best handkerchiefs. You and Hen _et al._ lingered. Eventually the tubs
were left unguarded. The moment seemed propitious for new diversion.
“Let’s see who can drink the most!” proposed Hen.
The idea was brilliant. To hear was to act.
It was plunge in your cup and gulp; and plunge it in and gulp; and fail
not to throw the residue in your neighbor’s face. Fast and furious waxed
the play, with Snoopie appearing to be sure winner.
“Aw, you ain’t drinkin’ it all! That ain’t fair!” you accused, and the
other boys joined in.
“Shut up! I am, too!” replied Snoopie, angrily; and proceeded with his
count: “Fourteen.”
Distanced, his competitors paused, and jealously, but half admiringly,
watched.
“Bo-oys! Bo-oys!”
The gentle soprano voice with the reproachful, shocked inflection made
you drop tin cups, the batch of you, and hastily look.
’Twas the minister’s wife. In power she stood above the superintendent,
even, and only slightly below the minister himself.
“Why, why! You mustn’t do that!” she objected, bearing down.
Mustn’t you? Well, all right; there was lots else to do, and, soaked
without and within, reeking of lemonade, you withdrew to do it.
“Gee—I drunk fifteen!” boasted Snoopie, patting his stomach.
He proved to be high man. Yourself had to your score only the modest
aggregate of ten.
Behind, at the scene of the late contest, arose sounds of lamentation
and dismay over the state of the tubs.
Stately, mute, impenetrable, with baffling rag-carpet covering their
tops, in the shade stand the two ice-cream freezers, and on all sides of
them the feet of you and your cronies, and of the little girls as well,
have well-nigh worn bare the woodland sod. But now, torn away by less
exalted emotions, you and Hen revolve around Mrs. Schmidt’s tablecloth
spread on the ground and weighted down with dishes.
Here is to be your station at dinner. Other cloths there are, spread
about, but Hen recommends his mother’s. There will be a family feeling,
and less chance of neglect.
Drag slower and slower the minutes. Hen goes foraging, and returns
gleefully with a cooky apiece. The delicious smell of sliced tongue and
ham and boiling coffee permeates the air.
“Henry, if you and John don’t keep out from under foot, I’ll take you
right straight home!” threatens Mrs. Schmidt, exasperated.
Other women, too, lower at you.
“Yes, boys,” chimes in the superintendent; “run away and play, and don’t
bother the people getting dinner. When we’re ready we’ll call you.”
But, oh, dear, supposing something should be all eaten up before you got
there!
At last, at the very last—as the French emphatically express it, _à la
fin des fins_—your rebuffs are over. You are actually bidden to advance.
’Tis barely the wink of an eyelash, but ’tis enough; and before a word
is spoken you are there, the two of you, sitting elbow to elbow, on your
calves, against the cloth: greedy-eyed, watery-mouthed, faint-stomached.
From right and left come trooping young and old, none of them, save one
or two couples from the Bible-class, trooping from very far. They settle
like pigeons fluttering down to corn. About each cloth a circle is
formed. Nobody is homeless. And isn’t it time to start in? Alas! not
yet.
From his place (“Mr. Jones, _do_ sit down! You look tired to death. Sit
right here!” has been the imploration, and he has yielded) the
superintendent bobs up and loudly claps his hands, and says: “Sh!”
“Sh!” assist sundry whispers, as warning to you and your mates.
It is the blessing, for, as Mr. Jones subsides, the minister rises.
He prays long and fervently. Out of the corners of your eyes you
continue to scan sandwich, and cake, and jelly, and pickles, while your
nose wriggles like the nose of an inquiring rabbit. You wonder why the
minister cannot quit; but, ignoring every good stopping-point, he
proceeds on and on. You hear Hen groan with pent-up disgust. You slyly
groan back.
“Amen.”
It has come! Mrs. Schmidt’s glance flashes rebuke in your direction, but
neither you nor Hen cares. High swells an instant chorus of talk and
rattling staccato of dishes. Hither and thither flit busy servers; and,
behind the backs of the circle, down your way is progressing in solemn
state a huge tray of sandwiches.
You watch it eagerly. It brushes your shoulder. You and Hen grab
together. They are bun sandwiches, with cold boiled ham between. Your
mouth opens against yours, and your teeth meet through it.
“Yum, yum!” you mumble ecstatically to Hen.
“Yum, yum!” agrees Hen.
Come other sandwiches—tongue and beef and potted ham; come cold fried
chicken and pressed veal loaf; come jelly—several kinds—and pickles,
sweet and sour. Sometimes you hesitate.
“I will if you will,” dares Hen; therefore you generally do.
Comes coffee, and more lemonade; comes pie—apple, lemon, blueberry,
custard; comes cake—chocolate, lemon-layer, jelly-layer, plain, frosted,
cocoanut, spice, angel-food.
“Um! Um!” revels Hen at intervals.
“Um! Um!” you respond, in perfect sympathy.
Comes ice cream in “heaping” saucers!
Come cookies and sweet crackers, ginger-bread, cream-puffs, kisses and
oranges.
You both have been obliged to kneel—expanding, as it were, from your
sitting posture. And now the feast is done. Vainly you view the débris;
you have accomplished marvels, but you can do no more. You sigh, and,
sucking an orange, reluctantly you stand. You waddle off, feeling fat
and stuffy, to convene with the other boys, and compare notes.
“Aw, you ought to been at _our_ table!” claims Billy Lunt. “We had
chocolate cake with chocolate an inch thick—didn’t we, Buck?”
“Buck” promptly assents.
“So’d we! So’d we!” retorts Hen. “An’ we had jelly-cake, an’—”
“So’d we!” inform rivals, bound to uphold the honors of their boards.
“An’ lemon pie—”
“An’ custard, an’—”
“An’ pickled peaches—”
“Golly! I’m ’bout busted!” chuckles Billy, complacently.
Standing companionably by, Snoopie harkens and grins, but says little.
Only from a bulging pocket he extracts another orange and drills into
it. One may be certain that _he_, at least, has missed nothing.
Prudence might dictate a period of quiescence as a tribute to digestion.
But the day is short, and a half a bun skimming into your midst—that is,
into the midst of the group, not into your own midst, where it would
have hard work to find lodgment—arouses you to retaliation. Back and
forth and across fly the remnants from the various tablecloths, and
applause greets every hit. Snoopie introduces a popular feature by
plastering against a tree-trunk a fragment of a custard pie. Forthwith
custard and lemon pie are at a premium, these being the kinds that
stick. Then, interrupting the pleasant pastime, charge upon your ranks
horrified witnesses, suddenly awakening to the crisis.
“Boys! Stop it! Stop it at once! The idea!”
Expostulating, they drive you all, shame-faced but sniggering, from the
premises. You leave the plot looking as though a caisson laden with
cartridges of lunch had exploded there!
The principal event of the day being over, your elders relax into a
state more or less lethargic. The women sit and crochet and chat. The
minister goes to sleep with a handkerchief on his face, and even some of
your juniors follow suit—members of the infant class seeking the pillow
of their mothers’ laps. The Bible-class wanders off in couples. The
superintendent, only, is kept active by demands of “Swing me, Mr. Jones;
please swing me!” from the little girls.
Naturally the inspiration for you and yours is to follow the Bible-class
couples and spy upon them; when they think themselves nicely secluded
and comfortably ensconced, to steal upon them; and in the midst of their
innocent confidences to hoot upon them (with such delicate insinuations
as “Aw, Mr. Johnson’s Miss Saxby’s beau!”—or “Say, Miss Lossing, Mr.
Pugsley wants to kiss you!”)—and then to flee, riotously giggling.
It is four o’clock. Prolonged shouts from the throats of the
superintendent and assistants echo through the woods, calling together
the stragglers. The ’buses have arrived. Home-going must be accomplished
early, on account of the “little ones.”
All right. If the day is done, another day is coming. You rush down, and
you and Hen again secure the end seats. The ’bus fills, its load, on the
whole, not so sprightly, nor so enthusiastic, nor so clean as in the
morning.
Snoopie hangs on at the rear.
The driver says “Gid-dap!” Somebody replies with “Whoa!” “Whoa-oa!”
supplement a score of voices. To frantic encouragement descends the
hill, scurrying as if from Indians or bears, a belated, last Bible-class
couple.
“Gid-dap!” once more urges the driver.
The ’bus moves. You yawn. Hen yawns. You are tired and sticky. Hen,
also, is tired and sticky.
“Lookee!” bids Snoopie.
He throws away his dead snake; his pockets are empty again.
Yet in the depth of the aftermath you brighten. Your thoughts travel
ahead. The Presbyterians are to have _their_ picnic next week!
“You goin’?” asks Hen.
“You bet!” you reply confidently.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE OLD MUZZLE-LOADER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE OLD MUZZLE-LOADER
THE old muzzle-loader was so much the taller that when you stood opposed
to it, only by a series of hitches, a few inches at a time, could you
extract the ramrod from the slot. In your aiming exercises you leaned so
far backward that you formed almost a half circle. The stock was
scarred, the hammer was loose, the barrel was rusted and the sight awry,
but it was a fine gun; yes, a fine gun, fit for a boy to worship.
And when, with father coaching you, its barrel firmly supported in the
crotch of the apple tree and its butt pressed against your throbbing
chest, you shut your eyes and jerked the trigger, as you picked yourself
up while invidious spectators gamboled and cheered, with what gusto did
you assert that “it didn’t hurt a bit,” and avowed that you wanted to do
it again.
How it happened that here you were, headed for the open country with the
old muzzle-loader hoisted athwart your shoulder, probably no one alive
remembers, but you—and Hen Schmidt, your aider and abettor as accessory
after the fact. Dangling against your right knee was the powder flask,
dangling against your left knee was the shot flask, and the two banged
and rattled as you walked. In one trousers pocket were wads, in the
other caps.
“Lemme carry it?” pleaded Hen.
You refused.
“Naw, sir!” you rebuked. “You don’t know how.”
“Just to that big tree,” persisted Hen.
You relented; and under your watchful eye Hen proudly bore the ennobling
piece to the tree adown the dusty roadside. Exactly at the tree you
claimed possession again.
To-day, looking back, can you not see yourself, a sturdy little figure
trudging valorously onward, with the two flasks swaying and jiggling and
the old gun cutting like sin into your uncomplaining flesh, and with
heart so buoyed by the glorious present that it refused to think on the
dubious future; and Hen, scarcely less elate, solicitous to relieve you
of your burden, keeping pace, step for step?
The birds, flitting over or hopping upon either hand along your route,
witnessed and gaily laughed. Well might they laugh, because with
impunity. Your death-dealing weapon was not loaded; not yet. But
presently you halt and in an angle of the rail fence you load, do the
two of you, yourself operating, while Hen, keenly critical, at each
movement declaims and suggests.
“Aw, gee! That ain’t enough powder!” scoffs Hen. “What you ’fraid of? If
it was mine, you bet I’d put in twice as much!”
“I guess I know,” you retort. “Guess I’ve seen my father load more times
’n you ever have! What you want to do, bust it?”
The powder is dumped into the muzzle, the gun being propped slantwise so
that you may work conveniently. The invincible grains fall in a tinkling
shower through the black cylinder. You stuff in a wad.
“Here—” says Hen. “Lemme do it.”
You ram it down, and Hen rams it down. In goes the shot, No. 4, nice and
large. You insert the final wad. You ram, and Hen rams.
“Look out!” you warn Hen, who edges so close as to joggle you; and with
breathless care you press upon the nipple a cap, the way you have seen
your father do, and you lower the protecting hammer over it, also the
way you have seen your father do. Assisted by Hen you restore the ramrod
to its groove. You straighten up. You are ready. You shoulder arms.
You and Hen climb the fence and scale the hill, upon whose slope begins
your favorite patch of timber. Making sport of your backs, along the
fence that you have just quitted scampers a chipmunk, but you do not
know. Your thoughts are ahead.
The consciousness that your gun is charged imbues you with a strange
thrill of importance. You are deadly. Come what may, lion, bear,
wildcat, squirrel, rabbit, eagle, owl, partridge, you are prepared, so
let them one and all beware.
You and Hen talk in guarded tones, whilst your four eyes rove hither and
thither, greedy to sight prey. But under-foot, stealthy though you fancy
your advance, rustle the dried leaves, spreading afar the news of your
passage; and hushed though you consider your voices, they penetrate into
sharp ears attuned to catch the slightest alien sound. Eyes, sharper
than yours, widen and wait.
You would give the world to see a rabbit or a squirrel. You have just as
much chance of seeing a rabbit or a squirrel as you have of seeing a
hippopotamus. However, it doesn’t matter.
Hist! On before something twitters.
“There’s a bird!”
“Sh, can’t you! I hear him!”
Cautiously you and Hen steal forward, tip-toeing over crackling leaf and
twig, your gaze riveted on the distance.
“I see him!” announces Hen, excitedly.
“Where?” you whisper.
“There—in that tree! Now he’s runnin’ ’round the trunk! He’s a
woodpecker.” (Naturalists might cavil and term him a “warbler,” but just
the same he acts like a woodpecker!) “Can’t you see him?”
Alas, you can’t—at least, you don’t. Hen cannot abide such stupidity.
Besides, the thing is liable to make off.
“Ain’t you got any eyes? Gee whizz! Gimme the gun. I can pop him from
here.”
Give Hen the gun? Well, hardly! You clutch it the tighter, and strain
and peer. Now you glimpse him—a tiny chap in a pepper-and-salt suit,
busily engaged in pecking at the bark beneath his toes.
“I see him!” you mutter exultantly.
You stoop; Hen stoops. You glide up, making service of covert afforded
by tree and bush, and your flasks catch, and sometimes you step on them.
Hen, too, glides, just behind, imitating your every movement.
The hour is portentous, but the dare-devil bird braves it and maintains
his post at table. Possibly, deceived by your woodcraft (as you fondly
suppose), he is oblivious to the fact that yard by yard two boys are
drawing closer and closer. You are breathing hard, and to your rear
pants Hen, for the advance has been onerous.
“G’wan and shoot! He’ll fly away,” urges Hen, hoarsely.
Yes, you are near enough. No. 4 shot at fifteen yards ought to do the
business for that chap. You slowly settle upon your knees, behind the
tree trunk which is your shelter, and cock your piece. At the click the
“woodpecker” for an instant ceases operations, and flirts his tail
inquisitively.
“Darn it—you’ve scared him!” you accuse Hen, who shifts and squirms at
your back, in attempts to secure a better view. Hen holds himself in
suspense, apparently well-nigh suffocating with the effort. You bring
your piece to bear, but it is so long and awkward that you are being
worsted in the struggle, when Hen eagerly proposes:
“Lay it on my shoulder!”
You recede a little, and Hen wriggles forward, the transfer being
accomplished with mingled fear and haste.
Hen’s shoulder is rather low for an ideal rest, but you may not
complain. You sink as far as possible, and aim. The muzzle projects
beyond the tree trunk, and wavers in space. Beyond the space is your
suspicious woodpecker, a creature of the most unexpected and eccentric
movements imaginable. He never stays “put.” Just as the sight approaches
him, he changes position; and just as he approaches the sight, it
changes. A conjunction of the two seems hopeless.
“Why don’t you shoot? What’s the matter with you?” gasps Hen.
You shut both eyes. Boom!
Backward you keel, head down, heels up, and the gun, jumping from Hen’s
shoulder, rasps along the tree to the ground.
“Did I hit him? Where’d he go?” you cry frantically, staggering to your
feet.
Hen is bounding toward the tree whereon the impudent bird had been
foraging. You wonder that the tree yet remains, but there it is, to all
appearances as hale as ever.
“Did I hit him?” you repeat, seizing the gun and following.
“I dunno. But he flew off kind of funny,” reports Hen.
“Find any blood? I bet I wounded him like everything, anyhow!” you
assert. The woodpecker must have bled internally, for, search as you two
might, no tell-tale splashes of gore could be discovered. There were
even no feathers. You scanned the tree, but upon close inspection it
still persisted in acknowledging no damage, despite the frightful leaden
deluge to which you had subjected it.
“Aw, you missed him! Aw, gee!” suddenly bemoans Hen, overcome by
disappointment.
“Didn’t neither. He flew just when I shot, and I couldn’t stop!” you
reply, defensively—unmindful of the discrepancy evident between your
denial and your excuse.
“If you’d let me shoot I’d have got him,” declares Hen, unplacated.
You proceed to load. Hen moodily holds aloof from helping you ram, and
you regain in some measure your lost caste only when you offer him the
privilege of the ammunition flasks. These he dons, and by this little
touch of diplomacy you smooth over his ill humor.
Together you and he scout along the crispy ridge, ever on the qui vive
for another mark, beast or bird. Crows scold. Ah, if you could but bag a
crow! But they always flap off too soon. Bluejays jeer. You would stop
that mighty quick if they would give you a chance. But they don’t. Even
woodpeckers fight shy of that inimical, albeit not unerring, gun.
The gun aforesaid is now growing so heavy that the fact cannot be
ignored. You balance it on one portion of your anatomy, and on another;
yet the more it weighs and the sharper wax its angles, and you can
secure no lasting ease.
“I’ll carry it,” volunteers Hen, prompt to take advantage of your
significant maneuvers.
“Uh-uh,” you decline stanchly. You compromise by suggesting, in a
moment, with off-hand bluffness: “Say, let’s sit down a while. There’s
nothin’ up here to shoot.”
“Naw,” responds Hen, “I’ll tell you—let’s shoot woodchucks!”
The idea appeals. After “shooting” woodpeckers, “shooting” woodchucks
ought to prove a pleasing diversion.
With the gun as angular as ever, but with your hunting instincts piqued
anew, you followed while Hen led to the nearest woodchuck hole: that
burrow under the stump on the side of the hill, across from Squire
Lucas’s pasture; a matchless lair for an old ’chuck such as was the
occupant, whence he could sally forth and wallow in the squire’s clover
to his heart’s and stomach’s content.
Many a covetous glance had the boys of town and country cast toward this
burrow; many a fruitless attack had silly dogs made upon its
unresponsive portals; from time to time fresh earth about the entrance
popularly indicated that the ’chuck was enlarging and remodeling his
apartments, and it was commonly believed that he had tunneled clear
through the hill: laughing to scorn the foes that vainly compassed him
about, he lived and fattened, and spoiled as much clover as he could.
With bated breath and gingerly tread, you and Hen sneaked to ambush
under cover of the zigzag rail fence that diagonally skirted the foot of
the hill, before the woodchuck’s dwelling. Ah, how many other boys had
lurked there, for hope springs eternal.
You trained your grim weapon upon the region of the hole. You allowed
Hen to have a squint adown the trusty, and rusty, barrel.
“Gee! I bet that’ll pepper him!” commended Hen; and laying aside his
flasks he equipped himself with a rock in each hand, for aiding in the
proposed job.
Very peaceful and cozy was it there, against the fence, with Indian
Summer (in retrospect, those falls were all Indian Summer) around you,
the warm sun shining upon you, and the warm grass and pungent weeds an
elastic cushion underneath. It was an agreeable change, to surrender
your gun to the fence, and relax.
“Sh!” whispered Hen, angrily, when you sought to straighten a leg.
“I don’t believe he’s comin’ out,” you whispered back.
“Yes, he will,” averred Hen.
“Maybe he doesn’t stay there any more,” you hazarded anxiously.
“Course he does!”
“Maybe he’s gone to sleep for the winter, though.”
“Sh! Shut up! He won’t come out as long as you’re talkin’!”
You subsided, and with cheekbone glued to the gunstock, and eyes
ferociously glaring along the barrel, at the hole beyond, you
expectantly bided the first rash movement on the part of Mr. ’Chuck.
In the meantime, what of that woodchuck? Lured afield by the pleasant
weather, from his predatory tour he was leisurely returning—halting now
to nuzzle amidst the stubble, now to scratch—for a mid-day nap within
his subterrene retreat. He waddled into a dried ditch and out again,
slipped through his private wicket in a boundary hedge, and gradually
working up the slope was approaching his home, on the side opposite to
your rail fence, when Hen, suddenly espying him, was astounded into the
yelp: “There he is! Shoot! Shoot!”
Startled into immobility, the woodchuck stared about with quivering
whiskers and bulging eyes. Boys!
As in a dream, you vaguely saw a squat, furry shape, a cleft, vibrant
nose and two broad, yellow teeth; and with the remembrance that your gun
was pointing in the general direction of this combination, you
desperately tugged at the trigger. Your sole thought was to “shoot,
shoot,” the quicker the better. The report was the thing.
But no report came. The trigger would not budge.
“Darn it! You old fool, you! You ain’t got it cocked!” shrieked Hen,
grabbing at your weapon.
With a whistle of decision the woodchuck bolted for sanctuary. He
clawed, he slid, he sprawled, all at once. Hen frenziedly delivered both
rocks. The ’chuck, at the mouth of his burrow, in a second more would
have swung on the pivot of his four short, stout little legs and have
whisked in like a brindled streak, when, having succeeded in cocking
your piece, you blindly let go—bang!
The butt slammed you under the chin, knocking your teeth together upon
your lower lip. You noted it not.
“We got him! We got him!”
Thus Hen, tumbling over the rail fence, was wildly bellowing—with a
pardonable extension of the subject pronoun.
“Hurrah!”
You were on your feet in a twinkling, and were dashing in the wake of
Hen, up the incline, midway of which, just below the stump, on his side
lay the woodchuck, limp and still.
Hen circumspectly reached and stirred him with the tip of a toe; then,
emboldened into the attitude of Victor, recklessly kicked him.
“He’s dead!”
“Je-rusalem! I should say he was!” you agreed, poking the inert mass.
“Wasn’t that a dandy shot, though?”
“You bet!” praised Hen.
And so it was—considering the attendant circumstances.
Gloatingly you and Hen examined your prize, inch by inch, investigating
him from his two front teeth to his scraggly tail. Most of all did you
gloat upon the blood, striking proof of your valor, and ere you had
finished you well-nigh could have drawn a diagram of the shot holes.
’Twas established that the aim had been perfect (yourself demonstrating
to Hen precisely what had been your course of action), that the gun had
shot tremendously, and that the woodchuck was a very prodigy of size and
strength.
Poor ’chuck! He had made his last foray, long enough had he dared to
live, and now, despite his cunning, he had fallen to a boy who shut both
eyes before firing.
Homeward, is it? Certainly! Nothing is left to be gained on the trail.
With the stride of conquerors, you and Hen march through the village—you
with gun and ammunition flasks, Hen with the woodchuck, which he has
appropriated, dangling by the tail.
“Well, well! Where did you get that fellow?” query the men.
“Oh, John and me shot him,” explains Hen.
“Crickety, but ain’t he a big one! How’d you get him?” query the boys.