A Son of the City Part 44

At that, the number was pitifully inadequate for his demands. He retraced his steps to the corner and hurried over to the suburban railroad station. There, the leader of the "Jefferson Toughs" was trying to dispose of the last of his wares.

"Let's have 'em all," said John. His rival gazed at him in amazement.

"Quit your kiddin'," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed finally.

"Honest 'n truth," John a.s.sured him. "Missed the paper wagon, and I've got to fix my customers, somehow."

Next, he ran westward to the little school store to beg Miss Thomas to disappoint her steady patrons for just this once. The search led him far beyond the university buildings and the gray-stone flat which had marked the limits of their hitching trip in February, down to the business street with its rattling surface cars which lay a full mile west of John's home. He returned by a side street, four blocks to the north, stopping at the numerous little stationery and notion shops on the way.

Even with that, certain staid and substantial customers were horrified to find that the yellowest of yellow newspapers had supplanted their conservative favorite, that evening.

He came home tired and footsore, and went wearily to bed after a half-eaten supper. The business which he had built up so zestfully in the autumn had enfettered him, and was shaping his leisure moments like an inexorable machine, and the realization of it gave him moodily thoughtful moments during the remainder of the week.

Sunday, blessedly work free, was warm and sun-shiny. As soon as he had eaten dinner, he grabbed his battered cap from the hall chair and started for the door.

"Going for a walk," he explained to Mrs. Fletcher as she looked up from the Sunday paper.

"Louise going with you?"

"Not much! Silvey'n me are going on a real walk. We don't want to feed squirrels on an afternoon like this."

It was as if the entire city's population had turned out to welcome the arrival of spring. The street leading from the car terminal was thronged with a constantly moving procession bound for the park. White-faced stenographers and anaemic clerks came from the dingy boarding-house districts to the north. Stockily built mechanics swaggered along with their simpering, gaudily dressed lady loves. Here and there were entire families of substantial Germans and Swedes, and occasionally, swarthy Italians and beady-eyed, voluble Jews. Sooner or later, they all lost themselves in the winding gravel paths of the park, or made their way to the broad walk along the lake front, where the air was filled with their polyglot babel.

"Isn't it peachy?" asked John as the boys pa.s.sed the long, parallel rows of poplars which marked the edge of the park. "Come on, Bill. Let's go to the island."

The path led them by the boat landing. All traces of the warming house which had sheltered so many numbed skaters during the winter had been removed. In its stead, were piled rows upon rows of yellow, flat-bottomed boats, one on top of another, with boards separating them.

"Look!" John pointed them out. "That means summer's coming soon, and fishing, and school vacation." On the island, they found two severely dressed, angular students from the university who stood beneath a small brown bird in the branch of a budding maple. As he sunned himself happily, the taller of the two consulted a book which she held in one hand in a manner vaguely suggestive of Miss Brown and school recitations.

"It is a little smaller than Wilson's thrush, Maria," she admitted.

"Still----"

John chuckled; "Nothing but a sparrow." He brushed past a bench on which was squatted a be-shawled, unwashed, immigrant grandmother. "Come on down this little path, Bill. Perhaps we can find some birds if we look."

But the season was still a little too early for the arrival of the robins, the yellowhammers, and the elusive kinglets and thrushes from the southland. Though the boys stalked in and out the winding, bush-beset trail, their search startled only nervous-tailed squirrels and dozens of the feathered gamins which had so sorely puzzled the two schoolmams. But the dandelions were poking their green shoots through the deposit of snow-packed autumn leaves, and the moss on the tree trunks lightened the somber gray of the bark. In one inlet of the lagoon, John caught a gleam in the water which was not a ripple reflection of the sun's rays.

"Sunfish," he whispered to Bill.

A bungling pair of grown-ups crashed down the path and drove the wary feeders to cover in deeper water. The boys waited a few futile minutes for their return, then dashed noisily over the wooden south bridge, past the golf links with its dense ma.s.s of patiently waiting enthusiasts, and down the gently sloping road to the stone bridge which marked the entrance to the yacht harbor.

There, where the black, bobbing buoys marked the moorings of the summer fleet of skiffs and schooners, of noisy little open motorboats, and long, heavily powered gasoline cruisers, Silvey found an empty bottle on the graveled sh.o.r.e. John looked at it reflectively.

"Got some paper?"

Bill found an old spelling sheet in his pocket. John tore off the cleanest end and, with the curving side of the bottle for a writing board, scribbled a laborious note.

"Lat 57, Long 64," he began, remembering the inevitable heading of the missives in sea-faring novels. "Nancy Lee sank this date, August 3, 1872. All hands lost but me. Frank Smith."

"What's that for?"

He worked the note down the narrow gla.s.s neck and plugged it with a bit of driftwood. "Maybe somebody, 'way across the lake, will find this," he explained, as he threw the receptacle far out on the water. "Then they'll think a ship's sunk."

"What's 'lat' and 'long'?" asked Silvey, as they watched it bobbing up and down with the ripples.

"The checkerboard lines on the geography maps," his chum answered evasively, as they retraced their steps northward.

At the macadam road they hesitated. On the other side lay the smaller golf course, which offered excellent amus.e.m.e.nt because of its many enthusiastic novices at the sport, and the lure of an occasional shrubbery-hidden ball which might be found by keen eyes. Ahead, stretched the lake and the broad walk, thronged with laughing, friendly humanity.

"Let's go the beach way," said John suddenly. Indeed, no spring jaunt could be complete without a stroll over the clinging, weather-beaten sand.

They halted first at the long pier, and walked out to the end to catch the invigorating freshness of the water-kissed south wind. There, a persistent fisherman, the first of that season's nimrod tribe, leaned against the life-preserver post.

John leaned cautiously over to see if captive perch were floating back and forth. Only ruffled water met his gaze.

"Biting any?" he asked.

The fisherman shook his head. "A mite early, I guess."

"Oh, I don't know," John encouraged. "Come on, Sil, let's sit down and watch. Maybe he'll catch something soon."

So the boys dangled their feet over the edge of the pier until the lengthening shadows told that it was time to leave for home. They rose regretfully and resumed the saunter along the broad walk with its many, occupied benches. Down on the sand, children hazarded spring colds as they fashioned hills and castles by the lake. Further along, an ardent youth serenely disregarded photographic rules and pointed his kodak at a group of laughing girls who stood between him and the setting sun. As the boys left the park, they pa.s.sed a group of gray-suited ball players, which had been using one of the park diamonds near the golf links. John watched them a minute.

"Most time for our team to get together again," he said.

Silvey nodded. "Sid was talking about it after the game of scrub the other day. Wants to be captain this year."

John laughed scornfully. As Silvey well knew, he, himself, intended to be re-elected to that important office. "Let's go home by the big lot and see what it's like," he suggested.

A few minutes later they clambered over the shaky fence which separated the field from the sidewalk and neighboring dairy pasturage. Silvey dug his foot into the yielding turf, which had formed the scene of that football scrimmage between the "Jeffersons" and the "Tigers."

"'Most dry enough to play on," he observed.

John nodded. The flat, white stone which had been used for a home plate during the summer had been removed as a hindrance to the gridiron sport, and the base lines which had been worn into the turf by frequent boyish footsteps, were almost obliterated by the winter's debris and the rank, quickening gra.s.s. Not an inspiring view by any means, yet John gazed upon it in dreamy satisfaction.

"Let's make 'er a _real_ home grounds," he said suddenly. "Soon as it gets drier, we'll bring our rakes over and get this stuff out of the way;" he kicked a rusty tin can to one side. "Then we'll cut the gra.s.s and make cinder base lines, and everything'll be just peachy."

Silvey beamed, enthralled as usual by John's fertile imagination.

"Then," went on John, as he retraced his steps to the walk, "we'll get some lumber from new flat buildings and put up a grand stand and call it 'The Tigers' Baseball Park.'"

They halted some minutes later in front of the Silvey house. John's watch told of at least a quarter of an hour before supper time, and they perched themselves on the top step to talk of fishing, of the May vacation of a week which would soon be upon them, of the leaky roof in the shack, and lastly of the baseball team.

"Joe Menard's folks had to move," said Silvey, as he thought over the roster of last year's organization.

"We'll get a pitcher somewhere," said John, a trifle impatiently, as he changed the subject. "So Sid wants to be captain, does he?"

Silvey smiled, as does an adult listening to the vagaries of a child.

"You know him as well as I do."