Read The Troll Garden and Selected Stories Page 6

the elder, was the best mathematician in school, and clever

  at his books, but he always dropped out in the spring term as if

  the river could not get on without him. He and Fritz caught the

  fat, horned catfish and sold them about the town, and they lived

  so much in the water that they were as brown and sandy as the river

  itself.

  There was Percy Pound, a fat, freckled boy with chubby cheeks,

  who took half a dozen boys' story-papers and was always being kept

  in for reading detective stories behind his desk. There was Tip

  Smith, destined by his freckles and red hair to be the buffoon in

  all our games, though he walked like a timid little old man and had

  a funny, cracked laugh. Tip worked hard in his father's grocery

  store every afternoon, and swept it out before school in the

  morning. Even his recreations were laborious. He collected

  cigarette cards and tin tobacco-tags indefatigably, and would sit

  for hours humped up over a snarling little scroll-saw which he kept

  in his attic. His dearest possessions were some little pill

  bottles that purported to contain grains of wheat from the Holy

  Land, water from the Jordan and the Dead Sea, and earth from the

  Mount of Olives. His father had bought these dull things from a

  Baptist missionary who peddled them, and Tip seemed to derive great

  satisfaction from their remote origin.

  The tall boy was Arthur Adams. He had fine hazel eves that

  were almost too reflective and sympathetic for a boy, and such a

  pleasant voice that we all loved to hear him read aloud. Even when

  he had to read poetry aloud at school, no one ever thought of

  laughing. To be sure, he was not at school very much of the time.

  He was seventeen and should have finished the High School the year

  before, but he was always off somewhere with his gun. Arthur's

  mother was dead, and his father, who was feverishly absorbed in

  promoting schemes, wanted to send the boy away to school and get

  him off his hands; but Arthur always begged off for another year

  and promised to study. I remember him as a tall, brown boy with an

  intelligent face, always lounging among a lot of us little fellows,

  laughing at us oftener than with us, but such a soft, satisfied

  laugh that we felt rather flattered when we provoked it. In

  after-years people said that Arthur had been given to evil ways

  as a ]ad, and it is true that we often saw him with the gambler's

  sons and with old Spanish Fanny's boy, but if he learned anything

  ugly in their company he never betrayed it to us. We would have

  followed Arthur anywhere, and I am bound to say that he led us into

  no worse places than the cattail marshes and the stubble fields.

  These, then, were the boys who camped with me that summer night

  upon the sand bar.

  After we finished our supper we beat the willow thicket for

  driftwood. By the time we had collected enough, night had fallen,

  and the pungent, weedy smell from the shore increased with the

  coolness. We threw ourselves down about the fire and made another

  futile effort to show Percy Pound the Little Dipper. We had tried

  it often before, but he could never be got past the big one.

  "You see those three big stars just below the handle, with the

  bright one in the middle?" said Otto Hassler; "that's Orion's belt,

  and the bright one is the clasp." I crawled behind Otto's shoulder

  and sighted up his arm to the star that seemed perched upon the tip

  of his steady forefinger. The Hassler boys did seine-fishing at

  night, and they knew a good many stars.

  Percy gave up the Little Dipper and lay back on the sand, his

  hands clasped under his head. "I can see the North Star," he

  announced, contentedly, pointing toward it with his big toe.

  "Anyone might get lost and need to know that."

  We all looked up at it.

  "How do you suppose Columbus felt when his compass didn't

  point north any more?" Tip asked.

  Otto shook his head. "My father says that there was another

  North Star once, and that maybe this one won't last always. I

  wonder what would happen to us down here if anything went wrong

  with it?"

  Arthur chuckled. "I wouldn't worry, Ott. Nothing's apt to

  happen to it in your time. Look at the Milky Way! There must be

  lots of good dead Indians."

  We lay back and looked, meditating, at the dark cover of the

  world. The gurgle of the water had become heavier. We had often

  noticed a mutinous, complaining note in it at night, quite

  different from its cheerful daytime chuckle, and seeming like the

  voice of a much deeper and more powerful stream. Our water had

  always these two moods: the one of sunny complaisance, the other of

  inconsolable, passionate regret.

  "Queer how the stars are all in sort of diagrams," remarked

  Otto. "You could do most any proposition in geometry with 'em.

  They always look as if they meant something. Some folks say

  everybody's fortune is all written out in the stars, don't they?"

  "They believe so in the old country," Fritz affirmed.

  But Arthur only laughed at him. "You're thinking of Napoleon,

  Fritzey. He had a star that went out when he began to lose

  battles. I guess the stars don't keep any close tally on Sandtown

  folks."

  We were speculating on how many times we could count a hundred

  before the evening star went down behind the cornfields, when

  someone cried, "There comes the moon, and it's as big as a cart

  wheel!"

  We all jumped up to greet it as it swam over the bluffs behind

  us. It came up like a galleon in full sail; an enormous, barbaric

  thing, red as an angry heathen god.

  "When the moon came up red like that, the Aztecs used to

  sacrifice their prisoners on the temple top," Percy announced.

  "Go on, Perce. You got that out of Golden Days. Do you

  believe that, Arthur?" I appealed.

  Arthur answered, quite seriously: "Like as not. The moon was

  one of their gods. When my father was in Mexico City he saw the

  stone where they used to sacrifice their prisoners."

  As we dropped down by the fire again some one asked whether

  the Mound-Builders were older than the Aztecs. When we once got

  upon the Mound-Builders we never willingly got away from them, and

  we were still conjecturing when we heard a loud splash in the

  water.

  "Must have been a big cat jumping," said Fritz. "They do

  sometimes. They must see bugs in the dark. Look what a track the

  moon makes!"

  There was a long, silvery streak on the water, and where the

  current fretted over a big log it boiled up like gold pieces.

  "Suppose there ever was any gold hid away in this old

  river?" Fritz asked. He lay like a little brown Indian, close to

  the fire, his chin on his hand and his bare feet in the air. His

  brother laughed at him, but Arthur took his suggestion seriously.

  "Some of the Spaniards thought there was gold up here somewhere.

  Seven cities chuck full of gold, they had it, and Coronado and his

  men came up
to hunt it. The Spaniards were all over this country

  once."

  Percy looked interested. "Was that before the Mormons went

  through?"

  We all laughed at this.

  "Long enough before. Before the Pilgrim Fathers, Perce. Maybe

  they came along this very river. They always followed the

  watercourses."

  "I wonder where this river really does begin?" Tip mused.

  That was an old and a favorite mystery which the map did not

  clearly explain. On the map the little black line stopped

  somewhere in western Kansas; but since rivers generally rose in

  mountains, it was only reasonable to suppose that ours came from

  the Rockies. Its destination, we knew, was the Missouri, and the

  Hassler boys always maintained that we could embark at Sandtown in

  floodtime, follow our noses, and eventually arrive at New Orleans.

  Now they took up their old argument. "If us boys had grit enough

  to try it, it wouldn't take no time to get to Kansas City and St.

  Joe."

  We began to talk about the places we wanted to go to. The

  Hassler boys wanted to see the stockyards in Kansas City, and Percy

  wanted to see a big store in Chicago. Arthur was interlocutor and

  did not betray himself.

  "Now it's your turn, Tip."

  Tip rolled over on his elbow and poked the fire, and his eyes

  looked shyly out of his queer, tight little face. "My place is

  awful far away. My Uncle Bill told me about it."

  Tip's Uncle Bill was a wanderer, bitten with mining fever, who

  had drifted into Sandtown with a broken arm, and when it was well

  had drifted out again.

  "Where is it?"

  "Aw, it's down in New Mexico somewheres. There aren't no

  railroads or anything. You have to go on mules, and you run out of

  water before you get there and have to drink canned tomatoes."

  "Well, go on, kid. What's it like when you do get there?"

  Tip sat up and excitedly began his story.

  "There's a big red rock there that goes right up out of the

  sand for about nine hundred feet. The country's flat all around

  it, and this here rock goes up all by itself, like a monument.

  They call it the Enchanted Bluff down there, because no white man

  has ever been on top of it. The sides are smooth rock, and

  straight up, like a wall. The Indians say that hundreds of years

  ago, before the Spaniards came, there was a village away up there

  in the air. The tribe that lived there had some sort of steps,

  made out of wood and bark, bung down over the face of the bluff,

  and the braves went down to hunt and carried water up in big jars

  swung on their backs. They kept a big supply of water and dried

  meat up there, and never went down except to hunt. They were a

  peaceful tribe that made cloth and pottery, and they went up there

  to get out of the wars. You see, they could pick off any war party

  that tried to get up their little steps. The Indians say they were

  a handsome people, and they had some sort of queer religion. Uncle

  Bill thinks they were Cliff-Dwellers who had got into trouble and

  left home. They weren't fighters, anyhow.

  "One time the braves were down hunting and an awful storm came

  up--a kind of waterspout--and when they got back to their rock they

  found their little staircase had been all broken to pieces, and

  only a few steps were left hanging away up in the air. While they

  were camped at the foot of the rock, wondering what to do, a

  war party from the north came along and massacred 'em to a man,

  with all the old folks and women looking on from the rock. Then

  the war party went on south and left the village to get down the

  best way they could. Of course they never got down. They starved

  to death up there, and when the war party came back on their way

  north, they could hear the children crying from the edge of the

  bluff where they had crawled out, but they didn't see a sign of a

  grown Indian, and nobody has ever been up there since."

  We exclaimed at this dolorous legend and sat up.

  "There couldn't have been many people up there," Percy demurred.

  "How big is the top, Tip?"

  "Oh, pretty big. Big enough so that the rock doesn't look

  nearly as tall as it is. The top's bigger than the base. The

  bluff is sort of worn away for several hundred feet up. That's one

  reason it's so hard to climb."

  I asked how the Indians got up, in the first place.

  "Nobody knows how they got up or when. A hunting party came

  along once and saw that there was a town up there, and that was

  all."

  Otto rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful. "Of course there

  must be some way to get up there. Couldn't people get a rope over

  someway and pull a ladder up?"

  Tip's little eyes were shining with excitement. "I know a

  way. Me and Uncle Bill talked it over. There's a kind of rocket

  that would take a rope over--lifesavers use 'em--and then you could

  hoist a rope ladder and peg it down at the bottom and make it tight

  with guy ropes on the other side. I'm going to climb that there

  bluff, and I've got it all planned out."

  Fritz asked what he expected to find when he got up there.

  "Bones, maybe, or the ruins of their town, or pottery, or some

  of their idols. There might be 'most anything up there. Anyhow,

  I want to see."

  "Sure nobody else has been up there, Tip?" Arthur asked.

  "Dead sure. Hardly anybody ever goes down there. Some hunters

  tried to cut steps in the rock once, but they didn't get higher

  than a man can reach. The Bluff's all red granite, and Uncle Bill

  thinks it's a boulder the glaciers left. It's a queer place,

  anyhow. Nothing but cactus and desert for hundreds of miles, and

  yet right under the Bluff there's good water and plenty of grass.

  That's why the bison used to go down there."

  Suddenly we heard a scream above our fire, and jumped up to

  see a dark, slim bird floating southward far above us--a whooping

  crane, we knew by her cry and her long neck. We ran to the edge of

  the island, hoping we might see her alight, but she wavered

  southward along the rivercourse until we lost her. The Hassler

  boys declared that by the look of the heavens it must be after

  midnight, so we threw more wood on our fire, put on our jackets,

  and curled down in the warm sand. Several of us pretended to doze,

  but I fancy we were really thinking about Tip's Bluff and the

  extinct people. Over in the wood the ring doves were calling

  mournfully to one another, and once we heard a dog bark, far away.

  "Somebody getting into old Tommy's melon patch," Fritz murmured

  sleepily, but nobody answered him. By and by Percy spoke out of

  the shadows.

  "Say, Tip, when you go down there will you take me with you?"

  "Maybe."

  "Suppose one of us beats you down there, Tip?"

  "Whoever gets to the Bluff first has got to promise to tell

  the rest of us exactly what he finds," remarked one of the Hassler

  boys, and to this we all readily assented.

  Somewhat reassured, I dropped
off to sleep. I must have

  dreamed about a race for the Bluff, for I awoke in a kind of fear

  that other people were getting ahead of me and that I was losing my

  chance. I sat up in my damp clothes and looked at the other boys,

  who lay tumbled in uneasy attitudes about the dead fire. It was

  still dark, but the sky was blue with the last wonderful azure of

  night. The stars glistened like crystal globes, and trembled as if

  they shone through a depth of clear water. Even as I watched, they

  began to pale and the sky brightened. Day came suddenly, almost

  instantaneously. I turned for another look at the blue

  night, and it was gone. Everywhere the birds began to call, and

  all manner of little insects began to chirp and hop about in the

  willows. A breeze sprang up from the west and brought the heavy

  smell of ripened corn. The boys rolled over and shook themselves.

  We stripped and plunged into the river just as the sun came up over

  the windy bluffs.

  When I came home to Sandtown at Christmas time, we skated out

  to our island and talked over the whole project of the Enchanted

  Bluff, renewing our resolution to find it.

  Although that was twenty years ago, none of us have ever

  climbed the Enchanted Bluff. Percy Pound is a stockbroker in

  Kansas City and will go nowhere that his red touring car cannot

  carry him. Otto Hassler went on the railroad and lost his foot

  braking; after which he and Fritz succeeded their father as the

  town tailors.

  Arthur sat about the sleepy little town all his life--he died

  before he was twenty-five. The last time I saw him, when I was

  home on one of my college vacations, he was sitting in a steamer

  chair under a cottonwood tree in the little yard behind one of the

  two Sandtown saloons. He was very untidy and his hand was not

  steady, but when he rose, unabashed, to greet me, his eyes were as

  clear and warm as ever. When I had talked with him for an hour and

  heard him laugh again, I wondered how it was that when Nature had

  taken such pains with a man, from his hands to the arch of his long

  foot, she had ever lost him in Sandtown. He joked about Tip

  Smith's Bluff, and declared he was going down there just as soon as

  the weather got cooler; he thought the Grand Canyon might be worth

  while, too.

  I was perfectly sure when I left him that he would never get

  beyond the high plank fence and the comfortable shade of the

  cottonwood. And, indeed, it was under that very tree that he died

  one summer morning.

  Tip Smith still talks about going to New Mexico. He married

  a slatternly, unthrifty country girl, has been much tied to a

  perambulator, and has grown stooped and grey from irregular

  meals and broken sleep. But the worst of his difficulties are now

  over, and he has, as he says, come into easy water. When I was

  last in Sandtown I walked home with him late one moonlight night,

  after he had balanced his cash and shut up his store. We took the

  long way around and sat down on the schoolhouse steps, and between

  us we quite revived the romance of the lone red rock and the

  extinct people. Tip insists that he still means to go down there,

  but he thinks now he will wait until his boy Bert is old enough to

  go with him. Bert has been let into the story, and thinks of

  nothing but the Enchanted Bluff.

  The Bohemian Girl

  The transcontinental express swung along the windings of the

  Sand River Valley, and in the rear seat of the observation car a

  young man sat greatly at his ease, not in the least discomfited by

  the fierce sunlight which beat in upon his brown face and neck and

  strong back. There was a look of relaxation and of great passivity

  about his broad shoulders, which seemed almost too heavy until he

  stood up and squared them. He wore a pale flannel shirt and a blue

  silk necktie with loose ends. His trousers were wide and belted at