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Leave the young lady out of it, or I'll give you something else to think about for a while." "Rats fer you," said the fellow, snapping his fingers under Ted's nose. He picked himself from the ground ten feet away, wiping his bleeding nose and wondering what had happened to him. "Say, boy," said the foreman of the Running Water, "that was as pretty and clean a blow as ever I see.
The only approach to a plan of action was suggested by the broken-nosed individual who had been Ted's companion that day at Palisades Park, a gentleman of some eminence in the boxing world, who rejoiced in the name of the Tennessee Bear-Cat. What they ought to do, in the Bear-Cat's opinion, was to get the old man out into Washington Square one morning.
Ted's face looked very grave. "When do I have to go, father?" "Right away, I'm afraid," was the reply. "I've let you stay as long as possible, and now we must start for our northern trip, if you are to see anything at all of mines and Esquimos before we start home. The mail-steamer passes Nuchek day after to-morrow, and we must go over there in time to take it." "Yes, sir," said Ted, forlornly.
"But there can't be any cellars in these woods," thought the little girl. "Where are you, Teddy?" she called after a bit. "I can't see you!" "Here I am, right behind you!" was the answer, and Jan, turning quickly, saw the head of her brother sticking up out of a hole in the ground. "Oh! Oh!" exclaimed Ted's sister. "Where's the rest of you? Where's your legs and your feet?"
The harvest, with its horde of vegetables and fruit, had been gathered into the yawning barns and cellars and the earth that had given so patiently of its increase had earned the right to lay fallow until the planting of another spring. Ted's work was done.
Perhaps Ted was too genuinely interested in what he was doing to think much about himself or realize that the place he held was an unusual one. At home he and his father had threshed out many a problem together and each given to it the best his brain had to offer, without thought of the difference in their ages. Sometimes Ted's way proved the better, sometimes Mr. Turner's.
Campbell said Ted was thrown out back, an' he was shore he wasn't killed." "Ahuh! Wal, I'm sorry, Abel, your family had to lose in this. Maybe Ted's not bad hurt. I shore hope so.... An' y'u an' Jim keep out of the fight, anyway." "All right, Isbel. But I reckon I'll give y'u a hunch. If this heah fight lasts long the whole damn Basin will be in it, on one side or t'other."
The boy's ambition was to clear off the debt, and then earn something wherewith to finish his own education and Ted's. Now, seeing the whole scheme nipped in the fair bud by Ted's recklessness, small wonder if his heart grew hard. Presently, however, catching sight of Ted's face of misery, stained with one or two furtive tears, his wrath began to melt. "Well, Ted," said he, "never mind now.
Hey! watch that, will you?" gasped William. "He threw the bag as far as he could into the woods!" said Jack. "That looks like he meant to try and keep it," suggested Jack; "I imagine that the leather grip holds something that took Ted's fancy. But all the same I reckon it isn't going to be easy sledding for him. Will he run, fellows?" "He's debating that same question now; but it's too late.
When he was done, his round face smooth and streamy and his eyes stinging from soapy water, he reached for a towel. The family towels were wet, wet and clammy and vile, all of them wet, he found, as he blindly snatched them his own face-towel, his wife's, Verona's, Ted's, Tinka's, and the lone bath-towel with the huge welt of initial. Then George F. Babbitt did a dismaying thing.
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