Part 8 (1/2)
Doris Carson was expectantly waiting for one of the boys to ”see her home,” but Carl guiltily stole up to Ben Rusk and commanded:
”Le's hike, Fatty. Le's take a walk. Something big to tell you.”
CHAPTER V
Carl kicked up the snow in moon-shot veils. The lake boomed. For all their woolen mittens, ribbed red-cotton wristlets, and plush caps with ear-laps, the cold seared them. Carl encouraged Ben to discourse of Gertie and the delights of a long and hopeless love. He discovered that, actually, Ben had suddenly fallen in love with Adelaide Benner.
”Gee!” he exulted. ”Maybe that gives me a chance with Gertie, then.
But I won't let her know Ben ain't in love with her any more. Jiminy!
ain't it lucky Gertie liked me just when Ben fell in love with somebody else! Funny the way things go; and her never knowing about Ben.” He laid down his cards. While they plowed through the hard snow-drifts, swinging their arms against their chests like milkmen, he blurted out all his secret: that Gertie was the ”slickest girl in town”; that no one appreciated her.
”Ho, ho!” jeered Ben.
”I thought you were crazy about her, and then you start kidding about her! A swell bunch of chivalry you got, you and your Galahad! You----”
”Don't you go jumping on Galahad, or I'll fight!”
”He was all right, but you ain't,” said Carl. ”You hadn't ought to ever sneer at love.”
”Why, you said, just this afternoon----”
”You poor yahoo, I was only teasing you. No; about Gertie. It's like this: she was telling me a lot about how Griffin 's going to be a lawyer, about how much they make in cities, and I've about decided I'll be a lawyer.”
”Thought you were going to be a mechanical engineer?”
”Well, can't a fellow change his mind? When you're an engineer you're always running around the country, and you never get shaved or anything, and there ain't any refining influences----”
The absorbing game of ”what we're going to be” made them forget snow and cold-squeezed fingers. Ben, it was decided, was to own a newspaper and support C. Ericson, Attorney-at-Law, in his dramatic run for state senator.
Carl did not mention Gertie again. But it all meant Gertie.
Carl made his round tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the arc-lights next day, apparently a rudely healthy young person, but really a dreamer love-lorn and misunderstood. He had found a good excuse for calling on Gertie, at noon, and had been informed that Miss Gertrude was taking a nap. He determined to go up the lake for rabbits. He doubted if he would ever return, and wondered if he would be missed. Who would care if he froze to death? He wouldn't! (Though he did seem to be taking certain precautions, by donning a mackinaw coat, two pairs of trousers, two pairs of woolen socks, and shoe-packs.)
He was graceful as an Indian when he swept, on skees he had made himself, across miles of snow covering the lake and dazzling in the diffused light of an even gray sky. The reeds by the marshy sh.o.r.e were frost-glittering and clattered faintly. Marshy islands were lost in snow. Hummocks and ice-jams and the weaving patterns of mink tracks were blended in one white immensity, on which Carl was like a fly on a plaster ceiling. The world was deserted. But Carl was not lonely. He forgot all about Gertie as he cached his skees by the sh.o.r.e and prowled through the woods, leaping on brush-piles and shooting quickly when a rabbit ran out.
When he had bagged three rabbits he was besieged by the melancholy of loneliness, the perfection of the silver-gowned Gertie. He wanted to talk. He thought of Bone Stillman.
It was very likely that Bone was, as usual in winter, up beyond Big Bend, fis.h.i.+ng for pickerel with tip-ups. A never-stopping dot in the dusk, Carl headed for Big Bend, three miles away.
The tip-up fisher watches a dozen tip-ups--short, automatic fis.h.i.+ng-rods, with lines running through the ice, the pivoted arm signaling the presence of a fish at the bait. Sometimes, for warmth, he has a tiny shanty, perhaps five feet by six in ground area, heated by a powder-can stove. Bone Stillman often spent the night in his movable shanty on the lake, which added to his reputation as village eccentric. But he was more popular, now, with the local sporting gentlemen, who found that he played a divine game of poker.
”h.e.l.lo, son!” he greeted Carl. ”Come in. Leave them long legs of yours up on sh.o.r.e if there ain't room.”
”Say, Bone, do you think a fellow ever ought to join a church?”
”Depends. Why?”