Part 4 (1/2)
The dog raised his head, stirred, blinked, pounded his tail on the floor, and rose, a gentlemanly, affable chap, to lay his muzzle on Bone's knee while the solitary droned:
”This fellow says in this book here that the city 's the natural place to live--aboriginal tribes prove man 's naturally gregarious. What d'you think about it, heh, Bob?... b.u.m country, this is. No thinking.
What in the name of the seven saintly sisters did I ever want to be a farmer for, heh?
”Let's skedaddle, Bob.
”I ain't an atheist. I'm an agnostic.
”Lonely, Bob? Go over and talk to his whiskers, Karl Marx. He's liberal. He don't care what you say. He---- Oh, shut up! You're d.a.m.n poor company. Say something!”
Carl, still motionless, was the more agonized because there was no sound from Gertie, not even a sobbing call. Anything might have happened to her. While he was coaxing himself to knock on the pane, Stillman puttered about the shack, petting the dog, filling his pipe.
He pa.s.sed out of Carl's range of vision toward the side of the room in which was the window.
A huge hand jerked the window open and caught Carl by the hair. Two wild faces stared at each other, six inches apart.
”I saw you. Came here to plague me!” roared Bone Stillman.
”Oh, mister, oh please, mister, I wasn't. Me and Gertie is lost in the woods--we----Ouch! Oh, _please_ lemme go!”
”Why, you're just a brat! Come here.”
The lean arm of Bone Stillman dragged Carl through the window by the slack of his gingham waist.
”Lost, heh? Where's t'other one--Gertie, was it?”
”She's over in the woods.”
”Poor little tyke! Wait 'll I light my lantern.”
The swinging lantern made friendly ever-changing circles of light, and Carl no longer feared the dangerous territory of the yard. Riding pick-a-back on Bone Stillman, he looked down contentedly on the dog's deferential tail beside them. They found Gertie asleep by the fire.
She scarcely awoke as Stillman picked her up and carried her back to his shack. She nestled her downy hair beneath his chin and closed her eyes.
Stillman said, cheerily, as he ushered them into his mansion: ”I'll hitch up and take you back to town. You young tropical tramps! First you better have a bite to eat, though. What do kids eat, bub?”
The dog was nuzzling Carl's hand, and Carl had almost forgotten his fear that the devil might appear. He was flatteringly friendly in his answer: ”Porritch and meat and potatoes--only I don't like potatoes, and--_pie!_”
”'Fraid I haven't any pie, but how'd some bacon and eggs go?” As he stoked up his cannon-ball stove and sliced the bacon, Stillman continued to the children, who were shyly perched on the buffalo-robe cover of his bed, ”Were you scared in the woods?”
”Yes, sir.”
”Don't ever for----Da----Blast that egg! Don't forget this, son: nothing outside of you can ever hurt you. It can chew up your toes, but it can't reach you. n.o.body but you can hurt you. Let me try to make that clear, old man, if I can....
”There's your fodder. Draw up and set to. Pretty sleepy, are you? I'll tell you a story. J' like to hear about how Napoleon smashed the theory of divine rule, or about how me and Charlie Weems explored Tiburon? Well----”
Though Carl afterward remembered not one word of what Bone Stillman said, it is possible that the outcast's treatment of him as a grown-up friend was one of the most powerful of the intangible influences which were to push him toward the great world outside of Joralemon. The school-bound child--taught by young ladies that the worst immorality was whispering in school; the chief virtue, a dull quietude--was here first given a reasonable basis for supposing that he was not always to be a back-yard boy.
The man in the flannel s.h.i.+rt, who chewed tobacco, who wrenched infinitives apart and thrust profane words between, was for fifteen minutes Carl's Froebel and Montessori.