Читать книгу In the Path of La Salle or Boy Scouts on the Mississippi - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 5

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Sparrow came out of the little shack into the grove, greeting the boy cordially. It was hard to say how old Sparrow was, but he was not young. His face was shaven and deeply wrinkled and his hair was thick and curly and of an iron-gray hue. His eyes were blue and as simple and honest as those of a little child.

It was an open secret that Sparrow had failed in the world. The great city had been too much for him and he had come up here with all he had, his young daughter and his small savings, and bought this little place which now furnished his living and constituted his home. He had the reward which most men have who fail because they lack shrewdness; he was trusted and liked. Every one had a feeling of affection for him, and the very qualities which had made him a failure in a large way had brought about his present modest prosperity in this small field.

It was very easy to “jolly” Sparrow, and he would readily swallow the most atrocious yarns. He always gave overweight in candy, crackers and such things. He hadn’t been to the city for ten years and the Oakwood boys hoped he never would go there, for they used to tell him the most outlandish things about the city. He didn’t believe their tales but he always laughed amiably and was glad to see the boys enjoying themselves at his expense. When Sparrow was sick Dr. Brent used to run up from Oakwood in his car each day to see him and was quite insulted when Sparrow asked for his bill. When he was getting better the Oakwood boys “chipped in” and gave him an easy-chair. On the whole, I am inclined to think that Sparrow was a great success.

“H’lo, Charlie,” said Wesley, “how are things?”

“Beginning to seem like spring, isn’t it?” Sparrow drawled. “How’s Oakwood?”

“Oh,” said Wesley, “I wouldn’t speak disrespectfully of the dead.”

Sparrow laughed good-humoredly, and Wesley was encouraged.

“Why, even the tide turns around and goes back when it gets to Oakwood,” said he.

“That’s very witty,” said the girl, “but it isn’t quite true; and that other one about speaking disrespectfully of the dead—didn’t you say that last year?”

Wesley was disconcerted; he wished she would go away.

“I think,” he said, “that a large and juicy cone would be about right now; got any chocolate, Charlie?”

The girl brought the cone and stood waiting by the table where her father and Wesley were seated. Sparrow saw that Wesley was uncomfortable and nodded to his daughter, who went away.

“I’ll fix that up next week, Charlie.”

“That’s all right, Wesley; I don’t want you to feel that you can’t stop here unless you have money with you.”

“You’re all right, Charlie,” said Wesley, approvingly. “I guess you’ll never lose anything by me.”

Sparrow laughed at the very thought.

“Who’s camping down the line, Charlie? There’s a tent down at the bend.”

“Oh, those are the surveyor folks; I guess they’re about done now,” Sparrow drawled.

“What—what are they surveying?”

Sparrow smiled. “Why, Wesley, where have you been keeping yourself?”

“Maybe he’s dead and doesn’t know it,” said the girl, who had returned to rub off the table.

Wesley was nettled. He could not talk easily while she was near so he just drummed on the table until she went away again. When she was a yard or so distant she wheeled about with unconscious grace and asked if he wanted anything more.

“You want another cone, Wesley?” said Sparrow.

“N-no, I guess not; tell me about this bunch, will you? They seem to have an idea they own the river.”

“Oh, I guess not,” Sparrow laughed, softly. “They seem to be a first-rate set. I believe I’ll miss them when they’re gone. ’Long about now you know, Wesley, I usually begin to get anxious to see the canoes come along. I kind of hanker after spring—and I’m glad you paddled up, Wesley—it’s good to see you. I suppose the other boys will be coming up in a day or so. Well, now, these surveyor folks have been real good company to me. Captain Craig, he’d come and set right down where you are and chat, and you wouldn’t believe it, Wesley, the adventures that man has had.

“One of those boys—the one they call Bob—I never heard tell of such things as he’s been through! Had a fight with a grizzly—sounds just like a dime novel, Wesley, so it does. And he went across from one mountain peak to another on a rope—rode in a little wicker basket to—to—er—verify a contour.”

“To how?”

“I can’t tell you what that means, Wesley,” laughed Sparrow. “I don’t like to interrupt them much to ask. Honor and I, we just sit and listen.”

“Swallow it whole, hey? Does she believe their stories?”

“Why, they rooted out a band of train-robbers in Kentucky, Wesley, the day before they sent the Mammoth Cave in by parcel post, and—” here Sparrow broke down in innocent laughter.

Wesley waited with cynical amusement, pitying his host’s credulity. “I suppose they’ve killed a few giants and dragons, too,” he suggested.

“Oh, they just meant mailing the map in, I suppose,” Sparrow explained; “but I do declare it’s good to hear them talk—’specially the captain. Honor and I’ll both hate to see them go and that’s a fact. We had quite a little joke, Wesley, she and I; when their launch would go chugging by she’d run down to the float and shout through the megaphone for the captain to come over and talk to father, and I’d make believe it was she all the while that wanted to hear about the adventures. She’s great for adventures—I never saw such a girl!”

“Guess that’s why she likes Harry Arnold.”

“Well, that’s a fact, Wesley; Harry has been about some, and that two years he spent in Panama, it’s just made a man of him. It’s a great thing for a boy to get away and be thrown on his own—”

“Well, how about this outfit?” Wesley interrupted. “Who are they, anyhow?”

“Why, they come from Washington, Wesley, from the Department of Geological and Coast Survey. They’ve been mapping up the river. You never heard such yarns as they have to tell. I could just sit and listen to them all night. They lined up the Everglades down in Florida—that’s what they call it, ‘lining up.’ And they packed up the Grand Cañon of Arizona for shipment—Wesley, you’d just laugh yourself hoarse to hear the way those boys go on. Sometimes I don’t know what they mean when they get to talking shop; you’d think the mountains and valleys and great lakes were just bric-à-brac.”

“It’s easy to entertain you, Charlie,” smiled Wesley as if to humor Sparrow’s simplicity. “I guess they’ve been stringing you.”

“Wesley, do you know who they call the ‘Old Lady’?” Sparrow chuckled.

“No, who?”

“The Mississippi River! I used to hear them talking about the ‘Old Lady,’ and finally I asked them. They never call it anything but just the ‘Old Lady.’”

There was a moment of silence during which Sparrow seemed to hesitate as if not knowing whether to say what was in his mind or not.

“Do you know, Wesley, I should think you’d like a position such as those boys have; you’re tall and strong and tough, and you’d get right in touch with nature. I believe if I were a boy I couldn’t resist it.”

“Not for mine!” said Wesley. “I’m not going to spend my life in a pair of overalls.”

“You’d get right out in the far west, and it would be—”

“It would be a plaguy long ways from Broadway,” Wesley interrupted.

“In the old days,” mused Sparrow, “when a boy felt he just had to have adventures, he up and ran away from home, but now, I do declare, it seems as if Uncle Sam was just waiting to supply them.— You’re going to work in the fall, aren’t you, Wesley?”

“Oh, if anybody offered me a position as president of a bank right now I’d take it. Otherwise I’m on the line September first for my little commutation ticket.”

“Just back and forth to the city every day, eh?” Sparrow queried.

“Sure. All this talk about ‘back to nature’ makes me tired. It seems as if these days all you have to do is to turn day-laborer to amount to something. The way it used to be, a fellow’d leave the farm and go to the city to make something of himself. But now they tell the city fellow to get back to the farm if he wants to succeed.”

Sparrow laughed appreciatively. He had quite a regard for Wesley’s worldly wisdom.

“Not for mine,” Wesley went on. “Why, I can get into an insurance company easy enough and they close at four in the afternoon. And the banks are better still. Look at Billy Ackerson, he gets twenty plunks a week in the Forbes Perfumery Company and Saturday afternoons all the year round.”

Sparrow smiled. “Do you believe you could get up much enthusiasm for perfumery, Wesley? Really, now? All it’s good for is to sprinkle on your handkerchief. Is the world any better for it?”

“Billy Ackerson is better for it.”

“Ha, ha! You’ve always got an answer ready, Wesley.— But the work these fellows here are doing—it’s a great work. You take a man who has his dealings with mountains and valleys and prairies and great rivers—he gets kind of calm and serene like, Wesley. And he measures up. Why, when I told Captain Craig I intended to drive piles for a boat-house over yonder, what do you think he did? He just picked up a rock, looked at it and told me, No, that there was nothing but mud underneath that kind of rock; why, he can tell you the different kinds of soil for fifty yards down—it’s just wonderful! You’ve no idea, Wesley, how many people—railroad men, mining men, construction engineers, and people like that—depend on the information they get from the Survey Department. But,” he added, chuckling with boyish simplicity, “I just can’t get over their calling the Mississippi River the ‘Old Lady.’”

Wesley laughed too at the impression which this band of official wanderers had made upon Sparrow’s credulous mind.

“Well, there’ll be company enough pretty soon now, Charlie, I guess,” he said, rising. “Don’t let the captain string you.”

“Come up soon again, Wesley. I see you’ve a new canoe.”

There was a little rueful look, half smile, half sneer, on the boy’s face as he sauntered toward the float. “He’s easy, all right! Huh, I’d like to meet that bunch,” he mused. “They’d have a good run for their money trying to string me! I’d have them guessing. I’d have little old Captain What’s-his-name eating out of my hand. It would be my deal when it came to fairy-tales, believe me!”

At the float he encountered Honor again.

“Well, I hear you’ve been having story-telling hour up here, Honor; I’d like to meet that outfit.”

“I hope you wouldn’t hurt them,” said she, quietly.

“They’d have to give me ether to get those adventure stories down my throat.”

“Wouldn’t that be too silly!” said the girl.

They stood facing each other for a moment, Wesley feeling uneasy as he always did in her presence, and the girl apparently hesitating whether to speak or not.

“Wesley Binford,” she said at last, trying to overcome a tremor in her voice, “there was three dollars you forgot to pay father last fall before the season closed; a dollar and a half for canoe hire and the rest for other things. He’ll never remind you about it so I have to. We had a hard time getting through the winter up here and—and—it can’t be you’ve forgotten it—have you? I didn’t hear you say anything about it to father, so I felt that I must—must—ask you about it.”

She could say no more and she waited, blushing and uncomfortable.

It was just because he felt that Honor Sparrow had a certain contempt for his fine show of manliness and worldly experience that Wesley felt he must now, at any cost, show her that her opinion of him was prejudiced and unfair. He remembered the three dollars well, and I hope I need not tell you that it was his intention to pay it. For just a moment he moved nervously from one foot to the other and felt hot and uncomfortable around his collar. He would not give this girl the satisfaction of sneering at him. The incident down at the bridge, with its unpleasant epithet, still chafed him. He could not bear the gaze of her steadfast, questioning eyes. He would show her that she was mistaken and—

And then Wesley Binford made the mistake of his life.

“Oh, that’s so,” he said, as if with sudden recollection. “Glad you mentioned it, Honor—and I owe another nickel now, too; I’d leave my head lying in that canoe if it wasn’t fastened on,” he added, starting toward the boat.

From the flap pocket of the mackinaw he brought forth several bills and some small change.

“I’m awfully glad you mentioned it, Honor; why, do you know, that really was what I came up for! All winter, and a measly little three dollars! Here,” and he handed her two bills and a nickel.

This latter she glanced at, then examined more closely, and handed back. His manner and his unexpected act took her quite by surprise, and she seemed more kindly disposed toward him as she said,

“I guess you didn’t mean to give me this one, Wesley; it says Republica de Panama on it.”

The boy felt himself blushing and he gulped nervously as he took the coin.

“Sure enough,” said he; “that’s my—my—old reliable pocket-piece.” And he handed her another coin in its stead.

“Good-by, Honor.”

“Good-by,” she said, watching him, just a trifle puzzled at his manner.

Wesley got into the canoe with a fine air of nonchalance. But the paddle was not steady in his hand. He ran the canoe clumsily into a skiff near by, extricated himself with an exclamation of annoyance, and started to paddle down the river on the ebbing tide. He was very nervous and agitated.