THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
The Cabin was some two miles from school. During spring vacation,
Jerry, who had remained at North Bank, had come across it one day when
roaming the woods. You or I might not have thought it much of a find,
but it had pleased Jerry mightily. No one knew its history, but Jerry
had a theory to the effect that it had been put up some years before
as a hunting cabin, a theory borne out by such evidences as empty
shot-gun shells. He had found little inside; only a small cookstove of
the sheet-iron variety, a wall cupboard made of a box and such other
indications of previous occupancy as old newspapers and tin cans. But
Jerry had toiled lovingly while recess lasted, and after that in his
spare hours, and had made the old shack quite habitable. There was a
bed there now in one corner, a rustic contrivance piled with evergreen
boughs, a large table and a smaller one, a bench and several stools
and, in the way of adornment, many colored pictures tacked to the
walls. He had made, too, shutters for the empty windows and placed a
hasp and padlock on the door, and the Cabin had become something of an
institution at North Bank during the balance of the school year. On
Saturday nights Jerry had served suppers to parties of half a dozen,
and they were suppers to remember, as Joe had recently testified. Ham
and eggs and sweet potatoes, bread and coffee and pie had comprised the
menu, and Jerry had himself done the cooking over a wood fire in the
little decrepit stove. But, given a boy’s appetite following a two-mile
trek, such simple viands can taste surprisingly good, and the fame of
the Cabin had spread and Jerry had never had an open date while school
lasted. As a money-making proposition the Cabin had not proved a great
success, but Jerry had enjoyed it all; most of all the sinking of the
season’s scanty profits in a banquet to the school nine after its
defeat of its old rival, Cumbridge, in the last contest of the year.
Yesterday he had made a hurried trip out there, well laden with
provisions, and found, to his vast relief, that none had molested his
domicile; his, at least, by right of discovery and possession. And
to-day when he threw the door creakingly inward Tom and Joe found
everything just as they recalled it. Beside the stove a box was piled
high with wood, the banquet table, of maple saplings and box covers,
held the tin plates and cups in neat piles and the small table and the
cupboard displayed a heartening array of edibles. Save that the bed
needed replenishing with fresh evergreen boughs, the Cabin was ready
for its new season.
“Gee, it’s swell!” sighed Joe. “Makes a fellow hungry just to get
here! What have you got in the big bundle, Jerry?”
“Bread and a raisin pie and some coffee.”
“Raisin!” exclaimed Joe ecstatically. “Leave me at it, boy!”
Tom, who had subsided on a bench, viewed him disgustedly. “Always
thinking of your tummy,” he said. “Didn’t you have any dinner?”
“Sure, but that was three hours ago. Want me to start the fire, Jerry?”
“No, sir, not just yet. Let’s cut some pine boughs for the bed first.”
Joe groaned. “Got to work for my supper, eh? That’s always the way!”
Nevertheless, he toiled as diligently as either of the others. They had
to go some little distance to find evergreen trees, and, since Jerry
wanted only the smaller branches, it was more than half an hour later
when they got back to the Cabin, and Joe again broached the subject of
supper, and was again sat on. Tom declared that it was much too warm
to think of fires and cooking yet, and went outside again, after the
bed had been “made,” and settled down on a leafy bank in the shade
of the hut. Joe disconsolately joined him while Jerry made tentative
preparations for the evening meal. When Jerry sought them Tom was
peacefully asleep, his clasped hands under his head, and Joe was on the
borderland. The latter cocked one eye open at Jerry’s appearance and
waved a hand weakly.
“Exhausted from want of food,” he murmured.
Whereupon Tom awoke suddenly and, possibly wishing to convey the
impression that he had not slumbered, remarked brightly: “Nice and
quiet here, isn’t it?”
“It is now,” responded Joe, “since you’ve woke up and stopped snoring!”
“I don’t snore,” said Tom with dignity. “Ask Jerry. Besides, I wasn’t
really asleep; I――er――was just thinking.”
“You ought to close your mouth when you think. That will give other
folks a chance. Say, Jerry, that reminds me. Your friend Jordan asked
me yesterday if I thought you’d let him have the Cabin some evening.
Near as I could make out, he wants to bring some pals out here and have
a party: cook their own supper and so on. I told him he’d better talk
to you about it.”
Tom chuckled. “Jordan’s scared to ask Jerry. They aren’t friends. It
was Jordan, you remember, who tried to haze him last winter.”
“I ain’t holding it against him,” remarked Jerry. “Just the same, I
don’t want to let any one come out here and use the place like that. If
he says anything more about it, Joke, you tell him I said I ain’t doing
that way.”
“All right. I shan’t mind telling him a bit. I don’t like him.”
“Oh, he’s all right, I guess,” said Tom carelessly. “Just a bit stuck
on himself.”
“No, he isn’t. No fellow can be all right with a name like his.”
“What name’s he got?” asked Jerry.
“Purves, Purves Jordan.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Tom inquired.
“I don’t know, but something is. It don’t sound sensible. Sounds like a
disease or something!”
The others chuckled. “Isn’t he playing football?” asked Tom.
“Yes, and he isn’t so bad, either. He’s trying for half back. Of
course, as he and Hal room together and all that, he’s likely to get a
whack at it before the season’s over. Not that Hal is the sort to show
favoritism, but naturally if your chum can play at all you’re going to
push him a bit. Well, it’s nothing in my sad existence.”
“It would be if you were a half back instead of half a tackle,”
chuckled Tom.
“Where do you get that ‘half a tackle’ stuff?” demanded Joe indignantly.
“I’m a tackle and a half. And I don’t mind confiding to you, Thomas,
that yesterday I played left tackle all the time and left end about half
the time, for our friend Butterfield was in a trance all through the
first half. Honest, he acted like a dummy!”
“He was certainly mighty poor on punts,” said Tom. “I noticed that if
Duveen punted to one side of the field Butterfield was generally on the
other.”
“Sure! He let the opposing end run him out every time. If he did get
under the ball he always overran. Of course, I’m not saying that
Duveen’s punts were very good, for they weren’t, but just the same an
end that knew his business could have judged them a heap better than
Lon Butterfield did yesterday. Reckon I’ll stop knocking, though. Maybe
I’ll be in his shoes next Saturday.”
“Was Thorne peeved with the way you chaps played?” asked Tom.
“If he was he disguised the fact. After all, Tom, we didn’t do so badly
for a first game. Remember we haven’t many of the old men left this
fall, and we’d only had one week of practice. I reckon Bayside had been
working a fortnight.”
“Well, I don’t know much about the silly game,” said Tom, yawning. “But
I did think that inside the tackles our line did pretty well.”
“You turn over! Hickson and I were the life of the party. Joking aside,
though, did you notice the way Fat Norris stood up to that husky center
of theirs? Fat’s going to be a peach of a center, you mark my words!
Oh, on the whole, Tom, we’re going to be a pretty good team when we get
our bearings.”
“Yes, if you don’t act like you did last year and try to knife Thorne
all season and get licked for it!”
Joe nodded. “I know. That may happen, too. I wasn’t one of that bunch
last season, but I know there was a lot of feeling. If Hal Mansfield
will hit it off with the coach all right, though, I reckon the others
will. So far they’re as thick as thieves.”
“So far Mansfield’s had his say about everything, likely,” commented
Tom pessimistically. “Wait till he wants to do something one way and
Thorne wants to do it another.”
“Well, I don’t think Hal’s unreasonable,” said Joe judicially. “He must
know that he can’t have everything his own way.”
“How come?” asked Jerry, breaking the silence that followed. “You can’t
pick up a ball after it’s been thrown and run with it?”
“A forward pass, you mean? Why, it’s against the rules. You see――――”
“Jerry!” exclaimed Tom sternly. “You go in and start that fire! There
are some things not suited for the ears of youth and innocence!”
Jerry grinned and obeyed. Joe chuckled. “Take it from me, Tom,” he
said, “you can’t do it! Jerry’s got the football bug and he will be
playing before long! Better make up your mind to it.”
Tom frowned and then smiled. “Guess you’re right, Joke. He’s certainly
mighty interested in it. Well, of course, if he really wants to try
it――――”
“I hope he will,” said Joe earnestly. “Something sort of tells me
Jerry’s got it in him to play the old game pretty well. You see, Tom,
when Jerry starts out to do a thing he puts his whole mind on it, and
that’s a fine asset in football. If you’re going to amount to anything
at all you’ve got to _live_ football. You can’t just think about it
while you’re playing it; you’ve got to study it every minute and dream
of it at night. That’s why it takes such a hold on you.”
“Yes, and that’s why football chaps are always such nuts,” replied Tom
insultingly. “Come on and let’s give Jerry a hand.”
An hour later they sat down to a repast fit for a king: ham that
sizzled enticingly on the tin plates, eggs that were symphonies in
white and gold, sweet potatoes baked to a turn and coffee that, if a
trifle muddy because Joe wouldn’t wait for it to settle, couldn’t have
tasted better from a silver urn. And, of course, there was plenty of
bread, and, to top off the feast, a raisin pie that was a dream of
sweetness. It was still broad daylight when they finished, although the
shadows were long and a whippoorwill was tuning up for his evening’s
program. Joe took the bucket to the brook and filled it and, while they
waited for it to heat on the little stove, they sat outside and watched
the amber light fade to gray above the forest to the west and were
comfortably silent and inert. Later, they washed up the dishes, like
three tidy housewives, and then Jerry saw that the fire was safe to
leave and they passed out into the twilight, the host locking the door
and pocketing the key with the air of a landed proprietor. When they
emerged from the shadowed twilight of the woods and gained the highway
a little wispy crescent of a moon was riding in the eastern sky and
a gentle breeze blew toward them from the bay. In deference to Tom’s
plaintive urging, their homeward journey was made at a leisurely pace,
and they talked of many totally unrelated things, as boys will, and
settled, to their own satisfaction at least, a number of problems that
had puzzled greater minds than theirs. When the lights in the school
buildings twinkled into sight ahead it was well after eight o’clock,
and Joe assured the others that he could hear the “plaintive call of
the Striped Pajama.” To which Tom replied that if any one discovered
him awake half an hour from then he’d pay ’em real money!