Читать книгу In the Path of La Salle or Boy Scouts on the Mississippi - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 8

Table of Contents

All night long the light gleamed across the water and in the troubled intervals of sleep Wesley would single it out from the others and watch it as if it had some special lure for him. Once he fell to wondering how men made soundings on the ocean, and again, whether people really jumped from cliffs and were thrown from runaway horses just to make motion-pictures. He smiled at the mind’s-eye picture of Uncle Sam lifting his red, white and blue coat-tails to pull a tape-measure out of his back pocket. Then he wondered how Captain Brocker could see to steer with such clouds of tobacco smoke in front of him. Then he fell to thinking of Oakwood, and of Sparrow, and of—of what he should do when the broad, practical daylight of Monday morning stared him in the face.

At last the day came, the strenuous, busy day, and with it the crowds surging across the neighboring ferry. Everybody seemed so alive, so purposeful!

The boy hurried along with the surging multitude, to go to his father’s office. What else was there to do? He realized what a bungle he had made of this whole business. The longer he waited, the harder it was. And now he had got himself into a position where he felt something like a fugitive. He did not like that feeling. He would put the whole matter in his father’s hands at once, face the music, and have done with it. At least, there would be no more bungling.

He wished that his father had not talked so much lately of the need of economy. He had decided not to have the lawn graded because it would cost fifty dollars. Wesley thought wistfully how much easier would be this unpleasant task if his father were more like Sparrow, or Captain Brocker. He had said many times that he never wanted to work for his father.

When he came to the building, instead of going up in the elevator, he walked the entire eight flights, taking his time at it, pausing on the landings and looking from the windows. When at last he tried the door of his father’s office it was locked. He was surprised at that, but a little relieved as well, for it gave him a little more time. Down on the main floor he accosted the elevator starter.

“Hasn’t Mr. Binford come in yet?”

“He’s out of town; went away Saturday morning.”

“W-where, do you know?” gasped Wesley.

“South, I think; guess the stenographer’s up there.”

Wesley walked out into the street again. He did not know whether he was glad or sorry. The feeling that he was immediately conscious of was that of relief. He thrust his hands down into his empty pockets. He would have to straighten out this tangle himself now. What should he do? Where should he go? He drew a long, nervous breath and, walking to the corner, stood there while hurrying men and women brushed by, indifferent to everything except his own troubled thoughts.

And whenever I think of Wesley Binford now, knowing the rest of the story as I do, I like to think of him as he stood there alone on a corner in the great city that Monday morning with that weight upon his mind and not a cent in his pockets; alone, save for a haunting conscience and the memory of an unfortunate episode which he himself had made the worse by weakness and procrastination. What to do? Where to go? Well, in any event, be his decision wise or foolish, good or bad, it would at least be his own. His own conceit, his own silly pride, his own swaggering affectation had dragged him into dishonesty and humiliation and brought him here to the parting of the ways, where he must act and act quickly, and be the master of his own destiny.

A thought which had been lurking in his mind all night, but which he had put aside to go and see his father, suddenly asserted itself and inspired him with cheerfulness and hope and resolution. He would do three things, but the second and third would depend upon the first. Under the spell of his new purpose, he laughed outright at a certain whimsical thought which came into his mind.

“Couldn’t find my father,” he said; “now for a call on my uncle.”

But the merry laugh was only momentary, for he was still nervous and doubtful and apprehensive.

Captain Ellsworth Burton Craig, army engineer, field geographer, forestry specialist, hydraulic expert, and a few other things, sat at a well-worn table in a secluded corner of the officers’ quarters at Governor’s Island, New York. The surroundings were immaculate, but no more immaculate than Captain Ellsworth Burton Craig. His greenish khaki suit fitted his trim, clean-cut figure to perfection, and the only suggestion of a break in the precision and orderliness of his apparel was that the khaki belt which ran through vertical khaki plaits was not buttoned in front, its ends hanging, or rather standing, loose. It gave the one attractive touch of carelessness to his attire which certain young gentlemen of my acquaintance seek to effect by studiously leaving the lower waistcoat button unfastened. But this was the funny thing, that Captain Craig’s manner and mind had the same suggestion of being trim, immaculate and clean-cut, with just that one little dab of attractive offhandedness which made his strictest orders, his severest reprimands, palatable.

If you could have seen him place his finger-ends on the edges of those neat little rimless glasses, remove them, hold them up to the light and then replace them, you would never have supposed that he had any relation at all to those terrific forest rangers whom we read about. I suppose that, first and last, Bobby Cullen knew him as well as any one, and once when they were stalled in Washington, Bobby told the boys over in the Department of Agriculture that not in three years had the captain’s fingers ever touched the flat side of those precious lenses. Of course, I am not going to ask you to swallow everything that Bobby Cullen says, but he undoubtedly had the captain down to a T. He had “lined up” the Yukon with him up in Alaska; he had helped him on the irrigation system in New Mexico; he had revetted the Upper Mississippi with him and surveyed all the quadrangles north of 48° from the Pacific to the Rockies. Sometimes the Forestry people got their covetous hands on the captain, sometimes it was the “R.S.” (for you must know that the Geological Survey is everybody’s friend); and wherever the captain went, and for whatever exercise of his versatile talents, there also went Bobby Cullen, with his harmonica—like Good Man Friday.

On a big map before the captain lay a telegram which he had just read with great annoyance, for it told him to send MacConnell (otherwise Mack) to Washington at once for—for something or other, the captain did not care much what. He had a sovereign contempt for Washington, he knew that, and their reasons were nothing to him. Once in a while they managed to lasso him on the run and march him before a Senate or House committee to enlighten them as to some enterprise or proposed expenditure, and it was as good as a three-ring circus to hear the crisp, funny answers that he gave them, and see the fidgety way in which he would seem to count these precious minutes. Bobby Cullen always got up in the gallery on these occasions—but he kept his harmonica in his pocket.

The captain glanced out over the well-kept lawn and noticed a few stragglers who were coming up the gravel walk. Evidently, Uncle Sam’s little steamer was in. There were some soldiers back from leave, an officer or two, a little group of sightseers, and a tall young fellow of about eighteen, who came along last of all, and who seemed neither sight-seer nor attaché. His once natty blue serge suit was sadly wrinkled, there were whitish areas on his russet shoes which suggested recent immersion, his linen was soiled and wilted. The captain scrutinized him for a moment until the youth disappeared around the corner, then fell to spreading a pair of dividers across the map.

“What is it?” he asked, abstractedly. “Bobby come over on that boat?”

A sentinel who stood at attention in the doorway replied, “A young man would like to see you, sir; gives his name as Wesley Binford.”

“Let him come in.”

If Wesley had been uneasy in the captain’s presence before, he was doubly uncomfortable now. The boy who had but recently boasted that it would be “his deal when it came to fairy tales” felt his heart pounding in his breast as he stood there, humbly waiting.

“I don’t suppose you remember me, sir,” he said, when the captain at last looked up.

“Oh, yes, I remember you very well,” said the captain, crisply. “Will you be seated? You didn’t get pneumonia, I see.”

Wesley had never applied for a position in his life; despite his vaunted manliness and worldly experience, he had had no dealings with men, and he was so ignorant of military ways and life that he had suffered the utmost trepidation from the moment he set foot on the island, asking his direction of the first sentinel he had seen, in a vague fear that he might be making some terrible error which would presently land him in the military lock-up. Like most boys he had a curious feeling that army rule and discipline involved the general public in some way, and that he had better be very careful what he said and whom he addressed in this place of guns and uniforms and cannons, if he wanted to avoid trouble. He had a haunting fear that he might address a general without knowing it, and what would happen then? The plain, everyday invitation to be seated was very grateful to him.

For a minute Captain Craig moved his dividers across the map, and Wesley relieved the tension of suspense by watching the stiff, steel legs swaggering tipsily under his guidance.

Suddenly he was seized with a reckless impulse to make an offhand, irrelevant remark. He didn’t suppose that boys ever did such things in the presence of army officers and right in military quarters, but before he knew it he had yielded to the impulse and the remark was out.

“It doesn’t take long to get across the country that way, does it?” he said, smiling hesitatingly. No one ever saw Wesley smile that way without liking him, and the captain laid down his dividers and smiled pleasantly himself.

“No, just a hop, skip and a jump,” said he. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“I don’t suppose you’ll feel like doing anything much for me after seeing what a fool I was; you saved my life and I guess that’s about all I ought to ask.”

By this time Wesley was nervously handling a lead pencil which he had taken from his pocket, but the captain (unlike most men in such an interview) was handling nothing. His two hands rested motionless on the arms of his chair, and he was looking through his neat little glasses straight at his visitor.

“And what had you thought of doing with your life now that it has been saved?”

“That’s just what I wanted to see you about, sir.”

“I see,” he encouraged.

“Would—could you, do you think, help me—perhaps?”

The captain raised his brows in surprise. “You mean in government service?”

“Well, yes, sir, that’s what I thought; of course, I don’t know anything about such things,” Wesley added, somewhat abashed at the captain’s expression; “I suppose probably you have to have pull, but it’s been in my mind ever since Saturday, and—I suppose it’s pretty nervy for me to come and see you—but I kind of feel as if I’d like to go off and do the kind of things you and those two fellows do; I feel as if I’d just like to go far away and do something that’s—well, real, as you might say, and—and dangerous.”

“Dangerous, eh?” the captain smiled.

“Well, not exactly that,” Wesley corrected, with a little apologetic laugh, “but kind of—well, real— I guess that’s the word. Maybe if I knew you better, and wasn’t so—well, I don’t mean exactly afraid of you,” he stumbled, “but maybe if I wasn’t so rattled,” he added, with boyish frankness, “maybe I could tell you what I mean.”

Captain Craig nodded.

“Did any one tell you that our work was real, as you say, or did you think of that yourself?”

“Well, somebody told me that you got to be kind of serene like, being in the woods and the mountains so much, and then I got to thinking about it and how I couldn’t swim and—I guess in your kind of work you don’t have to tell lies—do you?” Wesley was so hesitating and nervous that he felt he must be showing at his very worst. But on the contrary he was at his very best and the captain saw this.

“Then you think that in some businesses one has to tell lies?”

“Yes, sir—don’t you?”

“I?” he queried amusedly, but refrained from expressing himself on that point. Instead, he picked up the telegram from Washington, glanced at it musingly, and laid it down. Wesley felt that he had made a very poor impression, but he was never more mistaken in his life.

“Well, what can you do that’s useful?”

Wesley hesitated, and then told of the only thing that he knew how to do, and do well.

“I can print,” said he.

“Lettering, you mean?”

“Yes, sir, it’s just kind of a knack, that’s all. Sometimes they get me to letter the names on canoes and motor-boats.”

“You’ve never studied drafting?”

“No, sir.”

The captain pushed a piece of paper toward him. “Let me see you letter your name.”

The hand which took the pencil trembled visibly. “May I use that ruler to rest my hand against? They always do that.”

“Certainly.”

“Maybe you’d rather have me print something else than my own name, because I’m used to that and can do it better.”

“Print my name—Captain Ellsworth Burton Craig, U.S.A.”

The hand which, steadied against the slanted ruler, guided the pencil, still shook nervously. This one accomplishment, which was just a natural gift, had never before been put to the test. He held his pencil ready, waiting patiently till his hand should cease to tremble. Then, slowly but with unerring precision, each perfect letter was formed. The name stood there symmetrical and perfect.

“Hmmm,” said Captain Craig, taking the paper; “that’s quite remarkable.”

“Of course, I could do better with regular drawing-ink.”

“What else can you do?”

“Nothing much; my father doesn’t think that amounts to anything. He says the only thing I can do is play the mandolin. I guess that’s not of very much use, either.”

“Oh, music is always useful,” the captain observed. “If a regiment of soldiers is on a twenty days’ march they’ll save two days and four hours if there’s music along.”

“I thought music was just—just for fun.”

“Oh, no, it’s a great time-saver; Uncle Sam pays out a good deal of money in the course of a year for music.”

“Well, then,” said Wesley, in a kind of disheartened way, “there’s two things I can do, anyway.”

“I think you’re a bit discouraged, eh?” said the captain.

“I’d like to go to war,” said Wesley; “that’s just the way I feel—and get killed, maybe. That’s what a fellow used to do in the old days when he felt that he wasn’t much good and the world had no use for him.”

“Is it, indeed?”

“Only there aren’t any wars nowadays.”

“No?”

“That is, not unless we have one with Mexico.”

“That wouldn’t be much of a war,” said the captain, dryly. “I wouldn’t be killed in a war if I were you unless it were a good one, a good big one, one that was real, to use your own expression. A boy who can print like that ought not to bother getting killed in a little, popular-price, cut-rate war.”

He looked sideways at Wesley in that alert, decisive way, and the boy couldn’t help laughing.

The captain removed his glasses, held them up toward the window, and replaced them carefully upon his nose.

“So you think there is no war on. Well, now, let us see. Suppose I were to tell you that many square miles of our territory, farms, vast fields of growing crops, populous towns, were captured last year by an enemy—a national enemy—an enemy whose forces roamed at will through the heart of our land—an enemy with two powerful allies; that they left death, havoc, devastation, ruin, in their path. What if I were to tell you that when the fight was over, we found that we had suffered a loss of life greater than that caused by any battle since the Battle of Gettysburg. What if I were to tell you that the enemy effected a night march of fifty-seven miles in an hour and twenty minutes, threw its flanks over eighty miles of country, surrounded and laid waste eleven towns—right here under the very nose of Uncle Sam. Suppose I were to tell you that the spoils of this great victory, the booty that was carried off was more than four hundred million tons of good American property—more than twice as much material as was excavated for the Panama Canal. Now, what would you say?”

He had spoken rapidly and convincingly; and it left Wesley staring.

“Were—were you in it?” he asked.

“I was in the thick of it.”

Wesley continued to stare.

“We never heard of that out our way; would you mind telling me who the enemy was?”

“Not at all—it was the Mississippi River.”

“The Mississ—?”

“You don’t suppose Mexico could hand us a fight like that, do you?”

“Well, I guess, No!”

Captain Craig appeared to ponder a minute, then spoke in a changed tone. Despite his dry, choppy manner, there was a note of encouragement in his words.

“I rather like the way you have talked to me, my boy; and I think the lettering you do is quite remarkable and might prove useful. Now, circumstances have come together in such a way that I may be able to help you. If so it will depend entirely upon yourself. When I saw you the other day you impressed me as being very fresh and conceited and as having a very exaggerated idea of your own importance. I am inclined now to amend that view somewhat. Of course, you have no technical knowledge or training of any kind. You could not, even with what you call ‘pull,’ secure a field appointment in either of the governmental departments with which I am affiliated; that is, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior. The Geological Survey, with which I am directly connected, is in the latter department. If I helped you at all it would only be by very broadly construing my authority, and my responsibility in such a matter, or my culpability, would hinge very largely on your own usefulness in the unskilled duties to which you would be assigned.

“I have the right to engage extra help at my discretion. I am not so sure that I have the right to hire a young man in New York and cart him across the continent on the supposition that he may prove useful. There are a great many young men to be had on the spot. Still, I think the lettering you do may furnish me an excuse for taking you along. At all events, we have railroad transportation for one, and I am tempted to keep it and use it—and let you come along. We shall be surveying some country along the Missouri River, and assisting one of the other departments in conservation work; that is, the prevention and handling of floods, and the development of rivers. You would doubtless meet some of the Forestry boys also, for I suspect we shall be thrown with them somewhat in surveying and advising them regarding their reserves.

“Of course,” he added, with just the suggestion of a smile, “one inexperienced boy more or less wouldn’t affect the work in any sense, but I find myself so much interested in you that I should dislike exceedingly to think of your hiding your martial spirit, and pining away as a shipping clerk or a bank messenger on the supposition that there is no fighting going on.”

Wesley laughed good-humoredly, and the captain sat back pondering.

“I want to get into that fight, Captain Craig; I hope you’ll decide right now to let me go. I’ll do my very best.”

“I will take the responsibility of offering you twenty-five dollars a month, and of course your living will be furnished you. You will do anything that you are told to do. If, through negligence or incompetence, you fail to make good, you will be dismissed forthwith and your fare paid to the nearest city—which would probably be Helena, Montana. If you do well your services will be appreciated. What do you say?”

“I say I’ll go, and that I thank you—and that I will do my very best—and—” He almost broke down.

“Very well; then you may get your things ready and come over on the boat late this afternoon. There’s one that leaves the Battery about five. You’ll find Bobby Cullen on it, probably. Tell him to give you a few pointers. Don’t try to show off before him—he’d only take you down.”

“Good-by, Captain Craig, and thank you—thank you very much. I’ll be here, all right.”

“Good-by, my boy,” said the captain, rising and taking his hand. “We’ll have a good fight,” he added, cheerily. “How old are you, Wesley?”

It sounded good to hear his own name in that way.

“Eighteen,” he said.

“So? You’re tall for your age; you’d be taller still if you threw your shoulders back. Well, good-by.”

“Good—good-by, Captain.” For a moment he hesitated, not quite knowing whether he ought to salute, and wondering how to do it.

“You want to josh Bobby about his harmonica,” said the captain; “don’t forget about that.”

“No, sir, I won’t,” laughed Wesley. “Good-by till to-night.”

His fear of military discipline and etiquette and his notions about army officers had changed somewhat.