The Adventures of Bobby Orde Part 31

But one day Bobby, walking glumly over to the composing stone, suggested something new.

"Let's start a newspaper," said he.

The clang of the press came to an abrupt stop.

"Let's start a newspaper," he repeated. "We've got enough pica to print one page at a time."

Rashly Johnny agreed. All went well until it came time to print the sheet. Eighteen subscribers were secured at five cents a copy. Johnny and Bobby wrote the entire number between them. Bobby set it up, happily. Johnny, also happily, turned out certain letter-heads at the press. Then came time to print. And at that moment trouble began.

The first copy was legible but smudgy. Bobby was not satisfied and attempted improvement, most of which, so far from improving, gave cause for fresh defects. Johnny was standing about impatiently.

"Come on," said he at last, "that's good enough. They can read it, all right, and those few letters don't matter. Let it go at that."

But Bobby shook his head and carried the form back to the composing stone.

Four days he worked over the first page of the _Weekly Eagle_. Johnny expostulated, stormed, pleaded with tears in his eyes.

"Let's let the whole thing slide," he begged. "All we get out of it anyway is less'n a dollar and think of all the time we're wasting. That job for Mr. Fowler isn't all done, and Smith's Meat Market is going to order some bill-heads."

But Bobby was obstinate. Finally Johnny, in disgust, left him to his own devices.

The world for Bobby contained but one thing. His recollections of that time are of a flaring gas jet and the smell of printer's ink. He won finally and duly delivered the eighteen copies--letter-perfect. Probably five hundred other and imperfect examples of the _Weekly Eagle_ found their way into the furnace.

Johnny plucked up heart and returned, only to find that the printing press question was dead as far as Bobby was concerned.

"I'm sick of printing," was all Bobby would say, and no argument as to unexploited wealth could move him. The subject had not only lost interest, but mere casual thought of its details brought on a faint repet.i.tion of the mental lethargy. The sight of the press and its varied appurtenances threw his mind into the defensive blank coma which rendered him incapable of the simplest intellectual effort. This was something as outside Bobby's control as the beating of his heart. He did not understand it, nor attempt to a.n.a.lyze it.

"I'm sick of it," said he; just as after the labour of building a fort in Monrovia, he had with the same remark deserted his companions on the threshold of its enjoyment.

Bobby thought he exercised a choice when he turned from printing, just as he chose whether to walk on the right or on the left side of the street. In reality it would have been impossible for him to re-enter his interest, his enthusiasm; impossible even for him to have accomplished the mechanical labour of the trade save at an utterly disproportionate expense of nervous energy.

Bobby did not know this; of course, Johnny was not capable of such a.n.a.lysis. The only human being who might have understood and worked in correction of the tendency, read the affair amiss. Mrs. Orde was only too glad to get Bobby into the open air again, and saw in his abandonment of this feverish enthusiasm only cause for rejoicing.

So Bobby threw his friend into despair by declining to go on with a flourishing business. "Bime by," said he. "I'm sick of it, now." As a matter of fact he never touched the printing press again. His parents deplored the useless waste of a large amount of money and drew the usual conclusion that it is foolish to buy children expensive things. No doubt from that standpoint the affair was deplorable; yet there is this to be noted, that Bobby's enthusiasm blew out only after he had thought all around the subject, back front, bottom and sides. He knew that printing press theoretically and practically and all it could do. As long as it withheld the smallest secret Bobby clung to it, his soul at white heat.

But the repet.i.tion and again the repet.i.tion of what he had learned thoroughly struck cold his every higher faculty. He shrugged it all from him, and turned with unabated freshness his inquiring child's eyes to what new the world had to offer him.

XXI

WINTER

After the collapse of the printing business Bobby and Johnny turned to Bobby Junior and the little sleigh. They drove often, far into the country. It was the dead of winter. The country was wide and still and white. Against the prevailing note of the snow the patches of woods showed almost black. The landscape looked strangely flattened out, and bereft of life. Nevertheless that impression was false, for the little sleigh climbed and dipped over many hills and hollows; and the boys were continually seeing living things and their indications. Tracks of small animals embroidered the snow. Strange tame birds hopped here and there or rose and swept down wind with plaintive pipings that, in spite of their lack of fear, lent them a spirit of wildness akin to the aloof savaging of winter winds in bared trees. Bobby and Johnny recognized the snow buntings, tossing in compact big companies like flakes in a whirlwind, the unsoiled white effect of their plumage shaming the snow.

Besides these were little red-polls, dressed warmly in magenta and brown for the winter, hopping and clinging among the seed-weeds exposed by the breezes; and hardy, impudent, harsh-voiced blue-jays, cloaking much villany and cunning under wondrous suits of clothes; and trim, neat cedar wax-wings, perching on elevated twigs, always apparently at leisure; in the woods, whole bands of chickadees and nuthatches, cruising it cheerfully, calling to each other in their varied notes, tiny atoms defying all the cold and famine Old Winter could bring. Once they were vastly excited to catch sight of a h.o.a.ry, wide-winged monster sweeping like a ghost close to the snow. They surmised it might be a Great Snow Owl, like the stuffed one in the English library, but they never knew. And again, in some trees alongside the road, they came upon a large flock of stocky-built birds, a little smaller than robins, so tame that the boys drove beneath them and could see their thick bills, and the marvellous clarity of the sunset yellow of their heads, shading to twilight down their backs, to black night on their wings, barred by a strip of clear white moonlight. They agreed that these were most unusual-looking creatures. How unusual any naturalist would have been glad to tell them; for these were that great and prized rarity, the Evening Grosbeak. So, too, in the pine woods they were showered by bits of cones, and looked aloft to make out a distant little bird busily engaged in tearing the cones to pieces. They laughed at his industry, but would have been immensely interested could they have examined at close hand the Crossbill's beak and its singular adaption to just this task. And of course they remarked the stately deliberate-looking prints of the grouse; and the herded tramping of the quail. The winter was populous enough, in spite of its rigour. Some of its many creatures the boys knew; many more they did not; but you may be sure they saw all that did not exercise the closest circ.u.mspection.

For miles about, the little sleigh explored the country: main-road, worn smooth by countless farmer-sleighs; by-roads, through which the pony had to wallow belly-deep, making a new track. Not the mere pleasure of driving lured them out--that amounted to little after the week of novelty--but something of the spirit of exploration was in it. Duke always accompanied them, plunging powerfully through the deepest drifts, exulting in the snow, rolling in it, frisking in it in all directions, racing down the road and back, glad to be alive and warm this freezing weather. One day in a patch of woods he came to an abrupt halt. The boys, watching, saw his eye fixed, his upper lip snarl back the least in the world, his tail stiffen except at its quivering tip, his whole body lengthen and half-crouch and turn rigid. And as the sleigh wallowed near him, suddenly, with an immense scattering of snow and a startling roar, an old c.o.c.k-partridge burst from beneath the surface of the snow and hurtled away through the frozen trees.

Some days when the wind blew keen and sharp as knives across the broad reaches, it was almost impossible for the boys to keep warm. The heated soap-stone wrapped up at their feet, the warm buffalo robes under and over them, their thick overcoats and fur caps alike proved inadequate.

Then one took his turn at driving, while the other crouched entirely covered beneath the robes. The wind drove the hard, spa.r.s.e flakes from the low leaden sky like so many needles against the driver's face, filling his eyes with tears, causing his skin to glow and smart. Even in this was a certain joy and adventure. But again the sun would shine, the bells jingle louder in the clarified air. Probably, however, the boys liked best of all the warm, still snowstorms, when all the world was m.u.f.fled in the shoes of silence; when nature held her finger on hushed lips; when deliberately, without haste the great white flakes zigzagged down from the soft gray above, obscuring and softening the landscape, rendering dear and mysterious the commonest things. Then sounds came, subdued as in a sanctuary, and people approaching showed portentous as through a mist, and the boys, looking upward, caught big wet flakes on their lashes as they tried in vain to determine the point at which the snowflakes became visible. There existed no such point. The snowflakes did not approach as other things approach, beginning small with distance, and becoming larger as they neared. They flashed into sight full-grown. It was as though they had fallen wrapped in invisibility until the great Magician had uttered the word. That was Bobby's secret thought, which he told n.o.body. Often he imagined he could hear the word repeated all about him, _presto! presto! presto! presto!_ like the distant hushed falling of waters. And as the charm was said, he, looking skyward, could see the big soft flakes flash into view out of nothing.

XXII

THE MURDER

So successful did the friendship between the two boys turn out to be that next autumn Johnny English was invited to visit the Ordes at Monrovia. He accepted very promptly, and, as the distance was short, brought with him the cart and pony. The country around Monrovia was very interesting to them. Riverland, marshland, swampland, sh.o.r.e and meadow, all offered themselves in the most diversified forms. The sandy roads wound over the hills, down the ravines, along the corduroys and float-bridges. Life was varied. The boys, armed with their Flobert rifle, wandered far afield.

They did not get very much, it is true, but they popped away steadily, and did a grand amount of sneaking and looking. And they managed first and last to see a great deal. In the snipe marshes they knew when the first flight dropped in--and murdered a killdeer as he stood. Out in the sloughs they marked the earnest red-heads from the north--and accomplished two mud-hens, a ruddy duck, and a dozen blackbirds. In the uplands they knew almost to a feather how many partridge each thicket had bred; to a covey where the quail used; and once in a great while, by strategy on their own side and foolishness on the part of the quarry, they caught one sitting and brought it down. What is quite as much to the point, they felt the season as it changed. The gradual transformation from the green of summer to the brown and lilac of late autumn, the low swinging of the sun, the mellowing of the days, the broad-hung curtain of sweet smoke-breeze, the hushing of the vital forces of the world in antic.i.p.ation of winter--all these pa.s.sed near them and, pa.s.sing, touched their eyes. They were too busy to notice such things consciously, however. The influence sank deep and became part of the permanent background against which their lives were to be thrown.

At first some doubt was expressed as to the wisdom of that Flobert rifle. To turn two small boys loose with a deadly weapon seemed to Mrs.

Orde a rather strong temptation of Providence. Mr. Kincaid spoke for them. In the end it was decided, though with many misgivings and more admonitions.

"Keep the muzzle pointed up; never get excited; never shoot at anything unless you _know_ what it is," was Mr. Kincaid's summing up.

These three precepts were so constantly impressed that to the boys their practice ended by becoming second nature.

"It's not only dangerous to do these things," said Mr. Kincaid, "but it's a sure sign of a greenhorn. A man ought to be deadly ashamed to confess himself such an all-round dub."

Toward the end of the fall, and nearing Thanksgiving, the boys drove Bobby Junior out the old east road. After a time they turned off into a by-way deep with sand. It ended. They hitched the placid Bobby Junior to the top rail of a "snake-fence" climbed it, and headed toward a scrub-oak and popple thicket thrown like a blanket over the long slope of a hill. They walked cautiously, for by experience they had learned that at the very edge, and in the lea of an old burned log, it was possible a fine big c.o.c.k-partridge might be sunning himself. The popples, shining silvery, were almost bare of leaves, but the scrub oaks clung tenaciously to a crackling umber-brown foliage. It was now near the close of the afternoon. The game bag was empty. Both boys trod on eggs, scrutinizing every inch of the ground before them.

"It's too late for 'em," whispered Bobby in discouragement. "There's not enough sun. They've gone in to feed."

But Johnnie seized his arm.

"There," he breathed, "See him! He's sitting in that little scrub oak--just to the left of the stub."

Bobby peered along his friend's arm. After a moment he made out a mottled spot of brown.

"I see him," said he, c.o.c.king his rifle. "It's his breast. I wish I could get at his head."

"He'll be gone in a minute!" warned Johnny.

It was Bobby's turn to shoot. He raised his weapon, aimed carefully, and pressed the trigger.

Immediately the thicket broke into a tremendous commotion. A scurrying of leaves, a brief exclamation of pain, a brown cap whirling through the air--and both boys turned and ran, ran as hard as they could up the hill until sheer lack of breath brought them to the ground. They stared at each other with frightened eyes from faces chalky white.

"We've killed somebody!" gasped Johnny.

They clung to each other trembling with the horror of it, utterly unable to gather their faculties. This was just what so often both had been cautioned against--the shooting without seeing clearly the object of aim. To the shock of a catastrophe they had to add the sinking remorse over warnings disobeyed.

"What are we going to do?" chattered Johnny at last.

"We got to go down and see----"