Crowded Out o' Crofield; or, The Boy who made his Way

"I'm going to the city!"

He stood in the wide door of the blacksmith-shop, with his hands in his pockets, looking down the street, toward the rickety old bridge over the Cocahutchie. He was a sandy-haired, freckled-faced boy, and if he was really only about fifteen, he was tall for his age. Across the top of the door, over his head, stretched a cracked and faded sign, with a horseshoe painted on one end and a hammer on the other, and the name "John Ogden," almost faded out, between them.

The blacksmith-shop was a great, rusty, grimy clutter of work-benches, vises, tools, iron in bars and rods, and all sorts of old iron scraps and things that looked as if they needed making over.

The forge was in the middle, on one side, and near it was hitched a horse, pawing the ground with a hoof that bore a new shoe. On the anvil was a brilliant, yellow-red loop of iron, that was not quite yet a new shoe, and it was sending out bright sparks as a hammer fell upon it-"thud, thud, thud," and a clatter. Over the anvil leaned a tall, muscular, dark-haired, grimy man. His face wore a disturbed and anxious look, and it was covered with charcoal dust. There was altogether too much charcoal along the high bridge of his Roman nose and over his jutting eyebrows.

The boy in the door also had some charcoal on his cheeks and forehead, but none upon his nose. His nose was not precisely like the blacksmith's. It was high and Roman half-way down, but just there was a little dent, and the rest of the nose was straight. His complexion, excepting the freckles and charcoal, was chiefly sunburn, down to the neckband of his blue checked shirt. He was a tough, wiry-looking boy, and there was a kind of smiling, self-confident expression in his blue-gray eyes and around his firm mouth.

"I'm going to the city!" he said, again, in a low but positive voice. "I'll get there, somehow."

Just then a short, thick-set man came hurrying past him into the shop. He was probably the whitest man going into that or any other shop, and he spoke out at once, very fast, but with a voice that sounded as if it came through a bag of meal.

"Ogden," said he, "got him shod? If you have, I'll take him. What do you say about that trade?"

"I don't want any more room than there is here," said the blacksmith, "and I don't care to move my shop."

"There's nigh onto two acres, mebbe more, all along the creek from below the mill to Deacon Hawkins's line, below the bridge," wheezed the mealy, floury, dusty man, rapidly. "I'll get two hundred for it some day, ground or no ground. Best place for a shop."

"This lot suits me," said the smith, hammering away. "'Twouldn't pay me to move-not in these times."

The miller had more to say, while he unhitched his horse, but he led him out without getting any more favorable reply about the trade.

"Come and blow, Jack," said the smith, and the boy in the door turned promptly to take the handle of the bellows.

The little heap of charcoal and coke in the forge brightened and sent up fiery tongues, as the great leathern lungs wheezed and sighed, and Jack himself began to puff.

"I've got to have a bigger man than you are, for a blower and striker," said the smith. "He's coming Monday morning. It's time you were doing something, Jack."

"Why, father," said Jack, as he ceased pulling on the bellows, and the shoe came out of the fire, "I've been doing something ever since I was twelve. Been working here since May, and lots o' times before that. Learned the trade, too."

"You can make a nail, but you can't make a shoe," said his father, as he sizzed the bit of bent iron in the water-tub and then threw it on the ground. "Seven. That's all the shoes I'll make this morning, and there are seven of you at home. Your mother can't spare Molly, but you'll have to do something. It is Saturday, and you can go fishing, after dinner, if you'd like to. There's nothin' to ketch 'round here, either. Worst times there ever were in Crofield."

There was gloom as well as charcoal on the face of the blacksmith, but Jack's expression was only respectfully serious as he walked away, without speaking, and again stood in the door for a moment.

"I could catch something in the city. I know I could," he said, to himself. "How on earth shall I get there?"

The bridge, at the lower end of the sloping side-street on which the shop stood, was long and high. It was made to fit the road and was a number of sizes too large for the stream of water rippling under it. The side-street climbed about twenty rods the other way into what was evidently the Main Street of Crofield. There was a tavern on one corner, and across the street from that there was a drug store and in it was the post-office. On the two opposite corners were shops, and all along Main Street were all sorts of business establishments, sandwiched in among the dwellings.

It was not yet noon, but Crofield had a sleepy look, as if all its work for the whole week were done. Even the horses of the farmers' teams, hitched in front of the stores, looked sleepy. Jack Ogden took his longest look, this time, at a neat, white-painted frame-house across the way.

"Seems to me there isn't nearly so much room in it as there used to be," he said to himself. "It's just packed and crowded. I'm going!"

He turned and walked on up toward Main Street, as if that were the best thing he could do till dinner time. Not many minutes later, a girl plainly but neatly dressed came slowly along in front of the village green, away up Main Street. She was tall and slender, and her hair and eyes were as dark as those of John Ogden, the blacksmith. Her nose was like his, too, except that it was finer and not so high, and she wore very much the same anxious, discontented look upon her face. She was walking slowly, because she saw, coming toward her, a portly lady, with hair so flaxy that no gray would show in it. She was elegantly dressed. She stopped and smiled and looked very condescending.

"Good-morning, Mary Ogden," she said.

"Good-morning, Miss Glidden," said Mary, the anxious look in her eyes changing to a gleam that made them seem very wide awake.

"It's a fine morning, Mary Ogden, but so very warm. Is your mother well?"

"Very well, thank you," said Mary.

"And is your aunt well-and your father, and all the children? I'm so glad they are well. Elder Holloway's to be here to-morrow. Hope you'll all come. I shall be there myself. You've had my class a number of times. Much obliged to you. I'll be there to-morrow. You must hear the Elder. He's to inspect the Sunday-school."

"Your class, Miss Glidden?" began Mary; and her face suggested that somebody was blowing upon a kind of fire inside her cheeks, and that they would be very red in a minute.

"Yes; don't fail to be there to-morrow, Mary. The choir'll be full, of course. I shall be there myself."

"I hope you will, Miss Glidden-"

The portly lady saw something up the street at that moment.

"Oh my! What is it? Dear me! It's coming! Run! We'll all be killed! Oh my!"

She had turned quite around, while she was speaking, and was once more looking up the street; but the dark-haired girl had neither flinched nor wavered. She had only sent a curious, inquiring glance in the direction of the shouts and the rattle and the cloud of dust that were coming swiftly toward them.

"A runaway team," she said, quietly. "Nobody's in the wagon."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Miss Glidden; but Mary began to move away, looking not at her but at the runaway, and she did not hear the rest. "Mary Ogden's too uppish.-Somebody'll be killed, I know they will!-She's got to be taken down.-There they come!-Dressed too well for a blacksmith's daughter. Doesn't know her place.-Oh dear! I'm so frightened!"

Perhaps she had been wise in getting behind the nearest tree. It was a young maple, two inches through, lately set out, but it might have stopped a pair of very small horses. Those in the road were large-almost too large to run well. They were well-matched grays, and they came thundering along in a way that was really fine to behold; heads down, necks arched, nostrils wide, reins flying, the wagon behind them banging and swerving-no wonder everybody stood still and, except Mary Ogden, shouted, "Stop 'em!" One young fellow, across the street, stood still only until the runaways were all but close by him. Then he darted out into the street, not ahead of them but behind them. No man on earth could have stopped those horses by standing in front of them. They could have charged through a regiment. Their heavy, furious gallop was fast, too, and the boy who was now following them, must have been as light of foot as a young deer.

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Go it, Jack! Catch 'em! Bully for you!" arose from a score of people along the sidewalk, as he bounded forward.

"It's Jack! Oh dear me! But it's just like him! There! He's in!" exclaimed Mary Ogden, her dark eyes dancing proudly.

"Why, it's that good-for-nothing brother of Mary Ogden. He's the blacksmith's boy. I'm afraid he will be hurt," remarked Miss Glidden, kindly and benevolently; but all the rest shouted "Hurrah!" again.

Fierce was the strain upon the young runner, for a moment, and then his hands were on the back-board of the bouncing wagon. A tug, a spring, a swerve of the wagon, and Jack Ogden was in it, and in a second more the loosely flying reins were in his hands.

The strong arms of his father, were they twice as strong, could not at once have pulled in those horses, and one man on the sidewalk seemed to be entirely correct when he said, "He's a plucky little fellow, but he can't do a thing, now he's there."

The Runaway.

His sister was trembling all over, but she was repeating: "He did it splendidly! He can do anything!"

Jack, in the wagon, was thinking only: "I know 'em. They're old Hammond's team. They'll try to go home to the mill. They'll smash everything, if I don't look out!"

It is something, even to a greatly frightened horse, to feel a hand on the rein. The team intended to turn out of Main Street, at the corner, and they made the turn, but they did not crash the wagon to pieces against the corner post, because of the desperate guiding that was done by Jack. The wagon swung around without upsetting. It tilted fearfully, and the nigh wheel was in the air for a moment, until Jack's weight helped bring it down again. There was a short, sharp scream across the street, when the wagon swung and the wheel went up.

Down the slope toward the bridge thundered the galloping team, and the blacksmith ran out of his shop to see it pass.

"Turn them into the creek, Jack!" he shouted, but there was no time for any answer.

"They'd smash through the bridge," thought Jack. "I know what I'm about."

There were wheel-marks down from the street, at the left of the bridge, where many a team had descended to drink the water of the Cocahutchie, but it required all Jack's strength on one rein to make his runaways take that direction. They had thought of going toward the mill, but they knew the watering-place.

Not many rods below the bridge stood a clump of half a dozen gigantic trees, remnants of the old forest which had been replaced by the streets of Crofield and the farms around it. Jack's pull on the left rein was obeyed only too well, and it looked, for some seconds, as if the plunging beasts were about to wind up their maddened dash by a wreck among those gnarled trunks and projecting roots. Jack drew his breath hard, and there was almost a chill at his young heart, but he held hard and said nothing.

Forward-one plunge more-hard on the right rein-

"That was close!" he said. "If we didn't go right between the big maple and the cherry! Now I've got 'em!"

Splash, crash, rattle! Spattering and plunging, but cooling fast, the gray team galloped along the shallow bed of the Cocahutchie.

"I wish the old swimming-hole was deeper," said Jack, "but the water's very low. Whoa, boys! Whoa, there! Almost up to the hub-over the hub! Whoa, now!"

And the gray team ceased its plunging and stood still in water three feet deep.

"I mustn't let 'em drink too much," said Jack; "but a little won't hurt 'em."

The horses were trembling all over, but one after the other they put their noses into the water, and then raised their heads to prick their ears back and forth and look round.

"Don't bring 'em ashore till they're quiet, Jack," called out the deep, ringing voice of his father from the bank.

There he stood, and other men were coming on the run. The tall blacksmith's black eyes were flashing with pride over the daring feat his son had performed.

"I daren't tell him, though," he said to himself. "He's set up enough a'ready. He thinks he can do 'most anything."

"Jack," wheezed a mealy voice at his side, "that's my team-"

"I know it," said Jack. "They 're all right now. Pretty close shave through the trees, that was!"

"I owe ye fifty dollars for a-savin' them and the wagin," said the miller. "It's wuth it, and I'll pay it; but I've got to owe it to ye, jest now. Times are awful hard in Crofield. If I'd ha' lost them hosses and that wagin-"

He stopped short, as if he could not exactly say how disastrous it would have been for him.

There was a running fire of praise and of questions poured at Jack, by the gathering knot of people on the shore, and it was several minutes before his father spoke again.

"They're cool now," he said. "Turn 'em, Jack, and walk 'em out by the bridge, and up to the mill. Then come home to dinner."

Jack pretended not to see quite a different kind of group gathered under the clump of tall trees. Not a voice had come to him from that group of lookers-on, and yet the fact that they were there made him tingle all over.

Two large, freckle-faced, sandy-haired women were hugging each other, and wiping their eyes; and a very small girl was tugging at their dresses and crying, while a pair of girls of from twelve to fourteen, close by them, seemed very much inclined to dance. Two small boys, who at first belonged to the party, had quickly rolled up their trousers and waded out as far as they could into the Cocahutchie. Just in front of the group, under the trees, stood Mary Ogden, straight as an arrow, her dark eyes flashing and her cheeks glowing while she looked silently at the boy on the wagon in the stream, until she saw him wheel the grays. Even then she did not say anything, but turned and walked away. It was as if she had so much to say that she felt she could not say it.

"Aunt Melinda! Mother!" said one of the girls, "Jack isn't hurt a mite. They'd all ha' been drowned, though, if there was water enough."

"Hush, Bessie," said one of the large women, and the other at once echoed, "Hush, Bessie."

They were very nearly alike, these women, and they both had long straight noses, such as Jack's would have been, if half-way down it had not been Roman, like his father's.

"Mary Ann," said the first woman, "we mustn't say too much to him about it. He can only just be held in, now."

"Hush, Melinda," said Jack's mother. "I thought I'd seen the last of him when the gray critters came a-powderin' down the road past the house"-and then she wiped her eyes again, and so did Aunt Melinda, and they both stooped down at the same moment, saying, "Jack's safe, Sally," and picked up the small girl, who was crying, and kissed her.

The gray team was surrendered to its owner as soon as it reached the road at the foot of the bridge, and again Jack was loudly praised by the miller. The rest of the Ogden family seemed to be disposed to keep away, but the tall blacksmith himself was there.

"Jack," said he, as they turned away homeward, "you can go fishing this afternoon, just as I said. I was thinking of your doing something else afterward, but you've done about enough for one day."

He had more to say, concerning what would have happened to the miller's horses, and the number of pieces the wagon would have been knocked into, but for the manner in which the whole team had been saved.

When they reached the house the front door was open, but nobody was to be seen. Bob and Jim, the two small boys, had not yet returned from seeing the gray span taken to the mill, and the women and girls had gone through to the kitchen.

"Jack," said his father, as they went in, "old Hammond'll owe you that fifty dollars long enough. He never really pays anything."

"Course he doesn't-not if he can help it," said Jack. "I worked for him three months, and you know we had to take it out in feed. I learned the mill trade, though, and that was something."

Just then he was suddenly embarrassed. Mrs. Ogden had gone through the house and out at the back door, and Aunt Melinda had followed her, and so had the girls. Molly had suddenly gone up-stairs to her own room. Aunt Melinda had taken everything off the kitchen stove and put everything back again, and here now was Mrs. Ogden back again, hugging her son.

"Jack," she said, "don't you ever, ever, do such a thing again. You might ha' been knocked into slivers!"

Molly had gone up the back stairs only to come down the front way, and she was now a little behind them.

"Mother!" she exclaimed, as if her pent-up admiration for her brother was exploding, "you ought to have seen him jump in, and you ought to have seen that wagon go around the corner!"

"Jack," broke in the half-choked voice of Aunt Melinda from the kitchen doorway, "come and eat something. I felt as if I knew you were killed, sure. If you haven't earned your dinner, nobody has."

"Why, I know how to drive," said Jack. "I wasn't afraid of 'em after I got hold of the reins."

He seemed even in a hurry to get through his dinner, and some minutes later he was out in the garden, digging for bait. The rest of the family remained at the table longer than usual, especially Bob and Jim; but, for some reason known to herself, Mary did not say a word about her meeting with Miss Glidden. Perhaps the miller's gray team had run away with all her interest in that, but she did not even tell how carefully Miss Glidden had inquired after the family.

"There goes Jack," she said at last, and they all turned to look.

He did not say anything as he passed the kitchen door, but he had his long cane fishing-pole over his shoulder. It had a line wound around it, ready for use. He went out of the gate and down the road toward the bridge, and gave only a glance across at the shop.

"I didn't get many worms," he said to himself, at the bridge, "but I can dig some more if the fish bite. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't."

Over the bridge he went, and up a wagon track on the opposite bank, but he paused for one moment, in the very middle of the bridge, to look up stream.

"There's just enough water to run the mill," he said. "There isn't any coming over the dam. The pond's even full, though, and it may be a good day for fish. I wish I was in the city!"