The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life

"I _been_ playing." "Then play some more." "I ain't got nobody to play with." "Then find somebody. But don't you step vun step out of this yard." "I don't see _why_ I can't go outa the yard!" "Because I said so." Again the sound of the sad-iron. Carl invented a game in which he was to run in circles, but not step on the grass; he made the tenth inspection that day of the drying hazelnuts whose husks were turning to seal-brown on the woodshed roof; he hunted for a good new bottle to throw at Irving Lamb's barn; he mended his sling-shot; he perched on a sawbuck and watched the street. Nothing passed, nothing made an interesting rattling, except one democrat wagon. From over the water another gun-shot murmured of distant hazards. Carl jumped down from the sawbuck and marched deliberately out of the yard, along Oak Street toward The Hill, the smart section of Joralemon, where live in exclusive state five large houses that get painted nearly every year. "I'm gonna seek-my-fortune. I'm gonna find Bennie and go swimming," he vowed. Calmly as Napoleon defying his marshals, General Carl disregarded the sordid facts that it was too late in the year to go swimming, and that Benjamin Franklin Rusk couldn't swim, anyway. He clumped along, planting his feet with spats of dust, very dignified and melancholy but, like all small boys, occasionally going mad and running in chase of nothing at all till he found it. He stopped before the House with Mysterious Shutters. Carl had never made b'lieve fairies or princes; rather, he was in the secret world of boyhood a soldier, a trapper, or a swing-brakeman on the M. & D. R.R. But he was bespelled by the suggestion of grandeur in the iron fence and gracious trees and dark carriage-shed of the House with Shutters. It was a large, square, solid brick structure, set among oaks and sinister pines, once the home, or perhaps the mansion, of Banker Whiteley, but unoccupied for years. Leaves rotted before the deserted carriage-shed. The disregarded steps in front were seamed with shallow pools of water for days after a rain. The windows had always been darkened, but not by broad-slatted outside shutters, smeared with house-paint to which stuck tiny black hairs from the paint-brush, like the ordinary frame houses of Joralemon. Instead, these windows were masked with inside shutters haughtily varnished to a hard refined brown. To-day the windows were open, the shutters folded; furniture was being moved in; and just inside the iron gate a frilly little girl was playing with a whitewashed conch-shell. She must have been about ten at that time, since Carl was eight. She was a very dressy and complacent child, possessed not only of a clean white muslin with three rows of tucks, immaculate bronze boots, and a green tam-o'-shanter, but also of a large hair-ribbon, a ribbon sash, and a silver chain with a large, gold-washed, heart-shaped locket. She was softly plump, softly gentle of face, softly brown of hair, and softly pleasant of speech. "Hello!" said she. "H'lo!" "What's your name, little boy?" "Ain't a little boy. I'm Carl Ericson." "Oh, are you? I'm----" "I'm gonna have a shotgun when I'm fifteen." He shyly hurled a stone at a telegraph-pole to prove that he was not shy. "My name is Gertie Cowles. I came from Minneapolis. My mamma owns part of the Joralemon Flour Mill.... Are you a nice boy? We just moved here and I don't know anybody. Maybe my mamma will let me play with you if you are a nice boy." "I jus' soon come play with you. If you play soldiers.... My pa 's the smartest man in Joralemon. He builded Alex Johnson's house. He's got a ten-gauge gun." "Oh.... My mamma 's a widow." Carl hung by his arms from the gate-pickets while she breathed, "M-m-m-m-m-m-y!" in admiration at the feat. "That ain't nothing. I can hang by my knees on a trapeze.... What did you come from Minneapolis for?" "We're going to live here," she said. "Oh." "I went to the Chicago World's Fair with my mamma this summer." "Aw, you didn't!" "I did so. And I saw a teeny engine so small it was in a walnut-shell and you had to look at it through a magnifying-glass and it kept on running like anything." "Huh! that's nothing! Ben Rusk, he went to the World's Fair, too, and he saw a statchue that was bigger 'n our house and all pure gold. You didn't see that." "I did so! And we got cousins in Chicago and we stayed with them, and Cousin Edgar is a very _prominent_ doctor for eyenear and stummick." "Aw, Ben Rusk's pa is a doctor, too. And he's got a brother what's going to be a sturgeon." "I got a brother. He's a year older than me. His name is Ray.... There's lots more people in Minneapolis than there is in Joralemon. There's a hundred thousand people in Minneapolis." "That ain't nothing. My pa was born in Christiania, in the Old Country, and they's a million million people there." "Oh, there is not!" "Honest there is." "Is there, honest?" Gertie was admiring now. He looked patronizingly at the red-plush furniture which was being splendidly carried into the great house from Jordan's dray--an old friend of Carl's, which had often carried him banging through town. He condescended: "Jiminy! You don't know Bennie Rusk nor nobody, do you! I'll bring him and we can play soldiers. And we can make tents out of carpets. Did you ever run through carpets on the line?" He pointed to the row of rugs and carpets airing beside the carriage-shed. "No. Is it fun?" "It's awful scary. But I ain't afraid." He dashed at the carpets and entered their long narrow tent. To tell the truth, when he stepped from the sunshine into the intense darkness he was slightly afraid. The Ericsons' one carpet made a short passage, but to pass on and on and on through this succession of heavy rug mats, where snakes and poisonous bugs might hide, and where the rough-threaded, gritty under-surface scratched his pushing hands, was fearsome. He emerged with a whoop and encouraged her to try the feat. She peeped inside the first carpet, but withdrew her head, giving homage: "Oh, it's so _dark_ in there where you went!" He promptly performed the feat again. As they wandered back to the gate to watch the furniture-man Gertie tried to regain the superiority due her years by remarking, of a large escritoire which was being juggled into the front door, "My papa bought that desk in Chicago----" Carl broke in, "I'll bring Bennie Rusk, and me and him 'll teach you to play soldiers." "My mamma don't think I ought to play games. I've got a lot of dolls, but I'm too old for dolls. I play Authors with mamma, sometimes. And dominoes. Authors is a very nice game." "But maybe your ma will let you play Indian squaw, and me and Bennie 'll tie you to a stake and scalp you. That won't be rough like soldiers. But I'm going to be a really-truly soldier. I'm going to be a norficer in the army." "I got a cousin that's an officer in the army," Gertie said grandly, bringing her yellow-ribboned braid round over her shoulder and gently brushing her lips with the end. "Cross-your-heart?" "Um-huh." "Cross-your-heart, hope-t'-die if you ain't?" "Honest he's an officer." "Jiminy crickets! Say, Gertie, could he make me a norficer? Let's go find him. Does he live near here?" "Oh my, no! He's 'way off in San Francisco." "Come on. Let's go there. You and me. Gee! I like you! You got a' awful pertty dress." "'Tain't polite to compliment me to my face. Mamma says----" "Come on! Let's go! We're going!" "Oh no. I'd like to," she faltered, "but my mamma wouldn't let me. She don't let me play around with boys, anyway. She's in the house now. And besides, it's 'way far off across the sea, to San Francisco; it's beyond the salt sea where the Mormons live, and they all got seven wives." "Beyond the sea like Christiania? Ah, 'tain't! It's in America, because Mr. Lamb went there last winter. 'Sides, even if it was across the sea, couldn't we go an' be stow'ways, like the Younger Brothers and all them? And Little Lord Fauntleroy. He went and was a lord, and he wasn't nothing but a' orphing. My ma read me about him, only she don't talk English very good, but we'll go stow'ways," he wound up, triumphantly. "Gerrrrrrtrrrrrude!" A high-pitched voice from the stoop. Gertie glowered at a tall, meager woman with a long green-and-white apron over a most respectable black alpaca gown. Her nose was large, her complexion dull, but she carried herself so commandingly as to be almost handsome and very formidable. "Oh, dear!" Gertie stamped her foot. "Now I got to go in. I never can have any fun. Good-by, Carl----" He urgently interrupted her tragic farewell. "Say! Gee whillikins! I know what we'll do. You sneak out the back door and I'll meet you, and we'll run away and go seek-our-fortunes and we'll find your cousin----" "Gerrrtrrrude!" from the stoop. "Yes, mamma, I'm just coming." To Carl: "'Sides, I'm older 'n you and I'm 'most grown-up, and I don't believe in Santy Claus, and onc't I taught the infant class at St. Chrysostom's Sunday-school when the teacher wasn't there; anyway, I and Miss Bessie did, and I asked them 'most all the questions about the trumpets and pitchers. So I couldn't run away. I'm too old." "Gerrrtrrrude, come here this _instant_!" "Come on. I'll be waiting," Carl demanded. She was gone. She was being ushered into the House of Mysterious Shutters by Mrs. Cowles. Carl prowled down the street, a fine, new, long stick at his side, like a saber. He rounded the block, and waited back of the Cowles carriage-shed, doing sentry-go and planning the number of parrots and pieces of eight he would bring back from San Francisco. _Then_ his father and mother would be sorry they'd talked about him in their Norwegian! "Carl!" Gertie was running around the corner of the carriage-shed. "Oh, Carl, I had to come out and see you again, but I can't go seek-our-fortunes with you, 'cause they've got the piano moved in now and I got to practise, else I'll grow up just an ignorant common person, and, besides, there's going to be tea-biscuits and honey for supper. I saw the honey." He smartly swung his saber to his shoulder, ordering, "Come on!" Gertie edged forward, perplexedly sucking a finger-joint, and followed him along Lake Street toward open country. They took to the Minnesota & Dakota railroad track, a natural footpath in a land where the trains were few and not fast, as was the condition of the single-tracked M. & D. of 1893. In a worried manner Carl inquired whether San Francisco was northwest or southeast--the directions in which ran all self-respecting railroads. Gertie blandly declared that it lay to the northwest; and northwest they started--toward the swamps and the first forests of the Big Woods. He had wonderlands to show her along the track. To him every detail was of scientific importance. He knew intimately the topography of the fields beside the track; in which corner of Tubbs's pasture, between the track and the lake, the scraggly wild clover grew, and down what part of the gravel-bank it was most exciting to roll. As far along the track as the Arch, each railroad tie (or sleeper) had for him a personality: the fat, white tie, which oozed at the end into an awkward knob, he had always hated because it resembled a flattened grub; a new tamarack tie with a sliver of fresh bark still on it, recently put in by the section gang, was an entertaining stranger; and he particularly introduced Gertie to his favorite, a wine-colored tie which always smiled. Gertie, though _noblesse oblige_ compelled her to be gracious to the imprisoned ties writhing under the steel rails, did not really show