Читать книгу In the Path of La Salle or Boy Scouts on the Mississippi - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 3

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If ever a man knew how to fill an ice cream cone, that man was Sparrow. He pressed the ice cream down into the very apex, packing it tight and hard; then building on this honest foundation he piled and crushed the cream in until it formed a luscious dome, like an arctic mountain, above the little conical cup. This he handed to you, dripping.

That is why the boys patronized Sparrow. It was easy enough to get ice cream cones, such as they were, down in Oakwood Village, but Sparrow, remote and obscure, far up beyond the second bend of the river, had served Gordon Lord one afternoon and Gordon had returned down the river to Oakwood and made Sparrow famous. Sparrow’s flourishing trade was attributable to Master Gordon Lord; and this whole story comes out of an ice cream cone.

The front of Sparrow’s odd little place was on the village street of Bridgevale, its side toward the river where there was a float, a launching track and a little grove furnished with rickety tables and rustic chairs. These were for the boating parties, Sparrow’s guests.

And Bridgevale? Oh, Bridgevale was a village which sponged on Oakwood and called frantically for Oakwood’s fire department whenever it had a fire. But there weren’t many fires. If there had been there wouldn’t have been much Bridgevale, as Bridgevale’s stock of fuel consisted of just nineteen houses. Brick Parks always claimed that you couldn’t see Bridgevale without a field-glass, and one day the Oakwood boys, being in facetious mood, drove a stake in the ground along the river bank near Sparrow’s, so they would know Bridgevale when they came to it. Of course, they did that to jolly Sparrow; but what did Sparrow care? He knew Brick Parks.

Time was when Sparrow looked to Bridgevale for his livelihood, but that was before he had discovered the vast possibilities of the ice cream cone and turned his calculating eye upon the gay river. Now parties coming from far down the stream and even from the bay would stop there for refreshment.

Sparrow’s stock consisted of ice cream, to be served in plate or cone, root beer, cheese, crackers, spark plugs, cake, canoe paddles, pie, medium oil, gum drops, batteries, chocolates and gasoline. You could regale yourself or your motor-boat at Sparrow’s. You could, if you chose, leave your canoe there over night and go down to Oakwood by train if the weather were threatening, or if you were tired of paddling. An old rudder hung loose by its pintles from one of the tree-trunks, like an old tavern signboard, and on this was graven the legend, RIVERSIDE REST. But most of the patrons persisted in calling the place simply “Sparrow’s.”

The only things not of an edible or serviceable nature that Sparrow kept were picture post-cards. He had a rusty revolving rack filled with these, which creaked when you turned it so that the girls always pressed their elbows into their sides and drew long breaths between their clenched teeth, and shuddered. For this reason the boys always gave it a vigorous twirl when they passed it going to or from the float.

On a certain Saturday in early spring Wesley Binford stood on the Boat Club steps in Oakwood, watching the river. I remember it was a Saturday because it was the same day that the Oakwood scouts, both patrols, the Beavers and the Hawks, went into the city with Red Deer for their annual spring assault upon several sporting goods establishments. That was the very reason why Harry Arnold, leader in the Beavers, could not go canoeing up the river with Marjorie Danforth. But that is another matter.

Wesley stood on the Boat Club steps, his hands in his pockets, contemplating the river. The pretty cupolaed boat-house with its pleasant veranda and easy-chairs was a tempting spot for summer lounging, and here the boys whose fathers were members of the Club were wont to loll away many an idle hour in vacation time. The boating had not yet begun; only one launch lay at the floats, but several others standing on blocks hard by were in process of renovation for the “Commodore’s Run,” which would formally open the season. Several canoes lay inverted on saw-horses about the lawn, their fresh paint drying in the sun. But the flower beds and gravel walks were yet unkempt, showing that whatever preparation the members might be making to launch their little craft, the Club had not officially pronounced the season open.

No boatman had as yet been engaged. The national emblem had not been raised on the cupola nor the Club pennant on the little shack where the boatman stayed. And everything was under lock and key.

Wesley wondered when they intended to hire a boatman, and whether he might—no, he couldn’t; the very thought of it was humiliating. Yet there was nine dollars a week with very little to do except raise and lower the colors, trim the walks, keep the lawn mowed and help the canoeists to and from the floats with their canoes. So far as the trimming and mowing were concerned, Wesley did as much at home; but he could not do such things for money.

Yet no boy that ever lived wanted money more than Wesley Binford.

He was a tall boy of about eighteen with a ruddy color, gray eyes, and a manner which people called likable. He was of all things manly in his look and demeanor, slim but healthful and muscular-looking, and with that indescribable something which suggests good instincts and good breeding. There was a little touch of superciliousness in his bearing, directed toward the world in general, particularly toward the unoffending, slow, beautiful, tree-embowered town of Oakwood, with the lovely river winding through it.

But supercilious or not, there was something particularly winning in Wesley’s smile, and to supplement these favorable qualities of appearance, he was really generous and good-hearted. Small children liked him immensely (which I think is a good sign), and when he allowed himself to relax and be just the amiable, attractive, inexperienced boy that he was, everybody liked him and thought him charming.

But two things made Wesley dissatisfied and caused that little sneer which more and more of late had disfigured his countenance. His parents were poor (not so very poor, but too poor for Wesley) and the restrictions which this fact placed upon his life irked him and made him cynical and covetous. Besides, he was dissatisfied with his youth. He wished to be a man and the pose of sophisticated worldly wisdom which he assumed deprived him, first and last, of a good deal of wholesome, boyish pleasure.

That is the reason why Wesley was not in the city with the scouts this beautiful Saturday instead of standing here alone on the Boat Club steps, wondering what to do with himself. He was on friendly enough terms with all the troop, particularly with Harry Arnold, but he said they were kids—nice kids, he admitted—but kids.

Oh, Wesley, Wesley, you make me laugh!

He cast a twig in the river and saw that the tide had not yet turned, it was still running up. He ambled along past the tiers of canoe lockers under the porch. Each was numbered and when he came to 53 he paused and tried the padlock, but it was fast. He gave a little amused sneer as if he did not care a bit, and wandered on.

But 53 was his unlucky number. In a few minutes he was before the locker again and this time he held a small stone. With this he tapped the bar of the padlock sideways very lightly and from a dexterous little twirl it presently fell open. Most of the old Boat Club padlocks yielded readily to this cunning treatment and, first and last, they were subjected to it a great deal. For instance, there were the Lawton boys, three of them, and only one key; and that key had a perverse way of never being with any of them when it was wanted. Then besides, there was a kind of free-and-easy code at the Boat Club anyway. Everybody knew everybody else, there was mutual trust and good fellowship in the boating fraternity, and locks were “hypnotized” and canoes “borrowed” in a spirit of genial brigandage, much the same as a fellow’s neckties and scarf-pins are “copped” and used by his chums at boarding-school.

I say this because I do not want to prejudice you against Wesley. There were, to be sure, some who never did this thing, and in this particular case it is right to tell you that Wesley’s father was not a member of the Club. I should say that might make a difference.

In any event, he threw open the locker and grasped the end of the canoe, pulled it out over its rollers, hauled it to the nearest float and slid it into the river.

It was an unusually handsome canoe with the high, curving ends of the true Indian model, and painted a bright vermilion hue which contrasted pleasantly with the rich green of the new foliage as it glided silently upstream between the wooded, overhanging shores. As Wesley passed under the rustic bridge there was the usual Saturday battalion of small boys perched upon its rail, their fish lines dangling in the water below. They made a row all the way along the bridge, the lines forming a sort of whip-lash curtain through which the canoeist must pass.

“Hey, look out for those lines, will you!” piped a diminutive urchin.

“Sure he will,” reassured another; “he’s a nice fellow; I know that red canoe.”

Evidently the owner of the vermilion canoe was to be trusted.

Wesley cast a mischievous look at the group above, then with a dexterous sideways swing of his paddle he involved all the lines in a hopeless tangle. Emerging from beneath the bridge, he was greeted with a storm of appropriate epithets and, I am happy to say, with one or two well-directed missiles. One, a wriggling eel, caught him in the neck, but he cast it off good-humoredly and called, “Good shot!” at the elated marksman. There was a good deal of the true sport about Wesley.

“Why didn’t you pull your lines up?” he demanded.

“A-a-a-w!” was the contemptuous reply. “You ain’t the fellow that owns that canoe!”

“Don’t get mad, now,” laughed Wesley, dodging a missile. “Can’t you take a joke? Climb down here, kiddo, and I’ll give you a dime to buy some more line.”

“Ye-e-e-s, you won’t!”

“Sure I will; climb down and hang onto that brace.”

“Don’t you go, he’s kiddin’ you!” advised one sage youngster.

But the little fellow clambered down, while Wesley fumbled in his pocket, the others crowding at the rail in sneering skepticism.

“Gee!” said Wesley, abashed; “I haven’t got any change—honest. You be here when I come down.”

“Ye-e-e-s,” came a storm of distrust. “You think you can fool us, don’t you, you big—”

But it was not quite so bad as that, for Wesley really did mean to pay for his little act of perversity. It was like him to tangle the lines simply because he had been asked not to. It was quite like him to wish to undo the little act of meanness directly it had been committed. It amuses me too to think how exactly like him it was not to have a dime in his pocket. And as for his promising to pay it on the way down when there was no means of getting it meanwhile, why, that was just Wesley Binford all over.