Читать книгу Cole of Spyglass Mountain - Arthur Preston Hankins - Страница 4

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Silvanus Madmallet had long considered Joshua Cole a child of the evil one. While the boy seemed intelligent enough, he was in the main behind in his school work. His brother, aged eleven, was in the same class, with Joshua fourteen. He was all sufficient as to “readin’ and writin’,” but when it came to the third grim specter in that detestable trio, “ ’rithmetic,” Joshua simply was the dumbest of the dumb. Geography and history seemed to hold his attention to a mild degree, but he detested grammar and all its works. Madmallet’s futile endeavor to pound arithmetic into young Joshua’s head was perhaps the opening gun in the feud that existed between them. Why, what could anybody ever expect to amount to if he did not have a sound understanding of arithmetic? Once a week the class had composition; and, though Joshua’s efforts were always above the average and showed good sentence construction and thought, they brought no praise from Madmallet. What matter if the boy wrote well if he could not parse and diagram a sentence, and knew no rules of grammar?

One day Madmallet had unraveled a part of the mystery that shrouded the boy’s shortcomings. Slipping up behind young Joshua, he had surprised him in holding behind his large geography a smaller book, upon which his attention was riveted. Madmallet had snatched away the forbidden fruit, and his craggy brows had come down as he glared at the unfamiliar title. Joshua had been reading Proctor’s Other Worlds Than Ours!

Madmallet had no sympathy for Science. He was a firm believer that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and he carried his convictions to extremes. He sent the book home to Joshua’s father, who cared for neither Science nor its enemies, but believed that a pupil should not antagonize his teachers, and promptly punished Joshua by holding him with his head submerged in a tub of water until the boy was all but drowned.

One thing had led to another until Madmallet nursed a personal antipathy for young Joshua. Many times he had punished him, but the boy had proved so obstinate that never a cry could his persecutor wring from his twitching lips. Then Madmallet had learned of Joshua’s rare brotherly love for Lester, who was himself a prodigious sinner and committed more crimes against the canons of the school than did Joshua. So, unable to bend the older brother to his will, he tortured Lester, well knowing in his cunning and cruel old heart that he thus punished Joshua more thoroughly than he could with cane or strap.

And so had the feud progressed until that morning when Joshua turned upon his tormentor and followed him into the hall, the blacksmith-made poker gripped in his trembling hands.

“Take off your coat,” Madmallet was saying, when the door opened softly behind him and Joshua came through.

“Keep yer coat on, Les,” ordered Joshua in shaky tones. Then he turned his grave gray-blue eyes on the teacher, and laid the poker over his right shoulder. “Du-don’t you hit my brother with that strap,” he said; and, though his tones showed nervousness, even fear, they contained a quality that gave Madmallet pause.

His face grew fiery red and his cheeks puffed out.

“You threaten me with that poker, you young scoundrel!” he bellowed. “Me! You threaten me!”

“Ye heard what I said!”—the tones grew stronger. “You hit my brother with that strap an’ I’ll bust your head with this poker.”

Silvanus Madmallet stood in a statuesque position and gazed in horrified amazement at the boy. Could this thing be? Had he heard aright? Would even the most incorrigible pupil in his room dare to go as far as this?

He clinched his teeth, drew back the strap, and took one step toward the cowering Lester. Then the iron poker left the shoulder of young Joshua, and the boy’s elbows traveled farther back to gain impetus for a deadly blow. Madmallet paled, dropped the uplifted arm, and stepped safely out of reach. In that moment Joshua knew that he faced an utter coward, and his soul cried out in triumph.

“Don’t hit ’im, I tell ye!” he said gloatingly. He knew that this repetition was unnecessary, but he had to crow over his victory and could think of nothing else to say.

Madmallet took one more step toward safety, then leveled a long, bony finger.

“You, Joshua Cole, are expelled,” he said. “Go home and tell your parents.”

“I don’t care,” retorted Joshua. “You c’n expel me if ye want to, but you ain’t gonta hit my brother with that strap.”

“Go home! Get your hat and your books and go!”

“Not unless Les goes with me. You ain’t gonta send me home, and keep Les here to beat ’im up soon’s I’m gone.”

“You’re the devil’s spawn!” raged Madmallet. “You’ll die on the gallows!—you’re a born criminal!—I’m expelling you for the good of the school!—to save the rest of my pupils from your evil influence! I hope your father—kills you. Will you go?”

But Joshua stood firm. Then Madmallet threw up his hands and rolled his eyes toward heaven. He seemed to derive inspiration from the process, for he turned to Lester, and, cheeks vibrating with anger, ordered him:

“Go home—you, too! You’re suspended for a week. I’ll write a letter to your father about this unbelievable insolence. Go—both of you! Out of my sight!”

And with this he hurried toward the door, keeping a wide space between his precious self and the poker-bearer, and dodged into the classroom.

“N-now ye’ve done it!” blubbered Lester, casting a reproachful look at his champion.

“Shut up!” ordered his brother. “Go get our caps. We’ll let the confounded ole books go. Le’s hurry up an’ get outa this.”

“Father’ll drown us,” wailed Lester, but he obeyed his brother and came back presently from the cloak room, both caps in hand.

Joshua crowded his on his head, laid the poker against the stair rail, and descended almost noiselessly ahead of Lester. Downstairs and out in the bright spring sunshine he still took the lead, while Lester, sobbing brokenly, trudged along behind him. They left the school ground and made toward the vacant lot where the rank weeds grew.

“Wh-where ye goin’, Josh?” sniffled the younger one.

“What’s the diff where we go? We dassent go home. I’m gonta see if I c’n find that slug again. I’ll show ye somethin’ else he c’n do that ye never dreamed of.”

“I don’t wanta see no ole slug, Joshua! What’re we gonta do? You—you jest ruined everythin’! Father’ll drown us, I tell ye! An’ all on your account!”

“Won’t drown me,” replied Joshua doggedly. “Me, I’m through with that drowndin’ business. Father’ll never stick my head in a tub o’ water again.”

“But what’ll you do to keep ’im from doin’ it? Oh, I tell ye he’ll—”

“Shut up! You gi’me a pain, Les! I’m goin’ out West—that’s why he won’t drown me. You’re goin’ with me.”

“I ain’t! I won’t!”

“Then stay here and get drowned,” said Joshua heartlessly.

They had by this time entered the swampy vacant lot where, such a short time before, Joshua had paraded to the betterment of his pockets’ contents the marvelous endowment of Limax Campestris. Joshua’s eyes were dry, but his face was pallid, for he knew only too well the gravity of the situation. But he sought for and found the self-same slug, crawling over a broad leaf and feasting thereon. And at once his gray-blue eyes lighted up, and thoughts of his troubles vanished.

“Say, Les,” he said, “you stay here while I go home and sneak Father’s razor. I’ll be right back—honest, I will.”

“What d’ye want of a razor?” asked the brother petulantly.

“Ne’mind. I’ll tell Mother I forgot a book and hadta come home f’r it. But she won’t see me, maybe. I’ll sneak in the back door, an’ Zida’ll never tell on me. Mother was goin’ ridin’ this mornin’, anyway.”

“But what’re we gonta do, Josh?” wailed Lester again, as Joshua started away.

“Aw, ferget that, can’t ye! We’re goin’ West, I tell ye! You leave everything to me, Les.”

“You got me into this, an’—”

But Joshua was running and paid no further heed; and Lester threw himself upon the damp ground and gave his misery full swing.

Zida Hunt, the Coles’ negro cook and maid of all work, was a friend of the erring Joshua. As the boy entered the kitchen of the big brick house which the Coles called home she turned toward him and lifted high her hands. Zida was given to emotionalism on the slightest provocation.

“Lord, chile, what yo’-all doin’ home dis time o’ day?”

“I forgot one o’ my books, Zida, an’ Ole Madhouse sent me home to get it,” lied the boy. “Where’s Mother?”

“She done gone out ridin’ in de kerrige,” Zida told him.

“Well, don’t say nothin’, will ye, Zida? About me bein’ sent home, you know. They ain’t any use to, now, is there?”

“Suttingly not, chile. Go on up to yo’ room an’ git yo’ book. Ah ain’t gonta say nothin’ about hit.”

“Thanks, Zida”—and Joshua hurried through the dining room to the front hall, where he leaped upstairs three steps at a time.

Here he was safe, so he made at once for his father’s room, searched the dresser drawers, found the cased razor, and went downstairs once more. He left the house by the front door so that Zida might not see that he carried no book. He hurried along Grant Avenue to the corner, then followed a side street to the vacant lot where his heartsick brother awaited him.

“Where’s that ole slug now?” was Joshua’s beginning. “I got the ole razor, all right, all right.”

Lester sat up and continued to sniffle, uninterested in the razor and the slug and any combination that might be arranged between them.

The feasting slug had not moved from the broad leaf, and Joshua sat down on the ground beside it and removed the razor from its case.

“Gee, it’s sharp!” he announced. “Le’me spit on yer arm an’ shave the hair offen it, kid.”

“No, I don’t want ye to,” said Lester. “I don’t know how you c’n be that way, when you know as well as I do what’s gonta be done to us.”

“What way?”

“Thinkin’ about things like ye’re always doin’—that’s how! Ye better be thinkin’ about what’s gonta happen to us when the folks gets Ole Sorehammer’s letter.”

“They ain’t gonta get any letter from Ole Sorehammer, kid. Don’t you worry about that. C’m’on now an’ watch this ole slug do somethin’ funny. What ye got to bet that he can’t walk the tight rope along the edge o’ this razor ’thout cuttin’ ’imself?”

“I ain’t got nothin’ to bet, and I don’t care what he c’n do! Why won’t our folks get Madmallet’s letter, Josh?”

“ ’Cause I won’t let ’em, that’s why. Don’t ye know who Madmallet’ll send home with that letter?”

“O’ course—ole Slinky Dawson, teacher’s pet.”

“Course it’ll be Slinky Dawson. An’ that’s just why I’m hangin’ out here in this ole lot. Won’t ole Slinky hafta cross this lot on the way to our house? An’ we’ll be hidin’ here, an’ when he comes along we’ll scare the stuffin’ outa him. I’ll tell ’im that if he takes that letter to our folks I’ll knock the waddin’ outa him. Say, he’ll be scared to death, Les. You leave that little mamma’s boy to your Uncle Josh—I’ll fix his ole clock! C’m’on, now—bet ye anythin’ ye wanta bet this here ole slug c’n walk from one end to the other o’ this ole razor blade an’ not cut ’imself a little bit. C’m’on, Les—be a sport! What’s the use actin’ like you are—that don’t get you nothin’!”

Lester rubbed the tears from his eyes with a dirty wrist and, encouraged by the positive tone in his brother’s promises, allowed his curiosity to arise over the possibilities of a razor-walking slug. He went close to Joshua and squatted beside him, but, remembering his loss of a short time before, refused to bet against another sure-thing nature game.

And in wonder he watched his brother take up the slug and place the open razor, edge up, on the ground. Then Joshua put the slug on the handle of the razor and prodded it along until it crawled to the keen edge. Here it tried to go sidewise and reach the ground, but with a small stick Joshua kept it to the course. And along the keen edge the slow creature made its way, adding to the thrills of its brief terrestrial day.

“Gosh, Joshua! Ain’t it cuttin’ ’im?”

“Don’t see any blood, do you?”

“Uh-uh!”

“Ye wouldn’t either, I guess. Ain’t no blood in ’em, I’m thinkin’. But he ain’t drippin’ anything, is he? He’s got insides, ain’t he? There’d be somethin’ to drip if he was gettin’ cut, wouldn’t they?”

“Uh-huh. But ain’t it hurtin’ ’im at all, Josh?”

“Course not, rummy! There he goes off on the ground. Now watch while I turn ’im over, kid. You won’t see a ole cut or anything.”

And when Joshua’s gently prodding stick had laid the long-suffering mollusk on its back its belly showed none the worse for the experience.

“Josh, how’d he stay on?”

“I can’t tell ye that. But I’ll know some day. Then come ’round and ast me.”

“And why’n’t it cut ’im?”

“Can’t tell that either—but sometime I will.”

“How ye gonta ever tell, Josh?”

“I don’t know. There’s a lotta things I gotta find out, kid. There’s books an’ things that’ll tell ye all about things like that. I’m gonta get the names of ’em sometime. Now what’ll we do till ole Slinky Dawson comes along with Madmallet’s letter to the folks?”