The Forbidden Trail. Honoré Morrow
"For three days you cannot play with Ernie and Elschen."
Instantly a howl rose from the two little Wolfs. "We can't play without Roger! It was our fault too!"
"Indeed, that's too hard on all of them, Mrs. Moore. We'll have bedlam for three days," protested Mrs. Wolf.
"But he's always losing his temper and hurting your children," exclaimed Mrs. Moore.
"But he keeps them interested, anyhow," replied the little German mother. "They never ask to go away when Roger is with them. There's something so lovable about him in spite of his temper."
"He hit me in my poor little belly—" began Elschen.
"Elschen!" shrieked her mother.
"Stomach," Elschen substituted hastily. "My poor little stomach. But I don't care, I love him anyhow."
"But how about my sofa pillows?" asked Mrs. Moore.
"We'll give you the money out of our banks," said Ernie.
Elsa jumped up and down. "So we will! And you too, Roger!"
"Sure I will. And I'll iron the roses out for you."
The two mothers looked at each other with a glimmer of a smile in light and dark blue eyes.
"You can each put a quarter in the Sunday School contribution box next Sunday and we'll call it square. Do you agree, Mrs. Wolf?" Then as her little neighbor nodded, Roger's mother went on. "Go change your wet suit, Roger, and take Charley home. Lend me some of Elschen's little things for her, Mrs. Wolf. The child is soaked."
"Mamma! That's a mile out to Prebles'," roared Roger.
His mother looked at him, completely out of patience. "Well, Roger! after this afternoon's various performances!"
"Oh, I'll go!" cried Roger hastily. "I was just talking, that was all!" and he fled to the house.
Roger and Charley, hand in hand, trailed up the street in the haphazard manner of childhood. The Prebles lived on a farm half a mile beyond the limits of the town of Eagle's Wing. The board walk ended not far beyond the Moores' house and the children automatically chose the center of the road where the dust was deepest. By scuffling their bare feet continuously they managed to travel most of the distance to the farm in a cloud of dust which Roger explained was a deep sea fog.
Dick Preble met them at the door of the farm house. Dick was a stocky boy of ten with a freckled face surmounted by a thatch of sandy hair.
"Charley! Where have you been? We thought you were asleep upstairs. Mamma was just getting scared. And whose clothes have you got on?"
Charley rushed headlong past her brother, shrieking for her mother, while Roger struggled with his explanation of certain of the afternoon's complications.
"Gee!" was Dick's comment, "I'll bet Charley gets the paddle whacks for running away."
"You weren't thinking of driving into town, were you?" asked Roger.
"Naw, lazy bones! You can just foot it, after half drowning my sister."
"You better keep your old sister home then," replied Roger, starting for the gate.
It was a long walk for seven-year legs. Roger was considerably less active on the return trip than he had been plowing through the sea fog on his way out. But his mind was hard at work.
"It would be nice to have a railroad all the way out to Prebles'. One that just us children could use—under the road. And I'd have little doors that would open up in the road and we'd peek out. And if we saw any grown ups coming we'd close the door quick. I'd be the engineer and Ernie the fireman. And we wouldn't have that old Dick at all. He's too big and cross. The girls could ride if they'd behave and run errands for us. Let's see. We'd have to dig it out first. Then we'd want ties and rails and a little engine. I wonder how much it would cost. But it would be very useful. 'Specially if we let Mr. Preble send his corn to town on it. He wouldn't have so much trouble with his hired men if they could ride on my engine, I bet."
This delectable dream, with infinite variations, carried Roger home. Supper was on the table and Mr. Moore was already in his place. A thin man, Roger's father, with a deeply lined face and good gray eyes, under a thatch of iron gray hair. He was a master mechanic, now owner of a little factory which turned out plowshares. Moore had devised machinery which enabled him to turn out plowshares of a superior quality, in greater quantity and at a cheaper rate than any of his larger competitors in neighboring states. His was only a small concern, employing twenty-five or thirty men, but even this made Moore the chief manufacturer of the town of Eagle's Wing, whose only other glory was that it housed the state university. The members of the college faculty did not recognize many of the town people socially. But Dean Erskine, the young new dean of the School of Engineering, had visited the plow factory and had been so enthusiastic over Moore and his work that he had come a number of times to the house, bringing Mrs. Erskine with him. Factory management was a new theme in these days and Dean Erskine found Roger's father open minded to his theories.
"Well, old son, have you been a good boy to-day?" asked Mr. Moore as Roger slid into his place at the table.
"No, sir. I've been pretty bad. Say, Papa, how much would it cost to build a railroad, under the ground, from our house to Prebles'?"
"A good deal of money. What way were you bad, Rog?"
"Oh, about every way, temper and all. Papa, I guess I'll build that railroad. I got a big piece of pipe and a gauge that might work. Guess I might begin to make a engine. Aren't I a pretty good inventor, Papa?"
"I don't know, Son. Nothing you've ever said or done makes me think you're one yet. In the first place an inventor is the most patient animal in the world. An inventor just can't lose his temper. Why don't you begin by inventing a way to control your temper, Son?"
Roger subsided into his bowl of bread and milk.
Mr. Moore was smoking on the front porch when Mrs. Moore joined him after putting Roger to bed. She sat down on the steps beside him while she told him of Roger's day.
"He's so contrite and so sweet, after one of his passions!" she said. "And yet, well, maybe it's his age, but he's so sort of casual about his temper. To-night, for instance, after he'd said the Lord's Prayer, he added, 'And please God, help me to find some pipe to make that engine and some rails too. And bless Charley, she's so little. And bless Mamma and Papa. And Lord, you might do something about my temper if you have time. Amen.'"
The father and mother laughed together, then Mr. Moore said, "I do hope the boy will keep up his interest in mechanics. It's the coming game for real he-men. The world's going to turn into a big machine. The way things are going now with me, I'll have a real place for the boy when he finishes school. Dean Erskine's about persuaded me to let him go to college. I've been dead set against a college engineer until I met Erskine. He's made me feel as I'd have had less of an uphill pull if I'd gone to engineering school, and he says I've made him feel as if he never had enough shop practice."
Moore stopped to chuckle. Then he went on, after refilling his pipe, "Yes, machinery is the greatest thing in the world. I took on five more men to-day, Mamma. All union men. I've decided to give in on that point and have a strictly union shop."
"I think you're right," said Mrs. Moore. "After all the union is the working man's only protection."
Moore grunted. "I don't care so much about the right of it as I do the expediency. And I haven't time to buck the union."
"You've changed a lot since you left off working with your hands," commented his wife, noncommittally.
"A man has to change his point of view when he becomes an employer instead of an employee. Old girl, we're on our way up the ladder and nothing but old Grim, himself, can stop us. And when I came in from the old farm, when I was twelve years old, I had only my two hands and the clothes I stood in."
"You've been wonderful!" murmured Mrs. Moore. "Do you know, Mr. Wolf has done well too.