Читать книгу In the Path of La Salle or Boy Scouts on the Mississippi - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 9

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Wesley was greatly relieved that Captain Craig had asked him nothing about his home nor any question which might have made it necessary for him to say that his plans were not known to his family. But now a dilemma confronted him. He must not appear empty-handed before the captain, for that would surely excite remark and perhaps suspicion. He must have something in the form of baggage, both for appearance’s sake and because certain articles were indispensable. Also, he told himself, ruefully, he was very hungry.

It was in this predicament and when he had about reached his wits’ end, fearing that now at the last moment his opportunity and his plans were to be ruined, that he noticed a musty-looking store, which suggested to him an expedient he had never dreamed of in his life before. The very sight of the window, indiscriminately filled with old and ill-assorted trifles, reminded Wesley to what a low ebb he had run, and through what sordid and pride-racking channels he must go before the tide of his life turned.

He walked past the place several times before he could muster the courage to go in, then he entered and fumbling nervously he removed from his waistcoat the little High School fraternity pin which he always wore.

The man took it, scrutinized it, and said, “How much?”

“I would like to get five dollars,” said Wesley.

“I’ll let you have four.”

“All right,” said Wesley, glad to make an end of such an interview. His voice almost trembled with embarrassment and humiliation as he took the four bills and a little ticket, which he did not read but thrust in his pocket as if to get it out of his sight. Then he went out of the musty den to where the bright sun was shining. He thought that people must be looking at him, but was surprised to find that no one seemed to notice. To Wesley it was an awful experience.

He bought himself a belated luncheon, the effect of which was to bring back some measure of his lost pride. Then he purchased for seventy-five cents a pasteboard suitcase with a cheap coating of oil-cloth paint. It was one of a number which were chained together outside a trunk store and was said to be “marked down” from a fabulous price. So Wesley felt that fortune was favoring him. He next bought a pair of corduroy trousers, two coarse blue flannel shirts and some cheap underwear. He made these sumptuous purchases with a certain rueful amusement, for he had never gone in much for the “roughing it” attire which the Scout movement had done so much to popularize. Wesley had always worn frightfully high collars and prided himself on knowing how to tie a four-in-hand. He also bought a writing-pad.

When his shopping was finished he had eighteen cents left. But he felt that he was well started now and that when a certain other unpleasant duty was performed, he might see the clouds breaking and a clear way ahead. He was keenly expectant, hopeful, almost happy.

It was in this new mood of unaffected and fresh enthusiasm that Captain Craig saw him when he and Bobby Cullen arrived together in the middle of the afternoon. In Wesley’s pocket were two unfinished letters, both liberally adorned with erasures, corrections and interlinings. They were evidently in a formative stage and intended for further revision and final copying before mailing. He had produced them in Battery Park while waiting for the government boat. One was to his father, the other was to Harry Arnold, but both were much the same in substance. The one to Harry Arnold ran:

Dear Harry:—

Last Saturday I took your canoe. The locker was locked—but I tapped the padlock. Of course, I ought not to have done it, but I meant to put it back before you got home and anyway I thought you wouldn’t mind. When I got up to Sparrow’s, Honor reminded me of some money I hadn’t paid left over from last year. And I took some money—three dollars and five cents—out of your mackinaw and paid it. It was a dishonest thing to do but I didn’t mean it that way, because Billy Ackerson was going to buy my bicycle and I intended to put back what I stole before you found it out. I expected the whole thing would be straightened out in an hour or so. But of course I realize now that I would have been a thief for that long anyway. On the way down I smashed your canoe because I didn’t know the channel, as any fool does, so that is a good lesson too. I was rescued but I would rather not tell yet who rescued me. I’m sorry I didn’t let you teach me to swim two years ago when you offered to. I was all rattled and when I came to myself and got to thinking I realized that I owed you fifty-three dollars and five cents, and that all of it was stolen as you might say. And when I got to thinking I thought of a lot of other things too, for that’s the way it is. Now I’ve gone away not because I am afraid. At first I was kind of afraid, but not now, only I have a plan so it will be all myself and nobody else that makes good.— You wouldn’t think a girl like Honor Sparrow who looks at you so straight could start a fellow doing—but it was just because she did look at me so straight that I tumbled over—as you might say. But—well I guess I can’t tell you what I mean, but anyway she had me sized up and knew I was bluffing. Now, Harry, I write you this letter because I am going away to earn money to pay you. So I can give back what belongs to you—though I stole because I was a fool and not because I meant to be dishonest. I know you will believe that and when all this gets to be known I wish you would try to make Honor Sparrow believe it too. And tell Sparrow I found out he is right. I have got a job very far away and unless you want the money very much, Harry, please don’t take it from my father for that wouldn’t be me paying you back. And I know you expect to go away somewhere yourself so maybe you wouldn’t get another canoe just yet anyway. I’m going to get twenty-five dollars a month and my board too. So I’m going to send you twenty-five dollars—that is all my—I mean all your money—the end of the first month and the same at the end of the second month, and the next month I will send the other three dollars and five cents. And after you get it all I want you to say to yourself that I’m not a thief and try to make my father believe it too, for I know you are the kind of fellow who won’t misjudge me. I think my father has more use for you than he has for me so please talk to him and try to make him understand what I write to him. That’s a hard thing for a fellow to admit, but it’s true, Harry. But I’ve made one friend who believes in me so—

That was as far as the rough draft went. It had been his intention to copy and mail these letters before starting, but things moved so briskly from the moment he rejoined the captain that he was in Philadelphia before he knew it, with these rough drafts still in his pocket. Between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh he lay awake in his berth pondering them, and between Pittsburgh and Chicago they suffered relentless overhauling. The boy seemed possessed by a perfect craze to get the right words and to call things by their names. The letters in their final and accepted form narrowly escaped mailing at Minneapolis, and then came within an ace of being carried all the way out to the headwaters of the Missouri in the interest of this odd scrupulousness. When they finally did start upon their travels back they bore the postmark of Williston, North Dakota.

And that was the last that was ever heard of one of them, and even the other, filthy and saturated, but rescued by Uncle Sam, was not delivered to Harry in Oakwood. For a certain minor ally of the mighty host with whom Wesley Binford hoped later to cope, had already begun in true military fashion by intercepting communications of the enemy. Captain Craig would have called it just a preliminary skirmish of this little ally. It came out of winter quarters somewhere in the fastnesses above the American border, where it had rested in the form of snow and ice throughout the long winter.

Melting, it poured down hillside, over precipice and through many a rocky cranny and deep ravine, and into the channel of Blue River. Then, sweeping in its mad career through this river’s valley in northern Minnesota, it surprised the little town of Conver’s Junction, and put it out of business. A little east of Valley Station, a few miles farther down, it caught the railroad bridge, uprooted it, toppled it over, scattered the wreckage and bore the fragments along with it as prisoners of war. It carried off the telegraph wires, too, in a hopeless tangle. And in that same hour the train which bore Wesley’s letters eastward went plunging headlong over the embankment into the turbulent waters.

And so it came about that a few days later a little solemn group of boys stood upon the shore of a well-behaved and modest stream a mile or two above their home in Oakwood, New Jersey, and watched with bated breath a certain spot nearby where two of the husky fishermen whom he had so despised, were dragging the river for the body of Wesley Binford.