Jimmie lounged about the dining-room and watched his mother with
large, serious eyes. Suddenly he said, "Ma--now--can I borrow pa's
gun?"
She was overcome with the feminine horror which is able to mistake
preliminary words for the full accomplishment of the dread thing.
"Why, Jimmie!" she cried. "Of al-l wonders! Your father's gun! No
indeed you can't!"
He was fairly well crushed, but he managed to mutter, sullenly, "Well,
Willie Dalzel, he's got a gun." In reality his heart had previously
been beating with such tumult--he had himself been so impressed with
the daring and sin of his request--that he was glad that all was over
now, and his mother could do very little further harm to his
sensibilities. He had been influenced into the venture by the larger
boys.
[Illustration: "'MA--NOW--CAN I BORROW PA'S GUN?'"]
"Huh!" the Dalzel urchin had said; "your father's got a gun, hasn't
he? Well, why don't you bring that?"
Puffing himself, Jimmie had replied, "Well, I can, if I want to." It
was a black lie, but really the Dalzel boy was too outrageous with his
eternal bill-posting about the gun which a beaming uncle had intrusted
to him. Its possession made him superior in manfulness to most boys in
the neighborhood--or at least they enviously conceded him such
position--but he was so overbearing, and stuffed the fact of his
treasure so relentlessly down their throats, that on this occasion the
miserable Jimmie had lied as naturally as most animals swim.
Willie Dalzel had not been checkmated, for he had instantly retorted,
"Why don't you get it, then?"
"Well, I can, if I want to."
"Well, get it, then!"
"Well, I can, if I want to."
Thereupon Jimmie had paced away with great airs of surety as far as
the door of his home, where his manner changed to one of tremulous
misgiving as it came upon him to address his mother in the
dining-room. There had happened that which had happened.
When Jimmie returned to his two distinguished companions he was blown
out with a singular pomposity. He spoke these noble words: "Oh, well,
I guess I don't want to take the gun out to-day."
They had been watching him with gleaming ferret eyes, and they
detected his falsity at once. They challenged him with shouted gibes,
but it was not in the rules for the conduct of boys that one should
admit anything whatsoever, and so Jimmie, backed into an ethical
corner, lied as stupidly, as desperately, as hopelessly as ever lone
savage fights when surrounded at last in his jungle.
Such accusations were never known to come to any point, for the reason
that the number and kind of denials always equalled or exceeded the
number of accusations, and no boy was ever brought really to book for
these misdeeds.
In the end they went off together, Willie Dalzel with his gun being a
trifle in advance and discoursing upon his various works. They passed
along a maple-lined avenue, a highway common to boys bound for that
free land of hills and woods in which they lived in some part their
romance of the moment, whether it was of Indians, miners, smugglers,
soldiers, or outlaws. The paths were their paths, and much was known
to them of the secrets of the dark green hemlock thickets, the wastes
of sweet-fern and huckleberry, the cliffs of gaunt bluestone with the
sumach burning red at their feet. Each boy had, I am sure, a
conviction that some day the wilderness was to give forth to him a
marvellous secret. They felt that the hills and the forest knew much,
and they heard a voice of it in the silence. It was vague, thrilling,
fearful, and altogether fabulous. The grown folk seemed to regard
these wastes merely as so much distance between one place and another
place, or as a rabbit-cover, or as a district to be judged according
to the value of the timber; but to the boys it spoke some great
inspiring word, which they knew even as those who pace the shore know
the enigmatic speech of the surf. In the mean time they lived there,
in season, lives of ringing adventure--by dint of imagination.
The boys left the avenue, skirted hastily through some private
grounds, climbed a fence, and entered the thickets. It happened that
at school the previous day Willie Dalzel had been forced to read and
acquire in some part a solemn description of a lynx. The meagre
information thrust upon him had caused him grimaces of suffering, but
now he said, suddenly, "I'm goin' to shoot a lynx."
The other boys admired this statement, but they were silent for a
time. Finally Jimmie said, meekly, "What's a lynx?" He had endured his
ignorance as long as he was able.
The Dalzel boy mocked him. "Why, don't you know what a lynx is? A
lynx? Why, a lynx is a animal somethin' like a cat, an' it's got great
big green eyes, and it sits on the limb of a tree an' jus' glares at
you. It's a pretty bad animal, I tell you. Why, when I--"
"Huh!" said the third boy. "Where'd you ever see a lynx?"
"Oh, I've seen 'em--plenty of 'em. I bet you'd be scared if you seen
one once."