Three Mormon Boys

By Homespun [Susa Young Gates]

Chapter 8

The moment the doctor looked into the face of the young lad and saw the general symptoms he sat calmly down on the bedside with anything but a serious cast of countenance. The ludicrousness of the thing was too much for the doctor’s risibilities, and as he heard the young man’s groans and protestations that he was about to die and had been poisoned, he laughed and laughed until the tears ran down ills face. Sister Thomson was indignant. Was the doctor going crazy? What did he mean by insulting her anxiety and her boy’s agony?

“I am sure I can’t see anything to laugh at,” she said sharply; “Some folks can laugh in the face of death itself.”

“I can’t, my dear sister; but this is not death, nor anythng like it. This is simply a bad case of mixed jalap and pear,” and again the doctor roared with laughter.

The poor woman grasped gradually what the doctor meant, for had she not that very afternoon urged him to put the whole Balfour family in jail for stealing his pears? Oh, why had she not mentioned the matter to Martin and thus saved this disgraceful exposure? As it was, she hesitated a moment, then hurried out of the room, and did not come back to receive a word of instruction or medicine at the hands of the now sobered doctor. He left a few powders, and told Rose that he would call in the morning and see her mother. But when he called Sister Thomson was out, and she made him very sensible of the fact that she intended to avoid him, until the good man lost all patience, and told himself that there were none so blind as those who won’t see.

Brother Brown was invited by an old friend of his to go down to the town of A some miles south of the city, with a view to investing and settling in that thriving little town. Accordingly, in the early spring months, before there was a good chance to leave the city work on account of a heavy rain, he took John with him and went down to the village, or as it was then, the fort of A—.

Bertie was very lonesome after his friend John had gone away, and he scarcely knew what to do with his spare time. One day the rain had cleared off so that the sun shone down warm and pleasant, he felt a longing to go off and have some sport. He ran down to the home of his old-time chum, Martin whom he had seen little of in the last month,
and finding him home he suggested that they should go down to the river Jordan and have
a swim.

This was uniting business with pleasure, for Aunt Mary’s cow had been lost for three days, and she had heard of her being over Jordan, in the meadow. So he was glad to go in search of her, for it was quite warm enough to have a good swim and there was no pleasanter amusement to my friend Bertie than swimming or trying to swim in the river.

“May I go down to the river swimming with Bertie, mother?” asked Martin. “He has lost his cow, and she is over Jordan, and so we are going to have a swim while we are down there.”

“No, my son, I don’t want you to go in that treacherous river swimming, for it is not at all safe. And neither you nor he can swim, and the water is high this year. No you can’t go in swimming. So that’s all there is about it.”

Martin looked glum and sulky, for he fully expected his mother to say yes to his request, for she had objected so much to his going with Jim Balfour, that he thought she would be happy enough to have him go out with Bertie once more. However she tied on her bonnet and went off without any more words, on an errand to a neighbor’s, leaving Martin to chop some wood and bring into the house for the baking Rose was about to do for the next day, which was Sunday.

Martin went out of the house, and as he had done too many times of late, he determined to go without his mother’s consent.

“Can you go?” asked Bertie when he came out doors.

“Yes, when I cut up this wood for Rose,” answered Martin, inwardly congratulating himself that he had not told a direct lie.

So after the wood was taken in and piled up for Rose’s use the two boys hastened away to get down to the river in time to have a good swim.

The warmth of the sun was very grateful after the cool, rainy weather of the past week, and the two boys stripped off and were into the cold waters of the Jordan, before the sun had reached its zenith. The river was considerably spread out that season, and therefore was not as deep in the main, as it was when the channel was deeper and narrower.

There was an island down the stream some distance where the water was quite shallow on one side, and although somewhat swift, it was not over two feet deep. Several other boys had joined our youngsters, and they were all having great fun, when Bertie proposed that they should sit down and let the swift current bump them along over the shallow stream around the island. The project accepted Bertie came first followed by Martin, and behind Martin were all the other and younger boys. Down the stream they bumped and floated, when suddenly Bertie plunged into the vortex at the end of the divided stream at the point where it united with the other stream. Here the river was deep, narrow and very swift. It ,was the end of the island and the current of both streams had made a big hole in the channel. Down into this hole plunged Bertie, and was out of sight in a second. Martin did not know anything about the disappearance of Bertie, for he supposed that he had gone out of sight around the corner of the island. So he went along.

The next thing Bertie knew, he was thrown up on a high mud bank, and as soon as he could he crawled up on the shore. Just as he turned around to look into the stream, he beheld Martin disappearing in the dangerous hole. Bertie turned around the curve in the bank and shouted to the rest of the boys to get out for their lives. Then running back to where he had crawled out, he saw just beneath him the black curly head of the boy companion he had loved so well. Without one word or thought of his own inability to save his friend, he dashed into the boiling stream, head first and made a plunge at his friend. He was hardly conscious for a moment, but the next thing he realized he was paddling along down under the water trying to get to Martin. As his head came up to the surface, he saw just ahead of him his friend thrown up on the same bank where he had landed. But strange to say, Martin was not making one eff”ort to crawl out of the dangerous place. With all the strength and science Bertie could muster, and alas that was not much, he kept above water and made for the high bank. After what seemed to him an interminable time, but in reality was only an instant, he reached it, and was thrown, by the strength of the current right up on the bank. But there just on the other side was his friend too weak or too stupid to save himself, being drifted off by the shallow water which still had sufficient power to wash unresisting bodies into the deeper water beyond. With all the love and poor remnants of strength left to the exhausted boy Bertie dragged himself over to where his friend lay, and with feeble strength he held on to him, calling as loudly as he could for the other boys to come to his assistance.

The boys came, and not one moment too soon, for Bertie was well nigh worn out. With eager helpful hands the two lads were dragged out of the shallow water unto the safe banks of the river, and with as much skill as they possessed, the boys rubbed and worked with the two half-drowned lads. Bertie was soon all right, but it took at least an hour to bring back the rich color into the cheeks of Martin.

When at last he came to his own mind, and saw around him the anxious faces of his companions, and it flashed over him what a narrow escape he had had from an awful death, he turned to Bertie, and whispered in his weak voice,

“This is because I disobeyed mother, old fellow. I’ll never do that way again, so help me Bob.”

Of course Bertie was ignorant of the fact alluded to by Martin, that of the unwillingness of Mrs. Thompson to allow Martin to go swimming; but he was so glad to hear Martin say that he was sorry and determined to do better in the future, that he felt that his own rough experience had been of great use both to him and his friend, and his kindly soul was full of silent rejoicing.

As soon as they were able, the two started home, without the cow however, for they were too much excited to think of such minor things as cows. So on they trudged, and as they walked, Martin told Bertie of many dishonest things he had been led to do by his associate, Jim Balfour.

Martin’s mind was in a very mellow and repentant state, and he determined to take a different course from that very day. He told Bertie so, while his lovely brown eyes filled with sad and sorrowful tears to hear the kind but reproachful suggestions and comments of Bertie.

The two reached town just as the sun was setting, and they separated to go home at the corner between the two houses. I wish Bertie bad gone home with Martin, or I wish perhaps that Mrs. Thompson was not quite so sharp with her tongue, or indeed I wish that Martin was not too cowardly to do what he knew was right, no matter what his mother or any one else might say. The moment he caught sight of his mother’s face, he saw she was angry, and he determined not to tell her he had been down to the river at all. There would be no occasion to lie, as he need not say anything at all about the matter. It was no uncommon thing for him to go off for a whole day, and it was seldom that his mother asked where he had been or what he had been doing.

He sauntered up to the door, and asked Rose banteringly,

“How many pies have you made today?”

“Where on earth have you been all day, Martin?” asked his mother, sharply. Well there was no help for it, the lie must come he thought, and without a moment’s hesitation, he answered, trusting to his mother’s absent, mindedness to forget all about the morning’s request, “I have been down to Bertie’s playing on his drum, and trying to learn to be a fine drummer.”

“Did Bertie get his cow?”

“No!” Thank goodness, he was telling the whole truth now.

“Say, why did not him or you go down over Jordan after it?”

“Oh, he’s going tomorrow, I guess.” And to turn away her suspicion, he hastened to add, “Say, mother can’t I go with him tomorrow?”

“No, you can’t, not tomorrow nor day after tomorrow. Now, I don’t want you to say Jordan river again to me this spring or summer.”

“I won’t, mother,” said the lad, with a far deeper meaning in his words than she suspected. But oh, if he could only have known how dangerous was the ground of half-truths upon which he allowed his spirit to stand, he would not have so congratulated himself on the end of a disagreeable matter as his mother turned and went into another room. How little we understand our duty to our children, when we allow them to be away hours and days at a time without the careful and kindly inquiry as to their whereabouts, when they come home at night! And how sad a mistake we make in chastising them so severely with whip or tongue, for every little accident and ill-doing, that they fear to tell the truth, or a part of it. That is one of the chief corner stones of that horrible structure of lying and deceit in which dwell and writhe and twist all the venomous, slimy, wicked elements of death and spiritual destruction. Parents, love your children and make yourselves their very best friend. Don’t chide them so much, nor for such trifling things.

The week that followed was a merry one for Bertie and Martin, for they were as much together as in olden times, and they were full enough of mischief to make things very uncomfortable for all neighbors.

(To be continued)