Chapter I: A New Boy Arrives

A boy of sixteen, dark-eyed, fairly tall and of medium weight, set a very new-looking kit-bag on the floor in front of the news stand in the Baltimore station, shifted an overcoat to his left arm and selected a magazine. In the act of drawing a folding purse from a pocket his attention was attracted by a second youth who ranged alongside. The latter appeared of about his own age, but there all similarity ended. The newcomer was tall and angular and looked overgrown. He had a sallow face, with high cheek bones, pale blue eyes, under lashes and brows that were almost white, and a wide mouth. Underneath a snuff-colored felt hat with a low crown and a narrow, straight brim, his hair, which was a shade or two darker than his eyelashes, had recently been clipped close. Although evidently dressed in his best, his attire looked strange even in a place where strange attires are no novelty. Perhaps his clothes had been made for a much larger person. In any case, they fell in loose folds from every part of his spare frame, almost covering his knuckles and wrinkling ridiculously above his shoes. In hue they were very like his hair, and they seemed made of some material in which cotton and wool combined, with the odds in favor of the cotton. A bluish gingham shirt was in evidence below a turned-down collar and a black bow tie, which, the first lad suspected, was attached to his collar-button by an elastic. Like his neighbor, he carried his overcoat over one arm and had set a new bag on the floor beside him. But the bag was an old-fashioned valise, aggressively yellow and palpably of imitation leather, and the coat was a khaki-colored army overcoat.

“Got any chewing gum, stranger?”

The man behind the counter offered a choice of many brands and the boy fished a handful of loose change from a capacious trousers’ pocket, purchased, smiled in a neighborly fashion at the lad beside him, showing a set of fine white teeth, and, taking up his bag, ambled off. Tom Hartley and the news stand man exchanged amused smiles, the latter shaking his head humorously.

“Right down from the mountains, I reckon,” he said. He himself pronounced the word “daown,” and Tom, fresh from a fortnight above Mason and Dixon’s Line, smiled again, this time to himself. Then, adding the magazine he had bought to his burdens, he made his way through the near-by gate and along the platform to the waiting “train.” On that electric line they always called it a train, whether it consisted of one car or two. The afternoon travel out of the city had not set in and the two o’clock “Limited”――another word that always aroused Tom’s amusement――held but a handful of persons. He set his bag on a seat, draped his coat over it and went back to the small baggage compartment at the rear to see if his trunk was aboard. Of course it wasn’t. One’s trunk was never known to get on the same train that one traveled by, and had Tom seen it there he would possibly have fallen in a dead faint.

There were, Tom noticed on his way back, several of his school companions present, and to all but one he nodded and spoke. None was a sufficiently close acquaintance to demand more than a brief “Hello.” The single exception was a boy of eighteen, a big, good-looking fellow who, noting Tom’s arrival, turned his face toward a window with a sneering, contemptuous expression. To him Tom neither spoke nor nodded. He and Wayne Sortwell were acknowledged enemies, although neither could have offered a sufficient explanation for the fact. Meeting each other in the very middle of the Sahara Desert, with no one else present, they might have nodded scowlingly, but on ordinary occasions they sedulously avoided recognition.

The car filled slowly. Tom, opening his magazine, hoped that leaving time would arrive before a colored “mammy” toting a pickaninny or a basket of marketing plumped herself beside him. He was spared that, although he was not fortunate enough to keep the seat to himself. At the very last moment, when he had congratulated himself and was settling down to a story in the magazine, he became aware of a disturbance beside him and looked up to see a flash of white teeth and the friendly twinkling of a pair of pale blue eyes under colorless lashes.

“Reckon I’ll have to sit in with you-all,” said the owner of the teeth. Tom murmured politely and drew himself toward the window, and the youth of the chewing gum incident lowered himself to the seat, very careful not to jostle his neighbor as the car swayed over the yard switches, set his valise between his feet, doubled his faded khaki overcoat over his gaunt knees and folded a pair of scarred and rugged hands on the coat. Observing from the corners of his eyes, Tom saw the boy’s jaws working rhythmically over his gum. Tom went back to his story. Evidently his neighbor had the good sense not to attempt conversation.

Presently the conductor came, and Tom, yielding his own ticket to North Bank, saw with surprise that the boy beside him gave up a similar ticket. That this raw-boned, countrified fellow could be on his way to North Bank School was too ridiculous for credence, and yet, if he was not going to the school, where could he be going? Broadly speaking, the school was all there was at North Bank in the winter. In summer the houses and bungalows that lined the river were occupied, but at this time of year, the first week in January, only one or two would be open. Tom stole a puzzled look at his traveling companion, and at the same moment the latter turned his blue eyes on Tom. The blue eyes twinkled before Tom could look past and away, and the broad mouth curved in a likable smile. Unconsciously, Tom smiled back. If, he reflected, you lost sight of the fellow’s impossible attire, he wasn’t so bad!

“Reckon you-all are goin’ to the school,” said the boy questioningly. Tom nodded.

“I’m going to North Bank,” he agreed pleasantly.

“That’s what I thought. I’m goin’ there, too.” The blue eyes moved past Tom to stare calmly through the window.

“Oh!” said Tom, not thinking of anything better at the moment. His gaze swept the oddly dressed youth again. He hated to think what would happen when this new acquaintance was seen by his future schoolmates! After a moment he asked: “What class are you in?”

“The feller that wrote to Pap said I’d be in the third class. I ain’t had much schoolin’. Reckon I’m kind of old for the third.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

Tom hesitated. Looking closely at the other he could see that his first guess of sixteen had been wrong. Now he could have accepted even eighteen as the chap’s age, for in spite of the boyish smile and the uncouth appearance there was a settled, mature expression in the face. “Well,” Tom said finally, “seventeen is a bit old for the third class, but I wouldn’t let that trouble you.”

The other shook his head placidly. “I ain’t reckonin’ to let it trouble me none, neighbor,” he said in his not unpleasant drawl. “I ain’t never goin’ to get any younger. Reckon that’s your class, too.”

“No, I’m in the second.” Tom, to his surprise, spoke almost apologetically.

“Are you? Well, then I reckon you-all can tell me somethin’ about this class I’m goin’ in. Do they learn you pretty hard?”

“Learn you――oh, are the studies hard, you mean? No, I don’t think so. The regular stuff; algebra, English, Latin, geography and so on.”

“Mh-mh. Reckon that Latin’s goin’ to stump me, though. I never had any Latin. The feller that wrote Pap said I’d have to do a sight of work on that Latin so’s to catch up with the other fellers.”

“Third class Latin’s not very hard,” said Tom consolingly. “Coming in like this, though, in the middle of the year, makes it a bit stiffer. If you’d started in with your class, you know――――”

“Mh-mh, that’s what the feller said. But I couldn’t of come last September. Pap didn’t have any one in the store and he couldn’t get any one, either, and so I had to stay by him. Seems like since the War nobody wants to do any work. Then some of the fellers didn’t come back at all. Gene Simpkins and Bill Tolliver was killed, and Lee Nash――nobody knows what happened to Lee. He just dropped out of sight. His mammy’s still lookin’ for him, but I reckon he’s a goner. A couple of the fellers got jobs in New York. Pap ain’t as young as he used to be and I sort of hated to leave him.”

“I see,” said Tom. “But he found some one finally, eh? Your father, I mean.”

“He ain’t my father. I never had any father, any rate not as I can remember. Nor any mammy, neither. Reckon I did have ’em once, but they died before I knowed ’em. Pap Huckins brung――brang me up, but he ain’t any kin of mine. I always called him Pap because I never had any real Pap.”

“Where do you live?” asked Tom.

“Huckinsburg, North Carolina. It’s named for Pap. Pap’s folks was quality before the war; the old war, I mean, where we-all fought you-all.”

Tom laughed. “You think I’m a Northerner, then, do you?”

The other smiled with twinkling eyes. “Reckon you must be,” he answered. “Any rate, you ain’t a Southron. Ain’t you a Yank?”

“I guess that’s what you’d call me. My name’s Hartley, by the way.”

“Pleased to know you.” The boy seized Tom’s hand in a crushing grip and shook it heartily. “My name’s Jerry Benson. I’m powerful glad to meet up with a friend, ’cause I reckon a lot of those high-toned fellers at school won’t have much use for a feller like me.”

Tom, a trifle dismayed, muttered something as he surreptitiously examined his mangled fingers. Jerry Benson went on placidly.

“Reckon I ain’t really got any right at this school, seeing I’m a sort of country feller, but Pap allowed the best was the cheapest in the long run, and he knows a man over to Brattleville whose boy went to North Bank and so he made up his mind I was to go here too. I wanted to go to the school over to Major’s Run. It’s a right good school, too. But Pap, he’d set his heart on this place. Reckon there’s a heap of trouble ahead of me, don’t you?” The pale blue eyes were twinkling again and Tom had the thought that even if his acquaintance anticipated trouble he certainly didn’t look concerned about it!

“Well, I don’t know,” he began. “Perhaps a few fellows may rag you, but I guess they’re not worth considering, Benson. You see――――”

“Say,” the other interrupted, “I’d sort of like you to call me Jerry. No one ain’t never called me Benson before, and it sounds unnatural. Reckon you didn’t say what your first name is.”

“Tom.”

“Mh-mh. Tom’s a good easy name to handle, ain’t it? Reckon you and me’s goin’ to be friends, Tom.”

What answer Tom would have made he never knew, for at that moment the car began to slow and the conductor’s voice came as a welcome diversion:

“North Bank! North Bank!”