From the Improvement Era, January 1935 –

Cross Country

By Samuel Taylor

The clear notes of the starting bugle cut through the swish of wind along the hilltop. Ted Nelson settled his knit cap rakishly over one eye and tentatively jiggled his skis.

“Watch me,” he said to the other six skimen. “I’ll show that old fossil how it’s done. Bet he fell a-purpose to make the trail bad for me.”

“You go easy,” warned Gunnerud. “This wind she tough today, yet bat.”

Nelson started, crouching low, and bobbed up and down jockeying for speed. The bitter wind blurred his vision; he shook his eyes clear as he swooped in the level of the takeoff. Then a leap like a released clock spring whipped him high. The voice of the mob below swelled to a roar. Arms flailing, Nelson leaned forward almost horizontal, slowly straightening as he dropped. Spat! the waxed grooves contacted the hillside and Nelson’s knees bent gracefully to absorb the shock. Then he was under the finish wire and his skis threw up a spray of snow as he skidded to a stop. He skated to the sidelines, grinning, and winked at a pretty girl, red-cheeked and with straw colored curls, who was in the front rank of the crowd, close to the rope.

“How’s that, Hilda?”

“Oh, that was a gra-and leap, Ted! But be careful! It’s an awful day with this wind. … See about Papa, will you? He said the fall didn’t hurt him. But it was a nasty spill he took and I’m afraid he twisted that ankle again.”

“Two hundred and seven feet, folks!” came the brassy voice from the amplifier. “Two seven for Nelson on the trial leap. Looks like a fast track today and plenty of thrills in store. . . . We’ve just got word from Kristiansen. The old master declares the spill he took did not injure him, and so the King will still be the man to beat, as usual.”

Nelson looked up the steep curve of the landing hill to the takeoff, and beyond to where the six remaining jumpers made a thin line of color in the solid gray of snow and sky. The bugle sounded and Gunnerud started down the thin pair of tracks above the takeoff platform. Nelson looked at the pink faces of the crowd — eyes staring upward in fascination while mouths relaxed in awe and throats growled a rumble of vicarious fear. Gunnerud landed safely at a hundred ninety-two feet. Nelson, with a wry twist to his mouth, made his way to the hot little room near the ascending trail,

Lars Kristiansen was inside, sitting on a box of sand near the stove and flexing his ankle. A tough, lean fellow was “King” Kristiansen.

“How’s the ankle?”

“Ay guess you wish it was broke, huh?”

“No, I don’t care,” Nelson said, then added: “Hilda wanted to know.”

“Then lat her ask me!” Lars rumbled. “You batter kape away from my Hildegarde!”

Nelson grinned confidently.

“We’ll talk about that after the meet, maybe.”

The lean Kristiansen got to his feet. “You naver bate Lars Kristiansen, ba-aby boy! Yah! Young kids who try to be ski yumpers! You yump too far and braak your nack, by golly!

A newspaper man collared Nelson outside the door.

“Say. Ted”— it was “Ted,” though the fellow was an absolute stranger — “I want you to verify the story about the feud between you and old Lars.”

“What feud?”

“It’s all right, Ted. Everybody knows about it. Just a word, see. For a quote. About you and Kristiansen’s daughter, Hildegarde — romance in the ski troupe — youth against age — can’t bear to admit he’s getting old — won’t listen to you at all as a son-in-law. You know it all.

But I understand the old boy’s a real sport — and plenty confident — or maybe desperate. There’s a rumor that he might change his mind about you and Hilda if you ever were man enough to beat him. That kind of a man, you know — proud of his skill but ready to shake hands with a better man. How about it, Ted? Just a word.”

“Funny how stories get around,” remarked Nelson, and started up the hill. Bernssen was coming off the takeoff. He was caught sideways by the wind and hit with skis crossed.

“Bad day for yumpin’,” Gunnerud growled on the trail behind Nelson.

“What the devil? — we knew the game when we went into it.”

“Yas! But it is not lak it used to be, by golly! They gat hills bigger every year, you bat, and if there is no hill they make a scaffold! When Ay start yumpin’ years ago they think it impossible to yump two hundred feet. And now you got to go batter than that to gat in the money. And one bad fall — .”

“Aw, what does it matter about us? The mob wants thrills.”

“Yass! You are young — and you look at Hildegarde and think you bate Lars!”

“You’re having pipe dreams.”

It soon developed that the mob was to get the thrills it came after. The meet settled down to a reckless duel between the old master, Lars “King” Kristiansen, and young Ted Nelson. Lars had perfect form and years of experience. But forty years of age are a heavy handicap in a sport demanding the very utmost of agility and rubber resiliency of a man. And Nelson had his eye on glory — and the apple-cheeked Hilda.

When Ted joined the professional ski ranks two years previously, Lars called him a kid, told him to keep away from Hildegarde until he was a man. A man, it developed, was someone who could handle a pair of hickory skis — who could beat the old master at his own game. Hilda was sixteen then and Ted just eighteen. The rivalry developed, Lars jealously keeping his supremacy, regarding the younger man with that instinctive dislike of fathers for the suitors of their daughters. And Ted pushed the old master to the limit.

On the first jump after the trial leap Kristiansen hurtled two hundred three feet. Nelson topped it with two twenty-seven. Lars flung himself far enough to surpass that by nineteen feet, but the effort of jumping combined with the wind caused him to touch one hand, losing fifteen points. Nelson followed in a mighty stride of two hundred fifty-two.

The announcer was beside himself. “You’re seeing a match, folks! You’re seeing a match! Watch out for a world’s record in the next jump, folks!”

“Ted, don’t be so reckless!” Hildegarde advised anxiously, I’m afraid for you in this wind. And Papa. He’s jumping too hard. He simply won’t let you beat him!”

Nelson kept his grin, but he said. “Get ready to cry, for the time is at hand. It’s always sad to see an old champion go down. But I’m Youth and this is my day.”

“You’re stuck up and fresh besides!”

Nelson turned into the hot room, laughing. Lars was rubbing his ankle again, sitting on the sandbox by the stove. Nelson set his skis in the corner and smiled sweetly. “You’d better quit — claim injury or something. Otherwise you’ll get beat, and bad,”

“Shat up your mouth, you batter!”

The reporter stuck his head in and called Nelson outside.

“Going great, Ted! Great stuff! Old Lars ain’t been licked for years and this is big! How should I quote you? Here, listen: ‘Lars is a great jumper,’ young Nelson admitted generously after vanquishing — ‘.”

“Ring off! Tripe!”

“I got another — .”

“Listen, there’s still one jump. Gome back later — if I win.”

On the final jump the veteran went two hundred twenty-eight.

“Two hundred will bate him. Tad,” advised Gunnerud, “You are ahead. Taak it easy.”

The youngster grinned. “Watch this one!”

The right ski dragged as he started, but he straightened, swooped down to the takeoff and made a tremendous spring. Then, landing, a ski twisted. He braced his arms to protect his head, then he was rolling blindly, the world a crazy mass of twisting snow, the long lever of his skis flinging him helplessly over and over. . . .

They came to see him in the hospital. Hildegarde had a new brown ensemble which made her blonde freshness dazzling.

“I could go for you,” Nelson admitted. He pointed at the arrangement of weights and pulleys over the bed, “But this is a big cramp in my romantic style.”

“Ay sorry,” Lars Kristiansen grunted. “By golly. Ay did not want for you to braak your leg, Tad. Ay did not think —”

“Gwan,” grinned the young man from the bed. “You’re tickled to death. Had you beat hollow ‘fore I took that spill.”

“But Ay not think you braak your leg,” persisted Lars. “That was accident. Ay figure — .”

“Save your sympathy until next season. You’ll need all you have.”

“We’ve got to leave,” Hildegarde was saying, “We’ve only an hour to catch the bus for the Truckee meet. Doctor wouldn’t let us in until now.”

“Wait,” Lars said. He was pulling his cap between his big hands, shifting the lank body which never could seem to fit into street clothes. Finally, “Tad, I been thinking,” he muttered. “About you and Hildegarde. She — .”

“Cut it,” Nelson advised. “Just because I crack a pin is no reason to get soft hearted. We understand one another.”

“Ted! you can’t talk about me like that!” the girl snapped. “I’m not a prize in a package of popcorn, I won’t be won by a skijump!”

“We batter go,” advised Lars Kristiansen.

Nelson was up by the middle of March, and back at his summer job in the service station soon afterwards, Hildegarde and her father returned a month later, Ted saw her occasionally during the summer. Then fall came, and the first heavy snows
of winter followed. Lars Kristiansen was packing up for a tournament in Vancouver.

“You coming. Tad?”

Nelson shrugged, “The pin — still a little green. Stick around here this winter. Might do a little cross-country work to keep my hand In.”

He devoured the sports pages. Old Lars, now forty-one, was still the mighty King Kristiansen. Arrowhead, Big Pines, Ecker, Mount Shasta, Truckee — magic names to Ted Nelson. Lars entered the two main meets at Maple Canyon, the local hill. Nelson went with the squad of cross-country men who scrambled over miles of broken country and arrived at the ski hill amid a few scattered cheers just before the jumping started.

The troupe went east and Hildegarde sent a letter In January. “We are all waiting,” she wrote, “until you’re out of the preliminaries and are again in the big time.”

Nelson read that sentence through twice, then crumpled the letter.

She returned with her father in the spring. Ted had been promoted to a traveHng job and did not see much of her during the summer. Winter came early, and on the first of November the district manager for the oil company, Jenness, called Nelson into the office.

“I knew you’d want to be getting off, so I’ve fixed it for you. And you start in the spring where you leave off today. All the boys are pulling for you in the big meets this winter.”

Jenness was smiling, but as he looked at Nelson his face became sober.

“What’s the matter, Ted? You don’t want an office job all winter, do you? Of course, if you want it — .”

“No. I was just thinking — no; thanks a lot.”

During the next two weeks Nelson went every day into the canyons with his skis. On the second Saturday Hildegarde went with him up Maple Canyon. It was a clear day, cold and sparkling. A score of hard-working enthusiasts from the local club were grooming the hill, getting the first snows packed in a solid base. Ted parked the car by the clubhouse. He and Hildegarde went on skis to the hill. The members shouted greetings.

“Good to see you, Ted! . . . Got the old sticks out of the moth balls, eh? . . . Got ‘er ready for a trial if you feel like it!”

The girl was looking at him. “I supposed — haven’t you been coming up here for the past two weeks?”

“No,” Nelson said, looking ahead. “Been getting my hand in — doing a little cross-country work by myself.”

“Cross-country work.”

They helped tramp the hill for an hour, going up and down with skis sideways; then Hildegarde climbed high on the hill above the takeoffs, and Nelson followed.

She said eagerly, looking down: “I’m crazy to go off the big jump sometime. But Papa won’t let me. He keeps me on the amateur jumps.”

“Stick to ’em,” Ted advised. “Beyond a hundred and fifty feet it stops being fun. Your life’s wrapped up in two slick boards when you take off the big jump.”

The girl glided diagonally down the hill to a spot above the amateur takeoff, and stopped with a beautifully executed turn.

“Well, I’ll have fun then, anyway. . . Track!” She leaped around, landing crouched, with skis parallel, and sped down the slope and off the amateur takeoff. She soared into the air, disappeared below the brow of the hill, reappeared on the level far below and her skis threw up a spray as she stopped.

“Track’s clear!”

Nelson descended in the cross-country manner, zig-zagging down the slope until under the takeoff, then making a smooth glide. His face was white except for two brilliant pink splashes at the cheekbones.

“Don’t feel like jumping today.”

“Let’s go home,” the girl said. The ripe-apple color was out of her cheeks.

Neither spoke until the car was out of the canyon, then Nelson said: “Funny — you know, how people change. I used to think there was nothing in the world like ski jumping. But you grow older — you know — different ideas. I might go in for a little cross-country work this winter — just for fun, you know. After this season I’ll stick to my job. You know, a man has silly ideas about things when he’s a kid.

“Yes. A person has — silly ideas,” she said, and continued with an intent edge to her voice: “There’s a meet at Ecker on Christmas.”

Nielson stayed home for Christmas. When the professionals came for the New Year’s day meet in Maple Canyon, Ted went to bed with a cold. Neither Hildegarde nor her father came to visit. Lars twisted his ankle again, and decided to rest a month at home. Nelson went north the next day.

Two weeks later he was in Wyoming, entered in a cross-country race. Nine men were lined up with him, when from among the parked cars came a lank figure who took his place beside Nelson. It was Lars Kristiansen. Neither spoke. All eyes turned to these two — great jumpers, entered in a picayune cross-country event.

“Here’s the course once more!” the official starter was bawling. “Twenty-seven miles through the hills, with the finish at Antelope Flat. Start due west to Little Henry Creek, follow the stream south through Suicide Gorge, then cut back northwest to the finish. Red flags blaze the trail at two mile intervals.”

“How about jumpin’ Suicide Gorge?” asked one of the skimen slyly.

The official smiled. “Sure; if you hate your neck.”

“Troget Nordquist, he yumped it,” rumbled Lars.

“Sure, the first time. And the next year I helped pick him off the rocks below. The officials of this contest advise strongly against it.”

“Ay wass yust wondering,” Lars said softly, and he turned to Nelson. “But Ay guess Ay lost my nerve. Sprained my ankle and Ay lost my nerve. Yumpers get laak that when they sprain their ankle — or maybe bust a leg; eh, Tad?”

Nelson stared straight ahead, face white. The starting gun sounded. Four of the racers set a killing pace, with five others following fairly fast. Lars was soon in the rear, with Nelson a ski-length behind.

At five miles they passed the middle party. Another four and they were working through the rolling country on the heels of the two leaders. Kristiansen let the leading pair break trail through the chaparral thickets, followed their herringbone pattern up hills and glided smoothly in their tracks down grade.

“This planty fun,” Lars grunted when he and Nelson were coasting easily down a smooth slope. “And no risk, lak in yumpin’.”

Nelson did not reply; the lank veteran continued: “My little girl, she was going to marry a yumper — once.”

At the red flag marking sixteen miles, Lars and Nelson passed the leaders. Another mile and the course led in a long semi-circle around a hogback to the creek running through Suicide Gorge. Kristiansen started up the hillside, his skis clipping a precise fishbone pattern in the snow.

Nelson spoke for the first time: “I’ll pick you up from the bottom of the gorge.”

Lars swung his long hickories parallel, put fists on lean hips and grinned. “Hildegarde, she is waiting at Antelope Flat for me. Ay lose my nerve — but Ay not lost it enough to go four miles out of the way because Ay am afraid to yump a little creek. . . You go around, ba-aby! I tank Ay go over the Suisade Yump — yust for fun.”

Nelson smiled grimly. “Sure; go ahead. I know why. That ankle is giving in. I’ve seen you favoring it all along. You’re afraid you can’t beat me without going over the gorge.”

Lars continued up the hill. Ted Nelson stood uncertainly, while his breath came fast. Then he clamped his jaws and began savagely chopping a herringbone pattern up the hillside behind Lars.

Kristiansen put on the pressure, pushing straight up the slope at a heart breaking pace. Nelson fell behind a bit. The two men who were second in lead stopped for a moment at the base of the hill for a grim look, then went around toward the creek. The ski pattern in the snow showed that the veteran was taking a smaller bite with his left leg.

When Lars reached the summit he looked back with a grin.

“Ay have dinner raady whan you come in!”

He crouched and disappeared.

Nelson clambered desperately to the ridge. Then, rounding the summit, his breath came in an involuntary gasp. Lars was draped limply around a dead pine a hundred yards down the slope. The veteran’s tracks cut through the tops of a half-buried oak thicket; a gnarled stub had deflected the weak left leg; there was a slash in the snow where the ski buckled.

Nelson switched down the slope, skidding to a stop beside the limp figure. He unsnapped Lars’ harnesses and straightened the unconscious man in the snow. The scalp was laid back in a red triangle from eyebrow to hair roots. Nelson applied snow to the face. Lars coughed, drooling a thin stream of red saliva, and opened his eyes.

“Ay — getting old.”

“How do you feel?”

“All right.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I’m all right! By golly Ay not lat you halp me! . . .Wait!” he commanded as Nelson went to pick him up. “I got something to tell you.”

“Spit it out. There’s a race on.”

Lars took a deep breath, rubbed the snow from his face with a vague gesture, then: “Ay make you fall, Tad,” he muttered. “That day you braak your leg. You leave your skis in the room and went out talking with the newspaper man. So from the sandbox I put sand on the stove and whan she is hot I rub it in the wax of one ski bottom.

“But Ay think maybe you only touch one hand and lose points — or maybe fall. I do not want for you to win; but Ay do not think you braak your leg. . . And now you see why you must leave me here and not help me.”

Nelson hesitated, looking at the older man as if for the first time realizing the terrific fight of man against age, the almost neurotic struggle to avoid obsolescence, the multitude and the incredibility of the aids and devices by which the passing generation tries to preserve the status quo and with which it persistently attempts to distort, and finally blinds itself to, the inevitable. The young do not feel that struggle; the coming generation surges upwards by the very buoyancy of its innate strength, and by the overwhelming force of numbers it crowds out the weary, aging, and the slow; and indeed, perhaps only when the coming has imperceptibly hardened into the passing generation do its members slowly comprehend and then finally engage in the unending siege which is so infinitely pathetic because it is predestined to defeat.

Now Ted Nelson looked into the eyes of King Kristiansen, and he shivered as if the icy Breath of eternity had touched him, aging him, deepening’ the grooves in his face with helpless sadness. Then the young man shrugged, and growled hoarsely:

“Quit talkin’; you might have Internal inquiries.”

He swung Kristiansen over his shoulders and began clumping up the hill.

“Tad! Ay not let you — !”

“Why did you come to Wyoming?” demanded Nelson between breaths. “I’ll tell you! You knew I’d lost my nerve — that I was afraid to jump. And you figured that since you caused it you had some duty trying to shame it out of me.”

Kristiansen sighed from his position draped over the young man’s shoulder. “Yass. I wanted you to make one yump. Ay was like that once after a bad fall — afraid inside me. And Hildegarde — her cheeks are not so red now. So Ay come up to halp — halp you make the first yump.

“But, Tad, it was not only that Ay made you fall and so was sorry. No. It was because you — well. Ay have always — .” He left the sentence unfinished.

Nelson was on the summit, gasping. His legs quivered from the double burden. “Sure. It’s the first jump” — desperately — “the first one after a bad spill.” He was talking in a low voice, almost as if to himself . “You get over the first one and you’re all right. Your heart shrinks up, but you’re all right after the first one. . . Hang on, Lars!”

Nelson started down towards Suicide Gorge. The double weight broke the snow crust at first, then speed became sufficient to skim the waxed boards over the top. It wasn’t a big jump. Forty-two feet. But that was horizontal measurement, which is something else again. And no nice landing hill, smoothly packed.

He knifed through the tops of a clump of chaparral, cut down a dip and sped towards the black gash of the chasm. Wind howled in his ears with the velocity, blurred his eyes with tears. Lars, hanging over his shoulder, was smiling a grin of triumph. Nelson blinked his eyes clear, couched lower, tensed.

“Ahh!”

The cry echoed up frorri the bottom of the gorge where the other racers were strung along the rocky edge of the creek. They saw the straining leap — wobbly, out of form, everything sacrificed for distance — and then the double burden.

Nelson was whipped backwards by the gigantic effort of his jump. Impossible to whirl the arms for balance while clinging to Lars. He churned the air with his skis. Dropping swiftly, he braced for the jolt, and smashed Into the edge of the soft snowbank on the other side, floundering.

Nelson found himself not shocked, but rather with a great relief, even though he was head down in a thick bank of loose snow. He reached up, fumbling for his ski harnesses to undo his feet, when a hand gripped his wrist and pulled.

“Why — you old mossback! I thought you were seriously — say!” Nelson growled suspiciously. “Were you playing ‘possum all the time?”

Lars stretched, and grinned to disclose a gap in his front teeth. He was standing waist deep in snow, and after righting Nelson, Lars now leaped nimbly up on the back of the skis.

“Gauss Ay got breath knocked out from me — at first,” he admitted. “But whan Ay saw you was going over Suisade Gorge whan you thought Ay was hurt bad — then Ay yust sit still. . . Hurry up, Tad; we are still in a race.”

The two, riding tandem on one pair of skis, started down the long slope to Antelope Flat.

The crowd let out a cry at sight of the pair. Hildegarde raced out on snowshoes to meet them.

“Watch this,” Nelson said as they passed. “You’ll notice I’m in front. This old guy hooking a ride behind is coming in second.”

On the trip back Hildegarde sat between the two in the rear seat of a car. Lars’ forehead was bandaged; Nelson’s wrist was taped.

“I’m a soft fool,” the young man growled. “But how did I know you weren’t dying?”

“Yah!” rumbled Kristiansen. “I know you, you brat! You think Ay let you win next yumpin’ tournament on account you brang me in! Ay naver lat you win if I have to braak you with my hands in two!”

Nelson grinned at Hildegarde. “Listen to him, will you? Hard for an old man to take a back seat. I’ll make him look like an amateur at Ecker next month.” He paused, and then said soberly: “And after that, there’s something I’ll be wanting to ask you — something I didn’t say before because I felt like a yellow rat.”

He grinned again. “So you’d better start getting excuses ready.”

She was smiling, and the ripe apple color of her cheeks was back in full glory.

“I was always poor at excuses.”