by Bret Harte
A TALE OF THREE TRUANTS
The schoolmaster at Hemlock Hill was troubled that morning. Three of hisboys were missing. This was not only a notable deficit in a roll-call oftwenty, but the absentees were his three most original and distinctivescholars. He had received no preliminary warning or excuse. Nor could heattribute their absence to any common local detention or difficulty oftravel. They lived widely apart and in different directions. Neitherwere they generally known as "chums," or comrades, who might haveentered into an unhallowed combination to "play hookey."
He looked at the vacant places before him with a concern which his otherscholars little shared, having, after their first lively curiosity, notunmixed with some envy of the derelicts, apparently forgotten them. Hemissed the cropped head and inquisitive glances of Jackson Tribbs onthe third bench, the red hair and brown eyes of Providence Smith inthe corner, and there was a blank space in the first bench where JulianFleming, a lanky giant of seventeen, had sat. Still, it would not doto show his concern openly, and, as became a man who was at least threeyears the senior of the eldest, Julian Fleming, he reflected that theywere "only boys," and that their friends were probably ignorant of thegood he was doing them, and so dismissed the subject. Nevertheless, itstruck him as wonderful how the little world beneath him got on withoutthem. Hanky Rogers, bully, who had been kept in wholesome check byJulian Fleming, was lively and exuberant, and his conduct was quietlyaccepted by the whole school; Johnny Stebbins, Tribbs's bosom friend,consorted openly with Tribbs's particular enemy; some of the girlswere singularly gay and conceited. It was evident that some superiormasculine oppression had been removed.
He was particularly struck by this last fact, when, the next morning,no news coming of the absentees, he was impelled to question his flocksomewhat precisely concerning them. There was the usual shy silencewhich follows a general inquiry from the teacher's desk; the childrenlooked at one another, giggled nervously, and said nothing.
"Can you give me any idea as to what might have kept them away?" saidthe master.
Hanky Rogers looked quickly around, began, "Playin' hook--" in a loudvoice, but stopped suddenly without finishing the word, and becameinaudible. The master saw fit to ignore him.
"Bee-huntin'," said Annie Roker vivaciously.
"Who is?" asked the master.
"Provy Smith, of course. Allers bee-huntin'. Gets lots o' honey. Got twofull combs in his desk last week. He's awful on bees and honey. Ain'the, Jinny?" This in a high voice to her sister.
The younger Miss Roker, thus appealed to, was heard to murmur that ofall the sneakin' bee-hunters she had ever seed, Provy Smith was theworst. "And squirrels--for nuts," she added.
The master became attentive,--a clue seemed probable here. "Would Tribbsand Fleming be likely to go with him?" he asked.
A significant silence followed. The master felt that the childrenrecognized a doubt of this, knowing the boys were not "chums;"possibly they also recognized something incriminating to them, and withcharacteristic freemasonry looked at one another and were dumb.
He asked no further questions, but, when school was dismissed, mountedhis horse and started for the dwelling of the nearest culprit, JacksonTribbs, four miles distant. He had often admired the endurance of theboy, who had accomplished the distance, including the usual meanderingsof a country youth, twice a day, on foot, in all weathers, with nodiminution of spirits or energy. He was still more surprised when hefound it a mountain road, and that the house lay well up on the ascentof the pass. Autumn was visible only in a few flaming sumacs setamong the climbing pines, and here, in a little clearing to the right,appeared the dwelling he was seeking.
"Tribbses," or "Tribbs's Run," was devoted to the work of cuttingdown the pines midway on a long regularly sloping mountain-side, whichallowed the trunks, after they were trimmed and cut into suitablelengths, to be slid down through rude runs, or artificial channels, intothe valley below, where they were collected by teams and conveyed to thenearest mills. The business was simple in the extreme, and was carriedon by Tribbs senior, two men with saws and axes, and the natural laws ofgravitation. The house was a long log cabin; several sheds roofed withbark or canvas seemed consistent with the still lingering summer and theheated odors of the pines, but were strangely incongruous to those whitepatches on the table-land and the white tongue stretching from the ridgeto the valley. But the master was familiar with those Sierran contrasts,and as he had never ascended the trail before, it might be only theusual prospect of the dwellers there. At this moment Mr. Tribbs appearedfrom the cabin, with his axe on his shoulder. Nodding carelessly to themaster, he was moving away, when the latter stopped him.
"Is Jackson here?" he asked.
"No," said the father, half impatiently, still moving on. "Hain't seenhim since yesterday."
"Nor has he been at school," said the master, "either yesterday orto-day."
Mr. Tribbs looked puzzled and grieved. "Now I reckoned you had kep' himin for some devilment of his'n, or lessons."
"Not ALL NIGHT!" said the master, somewhat indignant at this presumptionof his arbitrary functions.
"Humph!" said Mr. Tribbs. "Mariar!" Mrs. Tribbs made her appearance inthe doorway. "The schoolmaster allows that Jackson ain't bin to schoolat all." Then, turning to the master, he added, "Thar! you settle itbetween ye," and quietly walked away.
Mrs. Tribbs looked by no means satisfied with or interested in theproposed tete-a-tete. "Hev ye looked in the bresh" (i. e., brush orunderwood) "for him?" she said querulously.
"No," said the master, "I came here first. There are two other boysmissing,--Providence Smith and Julian Fleming. Did either of them"--
But Mrs. Tribbs had interrupted him with a gesture of impatient relief."Oh, that's all, is it? Playin' hookey together, in course. 'Scuse me,I must go back to my bakin'." She turned away, but stopped suddenly,touched, as the master fondly believed, by some tardy maternalsolicitude. But she only said: "When he DOES come back, you just givehim a whalin', will ye?" and vanished into her kitchen.
The master rode away, half ashamed of his foolish concern for thederelicts. But he determined to try Smith's father, who owned a smallrancho lower down on a spur of the same ridge. But the spur was reallynearer Hemlock Hill, and could have been reached more directly by a roadfrom there. He, however, kept along the ridge, and after half an hour'sride was convinced that Jackson Tribbs could have communicated withProvy Smith without coming nearer Hemlock Hill, and this revived hisformer belief that they were together. He found the paternal Smithengaged in hoeing potatoes in a stony field. The look of languidcuriosity with which he had regarded the approach of the master changedto one of equally languid aggression as he learned the object of hisvisit.
"Wot are ye comin' to ME for? I ain't runnin' your school," he saidslowly and aggressively. "I started Providence all right for it mornin'afore last, since when I never set eyes on him. That lets ME out. Mybusiness, young feller, is lookin' arter the ranch. Yours, I reckon, islookin' arter your scholars."
"I thought it my business to tell you your son was absent from school,"said the master coldly, turning away. "If you are satisfied, I havenothing more to say." Nevertheless, for the moment he was so startledby this remarkable theory of his own responsibility in the case thathe quite accepted the father's callousness,--or rather it seemed to himthat his unfortunate charges more than ever needed his protection. Therewas still the chance of his hearing some news from Julian Fleming'sfather; he lived at some distance, in the valley on the opposite sideof Hemlock Hill; and thither the master made his way. Luckily he had notgone far before he met Mr. Fleming, who was a teamster, en route. Likethe fathers of the other truants, he was also engaged in his vocation.But, unlike the others, Fleming senior was jovial and talkative. Hepulled up his long team promptly, received the master's news with amusedinterest, and an invitation to spirituous refreshment from a demijohn inhis wagon.
"Me and the ole woman kind o' spekilated that Jule might hev been overwith Aunt Marthy; but
don't you worry, Mr. Schoolmaster. They're limbs,every one o' them, but they'll fetch up somewhere, all square! Justyou put two fingers o' that corn juice inside ye, and let 'em slide. Yedidn't hear what the 'lekshun news was when ye was at Smith's, did ye?"
The master had not inquired. He confessed he had been worried about theboys. He had even thought that Julian might have met with an accident.
Mr. Fleming wiped his mouth, with a humorous affectation of concern."Met with an ACCIDENT? Yes, I reckon not ONE accident, but TWO of 'em.These yer accidents Jule's met with had two legs, and were mighty livelyaccidents, you bet, and took him off with 'em; or mebbe they had fourlegs, and he's huntin' 'em yet. Accidents! Now I never thought o' that!Well, when you come across him and THEM ACCIDENTS, you just whale 'em,all three! And ye won't take another drink? Well, so long, then! Geeup!" He rolled away, with a laugh, in the heavy dust kicked up by hisplunging mules, and the master made his way back to the schoolhouse. Hisquest for that day was ended.
But the next morning he was both astounded and relieved, at theassembling of school, to find the three truants back in their places.His urgent questioning of them brought only the one and same responsefrom each: "Got lost on the ridge." He further gathered that they hadslept out for two nights, and were together all the time, but nothingfurther, and no details were given. The master was puzzled. Theyevidently expected punishment; that was no doubt also the wish of theirparents; but if their story was true, it was a serious question if heought to inflict it. There was no means of testing their statement;there was equally none by which he could controvert it. It was evidentthat the whole school accepted it without doubt; whether they were inpossession of details gained from the truants themselves which theyhad withheld from him, or whether from some larger complicity with theculprits, he could not say. He told them gravely that he should withholdequally their punishment and their pardon until he could satisfy himselfof their veracity, and that there had been no premeditation in theiract. They seemed relieved, but here, again, he could not tell whetherit sprang from confidence in their own integrity or merely from youthfulhopefulness that delayed retribution never arrived!
It was a month before their secret was fully disclosed. It was slowlyevolved from corroborating circumstances, but always with a shyreluctance from the boys themselves, and a surprise that any one shouldthink it of importance. It was gathered partly from details picked up atrecess or on the playground, from the voluntary testimony of teamstersand packers, from a record in the county newspaper, but always shapingitself into a consecutive and harmonious narrative.
It was a story so replete with marvelous escape and adventure that themaster hesitated to accept it in its entirety until after it hadlong become a familiar history, and was even forgotten by the actorsthemselves. And even now he transcribes it more from the circumstancesthat surrounded it than from a hope that the story will be believed.
WHAT HAPPENED
Master Provy Smith had started out that eventful morning with theintention of fighting Master Jackson Tribbs for the "Kingship" ofTable Ridge--a trifling territory of ten leagues square--Tribbs havinginfringed on his boundaries and claimed absolute sovereignty overthe whole mountain range. Julian Fleming was present as referee andbottle-holder. The battle ground selected was the highest part of theridge. The hour was six o'clock, which would allow them time to reachschool before its opening, with all traces of their conflict removed.The air was crisp and cold,--a trifle colder than usual,--and there wasa singular thickening of the sun's rays on the ridge, which made thedistant peaks indistinct and ghostlike. However, the two combatantsstripped "to the buff," and Fleming patronizingly took position at the"corner," leaning upon a rifle, which, by reason of his superior years,and the wilderness he was obliged to traverse in going to school, hisfather had lent him to carry. It was that day a providential weapon.
Suddenly, Fleming uttered the word, "Sho!" The two combatants paused intheir first "squaring off" to see, to their surprise, that their refereehad faced round, with his gun in his hand, and was staring in anotherdirection.
"B'ar!" shouted the three voices together. A huge bear, followed by itscubs, was seen stumbling awkwardly away to the right, making for thetimber below. In an instant the boys had hurried into their jacketsagain, and the glory of fight was forgotten in the fever of the chase.Why should they pound each other when there was something to reallyKILL? They started in instant pursuit, Julian leading.
But the wind was now keen and bitter in their faces, and that peculiarthickening of the air which they had noticed had become first a darkblue and then a whitening pall, in which the bear was lost. They stillkept on. Suddenly Julian felt himself struck between the eyes by whatseemed a snowball, and his companions were as quickly spattered by goutsof monstrous clinging snowflakes. Others as quickly followed--it wasnot snowing, it was snowballing. They at first laughed, affectingto retaliate with these whirling, flying masses shaken like clingingfeathers from a pillow; but in a few seconds they were covered from headto foot by snow, their limbs impeded or pinioned against them by itsweight, their breath gone. They stopped blindly, breathlessly. Then,with a common instinct, they turned back. But the next moment they heardJulian cry, "Look out!" Coming towards them out of the storm wasthe bear, who had evidently turned back by the same instinct. Anungovernable instinct seized the younger boys, and they fled. But Julianstopped with leveled rifle. The bear stopped too, with sullen, staringeyes. But the eyes that glanced along the rifle were young, true, andsteady. Julian fired. The hot smoke was swept back by the gale into hisface, but the bear turned and disappeared in the storm again. Julian ranon to where his companions had halted at the report, a little ashamed oftheir cowardice. "Keep on that way!" he shouted hoarsely. "No use tryin'to go where the b'ar couldn't. Keep on!"
"Keep on--whar? There ain't no trail--no nuthin'!" said Jacksonquerulously, to hold down a rising fear. It was true. The trail had longsince disappeared; even their footprints of a moment before were filledup by the piling snow; they were isolated in this stony upland, high inair, without a rock or tree to guide them across its vast white level.They were bitterly cold and benumbed. The stimulus of the storm andchase had passed, but Julian kept driving them before him, himselfdriven along by the furious blast, yet trying to keep some vaguecourse along the waste. So an hour passed. Then the wind seemed to havechanged, or else they had traveled in a circle--they knew not which, butthe snow was in their faces now. But, worst of all, the snow had changedtoo; it no longer fell in huge blue flakes, but in millions of stinginggray granules. Julian's face grew hard and his eyes bright. He knew itwas no longer a snow-squall, but a lasting storm. He stopped; the boystumbled against him. He looked at them with a strange smile.
"Hev you two made up?" he said.
"No--o!"
"Make up, then."
"What?"
"Shake hands."
They clasped each other's red, benumbed fingers and laughed, albeit alittle frightened at Julian. "Go on!" he said, curtly.
They went on dazedly, stupidly, for another hour.
Suddenly Provy Smith's keen eyes sparkled. He pointed to a singularirregular mound of snow before them, plainly seen above the drearylevel. Julian ran to it with a cry, and began wildly digging. "I knew Ihit him," he cried, as he brushed the snow from a huge and hairy leg.It was the bear--dead, but not yet cold. He had succumbed with his hugeback to the blast, the snow piling a bulwark behind him, where it hadslowly roofed him in. The half-frozen lads threw themselves fearlesslyagainst his furry coat and crept between his legs, nestling themselvesbeneath his still warm body with screams of joy. The snow they hadthrown back increased the bulwark, and drifting over it, in a fewmoments inclosed them in a thin shell of snow. Thoroughly exhausted,after a few grunts of satisfaction, a deep sleep fell upon them, fromwhich they were awakened only by the pangs of hunger. Alas! theirdinners--the school dinners--had been left on the ingloriousbattlefield. Nevertheless, they talked of eating the bear if it came tothe worst. They woul
d have tried it even then, but they were far abovethe belt of timber; they had matches--what boy has not?--but no WOOD.Still, they were reassured, and even delighted, with this prospect, andso fell asleep again, stewing with the dead bear in the half-impervioussnow, and woke up in the morning ravenous, yet to see the sun shining intheir faces through the melted snow, and for Jackson Tribbs to quicklydiscover, four miles away as the crow flies, the cabin of his fatheramong the flaming sumacs.
They started up in the glare of the sun, which at first almost blindedthem. They then discovered that they were in a depression of thetable-land that sloped before them to a deep gully in the mountainside,which again dropped into the canyon below. The trail they had lost, theynow remembered, must be near this edge. But it was still hidden, andin seeking it there was danger of some fatal misstep in the treacheroussnow. Nevertheless, they sallied out bravely, although they would fainhave stopped to skin the bear, but Julian's mandate was peremptory. Theyspread themselves along the ridge, at times scraping the loose snow awayin their search for the lost trail.
Suddenly they all slipped and fell, but rose again quickly, laughing.Then they slipped and fell again, but this time with the startlingconsciousness that it was not THEY who had slipped, but THE SNOW! Asthey regained their feet they could plainly see now that a large crackon the white field, some twenty feet in width, extended between them andthe carcass of the bear, showing the glistening rock below. Againthey were thrown down with a sharp shock. Jackson Tribbs, who had beenshowing a strange excitement, suddenly gave a cry of warning. "Lie flat,fellers! but keep a-crawlin' and jumpin'. We're goin' down a slide!" Andthe next moment they were sliding and tossing, apparently with the wholesnow-field, down towards the gullied precipice.
What happened after this, and how long it lasted, they never knew.For, hurried along with increasing momentum, but always mechanicallyclutching at the snow, and bounding from it as they swept on, theysometimes lost breath, and even consciousness. At times they were halfsuffocated in rolling masses of drift, and again free and skimming overits arrested surface, but always falling, as it seemed to them, almostperpendicularly. In one of these shocks they seemed to be going througha thicket of underbrush; but Provy Smith knew that they were the tops ofpine-trees. At last there was one shock longer and lasting, followed bya deepening thunder below them. The avalanche had struck a ledge in themountain side, and precipitated its lower part into the valley.
Then everything was still, until Provy heard Julian's voice calling. Heanswered, but there was no response from Tribbs. Had he gone overinto the valley? They set up a despairing shout! A voice--a smotheredone--that might be his, came apparently from the snow beneath them. Theyshouted again; the voice, vague and hollow, responded, but it was nowsurely his.
"Where are you?" screamed Provy.
"Down the chimbley."
There was a black square of adobe sticking out of the snow near them.They ran to it. There was a hole. They peered down, but could seenothing at first but a faint glimmer.
"Come down, fellows! It ain't far!" said Tribbs's voice.
"Wot yer got there?" asked Julian cautiously.
"Suthin' to eat."
That was enough. In another instant Julian and Provy went down thechimney. What was a matter of fifteen feet after a thousand? Tribbs hadalready lit a candle by which they could see that they were in the cabinof some tunnel-man at work on the ridge. He had probably been in thetunnel when the avalanche fell, and escaped, though his cabin wasburied. The three discoverers helped themselves to his larder. Theylaughed and ate as at a picnic, played cards, pretended it was arobber's cave, and finally, wrapping themselves in the miner's blankets,slept soundly, knowing where they were, and confident also that theycould find the trail early the next morning. They did so, and withoutgoing to their homes came directly to school--having been absent aboutfifty hours. They were in high spirits, except for the thoughtof approaching punishment, never dreaming to evade it by anythingmiraculous in their adventures.
Such was briefly their story. Its truth was corroborated by thediscovery of the bear's carcass, by the testimony of the tunnel-man, whofound his larder mysteriously ransacked in his buried cabin, and, aboveall, by the long white tongue that for many months hung from the ledgeinto the valley. Nobody thought the lanky Julian a hero,--least of allhimself. Nobody suspected that Jackson Tribbs's treatment of a "slide"had been gathered from experiments in his father's "runs"--and he wasglad they did not. The master's pardon obtained, the three truants caredlittle for the opinion of Hemlock Hill. They knew THEMSELVES, that wasenough.