 CHAPTER 1 THE ADVENTURE OF YOUTH Carl Erickson was being naughty. Probably no boy in Jorah Lemon. He was being naughty that October-Sunday afternoon. He had not half finished the woodpiling which was his punishment for having chased the family rooster thirteen times squawking around a chicken-yard while playing soldiers with Benny Rusk. He stood in the middle of the musty woodshed, pessimistically kicking at the scattered wood. His face was stern, as became a man of eight who was a soldier of fortune, famed from the front gate to the chicken-yard. An unromantic film of dirt hid the fact that his Scandinavian cheeks were like cream-coloured silk stained with rose petals. A baby Norseman, with only an average boy's prettiness yet with the whiteness and slenderness of a girl's little finger. A backyard boy, a baggy jacket and trousers, gingham blouse and cap whose lining oozed back over his ash-blonde hair, which was tangled now like trample-grass, with a tiny chip writing grotesquely on one flossy lock. The darkness of the shed displeased Carl. The whole basic conception of work bored him. The sticks of wood were personal enemies to which he gave insulting names. He had always admired the hard bark and metallic resonance of the ironwood, but he hated the poppy. Popple. It is called in... Jorlemon, Minnesota. Poppler becomes dry and dusty and the bark turns to a monstrously modelled and evil greenish-white. Carl announced to one popper stick, I could lick you. I'm a general, I am. The stick made no reply, whatever, and he contemptuously shied it out into the chick-weed, which matted the grubby backyard. This necessitated his sneaking out and capturing it by stalking it from the rear, lest it rouse the popple army. He loitered outside the shed, sniffing at the smoke from burning leaves, the scent of autumn and migration and wanderlust. He glanced down between houses to the reedy shore of Jorlemon Lake. The surface of the water was smooth, and tinted like a bluebell, save for one patch in the current where wavelets sleep with October madness and sparkles of diamond fire. Across the lake wood sprinkled with gold dust and paprika broke the sweep of sparse yellow stubble, and a red barn was softly brilliant in the caressing sunlight and lively air of the Minnesota prairie. Over there was the field of valor where grown-up men with shiny shotguns went hunting prairie chickens, the great world, leading clear to the Red River Valley in Canada. Three mallard ducks with necks far out and wings beating hurriedly shot over Carl's head. From far off a gunshot floated echoing through the forest hollows in the waiting stillness sounded a rooster's crow, distant, magical. I won't go hunting, mourn Carl, as he trailed back into the woodshed. It seemed darker than ever and smelled of moldy chips. He bounced like an enraged chipmunk, like medic China blue eyes filled with tears. Won't buy no more wood, he declared. Naughty he undoubtedly was, but since he knew that his father Oscar Erickson, the carpenter, all knuckles and patched overalls in bad temper, would probably whip him for rebellion, he may have acquired merit. He did not even look toward the house to see whether his mother was watching him. His farm-bread, worried, kindly, small, flat-chested, pinched-nosed, bleached, twangy-boy, plucky Norwegian mother. He marched to the workshop and brought a collection of miscellaneous nails and screws out to the bare patch of earth in front of the chicken-yard. They were the nail-people, the most reckless band of mercenaries the world has ever known, led by General Dorhange, who was somewhat inclined to collapse in the middle, but possessed of the unusual virtue of eyes in both ends of him. He had explored the deepest canyons of the woodshed and victoriously led his ten-penny warriors against the sumacs in the empty space beyond Irving Lam's house. Carl marshaled a nail-people, sticking them up right in the ground. After reasoning sternly with an intruding sparrow, thus did the dauntless General Dorhange address them. "'Men! There's an awful big army against us, but let's die like men, my men. Forward!' As the veteran finished, a devastating fire of stones infallated the company, and one by one they fell, save for the commander himself, who bowed his grizzled, wrought steelhead and sobbed, "'Haha, the brave boy's done their duty.'" From across the lake rolled another gun-shot. Carl dug his grimy fingers into the earth. "'Jiminy, I wished I was out hunting. Why can't I never go? I guess I'll pile the wood, but I'm going to go seek my fortune after that.'" Since Carl Erickson, some date to be known as Hawk Erickson, was the divinely restless seeker of the romance that must or we die lie beyond the hills, you first see him in action. Find him in the year 1893, age-date, leading revolutions in the backyard, but equally since this is a serious study of an average young American there should be an indication of his soil-nourished ancestry. Carl was his second generation Norwegian, American born, American in speech, American in appearance, safe for his flaxen hair and china-blue eyes and, thanks to the flag-decked public school, overwhelming the American in tradition, when he was born the typical Americans of earlier stocks had moved to city palaces or were marooned on run-down farms. It was Carl Erickson, not a toll-bridge or a Stuyvesant or a Lee or a Grant, who was the typical American of his period. It was for him to carry on the American destiny of extending the western horizon, his to restore the wintry pilgrim virtues and the exuberant October-partridge-drumming days of Daniel Boone, then to add in his own or another generation new American aspirations for beauty. They are the new Yankees, the Scandinavians of Wisconsin and Minnesota and the Dakotas, with a human breed that can grow and a thousand miles to grow in. The foreign-born parents, when they first came to the northern Midwest, huddle in unpainted farmhouses with grassless door-yards and fly-whizzing kitchens and smelly dairies, set on treeless, shadeless, unsophoned leagues of prairie or bunched in new clearings ragged with small stumps. First generation are alien and forlorn. The echoing fjords of Torneum and the moors of Finmark have clipped their imaginations, silenced their laughter, hidden with ice their real tenderness. In America they go, sedulously, to the bare Lutheran church and frequently drink ninety percent alcohol. They are also heroes and have been the makers of a new land, from the days of the Indian raids and oxen-teams and hillside dugouts to now, repeating in their patient hewing the history of the Western Reserve. In one generation or even in one decade they emerge from the desolation of being foreigners. They and the Germans pay Yankee mortgages with blood and sweat. They swiftly master politics voting for honesty rather than handshakes. They make Keynes groupously honest business deals, send their children to school, accumulate land, one section or two sections, or move to town to keep shop, and ply skilled tools, become methodists and congregationalists. Our neighborly with Yankee manufacturers and doctors and teachers, and in one generation or less, are completely American. So it was with Carl Erickson, his carpenter father, that come from Norway by a way of steerage and a farm in Wisconsin, changing his name from Erickson, Erickson Sr. owned his cottage and, though he still said, I've been gone, he talked as naturally of his own American tariff and his own Norwegian American governor as though he had five generations of Connecticut or Virginia ancestry. Now it was Carl's to go on to seek the flowering. Unconscious that he was the heir apparent of the age, but decidedly conscious that the woodshed was dark. Carl finished the pile. From the step of the woodside he regarded the world with plentative boredom. Irving! he called. No answer from Irving the next door boy. The village was rustingly quiet. Carl skipped slowly and unhappily to the group of box elders beside the workshop and stuck his fingernails into the cobwebby crevices of the black bark. He made overtures for a company on any terms to a robin, a woolly worm, and a large blue fly, but they all scorned his advances, and when he yelled an ingratiating invitation to a passing dog, seemed to swallow its tail and ears as it galloped off. No one else appeared. Before the kitchen window equavored, Mama! In the kitchen the muffled pounding of a flat iron upon the padded ironing board. Mrs. Erickson's whitey-yellow hair, pale eyes, and small nervous features were shadowed behind the cotton curtains. Well, she said, I've got nothing to do. Go pile the wood. Pile piles of it. Then go and play. Been playing. And play some more. I've got nobody to play with. Then find somebody. But don't you step one step out of this yard. I don't see why I can't go out of the yard. Because I said so. Again the sound of the flat iron. Carl invented a game in which he was to run in circles, but not step on the grass. He made the tenth inspection that day of the drying hazelnuts whose husks were turning to seal-brown on the woodshed roof. He hunted for a good new bottle to throw at Irving Lam's barn. He mended his catapult. He perched on a bench and watched the street. Nothing passed. Nothing made an interesting rattling except one wagon. From over the water another gunshot murmured of distant hazards. Carl jumped down from the bench and marched deliberately out of the yard along Oak Street toward the hill, the smart section of Jorleman, where live an exclusive state five large houses that get painted nearly every year. What a sigma fortune. Gonna find Benny and go swimming, he vowed. Comely as Napoleon defying his marshals, General Collar disregarded the sword facts that it was too late in the year to go swimming and that Benjamin Franklin Rusk couldn't swim. Anyway, he clumped along planting his feet with spats of dust. He dignified and melancholy. But, like all small boys, occasionally going mad and running in chase of nothing at all till he found it. He stopped before the house with mysterious shutters. Carl had never made believe fairies or princes. Rather, he was in the secret world of boyhood, a soldier, a trapper, or a swig-breakman on the M&DR. But he was bespelled by the suggestion of grandeur in the iron fence and gracious trees and dark-carriage shed of the house with shutters. With a large square solid brick structure set among oaks and sinister pines once the home or perhaps a mansion of banker Whitley, but unoccupied for years, leaves rotted before the deserted carriage shed, the disregarded steps in front were seen with shallow pools of water for days after a rain. The windows had always been darkened, but not by a bronze slatted outside shutters smeared with house paint to which stuck tiny black hairs from the paintbrush, like the ordinary houses of drawer them. Instead, these windows were masked with inside shutters, huddly varnished to a hard refined brown. Today the windows were open, the shutters folded, furniture was being moved in, and just inside the iron gate a frilly little girl was playing with a white-washed conch shell. She must have been about ten at the time since Carl was eight. She was a very dressy and complacent child, possessed not only of a clean white Muslim with three rows of tucks, immaculate bronze boots, and a green tamish-and-er, but also of a large hair ribbon, a ribbon sash, and a silver chain with a large gold-washed heart-shaped locket. She was softly plump, softly gentle of face, softly brown of hair, and softly pleasant of speech. Hello, said she. Hello. What's your name, little boy? I'm a little boy. I'm Carl Erickson. Oh, are you? I'm... I'm going to have a shotgun when I'm fifteen. He shyly hurled a stone at a telegraph pole to prove that he was not shy. My name is Gretty Cowles. I came from Minneapolis. My mama was part of the Joramund Flower Mill. Are you a nice boy? We just moved here, and I don't know anybody. Maybe my mama will let me play with you if you are a nice boy. I'd just soon come play with you if you play soldiers. My pa's the smartest man in Joramund. He builded Alex Johnson's house. He's got a gun. Oh, my mama's a widow. She was all hung by his arms from the gate pickets while she breathed. Mmm, my, an admiration at defeat. There ain't nothing. I can't hang by my knees on a trapeze. What'd you come from Minneapolis for? We're going to live here, she said. Oh, I went to the Chicago World's Fair with my mama this summer. I didn't. I did so. And I saw a teeny engine so small it was in a walnut shell, and you had to look at it through a magnifying glass and it kept on running like anything. Eh, that's nothing. Ben Risk, he went to the World's Fair too. And he saw a stankture that was bigger in our house, and all pure gold. You didn't see that. I did so. And we got cousins in Chicago, and we stayed with them, and cousin Edgar is a very prominent doctor for iron ear and stomach. Ah, Ben Risk pause at Doctor Two. And he's got a brother what's going to be a surgeon. I got a brother he's a year older than me. His name is Ray. There's lots more people in Minneapolis than here in Joramund. There's a hundred thousand people in Minneapolis. Ain't none. My pa was born in Kristina in the old country. And there's a million, million people there. Oh, there is not. Honest there is. Is there honest? Gertie was admiring now. He looked patronizingly at the red-placed furniture which was being splendidly carried into the great house from Jordan Stray, an old friend of Carl's which had often carried him banging through town. He condescended, Jimmy, you don't know Benny Rusk or nobody do you? I'll bring him when we can play soldiers. And we can make tents out of carpets. Did you ever run through carpets on a line? He pointed to the row of rugs and carpets airing beside the carriage shed. No, is it fun? Yeah, it's awful scary, but I ain't afraid. He dashed at the carpet and entered their long narrow tent to tell the truth when he stepped from the sunshine into the intense darkness. He was slightly afraid. The Erikson's one carpet made a short passage, but to pass on and on and throng through this secession of heavy rug mats, where snakes and poisonous insects might hide, and where the rough-threaded gritty undersurfaces scratched his pushing hands was fearsome. He emerged with a whoop and encouraged her to try the feet. She peeped inside the first carpet, but withdrew her head giving homage. Oh, it's so dark in there. Where you went? He promptly performed the feet again. As they wandered back to the gate to watch the furniture man, Gertie tried to regain the superiority to her ears by remarking of a large esquitard which was being juggled into the front door. My papa bought that desk in Chicago. Car broke in. I'll bring Benny Rusk and me and him. We'll teach you to play soldiers. My mama don't think I ought to play games. I've got a lot of dolls, but I'm too old for dolls. I play authors with mama sometimes, in Domino's. Authors is a very nice game. But maybe your ma'll let you play Indian Squaw, and me and Benny'll tie you to a stake and scalp you. That won't be rough like soldiers. But I'm going to be a really truly soldier. I'm going to be an officer in the Army. I got a cousin that's an officer in the Army, Gertie said grandly. Bring her yellow ribbon braid around over her shoulder and gently brushing her lips with the end. Cross your heart? Uh-huh. Cross your heart and hope to dive. He ain't honest. He's an officer. Jimmy crickets. Say, Gertie, could he make me an officer? Let's go find him. Did he live near here? Oh, no. He's way off in San Francisco. Come on, let's go there. You and me. Gee, I like you. You got an awful pretty dress. Tape light to compliment me to my face, mama says. Come on, let's go. We're going. No, I'd like to, she faltered. But my mama wouldn't let me. She don't let me play around with boys anyway. She's in the house now. Besides, it's way far off across the sea to San Francisco. It's beyond the Salt Sea where the Mormons live, and they all got seven wives. Beyond Sully, like Christina? Ah, Taint, it's in America, because Mr. Lamb went there last winter. Besides, even if he was across the sea, couldn't we go and be stowaways like the younger brothers and all them? And little Lord Fontleroy? He went and was a Lord, and he wasn't nothing but an orphan. My mama read me about him. Only she didn't talk English very good. But we'll go stowaways. He wound up triumphantly. Gertrude! A high-pitched voice from the house. Gertie glowered at a tall, meager woman with a long green and white apron over a most respectable black alpaca gown. Her nose was large, her complexion dull, but she carried herself so commandingly as to be almost handsome and very formidable. Oh, dear! Gertie stomped her foot. Now I got to go in. I never can have any fun. Goodbye, Carl. You urgently interrupted her tragic farewell. Say, Gertrude, I know what we'll do. You sneak out the back door, and I'll meet you, and we'll run away and go seek our fortunes and we'll find our cousin. Gertrude! On the house. Yes, mama. I'm just coming, to Carl. Sides, I'm older than you, and I'm most grown up, and I don't believe in Santa Claus. And once I taught the infants class at St. Christendom's Sunday School when the teacher wasn't there. Anyway, I am as best he did, and I ask them most all the questions about the trumpets and pitchers. So I couldn't run away. I'm too old. Gertrude! Come here this instant. Come on, I'll be waiting. Carl demanded. She was gone. She was being ushered into the house of mysterious shutters by Mrs. Cowles. Carl prowled down the street, a fine, new, long, stickity side like a sabre. He rounded the block and waited behind the cowles' carriage shed. Doing sentry go and planning the number of parrots and pieces of eight he would bring back from San Francisco. Then his father and mother would be sorry they talked about him and Norwegian. Carl. Gertrude was running around the corner of the carriage shed. Oh, Carl, I just had to come out and see you again. But I can't go seek our fortunes with you, because they've got the piano moved in now and I've got to practice. Else I'll grow up to be just an ignorant common person, and besides, there's going to be tea biscuits and honey for supper. I saw the honey. He smartly swung his sabre to his shoulder, ordering, Come on! Gertrude edged forward, perplexedly, sucking a finger joint and followed him along Lake Street toward open country. They took the Minnesota and Dakota Railway track, a natural footpath, and a land where the trains were few and not fast, as was the condition of the single-tracked M&D of 1893. In a worried manner Carl inquired whether San Francisco was Northwest or Southeast, the direction in which ran all self-respecting railways. Gertrude blindly declared that it lay to the Northwest, and Northwest they started, toward the swamps and the first forest of the Big Woods. He had wonderlands to show her along the track. To him every detail was of scientific importance. He knew intimately the topography of the fields beside the track, in which corner of Tubbs pasture between the track and the lake, the scraggly wild clover grew, and down what part of the gravel bank it was most exciting to roll. As far along the track as the arch, each railway tie, or sleeper, had for him personality, the fat white tie which oozed at the end into an awkward knob, he had always hated because it resembled a flattened grub. A new Tamarack tie with a piece of fresh bark still on it, recently put in by the section gang, was an entertaining stranger, and he particularly introduced Gertrude to his favorite, a wine-colored tie which always smiled. Gertrude, though nobilities oblige, compelled her to be gracious to the imprisoned ties writhing under the steel rails. Did not really show much enthusiasm till he led her to the justly celebrated arch. Even then she boasted of many ha-ha-falls and fort-snelling and Lake Calhoun, but upon his grieved solicitation declared that, after all, the Twin Cities had nothing to compare with the arch, a sandstone tunnel full twenty feet high miraculously boring through the railway embankment, and faced with great stones which you could descend by lowering yourself from stone to stone. Through the arch ran the creek, with rare meadows in its pools, while important paths led from the creek to a wilderness of hazelnut bushes. He taught her to tear the drying husk from the nuts, and crack the nuts with stones. At his request Gertrude produced two pins from unexpected parts of her small frilly dress. He found a piece of string and they fished for perch in the creek. As they had no bait whatever their success was not large. Flock of ducks flew low above them seeking a pawn for the night. Jiminy, Carl, cried. It's getting late. We got to hurry. It's all for fur to San Francisco, and I don't know if, gee, where we'll sleep tonight. We had not to go on, had we? Yeah, come on. From the creek they cramped nearly two miles, through the dark gravel banks of the railway, cutting across the high trestle over Jor Lemon River, where Gertrude had to be coaxed from string and re-stringer. They stopped only when a gopher in a clearing demanded attention. Gertrude finally forgot the superiority of age when she saw Carl Whistle, the quivering gopher cry, while the gopher sat as though hypnotized on his pile of fresh black earth. Carl stalked him. As always happened, the gopher popped into his shoulders before Carl reached him. But it certainly did seem that he had nearly been caught, and Gertrude was jumping with excitement when Carl returned, strutting caulking his sabre-stick over his shoulder. Gertrude was tired. She, the Minneapolis girl, had not been much odd by the railway ties nor the arch, but now she trapped proudly beside the man, who could catch gophers, till Carl inquired. Are you getting off hungry? It's almost supper time. Yes, I'm hungry, trustingly. I'm going to go swipe some taters. I guess, it may be there's a farmhouse over there. I see a chimney being on the slaw. Used to be here. I doesn't stay alone. I'd better go home. I'm scared. Come on. I won't let nothing hurt you. They circled the swamp surrounded by woods. Carl's left arm about her, his right clutching the sabre. Though the sunset was magnificent and a gay company of blackbirds swayed in the reeds of this slaw, dusk was sneaking out from the underbrush that blurted the forest floor, and Gertrude caught the panic fear. She wished to go home at once. She saw darkness reaching for them. Her mother would unquestionably whip her for staying out so late. She discovered a mud smear on the side of her skirt, and a shoe-button was gone. She was cold. Finally, if she missed supper at home, she would get no tea-biscuits and honey. Gertrude's polite little stomach knew its rights and insisted upon them. I wish I hadn't come, she lamented. I wish I hadn't. Do you suppose mama will be dreadfully angry? Won't you explain to her? Well, won't you? It was Carl's duty as officer commanding to watch the blackened stumps that sprang from the underbrush, and there was something way over in the woods, beyond the trees horribly gashed to whiteness by lightning. Perhaps the something hadn't moved. Perhaps it was a stump. When he answered her loudly so that lurking robbers might over here. I know a great big man over there, and he's a friend of mine. He's a break-he on the M&D, and he lets me ride in the cab any time I want to, and he's right behind us. I was just making believe, Gertrude. I'll explain everything to your mother. He's bigger than anybody. More conversationaly. Ah, Jiminy, Gertrude, don't cry. Please don't. I'll take care of you. And if you ain't going to have any supper, we'll swipe some taters and roast them," he gulped. He hated to give up to return to woodshed and chicken-yard. But he conceded. As many we hadn't better go seek our fortunes no more to. A long wail tore through the air. The children shrieked together and fled stumbling and dry bog, weeping in terror. Carl's backbone was all one prickly bar of ice. But he waved his stick fiercely, and because he had to care for her, was calm enough to realize that the wail must have been the cry of a bitter. There was nothing but a bird, Gertrude. Can't hurt us? Heard him lots of times. Nevertheless he was still trembling when they reached the edge of the farmyard clearing beyond the swamp. It was grey-dark. They could see only the mass of a barn and a farmer's cabin, both new to Carl, holding our handy whispered. They must be some taters, big reason to barn. I'll sneak in and see. You stand here by the corn crib and work out some mirrors between the barn, see, like this? He left her. The sound of her frightened snivel aged him. He tiptoed to the barn door, eyeing a light in the farmhouse. He reached far up to the latch of the broad door and pulled out the wooden pin. The latch slipped noisily from its staple. The door opened with a groaning creak and banged against the barn. Paralyzed, hearing all the silence of the wild clearing he waited. There was a step in the house. The door opened. A huge farmer, tousled, haired, black-bearded, held up a lamp and peered out. It was the black Dutchman. The black Dutchman was a living legend. He often got drunk and rode past Carl's home at night, lishing his horses and cursing in German. He had once thrashed the school teacher for whipping his son. He had no friends. Oh, dear, oh, dear, I wished I was home, sob Carl. But he started to run to Gertie's protection. The black Dutchman sat down the lamp. Where is Tia? I see you. Damnation! He roared and lumbered out, seizing a pitchfork from the manure pile. Carl galloped up to Gertie panting. He's after us! And dragged her into the hazel bushes at the corn crib. As his country-bred feet found and followed a path toward deeper woods, he heard the black Dutchman beating the bushes with his pitchforks shouting, I think I know where you are, ha! Carl jerked his companion forward, till he lost the path. There was no light. They could only crawl on through the bushes, whose malicious fingers stung Gertie's face and plucked at her proud frills. He lifted her overfallen trees, freed her from bushes, and, all the time between his own sobs, he encouraged her and tried to pretend that their incredible plight was not the end of the world, whimpering. We're almost on the road down, Gertie. Honest, we are. I can't hear him now. I ain't afraid of him. He wouldn't ask to hurt us. My paw would fix him. Oh, I hear him. He's coming. Oh, please save me, Carl. Gee, run fast. I don't hear him. I ain't afraid of him. They burst out on a grassy woodland road and lay down panting. They could see a strip of stars overhead and the world was dark, silent. In the inscrutable night of autumn, Carl said nothing. He tried to make out where they were. Where this road would take them, it might run deeper into the woods, which he did not know as he did the arch and pyres. And he had so twisted through the voice that he could not tell in what direction lay either the main wagon road or the M&D track. He lifted her up, and they plotted hand in hand till she said, I'm awful tired. It's awful cold. My feet hurt awfully. Carl, Daryl, please take me home now. I'm on my mama. Maybe she won't whip me now. It's so dark and old. She muttered incoherently. By the road, he's waiting for us. She sank down her arm over her face, groaning. Don't hurt me! Carl straddled before her on guard. There was a distorted mass crouched by the road just ahead. He tingled with a chill of fear down through his thighs. He had lost his stick-saber, but he bent, felt for, and found another stick, and piped to the shadowy watcher. I'm afraid of you. You're going away from here! The watcher did not answer. I know who you are. Bellowing with fear, Carl ran forward. Futurously waving his stick and clamoring, you better not touch me! The stick came down with a silly flat-click upon the watcher, a roadside boulder. It's just a rock, Gertie. Jiminy, I'm glad it's just a rock. I knew it was a rock all the time. Ben Russ gets scared every time he sees a stump in the woods, and he always thinks it's a robber. Chetely, Carl went back, lifted it again, endured her kissing his cheek, and they started on. I'm so cold, Gertie moaned from time to time till he offered. I'm trying to build fire. May we better camp. I've got a match that I swipe in the kitchen. May I make up fire so we can better camp? I don't want to camp. I want to go home. I don't know where we are, I told you. Can you make a regular campfire like Indians? Mm-hmm. That's... but I'd rather go home. You ain't scared now, are you, Gertie? Gee, you're an awful brave girl. Oh, but I'm cold and I wish we had some tea biscuits. Ever too complacent was Ms. Gertrude Cowles, the good girl, in whatever group she joined. But she seemed to trust in Carl's heroism, and as she murmured of a certain chilliness she seemed to take it for granted that he would immediately bring her some warmth. Carl had never heard of the romantic males who, in fiction so frequently, offer their coats to ladies fair but chill, yet he stripped off his jacket and wrapped it about her, while his gingham-clad shoulders twitched with cold. I can hear a crick way, way over there. Let's camp by it, he scrambled through the bush, Carl leading her and feeling the way. He found a patch of long grass beside the creek. With only his tremulous hands for ice he gathered leaves, twigs, and dead branches, and piled them together in a pyramid, as he had been taught to do by the older, wood-sparing boys. It was still, no wind. But Carl, who had gumbled up every word he had heard about deer-hunting in the North Woods, got a great deal of interesting fear out of dreading what might happen if his one match did not light. He made Gertrude Neil beside him the jacket outspread, and he hesitated several times before he scratched the match. It flared up. The leaves caught. The pile of twigs was instantly aflame. He whipped. Jiminy, if it hadn't lighted. By and by he announced loudly, I wasn't afraid, to convince himself and set up throwing twigs on the fire grandly. Gertrude, who didn't really appreciate heroism, sighed, I'm hungry, and my second grade teacher told us a story how there was an arty explorer, and he was out in a blizzard, and I wish we had some tea biscuits, concluded Gertrude, companionably, but firmly. I'll go pick some hazelnuts. He left her feeding the flame. As he crept away the fire behind him, he was dreadfully frightened, now that he had no one to protect. A few yards from the fire he stopped in terror. He clutched a branch so tightly that it creased his palm. Two hundred yards away across the creek was a small square of a lighted window, hovering detached in the darkness. For a panic-filled second, Carl was sure that it must be the black Dutchman's window. His tired child mined wine. But there was no creek near the black Dutchman's. Though he did not want to venture up to the unknown light, he growled, Eh, well, if I want to! and limped forward. He had crossed the creek, the strange creek whose stepping stones he did not know. Shivering, hesitant, he stripped off his shoes and stockings and dabbled the edge of the water with reluctant toes, to see if it was cold. It was. Dog gone! he swore mightily. He plunged in, waited across. He found a rock and held it ready to throw at the dog that was certain to become snapping at him as he tiptoed through the clearing. His wet legs smarted with cold. The fact that he was trespassing made him feel more forlornly lost than ever. But he stumbled up to the one-room shack that was now shaping itself against the sky. It was a house that he believed he had never seen before. When he reached it he stood fully a minute, afraid to move. But from across the creek whimpered Gertie's call. Carl, Carl, where are you? He had to hurry. He crept along the side of the shack to the window. It was too high on the wall for him to peer through. He felt for something to stand upon and found a short board which he wedged against the side of the shack. He looked through the dusty window for a second. He sprang from the board. Alone in the shack was the one person about Jeremon. More feared, more fabulous, than the black Dutchman. Bohn Stilman. The man who didn't believe in God. Bohn Stilman read Robert G. Engersaw and said what he thought. Otherwise he was not dangerous to the public peace. A lone old bachelor farmer. It was said that he had been a sailor or a policeman, a college professor or priest, a forger or an embezzler. Nothing positive was known except that three years ago he had appeared and bought this farm. He was a grizzled man of fifty-five with a long tobacco-stained gray mustache and an open-neck blue flannel shirt. To Carl, beside the shack, Bohn Stilman, was all that was demonic. Gritty was calling again. Carl climbed up his board and resumed his inspection, seeking a course of action. The one-room shack was lined with tarpaper on which were pinned lithographs of Robert G. Engersaw, Carl Marx and Napoleon. Under a gun-rack made of deer antlers was a cupboard half filled with dingy books, shotgun shells, fishing tackle. Bohn was reading by a pine-table still littered with supper dishes. Before him lay a clean limbed English setter. The dog was asleep. In the shack was absolute stillness and loneliness, intimidating. While Carl watched, Bohn dropped his book and said, Here, Bob, what do you think of single tax, eh? Carl gazed apprehensively. No one but Bohn was in the shack. It was said that the devil himself sometimes visited there. On Carl was the chill of a nightmare. The dog raised his head, stirred, blinked, pounded his tail on the floor and rose, a gentlemanly affable champ to lay his muzzle on Bohn's knee while a solitary droned. This fellow says in this book here that the city's the natural place to live. Aboriginal tribes prove man's naturally gregarious. Why, think about it. Eh? Bob? Run, country, this is. No thinking. What in the name of seven saintly sisters did I ever want to be a farmer for, eh? Let's get daddle, Bob. I ain't an atheist. I'm an agnostic. Lonely Bob? Go over and talk to his whiskers. Carl Marx, he's liberal. He don't care what you say, he. Ah, shut up. You're a damn poor company. Say something. Carl still motionless was the more agonized because there was no sound from Gertie, not even a sobbing call. Anything might have happened to her. While he was coaxing himself to knock on the pain, Stillman puttered about the shack, petting the dog, filling his pipe. He passed out of Carl's range of vision towards the side of the room in which was the window. A huge hand jerked the window open and caught Carl by the hair. Two wild faces stared at each other, six inches apart. I saw you. Come here to plague me, roared Bone Stillman. Oh, Mr. Oh, please, Mr. I wasn't mean Gertie was lost in the woods. We ouch. Oh, please let me go. Why, you're just a brat. Come here. The lean arm of Bone Stillman dragged Carl through the window by the slack of his gingham shirt. Lost, eh? Where's the other one? Gertie, was it? He's over in the woods. Poor little tyke. Where'd all I like my lantern? The swinging lantern made friendly, ever-changing circles of light, and Carl no longer feared the dangerous territory of the yard. Riding piggyback on Bone Stillman, he looked down contentedly at the dog's differential tail beside them. They found Gertie asleep by the fire. She scarcely awoke as Stillman picked her up and carried her back to his shack. She nestled her downy hair beneath his chin and closed her eyes. Stillman said cheerily as he ushered them into his mansion. I'll hitch up and take you back to town, you young tropical tramps. First you better have a bite to eat, though. What do kids eat? Dog was nuzzling Carl's hand and Carl had almost forgotten his fear that the devil might appear. He was flatteringly friendly in his isn't her. Forage, meat, and potatoes. Only I don't like potatoes. And pie. Freight I haven't any pie, but how'd some bacon and eggs go? As he stoked up his cannonball stove and sliced the bacon, Stillman continued to the children who were shyly perched on the buffalo robe cover of his bed. Were you scared in the woods? Yes, sir. Don't ever, for the blast that egg. Don't forget this, son. Nothing outside of you can ever hurt you. It can chew up your toes, but it can't reach you. Nobody but you can hurt you. Let me try to make that clear, old man, if I can. There's your father, drop and set to. Pretty sleepy, are you? I'll tell you a story. Would you like to hear about how Napoleon smashed the theory of divine rule, or about how me and Charlie Weems explored Tiberon? Well... Though Carl afterward remembered not one word of what Bone Stillman said, it is possible that the outcast treatment of him as a grown-up friend was one of the most powerful of the intangible influences which were to push him toward the great world outside of Jerusalem. The school-bound child. Taught by young ladies that the worst immorality was whispering in school, the chief virtue, adult quietude, was here first given to a reasonable basis for supposing that he was not always to be a backyard boy. The man in the flannel shirt who chewed tobacco, who wrenched infinitives apart and thrust profane words between, was for fifteen minutes, Carl's Floorbell and Montessori. Carl's recollection of listening to Bone burrs into one of being somewhere in the back of a wagon beside Gertie, wrapped in buffalo robes, and of being awakened by the stopping of the wagon when Bone called to a band of men with lanterns who were searching for the missing Gertie. Apparently the next second he was being lifted out before he's home, and his apron mother was kissing him and sobbing, Oh, my boy! He snuggled his head on her shoulder and said, I'm cold, but I'm going to San Francisco. End of chapter two. Chapter three of The Trail of the Hawk. The sleeper box recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti, mikevendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter three. Carl Erickson, grown to sixteen and long trousers, trimmed the arc lights for Jor Lemon Power and Lighting Company after school. Then, at Eddie Clem's Billiard Parlor, he won two games of Kelly Pool, smoked a cigarette of flaked tobacco, and wheat straw paper and chipped in five cents towards a can of beer. A slender Carl, hesitating in speech but with plenty to say, rangey as a setter pup, silk and haired, his Scandinavian cheeks like petals at an age when his companions' faces were like maps of the moon, stubborn and healthy, wearing a celluloid collar in a plain black foreign hand. A blue-eyed, undistinguished, awkward, busy, pulletarian of sixteen, to whom evening clothes and poetry did not exist, but who quivered with inarticulate determinations to see Minneapolis or even Chicago. To him it was sheer romance to parade through town with a tin haversack of carbons for the arc lights, familiarly lowering the high-hung, mysterious lamps. While he's plotting acquaintances, clerked in stores on Saturdays or tended furnaces. Sometimes he donned the veral and noisy uniform of an electrician. Army gauntlets, a coil of wire, pole climbers strapped to his legs, crunching his steel spurs into the crisp pine wood of the lighting poles, he carelessly ascended to the place of humming-wires and red crossbars and green glass insulators, while crowds of two and three small boys stared in awe from below. At such moments Carl did not envy the aristocratic leisure of his high school classmate, Fatty Ben Rusk, who was son of the leading doctor, did not work but stayed home in red library books. Carl's own home was not adapted to the enchantments of a boy's reading. Perfectly comfortable it was and clean with the hard clendoness that keeps oilcloth looking perpetually unused, but it was so airlessly respectable that it doubled Carl's natural restlessness. It had been old Oscar Erickson's labor of love, but the carpenter loved shininess more than space and leisure. His model for a house would have been a pine dry goods box, grained in imitation of oak, Oscar Erickson radiated intolerance and a belief in unimaginative, unresting labor. Every evening, colorless and carpet-slippered, ruffling his broom-colored hair or stroking his large long chin, while his shirt tab moved ceaselessly in time to his breathing, he read a Norwegian paper. Carl's mother darned woolen socks and thought about milk pans and the neighbors and breakfast. The creek of rockers filled the unventilated oilcloth floor-sitting room. The sound was as unchanging as the sacred positions of the crayon enlargement of Mrs. Erickson's father, the green glass top hat for matches, or the violent and grain rug with its dog-head pattern. Carl's own room contained only plaster walls, an arrow-wooden bed, a bureau, a kitchen chair. Fifteen minutes in this irreproachable home sent Carl off to Eddie Clem's billiard parlor, which was not irreproachable. He rather disliked the bitterness of fear in the acrid specks of cigarette tobacco that stuck to his lips, but the bunch at Eddie's were among the few people in Jerusalem who were conscious of life. Eddie's establishment was a long white plastered room with a pressed steel ceiling and an upswept floor. On the walls were billiard table markers, calendars, and a collection of cigarette premium cromos portraying bathing girls. The girls were of lithographic complexions, almost too perfect a feature, and their lips were more than ruby. Carl admired them. A September afternoon, the sixteen-year-old Carl was tipped back in a chair at Eddie Clem's, one foot on a rung while he discussed village scandals and told outrageous stories with Eddie Clem, a brisk money-maker and a Bulgarian aged twenty-three, who wore a fancy vest and celluloid buttons on his lapels. Ben Rusk hesitantly poked his head through the door. Eddie Clem called with business-like cordiality. Oh, Fatty, come in. How's your good health? Haven't reformed, have you? Going to join us rough necks? Come on, I'll teach you to play pool. Won't cost you a cent. Nah, I guess I hadn't better. I was just looking for Carl. Well, well, Fatty, ain't we refined? Why do we guess we hate to probably maybe oughtn't have had better? Oh, I don't know. Someday I'll learn, I guess, sighed Fatty Ben Rusk, who knew perfectly that with a doctor father, a religious mother, and an infeminate taste for reading, he could never be a town sport. Hey, what's up, shriek-deady? What's the matter? Gasp, Fatty. Floor, it's falling on you. The, the, the, I say you're kidding me, said Fatty weakly, with a propitiating smile. Don't worry, son, you're the third guy to date that I've caught on that. Stick around, son, and sit in any time, and I'll learn you some pool. You got just the right build for a champ player. Have a cigarette. The social amenities whereby Girolian prepares her youth. For the graces of life having been recognized, Fatty Rusk hitched to chair beside Carl and Muddard. Hey, Carl, here's what I wanted to tell you. I was just up at the Coles' to take back a French grammar I borrowed to look at. Maybe that ain't a hard-looking language. What do you think? Mrs. Coles told me Gertie is expected back tomorrow. She was. I thought she was going to stay in New York for two years, and she's only been gone six months. Yes, Mrs. Coles is kind of lonely without her. Been mooned. So now you'll be all nice and in love with Gertie again, eh? Certainly gets me why you want to fall in love, Fatty. When you could be out hunting, if you'd read about King Arthur and Gala Had, and all them instead of reading the Scientific American and about those fool-horseless carriages and stuff, there never will be any practical use for horses' carriages, anyway. There will, growl, Carl. My mother says she don't believe the Lord ever intended us to ride without horses. Or what did he give us horses for? And the things always get stuck in the mud, and you have to walk home. Mother was reading that in the newspaper just the other day. Son, let me tell you, all on the horses carried some day, and I bet I go on average a twenty miles an hour with it. Maybe forty. All rats. But I was saying, if you'd read some library books, you'd know what about love. Why, what did God put love in the world for? Say what you quit explaining to me what God did things for. Oh, quit off! Quit, Carl! Say listen, here's what I wanted to tell you. Oh, if you and me and Adelaine Benner and some of us went down to the depot and meet Gertie tomorrow. She comes in on a twelve forty-seven. Well, all right. Say, Benny, you don't want to be worried when I kid you about being in love with Gertie. I don't think I'll ever get married. But it's all right for you. Saturday morning was cool, so radiant that Carl awakened early to a conviction that no matter how important meeting Gertie might be in the cosmic scheme, he was going hunting. He was downstairs by five. Fried two eggs called dollar Ingersoll, his dog, son of Robert Ingersoll Stillman, gentleman dog. Then in canvas hunting-coat and slouch hat, trapped out of town southward where the woods ended in prairie, Gertie's arrival was forgotten. It was a gypsy day. The sun rolled blundely through the dry air over miles of wheat stubble, whose gray yellow prickles were transmuted by distance into tawny velvet, seeming only the more spacious because of the straight thin lines of barbed wire fences lined with golden rod, and solitary houses in willow groves. The dips and curves of the rolling plain drew him on. The distances satisfied his eyes. A pleasant hum of insects filled the land's wide serenity with hidden life. Carl left a trail of happy monotonous whistling behind him all day, as his dog followed the winding trail of prairie chickens, as a covey of chickens rose with booming wings, and he swung a shotgun for a bead. He stopped by prairie sloughs or bright green bogs to watch for a duck. He hailed as equals the occasional groups of hunters in two seated buggies, quartering the fields after circling dogs. He lunched contentedly on sandwiches of cold lamb, and lay with his arms under his head, gazing at a steeple fully ten miles away. By six of the afternoon he had seven prairie chickens tucked inside the long pocket that lined the tail of his coat, and he headed for home, superior to Miles, his quiet eyes missing none of the purple asters and golden rod. As he began to think he felt a bit guilty, flowers suggested girding. Gathered a large bunch, poking stalks of astor among the golden rod, examining the result at arms length. Yet when he stopped at rusts in town to bid Benny to take the rustic bouquet of Gertie, he replied to reproaches. What making all of us about my not being there to meet her for? She got here all right, didn't she? What'd you expect me to do? Kiss her? You ought to know it was too good a day for hunting to miss. That was Gert. Have a good time in New York. Carl himself took the flowers to her, however, and was so shyly attentive to her account of New York, that he scarcely stopped to speak to the callous's hired girl, who was his second cousin. Mrs. Cowles overheard him shout, Hello, Linda. How's it going? To the hired girl with cousinly ease. Mrs. Cowles seemed chilly, Carl wondered why. From month to month of his junior year in high school, Carl grew more discontented. He let the lines of his Cicero fade into a gray blur that confounded Cicero's blatant virtue, and Catalan's treachery. While he pictured himself cramping with snowshoes, and a Mackinaw coat, into the snowy Salmonies of the northern Minnesota Tamarack Swamps, much of his discontent was caused by his learned preceptors. The teachers for this year were almost perfectly calculated to make any lad of the slightest independence-hate culture for the rest of his life. With the earnestness and industry usually ascribed to the devil, Professor Saibet E. Larson, B.A. Platonius, Ms. McDonald, and Ms. Muzzi kept up 95% discipline and 7% instruction on anything in the least worthwhile. Ms. Muzzi was sarcastic and proud of it. She was sarcastic to Carl when he gruffly asked why he couldn't study French instead of all his Latin stuff. If there be any virtue in the study of Latin, and we have all forgotten all our Latin except the fact that suburb means under the city, i.e., a subway, Carl was blinded to it forever. Ms. Muzzi wore eyeglasses and had no bosom. Carl's father used to say approvingly, that Ms. Muzzi don't stand for no nonsense. And Mrs. Dr. Rusk often had her for dinner. Ms. McDonald fat and slow spoken and kind, prone to use the word dairy to read longfellow and to have buttons off her shirt-waists, used on Carl a feminine weapon more unfair than the robust sarcasm of Ms. Muzzi. After irritating a self-respecting boy into rudeness, by pawing his soul with damp, puffy hands, she would weep. She was a kind, honest, and reverent bovine. Carl sat under her supervision in the junior room, with its hardwood and blackboards and plaster, high windows and portraits of Washington, and a president who was either Madison or Monroe, nobody ever remembered which. He hated the eternal school smell of drinking water pails and chalk and slates and varnish. He loathed the blackboard erasers white with crayon dust. He found inspiration only in the laboratory where Prof. Larson mistaught physics and rebuked questions about the useless part of chemistry. That is the part that wasn't in their textbooks. As for literature, Ben Rusk persuaded him to try Captain Marriott and Conan Doyle. Carl met Sherlock Holmes in a paperbound book during a wait for flocks of mallards on a duck pass, which was a little temple of silver birches, bare with November. He crouched down in his canvas coat and rubber boats, gunned across knees, and read for an hour without moving. As he trapped home into a vast Minnesota sunset like a furnace of fantastic coals, past the garnet-tinged ice of lakes, he kept his gun cocked and under his elbow, ready for the royal robber who was dogging the personage of Baker Street. He hunted much, distinguished himself in geometry and chemistry, nearly flunked in Cicero in English, learned to play an extraordinary steady game of bottle pool at eddy climbs. And always, Gertie Cowles gently hesitant toward Ben Rusk's affection, kept asking Carl why he didn't come see her oftener and played diddly-winks. On the Friday morning, before Christmas vacation, Carl and Ben Rusk were cleaning up the chemical laboratory, its pine experiment bench and iron sink and rough floor. Benny worried a rag in the sink with the resigned manner of a man who, having sailed with purple banners the sunset sea of tragedy, goes greatly on with a life gray and weary. The town was excited. Gertie Cowles was giving a party, and she had withdrawn her invitation to eddy climb. Gertie was staying away from high school, gracefully recovering from a cold. For two weeks the junior and senior classes had been futurably exhibiting her holly-deck cards of imitation. Eddie had been included, but after his quarrel with Howard Griffin, a Plato college freshman, who was spending the vacation with Ray Cowles, it had been explained to Eddie that perhaps he would be more comfortable not to come to the party. Gertie's brother Murray, or Ray, was the town hero. He had captained the high school football team. He was tall and very black-haired, and he jollied the girls. It was said that twenty girls and juror women and Walkman and a grass widow in St. Hilary wrote to him. He was now a freshman in Plato College, Plato, Minnesota, and he brought home with him his classmate Howard Griffin, whose people lived in South Dakota, and were said to be wealthy. Griffin had been very haughty to Eddie Klim when introduced to that brisk young man at the billiard parter, and now the town eagerly learned Eddie had been rejected of society. In the laboratory, Carl was growling. I'll say fatty. If it was right for them to throw Eddie out, where do I come in? His dad's a barmer and mine's a carpenter. And that's just as bad. Or how about you? I was reading that Docs used to be just barbers. Ah, thunder! said Ben Rusk, the doctor's sky on, uncomfortably. You're just arguing. I don't believe that about doctors being barbers. Don't it tell about doctors way back in the Bible? Well, of course. Luke was a physician. Besides, it ain't a question of Eddie being a barber's son. I should think you'd realize that Gertie isn't well. She wouldn't want to have to entertain both Eddie and Griffin, and Griffin's her guest. And besides, you're getting all tangled up. If I was to let you go on, you'd trip over a long word and bust your dome. Come on. We've done enough cleaning. Let's hike. Come on up to the house and help me on my bobs. I got a new scheme for pivoting the back sled. You just wait till tonight. I'm going to tell Gertie and Mr. Howard Griffin just want to think of them for being such two-bit snobs. And you're future mon-law. Gee. I'm glad I don't have to be in love with anybody and become a snob. Come on. Out of this wholesome, democratic, and stuffy village life, Carl suddenly stepped into the great world. A motor-car. The first he had ever seen was drawn up before the Hennepin House. He stopped. His china-blue eyes widened. His shoulders shot forward to a rigid stoop of astonishment. His mouth opened. He gasped as they ran to join the gathering crowd. A horseless carriage. Do you get that? There's one here. He touched the bonnet of the two-cylinder 1901 car and worshipped. Under there the engine. And there's where you steer. I will own one. Gee, you're right, Fatty. I believe I will go to college and then I'll study mechanical engineering. Thought you said you was going to try to go to Annapolis and be a sailor. Nah, rats. I'm going to own a horseless carriage, and I'm going to tour every state in the Union. Think of seeing mountains and the ocean, and going 20 miles an hour like a train. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of the Trail of the Hawk The Sleuthbrovok's recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti, mikevendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 4 While Carl prepared for Gertie Cowell's party by pressing his trousers with his mother's flat iron, while he blacked his shoes and took his weekly sponge bath, he was perturbed by the partnership with Eddie Clem, and the longing for the world of motors, and some anxiety as to how he could dance at the party when he could not dance. He clumped up the new stone steps of the Cowell's house carelessly, not unusually shy, ready to tell Gertie what he thought of her treatment of Eddie. Then the front door opened, and an agonized Carl was smothered by politeness, his second cousin. Lena, the Cowell's's hired girl, was opening the door stiff and uncomfortable in a cap, a black dress, and a small frilly apron that dangled on her bonyness like a lace kerchief pinned on a broom handle. Murray Cowell's rushed up. He was in evening clothes. Behind Murray, Mrs. Cowell's greeted Carl with thawed majesty. We are so glad to have you, Carl. Won't you take your things off in the room at the head of the stairs? An affable introduction to Howard Griffin, also in evening clothes, was poured on Carl like soothing balm, said Griffin. Might have glad to meet you, Erickson. Ray told me you'd make a ripping sprinter. The captain of the track team will be on the lookout for you when you get to Plato. Of course you're going to go there. The yield of him is too big. You'll do something for old Plato, wish I could. But all I can do is warble like a darn dicky bird. Have a cigarette. They're just turning to dance. Come on, old man. Come on, Ray. Carl was drawn downstairs and instantly precipitated into a dance regarding which he was sure only that it was a waltz, a two-step, or something else. It filled with glamour the Cowell's library, the only parlor in Jerome that was called a library, and the only one with a fireplace or a polished hardwood floor. Grandeur was in the red lamekins over the doors and windows, the bead potteray, a hand-painted coal-shuttle, small round paintings of flowers set in black velvet, an enormous black walnut bookcase, with fully a hundred volumes, and the two lamps of green model shades and wrought-iron frames set on phytograph leather skins brought from New York by Gertie. The light was courtly on the polished floor. Adelaide Benner, a new Adelaide in chiffon over yellow satin, and patent leather slippers grinned at him and ruthlessly towed him into the tide of dancers. In the spell of society no one seemed to remember Eddie Clem. Adelaide did not mention the incident. Carl found himself bumping into others continually apologizing to Adelaide and the rest and not caring, for he saw a vision. Each time he turned toward the south into the room he beheld, Gertie Cowles glorified. She was out of ankle-length dresses. She looked her impressive 18 in a foamy, long, white mall that showed her soft throat. A red rose was in her brown hair. She reclined in a big chair of leather and oak and smiled the gentlest especially when Carl bobbed his head to her. He had always taken her as a matter of course. She had no age, no sex, no wonder. That afternoon she had been a negligible bit of Jola One, to be accused of snobbery toward Eddie Clem, and always to be watched suspiciously, lest she spring some New York airs on us. Gertie had craftably seemed unchanged after New York enlightenment, till now. Here she was, suddenly grown up and beautiful, haloed with a peculiar magic which distinguished her from the rest of the world. She's the only one that would ride in that horseless carriage when I get it, Carl exalted. That must be a train that thinks she's got on. After the dance he disposed of Adelaide Benner as though she were only a sister. He hung over the back of Gertie's chair and urged, I was awful sorry to hear you were sick. Say you look wonderful tonight. I'm so glad you could come to my party, oh I must speak to you about. Do you suppose you would ever get very very angry at poor me? Me so bad sometimes? Got an awkward little caper to show his aplomb and to shirt her. I guess probably I'll kill you some time, all right? No, listen Carl, I'm dreadfully serious. I hope you didn't go and get dreadfully angry at me about Eddie Clem. I know Eddie's good friends with you, and I did want to have him come to my party, but you see was this way. Mr. Griffin is our guest. He likes you a lot, Carl. Isn't he a dandy fellow? I guess Adelaide and Hazel were just crazy about him. I think he's just as well as the men in New York. Eddie and he didn't get along very well together. Doesn't anybody's fault I don't guess. I thought Eddie would be lots happier if he didn't come, don't you see? Oh no, of course. Oh yes, I say sure. I can see how… say Gertie. I never did know you could look so grown up. I suppose now you'll never play with me. I want you to be a good friend of mine always. We always have been awfully good friends, haven't we? Yes. Do you remember how we ran away? And how the black Dutchman chased us? Her sweet and complacent voice was so cheerful that he lost his awe of her new magic and chortled. And how he used to play Bum Bum Bulloway. She delicately leaned her cheek on a fingertip side. Yes, I wonder if we shall ever be so happy as when we were young. I don't believe you care to play with me so much now. Oh gee, Gertie. I like to. The shyness was on him again. Say, are you feeling better now? You're all over being sick? Almost now. I'll be back in school right after vacation. Yet you that don't want to play, I guess. I can't get over that long white dress. It makes you look so… you know, so, uh… They're going to dance again. I wish I felt able to dance. We said talk to you, Gertie, instead of dancing. I suppose you're dreadfully bored, though, when you could be down at the billiard baller. Yes, I could. Not. Eddie Clem and his fancy vest wouldn't have much chance alongside a griffin in his dress suit. Of course, I don't want to knock Eddie, him and me, or pretty good sidekicks. Oh, no, I understand. It's just that people have to go with their own class. Don't you think? Oh, yes, sure. I do think so myself. Carl said it with a spurious society manner. In Gertie's aristocratic presence, he desired to keep a loop from all vulgar persons. Of course, I think we ought to make allowances for Eddie's father, Carl, but then she sighed with the responsibility of no blessé oblige, and Carl gravely sighed with her. He brought a stool and sat at her feet. Immediately he was afraid that everyone was watching him. Ray Cowell's balled to them as he passed in the waltz. Watch out for that, Carl, Gert. He's our regular bettix. Carl's scalp prickled, but he tried to be very offhand in remarking, You must have gotten that dress in New York, didn't you? Why haven't you ever told me about New York? You've hardly told me anything at all. Well, I like that, and you never been near me to give me a chance. Guess I was kind of scared. You wouldn't care much for Joelerman after New York. Why, Carl, you mustn't say that to me. Didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Gertie. Honestly, it didn't. I was just joking. I didn't think you'd take me seriously. As though I could forget my old friends, even in New York? I didn't think that, straight. Please, tell me about New York. That's the place all right, Jiminy. Wouldn't I like to go there? I wish you could have been there, Carl. We had such fun in my school. There weren't any boys in it, but we... No boys in it? Why, how's that? Well, it was just for girls. I see, he said facturously, completely satisfied. We did have the best times, Carl. I must tell you about one awfully naughty thing, Carrie. She was my chum in school, and I did. There was a stock company on 23rd Street, and we were all crazy about the actors, especially. Clements de Vaux. And one afternoon, Carrie told the principal she had a headache. And I asked if I could go home with her and read her the assignments for the next day. They called the lessons assignments there. And they thought I was such a meek little country mouse that I would never fib. And so they let us go. And what do you think we did? She had the tickets for the two orphans at the stock company. You've never seen the two orphans, have you? It's perfectly splendid. I used to weep my eyes out over it. And afterward we went and waited outside right near the stage entrance. And what do you think? The leading man, Clements de Vaux, went right by us as near as I am to you. Oh, Carl, I wish you could have seen him. Maybe he wasn't the handsomest thing. He had the blackest, curliest hair, and he wore a thumb ring. I don't think much about all these ham fetters, Carl. Actors always go broke and have to walk back to Chicago. Don't you think it'd be better to be a civil engineer or something like that instead of having to slig up your hair and carry a cane? They're just dudes. Why, of course, Carl, you silly boy. You don't suppose I'd take Clements seriously to you, you silly boy? I'm not a boy. I didn't mean it that way. She sat up, touched his shoulder, and sank back. He blushed with bliss and the fear that someone had seen as she continued. I always think of you as just as old as I am. We always will be, won't we? Yes. Now you must go to talk to Doris Carlson. Poor thing, she always is a wallflower. However much he thought of common things as he left her. Beyond those common things was the miracle that Gertie had grown into the one perfect, divinely ordained woman and that he would talk to her again. He'd asked the Virginia Reel. Instead of clumping suckly through the steps as at other parties, he heeded Adelaide Brennan's lesson and watched Gertie in the hope that she would see how well he was dancing. He shouted to the man that they played, skipped to Maloo, and cried down the shy girls who giggled that they were too old for the childish party game. He howled without prejudice in favor of any particular key, the ancient world's Rants and the Sugar Bowl two by two, Rants and the Belvry two by two, Rants and the Sugar Bowl two by two, Skip to Maloo, my darling. In a nonchalant company of the smarter young bachelor's upstairs he smoked a cigarette. But he sneaked away. He paused at the bend in the stairs below him was Gertie, silver-gowned, wonderful. He wanted to go down to her. He would have given up his chance for a motor-car to be able to swagger down like an eddy clam. For the Carl Erickson who sailed his ice boat over the inch-thick ice was timid now. He poked into the library and in a nausea of discomfort he conversed with Mrs. Cowles, Mrs. Cowles, doing the conversing. Are you going to be a Republican or a Democrat, Carl? Ask the forbidding lady. Here's some mumble Carl peering over at Gertie's throne where Ben Rusk was being cultured. I hope you're having a good time. We always wish our young friends to have an especially good time at Gertrude's parties, Mrs. Cowles sniffed, and bowed away. Carl sat beside Adelaide Benner in the decorous and giggling circle that rang the room, waiting for the refreshments. He was healthily interested in devouring maple ice-cream and chocolate layer cake, but all the while he was spying on the group gathering about Gertie. Ben Rusk, Howard Griffin and Joe Jordan. He took the most strategic precaution lest one think that he wanted to look at Gertie, made such ponderous efforts to prove he was carefree that everyone knew something was the matter. Ben Rusk was taking no part in the guillotine of Howard and Joe. The serious man of letters was not easily led into a panse of frivolity. Carl swore to himself, Ben's the only guy I know that's got any delicate feelings. He appreciates how Gertie feels when she's sick, poor girl. He don't make a goat of himself like Joe or maybe he's got a stomach ache. Post Office, crying Howard Griffin to the room at large. Come on. Will all of us going to be kids again and play Post Office? Who's the first girl wants to be kissed? The idea, giggled Adelaide Banner. Me for Adelaide, bald Joe of Jordan. Joe, bet I kissed Gertie from Irving Lamb? The idea. Just as if we were children. He must think we're kids again. Shame he, when he wants to be kissed and Carl won't. I don't either, so there. I think it's awful. Bet I kissed Gertie. Carl was furious at all of them as they strained their shoulders forward from their chairs and laughed. He asked himself, haven't these galutes got any sense? To speak so lightly of kissing Gertie. He stared at the smooth rounding of her left cheek below the cheekbone till it took a separate identity, and its white softness filled the room. Ten minutes afterward, playing Post Office, he was facing Gertie in the semi-darkness of the sitting room, authorized by the game to kiss her. Shut in with his divinity. She took his hand. Her voice was crooning. Are you going to kiss me terribly hard? He tried to be gracefully mocking. Oh yes, sure, I'm going to eat you alive. She was waiting. He wished that she would not hold his hand with any groan. Gee, will I feel foolish? He croaked. Do you feel better now? You'll catch more cold in here, won't you? There's kind of a drought. Let me look at this window. Crossing to the obviously tight window, he ran his finger along the edge of the sash with infinite care. He trembled. In a second, now, he had to turn and make light of the lips which he would feign have approached with ceremony pompous and lingering. Gertie flopped into a chair, laughing. I believe you're afraid to kiss me. Afraid you can't. You'll never be a squire of dames like those actors are. All right for you. I'm not afraid, he piped. Even his prized, semi-based voice had deserted him. He rushed to the back of his chair and leaned over, confused, determined, hastily kissed her. The kiss landed on the tip of her cold nose. And the whole party was tumbling in, crying. Time's up. You can't hug her all evening. Did you see? He kissed her on the nose. Did he? Oh, time's up. Can't try it again. Joe Jordan in the van was dancing fantastically, scraping his forefinger at Carl in token of disgrace. The riotous crowd, Gertie and Carl among them, fluttered out again to show that he had not minded the incident of the misplaced kiss. Carl had to be very loud and merry in the library for a few minutes. But when the game of post-office was over and Mrs. Cowles asked Ray to turn down the lamp in the sitting-room, Carl insisted. I'll do it, Miss Cowles. I'm near and Ray in bolted. He knew that he was wicked in not staying in the library and continuing his duties to the party. He had to crowd into a minute all his agonizing and beat back at once. It was beautiful in the stilly sitting-room, away from the noisy crowd, to hear Love's heart beating. He darted to the chair where Gertie had sat and guiltfully kissed its arm. He tiptoed to the table, blew out the lamp. Remember that he should only have turned down the wick, tried to raise the chimney, stanched the anchor-chief, dropped it, groaned, picked up the anchor-chief, raised the chimney, put it on the table, searched his pockets for a match, found it, dropped it, picked it up from the floor, dropped his knife from his pocket as he stooped, felt itchy, bought the scalp, picked up the knife, relighted the lamp, exquisitely adjusted the chimney, and again blew out the flame and swore. As darkness whirled into the room again the vision of Gertie came nearer. Then he understood his illness and gasped. Great jumping Jupiter on a high mountain. I guess I'm in love. Me. The party was breaking up, each boy as he accompanied a girl from the yellow lamplight into the below zero cold, shouted and scuffled the snow to indicate that there was nothing serious in his attentions, and immediately tried to maneuver his girl away from the others. Mrs. Cowles was standing in the hall, not hurrying the guests away, you understand, but perfectly resigned to accepting any farewells. When Gertie moving gently among them with little sounds of pleasure, penned Carl in a corner and demanded, Are you going to see some one home? I suppose you'll forget poor me completely now. I will not. I wanted to tell you what Ray and Mr. Griffin said about Plato, and about being lawyers. Isn't it nice you'll know them when you go to Plato? Yes, it'll be great. Mr. Griffin's going to be a lawyer and maybe Ray will too. And why don't you think about being one? You can get to be a judge and know all the best people. It would be lovely. Refining influences, they, that's... I could never be a high-class lawyer like Griffin will, said Carl, his head on one side much pleased. You silly boy, of course you could. I think you've got just as much brains as he has, and racist they all look up to him, even in Plato. And I don't see why Plato isn't just as good, of course. It isn't as large, but it's so select and the faculty can give you so much more individual attention. And I don't see why it isn't every bit as good as Yale, Michigan, and all those Eastern colleges. Howard, Mr. Griffin, he says that he wouldn't ever have thought of being a lawyer. Only a girl was such a good influence with him, and if you get to be a famous man too, maybe all have been just a teeny-weeny bit of an influence too, won't I? Oh, yes. I must get back now and say goodbye to my guest. Good night, Carl. I'm going to study. You just watch me. And if I do get to go to Plato... Oh, gee, you always have been a good influence. You noticed that Doris Carson was watching them. Well, I gotta be going. I've had a peach of a time. Good night. Doris Carson was expectantly waiting for one of the boys to see her home. But Carl guiltily stole up to Ben Rusk and commanded, There's a hike, Faddy. Let's take a walk. Something big to tell you. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of Trail of the Hawk This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti, mikevendetti.com Trail of the Hawk By Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 5 Carl kicked up the snow and moonshot fails. The lake boomed. For all her woollen mittens, ribbed red cotton wristlets and plush caps with earlaps, the cold seared them. Carl encouraged Ben to discourse of Gertie and the delights of a long and hopeless love. He discovered that actually Ben had suddenly fallen in love with Adelaide Benner. Gee, exalted. Maybe that gives me a chance with Gertie then. But I won't let her know Ben ain't in love with her any more. Jiminy ain't it lucky, Gertie like me just when Ben fell in love with somebody else. Funny the way things go. And her never knowing about Ben. He laid down his carts. While they plowed through the hard snow drifts, swinging their arms against their chest like milkmen, he blurted out all his secret. That Gertie was the slickest girl in town. That no one appreciated. Oh, ho, jeered Ben. I thought you were crazy about her and then you start kidding about her. Small bunch of chivalry you got. You and your Gala-head. You don't you go jumping on Gala-head or all fight? It was all right, but you ain't, said Carl. You had not ever sneer at love. Why, you said just this afternoon. You poor yahoo, I was only teasing you. No, about Gertie. It's like this. She was telling me a lot about how Griffin's going to be a lawyer, about how much they make in cities then. I've about decided I'll be a lawyer. Are you going to be a mechanical engineer? Well, can't a fellow change his mind? When you're an engineer you're always running around the country and you never get shaved or anything and there ain't any refining influences. An absorbing game of what we're going to be made them forget snow and cold squeezed fingers. Bennett was decided was to own a newspaper and support C. Erickson attorney-at-law in his dramatic run for state senator. Carl did not mention Gertie again, but it all meant Gertie. Carl made his round trimming the arc lights next day apparently a rudely healthy young person. But really, a dreamer, Lovelorn, and misunderstood. He had found a good excuse for calling on Gertie at noon and had been informed that Miss Gertrude was taking a nap. He determined to go up the lake for rabbits. He doubted if he would ever return and wondered if he would be missed. Who would care if he froze to death? He wouldn't. Though he did seem to be taking certain precautions by donning a Mackinac coat, two pairs of trousers, two pairs of woolen socks, and shoe packs. He was graceful as an Indian when he swept on skis. He had made himself across miles of snow covering the lake and dazzling in the diffused light of an even grey sky. The reeds by the Marcy shore were frost glittering and clattered faintly. Marcy islands were lost in snow, hummocks and ice-jams, and the weaving patterns of mink tracks were blunted in one white immensity, on which Carl was like a fly on a plaster ceiling. The world was deserted, but Carl was not lonely. He forgot all about Gertie as he caked his skis by the shore and prowled through the woods, leaping on brush piles and shooting quickly when a rabbit ran out. When he had bagged three rabbits, he was besieged by the melancholy of loneliness, the perfection of the silver-gound Gertie. He wanted to talk. He thought of Bohm's Dillman. It was very likely that Bohm was, as usual in winter, up beyond Big Bend, fishing for picarelle with tip-ups, a never-stopping dot in the dusk Carl headed for Big Bend, three miles away. The tip-up fisher watches a dozen tip-ups, short automatic fishing rods, with lines running through the ice. The pivoted arms signalling the presence of a fish at the bait. Sometimes for warmth he has a tiny shanty, perhaps five feet by six in ground area. He did by a powder-can stow. Bohm's Dillman often spent the night in his movable shanty on the lake, which added to his reputation as a village eccentric. But he was more popular now with the local sporting-gentlemen, who found that he played a divine game of poker. Hello, son! Greetings, Carl. Come in. Leave them long legs of yours up on shore, if any got room. Hey, Boone, do you think a fellow ever ought to join a church? Pins, why? Well, suppose he was going to be a lawyer and going for politics. Look here, what you're thinking of becoming a lawyer for? Didn't say it was. Of course you're thinking of a look here. Don't you know you've got a chance of seeing the world? You're one of the lucky people that can have a touch of the wanderlust, without being made useless by it, as I have. You may, you may wander in thought as well as on freight trains, discover something for the world. Whereas a lawyer? They're priests. They decide what's holy and punish you if you don't guess right. They set up codes that it takes lawyers to interpret, and so they perpetuate themselves. I don't mean to say you're extraordinary and having a chance to wander. Don't get the big head over it. You're a pretty average young American. There's plenty of the same kind. Only mostly they get tied up to something before they see what a big world there is to hike in. And I want to keep you from that. I'm not roasting lawyers. Yes, I am too. They live in calf-bound books. Son, son, for God's sake, live in life. Yes, but look here, Bone, I was just thinking about it, that's all. You're always drumming it into me about not taking anything for granted. Anyway, by the time I go to Plato, I'll know. Do you mean to say you're going to that back-creek nunnery, that black-conned university? Are you going to play checkers all through life? I don't know now, Bone. I know it's so bad a fellow's got to go someplace so he can mix with people that know what's a proper thing to do. Refining influences and like that. Proper. Refining. Son, son, are you going to get demoralized? If you want what the French folks call the grand manor, if you're going to be a tip-top, a number one, genuine grand senior, or however they pronounce it, why, all right. Go to it. That's one way of playing a big game. But a win comes down to a short bit. Fresh water, sowing circle, like Plano College, where an imitation scholar teaches you imitation translations of useless classics and amble-footed girls teach you imitation party manners that make you just as plum ridiculous in a real salon as they would in a lumber-rank camp. Why, oh, say, I've got it. Girls, eh? What girl have you been falling in love with to get this play-to-idea from, eh? Uh, I ain't in love, Bone. No, I don't know who pine you are. To your age you've got about as much chance of being in love as you have of being a grandfather. But somehow I seem to have a little old suspicion that you think you're in love. But it's none of my business, and I go and ask questions about it. He padded Carl on the shoulder, moving his arm with difficulty in their small dark space. Son, I've learned this in my life, and I've done quite some hiking at that, even if I didn't have the book-learning and the get-up-and-get to make anything out of my experience. It's a thing I ain't big enough to follow up, but I know it's there. Life is just a little old checker game played by the alfalfa contingent at the country store, unless you've got an ambition that's too big to ever quite lasso it. You want to know that there's something ahead that's bigger and more beautiful than anything you've ever seen and never stopped till, well, till you can't follow the road anymore, and anything or anybody that doesn't pack any surprises. Get that? Surprises. For you is dead. And you want to swallow it like a snake does its skin. You want to keep on remembering that Chicago's beyond Girolaman, and Paris beyond Chicago, beyond Paris. Well, maybe there's some big peak in the Himalayas. For hours they talk, bone desperately striving to make his dreams articulate to Carl and to himself. They ate fresh fried on the powder can stove with half warm coffee. They walked a few steps outside the shack in the ringing cold to stretch stiff legs. Carl saw a world of unuttered freedom and beauty, fourth shadowed in bone's cloudy speech. But he was melancholy, for he was going to give up his citizenship in Wonderland. For Gritty Collins. Gritty continued to enjoy ill health for another week. Every evening Carl walked past her house hoping that he might see her at a window. Longing to dare to call. Each night he pictured rescuing her from things, rescuing her from fire, from drowning, from evil men. He felt himself the more bound to her by the social recognition of having his name in the Girolaman Dynamite, the following Thursday. One of the pleasant affairs of the holiday season, among the younger set, was held last Friday evening when Gertrude Cowles entertained a number of her young friends at a party and her mother's handsome residence on Maple Hill. Among those present were Mademoiselle Benner and Rusk, who came in for a brief time to assist in the jollies of the evening. Ms. Benner, Carlson, Mussel Sloss, Wonderland, Ripca Smith, Lansing, Ann, Brick, and Messers, Roy Cowles, his classmate, Howard Griffin, who is spending his vacation here from Plato College, Carl Erickson, Joseph Jordan, Irving Lamb, Benjamin Rusk, Nells Thorson, Peter Storhoff, and William T. Uppam. After dancing and games which were thoroughly enjoyed by all present, and a social hour spent in discussing the events of the season in JHS, a more delicious repast was served and the party adjourned one, and all, voting that they had been royally entertained. The glory was the greater because at least seven names had been omitted from the list of guests. Such social recognition satisfied Carl for half an hour. Possibly it nerbed him finally to call on Gertie. Since for a week he had been dreading a chilly reception when he should call. He was immeasurably surprised when he did call and got what he expected. He had not expected the fates to be so treacherous as to treat him as he expected, after he had disarmed them by expecting it. When he rang the bell he was an immensely grown-up lawyer, though he couldn't get his worn navy blue tie to hang exactly right. He turned into a crestfallen youth as Mrs. Cowells opened the door and waited, waited for him to speak after a crisp. Well, what is it, Carl? Well, I just thought I'd come and see how Gertie is. Gertrude did so much better. Thank you. I presume she will return to school at the end of vacation. The home behind Mrs. Cowells seemed very stately, very long. I've heard a lot saying that I hoped she was better. You may tell them that she is better, Mrs. Cowell shivered. No one could possibly have looked more like a person closing a door without actually closing one. Lena, she shrieked, closed the kitchen door. There's a drop. She turned back to Carl. The shy lover vanished. An angry young man challenged. If Gertie's up, I think I'll come in a few minutes and see her. Why, uh, hesitated Mrs. Cowells. He merely walked in past her. His anger kept its own counsel for he could depend on Gertie's warm greeting. Lonely Gertie. He would bring her the cheer of the great open. The piano sounded in the library, and the voice of the one perfect girl mingled with the man's tenor on old Black Joe. Carl stalked into the library. Gertie was there, much corseted, well powdered. Wearing a blue, pollen, frenzy dotted with white, and being cultured in company with Dr. Doyle, the lively young dentist who had recently taken an office in the National Bank block. He was a graduate over the University of Minnesota dental department. He had oily black hair and smiled with gold-filled teeth, before one came to the real point of a joke. He sang in the Congregational Church choir, and played tennis, in a crimson and black blazer, the only one in Gerolemon. To Carl Dr. Doyle was dismayingly mature and smart. He horribly feared him as a rival. For the second time that evening he did not balk fate by fearing it. The dentist was a rival. After fluttering about the mature charms of Miss Diaz, the school drawing teacher, in taking a tentative buggy ride or two with the Miller's daughter, Dr. Doyle was bringing all the charm of his professional position and professional teeth and patent leather shoes to bear upon Gertie. And Gertie was interested, obviously. She was all of 18 tonight. She frowned slightly as she turned on the piano stool at Carl's entrance and mechanically. This is a pleasant surprise. Then, enthusiastically, isn't it too bad that Dr. Doyle was out of town or I would have invited him to my party, and he would have given us some of his lovely songs? Do try the second first, Doctor. The harmony is so lovely. Carl sat at the other end of the library from Gertie and the piano, while Mrs. Cowles entertained him. He obediently said, yes, norm, to the observation which she offered from the fullness of her lack of experience of life. He sat straight and still. Behind his fixed smile he was simultaneously longing to break into the musical fiesta and envying the dentist's ability to get married without having to wait to grow up and trying to follow what Mrs. Cowles was saying. She droned while crocheting with high-minded industry on a useless piano-scarp. Do you still go hunting, Carl? Yes, ma'am. Quite a little rabbit hunting. Oh, not very much. At the distant piano across the shining acres of floor, the mystical woman and a dentist had ceased singing and were examining a fresh sheet of music. The dentist coily poked his finger at her cofiture and she slapped the finger gurgling. I hope you don't neglect your schoolwork, though, Carl. Mrs. Cowles held the scarf nearer the lamp and squinted at it, deliberately and solemnly, through the eyeglasses that lauded at atop her severe nose. A head-ache set of moth-balls was in the dull air. She forbiddenly moved the shade of the lamp about a tenth of an inch. She removed some non-existent dust from the wrought-iron standard. Her gesture said that the lamp was decidedly more chic than the pink-shaded hanging lamps raised and lowered on squeaking chains, which characterized most droolamon living-rooms. She glanced at the red lampkin over the nearest window. The moth-ball smell grew more stupefying. Carl felt stuffy in the top of his nose as he mumbled, oh, I worked pretty hard at chemistry, but gee, I can't see much to all this Latin. When you're a little older, Carl, you'll learn that things that you like now aren't necessarily the things that are good for you. I used to say to Gertrude, of course, she is older than you, but she hasn't been a young lady for so very long, even yet, and I used to say to her, Gertrude, you will do exactly what I tell you to do, and not what you want to do, and we shall make no more words about it. And I think she sees now that her mother was right about some things. Dr. Doyle said to me, and of course, you know, Carl, that he's a very fine scholar. Our pastor told me that the doctor reads French better than he does, and the doctors told me some things about modern French authors that I didn't know, and I used to read French almost as well as English when I was a girl. My teachers all told me, and he says that he thinks that Gertrude has a very fine mind, and he was so glad that she hasn't been taken in by all this hysterical, wicked way girls have today, of thinking they know more than their mothers. Yes, she is, Gertie is. I think she's got a very fine mind, Carl commented. From the other end of the room, Gertie could be overheard confiding to the dentist in tones of hush and delicious adult scandal. They say that when she was in St. Paul's shee. So Mrs. Cowles serenely sniffed on, while the bridge of Carl's nose felt broader and broader, stretching wider and wider, as that stuffy feeling increased and the intensive heat stung his eyelids. You see, you mustn't think because you'd rather play around with the boys than study Latin, Carl, that it's the fault of your Latin teacher. She nodded to him with a condescending smile that was infinitely insulting. He knew it and resented it, but he did not resent it actively, or he was busy marbling. How the dickens is it I never heard Doc Doyle was stuck on Gertie. Everybody thought he was going to Brenda. Dang him, anyway. The way he snickers you'd think she was his best girl. Mrs. Cowles was lawfully pursuing her pillared way. Latin was known to be the best study for developing the mind a long, long time. And her clicking crochet needles impishly echoed. A long, long time. And the odor of the mothballs got down into Carl's throat while in the golden Olympian atmosphere at the other end of the room Gertie Cowles pretended to slap the dentist hand with a series of tittering taps. A long, long time, before either you or I were born, Carl, and we can't very well set ourselves up to be wiser than the wisest men that ever lived, now can we? Again the patronizing smile. That went scarcely. Carl resolved. There's got to stop. I've got to do something. He felt her monologue as a blank steel wall, which he could not pierce, allowed. Yes, that's so, I guess. Say, that's a fine dress Gertie's got on tonight. Ain't it? Say, I've been learned to play in crock and only at Ben Rusks. You got a board, haven't you? Would you like to play? Does the doctor play? Indeed. I haven't the slightest idea, but I have very little doubt that he does. He plays tennis so beautifully. He is going to teach Gertrude in the spring. She stopped and again held the scarf up to the light. I am so glad that my girly, that was so naughty, once and ran away with you. I don't think I shall ever get over the awful fright I had that night. I am so glad that now she is growing up. Clever people like Dr. Doyle appreciate her so much, so very much. She dropped her crochet to her lamp and stared squarely at Carl. Her warning that he would do exceedingly well to go home was more than plain. He stared back. Agitated, but not surrendering. Deliberately, almost swabbly, with ten years of experience added to the sixteen years that he had brought into the room, he said. I'll see if they like to play. He sauntered to the other in the room, abashed before the mystic woman and ventured. I saw a ray to-day. I've got to be going pretty quick, but I was wondering if you two like to play some Chronicle? Gertie said slowly, I'd like to, Carl, but unless you'd like to play Doctor? Well, of course, it's common little default to play Ms. Cowles, but I was just hoping to have the pleasure of hearing you make some more of your delectable music, about the dentist, and Gertie Boudbang and their smiles joined in a glittery bridge of social aplomb. Oh, yes, Carl, that just do, but you hadn't ought to play too much if you haven't been well. Oh, Carl, shriek Gertie, ought not to, not hadn't ought to. Aught not to, repeated Ms. Cowles icely, while the dentist waved his hand in an amused manner and contributed, ought not to say, hadn't ought to, as my preceptor used to tell me. I'd like to hear you sing Longfellow's Psalm of Life, Ms. Cowles. Don't you think Longfellow's a bum poet, growl, Carl? Bone Stillman says Longfellow's a grind organ of poetry. Like this. Life is real, life is earnest, tongue-de-diddly-duddly-dumb. Carl, ordered Ms. Cowles, you will please to never mention that Stillman person in my house. Oh, Carl, rebuke Gertie, she rose from the piano stool, her essence of virginal femininity, its pure and cloistered and white hemisold order, bespelled Carl to fainting timidity. And while he was thus defenseless the dentist's thrust, why they tell me Stillman doesn't even believe the Bible. Carl was not to retrieve his credit with Gertie, but he couldn't betray Bone Stillman, hastily. Yes, maybe, that way. Oh, say, doctor, Pete Jordan was telling me, liar, that you were one of the best tennis players at the U. Gertie sat down again. The dentist coily fluffed his hair and appreciated. Oh, no, I wouldn't say that. Carl had won. Instantly they three became a country club of urban aristocrats, who laughed at the poor rustics of Jordan for knowing nothing of golf and polo. Carl was winning their tolerance. Though not their close attention, by relating certain interesting facts from the inside page pages of the local paper as to how far the tennis racket sold in one year would extend if laid end to end, when he saw Gertie and her mother glance at the hall. Gertie giggled. Mrs. Cowles frowned. He followed their glance. Clumping through the hall was his second cousin, Lena. The Cowles' hired girl. Lena nodded and said, Hello, Carl. Gertie and the dentist raised her eyebrows at each other. Carl talked for two minutes about something he did not know what, and took his leave. In the intensity of his effort to be respectively dignified, he stumbled over the hall hat rack. He heard Gertie yelp with laughter. I got to go to college, be worthy of her, he groaned all the way home. And I can't afford to go to the U of M. I'd like to be free like Bone says, but I've got to go to Plato.