When Westy departed from Temple Camp leaving Uncle Jeb alone in his
glory for the long winter, he was filled with thoughts of the far-off
springtime which loomed up beyond the long, cheerless, intervening
season of cold and waiting. He would have liked remaining in the
deserted camp all winter with old Uncle Jeb and helping him with the
winter “chorin’” with which the solitary old occupant always busied
himself.
He burst elatedly into his home in Bridgeboro, New Jersey, on the
evening before the day on which school opened, his duffel bag over his
back, his face wreathed in smiles. His mother and his sister Doris had
only that day returned from the mountains and their trunks cluttered the
living room. There was a riot of embracing incidental to this family
reunion. Ghostly sheets which had protected the upholstered furniture
during the season of Mr. Martin’s lonely occupancy were still in
evidence and the paintings on the wall were concealed behind these
uncompanionable hangings. One of the trunks stood open with part of its
contents pulled out and Westy sniffed the pleasing odor of apples, those
souvenirs of vacation time which nestle coyly in the corners of
homecoming trunks. The disused living room, bereft of all its familiar
bric-a-brac, had a musty odor.
Westy sat down on an unopened trunk and poured out his tidings of great
joy. “You’re a nice lot, you are, never writing me anything about my big
award. You didn’t say anything about it in your last letter, Mom; I
guess you were too busy playing tennis, Dorrie. I should worry. Some
work I’ve done this last week, _believe me_! I suppose you know I’m
going to Montana next summer with Uncle Jeb and I’m going to live in his
cabin in the Rocky Mountains and you can hear eagles screeching where
that cabin is; you can hear grizzlies, too. And I can choose a fellow to
go with me; that’s what I get for helping Uncle Jeb all summer. Have you
seen Mr. Temple, Dad? He can tell you all about it. Gee williger, I told
in letters and you didn’t even say anything about it. Didn’t you get the
letter I sent you up to Mountainvale, Dorrie? Talk about mountains! Why
Mountainvale is--it’s--it’s only----”
“I did and I think it’s perfectly glorious,” said Doris, aged nineteen.
“You know how it is, Wes, when you’re up in the country, you just never
write letters.”
“She has a new beau,” explained Mrs. Martin.
“Oh, what I know about you, Dorrie!” Westy teased in the overflow of his
joy. “I should worry about letters. Anyway, I won’t be here to kid you
next summer. I bet you’ll be glad of that. Did you can that Arnold
fellow?”
“You shouldn’t talk that way,” said Mrs. Martin in mild reproof. “Mr.
Captroop is a very nice young man and your father likes him. He’s in the
brokerage business in Wall Street and he’s doing very well indeed.”
“He’s a right sort of a young fellow,” said Mr. Martin, “steady and
sane.”
It was evident that these remarks of Mr. and Mrs. Martin were intended
rather for Doris than for Westy.
“It’s nice to think he’s not insane,” said Doris.
“What’s his name--Claptrap?” said Westy.
“You haven’t asked about your friend, Artie Van Arlen,” said Mr. Martin.
“He had a very narrow escape from death up at Temple Camp. And so did
you, from all I hear. You didn’t write us a great deal about that, Wes.”
“I didn’t want you to worry,” said Westy, a trifle embarrassed.
The fact was that Westy had not in his letters depicted the affair of
the rock in all its seriousness. Every opportunity for adventure that he
had ever had had been wrenched from his father after a struggle in which
Doris had boldly championed her brother and poor Mrs. Martin had been
his gentler ally.
Mr. Martin believed in people, even young people, being “steady and
sane” and he seemed forever haunted by the thought that scouting was
something in which boys broke their necks and that camps were places
where they contracted typhoid fever. You could not pry those ideas out
of Mr. Martin’s head with a crowbar. It was for this reason that poor
Westy always skimmed lightly over his adventures and related the doings
at Temple Camp with cautious reticence. But he might have known that the
news of Artie’s mishap would reach Bridgeboro before him.
“Well, my boy,” said Mr. Martin, sensing the cause of his son’s
reticence and speaking mildly in consideration of the boy’s homecoming,
“I think you should have told us the whole story.”
“I don’t see what Artie’s accident has to do with Wes’s going out to
Montana,” said Doris. “It wasn’t a case of telling the whole story at
all; they are two different stories.”
“Well, then, I don’t see why he didn’t tell both of them,” said Mr.
Martin. “The Van Arlen boy had a close call from death while in company
of this old man. From all I can gather Wes had a pretty narrow escape
too--helping this old man. And this is the very same old man that Mr.
Temple wants Wes to go off to the four corners of the earth with and
risk his neck. It’s very easy for Mr. John Temple to arrange for other
people’s sons’ fighting Indians and all such nonsense and breaking their
necks into the bargain. Mr. John Temple has no son of his own. Why, I
thought all this dime novel hocus-pocus was put on the shelf long ago.
Now here is Mr. John Temple filling boys’ minds with all such nonsense
and sending them off with some old fire-eater to the frontier of
nowhere. The man’s philanthropy has gone to his head. Here you are all
home again, not three hours in the house, and Wes talking about going to
some cabin or other out West next summer when he ought to be thinking
about school to-morrow morning. What boy is he going to take with him,
I’d like to know?”
“I made up my mind. It’s Artie,” said Westy timidly.
“Oh, I’m so glad,” said Doris; “he deserves it, for his heroism.”
“Well, that isn’t the way to reward him,” said Mr. Martin.
“You might give him a lollypop,” said Doris, winking at Westy.
“Well,” said Mrs. Martin, putting her arm about poor Westy and speaking
in her gentle way, “we’re not going to quarrel about next summer the
very first evening we’re all together and have so much to tell each
other; we’re just going to forget all about it, dearie.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” exploded Mr. Martin, speaking to Westy, but
_at_ his daughter. “If Archie Captroop had gone shooting buffaloes when
he was sixteen and got his head filled up with all this wild-west
business he wouldn’t be drawing forty dollars a week at Ketchem and
Skinners in Wall Street now. There was none of this falderal when he was
sixteen, and look at him now.”
“Picture him hunting buffaloes,” Doris exploded mirthfully.
“Do you mean I can’t go then?” said Westy.
“I mean you should settle down to school now,” said his father not
unkindly, “and forget everything else.”
Mr. Martin was not as good a scout as his son. Westy was steeled then
and there to hear the worst. But Mr. Martin had not the courage to tell
him the worst. He would hem and haw and bluster all winter. But he had
no intention of letting Westy go. He would talk about boys breaking
their necks until the household would be weary of hearing him. By such
talk he would take all the pleasure of going from Westy. Westy’s hope
and spirit would be broken instead of his neck. That was the way Mr.
Martin worked.