THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

The Cabin was some two miles from school. During spring vacation, Jerry, who had remained at North Bank, had come across it one day when roaming the woods. You or I might not have thought it much of a find, but it had pleased Jerry mightily. No one knew its history, but Jerry had a theory to the effect that it had been put up some years before as a hunting cabin, a theory borne out by such evidences as empty shot-gun shells. He had found little inside; only a small cookstove of the sheet-iron variety, a wall cupboard made of a box and such other indications of previous occupancy as old newspapers and tin cans. But Jerry had toiled lovingly while recess lasted, and after that in his spare hours, and had made the old shack quite habitable. There was a bed there now in one corner, a rustic contrivance piled with evergreen boughs, a large table and a smaller one, a bench and several stools and, in the way of adornment, many colored pictures tacked to the walls. He had made, too, shutters for the empty windows and placed a hasp and padlock on the door, and the Cabin had become something of an institution at North Bank during the balance of the school year. On Saturday nights Jerry had served suppers to parties of half a dozen, and they were suppers to remember, as Joe had recently testified. Ham and eggs and sweet potatoes, bread and coffee and pie had comprised the menu, and Jerry had himself done the cooking over a wood fire in the little decrepit stove. But, given a boy’s appetite following a two-mile trek, such simple viands can taste surprisingly good, and the fame of the Cabin had spread and Jerry had never had an open date while school lasted. As a money-making proposition the Cabin had not proved a great success, but Jerry had enjoyed it all; most of all the sinking of the season’s scanty profits in a banquet to the school nine after its defeat of its old rival, Cumbridge, in the last contest of the year.

Yesterday he had made a hurried trip out there, well laden with provisions, and found, to his vast relief, that none had molested his domicile; his, at least, by right of discovery and possession. And to-day when he threw the door creakingly inward Tom and Joe found everything just as they recalled it. Beside the stove a box was piled high with wood, the banquet table, of maple saplings and box covers, held the tin plates and cups in neat piles and the small table and the cupboard displayed a heartening array of edibles. Save that the bed needed replenishing with fresh evergreen boughs, the Cabin was ready for its new season.

“Gee, it’s swell!” sighed Joe. “Makes a fellow hungry just to get here! What have you got in the big bundle, Jerry?”

“Bread and a raisin pie and some coffee.”

“Raisin!” exclaimed Joe ecstatically. “Leave me at it, boy!”

Tom, who had subsided on a bench, viewed him disgustedly. “Always thinking of your tummy,” he said. “Didn’t you have any dinner?”

“Sure, but that was three hours ago. Want me to start the fire, Jerry?”

“No, sir, not just yet. Let’s cut some pine boughs for the bed first.”

Joe groaned. “Got to work for my supper, eh? That’s always the way!”

Nevertheless, he toiled as diligently as either of the others. They had to go some little distance to find evergreen trees, and, since Jerry wanted only the smaller branches, it was more than half an hour later when they got back to the Cabin, and Joe again broached the subject of supper, and was again sat on. Tom declared that it was much too warm to think of fires and cooking yet, and went outside again, after the bed had been “made,” and settled down on a leafy bank in the shade of the hut. Joe disconsolately joined him while Jerry made tentative preparations for the evening meal. When Jerry sought them Tom was peacefully asleep, his clasped hands under his head, and Joe was on the borderland. The latter cocked one eye open at Jerry’s appearance and waved a hand weakly.

“Exhausted from want of food,” he murmured.

Whereupon Tom awoke suddenly and, possibly wishing to convey the impression that he had not slumbered, remarked brightly: “Nice and quiet here, isn’t it?”

“It is now,” responded Joe, “since you’ve woke up and stopped snoring!”

“I don’t snore,” said Tom with dignity. “Ask Jerry. Besides, I wasn’t really asleep; I――er――was just thinking.”

“You ought to close your mouth when you think. That will give other folks a chance. Say, Jerry, that reminds me. Your friend Jordan asked me yesterday if I thought you’d let him have the Cabin some evening. Near as I could make out, he wants to bring some pals out here and have a party: cook their own supper and so on. I told him he’d better talk to you about it.”

Tom chuckled. “Jordan’s scared to ask Jerry. They aren’t friends. It was Jordan, you remember, who tried to haze him last winter.”

“I ain’t holding it against him,” remarked Jerry. “Just the same, I don’t want to let any one come out here and use the place like that. If he says anything more about it, Joke, you tell him I said I ain’t doing that way.”

“All right. I shan’t mind telling him a bit. I don’t like him.”

“Oh, he’s all right, I guess,” said Tom carelessly. “Just a bit stuck on himself.”

“No, he isn’t. No fellow can be all right with a name like his.”

“What name’s he got?” asked Jerry.

“Purves, Purves Jordan.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Tom inquired.

“I don’t know, but something is. It don’t sound sensible. Sounds like a disease or something!”

The others chuckled. “Isn’t he playing football?” asked Tom.

“Yes, and he isn’t so bad, either. He’s trying for half back. Of course, as he and Hal room together and all that, he’s likely to get a whack at it before the season’s over. Not that Hal is the sort to show favoritism, but naturally if your chum can play at all you’re going to push him a bit. Well, it’s nothing in my sad existence.”

“It would be if you were a half back instead of half a tackle,” chuckled Tom.

“Where do you get that ‘half a tackle’ stuff?” demanded Joe indignantly. “I’m a tackle and a half. And I don’t mind confiding to you, Thomas, that yesterday I played left tackle all the time and left end about half the time, for our friend Butterfield was in a trance all through the first half. Honest, he acted like a dummy!”

“He was certainly mighty poor on punts,” said Tom. “I noticed that if Duveen punted to one side of the field Butterfield was generally on the other.”

“Sure! He let the opposing end run him out every time. If he did get under the ball he always overran. Of course, I’m not saying that Duveen’s punts were very good, for they weren’t, but just the same an end that knew his business could have judged them a heap better than Lon Butterfield did yesterday. Reckon I’ll stop knocking, though. Maybe I’ll be in his shoes next Saturday.”

“Was Thorne peeved with the way you chaps played?” asked Tom.

“If he was he disguised the fact. After all, Tom, we didn’t do so badly for a first game. Remember we haven’t many of the old men left this fall, and we’d only had one week of practice. I reckon Bayside had been working a fortnight.”

“Well, I don’t know much about the silly game,” said Tom, yawning. “But I did think that inside the tackles our line did pretty well.”

“You turn over! Hickson and I were the life of the party. Joking aside, though, did you notice the way Fat Norris stood up to that husky center of theirs? Fat’s going to be a peach of a center, you mark my words! Oh, on the whole, Tom, we’re going to be a pretty good team when we get our bearings.”

“Yes, if you don’t act like you did last year and try to knife Thorne all season and get licked for it!”

Joe nodded. “I know. That may happen, too. I wasn’t one of that bunch last season, but I know there was a lot of feeling. If Hal Mansfield will hit it off with the coach all right, though, I reckon the others will. So far they’re as thick as thieves.”

“So far Mansfield’s had his say about everything, likely,” commented Tom pessimistically. “Wait till he wants to do something one way and Thorne wants to do it another.”

“Well, I don’t think Hal’s unreasonable,” said Joe judicially. “He must know that he can’t have everything his own way.”

“How come?” asked Jerry, breaking the silence that followed. “You can’t pick up a ball after it’s been thrown and run with it?”

“A forward pass, you mean? Why, it’s against the rules. You see――――”

“Jerry!” exclaimed Tom sternly. “You go in and start that fire! There are some things not suited for the ears of youth and innocence!”

Jerry grinned and obeyed. Joe chuckled. “Take it from me, Tom,” he said, “you can’t do it! Jerry’s got the football bug and he will be playing before long! Better make up your mind to it.”

Tom frowned and then smiled. “Guess you’re right, Joke. He’s certainly mighty interested in it. Well, of course, if he really wants to try it――――”

“I hope he will,” said Joe earnestly. “Something sort of tells me Jerry’s got it in him to play the old game pretty well. You see, Tom, when Jerry starts out to do a thing he puts his whole mind on it, and that’s a fine asset in football. If you’re going to amount to anything at all you’ve got to _live_ football. You can’t just think about it while you’re playing it; you’ve got to study it every minute and dream of it at night. That’s why it takes such a hold on you.”

“Yes, and that’s why football chaps are always such nuts,” replied Tom insultingly. “Come on and let’s give Jerry a hand.”

An hour later they sat down to a repast fit for a king: ham that sizzled enticingly on the tin plates, eggs that were symphonies in white and gold, sweet potatoes baked to a turn and coffee that, if a trifle muddy because Joe wouldn’t wait for it to settle, couldn’t have tasted better from a silver urn. And, of course, there was plenty of bread, and, to top off the feast, a raisin pie that was a dream of sweetness. It was still broad daylight when they finished, although the shadows were long and a whippoorwill was tuning up for his evening’s program. Joe took the bucket to the brook and filled it and, while they waited for it to heat on the little stove, they sat outside and watched the amber light fade to gray above the forest to the west and were comfortably silent and inert. Later, they washed up the dishes, like three tidy housewives, and then Jerry saw that the fire was safe to leave and they passed out into the twilight, the host locking the door and pocketing the key with the air of a landed proprietor. When they emerged from the shadowed twilight of the woods and gained the highway a little wispy crescent of a moon was riding in the eastern sky and a gentle breeze blew toward them from the bay. In deference to Tom’s plaintive urging, their homeward journey was made at a leisurely pace, and they talked of many totally unrelated things, as boys will, and settled, to their own satisfaction at least, a number of problems that had puzzled greater minds than theirs. When the lights in the school buildings twinkled into sight ahead it was well after eight o’clock, and Joe assured the others that he could hear the “plaintive call of the Striped Pajama.” To which Tom replied that if any one discovered him awake half an hour from then he’d pay ’em real money!