Well, when mother heard that Herb and Fan had had another fight she was
so hurt by it she just set down and cried and said, “Fan! Fan! I don't
know what is going to become of you with that temper of yours, because
Herbert Schwartz is one of the finest young men in the whole world and
if you keep on you 'll delineate his affections away from you entirely
forever,” or something like that.
And it did look like it. Professor Martin's leg didn't get any better
and he had to go over to the hospital at Chicago to have it broke
again and fixed and Herb was made a regular professor at our school and
principal of it, and every day he used to come into our room and talk
awhile with Miss Carter, and walk home with her. I tell you it looked
mighty bad for Fan, and I didn't blame Herb, because Miss Carter was
nice. She was nice for a teacher, I mean, and sweet and pretty and
everything.
Well, I had the engagement ring. I didn't know whether it was mine or
whose it was, because Fan had thrown it away and Herb hadn't bothered to
pick it up. So it looked as if it was mine, because finders is keepers.
So I asked Swatty. So Swatty wanted to look at the ring and when he saw
it had a diamond in it he said it was my ring, because Herb and Fan had
thrown it away, but that half of it was his, because Herb was as much
Swatty's brother as Fan was my sister, and if they had of had the fight
on Herb's porch instead of Fan's porch, it would of been Swatty that
found the ring. So we had it in pardnership and said we would keep it,
because if Herb got engaged again to Fan or to Miss Carter or anybody we
could trade it to him for his two-seat tricycle, maybe.
Bony was sitting there all the time, listening to us, so all at once he
said:
“Ain't any of the ring going to be mine?”
The reason he said it was because most of the things we have we have
sort of in cahoots, the three of us.
“Garsh, no, Bony,” Swatty said. “We'd like to have you part own it but
you ain't got no excuse to. Herb ain't your brother, and Fan ain't your
sister, like they are mine and Georgie's, are they? You ain't related to
the ring no way. We wish he was, don't we, Georgie? but he ain't.”
Well, Bony was sort of mad at it, but it wasn't our fault. So then
Swatty said to me:
“I ain't going to play with your sister any more.”
“Why ain't you?” I asked him.
“Because I ain't,” he said. “If my brother Herb ain't good enough for
your sister Fan, then I ain't good enough to play with Lucy. And I
won't.” Well, I knew what he meant, even if he didn't say it out in
words. He meant that he had been having Lucy for his secret girl, like
I wanted to have Mamie Little for mine, and now he wasn't going to have
her any more because Fan had been mean to Herb.
“Well, I don't blame you,” I said. “I wouldn't either.”
So none of us said anything for a while. Then all at once Bony said
something.
“Say!” he said.
“Say it yourself and see how you like it,” Swatty said.
“Why, say!” Bony said, getting red in the face and digging into the
grass with his toe; “if--if you don't want to play with her, can I play
with her?”
He meant with Lucy. He meant could he have Lucy for his girl if Swatty
didn't want her any more, only he didn't say it right out, of course.
So Swatty said he could. He said he didn't want her and Bony could have
her.
“Well, then--” Bony said. “Well, then, I'd ought to be part owner of the
ring.”
So we talked it over and me and Swatty thought that would be all right,
because if Bony wasn't a brother or sister of Herb or Fan he was going
to have Lucy for his girl and Lucy was my sister and Fan's. So we told
Bony he was third pardner in the ring.
I guess Bony felt pretty set up and proud to have a girl that Swatty had
had, when he had never had any girl before. Right away he began to get
mad when we said Lucy was his girl, and that's a good sign, because
that's the way fellows feel.
But girls don't feel that way when they Have fellows. Right away they
begin to wiggle their skirts when they walk, and want their mothers
to curl their hair every day, and put fresh hair-bows on them. So they
start right in saying how they hate the fellow that's their fellow; but
they take slate pencils and apples and things from him when he gives
them on the sly, and they begin writing notes to him in school, like
“Don't you think you 're smart with your new shoes on,” and things
like that. So he feels pretty good after all, and gives her apples when
nobody is looking, and pushes her around mean-like when anybody does
look.
But she don't mind being pushed around, because that's one way she knows
he's her fellow. So, when there is a party, she is the one he drops a
pillow before, and if she don't kiss him, all right for her! But mostly
she does. She lets on that she hates it, but she don't. She likes it.
Well, I guess one reason Swatty was glad to get rid of Lucy was because
Swatty didn't care for kissing games anyway, and it wasn't much fun for
him to have a girl, because nobody hardly dared yell at him:
“Swatty! Swatty! Swatty!
Lucy she is your girl!”
He was too good a fighter. And half the fun of having a girl is getting
mad because they yell it at you. And, anyway, Swatty was sort of rough
to have Lucy for his girl, and she didn't like to have him for a fellow
very much. As soon as school was out Swatty would begin clod fighting
with the Graveyard Gang, or make a bee-line for the baseball lot, or
get up a good fight. He never wanted to sort of walk on the edge of the
sidewalk when the girls were walking on the middle of it, and cut up
funny to make them look and giggle. It was boys he liked to push around,
and not girls.
One reason Lucy didn't care much to have him for her fellow was because
his father and mother were German, and none of the girls like a Dutchy
for a fellow, because lots of Dutchies worked in the sawmills and
couldn't talk good English. But Swatty's father didn't work in a
sawmill; he was a tailor. But he was a Dutchy just the same, and when
the fellows got mad at Swatty sometimes they would yell:
“Dutchy! Dutchy!
Stuffed with straw
Can't say nothing but
'Yaw! yaw! yaw!'”
Well, when I had time to think it over I thought it was funny that
Swatty had let Bony have a third partnership in the engagement ring as
easy as he had. And then one day I found out why it was. It shows how
slick Swatty was to keep a secret or anything.
The vacation before the time I'm telling about--which was almost
vacation time again--there was a new girl came to Riverbank. She lived
in a little house across Main Street that had a picket fence and a yard
that ran mostly down the gully toward Front Street, and the first I knew
about her was one day when I had to go down town on an errand and went
past her house.
I had on some new shoes, so I knew everybody would see them and be
thinking of them, and I felt pretty mean; and when I went by the little
house the girl was behind the picket fence, looking out. So I made a
face at her, because it was none of her business if I did have on new
shoes.
It was summer, of course, and hot; but the girl had on a woolen
dress--red and black checks--and it fitted her pretty tight all over,
and was too short and little, so that it was tight like skin, and her
wrists stuck out too far. She was barefoot, too, and that was funny,
because girls don't go barefoot. It was as funny to see her barefoot as
to see me with shoes on.
I was going to yell something at her, but I didn't, I only made a face
at her. But she didn't make one back at me. She just looked.
She wasn't like any girl in Riverbank that I ever saw. She was
brown--almost like an Indian--but she had reddish cheeks, and her hair
was as black as tar and cut short, like a boy's, only it was banged in
front, and her bangs were so long they came down to her eyes, and were
cut as straight as a string.
She stood behind the picket fence and just looked at me, and I didn't
like it. Her eyes were like big black marbles and her mouth like a
painted red. So I whistled and looked the other way and the first thing
I knew she was out of the gate and after me. I tried to run, but she
cornered me and took me by the hair and jerked me back and forth. I
thought she was going to jerk my head off. So I pulled loose and ran,
because no girl can jerk me around by the hair like that. So all she got
for her smarty business was just a handful of hair or two. And who cares
for a handful of hair?
Well, you bet I got even with her, all right! I never went past her
house alone after that.
So that's the way she was. She stayed in her yard, and when a boy came
along she would jump out and grab him by the hair, or slap him, and
chase him away from in front of her house. She was a tartar, all right.
She was like a spider that is always waiting and comes out and grabs
flies; only what she grabbed wasn't flies--it was boys. So we all got
afraid of her, and we didn't dast go past her house unless we were
two or three together. And then we generally went round some other way.
Except Swatty.
Because one day Swatty he went past her house, and she come out and was
going to pull his hair, like she did the rest of us; and when she came
at him he backed up against the fence, and when she reached out for his
hair he hit her hand away with one hand and slapped her on the face good
and plenty. He slapped her two or three times and dared her to touch
him. So she didn't say anything, and Swatty didn't say anything, and
they just stood there.
And pretty soon Swatty went on downtown. So she just stood there.
Well, me and Bony used to play with girls sometimes because they let us
be the husbands and fathers, and boss them around and whip the children.
So when we did Swatty used to come along. Mostly he would sit and
whittle until me and Bony got through, but sometimes he would be the
policeman to arrest the husbands when they got drunk, or a pirate, or an
Indian lurking to scalp the wives, or a 'rangatang to carry the children
off.
I guess the girls wished he wouldn't come, because a 'rangatang is such
an interruption to plain housekeeping, and pirates and policemen are
an awful nuisance to mothers who want to bring up a peaceful family
and don't want their husbands taken to jail just when the mud pies are
cooked and dinner is ready. But they couldn't help it, because if they
didn't let him me and Bony would go where Swatty went.
Well, one time when teacher kept Swatty in school to have the principal
lick him, she went out to get the principal and locked Swatty in the
room, and he climbed out of the window onto a maple tree branch and
got away. So the principal licked him the next day. Anyway, the trees
darkened the room all up, so they had the janitor cut down the two trees
and they fell down the bank back of the schoolhouse.
So that day the leaves were only beginning to wither, and the branches
of the trees made a bully place to play in. So Mamie Little and my
sister and me and Bony went right out there after dinner and played
house; and when Swatty had been licked, or whatever he had been kept in
for, he came there too. We made houses among the branches and
leaves, and were fathers and mothers; and Swatty had a lair and was a
'rangatang, and hung by his knees and swang from branch to branch.
It was pretty good fun, even if it was playing with girls, because it
was a jungle, and me and Bony hunted the wild 'rangatang between meals;
and we were playing along all right when I saw my sister standing and
looking. I guess you know how a girl stands and looks--the way a cow
does--when she don't like something. So I looked, and out in the street
was the girl in the red and black check woolen dress. She was just
standing and looking back at my sister. It made my sister mighty mad. I
guess girls can look the things boys generally holler at each other. So
my sister said:
“Bony, I don't want that girl to look at me!”
So Bony looked, and when he saw who was looking he said:
“Aw! let her look! Let her look, if she wants to. She ain't hurting
anybody!”
So then my sister got awful mad. She stamped her foot.
“I _won't_ let her look at me that way.”
So she started on a run for the girl. She didn't get quite up to her.
Before she got quite to her, the girl sort of flashed up to my sister.
That was about all I could see. The next I saw, she was standing just
where she had always been, and my sister was flopped down on the ground
with her arms over her head, yelling bloody murder. So I jumped out of
the tree and ran up to my sister. Her face was all scratched up. There
were four long scratches on each side of her face where the girl had
raked her with her claws. So Mamie Little came running too, and helped
my sister up.
“If I was a boy,” she said, “I wouldn't let anybody do that to my sister
unless I was a 'fraid-cat.”
“Aw! who's a 'fraid-cat?” I said. I wasn't no more 'fraid-cat than she
was, but I guess J knew that girl.
So Mamie Little took my sister by the arm. “Come on,” she said. “I guess
everybody around here is a 'fraid-cat. You and me will be mad at them
and stay mad for ever and ever!”
So I had to go. I wasn't going to hit the girl. I just thought I'd sort
of push her away--only maybe a little rough--until I pushed her
inside her gate, so I could show a smarty like Mamie Little who was a
'fraid-cat and who wasn't. I walked over to where the girl was, and
she waited for me. All I had time to see was the girl's eyes turning to
something like prickly black fire, and something plumped against me like
a bag of flour shot out of a sling. It was as if her body hit against
me everywhere at once. And then something grabbed my hair and yanked
me, and I felt scratches burning on my face, and, somehow, I was on the
ground, yelling and holding my arms above my head. The girl was standing
where she had always been. I heard Mamie Little and my sister yelling:
“Scratch-Cat! Scratch-Cat!”
Swatty came on the run. He was pretty mad, because him and me was chums,
and I was his cow-cousin and his double Dutch uncle, and he ran right
past me and up to the girl. He gave her a push with his hand, and it
sort of pushed her around; but she straightened up again and just looked
at him.
“You scratch-cat!” he said, as mean as he knew how. “Who are you
scratching around here, I'd like to know?”
I thought she'd jump on him and claw him, like she did me; but she
didn't.
“I ain't going to hurt you,” she said.
“You bet you ain't!” Swatty said. “'Cause why? 'Cause you darsent,
that's why!” Only he said, “'Cors why?” like he always does.
She didn't say she did dare, and she didn't say she didn't dare. She
said:
“Come over in my yard and play with me. Don't you play with them. I can
play good.”
So Swatty pushed her again, and she stepped back a step.
“Don't you play with girls!” she said. “You come and play with me.”
“Aw! you're a girl too,” Swatty said. “Go awrn home and play with
yourself.”
So he gave her another push. She looked as if she hadn't ever thought
that she was a girl before. She said:
“I can beat you running. I can beat you jumping. I can beat you climbing
trees. I can beat you skinning the cat. I can chin myself ten times more
than you can. I can stand on my head longer than you can.”
“Go awrn home!” Swatty said, and gave her another shove.
She stepped back again.
“Come on and play in my yard,” she said again. “I can throw you any hold
you want. I can fight you and lick you.”
“Becors you're a scratch-cat,” Swatty said, and pushed her again.
“I can lick you without scratching,” the girl said. “Well, then, do it!”
said Swatty. “Go on and do it, why don't you? I want to see you do it!”
So each time he said it he gave her a push.
“I won't!” she said. “I ain't going to fight you.”
“You darsent!”
“I ain't going to!”
“You don't dare!”
“I ain't going to!”
So every time Swatty said anything he shoved her again, and pretty soon
he had her pushed clear back against the fence of her yard, and he left
her there and came back. We went on playing. But every once in a while
we thought of her, and when we looked she was standing just where Swatty
had left her.
Well, we found out her name was Dell Brown, because my father went to
speak to her father about the way she scratched my sister. Her father's
name was Reverend Brown; but he had adopted her because her folks died,
and she was a sore trial, but no doubt willed by the Almighty. The
Reverend Brown was a sort of preacher, and had an old white horse and
drove around the country and preached wherever he thought they needed
preaching. Mrs. Brown was a sort of invalid and old, like Reverend Brown
was, and he was almost too old to adopt Dell Brown for his daughter.
He had ought to have adopted her for his granddaughter when he was
adopting.
So he said he would pray about it, and Mrs. Brown said she couldn't
understand Dell Brown, hardly, why she had the fighting streak in her,
because at home she was all love and affection to Mrs. Brown, and a word
made the child weep. I guess Dell Brown had just so much fight in her
and had to get it fought out. I guess she thought it was better to go
out and fight than to fight Mr. and Mrs. Brown. Maybe she was sort of
fond of them because they were funny and old and had adopted her. I
guess she was like George Washington: she was good and nice, but she
liked to fight.
Well, after while school started again. I kind of hated to go, because
I always hate to, but more because I thought Dell Brown would go to
school. So she did, and the first time she got me alone she took me
by the hair and walloped me good. I hadn't done nothing to her, except
maybe yell “Scratch-Cat!” at her sometimes when I was far enough away.
So after that I didn't go to school very early, but kind of hung around
until Dell Brown went in, and then I went in. I never told on her. If
she says I did she tells what ain't so. It was Toady Williams.
Me and Swatty was kept in that day, like we 'most always were, and Bony
was waiting outside. So Miss Murphy thought it wasn't any use talking
to Dell Brown any more; it was time to rawhide her. She got the rawhide
out of the closet, and told Dell Brown to come to the back of the room,
and Dell Brown went. Miss Murphy put one hand on Dell Brown's shoulder,
and lifted up the whip to switch her across the legs, and the next thing
she did was to let out a scream, and you couldn't have believed her
dress could be tom so in just a second if you hadn't seen it. Her hands
were beginning to get red in streaks where Dell Brown had scratched
them. So Dell Brown just threw Miss Murphy's hair switch on a desk, and
stood there with her chest swelling in and out under her red and black
checked dress, and Miss Murphy backed away and began winding her switch
on her head again.
When Miss Murphy got her hair on, she went out and locked the door and
got Professor Martin, the principal, who is her beau. He came in, and he
was pretty mad. He grabbed Dell Brown and gave her a shake, and she
flew at him like a cat and scratched him across the face. He slung her
around, and she hit a desk and fell on the floor. It made her cry, and
Professor Martin was scared of what he had done and went to pick her up.
But when he stooped she clawed at him and scratched his other cheek, and
he left her alone and told her to get up and go home, because she was
expelled from school.
So Dell Brown got up, and held her hand to her side, and went and got
her books and went home. But there was only one rib broke, and I guess
it healed all right, because she was young and tough. But nobody whipped
any more girls in school. I guess they thought it was safer to whip
boys. They are more used to it, and their ribs ain't so brittle. Or
maybe the school board stopped it. Professor Martin almost got fired
because he had broken a rib for Scratch-Cat and he would of been fired
only Scratch-Cat was such a ruffian, everybody said.
Well, of course the expelling didn't take, and Dell Brown came back
after while, when Miss Murphy went away and Miss Carter came. She didn't
fight much, because her rib was brittle yet, but she was cross all the
time. It looked like she hated everybody and everybody hated her.
But one day Miss Carter was walking down the aisle and she had some
flowers pinned on, and one dropped in the aisle, and Dell Brown picked
it up and put it in a book. She used to open the book and look at the
flower. She used to sit and look at Miss Carter, and you couldn't tell
whether she was mad at her or not, because her face was so dark and her
bangs so long that she always looked scowly. But I guess she wasn't
mad, I guess she wanted Miss Carter to like her, but didn't know how to
make her.
None of the girls played with Scratch-Cat because she scratched; and
none of the boys played with her either, because they were afraid of
her. As soon as school was out she would go home and play in her own
yard. I guess she was pretty lonely.
Well, that was how it was up to the time I'm telling about, just before
school closed, in June, and the weather was bully and warm. It made you
want to do things. So on Saturday me and Swatty and Bony was sitting in
my barn and talking about what we would do that afternoon. We thought of
a lot of things, and said them, but, every time, Swatty said: “Aw! no,
let's don't!” So we didn't. So then I said:
“I'll tell you what!”
“What?” Swatty asked.
“Pshaw, no!” I said. “It ain't no use. We couldn't get any. It ain't
time for them yet.”
“Aw! what are you talking about?” Swatty asked. “What ain't it time
for?”
“Water-lilies,” I said. “If it was time for waterlilies we could row up
to the water-lily pond and get some water-lilies.”
So then Swatty he talked up.
“Well, we could row up the river anyway, couldn't we?” he said--only he
said “rowr” instead of “row,” like he always does. “We could rowr up the
river and get some pond-lily roots and sell them.”
“Aw! who would buy old pond-lily roots?” Bony wanted to know.
Well, I thought at first that the reason Swatty said we could sell
pond-lily roots was because once I had told him about a man or somebody
who had made money getting pond-lily roots and selling them to people
who wanted to raise pond-lilies in a tub in their gardens. But that was
n't why he said it.
“Why, garsh! plenty of people would want to buy them,” Swatty said. “I
guess I ought to know. I guess I've got an uncle in Derlingport, ain't
I? I guess he ought to know about pond-lily roots, oughtn't he?”
It looked like that ought to be so, because Derlingport is three times
as big as Riverbank, and Swatty's uncle was older than any of us. But
Bony said: “Aw! what does your old uncle know about pond-lily roots,
anyway?”
“I guess he knows plenty about them,” Swatty said. “I guess if you went
up to Derlingport to visit him you'd see whether he knows anything about
them or not! I bet my uncle is the richest man in Derlingport, and the
reason he is is because once, when I was out pond-lilying, I sent him
a pond-lily root and he grew it in a tub, and when folks saw it they
wanted to grow some too. So my uncle he rowred up the river to a
pond-lily pond, and he got some roots and sold them. First orff he only
got a few and sold them; but pretty soon he had a hundred men getting
pond-lily roots for him, and he had to build a pond-lily root elevator,
like the grain elevator down on the levee, but ten times bigger.”
“Gee-my-nentily!” Bony said. “Ten times bigger! Gee!”
“Ho! that ain't nothing!” Swatty said. “That was when he was just
beginning to start out. He's got ten of them elevators now, and--he's
got almost ten trillion-billion pond-lily roots in them. He's got a
railway switch and a steamboat dock to each elevator, and when he ships
pond-lily roots he ships them by the trainload. Only, when he sells them
in Dubuque or Keorkuk, he ships them by the boatload.”
“Gee-my-nentily!” said Bony again. “Come on! Let's--”
“Well, I guess so!” said Swatty. “I guess it's no wonder he's the
richest man in Derlingport! And I can just go and visit him any time I
want to. I can go visit him and take a bath right in his china bathtub.”
“Aw! go on!” I said. “He ain't got a china bathtub!”
“Yes, sir! just like a tea-cup.”
“Gosh!” Bony said. “Did you take a bath in it?”
“Garsh, no!” said Swatty. “Do you think I'd go taking bath-tub baths
when I didn't have to? When I visit him my uncle lets me do just what I
want to. I don't have to wash my feet, or take a bath, or go for a cow,
or fetch in wood--”
“Who fetches in the wood?” Bony asked.
“Nobody,” Swatty said. “My uncle don't burn sawmill slabs or cord wood.
He burns coal.”
“Well, somebody has to fetch in the coal, don't he?” I wanted to know.
“Well, I guess not!” said Swatty. “He--he has a--a bridge built right
over the top of his house, so he can run a railroad over it, and he has
a big iron box on top of his house under the bridge, and the railroad
hawrls the cars of coal right up on top of the roof and dumps the coal
into the iron box, and it runs down the chimbleys right into the stove.”
Well, me and Bony didn't say nothing. We just sat there and thought what
we thought.
“And he's got a road scooped out under his house for a railroad to run
on,” Swatty said, “and there is a train of cars under the house, and
when my uncle, or anybody, shakes the grate the ashes fall right down an
iron pipe into the cars.”
“Come on!” I said. “Come on! Let's go somewhere.”
So Swatty looked at me; but I hadn't said he was a liar or anything, so
there was nothing to fight about. If I had wanted to I could have said I
had an uncle somewhere that didn't bother with dirty old coal and ashes
at all, but had his own natural gas well and used natural gas; but my
nose was sore yet from the last time Swatty had pushed it into my face,
so I didn't say it.
We went down to the boat-house and hired a skiff and rowed up the river
to the pond-lily pond. The river was pretty low and it was muddy on the
bank of the river--over knee-deep in mud. Swatty got out over the bow of
the skiff to pull it up on the mud, so the wash from any steamboat would
n't send it adrift, and he went in over the knees of his pants, so we
thought we had better undress in the skiff, and we did. It felt bully to
be undressed outdoors again.
I guess you know how the lily-pond is. On one side is the railroad and
on the other side is the river; but between the pond and the river
is narrow sand, with willows on it--bush willows. It makes a bank all
around the lower end of the pond-lily pond and ends at the railroad. So
me and Bony and Swatty talked it over, and thought we'd better not leave
our clothes in the skiff, because somebody might steal them. First we
thought we'd hide them in the willows, and then we thought we'd carry
them around by the sand spit to the railroad, because the pond-lily
roots were over by the railroad more. So we did. We walked around to the
railroad and left our clothes there, and waded in. Swatty went first.
It was pretty tough. You went into the mud pretty deep, and there
were plants that had scratch-els on them, and the lily plants and the
arrow-leaf plants were so thick you could hardly wade. They were all
around the shore for two or three rods, and you couldn't see over them.
They rustled like corn when we pushed through them. But we knew there
was a big clear place in the middle of the pond, so we waded on out
to it. It was the place where I learned to swim. It wasn't over head
anywhere.
Well, Swatty came to the open place first, and he stopped and said:
“There's somebody out there.”
Me and Bony peeked, and there was. Right off we saw who it was--it was
Scratch-Cat. She was in where the water was under-arm deep, and she
was sort of crying, she was so mad. Then we saw what she was trying
to do--she was trying to learn herself to swim. It was enough to make
anybody laugh.
It looked like she had been at it a long time, for she was so cold she
was shivering. We were near enough to her to see that the black spot on
her arm was a mole and not a leaf or a vaccination, and we could see her
shiver as plain as could be. The way she was learning herself to swim
was this: she put her hands out in front of her and sort of jumped off
her feet and then kicked and pounded the water and went down under. I
guess you know how that feels. You can't get your head above water when
you are that deep unless you stand up; so you paw in the mud, and get
scared because you can't get to your feet. Dell Brown would come up
scared to death, and spit and blow, and sort of cry, and shiver, and
then she would do it all again.
I guess it was pretty tough. Every time she went down she must have
got scratched up by the weeds with scratchels on them--some kind of
smartweed--and she was scared and chilly. It was mighty funny. I guess I
laughed out aloud.
Anyway, all at once she saw Swatty and us. She ducked like a shot, until
only her head was out of water, and me and Bony laughed. But Swatty
didn't. He pushed me and Bony back and said: “Hey! Scratch-Cat! Wait;
I'll show you how to swim.” Only, he said, “I'll showr you how to swim,”
the way he always says “show.”
So he slid his hands out on the water and turned on his side and swam
towards where she was. He didn't mean nothing. All he meant was to show
her how to swim, because she would never learn the way she was trying.
But Scratch-Cat turned and held her arms straight out in front of her
and hurried for the shore, pushing the weeds away with her hands.
Swatty kept telling her to wait, and once he came up to her, and she
turned and hammered him with her fists, crazy mad, and he let her go on.
The weeds must have scratched her pretty bad, ripping through them that
way; but she got to the railway track and began putting her clothes on
fast. So Swatty said: “Garsh! I bet she gets our clothes and hides them
or something!”
So me and Swatty and Bony hurried to where our clothes were and dressed.
We got most of our duds on and were putting on the rest, when we heard
somebody yelling. It was a woman, and she was over on the river road,
across a cornfield from where we were, and she was yelling like she was
being murdered. I was mighty scared. All I thought of was that whoever
was murdering her would murder her and then come over and murder us.
I guess Bony thought the same thing, for he got white and started to
run down the railway bank toward our skiff. So I started after him. But
Swatty he started to run the other way, down the bank to the cornfield,
towards where the woman was screaming. He rolled under the bob-wire
fence and started down between the com rows as hard as he could go. Me
and Bony stopped and looked, and then we went after him, only slower.
When we got deep into the com we got more scared. We didn't like to be
so far from where Swatty was, with a woman screaming like that and being
murdered. So I hurried up, and Bony came along, blubbering. I told him
to shut up.
We came to the edge of the cornfield and stopped. It was Miss Carter,
our teacher, and a tramp had her by the throat, trying to make her stop
her yelling. And just then Swatty jumped on the tramp. He had a rock,
and he lammed at the tramp with it and hit him on the arm. So then Miss
Carter went limp and stopped yelling, and fell in a pile on the road,
because the tramp let go of her and she fainted.
The road was all tramped up and covered with walked-on flowers Miss
Carter had been getting; but the tramp reached around and grabbed
Swatty and got him by the neck and began to pound his head. Me and Bony
crouched down and looked between the boards of the cornfield fence,
because we was too scared to run away.
Swatty done the best he could, but it wasn't much use. He was getting
killed, I guess. But all at once Scratch-Cat came a-sailing out of the
cornfield and lit on the tramp with both hands.
When her eight claws came raking down his face he let loose of Swatty
and grabbed for Scratch-Cat; but she wasn't where he grabbed. She was
standing away, with her hands clawed and her head sort of pointed at
him, ready to jump again. So Swatty picked up the rock and slung it, and
caught him in the back of the neck. He hollered like a bull and turned,
and Scratch-Cat went at him and raked him on the side of his face. He
lammed at her, and I guess he caught her on her brittle rib, because she
hollered.
She didn't care what happened, I guess, when he hit her brittle rib,
so she went right at him, and Swatty made a dive for his legs and got a
hold on them. The tramp fought good and hard. He went down, but he kept
on fighting; and Swatty hollered for me to get a rock and whack the
tramp on the head with it. Maybe I would have. I don't know. Just then a
top buggy came around the bend of the road, and the tramp showed all he
was worth and beat off Swatty and Scratch-Cat and cut into the woods.
We heard him cracking the brush as he scooted, and that was all we knew
about him.
Well, the man in the top buggy was Herb Schwartz. So he got out and
picked up Miss Carter and fetched her to, and Swatty told him what had
happened. So Herb went to where Scratch-Cat was sitting on the side of
the road, with her hand where her brittle rib had busted. So Swatty went
over there too.
“Garsh! I'd of been killed if you hadn't come!” he said. But she stood
up and looked at him.
'“What'd you come swimming at me when I was naked for?” she said, and
she was as mad as hops. I guess her rib hurt her and made her sort
of crazy mad, and Swatty was the first one that came near her, so she
picked on him. “Why'd you dare?” she screeched at him. “I'll show you
not to!”--or something like that.
So she went for him. She didn't scratch, either; she used her fists. She
fought like crazy, and got her leg back of his, and threw him and piled
on top of him. He had to fight as hard as he knew how to, and it was all
right, because she wasn't a girl--she was something crazy mad. It was
a quick fight and a good one, and then Herb Schwartz grabbed Scratch-Cat
by the shoulder and pulled her off Swatty; but that didn't matter,
because the fight was over anyhow. Swatty had said: “Enough! I won't do
it again!”
Well, as soon as Herb had stood Scratch-Cat up, she turned white and
fell down. She had fainted. It was a good deal of a mess-up. Miss Carter
had got hysterical, and was laughing and crying so she couldn't put
her hair up where it had fell down, and Scratch-Cat was stretched out
fainted, and I guess Herb Schwartz was never so busy in his life before.
He sent me and Bony and Swatty over to the pond-lily pond for a hatful
of water, and while we were gone he hugged Miss Carter until she wasn't
hysterical, because I guess that was what she needed to cure her, and
then he soused Scratch-Cat with the water and she came around all right.
So he took Miss Carter and Scratch-Cat back to town in the top buggy,
and me and Swatty and Bony went back to our skiff and rowed home.
Swatty was pretty quiet. I guess he thought Herb and Miss Carter would
tell all over town how he had been licked by a girl; but he told me and
Bony he would kill us if we told it, so we didn't. But neither did Herb
or Miss Carter. The reason was that Scratch-Cat told them not to tell
she had been fighting. Herb told Swatty that Scratch-Cat had asked them
not to.
After a while Scratch-Cat's brittle rib healed up again and she didn't
have to stay in bed, and I was going down-town on an errand past her
house, and I saw Swatty in her yard. They were playing mum-bledy-peg. So
after that she played with me and Bony and Swatty, and pretty soon with
Mamie Little and my sister and the other girls, and she was almost the
one they liked best.
So one day Swatty said to me:
“Don't you ever darst yell at me that Scratch-Cat is my girl!”
“Aw! I never yelled it!” I said.
“You better not!” he said. “Because she ain't.” So then I knew she was.