stand up, sir!” came from the rostrum.

Grinning in embarrassment, the older brother took his stand.

“It was my fault, Mr. Madmallet,” he confessed. “Lester, he wasn’t to blame. I kep’ him.”

“Oh, you kept him!” The principal’s tones were sarcastic. “And did you find it hard to do?”

“No, sir. That is—yes, sir. He—he didn’t want to stay.”

“That’s a falsehood, Joshua Cole,” said Madmallet in calm, assured tones. “This is not the first time you have tried to shield your brother. He has been tardy repeatedly. Your brotherly love may perhaps be commendatory, but this time it will not prevent your brother from being punished.”

Silvanus Madmallet seemed to derive great pleasure from talking, in a measure, over his charges’ heads. He loved to roll big words over his tongue. Pedantic in the extreme was old Silvanus Madmallet, else he would have risen long ago to some form of public service above the teaching of adolescent girls and boys.

“Lester, stand up!”

Lester squirmed out of his seat and stood erect.

“Go into the hall.”

With slow steps and a white face, the younger brother took up his melancholy march to the torture room.

“Joshua, sit down!”

But Joshua Cole remained standing. “Looky here, Mr. Madmallet,” he said, his lips twitching and the jaw muscles shuttling under the taut skin of his cheeks, “don’t you whip my brother. It was me that made him late for school. You whip me, if ye gotta whip somebody.”

The room was silence itself. There came only the faint shuffle of Lester’s feet as he walked to his doom. Gray crags grew over the fiery eyes of old Silvanus Madmallet, and the eyes glared at Joshua Cole.

“Sit down!” he thundered.

“I know what you’re tryin’ to do!” cried Joshua. “You know it’ll hurt me more if you whip my brother than ’twould if you was to whip me. You’ve done that before. I’m onto you. And I won’t stand it!”

His voice had risen with every sentence, and on the last it broke. Joshua Cole was near to tears. He was at once angry and frightened at his own audacity. But he had long been at war with his teacher and knew the injustice of the man.

“I won’t stand it!” he cried hotly again. “You just take it out on me by whippin’ Lester. And—and I just won’t stand it, that’s all!”

“Sit down!” thundered from the platform a second time.

Lester’s lagging steps had brought him to the hall door. Reluctantly he laid a hand on the knob.

“Go into the hall, I told you, Lester!” said the teacher, glancing toward him briefly.

Lester opened the door, all hope gone, and closed it behind him.

“Now, Joshua Cole, are you going to obey me? Once more—sit down!”

“I won’t set down!” said Joshua, pale as death, but in his blue-gray eyes that light of unshakable resolve which was later to prove the determining factor in his career.

Just what might be gained by his refusal to sit down Joshua did not know. He was not reasoning at all; he was merely in revolt against a long-standing tyranny. And, boylike, he had resorted to unreasoning obstinacy to show his attitude.

For a silent moment Silvanus Madmallet glared at him, his own face white and rigid. Then he arose briskly, went to the closet, and returned with a leather strap.

“I will attend to you later, young man,” he said with cold calmness, and passed through the door by which Lester Cole had entered the hall.

As the door closed behind him a low buzzing arose in the classroom. But it ceased abruptly as the scholars saw Joshua Cole trotting toward that door, his small fists doubled. And as he passed the big stove, which had not yet been taken down because of an occasional cold spring morning, he grasped up the iron poker that leaned so invitingly in a corner of the coal-box.