in him than any other boy among us, was less selfish, more trustworthy
and a better friend than ten Mats, and had done each of us no end of
boy-kindnesses, instead of using us as cat’s-paws for his own ambition.
But just because he had “played Rebel” for a few days solely to put a
little life into the war, the boys were “down on” him. His followers in
that campaign we made no note of and harbored no grudge against.
Perhaps there was wounded vanity in the recollection how nearly his
superior generalship had routed our superior forces. So unreasoning are
early prejudices that I presume a few of us never did quite get the last
grain of grudge out of our heads—unless, perhaps, fifteen years later,
when Mat was clerking in his father’s store, and word came of the death
of Capt. Tip in Arizona. He was slain by the Apaches after an heroic
fight which saved an immigrant party till the arrival of troops enough to
scatter the red fiends.
Well, Mat’s plan progressed famously. A small army of us, with brooms and
shovels, worked over that mile and a half of road till the coast was in
such good shape as no one ever dreamed of before.
The weather stayed obstinately cold; so, under Mat’s direction, we
brought water by the bucketful and wet down the safer parts of the slide.
There was some friction about this, for the older people objected to so
much glare ice; but Mat compromised by not wetting the street crossings,
and only a narrow track at the side of the road, so that sleighs had
plenty of room without encroaching on our slide.
At the tannery corner we made a crescent of hard-packed snow, with
sloping concavity, which rendered it rather easier to turn that dangerous
angle. It was like the raised rail on the outside of the railway curve,
or the “saucer-edge” of an automobile race-track.
And then came the marshalling of the clans. Our embryo Napoleon, of
course, was commander-in-chief, and his pride, the double-runner
“Avalanche,” led the line. There were in those days but half a dozen
other double-runners in town. These were owned by young men. Mat’s was
the only one in “our crowd.” It was a very fancy affair for then and
there.
Right-hand-man Hunt was privileged to manage the rear, and the coveted
remaining seats were occupied by guests of passing invitation.
It was no small social power to control a double-runner, and Mat made the
most of it, giving rides to all his friends with great princeliness. But
I remember that we never saw on Mat’s “traverse” any of the urchins from
the lower end of the village—they had no “influence.”
Behind the “Avalanche” came sleds of all sorts and sizes. As for Tip, no
one had seen him for several days. He lived up on the other hill—a hill
even steeper than Dolloff’s, but coming in with such an ugly turn at the
engine-house that no one coasted there since big Ned Green broke his neck
on a wood-pile around the bend.
The great Saturday came for the formal inauguration of the Cannonball
Railroad. Sixty-odd boys were gathered at the top of Dolloff’s Hill.
Some girls were there, too, with their high, flat-runnered sleds, upon
which we looked with supreme scorn. Kitty White and Annie Waters and May
Thurston were comfortably tucked up on the cushioned seat behind Mat on
his double-runner; and Hunt was holding back on the tail-board till the
signal.
“All ready—go!” yelled Mat. Hunt sprang to his seat, and the sled slipped
away, gaining momentum swiftly. Charlie White flung himself on his long
cutter and was at its heels; and one after another, in continuous line,
the whole array of boys on their sleds went sweeping down the hill.
Just as the last of us were whizzing by the engine-house, there was a
shrill yell, and a dark flash from the other arm of the “Y” of the roads
shot alongside in a swirl of snow-flower, and was past almost before
anyone could crack a wink.
All we were sure of was that Tip and a party had gone by us, but how, or
on what, no one knew. Anyhow, it was just like him. No one but Tip could
have turned that lopsided corner in that way, and grazed safely within
two feet of us. And one after another of the brown line ahead, we could
see this astounding meteor picking up and passing them all.
Mat was right on the town bridge, steering his grandest to cut a fine
curve through the square, when he caught that odd singing of tempered
runners. Before he could turn his head, Tip streaked by without a
glance, doubled the corner with a beautiful swing, and was out of sight
on the next pitch when the “Avalanche” turned into the square.
Tip on a double-runner! and one with wings, too, to judge by its speed!
And Lou Berry and Kate Morris and Amy Belle and that pauper Okey boy with
him, and that big Brown behind—it was altogether too much! When we got to
the bottom of Depot Hill, Tip and his party were starting back, dragging
the new craft. It was a very heavy double-runner, with a long, springy
plank of ash, set rather low. There was no paint on runners or deck, but
everything about the sandpapered wood had a clipper look, and the runners
were shod with steel rods of an odd spring.
“Where’d ye get it, Tip?” “Ain’t it a whaler?” “Lemme go down once with
you, Tip!” cried such of the boys as could catch up—which was not so
difficult, as old Nell was dragging our sleds. Tip trudged on, answering
composedly:
“Oh, Mr. Brown and I got it fixed up. ’Course you can go, one at a
time—we’ve got room for just one more.”
But just then Mat—whose heavy sled went farther than our light
ones—overtook us. No doubt he felt pretty sore over being so egregiously
beaten at his own game; and his look was anything but amiable as he
observed, loudly and in his most scornful tone: “Huh! We feel pretty
smart with a Rebel double-runner, don’t we?”
Kate and Lou flushed up, and Brown stuck out his lip contemptuously, but
Tip only answered, drily:
“No-o, not so awful smart—just smart enough for what we need.”
This was fuel to the fire. Mat, who was much the heavier of the two,
stepped forward; and very likely there would have been a scene, except
that the good old minister just then stopped his sleigh for a chat with
some friends, the boys. But Mat had clinched a nickname, and Tip’s
turnout became in every mouth “The Rebel Double-runner.”
Nor did it stop there. An organized movement—in which Mat was far too
shrewd to let himself be seen, leaving it to his younger followers—was
made to cut (boycott, as we would say nowadays) everyone who had anything
to do with Tip.
Brown evidently didn’t borrow much trouble about the scorn of boys so
much younger than himself; and whatever Tip may have felt, he said
nothing.
But Kate and Lou felt it keenly, for even the sisters of the camp were
enlisted to make things unpleasant for “all who gave aid and comfort
to Rebels.” But, as they were loyal and plucky girls, they stuck to
their friend in a fashion that was rather heroic, considering the heat
and the meanness of youthful partisanship. I trust that for the many
shabby turns done them they found some recompense in the regularity
with which, day after day and many times a day, they whizzed past their
envious persecutors. For Tip had left no gap in his plans. The Rebel
double-runner was safe to win every time—thanks partly to its superior
construction, partly to the dangerous hill on which it got its headway,
and partly to the tremendous send-off given it by that hatefully muscular
Brown.
Besides, Tip had a perfect genius as a steerer—the genius of effort and
fixity, which counts oftener than any other kind. He seemed afraid of
nothing, because he really “saw his way through.” He had studied that
slide in every inch, and knew how to give his sled every advantage of it.
It was an aggravation almost beyond endurance to have them flash by us
so easily every time; but for all Mat’s efforts and schemes and our wild
jockeying, they continued to do it. If the continued triumph of the
Rebel double-runner was aggravating to us, it was gall and wormwood to
Mat. The thing became a town joke; and older folks, who did not share our
grudge against Tip nor our awe of our “Napoleon,” poked all manner of fun.
Suave, self-satisfied, Mat grew glum and snappish. Those of us who
ventured to ride with Tip—and it must be confessed that our patriotism
was not always proof against the temptation—were made to feel the weight
of Mat’s displeasure. Our “leader of men” had not quite learned to lead
himself.
As we trudged up with our sleds from the depot one afternoon, we caught
sight of Tip’s outfit whisking around the tannery corner and bearing down
like a streak of dark lightning.
Mat was ahead, talking hard to young Burpee, who had a long red-bark
switch in his hand. Just as the flying traverse was close, the young imp
flung his stick down across the road.
Quick as thought we saw the act—and that Tip saw it, too. He slid back,
with feet braced hard on the crosspiece, and swung the sled a trifle to
the right.
He was pale—but not half so white as Mat, who stood glaring at him like
one fascinated. It was right on the last bridge, over the big fall—that
old wooden bridge with its crazy railing!
We were too horror-struck even to cry out, and there was no sound
from the white faces on the sled. I can remember yet how the great
falls roared, as out of a dead hush; how Tip’s teeth showed, and that
the steering-rope was sunk deep in his wrists. How many things made
themselves seen and felt in that instant!
The sled struck the slender switch exactly square. We looked to see its
occupants fly off into space; but, though Tip was snapped forward until
his knees bruised his face, those wiry legs saved him and the rest, who
were half piled upon him.
The flying ends of the switch told the story. Tip had steered upon the
slenderer end, and the swift, high-tempered runners had chopped it in
two, as was his hope, and without too great a shock.
Had the switch resisted never so little! It seemed to us—and does to me
yet—almost a miracle of escape. But for Tip’s instant wit, the whole
party would have broken their necks on the hill, or crashed through the
rail to the falls.
That day broke the back of the Cannonball Railroad. No one would so much
as look at Burpee; but we felt that the responsibility rested further
back.
Of course, Mat had not told him to throw the switch, and doubtless made
himself believe that he had no blame in the matter. But the rest of
us—well, even boys sometimes know how to read between the lines.
Tip never opened his month about the matter, and promptly stopped any
attempted reference to it. He had plenty of companions now, and treated
them in his square-toed boy way, as though nothing had ever happened.
A week after the switch episode, the crowd, including Tip, was straggling
up the hill as Mat and his few remaining satellites came down on the
“Avalanche.” Just as they reached the grist-mill, a loaded wood-sledge
stalled at the tannery corner—the snow was soft that day. The sled was,
for the same reason, not going half so fast as usual, but quite fast
enough. Seeing the dangerous passage thus blockaded, Mat began to get
panicky, and the sled wobbled.
“He’s going to jump!” exclaimed someone. “Don’t!”
Tip flung his sled-rope to me. “Hold to her, Mat!” he yelled, standing at
the very edge of the slide and balanced, catlike. But Mat did _not_ hold
on. The “Avalanche” slewed to one side, and he leaped and went plowing
and rolling fifty feet in the slush. Almost as he struck the road, Tip
had flung himself headlong upon the steering-seat and caught the lines.
He was just in time to “snub” the front sled before it could “turn cross”
and make a wreck; and, steering through the narrow space between the
wood-sledge and the bridge-rail, he fetched up safely with the traverse
and its four frightened boys on the grade that climbs to Water Street.
That settled the business. From that day out, I think no one was ever
heard to mention anything that sounded like “Rebel double-runner.” It
was “Tip’s Tornado,” and there wasn’t a boy in town, except one, but was
glad to ride on it—or to follow Tip in anything. It was the quietest of
victories, but complete.
The Balsa Boy of Lake Titi-Caca.
The Balsa Boy of Lake Titi-Caca.
I.
“But, _hombrote_, thou art a mouthful, and the lake is brave. Of me it
counts not, but much eye to this box. That is the far-looker that makes
the pictures, and if it went to the _bogas_ or were even wet, how couldst
thou answer?”
“There is no care, Excellency. More than that I am small, in this lake I
was born, and now I am made to it. I will not drown your Excellency, nor
more wet ye than must be when the lake is so. Trust me, _viracocha_, to
put you to the island safely. And if not then name me Bobo.”
Well, I had to get across, and that was all there was to it. The island
was there, I here, the miles of angry water between, and for bridge, only
this twelve-year-old Aymará boy with his water-logged _balsa_. I looked
out at the whitecaps, then at the unlikely craft, then in Pablo’s eyes.
“_Ba-le_, it is well. Thou hast the heart of a man. Hold her level for
the box.”
I waded out through the mud and rushes, waist-deep in the icy water,
holding the precious camera box on my head, and between us we got it
safely stowed abaft the beanpole mast. Then I scrambled aboard as best
might be, with Pablo’s helpful hand in my collar, for the mud had a
trap-like clutch on my legs. Bidding me squat forward, the boy settled
back on his knees and began to ply his pole. The loftiest great lake in
the world has no timber on its shores, and with the mighty forests of the
Yungas five days off no one is going to think of paddles. Plain contorted
poles of the iron _cupi_ are far more easily brought over the Andean
passes, and they have to suffice.
Slowly, with Pablo poling into the mud behind, the clumsy balsa slid
through the _totora_, whispering as it went with its brother rushes—for
itself was simply a great bundle of _totora_, _totora_ bound, with
_totora_ sail and sheets. There was no other thing about it; no nail
nor cord nor wood, save only the cupi mast. The mossy tangle of yachu,
which feeds the cattle of Titi-caca that graze all day shoulder deep
in the lake, hampered the soggy prow and fastened upon Pablo’s stick.
Sometimes, with that and the grasping mud, I looked to see him dragged
back overboard. But he wagged the pole sharply and held fast with his
knees, and always shook free. Decidedly his eyes were right—the boy was
no mouse.
In ten minutes we pushed our nose through the last _totoral_, and were
in the open. The wind butted the harder in our face; the waves—no longer
tamed by the rushen breakwater of the inshore—came running at us like
a stampede. The slow prow kicked them and stumbled on them and pounded
them into a coarse rain that pelted hard and icy. I wriggled out of my
coat of oiled horsehide and bound it over the camera box to protect that
from the spray—for it had been well strained by a fall of the pack mule
in crossing the pass of Sorata, and was no longer so waterproof as might
be wished. Pablo could now no more touch bottom; and kneeling a little
higher and a little farther astern he kept his pole ish-ishing through
the water, paddle fashion.
“Give me,” I said, after watching awhile the play of the round boy-chest.
“Thou art too light.”
But Pablo sent down his stick the harder—so forcibly, indeed, that the
effort pulled that corner of his mouth awry—and grunted:
“No, _viracocha_; leave me. Your Excellency knows the paddle—that I can
see by the way you sit. But this is different. Only we of the lake know
its ways, which are tricky. See, _pues_!” he sputtered, as a bucketful
of water slapped us in the face and left both gasping. “For here all the
winds quarrel from every way at once—as if pushed by him who was once
_alcalde_ of Paucarcolla.” Pablo crossed himself, thereby “dropping a
stitch” in his paddling.
“What? The—er—him that the Inquisition pursued?”
“_Si, viracocha_, that same. And yonder headland is where he disappeared
in the lake, for the which none care to tarry there, since it is well
known that he was the devil in person,” and Pablo crossed himself again.
As we cleared the Punta del Diablo the wind smote us with renewed force,
and with every dip a fresh deluge drenched us to the bone. But for a few
moments I did not think much of that. With the recession of the headland
the long line of the Bolivian Andes came marching into view, and I
suppose that just so wondrous a sight is nowhere else. Captained by the
peak that overhangs Sorata, the giant file stood marshaled seemingly upon
the very beach of the vast blue lake, itself white with that unspeakable
whiteness such as befalls no other thing on earth than a far peak of
eternal snow high up a clear sky. Such a rank of Titans—from incalculable
Illampu and his 25,000 feet, off to where his rival, Illimani, seemed
soaring out of the lake a hundred miles away! It was enough to make one
forget a wet skin—and even the possibility of a wet camera box. How they
possessed the firmament, these sublimated presences! And how the cumuli,
puffing up from the tropic forests of the Beni, tangled about their feet
and wreathed upward and dulled when their snow-whiteness lapped the
whiter snow of those proud crests!
A sharp “_Umpss!_” from Pablo recalled me to shiver and to look back. A
sudden flaw in the wind had caught his stroke with the full weight of the
balsa, and the ironwood pole had snapped under the cross strain. Pablo
looked anxious, but said very evenly:
“_Pss!_ We must break it off, _viracocha_, and use each an end; for in
this wind if we keep not our head, even a balsa will not last. Being
angry, the lake pounds as one with his fist.”
Indeed, it was more like that than anything else—and a most reiterant
fist, too. Nowhere else is there such a “chop” as on Lake Titi-caca when
the winds awake; and I have seen those who have weathered every sea and
who laughed at the English channel turned deathly seasick on one of the
wallowing little steamers that run from Puno to Chililaya. Now we were
kicked about with battering thumps that seemed like to pound our bundle
of rushes asunder. Pablo was straining and twisting at the broken pole,
to part the wiry fibers. I chopped at it with my heavy, keen bowie, and
at last the stubborn strands yielded; and so each had a stick some five
feet long. I knelt up and drove mine fiercely down the side while Pablo,
astern, kept stroke. We were at it none too soon. At one time I half
fancied that we never would get her head to the wind, for the soggy craft
answered slowly to our efforts with these pitiful paddles.
For some minutes we tugged in silence. At an altitude of 12,500 feet
in Peru one needs all one’s breath for work—even the Serrano lad did.
I glanced over my shoulder at him now and then. His lips were shut
square, his serious dark eyes seemed to be taking note of everything, and
the slender muscles of his arms and chest—clear drawn on the drenched
shirt—played smoothly. An athlete myself, and particularly taught in
the paddle, I began to feel a respect which was half awe for this manful
stripling who toiled so soberly and shrewdly where only the best foreign
lungs can endure any exertion whatever. And, at last, little as there was
breath to spare, I could not help grunting, “_Estás lo mas hombrote!_”
Pablo’s big white teeth shone for an instant in a sober smile.
“So must we,” he answered calmly. “For here is much to do, nor room for
lazies—for small though they be. When I was the half of this, my father
had me to help on the balsa; and once, even then, I took it to Puno, he
being sick.”
Then silence fell upon us again for a time, and we poled away doggedly.
But presently there seemed to me something wrong in Pablo’s quiet, and I
twisted my head to look. His stick was going steadily as a machine, but
in his face was what made me call out sharply, “What thing?”
He thrust out his chin toward Illampu. I looked thither, and then back at
him, uncertain.
“More wind,” he said, concisely. “Either to get to the island before it,
or”—and the Spanish shrug said the rest for him.
We did not get to the island before it. Two hundred yards away the gale
struck us and flattened the balsa into the waves and the waves into the
level, and was like to strip us bodily from our soaked craft. After that
nothing was very clear, for the winds and waves washed us fore and aft,
and it was hard to say which was the colder and more pitiless; and one
saw ill for that bitter pelting in the face, and the heart reeled with
overwork to feed the leaping lungs. Bent forward till our heads almost
touched the balsa, our knees wedged hard on the tiny roll which served
for gunwale, we dug away mechanically with those nightmares of paddles
that would carry us nowhere. Once, when my heart would work no more, I
turned idly to Pablo. His face was gray with effort, but so sweet and
composed that I shouted out, half petulantly:
“Ea! Hast thou not fear, _hijito_?”
“How not?” he screamed back up the wind. “Am I a fool, not to fear? We
shall never come there, perhaps. Only if the saints will! Promise a
silver candlestick, señor!”
But in my eyes were a blue eyed baby and her mother, five thousand miles
away, and for that, my temper was more to fight, with shut teeth, than
to be vowing candlesticks. And just then it struck me to think, in that
silly maundering of the mind in stress, how peaceful Pablo would look
when they should pick us up, and how they would add: “_Umpss!_ But these
gringos are of ill temper, no?”
For half an hour, perhaps, we doubled to our sticks, and still the gale
smote us, and still our marrow ached with the chill of the spray. There
was no complaint of Pablo. He accepted fate, but still worked like a
man—poised and steady in the face of death. If we were to end there, he
would be found with the little chapped fists still clenching the stick.
Once a motion swept on me to spring back and hug him and say:
“Son, it counts not. Let us meet it in peace. Thou’rt fit to die with!”
But then again the blue eyes came up in the mist, and my fingers cracked
on the paddle and my teeth grated. And Pablo, as if he understood, gave
me a grave, sweet nod. Further I noted that he drew some small object
from his pouch and seemed to breathe on it.
It was so near! In a little eddy of the wind I shook the water from my
eyes and peered ahead. The northern point of the island was not fifty
yards away—and we were drifting past. It slipped and slipped, for all I
dug savagely at the paddle and Pablo quickened his stroke with the first
groan I had heard from him. Our tired arms forgot their cramps, our lungs
their “stitches” in a wild strain—and still that dark shore kept drawing
to our right. Ah, for the old paddle that used to spin the birch canoe!
These accursed sticks—why, one might as well paddle with a poker!
“_Viracocha!_” The boy’s shrill voice split the wind like a fife. “The
sail!”
I stared at him stupidly an instant. “Thou hast the power,” he cried.
“Break it! Break it!”
Then I knew, and leaped upon the ironwood mast as a wolf at the throat of
a fawn, and clenched it and wrenched and beat, and shoved and twisted and
tugged, and with arms and knees tore it loose from its stepping in the
balsa. It well nigh racked the rushen raft in twain, and we noticed that
the impact of the waves no longer shook the balsa as a unit, but wabbled
and see-sawed it.
I caught the cupi under my left arm and clinched tight the “sheets” of
braided _totora_ around the _totora_ sail, till that was bound in shape
something like a closed umbrella, and springing forward to my station
stood and plied this new paddle with frantic energy. It was unwieldy and
floppy, but it had more resistance than the pole, and slowly—so slowly
that at first we dared not believe it—the sullen craft began to answer.
New hope came in us, and we shouted “_Arre!_ Drive!” and bent till the
muscles creaked. Now, even in Pablo’s face, was the fierce light of
combat.