_ CHAPTER XIII. THE PLAYMATES
Early that autumn it became expedient that Mrs. Orde and Bobby should visit Grandfather and Grandmother Orde at Redding, while Mr. Orde pushed through certain heavy cutting in the woods. Bobby took with him his two fonts of "real" type--one a parting present from Mr. Daggett--and his Flobert Rifle.
The old Orde homestead covered about three acres of ground. The city had grown up around it. The house was a three-storied stone structure, built fifty years before, steep of roof, gabled, low-ceilinged, old-fashioned and delightful. Bobby loved it and its explorations, from the cellar with its bins of vegetables and fruit and its barrels of molasses, cider and vinegar, to its attic with its black, mysterious, "behind the tank." And the three acres were a joy. Outside the picket fence were the shade trees, their trunks nearly two feet in diameter. Then stretched the wide deep lawn, now turning dull with the approach of winter and strewn with dead leaves. It supported the fir which Bobby always called the "Christmas Tree," and under whose wide low branches he could crawl as into a dusty, cobwebby house; and the little birch tree with its silver bark; and the big round lilac bush, now bare, but in summer the fragrant haunt of birds and butterflies innumerable; and the round flower bed; and the horse-chestnut tree whose inedible brown-and-yellow nuts were just right to throw or to string into necklaces; and close by the front gate the Big Tree. Bobby firmly believed this the largest tree in the world. It was a silver maple so great about the trunk that Bobby could trot about it as around a race-track. At twelve feet it branched in two, each division bigger than any shade tree in town. The branches were held together by a logging chain. Above them were more divisions and more and yet more, ever rising higher and finer, until at last, far over the tops of the maples, of the elms, even of the hickory at the side of the house, above the highest point of the highest gable of the house itself, it feathered out in a delicate, wide lacework that seemed fairly to brush the sky. Bobby's realization of height ceased short of the reality. Beyond that he was breathless, as one is breathless at too great speed. The big tree was full of orioles' and vireos' nests, old and recent, representing the building of many summers. Out behind was the orchard, a dozen sturdy old apple trees, now passing the meridian of their powers.
Here Bobby laboured hard with hammers and a few old boards until he had constructed a shield on which to tack his target. He leaned the affair against the thickest and tallest woodpile, placed a saw-horse for a rest at fifteen yards from his mark and brought out his Flobert Rifle.
At the third snap of the little weapon, he looked up to discover a row of interested heads lined up along the top of the high board fence that constituted the Ordes' eastern boundary. He pretended not to see but shot again, very deliberately.
"Say," shouted a voice, "I'm coming over!"
Bobby looked up once more. One of the heads had given place to a very sturdy back and legs suspended on the Orde side of the fence. The legs wriggled frantically, the toes scratched at the boards.
"Aw, drop!" said another voice, and the second head produced a hand and arm which proceeded calmly to rap the knuckles of the one who dangled. The latter let go. Finding himself uninjured by the three-foot fall, he looked up wrathfully at his late assailant. That youth was in the act of swinging his own legs over. The first-comer, with a gurgle of joy, seized the other by both feet and tugged with all his strength. His victim kicked frantically, tried to hang on, had to let go and came down all in a heap on top of his tormentor. Immediately they clinched and began to roll over and over. Bobby stared, vastly astonished.
Before he could collect his thoughts a third figure was dangling down the boards. This one was feminine. It displayed a good deal of long black leg, of short dull plaid skirt, a reefer jacket, two pigtails and a knit blue tam-o'-shanter. Further observation was impossible, for it dropped without hesitation and the moment it struck ground pounced on the two combatants. Bobby saw those gentlemen seized, shaken and slapped with hurricane vigour. The next he knew, three flushed visitors were descending on him with ingratiating grins.
The first, he of the pounded knuckles, was a short, sturdy, very fair-haired youth with a wide red-lipped mouth, wide and winning blue eyes and a bit of a swagger in his walk. He was about Bobby's age. The second, he of the pulled feet, was brown-haired, slightly stooped, rather nervous-faced, but with the drollest twinkle to his brown eyes and the quaintest quirk to his sensitive lips. He was about twelve years old. The third, the girl, was tawny-haired, gray-eyed. Her face was almost the exact shape of the hearts on valentines; her nose turned up just enough to be impudent; her freckles, for she was indubitably freckled, were just wide enough apart to emphasize the inquiring, unabashed self-reliance of her eyes. Her figure was long and lank but moved with a freedom and a confidence that indicated her full control of it. She was probably just short of her 'teens.
"Gorry!" said the first boy, "is that gun yours?"
"Let's see it," said the second.
"It's a beauty, isn't it? Look at the gold mounting," said the girl.
"Look out how you handle it!" warned Bobby.
"Why, is it loaded?" asked Number One.
"It doesn't matter whether it's loaded or not!" insisted Bobby stoutly. "It ought never to be pointed toward anybody."
"Oh, shucks!" said Number One, reaching for the rifle.
But Bobby interposed.
"You mustn't touch it unless you handle it right," said he.
"Shucks," repeated the light-haired boy, still reaching.
Bobby, his heart beating a little more rapidly than usual, thrust himself in front of the other.
"Ho!" cried the other, the joy of battle lighting up his dancing blue eyes. "Want to fight? I can lick you with one hand tied behind me."
"This is my yard," said Bobby, "and that is my gun! And besides I didn't ask you to come in here, anyway."
"Well, I can lick you, anyway," replied the other with unanswerable logic.
The girl had been watching them narrowly, her hands on her hips, her head on one side. Now she interfered.
"Johnnie, come off!" said she sharply. "No fighting! You're bigger than he is, and it _is_ his yard and his gun, and, anyway, he isn't afraid of you."
Johnnie looked at her doubtfully, then turned to Bobby as to a companion under tyranny.
"That's just like her," he complained. "She always spoils things! You ain't smaller than I am, anyhow. Never mind, we'll try it sometime when she ain't around. Let's see your old gun. I won't point it at anybody. Show me how she works."
Bobby, a little stiffly at first, for he could not understand fighting without animosity, showed them how it worked.
"Let me try her," urged Johnnie.
But Bobby would not until he had asked his mother, for permission to shoot had been obtained only at expense of a very solemn promise.
"Fraidy!" jeered Johnnie, "tied to his mammy's apron-strings!"
Bobby flushed deeply, but stood his ground.
"It's my gun," he pointed out again. "If you don't like my yard, you needn't come into it."
"Oh, all right, we don't want to stay in your old yard," replied Johnnie. "Come on, kids."
"Johnnie, come back here," commanded the girl sharply. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! He's perfectly right! Suppose one of us should get shot!"
"I'll get papa to shoot with us, if he will," promised Bobby.
"Johnny, you come back here!" ordered the girl in more peremptory tones. "You come back or--or--_I'll sit on your head again!_"
Johnny came back, entirely good-natured, his attractive blue eyes glancing here and there in restless activity.
"Oh, all right," said he. "Let's play robbers and policemen."
"We've left Carrie over the fence," insisted the girl.
"Bother Carrie! Why don't she climb?"
"You come over with us," the girl suggested to Bobby. "You're Bobby Orde, of course, we know. I'm May Fowler. I live in the big square house over that way. The boy with the yellow hair is Johnny English. The other one is Morton Drake. Come on."
"Where is it?" asked Bobby.
"Just over the fence. That's where the Englishes live. Haven't you been there yet?"
"No," said Bobby.
He leaned his rifle in the barn and followed the disappearing trio. His doubt as to how the smooth board fence was to be surmounted was soon resolved. The new-comers evidently knew all the ins and outs. In the very end of the long woodshed stood a chicken-feed bin. By scrambling to the top of this, it was just possible to squeeze between the edge of the roof and the top of the fence. Once there, one had the choice of descending to the other side or climbing to the shed roof.
The expedition at present led to the other side. Here was no necessity of dangling, for the two-by-fours running between the posts offered a graduated descent. Bobby found himself in the back yard of a tall house that occupied nearly the entire width of the lot. It was a very impressive cream-brick house. A cement walk led around it from the front. There were no stables, no clothes-lines, no pumps, nothing to indicate the kitchen end of a residence. The swift curve of a grassed terrace dropped from the house-level to that on which Bobby stood. Four large apple trees, mathematically spaced, would furnish shade in summer. That the shade was utilized was proved by the presence of a number of settees, iron chairs and a rustic table or so.
"There's Carrie!" cried May Fowler. "Why didn't you come on over? This is Bobby Orde who lives over there. This is Caroline English."
"We're going to play robber and policeman," announced Johnny English, cheerfully.
"All right," said Carrie.
She sat down behind one of those rustic tables.
"She's police sergeant," confided Morton Drake to Bobby. "She's always police sergeant because she doesn't like to get her clothes dirty."
"Here come the rest! Goody!" cried the alert Johnny as four more children came racing around the corner of the house.
Robber and policemen was a game absurd in its simplicity. The policemen pursued the robbers who fled within the specified limits of the Englishes' yard. When an officer caught a malefactor, he attempted to bring his prize before the police sergeant. The robber was privileged to resist. Assistance from the other policemen and rescues by the other robbers were permitted. That was all there was to it. The beautiful result was a series of free fights.
Bobby, as a new-comer, was made a robber. So were Grace Jones, Morton and Walter. The nature of the game demanded that the oldest should be policeman, otherwise arrests might be disgracefully unavailing.
At a signal from Carrie the robbers scurried away. At another the sleuths set out on the trail. Each policeman elected a robber as his especial prey. Bobby ran rapidly around the front of the house, dodged past the front steps and paused. Behind him he heard stealthy footsteps approaching the corner of the house. Instantly he ducked forward around the other corner and ran plump into the arms of Johnny English.
That youngster immediately grappled him.
Johnny was no bigger than Bobby, but he was practised at scuffles and his body was harder and firmer knit. Bobby tugged manfully, but almost before he knew it he was upset and hit the ground with a disconcerting whack. Of course, he continued to struggle, and the two, fiercely locked, whirled over and over through the leaves, but in a humiliatingly brief period Johnny had twisted him on his back and was sitting on his chest.
"There, I told you I could lick you!" he cried triumphantly.
"Let me up! Let me up, I tell you!" roared Bobby, kicking his legs and threshing his arms in a vain effort to budge the weight across his body.
Johnny looked at him curiously.
"Why! You ain't _mad_, are you!" He shrieked with the joy of the discovery. "Oh, kids! Come here and see him! He's getting mad!"
Bobby's eyes filled with tears of rage. And then he saw quite plainly the top of a sand-hill and the village lying below and the blue of the River far distant. And he heard Mr. Kincaid's voice.
"But, sonny, you can always be a sportsman, whatever you do," the voice said, "and a sportsman does things because he likes them, Bobby, for no other reason--not for money, nor to become famous, nor even to win----"
He choked back his rage and forced a grin to his lips--very much the same sort that he had once accomplished when he "jumped up and laughed" at his mother's spanking, simply because he had been told to do that whenever he was hurt.
"I'm not mad," he disclaimed and heaved so mighty a heave that Johnny, being unprepared by reason of shouting to the others, was tumbled off one side. Instantly Bobby jumped to his feet and scudded away.
He was captured eventually--so were the others--but only after fierce struggles. Even did a policeman catch and hold a robber, to drag the latter to jail was no easy problem. For if he summoned the help of a brother officer that left at large an unattached robber who would create diversions and attempt rescues. At times all eight were piled in a breathless, tugging, rolling mass, while Carrie, behind her rustic table, looked on serenely lest some of the simple rules of the game be violated. In fact Carrie was just as severe in anticipation of possible infractions, as over the infractions themselves, which, perhaps, goes far to explain Carrie.
Bobby returned home at lunch time to be received with horror by Mrs. Orde.
"You're a sight!" she cried. "_Where_ have you been, and _what_ have you been doing? I never saw anything like you! And look at those holes in your stockings."
"I've been playing robber 'n policeman with Johnny English and Carter Irvine and all the kids," explained Bobby blissfully.
After lunch Mr. Orde kissed his son good-bye.
"Going up in the woods for a week, sonny," said he.
"Papa," asked Bobby holding tight to the man's hand, "can I have the kids shoot with my rifle?"
"Not any!" cried Mr. Orde emphatically. "Not until I get back. Then maybe we'll have a shooting-match and invite all hands."
He was slipping on his overcoat as he spoke.
"Which of the boys do you like best?" he asked casually.
"I don't know," replied Bobby after an instant's thought. "Carter Irvine's got an air-gun: I like him. And Johny English is all right, too. I wish I were as strong as Johnny English," he ended with a sigh.
Mr. Orde paused in reaching for his valise.
"Can he take you down?" he asked shrewdly.
"Yes, sir!" replied Bobby with a vivid flush.
"All right, you be a good boy, and when I get back I'll show you a few tricks to fool Mr. Johnny," Mr. Orde chuckled. "There's a lot in knowing how." _