Chapter C: F. L (7)

The cat was a mass of wounds; and as I counted the eleven fatal thrusts, I marvelled at his vitality and pluck—and very heartily respected them, too. Any one of ten of them would have finally killed him, but he had kept his hold to the very last, which had sunk deep into his heart.

And such a small beast to attack the lord of creation! I do not think he weighed over thirty pounds; but what a model of compact strength and agility! His skin was so slashed as to be absolutely unsavable; but I kept his scalp a long time, till the moths destroyed it.

As for myself, I was in little more attractive shape than he. Of my stout duck coat and trousers only the right half remained. My duck vest and heavy flannel shirt boasted little but a few shreds two-thirds of the way around my body. I was half-naked, and my breast, back, left side and left thigh were laced with deep, bleeding gashes.

There is only one thing about that day which I do not remember; and that is, how I got back that ten miles to camp. But somehow I got there; for when I awoke next morning, very weak and stiff—for of all wounds I know of none so painful as those inflicted by a cat—I was under my roof of birch bark, and a spotted scalp lay on the sand beside me.

A Tame Deer.

A Tame Deer.

Buck deer, at certain seasons, or when wounded, may be very ugly customers; and in hunting East and West, I have had several unpleasant experiences with them. The very first deer I ever killed, up in the New Hampshire mountains, came wonderfully close to killing me—after his hind leg was broken at the hip and I thought it was quite safe to close in to finish him. How he literally “wiped the ground” with me!

Others of his kind have given me trouble and danger in varying degrees, and in a variety of ways; and I have known several persons killed by them. But the “closest call” a deer ever gave me, and one of the most terrible struggles in all my hunting and wandering, befell me in the heart of the city of Los Angeles; and the hero was a “tame” buck.

It was many years ago, at a time when my passion for pets, always strong, had unusual opportunities for gratification in one of the moss-gathering intervals of a usually rolling stone. Behind the house (where a half-million dollar block stands to-day) was a good-sized yard, for a city lot, well shaded with eucalyptus trees, and with a substantial shed. Here was plenty of room for pets, and we acquired a variety of them.

First in our affection was my precious old cat Beauty, which had come with the family from Ohio. There was also a horse, which boarded at the livery stable; and a fine Danish hound that had adopted us. This did very well for a while. But during a vacation run over New Mexico, I wounded a young eagle; and, seeing that his wing would soon heal under proper care, I brought him home and kept him in a leash on the back porch, where he throve admirably.

Then someone presented me with a barn-owl, and he kept the eagle company. Rabbits have always pleased me; and presently I made some hutches, and in time had them peopled with a dozen rabbits and guinea-pigs. In a cage in my study lived a couple of handsome rattlesnakes; and one day I brought home in a slatted box a tiny wildcat—at which a patient wife cried:

“Don’t get anything more, Charlie! We can’t move now without stepping on a pet; and they are too much care for me, with you gone at the office all day and almost all night!”

But in spite of herself she grew very fond of the wildcat baby, which would lie in her lap and purr with the most ridiculously disproportionate voice. It could hardly have been a month old; and had I been the hunter who found it in the Sierra Madre, it should never have been taken from its fierce mother at such an age—for it had not been weaned, evidently.

Its body was not as large as that of a lean house-cat, but its legs were quite one-half longer, so that it had rather the appearance of being on stilts—and very uncertain, wobbly ones, too. Its feet were twice the size of Beauty’s, and its voice, in growling, was so heavy and so savage that one could scarce believe it issued from that ungainly little frame.

It was very gentle with its mistress, purred sonorously whenever she petted it, and went stumbling all over the house at her heels. Nor was it hostile to the young lady who completed our family, not half so afraid of Beauty as Beauty was of this wild cousin. But with me it would have nothing to do. As I was then city editor of the morning newspaper, and was very little at home, it evidently looked upon me as an interloper, and at a glance of me would snarl and show fight as sincerely as a grown lynx. And it was an enemy not altogether to be laughed at, as there are still scars to testify.

Once it climbed up and hid among the springs of my bed, and the heavy buck gloves I put on for the task of dislodging it did not save me from ugly tastes of those keen teeth and claws. Perhaps it is quite as well that Tiger did not survive his infancy, but died of congestion at four or five months old. Had he grown up, without a change of heart, he might have become troublesome.

With this much of a household on our hands, we might very reasonably have been content; and so probably should have been but for one of those “chances of a lifetime” which are always befalling the enthusiast. A fellow down in the Mexican quarter of the city had a pet deer, and, learning of my hobby, pestered me to buy—“dirt cheap, Sir!”

“No, I don’t want any deer. Couldn’t take care of him.”

“Oh, but he is such a beauty, Sir, and tame as a sheep, and $10 is nothing. Just come and look at him!”

Well, it could do no harm to go and look at a pretty animal; so I went—with a virtuous resolve not to acquire another single pet.

The result was what might have been expected. He _was_ a beauty. There is almost nothing handsomer than a perfect Black-tail, and this was an excellent specimen—full grown, though young, with one fork on his dagger-sharp antlers, and gentle as a kitten. The first look of those liquid eyes made my resolution tremble; and when the lovely creature came and nestled his face into my vest with perfect confidence, I was lost.

I could not even wait to send an express-man for him. “Here is your $10,” said I; “and now give me a rope to lead him home.”

The rope was put around that graceful neck, and I started off in high glee. He followed me like a lamb through the back streets, paying little attention to people or wagons—for he had passed most of his life in the city—and much less abashed than his new master by the sensation we created. Once safely at home, I gave him a strong leather collar and a long steel chain, the other end of which hooked into a staple in the side of the shed.

Bonito, as we named him, seemed very content in his new home. At night he had a comfortable bed in the shed, and by day his place outside. There was plenty of alfalfa and young wheat, which we had cut for him from the rabbits’ patch, and bread and sugar from the house; and every morning my habit was to loose his chain and let him wander about the yard with me.

He had a great curiosity about the rabbits and the owl, a fair understanding with Giallo, the dog, a supreme contempt for the little wildcat—which had been transferred to a big cage in the yard and roared at us whenever we approached. As for the three human members of the family, he was hail-fellow-well-met with us all. He kept putting himself forward to be petted, delighted to be scratched behind the ears, and would rather eat from our hands than from his trough.

For five or six months Bonito was the pride of the family. He had grown very fat, and was sleek and handsome as one could wish. But with the advance of summer he turned misanthrope. He began to paw a considerable hollow by his post, and now and again stamped his hoof on the ground with that peculiarly audible rap which with wild deer is an alarm-signal sufficient to stampede a quietly grazing herd. Then he began to show some contempt for being petted, and several times pushed us away in a manner nothing short of rude.

At last I came home one night to find my wife much worked up. She had gone out that afternoon to feed Bonito and was giving him an apple, when suddenly he lowered his head and sprang at her. Luckily the sharp horns passed either side the slender waist, pinning her against the shed, but not hurting her; and with much presence of mind, instead of fainting or screaming or struggling, she scratched beneath his ears soothingly, and he at last let her escape unharmed.

“H’m! Well, don’t you go near him again,” said I. “I’ll attend to him myself, if that’s his temper;” and I forthwith procured a new chain.

Several times in the next few weeks he made lunges at me, but again would seem gentle and would enjoy a petting. Against my wife, however, he appeared to have taken a sudden grudge, and would tug on his chain at sight of her.

One Saturday she went to visit friends at the beach, and I was to follow on the half-past eight train next morning. It was four o’clock in the morning when I saw the paper to press and came home, and at seven o’clock got up to care for the pets before leaving.

When I went out to the yard, the deer was not there. The staple was torn out, and the drag of the chain enabled me to find where Bonito had jumped the fence and made off. I trailed him several blocks, and at last found him impudently grazing on a handsome lawn on Hill Street.

He did not attempt to elude me, and when I took the end of the chain he followed as meekly as you please, only stopping now and then to nibble a bit of grass by the sidewalk.

Unluckily just then I pulled out my watch. Seven-fifty! Time to hurry up—and when Don Bonito stooped to graze, I leaned back on the chain and brought him along. Five or six times this happened, and I fancied he was not quite so meek. Hungry he could not be—it was just his stupid notion to take a bite by the wayside; and my train would not wait for that. So each time that he halted, a steady but resistless pull brought him sliding forward, brace his feet as he would.

The last time I pulled there was a surprise. For an instant he held back with all his strength, and then, suddenly hunching his body like a panther, he gave a great bound at me. Losing balance at this sudden yielding of the weight, I sprawled on the sidewalk, and Bonito pounced upon me like a cat, cutting my leg with his sharp hoofs, and aiming his sharper horns at my ribs. It was as well that he had to do with no novice at catch-as-can wrestling, for without those years of keen practice I never should have come out from the next fifteen minutes—if, indeed, from the first onslaught. As it was, I clutched a horn at the first pass, within six inches of my side; and then, capturing the other, readily got my feet.

This head-lock counter-balanced his 20 pounds’ superiority in weight, but the very fact of being overpowered made him beside himself. He began to fight with inconceivable fury, twisting till he seemed like to break his neck in the effort to free his horns or get at me with his feet.

It began to appear that he had me in something like a “box.” It was equally out of the question to let him go or try to lead him farther. Every motion or snort of the infuriated animal showed that his one thought now was not escape, but revenge.

Still, confident in my muscles—like steel yet from a thirty-five-hundred-mile walk across the continent—I had no apprehensions. The only thing necessary was to take him home in such fashion that he could not hurt me; and once there, the chain would take care of him.

So I got my left arm locked in a chancery hold around his neck, my right hand still firmly holding his right horn, which worked uncomfortably close to my stomach, and thus, lifting him so that his fore feet were off the ground, I started homeward.

But there had been a reckoning without the host. The first two blocks went fairly, though in an unceasing violent struggle—rather to the scandal of the two or three passers we met, so early for Sunday morning in that quiet part of the town. But when I came with my prisoner to Fifth Street, it was with the consciousness that I was pretty well worn out, and that he, in spite of the strangle-lock, seemed to be growing fresher.

Each moment he fought with new rage and vigor, sometimes driving me against the fence, sometimes over the curb; lunging fiercely with those sinewy hind-legs, and striking wildly with the pointed fore-hoofs, whose dangerous effectiveness every hunter knows.

The way we wrestled and fought over the next six or seven hundred feet might have been amusing to bystanders, but became terrible to me. It was not for the bruises and gashes I got, nor for the breathless thumps against fences and trees, nor for the being violently thrown several times. I kept his head in chancery, and these small hurts were not much more than one expects to get in a good bout of catch-as-can with a human adversary.

As long as I could keep that deadlock on his neck I was perfectly safe from any serious injury, but the grim certainty confronted me that I could not keep it much longer. My arm began to give at his fiercest lunges, my breath and heart were alike stampeding, and I felt creeping over me the dizzy faintness of utter exhaustion. Never had wrestler given me such tussle before—though I have worked two hours “on the carpet” at a bout.

Down we went again at the last corner, and again a glancing hoof cut me as I fought back to my feet. I dropped the horn and clasped the left wrist with my right hand, drawing the arm tighter under the brute’s throat, at once to hold him surer and cut off his wind. But the broad leather collar seemed to save him. A burly fellow passed. “Help me with this deer!” I panted; but he looked at the savage struggles of Bonito and hurried on.

At the very gate the beast bore me down once more; but once more I struggled up and dragged him in. We swayed and fought along, tearing up the gravel-walks and flower-beds, and at last came to the shed. I could barely stand, and Bonito dragged me hither and yon. My eyes were hazy, and the cramped arms began to slip. Would Virginia never come? I yelled again, and just then she came running out.

“Fasten—his chains—around the post!” I had just breath to gasp; and, like the brave girl she was, she did it—in what seemed to me forever, while the deer and I fought the last bout.

“Run!” I cried, when the chain was at last secured; and when she was in the back door, I dragged Bonito to the end of his chain, loosed my hold and fell backward. I am positive that I could not have held him twenty seconds longer to save my life.

He slacked back on the tether and hurled himself forward till the steel links cracked again, and his eyes fairly started with the pressure on his throat. But the chain held, and his frantic efforts, which continued as long as I was in sight, were in vain. Had a link parted then, he would have had an easy victim. A few minutes’ breathing-spell made me over, and by a bit of good fortune I caught the next train, and reached Long Beach not far behind time—though with various large rents and blood stains on my clothing.

The next day a butcher was summoned to rid us of so dangerous a pet. He dealt Bonito a fearful blow on the forehead with a hatchet. The deer dropped as if shot, and lay motionless; and the butcher stepped forward with his knife. But like a flash the brute was on his feet again—and on his assailant, whose coat was pierced front and back by the sharp antlers. It was a remarkable chance that they had not entered his abdomen.

The butcher’s fat, rosy face turned a sickly gray. He kept his distance after that, and with a long-handled ax made thrice sure of the game before he would venture again within the radius of that chain.

Bonito dressed one hundred and fifty-six pounds—so you see he was no feather-weight for a wrestler. He was fat, and they said very good venison. At home we could not think of eating the meat of a former pet; but after his exploits, our sentiment did not go so far as to make us sorry that someone else could.

And since then I have never had an ambition to get another “tame deer.”

The Rebel Double Runner.

The Rebel Double Runner.

When I was a lad in a lonely New Hampshire village, in the memorable year of 1863, a great many fathers and uncles and older brothers were off at some fearful and dimly-comprehended distance, dressed in blue, and, as we reckoned it, fighting battles daily.

How brave they had looked one morning, as they left town, marching with fife and drum along the crazy sidewalk, and off down the “Depot Hill!”

After that, the games at school and after school took a decidedly warlike tinge. Wooden swords and muskets largely usurped the place of top and ball; and proud was the small boy whose grand-dad would lend him a real sword of 1812, or an ancient militia shako.

When the stern New Hampshire winter came on, with its sleighing and coasting and skating, military evolutions were somewhat curtailed—but not altogether. There were snow forts and snow battles; white-blocked Sumters that defied the assault of the enemy.

Patriotic feeling ran riot; and when one young school-fellow, named Tip, espoused the Southern cause for fun, and began to press our ramparts sore, gaining recruits every day by his sheer audacity, there came to be snow-balls slightly thawed and then left out over night to turn to ice—and, as a result, some dangerous casualties on the battle-field.

The very opposite of Tip in many ways was Mat Marks. Tip was restless, sometimes reckless, always full of mischief, but one of the squarest and least self-conscious of boys. His sudden “turning Rebel,” when he could hardly draft rebels enough to make the holding of our forts against them half-way interesting, was from no lack of as good patriotism as ours.

But Tip liked excitement, and was less vain than most of us; and without a second thought of any prejudice that he might excite because of this boyish enterprise, he abandoned the fort and took command of the enemy—“just to make it interesting.”

And, though he was always overwhelmingly outnumbered, interesting enough he made it for “Us Unions” before he finished.

Mat, on the other hand, while in a way as active and enterprising as Tip, was much bound to the traditions—not from any principle or understanding of them, but because he liked to be on the popular side, and at the head of it, too; for he had a remarkably good opinion of himself.

Thanks to his diplomacy, he counted more followers than any other lad in town, and was fully satisfied of the justice of his preëminence. He liked to deem himself “a born leader of men,” such as he read of; and I have often wondered, since, that we so long and so unquestioningly obeyed his smooth dictatorship. He was always “organizing”—the snow-ball battles were the outcome of his genius—and we carried out his orders with remarkable fidelity.

With the twentieth of December came a three-foot fall of snow, and in a few days it was hard packed on every highway, like a squeaky, white pavement. No more skating now—the sled was to be king for the next two months. For a few days everybody coasted, hit or miss; and the long slide swarmed like an ant-hill going crazy. But then the administrative mind of Mat began to work. Everyone sliding down hill on his own hook and straggling back at will—this was altogether too puerile and unorganized!

So Mat called a council of war.

“Say, boys,” he said, “I’ll tell you what let’s do! Instead of going higgledy-piggledy at it, like a lot of girls, let’s organize the coasting in good shape. We’ll have our rules and signals and right of way, just like a railroad, and a switch at the tannery corner so the small boys can go on to the toll-bridge, carrying supplies for the army, and the express-trains can turn off to the depot and take troops to the front.

“Then, too, I think father’ll let me have old Nell, and we can make her haul back all the sleds in a string, and let fellows have turns riding her down to meet us again. So that’ll get rid of the meanest part of it—the pulling our sleds up hill. Besides, we’re all the time having trouble with teams now; but if they all knew we were coming down in a steady string, they’d keep out of the way, and do their sledding only when the coast was clear. What do you fellows think?”

“Good enough!” “That’s the way!” “All right!” cried the crowd, in various voices, but with one mind. But when the exclamations were over, Tip tilted his sharp face a bit and said:

“Well, what are you going to do while Nell is getting down hill? Sit in the snow-drift there at the depot and rub your ears? Strikes me it’s better to turn around and climb back, and keep warm, ’stead of waiting there half an hour to freeze. And s’posing some team that didn’t know about our all comin’ down together was to get in the way? Then we’d be apt to get tangled up with each other and go to smash.”

“Huh!” retorted Mat, sharply; “I guess you’re scared. But you don’t have to join us. If the rest say to go in, I guess we can get along without you. What do you say, fellows? Shall we do it?”

“’Course we will!” was the chorus; and Mat looked triumphantly at his rival—for there was no denying that Mat reckoned as a rival, and therefore a foe, anyone who didn’t agree with him, as Tip generally did not. Tip returned the glance coolly and answered:

“Why, you fellows do as you like, of course—I ain’t bossing you. But you can count me out from any such goose-tag as that.”

“We wouldn’t have you anyhow!” cried Mat, nettled at this comparing them to a flock of geese waddling one after the other. “We don’t care to have any traitors in our crowd.”

“Yah, you old Rebel!” piped little Bill Burpee, taking his clew as usual; and several others echoed what was then the most dreadful word in our vocabulary.

“I ain’t a Rebel, and you know it!” Tip answered, warmly. “I guess my father’s fighting as hard as any of yours—and he ain’t staying home to tend grocery stores, like Mat’s!” with which parting shot he walked off scornfully and quite alone.

I can hardly understand now why we were so unjust to Tip. He had more in him than any other boy among us, was less selfish, more trustworthy and a better friend than ten Mats, and had done each of us no end of boy-kindnesses, instead of using us as cat’s-paws for his own ambition.

But just because he had “played Rebel” for a few days solely to put a little life into the war, the boys were “down on” him. His followers in that campaign we made no note of and harbored no grudge against.

Perhaps there was wounded vanity in the recollection how nearly his superior generalship had routed our superior forces. So unreasoning are early prejudices that I presume a few of us never did quite get the last grain of grudge out of our heads—unless, perhaps, fifteen years later, when Mat was clerking in his father’s store, and word came of the death of Capt. Tip in Arizona. He was slain by the Apaches after an heroic fight which saved an immigrant party till the arrival of troops enough to scatter the red fiends.

Well, Mat’s plan progressed famously. A small army of us, with brooms and shovels, worked over that mile and a half of road till the coast was in such good shape as no one ever dreamed of before.

The weather stayed obstinately cold; so, under Mat’s direction, we brought water by the bucketful and wet down the safer parts of the slide. There was some friction about this, for the older people objected to so much glare ice; but Mat compromised by not wetting the street crossings, and only a narrow track at the side of the road, so that sleighs had plenty of room without encroaching on our slide.

At the tannery corner we made a crescent of hard-packed snow, with sloping concavity, which rendered it rather easier to turn that dangerous angle. It was like the raised rail on the outside of the railway curve, or the “saucer-edge” of an automobile race-track.

And then came the marshalling of the clans. Our embryo Napoleon, of course, was commander-in-chief, and his pride, the double-runner “Avalanche,” led the line. There were in those days but half a dozen other double-runners in town. These were owned by young men. Mat’s was the only one in “our crowd.” It was a very fancy affair for then and there.

Right-hand-man Hunt was privileged to manage the rear, and the coveted remaining seats were occupied by guests of passing invitation.

It was no small social power to control a double-runner, and Mat made the most of it, giving rides to all his friends with great princeliness. But I remember that we never saw on Mat’s “traverse” any of the urchins from the lower end of the village—they had no “influence.”

Behind the “Avalanche” came sleds of all sorts and sizes. As for Tip, no one had seen him for several days. He lived up on the other hill—a hill even steeper than Dolloff’s, but coming in with such an ugly turn at the engine-house that no one coasted there since big Ned Green broke his neck on a wood-pile around the bend.

The great Saturday came for the formal inauguration of the Cannonball Railroad. Sixty-odd boys were gathered at the top of Dolloff’s Hill. Some girls were there, too, with their high, flat-runnered sleds, upon which we looked with supreme scorn. Kitty White and Annie Waters and May Thurston were comfortably tucked up on the cushioned seat behind Mat on his double-runner; and Hunt was holding back on the tail-board till the signal.

“All ready—go!” yelled Mat. Hunt sprang to his seat, and the sled slipped away, gaining momentum swiftly. Charlie White flung himself on his long cutter and was at its heels; and one after another, in continuous line, the whole array of boys on their sleds went sweeping down the hill.

Just as the last of us were whizzing by the engine-house, there was a shrill yell, and a dark flash from the other arm of the “Y” of the roads shot alongside in a swirl of snow-flower, and was past almost before anyone could crack a wink.

All we were sure of was that Tip and a party had gone by us, but how, or on what, no one knew. Anyhow, it was just like him. No one but Tip could have turned that lopsided corner in that way, and grazed safely within two feet of us. And one after another of the brown line ahead, we could see this astounding meteor picking up and passing them all.

Mat was right on the town bridge, steering his grandest to cut a fine curve through the square, when he caught that odd singing of tempered runners. Before he could turn his head, Tip streaked by without a glance, doubled the corner with a beautiful swing, and was out of sight on the next pitch when the “Avalanche” turned into the square.

Tip on a double-runner! and one with wings, too, to judge by its speed! And Lou Berry and Kate Morris and Amy Belle and that pauper Okey boy with him, and that big Brown behind—it was altogether too much! When we got to the bottom of Depot Hill, Tip and his party were starting back, dragging the new craft. It was a very heavy double-runner, with a long, springy plank of ash, set rather low. There was no paint on runners or deck, but everything about the sandpapered wood had a clipper look, and the runners were shod with steel rods of an odd spring.

“Where’d ye get it, Tip?” “Ain’t it a whaler?” “Lemme go down once with you, Tip!” cried such of the boys as could catch up—which was not so difficult, as old Nell was dragging our sleds. Tip trudged on, answering composedly:

“Oh, Mr. Brown and I got it fixed up. ’Course you can go, one at a time—we’ve got room for just one more.”

But just then Mat—whose heavy sled went farther than our light ones—overtook us. No doubt he felt pretty sore over being so egregiously beaten at his own game; and his look was anything but amiable as he observed, loudly and in his most scornful tone: “Huh! We feel pretty smart with a Rebel double-runner, don’t we?”

Kate and Lou flushed up, and Brown stuck out his lip contemptuously, but Tip only answered, drily:

“No-o, not so awful smart—just smart enough for what we need.”

This was fuel to the fire. Mat, who was much the heavier of the two, stepped forward; and very likely there would have been a scene, except that the good old minister just then stopped his sleigh for a chat with some friends, the boys. But Mat had clinched a nickname, and Tip’s turnout became in every mouth “The Rebel Double-runner.”

Nor did it stop there. An organized movement—in which Mat was far too shrewd to let himself be seen, leaving it to his younger followers—was made to cut (boycott, as we would say nowadays) everyone who had anything to do with Tip.

Brown evidently didn’t borrow much trouble about the scorn of boys so much younger than himself; and whatever Tip may have felt, he said nothing.

But Kate and Lou felt it keenly, for even the sisters of the camp were enlisted to make things unpleasant for “all who gave aid and comfort to Rebels.” But, as they were loyal and plucky girls, they stuck to their friend in a fashion that was rather heroic, considering the heat and the meanness of youthful partisanship. I trust that for the many shabby turns done them they found some recompense in the regularity with which, day after day and many times a day, they whizzed past their envious persecutors. For Tip had left no gap in his plans. The Rebel double-runner was safe to win every time—thanks partly to its superior construction, partly to the dangerous hill on which it got its headway, and partly to the tremendous send-off given it by that hatefully muscular Brown.

Besides, Tip had a perfect genius as a steerer—the genius of effort and fixity, which counts oftener than any other kind. He seemed afraid of nothing, because he really “saw his way through.” He had studied that slide in every inch, and knew how to give his sled every advantage of it.

It was an aggravation almost beyond endurance to have them flash by us so easily every time; but for all Mat’s efforts and schemes and our wild jockeying, they continued to do it. If the continued triumph of the Rebel double-runner was aggravating to us, it was gall and wormwood to Mat. The thing became a town joke; and older folks, who did not share our grudge against Tip nor our awe of our “Napoleon,” poked all manner of fun.

Suave, self-satisfied, Mat grew glum and snappish. Those of us who ventured to ride with Tip—and it must be confessed that our patriotism was not always proof against the temptation—were made to feel the weight of Mat’s displeasure. Our “leader of men” had not quite learned to lead himself.

As we trudged up with our sleds from the depot one afternoon, we caught sight of Tip’s outfit whisking around the tannery corner and bearing down like a streak of dark lightning.

Mat was ahead, talking hard to young Burpee, who had a long red-bark switch in his hand. Just as the flying traverse was close, the young imp flung his stick down across the road.

Quick as thought we saw the act—and that Tip saw it, too. He slid back, with feet braced hard on the crosspiece, and swung the sled a trifle to the right.

He was pale—but not half so white as Mat, who stood glaring at him like one fascinated. It was right on the last bridge, over the big fall—that old wooden bridge with its crazy railing!

We were too horror-struck even to cry out, and there was no sound from the white faces on the sled. I can remember yet how the great falls roared, as out of a dead hush; how Tip’s teeth showed, and that the steering-rope was sunk deep in his wrists. How many things made themselves seen and felt in that instant!

The sled struck the slender switch exactly square. We looked to see its occupants fly off into space; but, though Tip was snapped forward until his knees bruised his face, those wiry legs saved him and the rest, who were half piled upon him.

The flying ends of the switch told the story. Tip had steered upon the slenderer end, and the swift, high-tempered runners had chopped it in two, as was his hope, and without too great a shock.

Had the switch resisted never so little! It seemed to us—and does to me yet—almost a miracle of escape. But for Tip’s instant wit, the whole party would have broken their necks on the hill, or crashed through the rail to the falls.

That day broke the back of the Cannonball Railroad. No one would so much as look at Burpee; but we felt that the responsibility rested further back.

Of course, Mat had not told him to throw the switch, and doubtless made himself believe that he had no blame in the matter. But the rest of us—well, even boys sometimes know how to read between the lines.

Tip never opened his month about the matter, and promptly stopped any attempted reference to it. He had plenty of companions now, and treated them in his square-toed boy way, as though nothing had ever happened.

A week after the switch episode, the crowd, including Tip, was straggling up the hill as Mat and his few remaining satellites came down on the “Avalanche.” Just as they reached the grist-mill, a loaded wood-sledge stalled at the tannery corner—the snow was soft that day. The sled was, for the same reason, not going half so fast as usual, but quite fast enough. Seeing the dangerous passage thus blockaded, Mat began to get panicky, and the sled wobbled.

“He’s going to jump!” exclaimed someone. “Don’t!”

Tip flung his sled-rope to me. “Hold to her, Mat!” he yelled, standing at the very edge of the slide and balanced, catlike. But Mat did _not_ hold on. The “Avalanche” slewed to one side, and he leaped and went plowing and rolling fifty feet in the slush. Almost as he struck the road, Tip had flung himself headlong upon the steering-seat and caught the lines.

He was just in time to “snub” the front sled before it could “turn cross” and make a wreck; and, steering through the narrow space between the wood-sledge and the bridge-rail, he fetched up safely with the traverse and its four frightened boys on the grade that climbs to Water Street.

That settled the business. From that day out, I think no one was ever heard to mention anything that sounded like “Rebel double-runner.” It was “Tip’s Tornado,” and there wasn’t a boy in town, except one, but was glad to ride on it—or to follow Tip in anything. It was the quietest of victories, but complete.

The Balsa Boy of Lake Titi-Caca.

The Balsa Boy of Lake Titi-Caca.

I.

“But, _hombrote_, thou art a mouthful, and the lake is brave. Of me it counts not, but much eye to this box. That is the far-looker that makes the pictures, and if it went to the _bogas_ or were even wet, how couldst thou answer?”

“There is no care, Excellency. More than that I am small, in this lake I was born, and now I am made to it. I will not drown your Excellency, nor more wet ye than must be when the lake is so. Trust me, _viracocha_, to put you to the island safely. And if not then name me Bobo.”

Well, I had to get across, and that was all there was to it. The island was there, I here, the miles of angry water between, and for bridge, only this twelve-year-old Aymará boy with his water-logged _balsa_. I looked out at the whitecaps, then at the unlikely craft, then in Pablo’s eyes.

“_Ba-le_, it is well. Thou hast the heart of a man. Hold her level for the box.”

I waded out through the mud and rushes, waist-deep in the icy water, holding the precious camera box on my head, and between us we got it safely stowed abaft the beanpole mast. Then I scrambled aboard as best might be, with Pablo’s helpful hand in my collar, for the mud had a trap-like clutch on my legs. Bidding me squat forward, the boy settled back on his knees and began to ply his pole. The loftiest great lake in the world has no timber on its shores, and with the mighty forests of the Yungas five days off no one is going to think of paddles. Plain contorted poles of the iron _cupi_ are far more easily brought over the Andean passes, and they have to suffice.

Slowly, with Pablo poling into the mud behind, the clumsy balsa slid through the _totora_, whispering as it went with its brother rushes—for itself was simply a great bundle of _totora_, _totora_ bound, with _totora_ sail and sheets. There was no other thing about it; no nail nor cord nor wood, save only the cupi mast. The mossy tangle of yachu, which feeds the cattle of Titi-caca that graze all day shoulder deep in the lake, hampered the soggy prow and fastened upon Pablo’s stick. Sometimes, with that and the grasping mud, I looked to see him dragged back overboard. But he wagged the pole sharply and held fast with his knees, and always shook free. Decidedly his eyes were right—the boy was no mouse.

In ten minutes we pushed our nose through the last _totoral_, and were in the open. The wind butted the harder in our face; the waves—no longer tamed by the rushen breakwater of the inshore—came running at us like a stampede. The slow prow kicked them and stumbled on them and pounded them into a coarse rain that pelted hard and icy. I wriggled out of my coat of oiled horsehide and bound it over the camera box to protect that from the spray—for it had been well strained by a fall of the pack mule in crossing the pass of Sorata, and was no longer so waterproof as might be wished. Pablo could now no more touch bottom; and kneeling a little higher and a little farther astern he kept his pole ish-ishing through the water, paddle fashion.

“Give me,” I said, after watching awhile the play of the round boy-chest. “Thou art too light.”

But Pablo sent down his stick the harder—so forcibly, indeed, that the effort pulled that corner of his mouth awry—and grunted:

“No, _viracocha_; leave me. Your Excellency knows the paddle—that I can see by the way you sit. But this is different. Only we of the lake know its ways, which are tricky. See, _pues_!” he sputtered, as a bucketful of water slapped us in the face and left both gasping. “For here all the winds quarrel from every way at once—as if pushed by him who was once _alcalde_ of Paucarcolla.” Pablo crossed himself, thereby “dropping a stitch” in his paddling.

“What? The—er—him that the Inquisition pursued?”

“_Si, viracocha_, that same. And yonder headland is where he disappeared in the lake, for the which none care to tarry there, since it is well known that he was the devil in person,” and Pablo crossed himself again.

As we cleared the Punta del Diablo the wind smote us with renewed force, and with every dip a fresh deluge drenched us to the bone. But for a few moments I did not think much of that. With the recession of the headland the long line of the Bolivian Andes came marching into view, and I suppose that just so wondrous a sight is nowhere else. Captained by the peak that overhangs Sorata, the giant file stood marshaled seemingly upon the very beach of the vast blue lake, itself white with that unspeakable whiteness such as befalls no other thing on earth than a far peak of eternal snow high up a clear sky. Such a rank of Titans—from incalculable Illampu and his 25,000 feet, off to where his rival, Illimani, seemed soaring out of the lake a hundred miles away! It was enough to make one forget a wet skin—and even the possibility of a wet camera box. How they possessed the firmament, these sublimated presences! And how the cumuli, puffing up from the tropic forests of the Beni, tangled about their feet and wreathed upward and dulled when their snow-whiteness lapped the whiter snow of those proud crests!

A sharp “_Umpss!_” from Pablo recalled me to shiver and to look back. A sudden flaw in the wind had caught his stroke with the full weight of the balsa, and the ironwood pole had snapped under the cross strain. Pablo looked anxious, but said very evenly:

“_Pss!_ We must break it off, _viracocha_, and use each an end; for in this wind if we keep not our head, even a balsa will not last. Being angry, the lake pounds as one with his fist.”

Indeed, it was more like that than anything else—and a most reiterant fist, too. Nowhere else is there such a “chop” as on Lake Titi-caca when the winds awake; and I have seen those who have weathered every sea and who laughed at the English channel turned deathly seasick on one of the wallowing little steamers that run from Puno to Chililaya. Now we were kicked about with battering thumps that seemed like to pound our bundle of rushes asunder. Pablo was straining and twisting at the broken pole, to part the wiry fibers. I chopped at it with my heavy, keen bowie, and at last the stubborn strands yielded; and so each had a stick some five feet long. I knelt up and drove mine fiercely down the side while Pablo, astern, kept stroke. We were at it none too soon. At one time I half fancied that we never would get her head to the wind, for the soggy craft answered slowly to our efforts with these pitiful paddles.

For some minutes we tugged in silence. At an altitude of 12,500 feet in Peru one needs all one’s breath for work—even the Serrano lad did. I glanced over my shoulder at him now and then. His lips were shut square, his serious dark eyes seemed to be taking note of everything, and the slender muscles of his arms and chest—clear drawn on the drenched shirt—played smoothly. An athlete myself, and particularly taught in the paddle, I began to feel a respect which was half awe for this manful stripling who toiled so soberly and shrewdly where only the best foreign lungs can endure any exertion whatever. And, at last, little as there was breath to spare, I could not help grunting, “_Estás lo mas hombrote!_”

Pablo’s big white teeth shone for an instant in a sober smile.

“So must we,” he answered calmly. “For here is much to do, nor room for lazies—for small though they be. When I was the half of this, my father had me to help on the balsa; and once, even then, I took it to Puno, he being sick.”

Then silence fell upon us again for a time, and we poled away doggedly. But presently there seemed to me something wrong in Pablo’s quiet, and I twisted my head to look. His stick was going steadily as a machine, but in his face was what made me call out sharply, “What thing?”

He thrust out his chin toward Illampu. I looked thither, and then back at him, uncertain.

“More wind,” he said, concisely. “Either to get to the island before it, or”—and the Spanish shrug said the rest for him.

We did not get to the island before it. Two hundred yards away the gale struck us and flattened the balsa into the waves and the waves into the level, and was like to strip us bodily from our soaked craft. After that nothing was very clear, for the winds and waves washed us fore and aft, and it was hard to say which was the colder and more pitiless; and one saw ill for that bitter pelting in the face, and the heart reeled with overwork to feed the leaping lungs. Bent forward till our heads almost touched the balsa, our knees wedged hard on the tiny roll which served for gunwale, we dug away mechanically with those nightmares of paddles that would carry us nowhere. Once, when my heart would work no more, I turned idly to Pablo. His face was gray with effort, but so sweet and composed that I shouted out, half petulantly:

“Ea! Hast thou not fear, _hijito_?”

“How not?” he screamed back up the wind. “Am I a fool, not to fear? We shall never come there, perhaps. Only if the saints will! Promise a silver candlestick, señor!”

But in my eyes were a blue eyed baby and her mother, five thousand miles away, and for that, my temper was more to fight, with shut teeth, than to be vowing candlesticks. And just then it struck me to think, in that silly maundering of the mind in stress, how peaceful Pablo would look when they should pick us up, and how they would add: “_Umpss!_ But these gringos are of ill temper, no?”

For half an hour, perhaps, we doubled to our sticks, and still the gale smote us, and still our marrow ached with the chill of the spray. There was no complaint of Pablo. He accepted fate, but still worked like a man—poised and steady in the face of death. If we were to end there, he would be found with the little chapped fists still clenching the stick. Once a motion swept on me to spring back and hug him and say:

“Son, it counts not. Let us meet it in peace. Thou’rt fit to die with!”

But then again the blue eyes came up in the mist, and my fingers cracked on the paddle and my teeth grated. And Pablo, as if he understood, gave me a grave, sweet nod. Further I noted that he drew some small object from his pouch and seemed to breathe on it.

It was so near! In a little eddy of the wind I shook the water from my eyes and peered ahead. The northern point of the island was not fifty yards away—and we were drifting past. It slipped and slipped, for all I dug savagely at the paddle and Pablo quickened his stroke with the first groan I had heard from him. Our tired arms forgot their cramps, our lungs their “stitches” in a wild strain—and still that dark shore kept drawing to our right. Ah, for the old paddle that used to spin the birch canoe! These accursed sticks—why, one might as well paddle with a poker!

“_Viracocha!_” The boy’s shrill voice split the wind like a fife. “The sail!”

I stared at him stupidly an instant. “Thou hast the power,” he cried. “Break it! Break it!”

Then I knew, and leaped upon the ironwood mast as a wolf at the throat of a fawn, and clenched it and wrenched and beat, and shoved and twisted and tugged, and with arms and knees tore it loose from its stepping in the balsa. It well nigh racked the rushen raft in twain, and we noticed that the impact of the waves no longer shook the balsa as a unit, but wabbled and see-sawed it.

I caught the cupi under my left arm and clinched tight the “sheets” of braided _totora_ around the _totora_ sail, till that was bound in shape something like a closed umbrella, and springing forward to my station stood and plied this new paddle with frantic energy. It was unwieldy and floppy, but it had more resistance than the pole, and slowly—so slowly that at first we dared not believe it—the sullen craft began to answer. New hope came in us, and we shouted “_Arre!_ Drive!” and bent till the muscles creaked. Now, even in Pablo’s face, was the fierce light of combat.

And so we made the shore. In the lee of the point the water was so still that it seemed a yard lower than its surrounding level. A lone tuft of _totora_ grew near the shore, and when we came to it I fell on my face along the balsa and clutched the pithy stalks; and there we lay at that frail anchorage till heart and lungs came back in me. Then, poling nearer, I stepped over the side and landed the camera; and came back and gathered in my arms a limp bundle, whose head drooped upon my shoulder, and so waded heavily up the beach of Sicuya.

II.

There was nothing on the island for a good fire—indeed, in all that vast plateau, so lofty and so cold, one learns the art of shivering to perfection, for fuel is enormously scarce. After an hour’s work I had assembled a tiny heap of dry rushes from the beach, and bunch grass and a few straggling bushlets. The tinder, in its oil-cloth pouch, with the flint and steel, was dry, and presently we had a swift, ephemeral blaze. It was nothing to dry us, but served briefly to toast our hands and feet and take off a little of that ghastly chill. The camera was all right, and I resumed the horsehide coat, buttoning it to my chin to pay for the woolen shirt which I had lent Pablo. As the darkness came on our poor little fire died away. We scraped a trough in the gravel and lay down in it spoon fashion, my arms around Pablo’s chest, and so wore out the night.

We were chilled and stiff and half inanimate when the sluggard sun peeped over the far peaks of Apolobamba, and got up like old men. But even the light was cheering; and presently a soft glow began to tame the bitter air and we ran clumsily and danced about and swung our arms till the blood went free again in its forgotten channels. Pablo was all right now—a boy is a hard thing to kill, and particularly an outdoors boy—and chatted leisurely and calmly, as was his way.

“But to eat!” I broke in on one of his stories, when we were fairly limbered up in body and mind. “Is there _gente_ on the island?”

“Nobody. I think the Ancients were here once, for up yonder I have seen a strong wall. But none come here now—not even seeking treasure, which must be here.”

“Bother the treasure! What we want now is food, even if it were only llama meat; for in purity of truth I’m falling with hunger. Let us hunt.”