The Forbidden Trail - Honoré Willsie (top 10 books of all time .txt) 📗

Roger was only seven. He was tall for his age and very thin. He had a thick crop of black hair and his eyes were large and precisely the color of the summer sky that lifted above the Moores' back yard. These were the little boy's only claims to beauty, for even at this time Roger's face was too much of the intellectual type to be handsome. Beauty is seldom intelligent. Roger's long, thin jaw, his thin, thoughtful mouth, his high forehead, were distinctly of the thinking, dreaming type.

It was midsummer and Roger's tanned legs and feet were bare and scratched and mosquito bitten. He wore a little blue gingham sailor suit, which was much rumpled and soiled.

Charlotte was five. She was tall for her age too. In fact at five she was nearly as tall as Roger. But she was not as thin as he. She had large brown eyes of astounding depth and softness and bronze brown hair that was short and curly. There were lovely curves in her scarlet, drooping lips and a fine arch to her head above the ears. There was a dimple in her round chin. She sat in front of Roger who was astride one end of a great plank that was up-ended on a barrel.

"You go over and get Ernie and Elschen, Charley," commanded Roger in a deep, boyish voice.

"I won't!" returned Charley, succinctly, crowding closer to Roger, as she spoke.

"Well now, do you think I'm going to play alone all the afternoon with a baby?" roared Roger. "You're too little to work this teeter-tauter with me. I'm not going to stand it, I'm not. You get off!"

"I won't," repeated Charley, none the less firmly that the red lips trembled. "I runned away from our house to play with you and I'm going to play, I am."

"You ain't going to play alone and Mamma says I gotta take you home in half an hour if nobody doesn't come for you."

"I won't go home." Charley ended this time with a sob.

"Now don't bawl!" exclaimed Roger, in alarm, twisting the little girl's head around so that he could peer into her face. He kissed her in a paternal manner. "Don't bawl! I'll take care of you."

Charley wiped the kiss off on the sleeve of her checked gingham dress and smiled. Roger left the see-saw and climbed to the top of the board fence.

"Ernie!" he shouted in a tone that sounded through the quiet village like a siren horn. "Ernie! You and Elschen come on over!"

Mrs. Wolf appeared at the back door of the house next door.

"Ernie and Elschen are doing the dishes. When they finish they will be over."

"Will it take 'em long?" asked Roger. "I got all my chores done."

"They're nearly done. Here's Elschen ready to go now."

"It was my turn to wipe, so I got through quick. Ernie's awful mad," cried a small girl, scrambling hastily over the fence.

Elsa was six. She was short and plump, an almost perfect miniature of her pretty mother, who stood smiling in the doorway. Her hair was true gold. While it was not curly it was full of a vitality that gave it the look of finely spun wire as it stood out over her head in a bushy mass. She was red of cheek and blue of eye, a jolly, plucky little girl, much more enterprising and pugnacious than Ernie, who followed her shortly over the fence.

Ernest was Roger's age and he looked so much like Elsa that a stranger might have thought them to be twins.

He landed with a thud. "Where'd you get the teeter-tauter, Roger?" he cried.

"Don't you see, you old ninny? I heaved up the plank Papa put down for the walk to the clothes-reel, and the barrel, I sort-of—now I kind of borrowed that out of the Sauters' barn. I guess they wouldn't care. I left a penny on the barn floor to pay for it. It's the strongest barrel I most ever saw. You go on the other end and Charley and I'll stay here. Elschen, you can be candlestick."

"I ain't going to be candlestick very long, I ain't. Not for you old boys," said Elsa, climbing, however, to the place assigned her, where the board balanced on the barrel.

The children see-sawed amicably for perhaps five minutes when Roger roared—

"Hey! All of you get off! I got to fix this better."

"I'm not agoing to move," replied Elsa.

"I ain't agoing to move," agreed Charley.

"Come on, you girls, get off," cried Ernie. "What you going to do, Roger?"

"I'll show you! If you girls don't get off, I'll dump you," suiting action to words, as he tilted the plank sidewise. Elsa got a real bump, from the barrel to the ground. Charley's end of the see-saw was on the ground so she scrambled up laughing. Not so Elschen. She was red with anger. She flew at Roger and slapped him in the face.

Roger turned white, and struck back, the blow catching Elsa in the stomach. She doubled up and roared. Roger's voice rose above hers.

"I'll kill you next time! I'll kill you, you low down old German pig, you."

Slow moving little Ernie ran to put his arm round Elsa.

"Don't you hit my sister again, Rog Moore!"

Roger jumped up and down and kicked the barrel. "You get out of my yard! I hate you all!"

"Not me, Roger?" cried Charley, anxiously, running up to take his hand.

Curiously enough even in his blind passion, the boy clung to the childish fingers, the while he continued to kick the barrel and to roar,

"I'll kill you, Elsa!"

The screen door clicked and Mrs. Moore hurried down the back steps. She was very tall and slender, with Roger's blue eyes and a mass of red hair piled high on her head. She carried one of Roger's stockings with a darning ball in the toe in her left hand and the thimble gleamed on the middle finger of her right hand as she put it on Roger's shoulder.

"Roger! Roger! You're rousing the whole neighborhood!"

Roger struck the slender hand from his shoulder. "I hate you too. Let me alone!"

Mrs. Moore turned to the others. "Children, take Charley over in your yard for a little while. Roger is being a very bad boy and I must punish him."

Roger hung back, still roaring, but his mother dragged him into the kitchen. Here she sat down in a rocker and attempted to pull him into her lap, but he would have none of her. He threw himself sobbing on the floor and Mrs. Moore sat looking at him sadly.

"I don't know what we're going to do about your temper, Roger. This is the third spell you've had this week. I don't see why the children play with you. Some day you will murder some one, I'm afraid. I used to have a temper when I was a child but I'm certain it was nothing like yours. One thing I'm sure of, I never struck my dear mother. Thank heaven, I haven't that regret."

Roger wept on.

"I've tried whipping and I've tried scolding. Perhaps I'm the wrong mother for you—" A long pause, during which Roger's slender body did not cease to writhe in sobs. Then his mother continued: "Poor little Elschen, that was an awful knock you gave her! I shall have to apologize to Mrs. Wolf again. She's always sweet about your badness."

She began work on the stocking once more. Roger's sobs lessened and his mother rose to wet a towel-end and bathe his face. But when she returned from the sink, the child was asleep, his head pillowed on his arm. It was thus that his temper storms always ended. Mrs. Moore had observed that when she had whipped him for one of his explosions, he always slept much longer than when she merely allowed him to sob himself quiet. So though his father still advocated whipping, she had concluded that whipping led only to further nerve exhaustion and she had stopped that form of punishment.

Half an hour later Roger rolled over on his back and stared for a moment wide eyed, at the ceiling. Then he got up quickly and running over to his mother, he threw his arms about her neck and kissed her passionately.

"Oh, Mother! Mother! I love you so! I'm so sorry I slapped your hand. I will be good! Oh, I will be good!"

He took the hand which he had struck in both his own and kissed it.

"Poor hand," he half sobbed, "poor hand!"

"All right, dear," said his mother, freeing her hand gently. "Now, go make up with the other children."

Roger darted out the door and his mother heard him shouting to his playmates.

It was an hour later that she went to the back door, to send Roger home with Charley. What she saw there sent her flying once more to interfere with the children's play. Fastened by bits of rope and twine to the plank were her three choicest sofa cushions, of white silk which she herself had embroidered. A child lay on its stomach on each of these, wildly gesticulating with legs and arms while Roger played the garden hose on them.

The four culprits in a sodden row before her, Mrs. Moore sought counsel from Mrs. Wolf, who had come hurrying at her neighbor's call.

"What shall I do with him? It was his idea, he says."

"Sure it was," exclaimed Roger stoutly. "We were shipwrecked sailors. The tempest had raged for three days like in 'Swiss Family Robinson.'"

"But why did you get the sofa cushions?" asked Mrs. Wolf.

"Oh, that was my invention to make the teeter-tauter more comfortable. Then they made nice waves for us to rest our stomachs on when we swam."

"You knew how I prize those cushions. That one with the roses took me all last winter to do," said Roger's mother sternly.

"I—I—yes, I kind of knew, but I