CHAPTER XX.
WHILE THE GAME WAS PLAYED.
On a jutting ledge far up the side of Ragged Mountain, where he could overlook the village, harbor, open sea and hilly country to the westward, a lonely boy sat astride a spur of the blue rock, gazing downward at a dark object crawling steadily along the brown thread of a road which led from the village, crooked about the shores of the amethyst lake and wound into the distance that swallowed it from sight.
The boy was Don Scott, who had made feverish haste to get out of Rockspur ahead of the football team, leaving his overcoat at the little railroad station which he passed on the Lobsterville side. From the station he had followed the railroad to the foot of the mountain, where he found a dimly-defined path that led him, panting and toiling, upward to the ledge on which he was now perched.
At his feet lay Lake Glenwood, seeming near enough for him to hurl a pebble into it with no great effort, although he knew it was quite half-a-mile from the foot of the mountain. His eyes had hastily followed the road along the shore till they found, far beyond the middle section of the lake and pursuing the stream that led off from it, the dark object which he knew was the big buckboard carrying the members of the Rockspur Eleven to Highland.
“There they go!” he panted. “Renwood is with them! Bentley is with them! and I am here!”
He laughed bitterly, and then became silent as the wind seemed to bring faintly to his ears the refrain of a familiar song often sung by the boys on their way to a game or returning from a victorious contest. He could not distinguish the words, but the indistinct sound of the chorus, like a momentary murmur of the wind, was enough to cause those words to flash across his mind.
“Singing!” he cried, fiercely “Don’t be so sure you’ll ‘win to-day.’ You can’t tell. Anyhow, I hope you won’t! I hope you’ll be beaten out of your boots!”
He sat there and watched till the buckboard disappeared along with the brown road that had run to a hiding place amid the woods and hills. Even then he did not stir, but long after that he remained on the ledge, yet without deriving any pleasure from the beauty of the scene spread out before him in all the enchanting colors which a river-threaded, lake-dotted, sea-edged landscape reveals beneath the midday sun of early autumn.
At last he left the ledge and came slowly down the mountain. He did not follow the path all the way to the foot of the descent, but turned to the left, skirting the base of Round Stone Cliff, where pleasure-seekers had sent great stones shooting and bounding down the face of the steep declivity, thundering over the lower slope and crashing into the tangled thickets below, tearing crooked paths through the woods to the point where they were piled in confusion into a deep, dark ravine.
What if some unseen person, knowing nothing of his presence below, were to start a huge bowlder rolling from the top of the cliff as he made his way along its base! He thought of that and laughed!
“Let ’em come!” he exclaimed. “I can dodge ’em!”
Nothing of the kind happened, however, which, without doubt, for all of his confidence in his dodging ability, was fortunate for him.
Beyond the cliff, after forcing his way through dense and matted thickets, he came out into the Boxberry Pasture, as it was called by the boys. This was an elevated spot, where he could still look down on the harbor and village. The pasture was a mass of stumps and rocks and knolls, the latter being covered with interwoven vines, which gave to his nostrils the smell of dried checkerberry, plumes of which showed here and there in bright red patches.
Crossing the pasture, he descended to the road that led away to the Powder Mill Woods, where he felt that he might be alone for the afternoon. He hoped that he would not meet on the road any one who knew him, and, to his satisfaction and relief, he did not.
The woods seemed dark and still when he first entered them, and a feeling of loneliness beset him; yet there was a subtle something about the peaceful stillness that soothed his troubled spirit with a gentle suggestion of sadness that, strangely enough, gave him a sensation of enjoyment.
Beneath his feet, where the trees were thick overhead, the ground was damp and yielding, giving his footfall no sound, save when a twig snapped with a muffled noise. The air that he breathed was sweet with the odor of pine and balsam and damp earth. The sunshine did not glare before his eyes, and the dense shadows added to the tranquillity he sought.
So he wandered through the “dim aisles of the woods,” and after a time he found they were not so lonely and deserted as they appeared. He paused to watch a tiny black-hooded chickadee that was doing all kinds of gymnastic tricks upon a bush, clinging to the side of a branch one moment, hanging upside down the next, and constantly on the move, now and then gleefully crying: “Chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee.” He sat on a damp and rotting log and observed a red-headed woodpecker rat-tat-tatting away at the trunk of an old dead tree and saw a squirrel skurrying along the ground. And the hours slipped away with few disturbing thoughts of the football game that was taking place in Highland.
When he was tired of wandering in the woods, he sought the favorite spot by the Powder Mill Dam, where he lay on the ground or sat on the rocks and watched a speckled trout in a placid pool below the dam. So the afternoon passed, the sun dropped low, the shadows deepened and night drew on.
In the dusk, he returned along the road that led toward the village, the lights of which were beginning to gleam through the gloom across the harbor. He did not wish to appear in the village before the members of the eleven returned from Highland, and he knew they could not get back till some time after dark.
Reaching the Highland road, he paused a while, fully satisfied that neither players nor spectators from Rockspur had passed on the return journey. He sat on an old stone wall and waited till two village boys on bicycles, their lanterns making long white streaks of light on the road before them, came along from the direction of Highland. Although it was rather dark for him to make out who they were by the aid of his eyes, he recognized them by their voices, as they were talking about the game while they sped swiftly past toward the crest of Bloody Hill.
“Skinny Jones and Pug Andrews,” muttered Don, rising from the wall and making for the road. “They’ve come in ahead of the others, for Skinny is a scorcher. There’s time enough to get over the bridge before the buckboard comes along.”
But, as he was hurrying down the hill, there was a rattle of carriage wheels behind him. He looked back and saw a team come over the crest of the hill.
“That isn’t the buckboard,” he said.
But it proved to be a carriage driven by no less a person than Dolph Renwood, who was accompanied by his sister and Dora Deland. The light from a window of the railroad station at the foot of the hill shone out and fell full on Don, so those in the carriage recognized him.
“Oh, Mr. Scott!” cried a musical voice, “I’m so sorry we didn’t have you with us! If you had been there, I truly believe we might have won the game.”
Then the carriage clattered on, and Don turned in to the station to get his overcoat. He knew now that Rockspur had lost, but somehow Zadia’s words had seemed to rob him of the satisfaction he had expected to feel over such a result.
“She spoke to me!” he murmured; “she spoke to me, for all that she was with him!”
Obtaining the overcoat, he hastened down through Lobsterville to the bridge, crossed the river, turned to the left and hurried past the post-office on the corner, then made his way home by a back street.
Don dreaded to meet his father, for he knew Dr. Scott would question him about the game. It was his intention to make a pretense of being so disgusted over the result of the game that he did not wish to say anything about it; but he wondered what he could do in case his father pinned him down to tell the exact score.
Fortunately, his father was not at home, as he found after slipping quietly into the house, and he learned from his aunt that the doctor had been called to a neighboring town to consult over a critical case.
“He said he might not get home before eight or nine o’clock,” said the thoughtful old soul, who had supper ready to put on the table. “I s’pose you’re awful hungry? You didn’t get no legs nor arms broke to-day, did you?”
“No, I didn’t get hurt at all.”
“Fortunate—fortunate, indeed! I didn’t know but you’d come home dead.” Then, after a pause, “I s’pose you beat the Highlanders?”
“No; they beat us.”
“I declare!” cried Aunt Ella, sympathetically, stopping half way from the kitchen door to the dining-room table, the teapot in one hand and a plate of warm rolls in the other. “Now, that’s too bad! I’m real sorry!”
“And I’m real hungry. Just hustle on the grub, Aunt Ella, and see me wreak havoc and destruction on it.”
“You don’t seem to feel half as bad about losing as I thought you would,” said she, as she complied with his request. “It’s not like you, for you used to feel awful cut up when you got beat at baseball.”
“Oh, well, we’ll even this up with Highland all right next game,” asserted Don, sitting down to the table. “It’s no use crying over spilled milk.”
“You never cry, but you do feel bad, and this is the first time I ever saw you like this. I don’t understand it.”
Don came near laughing aloud, but repressed the inclination with an effort. When he had satisfied his hunger he went up to his room. He felt like going out to see if he could not find somebody to give him the particulars of the game, but his pride caused him to decide not to pursue such a course, as he did not wish any of his former companions to think he would take that much interest in the affairs of the eleven.
Some boys in Don’s position would have sought the defeated players for the purpose of jeering at them and deriding them, and it must be confessed that Scott was strongly tempted to do so; but he decided that it would cut them far more if he made a pretension of absolute and utter indifference, and in this he was right. A person who can deport himself with an air of indifference and unconcern toward those whom he dislikes has not only won a victory over himself and his natural inclinations to show scorn or hatred for his enemies, but he causes those enemies to feel that he considers them of such small consequence that he does not even take the trouble to become annoyed or offended at them. In the long run, indifference is a keener weapon than open scorn and hatred.
So Don remained at home, seeking to pass the evening as best he could. Wishing to do some writing, and finding in his desk no pens to suit him, he went down into his father’s office. Having lighted the hanging lamp, he sat down at the doctor’s open desk, and there he was writing busily some time later when a gentle tapping sounded on the window near his elbow. Looking round, he saw the outlines of a face close to the glass and recognized Leon Bentley, who was peering in at him with a smirking grin of conciliation and friendliness.