Classic Audiobook Collection - The Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis ~ Full Audiobook [comedy]

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

The Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis audiobook. Genre: comedy Trail of the Hawk, narrated by Mike Vendetti aka Miketheauctioneer, is Sinclair Lewis’ second novel published under his own name. It was not at the time of release a smashing success as his later works, Babbitt, Elmer Gantry, and others, but his style and immense talent are certainly evident. We travel with The Hawk, or Carl Ericson, son of Norwegian immigrants, born at the end of the 19th century through the first three adventurous periods of the young man’s life. We see him as an adventurous boy, running away with Gertie Cowels, the girl that lives in the big house in the better part of town, only to be rescued by Bone Stillman, a backwoods philosopher and influence on Carl. We travel with him as he leaves his childhood, Gertie and Joralemon behind, for a short attempt at higher education, then to pursue the hobo life, a Bowery bartender, an engineer in Panama and an aviator. It is during the aviator phase that he becomes Hawk Ericson barnstorming his way across America, an exciting but dangerous lifestyle. Leaving aviation after too many close calls, and the loss of his best friend, he becomes an automobile man, and moves into phase three. It is in phase three, love adventure, that we find The Hawk in New York, mingling with polite society quite by accident. He is smitten by Ruth Winslow, while riding on a streetcar after a fight with Gertie, and follows Ruth to a party which he crashes. I truly enjoyed narrating this novel, and believe the listener will enjoy it, a trip into post Victorian, pre-Jazz Age America. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:25:15) Chapter 02 (00:46:02) Chapter 03 (01:05:01) Chapter 04 (01:26:29) Chapter 05 (01:51:49) Chapter 06 (02:17:29) Chapter 07 (02:31:03) Chapter 08 (02:47:39) Chapter 09 (03:15:58) Chapter 10 (03:27:17) Chapter 11 (03:45:47) Chapter 12 (04:05:11) Chapter 13 (04:20:47) Chapter 14 (04:42:20) Chapter 15 (05:02:59) Chapter 16 (05:15:58) Chapter 17 (05:25:57) Chapter 18 (05:40:45) Chapter 19 (05:51:11) Chapter 20 (06:06:04) Chapter 21 (06:36:16) Chapter 22 (06:51:44) Chapter 23 (07:15:21) Chapter 24 (07:28:42) Chapter 25 (07:50:44) Chapter 26 (08:03:26) Chapter 27 (08:30:28) Chapter 28 (08:47:54) Chapter 29 (09:12:55) Chapter 30 (09:27:24) Chapter 31 (09:47:30) Chapter 32 (10:07:01) Chapter 33 (10:37:37) Chapter 34 (10:55:28) Chapter 35 (11:13:24) Chapter 36 (11:34:00) Chapter 37 (11:54:50) Chapter 38 (12:06:13) Chapter 39 (12:28:47) Chapter 40 (12:45:28) Chapter 41 (13:13:43) Chapter 42 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trail for the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Section 1, Chapter 1 The Adventure of Youth Carl Erickson was being naughty, probably no boy in Jor Lemon, was being naughty that October Saturday afternoon. He had not half finished the woodpiling, which was his punishment for having chased the family rooster

13 times squawking around the chicken yard, while playing soldiers with Benny Rusk. He stood in the middle of the musty woodshed, pessimistically kicking at the scattered wood his face was stern as became a man of eight who was a soldier of fortune famed from the front gate to the chicken-yard an unromantic film of dirt hid the fact that his scandinavian cheeks were like cream-colored silk stained like rose-petals a baby norseman with only an average boy's prettiness yet with the whiteness and slenderness of a girl's little finger a back yard boy a baggy jacket and trousers, gingam blouse and cap, whose lining oozed back over his ash-blonde hair,

which was tangled now like trampled grass, with a tiny chip riding grotesquely on one flossy lock. The darkness of the shed displeased Carl. The whole basic conception of work bored him. The sticks of wood were personal enemies to which he gave insulting names. He had always admired the hard bark and metallic resonance of the ironwood, but he hated the popper.

Popple, it is called in Drorlem in Minnesota. Poplar becomes dry and dusty, and the bark turns to a monstrously modeled and evil greenish white. Carl announced to one Popper stick, I could look to you. I'm a general, I am. The stick made no reply, whatever,

and he contemptuously shied it out into the chickweed, which matted the grubby backyard. This necessitated his sneaking out, and capturing it by stalking it from the rear, lest it roused the Popple Army. He loitered outside the shed, sniffing at the smoke from burning leaves, the scent of autumn and migration and wanderlust.

He glanced down between houses to the reedy shore of Jorlemond Lake. The surface of the water was smooth and tended like a bluebell, save for one patch in the current where wavelet slipped with October madness in sparkles of diamond fire. Across the lake, wood sprinkled with gold dust in paprika,

broke the sweep of sparse yellow stubble, and a red barn was softly brilliant in the caressing sunlight and lively air of the Minnesota Prairie. Over there was the field of valor, where grown-up men with shiny shotguns went hunting prairie chickens, the great world, leading clear to the Red River Valley in Canada. Three mallard ducks with necks far out and wings beating, hurriedly, shot over Carl's head. From far off a gunshot floated echoing through the forest

hollows, and the waiting stillness sounded a rooster's crow, distant, magical. I want to go hunting, mourned Carl as he trailed back into the woodshed. It seemed darker than ever and smelled of moldy chips. He bounced like an enraged chipmunk. Flak medic China blue eyes, filled with tears. Won't file no more wood, he declared. naughty, he undoubtedly was. But since he knew that his father, Oscar Erickson, the carpenter, all knuckles and patched overalls and bad temper,

would probably whip him for rebellion. He may have acquired merit. He did not even look toward the house to see whether his mother was watching him. His farm-bred, worried, kindly, small, flat-chested, pinched, nose, bleached, twangy-boy's plucky Norwegian mother. He marched to the workshop

and brought a collection of miscellaneous nails and screws out to the bare patch of earth in front of the chicken yard. They were the nail people, the most reckless band of mercenaries the world has ever known, led by General Dorhange, who was somewhat inclined to collapse in the middle, but possessed of the unusual virtue of eyes in both ends of him. He had explored the deepest canyons of the woodshed

and victoriously led his ten-penny warriors against the sumax in the empty space beyond Irving Lamb's house. Carl Marshall to nail people, sticking them upright into ground. After reasoning sternly with an intruding sparrow, thus did the dauntless General Doerhange address them. Men? There's an awful big army against us, but let's die like men, my men.

Forward! As the veteran finished, a devastating fire of stones inflated the company, and one by one they fell, save for the commander himself, who bowed his grizzled wrought steel head, and sobbed, "'Ah, the brave boys done their duty.'

From across the lake rolled another gunshot. Carl dug his grimy fingers into the earth. "'Gimony! Wish I was out hunting. Why can't I never go? I guess I'll pile the wood, but I'm going to go seek my fortune after that.' Since Carl Erickson, some day to be known as Hawk Erickson,

was the divinely restless seeker of the romance that must, or we die, lie beyond the hills, you first see him in action. Find him in the year 1893, age date, leading revolutions in the backyard, but equally, since this is a serious study of an average young American, there should be an indication of his soil-nourished ancestry. Carl was his second-generation Norwegian, American-born, American in speech, American in appearance, say for his flaxen hair and China blue eyes, and thanks to the flag-de-deck. public school overwhelming the American in tradition.

When he was born, the typical Americans of earlier stocks had moved to city palaces or were marooned on run-down farms. It was Carl Erickson not a towbridge or a Stuyvesant or Lee or Grant, who was the typical American of his period. It was for him to carry on the American destiny of extending the western horizon, his to restore the wintry pilgrim virtues and the exuberant October partridge-druming days of Daniel Boone, then to add in his own or another generation new American aspirations for beauty. They are the new Yankees, these Scandinavians of Wisconsin and Minnesota and the Dakotas,

with a human breed that can grow and a thousand miles to grow in. The foreign-born parents, when they first came to the northern Middle West, huddle in unpaid and farmhouses with grassless dooryards, and fly-wizzing kitchens, and smelly dairies, set on treeless, shadeless, unsoftened leagues of prairie or bunched in new clearings ragged

with small stumps. First generation are alien and forlorn. The echoing fjords of Tony Yum and the moors of Finnmark have clipped their imaginations, silenced their laughter, hidden with ice their real tenderness. In America, they go

sedulously, to the bare Lutheran Church and frequently drink 90% alcohol. They are also heroes and have been the makers of a new land, from the days of the Indian raids and oxen teams and hillside dugouts to now, repeating in their patient hewing the history of the Western Reserve. In one generation or even in one decade, they emerged from the desolation of being foreigners. They and the Germans pay Yankee Morgan. with blood and sweat.

They swiftly master politics voting for honesty rather than handshakes. They make keen, scrupulously honest business deals, send their children to school, accumulate land, one section or two sections, or move to town to keep shop, and ply skilled tools,

become Methodist and congregationalists, our neighborly with Yankee manufacturers and doctors and teachers, and in one generation or less, are completely American. So it was with Carl Erickson, His carpenter father had come from Norway by way of steerage and a farm in Wisconsin, changing his name from Erickson, Erickson Sr. owned his cottage,

and, though he still said, I've been going. He talked as naturally of his own American tariff and his own Norwegian-American governor as though he had five generations of Connecticut or Virginia ancestry. Now it was Carl's to go on to seek the flowering. Unconscious that he was the heir apparent of the age, but decidedly conscious that the woodshed was dark. Carl finished the pile. From the step of the woodshed,

he regarded the world with plaintive boredom. Irving! he called. No answer from Irving, the next-door boy. The village was rustlingly quiet. Carl skipped slowly and unhappily to the group of box elders beside the workshop and stuck his fingernails into the cobwebby crevices of the black bark. He made overtures for company on any terms to a robin, a woolly worm, and a large blue fly. But they all scorned his advances, and when he yelled an ingratiating invitation to a passing dog,

seemed to swallow its tail and ears as it galloped off. No one else appeared. before the kitchen window he quavered. Mama! In the kitchen the muffled pounding of a flat iron upon the padded ironing board. Well! Mrs. Erickson's whitey, yellow hair, pale eyes, and small nervous features were shadowed behind the cotton curtains.

Well, she said, I haven't got nothing to do. Go pile the wood. Piled piles of it. Then go and play. I've been playing. Can play some more. I've got nobody to play with. Then find somebody.

But don't you one step out of this yard. I don't see why I can't go out of the yard. Because I said so. Again, the sound of the flat iron. Carl invented a game in which he was to run in circles, but not step on the grass. He made the tenth inspection that day of the drying hazelnuts whose husks were turning to seal brown on the woodshed roof.

He hunted for a good new bottle to throw at Irving Lamb's barn. He mended his catapult. He perched on a bench and watched the street. Nothing passed. Nothing made an interesting rattling except one wagon. From over the water another gunshot murmured of distant hazards. Carl jumped down from the bench and marched deliberately out of the yard along Oak Street toward the hill.

the smart section of Jorlaman, where live in exclusive state five large houses that get painted nearly every year. I want to seek a fortune. Going to find Benny and go swimming, he vowed. calmly as Napoleon defying his marshals, General Collar, disregarded the sword facts that it was too late

in the year to go swimming and that Benjamin Franklin Rusk couldn't swim. Anyway, he clumped along, planting his feet with spats of dust. Very dignified and melancholy, but, like all small boys, occasionally going mad and running in chase of nothing at all till he found it. He stopped before the house with mysterious shutters. Carl had never made believe fairies or princes.

Rather, he was in the secret world of boyhood, a soldier, a trapper, or a swig-breakman on the M&D.R. But he was bespelled by the suggestion of grandeur in the iron-dra. fence and gracious trees and dark carriage shed of the house with shutters. With a large square solid brick structure, set among oaks in sinister pines, once the home or perhaps a mansion, of Banker Whitley, but unoccupied for years. Leaves rotted before the deserted carriage shed. The disregarded steps in front were seamed with shallow pools of water for days after a rain. The windows

had always been darkened, but not by broad slatted outside shutters smeared with house paint to which stuck tiny black hairs from the paintbrush, like the ordinary houses of drawer of them. Instead, these windows were masked with inside shutters, huddly varnished

to a hard, refined brown. Today the windows were open, the shutters folded, furniture was being moved in, and just inside the iron gate a frilly little girl was playing with a whitewashed conch shell. She must have been about ten at the time since car was eight. She was a very dressy and complacent child, possessed not only of a clean white Muslim with three rows of tucks,

immaculate bronze boots and a green tamishander, but also of a large hair ribbon, a ribbon sash and a silver chain with a large gold-washed hard-shaped locket. She was softly plump, softly gentle of face, softly brown of hair and softly pleasant of speech. Hello, said she. Hello.

What's your name, little boy? I ain't a little boy. I'm Carl Erickson. Oh, are you? I'm... I'm going to have a shotgun when I'm 15. He shyly hurled a stone at a telegraph pole to prove that he was not shy. My name is Grady Cowles. I came from Minneapolis. My mama owns part of the German flour mill.

Are you a nice boy? We just moved here and I don't know anybody. Maybe my mama will let me play with you if you are a nice boy. I'd just soon come play with you if you play soldiers. My pa's the smartest man in Jorerman. He built it Alex Johnson's house. He's got a gun. Oh, my mama's a widow.

Carl hung by his arms from the gate pickets while she breathed. My, in admiration at the feet. I ain't nothing. I can hang by my knees on a trapeze. What'd you come from Minneapolis for? We're going to live here, she said. Oh. I went to the Chicago World's Fair with my mama this summer.

I didn't. I did so. And I saw a teeny engine so small it was in a walnut shell. And you had to look at it through a magnifying glass and it kept on running like anything. Eh, that's nothing. Ben Risk, he went to the World's Fair, too. And he saw a statue that was bigger in our house and all pure gold.

You didn't see that. I did so. And we got cousins in Chicago, and we stayed with them, and cousin Edgar is a very prominent doctor for ironier and stomach. Ben Rusk pause at Dr. 2, and he's got a brother what's going to be a sturgeon. I got a brother. He's a year older than me. His name is Ray. There's lots more people in Minneapolis than here in Jorlman.

There's a hundred thousand people in Minneapolis. Ain't nothing. My pa was born in Christina in the old country, and there's a million, million people there. Oh, there is not. Honest there is? Is there honest? Gertie was admiring now.

He looked patronizingly at the Red Place furniture, which was being splendidly carried into the great house from Jordan's Drey, an old friend of Carl's, which had often carried him banging through town. He condescended, Jimmy, you don't know Benny Ruskner, nobody, do you? I'll bring him when we can play soldiers, and we can make tents out of carpets. Did you ever run through carpets on the line?

He pointed to the row of rugs and carpets, erring beside the carriage shed. No, is it fun? Yeah, it's awful scary, but I ain't afraid. He dashed at the carpet and entered their long, narrow tent. To tell the truth when he stepped from the sunshine into the intense darkness, he was slightly afraid. The Erickson's one carpet made a short passage,

but to pass on and on and thrown through this secession of heavy rug mats, where snakes and poisonous insects might hide, and where the rough-threaded gritty gritty, under surfaces scratched his pushing hands was fearsome. He emerged with a whoop and encouraged her to try the feat. She peeped inside the first carpet but withdrew her head giving homage. Oh, it's so dark in there. Where you went.

He promptly performed a feat again. As they wandered back to the gate to watch the furniture man, Gertie tried to regain the superiority due her years by remarking of a large esquitard, which was being juggled into the front door. My Papa bought that desk in Chicago. Carl broke in. I'll bring Benny Rusk and me and him.

We'll teach you to play soldiers. My mama don't think I ought to play games. I've got a lot of dolls, but I'm too old for dolls. I play authors with Mama sometimes. And Domino's, authors is a very nice game. But maybe your ma let you play Indian Squaw. and me and Ben will tie you to his steak and scalp you. That won't be rough like soldiers.

But I'm going to be a really, truly soldier. I'm going to be an officer in the Army. I got a cousin that's an officer in the Army, Gertie said grandly, bringing her yellow ribbon braid around over her shoulder and gently brushing her lips with the end. Cross your heart? Uh-huh.

Crush your heart and hope to die if he ain't... Honest, he's an officer. She have many crickets. Say, Gertie, could he make me no, sir? Let's go find him. Does he live near here? Oh, no. He's way off in San Francisco.

Come on, let's go there. You and me. Gee, I like you. You got an awful pretty dress. Take polite to compliment me to my face, Mama says. Come on, let's go. We're going. No, I'd like to, she faltered.

But my mama wouldn't let me. She don't let me play round with boys anyway. She's in the house now. Besides, it's way far off cross the sea to San Francisco. It's beyond the Salt Sea where the Mormons live, and they all got seven wives. Beyond Sully, like Christina? Ah, taint.

It's in America, because Mr. Lamb went there last winter. Besides, even if he was cross the sea, couldn't we go and be stowways like the younger brothers and all them? And little Lord Fauntleroy? He went and was a lord, and he wasn't nothing but an orphan. My mom read me about him, only she didn't talk English very good, but we'll ghost always.

He wound up triumphantly. Gertrude! A high-pitched voice from the house. Gertie glowered at a tall, meager woman with a long green and white apron over a most respectable black alpaca gown. Her nose was large, her complexion dull, but she carried herself so commandingly as to be. be almost handsome and very formidable.

Oh, dear, Gertie stomped her foot. Now I got to go in. I never can't have any fun. Goodbye, Carl. He urgently interrupted her tragic farewell. Say, gee, boy, I know what we'll do. You sneak out the back door, and I'll meet you, and we'll run away and go seek our fortunes,

and we'll find her cousin. Gertrude! From the house. Yes, Mama. I'm just coming to Carl. Besides, I'm older than you, and I'm most grown up, and I don't believe in Santa Claus. And once I taught the infants class at St. Christendom's Sunday School

when the teacher wasn't there. Anyway, I and Miss Bessie did, and I asked them most all the questions about the trumpets and pitchers, so I couldn't run away. I'm too old. Gertrude! Come here this instant! Come on, I'll be waiting, Carl demanded.

She was gone. She was being ushered into the house of mysterious shutters by Mrs. Cowles. Carl prowled down the street, a fine, new, long, stickety side like a saber. He rounded the block and waited behind the Cowell's carriage shed, doing sentry-go and planning the number of parrots and pieces of eight he would bring back from San Francisco. Then his father and mother would be sorry they talked about him in Norwegian. Carl! Gertie was running around the corner of the carriage shed.

"'Oh, Carl, I just had to come out and see you again. But I can't go seek our fortunes with you, because they've got their piano moved in now and I got to practice. Else I'll grow up be just an ignorant, common person, and besides, there's going to be tea biscuits and honey for supper. I saw the honey.' He smartly swung his saber to his shoulder, ordering, "'M'Anon!'

Gertie edged forward, perplexedly, sucking a finger joint, and followed him along Lake Street toward open country. They took the Minnesota and Dakota Railway track, a natural footpath, in a land where the trains were few and not fast, as was the condition of the single-tracked M&D of 1893. In a worried manner, Carl inquired whether San Francisco was northwest or southeast, the direction in which ran all self-respecting railways.

Dirty blandly declared that it lay to the northwest, and northwest they started, toward the swamps, and the first forest of the big woods. He had wonderlands to show her along the track. To him, every detail was of scientific importance. He knew intimately the topography of the fields beside the track, in which corner of Tubbs pasture between the track and the lake, the scraggly wild clover grew,

and down what part of the gravel bank it was most exciting to roll, as far along the track as the arch, each railway tie or sleeper had for him a personality, the fat white tie which oozed at the end into an awkward knob he had always hated because it resembled a flatten grub. A new tamarack tie with a piece of fresh bark still on it, recently put in by the section gang, was an entertaining stranger,

and he particularly introduced Gertrude to his favorite, a wine-colored tie which always smiled. Gurdido noblesse oblige compelled her to be gracious to the imprisoned ties writhing under the steel rails. Did not really show much enthusiasm till he led her to the justly celebrated arch. Even then, she boasted of Minnehaha Falls and Fort Snelling and Lake Calhoun, but upon his grieved solicitation declared that, after all, the Twin Cities had nothing to compare with the arch, a sandstone tunnel full 20 feet high,

miraculously boring through the railway embankment, and faced with great stones which you could descend by lowering yourself from stone to stone. Through the arch ran the creek, with rare meadows in its pools, while important path led from the creek to a wilderness of hazelnut bushes. He taught her to tear the drying husk from the nuts

and crack the nuts with stones. At his request, Gertie produced two pins from unexpected parts of her small, frilly dress. He found a piece of string and they fished for perch in the creek. As they had no bait whatever, their success was not large.

A flock of ducks flew low above them, seeking a pond for the night. Jiminy, Carl cried. It's getting late. We got to hurry. It's all for fur to San Francisco and I don't know if, gee, where we'll sleep tonight. We had not to go on, had we?

Yeah, come on. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Trail of the Hawk This Libravox recording is in the public domain Recording by Mike Vindetti, MikeVendetti.com Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis Chapter 2 From the creek they tramped nearly two miles

through the dark gravel banks of the railway cutting across the high trestle over Jor Lemon River where Gertie had to be coaxed from Stringer Stringer. They stopped only when a gopher in a clearing demanded attention. Dirty finally forgot the superiority of age when she saw Carl Whistle, the quivering gopher cry, while the gopher sat as though hypnotized on his pile of fresh black earth. Carl stalked him. As always happened, the gopher popped into his hole just before Carl reached him, but it certainly did seem that he had nearly been caught and Gertie was jumping with excitement

when Carl returned, strutting, cocking his saber stick over his shoulder. Gertie was tired. She, the Minneapolis girl, had not been much awed by the railway ties nor the arch, but now she trapped proudly beside the man who could catch gophers, till Carl inquired, Are you getting awful hungry? It's almost supper time. Yes, I'm hungry, trustingly.

I'm going to go swipe some teeters. I guess it may be there's a farmhouse over there. I see a chimney beyond the slough. Used to hear. I doesn't stay alone. I better go home. I'm scared. Come on.

I want that nothing hurt you. They circled the swamp surrounded by woods. Carl's left arm about her, his right clutching the saber. Though the sunset was magnificent in a gay company of blackbirds swayed in the reeds of the slough, Dust was sneaking out from the underbrush that blurted the forest floor, and Gertie caught the panic fear. She wished to go home at once. She saw darkness reaching for them.

Her mother would unquestionably whip her for staying out so late. She discovered a mud smear on the side of her skirt, and a shoot button was gone. She was cold. Finally, if she missed supper at home, she would get no tea biscuits and honey. Gertie's polite little stomach knew its rights and insisted upon them. I wish I hadn't come, she lamented. I wish I hadn't.

Do you suppose Mama will be dreadfully angry? Won't you explain to her? You will, won't you? It was Carl's duty as officer commanding to watch the blackened stumps that sprang from the underbrush, and there was something way over in the woods. Beyond the trees horribly gashed to white. by lightning.

Perhaps the something hadn't moved. Perhaps it was a stump. But he answered her loudly so that lurking robbers might overhear. I know a great big man over there, and he's a friend of mine. He's a breakie on the M&D, and he lets me ride in the cab any time I want to, and he's right behind us. I'm just making believe, Gertie. I'll explain everything to your mother.

He's bigger, nanny-buddy. More conversationally, Oh, Jiminy, Gertie, don't cry, please don't. I'll take care of you. And if you ain't going to have any supper, we'll swipe some taters and roast them, he gulped. He hated to give up to return to woodshed and chicken yard, but he conceded,

as may we hadn't better go seek our fortunes no more to. A long wail tore through the air. The children shrieked together, fled stumbling and dry bog, weeping in terror. Carl's backbone was all one prickly bar of ice. But he waved his stick fiercely, and because he had to care for her, was calm enough to realize that the whale must have been the cry of a bitter.

It wasn't nothing but a bird, Gertie. Can't hurt us? Heard him lots of times. Nevertheless, he was still trembling when they reached the edge of the farmyard clearing beyond the swamp. It was gray dark. They could see only the mass of a barn in a farmer's cabin, both new to Carl.

Holding our hand, he whispered, They must be some taters, beggaries in the barn. I'll sneak in and see. You stand here by the corn crib and work out some mirrors between the bar, see, like this? He left her. The sound of her frightened snivel aged him. He tiptoed to the barn door, eyeing a light in the farmhouse. He reached far up to the latch of the broad door.

and pulled out the wooden pin. The latch slipped noisily from its staple. The door opened with a groaning creek and banged against the barn. Paralyzed, hearing all the silence of the wild clearing, he waited. There was a step in the house. The door opened. A huge farmer, tousled-haired, black bearded, held up a lamp and peered out. It was the Black Dutchman. The Black Dutchman was a living legend. He often got drunk and rode past Carl's home at night, lashing his horses and cursing in German. He had once thrashed the school teacher for whipping his son. He had no friends.

Oh dear, oh dear. I wished I was home, sobbed Carl. But he started to run to Gertie's protection. The black Dutchman sat down the lamp. Where is still? I see you. Damn nation! He roared and lumbered out, seizing a pitchfork from the manure pile.

Carl galloped up to Gertie panting. He's after a man. and dragged her into the hazel bushes beyond the corn crib. As his country-bred feet found and followed a path toward deeper woods, he heard the black Dutchman beating the bushes with his pitchfork shouting, I think, I know where you are, ha! Carl jerked his companion forward, till he lost the path. There was no light.

They could only crawl on through the bushes, whose malicious fingers stung Gertie's face and plucked at her proud frills. He lifted her over fallen trees, freedom from branches, and all the time between his own sobs, he encouraged her and tried to pretend that their incredible plight was not the end of the world, whimpering. We're almost on the road now, Gerday, honest, we are. I can't hear him now.

I ain't afraid of him. He wouldn't dash to hurt him must. My ball would fix him. Oh, I hear him. He's coming. Oh, please save me, Carl. Gee, run fast. I don't hear him.

I ain't afraid of me. They burst down on a grassy woodland road and lay down panting. They could see a strip of stars overhead, and the world was dark, silent. In the inscrutable night of autumn, Carl said nothing. He tried to make out where they were, where this road would take them. It might run deeper into the woods, which he did not know as he did the arch-ship-irons. And he had so twisted through the voice that he could not tell in what direction lay either the main wagon road or the M&D track.

He lifted her up, and they plotted hand in hand, till she said, I'm awful tired, it's awful cold. My feet hurt awfully. Carl Daryl, please take me home now. I want my mama. Maybe she won't whip with me now. It's so dark and oh, she muttered incoherently. By the road, he's waiting for us.

She sank down her arm over her face, groaning. Don't hurt me. Carl straddled before her on guard. There was a distorted mass crouched by the road just ahead. He tingled with the chill of fear down through his thighs. He had lost his stick saber, but he bent, felt for, and found another stick, and piped to the shadowy watcher. I'm afraid of you.

You going away from here. The watcher did not answer. I know who you are. Bellowing with fear, Carl ran forward. Futurlessly waving his stick and clamoring, You better not touch me. The stick came down with a silly flat click upon the watcher, a roadside boulder. It's just a rock, Gertie.

Jiminy, I'm glad it's just a rock. I knew it was a rock all the time. Ben Russ gets scared every time he sees a stump in the woods, and he always thinks it's a robber. Chattily, Carl went back, lifted it again, endured her kissing his cheek, and they started on. I'm so cold, gritty moaned from time to time till he offered.

I'm trying to build fire. Maybe we better camp. I've got a match that I swipe in the kitchen. May I make up fire so we can better camp. I don't want a camp. I want to go home. I don't know where we are, I told you. Can you make a regular campfire like Indians?

Hmm? That's... But I'd rather go home. "'You ain't scared now, are you, Gertie? "'Gee, you're an awful brave girl. "'Oh, but I'm cold, and I wish we had some tea biscuits.' "'Ever too complacent was Miss Gertrude Cowles, the good girl, "'in whatever group she joined.

"'But she seemed to trust in Carl's heroism, "'and as she murmured of a certain chilliness, "'she seemed to take it for granted that he would immediately bring her some warmth. Carl had never heard of the romantic males who, in fiction, so frequently, offer their coats to ladies fair but chill, yet he stripped off his jacket and wrapped it about her, while his gingham-clad shoulders twitched with cold. I can hear a creek way, way over there. Let's camp by it, he decided.

They scrambled through the bush, Carl leading her and feeling the way. He found a patch of long grass beside the creek, with only his tremulous hands for eyes. he gathered leaves, twigs, and dead branches and piled them together in a pyramid, as he had been taught to do by the older woods-faring boys. It was still, no wind. But Carl, who had gobbled up every word he had heard about deer-hunting in the north woods,

got a great deal of interesting fear out of dreading what might happen if his one match did not light. He made Gertrude kneel beside him the jacket outspread, and he hesitated several times before he scratched the match. It flared up. The leaves caught. The pile of twigs was instantly aflame. He wept,

Jiminy, a bit of lighted. By and by, he announced loudlyly. I wasn't afraid. To convince himself and sat up throwing twigs on the fire, grandly. Gertie, who didn't really appreciate heroism, sighed, I'm hungry, and my second-grade teacher told us a story how there was an arty explorer, and he was out in a blizzard, and I wish we had some tea biscuits, concluded Gertie, companionably but firmly.

I'll go pick some hazelnuts. He left her feeding the flame. As he crept away the fire behind him, he was dreadfully frightened, now that he had no one to protect. A few yards from the fire he stopped in terror. He clutched a branch so tightly that it creased his palm. Two hundred yards away across the creek was the small. small square of a lighted window, hovering detached in the darkness.

For a panic-filled second, Carl was sure that it must be the Black Dutchman's window. His tired child mind whined, but there was no creek near the Black Dutchman's, though he did not want to venture up to the unknown light, he growled. "'Eh, well if I want to,' and limp forward. He had to cross the creek, the strange creek whose stepping stones he did not No. Shivering, hesitant, he stripped off his shoes and stockings and dabbled the edge of the water with reluctant toes to see if it was cold. It was. Dog gone! He swore mightily. He plunged in, waded across. He found a rock and held it ready to throw at the dog that was certain to become

snapping at him as he tiptoed through the clearing. His wet legs smarted with cold. The fact that he was trespassing made him feel more forlornly loss than ever. But he stumbled up to the one-room shack that was now shaping itself against the sky. It was a house that he believed he had never seen before. When he reached it, he stood for fully a minute, afraid to move. But from across the creek whimpered Gertie's call, "'Carl, oh, Carl, where are you?' He had to hurry.

He crept along the side of the shack to the window. It was too high in the wall for him to peer through. He felt for something to stand upon and found a short board, which he wedged against the side of the shack. He looked through the dusty window for a second. He sprang from the board. Alone in the shack was the one person about Jeroban, more feared, more fabulous than the black Dutchman.

Bone Stillman. the man who didn't believe in God. Bone Stillman read Robert G. Engersoll and said what he thought. Otherwise, he was not dangerous to the public peace. A lone old bachelor farmer. It was said that he had been a sailor or a policeman, a college professor or a priest,

a forger or an embezzler. Nothing positive was known except that three years ago he had appeared and bought this farm. He was a grizzled man 55 with a long tobacco-stained gray mustache and an open-neck blue flannel shirt. To Carl, beside the shack, Bone Stillman, was all that was demonic. Gertie was calling again, Carl climbed up his board and resumed his inspection, seeking a course of action.

The one-room shack was lined with tar paper on which were penned lithographs of Robert G. Engersoll, Karl Marx, and the Napoleon. Under a gun rack made of deer antlers was a cupboard half filled with dingy books, shotgun shells, fishing tackle. Bone was reading by a pine table still littered with supper dishes. Before him lay a clean-limbed English setter. The dog was asleep. In the shack was absolute stillness and loneliness, intimidating. While Carl watched, Bone dropped his book and said,

Here, Bob, what do you think of single-tax, eh? Carl gazed apprehensively. No one but Bone was in the shack. It was said that the devil himself sometimes visited there. On Carl was the chill of a nightmare. The dog raised his head, stirred, blinked, pounded his tail on the floor, and rose, a gentlemanly affable chap, to lay his muzzle on Bone's knee, while a solitary droned.

This fella says in this book here that the city's the natural place to live. Aboriginal tribe proved man's naturally gregarious. Why, think about it. Huh? Bob? Run country, this is.

No thinking. What in the name of seven saintly sisters did I ever want to be a farmer for? Eh? Let's gaddle, Bob. I ain't an atheist. I'm an agnostic. Lonely Bob?

Go over and talk to his whiskers. Carl Marx, he's liberal. He don't care what you say. He... Oh, shut up. You're damn poor company. Say something. Carl, still motionless, was the more agonized

because there was no sound from Gertie, not even a sobbing call. Anything might have happened to her. While he was coaxing himself to knock on the pain, Stillman puttered about the shack. petting the dog, filling his pipe. He passed out of Carl's range of vision towards the side of the room in which was the window.

A huge hand jerked the window open and caught Carl by the hair. Two wild faces stared at each other, six inches apart. I saw you. Come here to plague me? Roared Bone Stillman. Oh, Mr.

Oh, please, Mr. I wasn't me and Curtis lost in the woods. Wee, owch. Oh, please let me go. Why, you're just a brat. Come here. The lean arm of Bone Stillman dragged Carl through the window by the slack of his gingham shirt.

Lost, hang? Where's the other one, Gertie, was it? He's over in the woods. Poor little tyke. Wait till I light my lantern. The swinging lantern made friendly, ever-changing circles of light, and Carl no longer feared the dangerous territory of the yard. riding piggyback on bone, Stillman, he looked down contentedly at the dog deferential tail beside them.

They found Gertie asleep by the fire. She scarcely awoke as Stillman picked her up and carried her back to his shack. She nestled her downy hair beneath his chin and closed her eyes. Stillman said cheerily as he ushered them into his mansion. I'll hitch up and take you back to town, you young tropical tramps. First you better have a bite to eat, though. What do kids eat? Dog was nuzzling Carl's hand,

and Carl had almost forgotten his fear that the devil might appear. He was flatteringly friendly and his answer. Porridge and meat and potatoes. Only I don't like potatoes and pie. Afraid I haven't any pie, but how'd some bacon and eggs go? As he stoked up his cannonball stove and sliced the bacon, Stillman continued to the children who were shyly perched on the buffalo robe cover of his bed.

Were you scared in the woods? Yes, sir. Don't ever. For the blast that egg, don't forget this, son. Nothing outside of you can ever hurt you. It can chew up your toes, but it can't reach you. Nobody but you can hurt you. Let me try to make that clear old man if I can.

There's your fodder, drop and set two. Pretty sleepy, are you? I'll tell you a story. Did you like to hear about how Napoleon smashed the theory of divine rule, or about how me and Charlie Weems explored Tibran? Well, though Carl afterward remembered not one word of what Bone Stillman said, it is possible that the outcast treatment of him as a grown-up friend was one of the most powerful of the intangible influences

which were to push him toward the great world outside of Jerusalem. The school-bound child taught by young ladies that the worst immorality was whispering in school. The chief virtue, a dull quietude, was here first given to a reasonable basis for supposing that he was not always to be a backyard boy. The man in the flannel shirt who chewed tobacco, who wrenched infinitives apart and thrust profane words between,

was for fifteen minutes. Carl's floorbell and Montessori. Carl's recollection of listening to Bone blurs into one of being somewhere in the back of a wagon beside Curty, wrapped in buffalo robes, and of being awakened by the stopping of the wagon when Bone called to a band of men with lanterns who were searching for the missing Gertie.

Apparently the next second he was being lifted out before his home, and his apron mother was kissing him and sobbing, Oh, my boy! He snuggled his head on her shoulder and said, I'm cold, but I'm going to San Francisco. End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of the Trail of the Hawk.

This LeBron Box recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vindetti, Mikevindetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 3. Carl Erexon grown to 16 in long trousers, trimmed the arc lights for jaw lemon power and lighting company after school. Then at Eddie Clem's billiard parlor, he won two games of Kellypool, smoked a cigarette, a flaked tobacco,

and wheat straw paper and chipped in five cents towards a can of beer. A slender Carl, hesitating in speech, but with plenty to say, Rangy as a setter pup, silken-haired, his Scandinavian cheeks like petals at an age when his companion's faces were like maps of the moon, stubborn and healthy, wearing a celluloid collar and a plain black foreign hand, a blue-eyed, undistinguished, awkward, busy, pletarian of sixteen, to whom evening clothes and poetry did not exist, but who quivered with inarticulate determinations to see Minneapolis or even Chicago. To him, it was sheer romance to parade through

town with a tin haversack of carbons for the arc lights, familiarly lowering the high-hung, mysterious lamps. While he's plotting acquaintances, clerked in stores on Saturdays or tended furnaces. Sometimes he donned the virile and noisy uniform of an electrician, army gauntlets, a coil of wire, pole climbers strapped to his legs, crunching his steward. spurs into the crisp pine wood of the lighting poles, he carelessly ascended to the place of humming wires and red crossbars and green glass insulators, while crowds of two and three small boys stared in awe from below. At such moments, Carl did not envy the aristocratic leisure of his high school classmate, Fatty Ben Rusk, who as son of the leading

doctor, did not work, but stayed home in read library books. Carl's own home was not adapted to the enchantments of a boy's reading. Perfectly comfortable it was, and clean with the hard cleanliness that keeps oilcloth looking perpetually unused, but it was so airlessly respectable that it doubled Carl's natural restlessness. It had been old Oscar Erickson's labor of love, but the carpenter loved shininess more than space and leisure. His model for a house would have been a pine dry goods box.

grained in imitation of oak. Oscar Erickson, radiated intolerance, and a belief in unimaginative, unresting labor. Every evening, collarless and carpet slippered, ruffling his broom-colored hair or stroking his large long chin. While his shirt-tab moved ceaselessly in time to his breathing, he read a Norwegian paper. Carl's mother darned woolen socks and thought about milk pans

and the neighbors in breakfast. The creek of rockers filled the unventilated oilcloth floor sitting room. The sound was as unchanging as the sacred positions of the crayon enlargement of Mrs. Erickson's father, the green glass top hat for matches, or the violent ingrained rug with its doghead pattern. Carl's own room contained only plaster walls, a narrow wooden bed, a bureau, a kitchen chair. Fifteen minutes in this irreproachable home sent Carl off to Eddie Clem's billiard parlor, which was not irreproachable. He rather disliked the bitterness of beer and the acrid specks of cigarette tobacco that stuck to his lips,

but the bunch of Eddies were among the few people in Jerusalem who were conscious of life. Eddie's establishment was a long white-plastered room with a pressed steel ceiling and an upswept floor. On the walls were billiard table markers, calendars, and a collection of cigarette premium chromos portraying bathing girls. The girls were of lithographic complexions, almost too perfect of feature, and their lips were more than ruby. Carl admired them.

A September afternoon, the 16-year-old Carl was tipped back in a chair at Eddie Clems, one foot on a rung while he discussed village scandals and told outrageous stories with Eddie Clem, a brisk money-maker and a vulgarian aged 23, who wore a fancy vest and celluloid buttons on his lapels. Ben Rusk hesitatingly poked his head through the door. Eddie Clem called with business-like cordialty.

"'Oh, fatty, come in. How's your good health? Haven't reformed, have you? Going to join us, roughnecks? Come on, I'll teach you to play pool. What cost you a cent? "'Nah, I guess I hadn't better. I was just looking for Carl.' "'Well, well, fatty, ain't we refined? Why do we guess we hate to probably, maybe

oughtn't to have better?' "'Oh, I don't know. Someday I'll learn, I guess,' sighed Faddy Ben Rusk, who knew perfectly that with a doctor-father, a religious mother, and an infeminate taste for reading He could never be a town sport. Hey, what's up? Shrieked Eddie. What's the matter? Gasped Fattie. Floor, it's falling on you.

The, the... I say you're kidding me, said Fattie weekly, with a propitiating smile. Don't worry, son. You're the third guy today that I've caught on that. Stick around, son. And sit in any time and I'll learn you some pool. You got you.

Just the right build for a champ player. Have a cigarette. The social amenities whereby Gerolium prepares her youth. For the graces of life having been recognized, Faddy Rusk, hitched the chair beside Carl and muttered. Hey, Carl, here's what I wanted to tell you. I was just up at the Cowles'es, to take back a French grammar I borrowed to look at.

Maybe that ain't a hard-looking language. What do you think? Mrs. Cowles told me Gertie is expected back tomorrow. Gee whiz, I thought she was going to stay in New York for two years, and she's only been gone six months. Yes, Mrs. Cowles is kind of lonely without her being mooned. So now you'll be all nice and in love with Gertie again, eh? Certainly gets me while you want to fall in love, Faddy.

When you could be out hunting, if you'd read about King Arthur and Gallowad and all them instead of reading the Scientific Ameriard, and about those full horseless carriages and stuff? There never will be any practical use for horses carriages anyway. There will, growled Carl. My mother says she don't believe the Lord ever intended us to ride without horses, or what did he give us horses for?

And the things always get stuck in the mud, and you have to walk home. Mother was reading that in the newspaper just the other day. Son, let me tell you, I'll own a horseless, carriage some day, and I bet I go an average of 20 miles an hour with it, maybe 40. All rats. But I was saying, if you'd read some library books, you'd know about love. Why, what did God put love in the world for?

Say, would you quit explaining to me what God did things for? Oh, quit off. Quit, Carl. Say, listen, here's what I wanted to tell you. How, if you and me and Adelaine Binner, and some of us went down to the depot to meet Gertie tomorrow. She comes in on a 1247. Well, all right.

Say, Benny, you don't want to be worried when I kid you about being in love with Gertie. I don't think I'll ever get married, but it's all right for you. Saturday morning was cool, so radiant that Carl awakened early, to a conviction that no matter how important meeting Gertie might be in the cosmic scheme, he was going hunting. He was downstairs by five. Fried two eggs called Dollar Ingersoll, his dog, son of Robert Ingersoll Stilman, gentleman dog. Then in canvas hunting coat and slouch hat, trapped out of town southward where the woods ended in prairie.

Gertie's arrival was forgotten. It was a gypsy day. The sun rolled splendidly through the dry air over miles of wheat stubble, whose gray yellow prickles were transmuted by jibble. distance into tawny velvet, seeming only the more spacious because of the straight, thin lines of barbed wire fences lined with goldenrod and solitary houses in willow groves. The depths and curves of the rolling plain drew him on. The distances satisfied his eyes.

A pleasant hum of insects filled the land's wide serenity with hidden life. Carl left a trail of happy, monotonous whistling behind him all day as his dog followed the winding trail of prairie chickens as a covey of chickens rose with booming wings and he swung a shotgun for a bead. He stopped by prairie sloughs or bright green bogs to watch for a duck. He hailed as equals the occasional groups of hunters in two-seated buggies, quartering the fields after circling dogs. He lunched contentedly on sandwiches of cold lamb and lay with his arms under his head, gazing at a steeple fully ten miles away. By six of the afternoon he had seven prairie chickens

tucked inside the long pocket that lined the tail of his coat, and he headed for home, superior to Miles, his quiet eyes missing none of the purple asters and goldenrod. As he began to think he felt a bit guilty, flowers suggested Gertie. Gathered a large bunch, poking stalks of astor among the golden rod, examining the result at arm's length. Yet when he stopped at Rusks in town to bid Benny to take the rustic bouquet to Gertie,

he replied to reproaches. What making all the fuss about my not being there to meet her for? She got here all right, didn't she? What'd you expect me to do? Kiss her? You ought to know it was too good a day for hunting to miss. How's Gert? Have a good time in New York?

Carl himself took the flowers to her, however, and was so shyly attentive to her account of New York that he scarcely stopped to speak to the Cowlis' hired girl, who was his second cousin. Mrs. Cowles overheard him shout, Hello, Lena, how's it going? To the hired girl with cousinly ease, Mrs. Cowell seemed chilly. Carl wondered why.

From month to month of his junior year in high school, Carl grew more discontented. He let the lines of his cicero fade into a gray blur that confounded Cicero's blatant virtue, and Catalan's treachery, while he pictured himself cramping with snow shoes and a Mackinac coat into the snowy solomones of the northern Minnesota Tamarack swamps.

Much of his discontent was caused by his learned preceptors. The teachers for this year were almost perfectly calculated to make any lad of the slightest independence hate culture for the rest of his life. With the earnestness and industry usually ascribed to the devil, Professor Seibet E. Larson, B. A. Platonius, Miss McDonald and Miss Muzzy kept up 95% discipline and 7% instruction on anything in the least worthwhile. Miss Muzzy was sarcastic and proud of it. She was sarcastic to Carl when he gruffly asked why he couldn't study French instead of all his Latin stuff. If there be any virtue in the study of Latin, and we have all forgotten all our Latin

except the fact that suburb means under the city, i.e. a subway. Carl was blinded to it forever. Miss Muzzy wore eyeglasses and had no bosom. Carl's father used to say approvingly, That Miss Muzzy don't stand for no nonsense! And Mrs. Dr. Rusk often had her for dinner. Miss McDonald, fat and slow-spoken and kind, prone to use the word dearie, to read Longfellow, and to have buttons off her shirt-waists,

used on Carl a feminine weapon more unfair than a robust sarcasm of Miss Muzzy. After irritating a self-respecting boy into rudeness, by pawing his soul with damp, puffy hands, she would weep. She was a kind, honest, and reverent bovine. Carl sat under her supervision in the junior room, with its hard wood and blackboards and plaster, high windows and portraits of Washington, and a president who was either Madison or Monroe,

nobody ever remembered which. He hated the eternal school smell of drinking water pails and chalk and slates and varnish. He loathed the blackboard erasers white with crayon dust. He found inspiration only in the laboratory where Prof Larson mistought physics and and rebuked questions about the useless part of chemistry. That is the part that wasn't in their textbooks. As for literature, Ben Rusk persuaded him to try Captain Marriott and Conan Doyle. Carl met Sherlock Holmes in a paper-bound book

during a wait for flocks of mallards on a duck pass, which was a little temple of silver birches, bare with November. He crouched down in his canvas coat and rubber boats, gun across knees, and read for an hour without moving. As he tramped home into a vast Minnesota sunset like a furnace of fantastic coals, past the garnet-tinged ice of lakes, he kept his gun cocked and under his elbow,

ready for the royal robber who was dogging the personage of Baker Street. He hunted much, distinguished himself in geometry and chemistry, nearly flunked in Cicero in English, learn to play an extraordinary steady game of bottle pool at Eddie Climes. And always, Gertie Cowles, gently hesitant toward Ben Rusk's affection, kept asking Carl why he didn't come see her oftener and play tidlywinks. On the Friday morning, before Christmas vacation,

Carl and Ben Rusk were cleaning up the chemical laboratory, its pine experiment bench and iron sink, and rough floor. Benny worried a rag in the sink with the residing, manner of a man who, having sailed with purple banners the sunset sea of tragedy, goes bravely on with a life gray and weary. The town was excited. Gertie Cowles was giving a party, and she had withdrawn her invitation to Eddie Clem. Gertie was staying away from high school, gracefully recovering from a cold. For two weeks, the junior and senior classes had been furtively exhibiting her holly deck cards of imitation.

Eddie had been included, but after his quarrel with Howard Griffin, a Plato college freshman, who was spending the vacation with Ray Cowles, it had been explained to Eddie that perhaps he would be more comfortable not to come to the party. Gertie's brother Murray or Ray was the town hero. He had captained the high school football team. He was tall and very black-haired, and he jollied the girls. It was said that 20 girls in Jorilloman and Walkman and a grass widow in St. Hilary wrote to him.

He was now a freshman in Plato College, Plato, Minnesota, and he brought home with him his classmate, Howard Griffin, whose people lived in South Dakota and were said to be wealthy. Griffin had been very haughty to Eddie Clem when introduced to that brisk young man at the billiard parlor. And now the town eagerly learned Eddie had been rejected of society. In the laboratory, Carl was growling.

I'll say, Fanny. If it was right for them to throw Eddie out, where do I come in? His dad's a barber and mine's a carpenter. And that's just as bad. Or how about you? I was reading that docs used to be just barbers. Ah, thunder, said Ben Rusk, the doctor's guy on,

uncomfortably. You're just arguing. I don't believe that about doctors being barber. Don't it tell about doctors way back in the Bible? Well, of course. Luke was a physician. Science, it ain't a question of Eddie being a barber's son. I should think you'd realize that Gertie isn't well.

She wouldn't want to have to entertain both Eddie and Griffin, and Griffin's her guest. And besides, you're getting all tangled up. If I was to let you go on, you'd trip over a long word and bust your dome. Come on. We've done enough cleaning. Let's hike.

Come on up to the house and help me on my bobs. I got a new scheme for pivoting the back sled. You just wait till tonight. I'm going to tell Gertie and Mr. Howard Griffin just want to think of them for being such two-bit snobs. And your future ma-in-law, gee, I'm glad I don't have to be in love with anybody and become a snob. Come on.

Out of this wholesome, democratic, and stuffy village life, Carl suddenly stepped into the great world. A motor car. The first he had ever seen was drawn up before the Hennepin house. He stopped. His china blue eyes widened,

his shoulder shot forward to a rigid stoop of astonishment. His mouth opened. He gasped as they ran to join the gathering crowd. A horse-less carriage. Do you get that? There's one here.

He touched the bonnet of the two-cylinder 1901 car and worshipped. Under there the engine. And there's where you steer. I will own one. Gee, you're right, Fatty. I believe I will go to college, and then I'll study mechanical engineering. Thought you said you was going to try to go to Annapolis and be a sailor?

Nah, rats. I'm going to own a horseless carriage, and I'm going to tour every state in the Union. Think of seeing mountains in the ocean, and going 20 miles an hour like a train. End of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 of the Trail of the Hawk. Mr. Loozbovok's recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 4 While Carl prepared for Gertie Cowell's party by pressing his trousers with his mother's flat iron, while he blacked his shoes and took his weekly sponge bath, he was perturbed by the partnership with Eddie Clem

and the longing for the world of motors and some anxiety as to how he could dance at the party when he could not dance. He clumped up the new stone steps of the Cowles' house carelessly, not unusually shy, ready to tell Gertie what he thought of her treatment of Eddie. Then the front door opened and an agonized Carl was smothered by politeness, his second cousin. Lena, the Cowles' hired girl, was opening the door, stiff and uncomfortable in a cap, a black dress and a small frilly apron that dangled on her boniness like a lace kerchief pinned on a broom handle. Murray Cowles rushed up. He was in an evening close. Behind Murray, Mrs. Cowles greeted Carl with thawed

majesty. We are so glad to have you, Carl. Won't you take your things off in the room at the head of the stairs? An affable introduction to Howard Griffin, also an evening clothes, was poured on Carl like soothing bomb, said Griffin. Might a glad to meet you, Erickson. Ray told me you'd make a ripping sprinter. The captain of the tractine will be on the lookout for you when you get to Plato. Of course, you're going to go there.

The E of M is too big. You'll do something for old Plato, wish I could. But all I can do is warble like a darn dicky bird. Have a cigarette. They're just starting to dance. Come on, old man. Come on, Ray. Carl was drawn downstairs and instantly precipitated into a dance regarding which he was sure only that it was a waltz, a two-step, or something else.

It filled with glamour the Cowles Library, the only parlor in Gibraloman that was called a library, and the only one with a fireplace or polished hardwood floor. Grandeur was in the red lamacons over the doors and windows, the bead-bid, Petre, a hand-painted coal shuttle, small round paintings of flowers set in black velvet, an enormous black walnut bookcase, with fully a hundred volumes, and the two lamps of green modeled shades and wrought iron frames, set on photographed leather skins, brought from New York by Gertie. The light was courtly on the polished floor. Adelaide Binner, a new Adelaide in chiffon over yellow satin, and patent leather slippers, grinned at him and Bruce. toastlessly towed him into the tide of dancers.

In the spell of society, no one seemed to remember Eddie Clem. Adelaide did not mention the incident. Carl found himself bumping into others continually apologizing to Adelaide and the rest, and not caring, for he saw a vision. Each time he turned toward the south end of the room he beheld, Gertie Cowles glorified. She was out of ankle-length dresses. She looked her impressive.

in a foamy, long, white mull that showed her soft throat. A red rose was in her brown hair. She reclined in a big chair of leather and oak and smiled the gentlest, especially when Carl bobbed his head to her. He had always taken her as a matter of course. She had no age, no sex, no wonder. That afternoon she had been a negligible bit of Jolam one to be accused of snobbery toward Eddie Clem.

and always to be watched suspiciously, lest she sprang some New York airs on us. Gertie had craftily seemed unchanged after a New York enlightenment till now. Here she was, suddenly grown up and beautiful, hallowed with a peculiar magic, which distinguished her from the rest of the world. She's the only one that would ride in that horse's carriage when I get it,

Carl exulted. That must be a train, that thing she's got on. After the dance, he disposed of Adelaide Benner as though she were only a sister. He hung over the back of Gertie's chair and urged, I was awful sorry to hear you were sick. Say, you look wonderful tonight. I'm so glad you could come to my party. Oh, I must speak to you about.

Do you suppose you would ever get very, very angry at poor me? Me, so bad sometimes? Cut an awkward little caper to show his aplomb in his shirt her. I guess probably I'll kill you some time, all right? No, listen, Carl, I'm dreadfully serious. I hope you didn't go and get dreadfully angry at me about Eddie Clem. I know Eddie's good friends with you, and I did want to have him come to my party,

but you see, was this way. Mr. Griffin is our guest. He likes you a lot, Carl. Isn't he a dandy fellow? I guess Adelaide and Hazel were just crazy about him. I think he's just as well as the men in New York. Eddie and he didn't get along very well together. It isn't anybody's fault, I don't guess.

I thought Eddie would be lots happier if he didn't come. Don't you see? Oh, no, of course. Oh, yes, I see, sure. I can see how, say, Gertie. I never did know you could look so grown up. I suppose now you'll never play with me. I want you to be a good friend of mine always.

We always have been awfully good friends, haven't we? Yes. Do you remember how we ran away? And how the black Dutchman chased us? Her sweet and complacent voice was so cheerful that he lost his awe of her new magic, enchortled. And how he used to play Pum-Pum Pull Away. She delicately leaned your cheek on a fingertip side.

Yes, I wonder if we shall ever be so happy is when we were young. I don't believe you care to play with me so much now. Oh, gee, Gertie, I like to. The shyness was on him again. Say, are you feeling better now? You're all over being sick? Almost now.

I'll be back in school right after vacation. It's you that don't want to play, I can't get over that long white dress. It makes you look so, you know, so, uh... They're going to dance, I wish I felt able to dance. We sit and talk to you, Gertie, instead of dancing. I suppose you're dreadfully bored, though, when you could be down at the billiard baller.

Yes, I could. Not. Eddie clamming his fancy vest wouldn't have much chance alongside of Griffin in his dress suit. Of course, I don't want to knock Eddie, him and me, are pretty good sidekicks. Oh, no, I understand. It's just that people have...

to go with their own class, don't you think?" Oh, yes, sure. I do think so myself." Carl said it with a spurious society manner. In Gertie's aristocratic presence, he desired to keep aloof from all vulgar persons. Of course, I think we ought to make allowances for Eddie's father, Carl, but then she sighed with the responsibility of noblese oblige, and Carl gravely sighed. with her. He brought a stool and sat at her feet. Immediately he was afraid that everyone was watching

him. Ray Cowles bawled to them as he passed in the waltz. Watch out for that Carl Gert. He's a regular baddicks. Carl's scalp prickled, but he tried to be very offhand in remarking, he must have gotten that dress in New York, didn't you? Why haven't you ever told me about New York? You've hardly told me anything at all. Well, I like that, and you'd never been near me to give me a chance. Guess I was kind of scared. You wouldn't care much for Jolerman after New York.

Why, Carl, you mustn't say that to me. Didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Gertie. Honestly, it didn't. I was just joking. I didn't think you'd take me seriously. As though I could forget my old friends, even in New York? I didn't think that, straight.

Please tell me about New York. That's the place all right, Jiminy. Wouldn't I like to go there? I wish you could have been there, Carl. We had such fun in my school. There weren't any boys in it, but we... No boys in it? Why, how's that?

It was just for girls. I see, he said faturously, completely satisfied. We did have the best time. Carl, I must tell you about one awfully naughty thing, Carrie. She was my chum in school, and I did. There was a stock company on 23rd Street, and we were all crazy about the actors, especially Clements de Vaux.

And one afternoon, Carrie told the principal she had a headache, and I asked if I could go home with her and read her the assignments for the next day. They called the lessons assignments there. And they thought I was such a good. such a meek little country mouse that I would never fib. And so they let us go. And what do you think we did?

She had tickets for the two orphans at the stock company. You've never seen the two orphans, have you? It's perfectly splendid. I used to weep my eyes out over it. And afterward, we went and waited outside right near the stage entrance. And what do you think? The leading man, Clements DeVille. went right by us as near as I am to you.

Oh, Carl, I wish you could have seen him. Maybe he wasn't the handsomest thing. He had the blackest, curliest hair, and he wore a thumb ring. I don't think much about all these ham fetters, frowl, actors always go broke and have to walk back to Chicago. Don't you think it'd be better to be a civil engineer or something like that instead of having to slug up your hair and carry a cane? They're just dudes.

Well, of course, Carl, you silly boy. You don't suppose I'd take Clement seriously to you, you silly boy. I'm not a boy. I didn't mean it that way. She sat up, touched his shoulder, and sank back. He blushed with bliss and the fear that someone had seen as she continued. I always think of you as just as old as I am. We always will be, won't we?

Yes. Now you must go to talk to Doris Carlson. Poor thing, she always is a wildflower. However much he thought of common things he left her. Beyond those common things was the miracle that Gertie had grown into the one perfect, divinely ordained woman and that he would talk to her again. He'd asked the Virginia real, instead of clumping sulkily through the steps, as at other parties, he heated Adelaide Brennan's lesson and watched Gertie in the hope

that she would see how well he was dancing. He shouted to the man that they play, skipped to Maloo, and cried down the shy girls who giggled that they were too old for the childish party game. He howled without prejudice in favor of any particular key, the ancient world's, rats in the sugar bowl, two by two, rats in the belfry, two, rats in the belfry, two by two rats in the sugar bowl, two by two, skip to me a loo, my darling. In a nonchalant company of the smarter young bachelor's upstairs, he smoked a cigarette, but he sneaked away.

He paused at the bend in the stairs below him was gertie, silver-gowned, wonderful. He wanted to go down to her. He would have given up his chance for a motor-car to be able to swagger down like an eddy clam. for the Carl Erickson, who sailed his iceboat over the inch-thick ice, was timid now. He poked into the library, and in a nausea of discomfort, he conversed with Mrs. Cowles, Mrs. Cowles, doing the conversing. Are you going to be a Republican or Democrat, Carl? Ask the forbidding lady.

Yes, him, mumbled Carl, peering over at Gertie's throne where Ben Rusk was being cultured. I hope you're having a good time. we always wish our young friends to have an especially good time at Gertrude's parties. Mrs. Coles sniffed and bowed away. Carl sat beside Adelaide Penner in the decorous and giggling circle that rang the room, waiting for the refreshments. He was healthily interested in devouring maple ice cream and chocolate layer cake, but all the while he was spying on the group gathering about Gertie,

Ben Rusk, Howard Griffin, and Joe Jordan. He took the most strategic precaution, lest one think that he wanted to look at Gertie, made such ponderous efforts to prove he was carefree that everyone knew something was the matter. Ben Rusk was taking no part in the gaiety of Howard and Joel. The serious man of letters was not easily led into paths of frivolity, Carl swore to himself.

Ben's the only guy I know that's got any delicate feelings. He appreciates how Gertie feels when she's sick, poor girl. He don't make a goat of himself like Joe, or maybe he's got a stomach ache. Post office, cried Howard Griffin to the room at large. Come on. Will all of us going to be kids again and play post office? Who's the first girl wants to be kissed?

The idea, giggled Adelaide Banner. me for Adelaide, bald Joe Jordan. Oh, Joe, bet I kiss Gertie from Irving Lamb. The idea. Just as if we were children. He must think we're kids again. Shamy, Winnie wants to be kissed and Carl won't. I don't either sit there. I think it's awful.

But I kiss Gertie. Carl was furious at all of them as they strained their shoulders forward from their chairs and laughed. He asked himself, Haven't these galutes got any sense? To speak so lightly of kissing Gertie. He stared at the smooth rounding of her left cheek below the cheekbone till it took a separate identity, and its white softness filled the room.

Ten minutes afterward, playing post office, he was facing Gertie in the semi-darkness of the sitting-room, authorized by the game to kiss her, shut in with his divinity. She took his hand. Her voice was crooning. Are you going to kiss me terribly hard?" He tried to be gracefully mocking.

Oh, yes, sure, I'm going to eat you alive. She was waiting. He wished that she would not hold his hand. Within, he groaned. Gee, whiz, I feel foolish. He croaked. Do you feel better now? You'll catch more cold in here, won't you?

There's kind of a drought. Let me look at this window. Crossing to the obviously tight window, he ran his finger along the edge of the sash with infinite care. He trembled. In a second now, he had to turn and make light of the lips, which he would fain have approached with ceremony pompous and lingering.

Gertie flopped into a chair laughing. I believe you're afraid to kiss me, Frady Cat. You'll never be a squire of dames like those actors are. All right for you. I'm not afraid, he piped. Even his prize semi-base voice had deserted him. He rushed to the back of his chair and leaned over, confused, determined, hastily kissed her. The kiss landed on the tip of her cold nose.

And the whole party was tumbling in, crying, "'Time's up, you can't hug her all evening. Did you see? He kissed her on the nose, did he? Oh, times up. Can't try it again.' Joe Jordan in the van was dancing fantastically, scraping his forefinger at Carl in token of disgrace. The riotous crowd, Gertie and Carl among them, flooded out again. To show that he had not minded the incident of the Miss Place kissed, Carl had to be very loud and merry in the library for a few minutes.

But when the game of post office was over and Mrs. Cowles asked Ray to turn down the lamp in the sitting room, Carl insisted, I'll do it, Miss Cowles, I'm nearer, and Ray and bolted. He knew that he was wicked in not staying in the library and continuing his duties to the party. He had to crowd into a minute all his agonizing and be back at once. It was beautiful in the stilly sitting room, away from the noisy crowd, to hear Love's heart beating. He darted to the chair where Gertie had sat and guiltily kissed its arm. He tiptoed to the table, blew out the lamp.

Remember that he should only have turned down the wick, tried to raise the chimney, stanched his handkerchief, dropped it, groaned, picked up the handkerchief, raised the chimney, put it on the table, searched his pockets for a match, found it, dropped it up from the floor, dropped his knife from his pocket, as he stooped, felt itchy about the scalp, picked up the knife, re-lighted the lamp, exquisitely adjusted the chimney, and again blew out the flame and swore. As darkness whirled into the room again, the vision of Gertie came nearer.

Then he understood his illness and gasp. Great jumping Jupiter on a high mountain. I guess I'm in love. Me. The party was breaking up each boy as he accompanied a girl from the yellow lamplight into the below zero cold, shouted and scuffled the snow

to indicate that there was nothing serious in his attentions and immediately tried to maneuver his girl away from the others. Mrs. Cowles was standing in the hall not hurrying the guests away. he understand, but perfectly resigned to accepting any farewells. When Gertie moving gently among them with little sounds of pleasure, penned Carl in a corner and demanded, Are you going to see someone home?

I suppose you'll forget, poor me completely now. I will not. I wanted to tell you what Ray and Mr. Griffin said about Plato and about being lawyers. Isn't it nice you'll know them when you go to Plato? yes it'll be great mr griffin's going to be a lawyer and maybe ray will too and why don't you think about being one you can get to be a judge and know all the best people it would be lovely refining influences they that's i could never be a high-class lawyer like griffin will said carl his head on one side much pleased you silly boy of course you could i think you've got just as much brains as he has and ray says they all look up to him, even in Plato.

And I don't see why Plato isn't just as good, of course. It isn't as large, but it's so select, and the faculty can give you so much more individual attention, and I don't see why it isn't every bit as good as Yale, Michigan, and all those eastern colleges. Howard, Mr. Griffin, he says that he wouldn't ever have thought of being a lawyer. Only a girl was such a good influence with him, and if you get to be a famous man too,

maybe I'll have been just a teeny-weeny bit of an influence too, won't I? Oh, yes. I must get back now and say goodbye to my guest. Good night, Carl. I'm going to study. You just watch me, and if I do get to go to Plato, oh, gee, you always have been a good influence. He noticed that Doris Carson was watching them.

Well, I've got to be going. I've had a peach of a time. Good night. Doris Carson was expectantly waiting for one of the boys to see her home, but Carl guiltily stole up to Ben Rusk and commanded, Let's hike, Fannie. Let's take a walk. Something big to tell you.

End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of Trail of the Hawk. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mikevindetti.com. Trail of the Hawk. By Sinclair, Lewis. Chapter 5. Carl kicked up the snow and moonshot veils. The lake boomed. For all her woolen mittens, ribbed red cotton wristlets, and plush caps with earlaps, the cold seared them. Carl encouraged Ben

Ben to discourse of Gertie and the delights of a long and hopeless love. He discovered that actually Ben had suddenly fallen in love with Adelaide Benner. Gee, exalted. Maybe that gives me a chance with Gertie then. But I won't let her know Ben ain't in love with her anymore. Jiminy, ain't it lucky, Gertie liked me just when Ben fell in love with somebody else.

Funny the way things go. And her never knowing about Ben. He laid down his cards. While they plowed through the hard snowdrifts, swinging their arms against their chest like milkmen, he blurted out all his secret. That Gertie was the slick girl in town that no one appreciated her.

Oh, jeered Ben. I thought you were crazy about her, and then you start kidding about her. So a bunch of chivalry you got. You and your Galahad. You... Don't you go jumping on Galahad or I'll fight? It was all right, but you ain't, said Carl.

You had not to ever sneer at love. Why, you said just this afternoon. You poor Yahoo, I was only teasing you. No, about Gertie? It's like this. She was telling me a lot about how Griffin's going to be a lawyer. About how much they make in cities, then. I've about decided I'll be a lawyer.

Are you going to be a mechanical engineer? Well, can't a fellow change his mind? When you're an engineer, you're always running around to come. country, and you never get shaved or anything, and there ain't any refining influences. An absorbing game of what we're going to be made them forget snow and cold-squeased fingers. Bennett was decided was to own a newspaper and support C. Erickson attorney at law in his dramatic run for state senator. Carl did not mention Gertie again, but it all meant Gertie. Carl made his round trimming the arc lights next day,

apparently a rudely healthy young person. But really, a dreamer, lovedorn, and misunderstood. He had found a good excuse for calling on Gertie at noon and had been informed that Miss Gertrude was taking a nap. He determined to go up the lake for rabbits. He doubted if he would ever return and wondered if he would be missed. Who would care if he froze to death? he wouldn't.

Though he did seem to be taking certain precautions by donning a mackinaw coat, two pairs of trousers, two pairs of woolen socks, and shoe packs. He was graceful as an Indian when he swept on skis. He had made himself across miles of snow

covering the lake and dazzling in the diffused light of an even gray sky. The reeds by the marshy shore were frost glittering and clattered faintly. Marshay islands were lost in snow, hummocks and ice jams, and the weaving patterns of migtracks were blunted in one white immensility,

on which Carl was like a fly on a plaster ceiling. The world was deserted, but Carl was not lonely. He forgot all about Gertie as he caked to skis by the shore and prowled to the woods, leaping on brush piles and shooting quickly when a rabbit ran out. When he had bagged three rabbits, he was besieged by the melancholy of loneliness, the perfection of the silver-gowned gertie. He wanted to talk.

He thought of Bone Stillman. It was very likely that Bone was, as usual in winter, a beyond Big Bend, fishing for Piccorell with tip-ups. A never-stopping dot in the dusk, Carl headed for Big Bend, three miles away. The tip-up fisher watches a dozen tip-ups, short, automatic, fishing rods, with lines running through the ice, the pivoted arms signaling the presence of a fish at the bait. Sometimes for warmth he has a tiny shanty, perhaps five feet by six in ground area, heated by a powder-canned stove. Bone Stillman often spent the night in his movable shanty on the lake,

which added to his reputation as a village eccentric. But he was more popular now with the local sporting gentleman, who found that he played a divine game of poker. "'Hello, son,' greeted Carl. "'Come in. "'Leave them long legs of yours up on shore if ain't got room. "'Hey, Boone, do you think a fellow ever ought to join a church?' "'Pends, why?' "'Well, suppose he was going to be a lawyer and going for politics.

"'Look here, what you're thinking of becoming a lawyer for? Didn't say it was. Of course you're thinking of it. Look here. Don't you know you've got a chance of seeing the world? You're one of the lucky people that can have a touch of the wander list without being made useless by it, as I have. You may, you may wander in thought as well as on freight trains,

discover something for the world. Whereas a lawyer, they're priests. They decide what's holy and punish you if you don't guess right. They set up codes that it takes lawyers to interpret, and so they perpetuate themselves. I don't mean to say you're extraordinary and having a chance to wander.

Don't get the big head over it. You're a pretty average young American. There's plenty of the same kind, only mostly they get tied up to something before they see what a big world there is to hike in. And I want to keep you from that. that. I'm not roasting lawyers. Yes, I am too. They live in calf-bound books. Son, son, for God's sake, live in life. Yes, but look here, bone, I was just thinking about it, that's all.

You're always drumming it into me about not taking anything for granted. Anyway, by the time I go to Plato, I'll know. Do you mean to say you're going to that back creek nunnery? That Black-Hawnd University? Are you going to play checkers all through life? Well, I don't know now, Bone. I know ain't so bad. A fellow's got to go someplace so he can mix with people that know what's the proper thing to do,

refining influences and like that. Proper. Refining. Son, son, are you going to get demoralized? If you want what the French folks call the grand, manner, if you're going to be a tip-top, A number one, genuine grand signor, or however they pronounce it, well, all right, go to it. That's one way of playing a big game, but a wind comes down to a short bit, freshwater sewing circle like plato college, where an imitation scholar

teaches you imitation translations of useless classics and ambled-footed girls teach you invitation party manners that make you just as plum ridiculous in a real salon as they would in a lumber rank camp why oh say i've got it girls eh what girl have you been falling in love with to get this plato idea from eh oh i ain't in love bone no i don't know pine you are at your age you got about as much chance of being in love as you have of being a grandfather But somehow I seem to have a little old suspicion that you think you're in love. But it's none of my business, and I go and ask questions about it. He patted Carl on the shoulder, moving his arm with difficulty in their small dark space. Son, I've learned this in my life, and I've done quite some hiking at that,

even if I didn't have the book learning and to get up and get to make anything out of my experience. It's a thing I ain't big enough to follow up, but I know it's there. Life is just a little old checker game played by the alfalfa contingent at the country store, unless you've got an ambition that's too big to ever quite lasso it. You want to know that there's something ahead that's bigger and more beautiful than anything you've ever seen and never stop till, well, till you can't fall the road anymore. and anything or anybody that doesn't pack any surprises. Get that?

Surprises. For you is dead. And you want to slough it like a snake does its skin. You want to keep on remembering that Chicago's beyond Jerolaman and Paris beyond Chicago, beyond Paris. Well, maybe there's some big peak in the Himalayas. For hours they talked, Bone desperately striving to make his dreams articulate to Carl and to himself.

They had fresh fried on the powder-can stove with half-warm coffee. They walked a few steps outside the shack and the wringing cold to stretch stiff legs. Carl saw a world of unuttered freedom and beauty, forthshadowed in bones' cloudy speech. But he was melancholy, for he was going to give up his citizenship in Wonderland, for Gertie Cowles. Gertie continued to enjoy ill health for another week. Every evening Carl walked past her house, hoping that he might see her and a woman. window, longing to dare to call. Each night he pictured, rescuing her from things, rescuing her from fire, from drowning from evil men. He felt himself the more bound to her by the social recognition

of having his name in a jolumon dynamite the following Thursday. One of the pleasant affairs of the holiday season among the younger set was held last Friday evening when Gertrude Cowles entertained a number of her young friends at a party at her mother's handsome residence on Maple Hill. Among those present were Mademoiselle Benner and Rusk, who came in for a brief time to assist in the jollies of the evening. Miss Benner, Carlson, Wussleslossaloss, Mudland, Ripka Smith, Lansing, and Brick,

and Messrs. Royal Cowles, his classmate, Howard Griffin, who is spending his vacation here from Plato College, Carl Erickson, Joseph Jordan, Irving Lamb, Benjamin Rusk, Nels Thorson, Peter Storhoff, and William T. Upham. After dancing and games, which were thoroughly enjoyed by all present, and a social hour spent in discussing the events of the season in JHS, a more delicious repast was served and the party adjourned one and all, voting that they had been royally entertained. The glory was the greater because at least some,

seven names had been omitted from the list of guests. Such social recognition satisfied Carl for half an hour. Possibly it nerved him finally to call on Gertie. Since for a week he had been dreading a chilly reception when he should call. He was immeasurably surprised when he did call and got what he expected. He had not expected the fates to be so treacherous as to treat him as he expected, after he had disarmed him by expecting it. When he rang the bell, he was an immensely grown-up lawyer,

though he couldn't get his worn navy-blue tie to hang exactly right. He turned into a crestfallen youth as Mrs. Cowles opened the door and waited, waited for him to speak after a crisp. Well, what is it, Carl? Well, I just thought I'd come and see how Gertie is. Gertrude did so much better, thank you. I presume she will return to school at the end of vacation. The hall behind Mrs. Colles seemed very stately, very long.

I've heard a lot saying that hoped she was better. You may tell them that she is better, Mrs. Cowell shivered. No one could possibly have looked more like a person closing a door without actually closing one. Lena, she shrieked, close the kitchen door. There's a drop. She turned back to Carl. The shy lover vanished. an angry young man challenged.

If Gertie's up, I think I'll come in a few minutes and see her. Well, hesitated Mrs. Cowles. He merely walked in past her. His anger kept its own counsel for he could depend on Gertie's warm greeting, lonely Gertie. He would bring her the cheer of the Great Open. The piano sounded in the library and the voice of the one perfect girl

mingled with the man's tenor on Old Black Joe. Carl stalked into the library. Gertie was there, much corseted, well-powdered, wearing a blue, bowling frenzy dotted with white, and being cultured in company with Dr. Doyle, the lively young dentist who had recently taken an office in the National Bank Block. He was a graduate over the University of Minnesota Dental Department. He had oily black hair and smiled with gold-filled teeth, before one came to the real point of a joke. He sang in the congregational church choir and played tennis in a chrynsman and black blazer,

the only one in Jerolerman. To Carl Dr. Doyle was dismayingly mature and smart. He horribly feared him as a rival. For the second time that evening, he did not balk fate by fearing it. The dentist was a rival. After fluttering about the mature charms of Miss Diaz, the school drawing teacher,

and taking a tentative buggy run, or two with the Miller's daughter, Dr. Doyle was bringing all the charm of his professional position and professional teeth and patent leather shoes to bear upon Gertie. And Gertie was interested, obviously. She was all of 18 tonight. She frowned slightly as she turned on the piano stool

at Carl's entrance and mechanically. This is a pleasant surprise, then? Enthusiastically, Isn't it too bad that Dr. Doyle was out of town or I would have invited him to my party and he would have given us some of his lovely songs? Do try the second first, doctor. The harmony is so lovely.

Carl sat at the other end of the library from Gertie and the piano while Mrs. Cowles entertained him. He obediently said Yesam, Norm, to the observation which she offered from the fullness of her lack of experience. of life. He sat straight and still. Behind his fixed smile, he was simultaneously longing to break into the musical fiesta and envying the dentist's ability to get married without having to wait to grow up in trying to follow what Mrs. Cowles was saying. She droned while crocheting with high-minded

industry on a useless piano scarf. Do you still go hunting, Carl? Yes, him. Quite a little rabbit Honey, oh, not very much. At the distant piano across the shining acres of floor, the mystical woman and a dentist had ceased singing and were examining a fresh sheet of music. The dentist coolly poured his finger at her cofature, and she slapped the finger gurgling. I hope you don't neglect your schoolwork, though, Carl.

Mrs. Cowles held the scarf nearer the lamp and squinted at it, deliberately and solemnly, through the eyeglasses that lorded at a top her severe nose. A headachey scent of mothballs was in the dull air. She forbiddenly moved the shade of the lamp about a tenth of an inch. She removed some non-existent dust from the wrought iron standard. Her gesture said that the lamp was decidedly more chic than the pink-shaded hanging lamps raised and lowered on squeaking chains,

which characterized most droll among living rooms. She glanced at the red lambkin over the nearest window. The mothball smell grew more stanched. stupefying. Carl felt stuffy in the top of his nose as he mumbled, "'Oh, I worked pretty hard at chemistry, but gee, I can't see much to all this Latin. When you're a little older, Carl, you'll learn that things that you like now aren't necessarily the things that are good for you. I used to say to Gertrude, of course, she is older than you, but she hasn't been a young lady for so very long, even yet,

and I used to say to her, Gertrude, you will do exactly what I tell you to do, and not what you want to do. And we shall make no more words about it. And I think she sees now that her mother was right about some things.

Dr. Doyle said to me, and of course you know, Carl, that he's a very fine scholar. Our pastor told me that the doctor reads French better than he does, and the doctors told me some things about modern French authors that I didn't know, and I used to read French almost as well as English when I was a girl. My teachers all told me, and he says that he thinks that Gertrude has a very fine mind,

and he was so glad that she hasn't been taken in by all this hysterical, wicked way girls have today of thinking they know more than their mothers. Yes, she is, Gertius. I think she's got a very fine mind, Carl commented. From the other end of the room, Gertie could be overheard confiding to the dentist in tones of hush and delicious adult scandal. They say that when she was in St. Paul, she... So, Mrs. Cowles, serenely sniffed on, while the bridge of Carl's nose felt broader and broader, stretching wider and wider, as that stuffy feeling increased and the intensive heat stung his eyelids. You see, you mustn't think because you'd rather play around with the boys than

study Latin, Carl, that it's the fault of your Latin teacher. She nodded at him with a condescending smile that was infinitely insulting. He knew it and resented it, but he did not resent it actively, or he was busy marveling. How the dickens is it I never heard Doc Doyle was stuck on Gertie. Everybody thought he was going on Brenda. Dang him anyway. The way he snickers, you'd think she was his best girl. Mrs. Cowles was lawfully pursuing her pillared way.

Latin was known to be the best study for developing the mind a long, long time. And her clicking crochet needles impishly echoed, a long, long time. And the odor of the mothballs got down into Carl's throat while in the golden Olympian atmosphere at the other end of the room, Gertie Coily pretended to slap the dentist's hand with a series of tittering taps. A long, long time, before either you or I were born, Carl. and we can't very well set ourselves up to be wiser than the wisest men that ever lived. Now can we?

Again, the patronizing smile. That would scarcely. Carl resolved. Just got to stop. I got to do something. He felt her monologue as a blank steel wall, which he could not pierce, aloud. Yes, that's so, I guess. Say, that's a fine dress, Gertie's got on tonight, ain't it?

Say, I've been learned to play in crocannoli at Ben Rusks. You got a bored hamage you? Would you like to play? Does the doctor play? Indeed, I haven't the slightest idea, but I have very little doubt that he does. He plays tennis so beautifully. He is going to teach Gertrude in the spring.

She stopped and again held the scarf up to the light. I am so glad that my girly that was so naughty once and ran away with you, I don't think I shall ever get over the, awful fright I had that night. I am so glad that now she is growing up. Clever people like Dr. Doyle appreciate her so much, so very much. She dropped her crochet to her lap and stared squarely at Carl.

Her warning that he would do exceedingly well to go home was more than plain. He stared back, agitated, but not surrendering, deliberately, almost swabbly, with ten years of experience added to the sixteen years that he had brought into the room, he said. I'll see if they like to play. He sauntered to the other in the room, abashed before the mystic woman and ventured. I saw Ray to-day. I've got to be going pretty quick, but I was wondering, if you two like to play some chronicle?

Gertie said slowly. I'd like to, Carl, but unless you'd like to play Doctor, Well, of course, it's commonly a default to play, Miss Cowles, but I was just hoping to have the pleasure of hearing you make some more of your delectable music, bowed the dentist, and Gertie bowed back, and their smiles joined in a glittery bridge of social aplomb. Oh, yes, from Carl, that just do, but you hadn't ought to play too much if you haven't been well. Oh, Carl, shrieked Gertie, ought not to, not to, not.

"'Ot had an ought to.' "'Ot not to,' repeated Mrs. Cowles icily, "'while the dentist waved his hand in an amused manner and contributed, "'Ot not to say, had an ought to.' "'As my preceptor used to tell me. "'I'd like to hear you sing Longfellow's Psalm of Life, Miss Cowles.' "'Don't you think Longfellow's a bum poet?' growled Carl. "'Bone Stillman says Longfellow's the grind organ of poetry,

like this. Life is real, life is earnest, dumb-de-diddly-duddly-dum. Carl, ordered Mrs. Cowles, you will please to never mention that stillman person in my house. Oh, Carl, rebuke Gertie, she rose from the piano stool

her essence of virginal femininity, its pure and cloistered and white hemisolead odor, bespelled Carl to fainting timidity. and while he was thus defenseless the dentist thrust. Why, they tell me Stillman doesn't even believe the Bible. Carl was not to retrieve his credit with Gertie, but he couldn't betray Bone Stillman, hastily.

Yes, maybe that way. Oh, say, doctor, Pete Jordan was telling me, liar, that you were one of the best tennis players that to you. Gertie sat down again. The dentist coily fluffed his hair and appreciated. Oh, no, I wouldn't say that. Carl had won. Instantly, they three became a country club of urban aristocrats

who laughed at the poor rustics of Joleman for knowing nothing of golf and polo. Carl was winning their tolerance, though not their close attention, by relating certain interesting facts from the inside page of the local paper as to how far the tennis racket sold in one year would extend if laid end to end. when he saw Gertie and her mother glance at the hall.

Gertie giggled, Mrs. Cowell's frown. He followed their glance. Clumping through the hall was his second cousin, Lena. The Cowles' hired girl. Lena nodded and said, Hello, Carl. Gertie and a dentist raised her eyebrows at each other. Carl talked for two minutes about something

he did not know what and took his leave. In the intensity of his effort to be respectively dignified, he stumbled over the hall hat-rack. He heard Gertie yelp with laughter. I got to go to college. Be worthy of her, he groaned all the way home. And I can't afford to go to the U of M. I'd like to be free like Bone says,

but I've got to go to Plato. End of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 of Trail of the Hawk. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recorded by Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 6. Plato College, Minnesota, is as earnest and undistinguished

as provincially dull and pathetically human. As a spinster missionary, its 200 or 250 students, come from the furrows asking for spiritual bread and are giving a Greek root. Red brick buildings designed by the architect of county jails are grouped about that high barricouple-crown greystone barracks, the academic building, like red and red, faded blossoms about a tombstone.

In the air is the scent of crab apples and medley prairies, for a time but soon settles down a winter bitter of the learning of the Reverend S. Alcott Wood, D.D., the president. The town and college of Plato disturbed the expanse of prairie scarce more than a group of haystacks. In winter, the walks blur into the general whiteness, and the tree shrink to chilly skeletons. And the college is, like, like five blocks set on a frozen bed sheet, no shelter for the warm and timid soul,

yet no windy peak for the bold. The snow wipes out all the summertime individuality of the place, and the halls are lonier at dusk than the prairie itself, far lonelier than the yellow-lighted Jerrybilt shops in the town. The students never lose, for good or bad, their touch with the fields. From droning classrooms of victims of education, see the rippling wheat in summer and in winter the impenetrable wall of the sky,

footsteps and quick laughter of men and girls furtively furthing along the brick walls under the beautiful maples do make Plato dear to remember. They do not make it brilliant. They do not explain the advantages of leaving the farm for another farm. To the freshman Carl Erickson, descending from the dusty smoking car of the M&D in company with tumultuous youths in pinhead caps and enormous sweaters, the town of Plato was metropolitan. As he walked humbly up Main Street

and beheld two four-story buildings and a marble bank and an inter-urban trolley car, he had at last an idea what Minneapolis and Chicago must be. Two men in sweaters adorned with a large pea, athletes, generals, heroes, walked the streets in the flesh in he saw. It really was there. for him, the college bookstore,

whose windows were filled with leather-back treaties on Greek logic and trigonometry, and finally, he was gaping through a sandstone gateway at four buildings, each of them nearly as big as Gerolian High School surrounding a vast stone castle. He entered the campus, he passed an old man with white side whiskers and a cord on his gold-rimmed eyeglasses, an aged old man who might easily be a professor.

A Blythe student with YMCA reception committee, large on his hat band, rushed up to Carl, shook his hand busily, and inquired, Freshman old man? Got your room yet? There's a list of rooming houses over at the YM. Come on, I'll show you the way. He was received in academia, in Arcadia, in Elseum,

in fact, in Plato College. He was directed to a large but decomposing house conducted by the widow of a college janitor and advised to take a room for $1.75 a week for his share of the rent. That implied taking with the room a large solemn roommate, fresh from teaching country school, a heavy, slow-spoken, serious man of 31 named Albert Smith, registered as A-Smith and usually known as Plainsmith. Plain Smith sat studying in his cotton socks and never emptied the wash basin. He remarked during the first hour of their discourse in the groves of academia,

I hope you ain't going to bother me by singing and skylarking around. I'm here to work, Bob. Smith then returned to the large books which he was diligently scanning, that he might find wisdom. While Carl sniffed at the brown-blotched wallpaper, the faded grass matting, the shallow, standing wardrobe, he liked the house, however, it had a real bathroom. He could for the first time in his life, splash in a tub.

Perhaps it would not be regarded as modern today, perhaps a feat souls would disdain its honest tin tub, smeared with a paint that peeled instantly, but it was elegance in the hesperities compared with the sponge and two lard pails of hot water from the Erickson Kitchen Reservoir, which had for years been his conception of luxurious means of bathing. Also, there were choicer spirits in the house. One man who pressed clothes for a living and carried a large line of cigarettes in his room

was second vice-president of the sophomore class. As smoking was dourily forbidden to all Plainitonians, the sophomore's room was a refuge. The sophomore encouraged Carl and his natural talent for cheerful noise while Plainsmith objected even to singing while one dressed. Like four of his classmates, Carl became a waiter at Mrs. Henkel's student boarding house, for he's bored and $2 a week. The $2 constituted his pin money,

a really considerable sum for Plato, where the young men were pure and smoked not. Neither did they drink, where evening clothes were snobbish and sweaters thought rather well of. Where the only theatrical attractions were weekstand melodramas, playing such attractions as poor but true,

or the Reverend Sam J. Patkins celebrated lecture on the father of Lies, annually delivered at the I.O.O.F. Hall. Carl's father assured him in every letter that he was extravagant. He ran through the $2 in practically no time at all. He was a member in good and regular standing of the informal club that hung out about the corner drugstore, drink coffee, soda, and disguth athletics, and stare at the passing girls. He loved to set off his clear skin and shining pale hair with linen collars. Those soft roll collar shirts were in vogue.

And he was ready for any wild expedition, though it should cost 50 or 60 cents. With the sophomore second vice president and John Terry of the freshman class, usually known as the Turk, he often tramped to the large neighboring town

of Jamaica Mills to play pool, smoked turkey cigarettes, and drink beer. They always chorused Plato songs in long-drawn close harmony. Once they had imported English ale out of the bottle, and carried the bottles back to decorate and distinguish their rooms. Carl's work at the boarding house introduced him to pretty girl students

and cost him no social discredit whatever. The little college had the virtue of genuine democracy, so completely that it never prided itself on being democratic. Mrs. Henkel, proprietor of the boarding house, occasionally grew sarcastic to her student waiters as she stooped red-faced and loosened of hair over the range. She did suggest that they kindly wash up a few of the dishes now and then before they went gallivanting off. But songs arose from the freshman washing and wiping dishes.

They chuckling rehashed jokes. They discussed the value of the classical course versus the scientific course. While they waited on table, they shared the laughter in arguments that ran from student to student through Mrs. Henkel's dining room, a sunny room be decked with a canary of Pussycat, a gilded rope potteret, a comfortable rocker with a plateau cushion, a garland stove with nickel ornaments, two geraniums, and an oak-famed photograph of the champion plato football team of 1899. Carl was readily accepted by the men and girls who gathered about the piano in the evening.

His graceful seeming body, his puppyish awkwardness, his quietly belligerent dignity, his eternal quest of new things won him respect. Though he was too boyish to rouse admiration, except in the breast of fat, pretty, cheerful, fuzzy-haired, candy-eating May Thurerson, May so influenced Carl that he learned to jest casually, and he practiced a new dance called the Boston, which May had brought from Minneapolis. Though as a rival to the waltz and the two-step, the new dance was ridiculed by everyone. He mastered all the savourphalphal. of the boarding house. But he was always hurrying away from it to practice football,

to prowl about the Plato Powerhouse, to skim through magazines in the YMCA reading room, even to study. Beyond the dishwashing and furnace tending set, he had no probable social future, though everybody knew everybody at Plateau. Those immaculate upperclassmen, Murray Cowles and Howard Griffin, never invited him to their room

in a house on Elm Street with a screen porch, porch and piano sounds. He missed Ben Rusk, who had gone to Oberlin College and Joe Jordan, who had gone to work for the Jorlman Specialty Manufacturing Company. Life at Pletta was suspicious, prejudiced provincial, as it affected the ambitious students, and for the weaker brethren, it was philandering and vague. The class work was largely pure rot, arbitrary mathematics, antiquated botany, hesitating German, and a venerable, millerable, military drill in the conjunction of Greek verbs conducted by a man with a non-com soul, a pompous sandy-whiskered mannequin with cold eyes and a perpetual cold in the nose,

who had inflicted upon a patient world the four-millionth commentary on xenophon. Few of the students realized the futility of it all, certainly not Carl, who slept well and believed in football. The life habit justifies itself. one comes to take anything as a matter of course. To take one's neighbors seriously, whether one lives in Plato or Persia, in Mrs. Harnicle's kitchen, or a forecastle,

the Platonians raced toward their various goals of high school teaching or law or marriage or permanently escaping their parents. They made love, they were lazy and ate, and swore off bad habits, and had religious emotions, all quite naturally. They were not much bored, rarely exhilarated, always ready to gossip about their acquaintances,

precisely like a Duke or a delicatessen keeper. They played out their game, but it was so tiny a game, so played to the exclusion of all other games, that it tended to dwarf its victims. And the restless children, such as Carl, instinctively resent this dwarfing. They seek to associate themselves with other rebels.

Carl's unconscious rebel band was the group of Roderich freshmen who called themselves the gang. and loved about the room of their unofficial captain John Terry nicknamed the Turk, a swarthy, large-featured youth, with a loud laugh, a habit of slapping people upon the shoulder, an ingenious mind for debiltery, and considerable promise as a football end. Most small local colleges and many good ones have their gangs of boys who presumably become honorable men and fathers, yet who in college days regarded as heroic to sneak out and break things and as humorous to lead to,

contrary-side girls astray in Sored Amores. The more cloistered the seat of learning, the more vicious are the active boys to keep up with the swiftness of life forces. The Turks gang painted the statues of the memorial arch. They stole signs. They were the creators of noises unexpected and intolerable during small quiet hours of moonlight. As the silkworm draws its exquisite stuff from doughty leaves, so youth finds beauty and mystery in stupid days.

Carl went out unreservedly to practice with the football squad. He had a joy of martyrdom in tackling the dummy and peeling his nose on the frozen ground. He knew a sacred aspiration when Mr. Bojorkan, coach, a former University of Minnesota star,

told him that he might actually make the team in a year or two. That he had twice as much chance as Ray Cowles, who why Carl was thinking only of helping the scrub team to win, was too engrossed in his own dignity as a high school notable to get into the scrimmage. At the games among the gang on the bleachers, Carl went mad with fervor.

He kept shooting to his feet and believed that he was saving his country every time he yelled in obedience to the St. Vitus gestures of the cheerleader or sang on the goal line of Plato, to the tune of on the sidewalks of New York. Tears of a real patriotism came when at the critical moment of a little moment of a the losing game against the Minnesota Military Institute was sunset forlorn behind bare trees. The veteran cheerleader flung the horse plato ruders into another defiant yell. It was the never-say die of men who rose with clenched hands and arms outstretched to the despiring need of their college.

Then, Lord, they hurled up to their feet in frenzy as Pete Medland got away with the ball for a long run in victory. The next week, when the University of Keukuk whipped them 40 to 10, Carl stood weeping and cheering the defeated Plato team till his throat burned. He loved the laughter of the Turk, May Thurston's welcome experiments in the physic laboratory, and he was sure that he was progressing toward the state of grace in which he might aspire to marry Gertie Cowles.

He did not think of her every day, but she was always somewhere in his thoughts, and the heroines of magazine stories recalled some of her virtues to his mind invariably. The dentist who had loved her had moved away. She was bored. She occasionally wrote to Carl, but she was still superior, tried to influence him for good,

and advised him to cultivate nice people. He was convinced that he was going to become a lawyer, for her sake, but he knew that some day he would be tempted by the desire to become a civil or mechanical engineer. A January thaw. Carl was tramping miles out into the hilly country north of the plateau.

He hadn't been able to persuade any of the gang to leave their smoky loafing place in the Turks' room, but his own lungs demanded the open. With his heavy boots washing through icy pools, calling to an imaginary dog, and victoriously running Olympic races before millions of spectators, he defied the chill of the day and reached Hewatha mound. a hill eight miles north of Plateau. Toward the top a man was to be seen crouched in a pebbly sunny arroyo,

peering across the bleak prairie, a lone watcher. Ascending, Carl saw that it was Eugene Field Linderbeck, a plato freshman. Then mused him. He grinningly planned a conversation. Everyone said that Jeannie Linderbeck was queer, a precocious boy of 15, yet the head of his class in scholarship,

reported to be interested in Greek books quite outside of the course, fond of drinking tea and devoid of merit in the three manly arts, athletics, flirting, and breaking rules by smoking. Jeannie was small, anemic, and too well-dressed. He stuttered slightly and was always peering doubtfully at you with large and childish eyes that were made more eerie by his pale, bulbous forehead, and the penthouse of tangled mouse brown hair over it. The gang often stopped him on the campus

to ask mock polite questions about his ambition, which was to be a teacher of English at Harvard or Yale. Not very consistently, but without ever wearing of the jest, they shattered him to find out if he did not write poetry, and while no one had actually caught him, he was still suspect. Jeannie said nothing when Carl called, Hello, son, and sat on a neighboring rock.

What's trouble, Jeannie? You look worried. Why don't any of you fellows like me? Carl felt like a bug inspected by a German professor. What do you mean, Jeannie? None of you take me seriously. You simply let me hang around. And you think I'm a grind.

I'm not. I like to read, that's all. Perhaps you think I shouldn't like to go out for athletics if I could. I wish I could run the way you can, Erickson, darn it. I was happy out here by myself on the mound, where every prospect pleases, and now here I am again, envying you. My son, I guess we admire you a whole lot more than we let on,

triple man. When you're valedictorian and on the debating team, and wallop Hamlin, you'll laugh at the gang and we'll be proud to write home we know you. Carl was hating himself for ever having teased, Ginny Linderbreck. You've helped me a thundering lot. Whenever I've asked you about that plain greet syntax, I guess we're jealous of you.

You, uh, you don't want to let him kid you. Carl was embarrassed before Jean's steady, youthful, trusting gaze. He stooped for a handful of pebbles with which he pelted the landscape, pondering, say, why don't you come around to the Turks' room and get better acquainted with the gang? When shall I come? What? Why, thunder, you know, Jeannie'd just drop in at any time.

I'll be glad to. Carl was perspiring at the thought of what the gang would do to him when they discovered that he had invited Jeannie, but he was game. Come up to a room whenever you can and help me with my bony, he added. You mustn't ever get the idea that we're conferring any blooming favor by having you around. It's you that help us. Our necks are pretty well sandpapered. I'm afraid.

Come off to my room any time. I'll have to be hiking on if I'm going to get much of a walk. Come over and see me tonight. I wish you'd come up to Mr. Fraser's with me some Sunday afternoon for tea, Erickson. Henry Fraser M.A. Yale, Associate Professor of English Literature, was a college mystery. He was a thin-haired young man with a consuming love of his work,

which was the saving of souls by teaching Lidicus and Comius. This was his first year out of graduate school, his first year at Plato, and possibly his last. It was whispered about that. He believed in socialism and the President, the Reverend Dr. S. Alcott Wood,

had no patience with such silly fans. Carl Marvelled. Do you go to Fraser's? Why, yes. Thought everybody was down on him. They say he's an anarchist, and I know he gives fierce assignments in English lit. That's what all the fellows in his classes say.

All the fools are down on him. That's why I go to his house. Don't the fellow's a kind of... Yes, pipe genie in his most childish tone of anger, his tendency to stammer betraying him, Kid me for liking Fraser. He's the only teacher here that isn't spit. Provincial.

What do you mean by provincial? Narrow Villargy. Do you know what Bernard Shaw says? Never read a word of him, my son? Let me tell you that my idea of no kind of conversation is to have a guy spring, have you read, on me every few seconds and me coming back with, no, I haven't. Ain't it interesting?

If that's the brand of converse at Prof. Frazier's, you can count me out. Jeannie laughed. Think how much more novelty you'll get out of roasting me like that than telling Terry he's got bats in his belry ten or twelve times a day. All right, my son, you win. Maybe I'll go to Frazier's with you sometime. The Sunday following, Carl went to tea at Professor Henry Fraser's. The house was platonian without, plain and dumpy with gingerbread Gothic on the porch,

blistered paint, and the general lines of a prairie barn, but the living room was more nearly beautiful than any room Carl had ever seen. In accordance with the ideal of that era, it had mission furniture, with large leather cushions, brown woodwork, and tan oatmeal paper scattered with German color of prints, instead of the patent rockers and carbon prints of Roman monuments which adorned the houses of the other professors. While waiting with Jeannie Linderbank for the Frasers to come down, Carl found in a rack on the oak table such books as he had never seen.

Exquisite books from England, bound in terracotta and olive green cloth, with intricate gold designs, heavy-looking, but astonishingly light to the hand, books about Celtic legends and provincial junglers and Japanese prints and other matters of which he had never heard. So different from the stained textbooks and the shallow novels by brisk ladies, which had constituted his experiences of literature, that he suddenly believed in culture.

Professor Fraser appeared, walking into the room after his fragile wife and gracious sister-in-law, and Carl drank tea with lemon instead of milk in it, and listened to bewildering talk and to a few stanzas, heroic or hauntingly musical by a new poet W.B. Yeats, an Irishman associated with a thing called the Gaelic Movement. Professor Fraser had a funny, easy friendliness, his sister-in-law, a Diana in Brown, respectfully asked Carl about the practicability of motor cars, and all of them, including two newly come highbrow seniors,

listened with nodding interest while Carl bashfully analyzed each of the nine cars owned in Plato and Jamaica Mills. At dusk, the Diana and Brown played McDowell, and the light of the silken-shaded lamp was on a print of a very Swiss village. That evening, Carl wrestled with the Turk for one hour, catch-as-catch-can on the Turk's bed and under it, and nearly out the window to prove the value of Professor Frazier and culture.

Next morning, Carl and the Turk enrolled in Fraser's optional course in modern poetry, a desolatory series of lectures, which did not attempt Tennyson and Browning, so Carl discovered Shelley and Keats and Walt Whitman, Swinburne and Rosetti and Morris. He had to read by crawling from word to word as though they were ice cakes in a cataract of emotion. The elusiveness was agonizing,

but he pulled off his shoes, rested his feet on the footboard of his bed, drummed with a pair of scissors on his knee, and persisted in his violent pursuit of the beautiful. Meanwhile, his roommate, Plain Smith, flapped the pages of a Latin lexicon or took a little reac creation by reading the Reverend Mr. Todd's

student's manual, that gem of the alarm clock, and Water Bucket Epic, in American colleges. Carl never understood Jeannie Linderbock's conviction that words are living things that dream and sing in battle, but he did learn that

there was speech transcending the barking of the gang. In the spring of his freshman year, Carl gave up waiting on table and drove a motor car for a town banker. He learned every screw and spring in the car. He also made Jeannie go out with him for track athletics. Carl won his place on the college team as a half-miler

and viciously assaulted two freshmen and a junior for laughing at Jeannie's legs, which stuck out of his large running pants like straws out of a lemonade glass. In the great meet with Hamlin University, though Plato lost most of the events, Carl won the half-mile race. He was elected to the exclusive fraternity of Ray Cowles

and Howard Griffin, Omega Chi Delta, just before commencement. That excited him less than the fact that the Turk and he were to spend the summer up north in the hard wheat country stringing wire for the telephone company with a gang of Minneapolis wiremen. Oh yes, and he would see Gertie and Joliman.

She had written to him with so much enthusiasm when he had won the half mile. End of Chapter 6. Chapter 7 of Trail of the Heart Hawk. This Leavervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti. Mikevindetti.com The Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 7. He saw Gertie two hours after he reached D'Roleman. For a week's day before going north, they sat in rockers on the grass beside her stoop. They were embarrassed and rocked profusely and chattely. Mrs. Cowles was surprised and not much

pleased to find him, but Gertie, murmured that she had to be. been lonely, and Carl felt that he must be nobly patient under Mrs. Cowell's sight. He got so far as to sigh, oh, Gertie, but grew frightened, as though he were binding himself for life. He wished that Gertie were not wearing so many combs, stuck all over her pompadored hair. He noted that his rocker creaked at the joints and thought out a method of straightening it by braces. She bubbled that he was going to be the big man on campus. He said, aw, rats, and felt that his collar was too tight. He went home, his father remarked that Carl was late for supper,

that he had been in Gravagant and plateau, and that he was unlikely to make money out of all his running races. But his mother stroked his hair and called him her big boy. He tramped out to Bone Stillman Shack, impatient for the hand-clasp of the pioneer, and grew eloquent for the first time since his homecoming, as he described Professor Fraser and the delights of poetry. A busy week Carl had in Jorollumann, Adelaide Benner, gave a porch supper for him,

they sat under the trees laughing while the dimly lighted street bicycles were, and box elders he had always known, whispered, that his guest of honor was Carl Erickson. Come home a hero. The cycling craze still existed in Jorolleman. Carl rented a wheel for a week from the Blue Front Hardware Store. Once he rode with a party of boys and girls to Tamarack Lake, Once he rode to Walkman with Ben Rusk, home from Oberlin College. The ride was not entirely enjoyable because Oberlin had nearly 2,000 students,

and Ben was amusively superior about Plato. They did, however, enjoy the stylishness of buying bottles of strawberry pop at Walkaman. Twice, Carl rode to Tamarack Lake with Gertie. They sat on the shore, and while he shied flat, skipping stones across the water, and flapped his old cap at the hovering horseflies, he babbled of the Turk's stunts and the banker's car and the misty hinterlands of Professor Fraser's lectures. Gertie appeared interested and smiled at regular intervals,

but so soon as Carl fumbled at one of Fraser's abstract theories, she interrupted him with highly concrete Jerusalem gossip. He suspected that she had not kept up with the times. True, she referred to New York, but as the reference was one she had been using for two years, he still identified her with Chorilloman. He did not hold her hand, though he wondered if it might not be possible. Her hand lay so listlessly by her skirt on the sand.

They rode back in twilight of early June. Carl was chirple as their wheels crunched the dirt roads in a long, crisp hum. The stilly rhythm of frogs drowned the clank of their petals, and the sky was vast and pale and wistful. Gertie, however, seemed less cheerful. On the last evening of his stay in Jeroloman, Gertie gave him a hay-ride party. They sang, seeing Nellie home and merrily we roll along and Shawnee River, and my whole Kentucky home and my bonnie lies over the ocean, and in the good old summertime, under a

delicate new moon in a sky of apple green. Carl pressed Gertie's hand. She returned the pressure so quickly that he was embarrassed. He withdrew his hand as quickly as possible. possible, obstinately to help with the unpacking of the basket of ginger ale, chicken sandwiches, and three cakes, white frosted, chocolate layer, and banana cake. The same group said goodbye to Carl at the M&D station. As the train started, Carl saw Gertie turn away disconsolently, her shoulders so drooping that

her blouse was baggy in the back. He mourned that he had not been more tender with her that week. He pictured himself kissing Gertie on the shore of Tamarack Lake. Folded by afternoon in the mystery of sex and a protecting reverence for Gertie's loneliness. He wanted to go back, back for one more day, one more ride with Gertie. But he picked up a Mechanics magazine, glanced at an article on gliders, read in the first paragraph a prophecy about aviation, slid down in his seat with his head bent over the magazine,

and the idol of Gertie in the afternoon was gone. He was reading the article on Gliders in June 1905, so early in the history of air conquest that its suggestions were miraculous to him. For it was three years before Wilbur Wright was to start of the world by his flights at Le Mans, four years before Berloy was to cross the channel, though indeed it was a year and a half after the Wright's first secret ascent in a motor-driven aeroplane at Kitty Hawk. And 14 years after Lindenthal had begun that Iqbuckle series of glider flights,

which was followed by the experience, of Pilcher and Chonot, Langley and Montgomery. The article declared that if gasoline or alcohol engines could be made light enough, we should all be aviating to the office in ten years. That now was the time for youngsters to practice gliding as pioneers of the new age. Carl guessed that flying would be even better than automobiling. He made designs for three revolutionary new airplanes, drawing on the margins of the magazine,

with a toothmark pitted pencil stub. Gertie was miles back, concealed behind piles of triplanes and helicopters, and following surface monoplanes, which the wizard inventor C. Erickson was creating and ruthlessly destroying. A small boy was squalling in the seat opposite, and Carl took him from his tired mother

and lured him into a game of titacto. He joined the Turk and the wire stringers at a Prairie Hamlet, straggly rows of unpainted frame shanties, the stores with tin, carnicle, false fronts, that pretended to be two stories high. There were pig pens in the dooryards and the single church that had a square low white steeple, like the paper cap which labor wears in the posters. Farm wagons were hitched before a gloomy saloon. Carl was exceedingly glum, but the Turk introduced him to a University of Minnesota Pharmacy School student who was with the crew during the vacation, and the three went tramping across breezy, flowered prairies.

So began for Carl, a galloping summer. The crew struck telephone wire from pole to pole all day. Playing the jokes of hardy men and on Sunday, loafed in haystacks recalling experiences from Winnipeg to El Paso. Carl resolved to come back to this life of the open, with Gertie after graduation. He would buy a ranch on time, or the Turk and Carl would go exploring in a last.

or the Orient. Law? He would ask himself in monologues, law? Me and a stuffy office? Not a chance. The crew stayed for four weeks in a boomtown of 9,000,

installing a complete telephone system. Southeast of the town lay rolling hills as Carl talked with the Turk and the pharmacy school man on a hilltop the first evening of their arrival, he told them the scientific magazine's prophecies about aviation, and noted that these hills, were of the sort Lillianthal would probably have chosen for his glider flights.

Say, by the great Jim Hill, let's make us a glider, he exulted, sitting up his eyelids flapping rapidly. Sure, said the pharmacy man. How would you make one? Why, I guess you could make a frame out of willow. Have to. The willows long, the creeks here are only kind of trees near here. You'd cover it with varnished cotton.

That's what Lilienthal did anyway. But darned if I know how you'd make the planes curved, Cambered, like he did. You've got to have it that way. I suppose you'd use curved stays, like a quarter-barrel hoop. I guess it would be better to try to make a Chinook glider, just a plain pair of superimposed planes, instead of one all combobulated like bats' wings, like Lilienthal's glider.

Or we could try some experiments with paper models. Oh, no, thunder. Let's make a glider. They did. They studied with aching heads the dry-looking tables of lift and resistance for which Carl telegraphed to Chicago. Stripped to their undershirts,

they worked all through the hot prairie evenings in the oil-smelling greasy engine room of the local powerhouse, in front of the dynamos, which kept evilly throwing out green sparks and rumbling the mystic syllable, um, to greet their modern magic. They hunted for three-quarters-inch willow rods, but discarded them for seasoned ash from the lumberyard.

They coated cotton with thin varnish. They stopped to dispute furiously over angles of incidents, bellowing. Well, look here, then, you mutton-head, I'll draw it for you. On their last Sunday in the town, they assembled the glider, single-surfaced, like a monoplane, 22 feet in span with a tail and with a double bar beneath the plane by which the pilot was to hang. his hands holding cords attached to the entering edge of the plane, balancing the glider by movements of his body. At dawn on Monday, they loaded the glider upon a wagon

and galloped with it to a forty-foot hill, as they stared down the easy slope, which grew in steepness and length every second and thought about Lillianthal's death. Well, shivered the trick. Who tries it first? All three pretended to be adjusting the lashings, waiting for one another till Carl snarled.

Oh, all right, I'll do it, if I got to. Of course, it breaks my heart to see you swipe the honor, the Turk said. But I'm unselfish. I'll let you do it. Burr, it's as bad as the first jump into the swimming hole at spring. Carl was smiling at the comparison as they lifted the glider with him holding the bars beneath. The plane was instantly buoyed up like a cork on water as the 15-mile head was and poured under it. He stopped smiling. This was a dangerous living thing he was going to guide. It jerked at him as he slipped his arms over the suspended bars. He wanted to stop and think this

all over. Get it done. He snapped at himself and began to run downhill against the wind. The wind lifted the plane again. With a shock, Carl knew that his feet had left the ground. He was actually flying. He kicked wildly in the air. All his body strained to get balance in the air, to control itself, to keep from falling, of which he now felt the world-old instinctive horror. The plane began to tip to one side, apparently irresistibly, like a sheet of paper turning over in the wind. Carl was sick with fear for a tenth of a second.

Every cell in his body shrank before coming disaster. He flung his legs in the directions opposite to the tipping of the plane. With his counterbalancing weight, the glider righted. It was running on an even keel, 25 feet above the sloping ground, while Carl hung easily by the double bar beneath. Like a circus performer with a trapeze under each arm. He ventured to glance down. The turf was flowing beneath him.

A green and sunny blur. He exalted. Flying! The glider dipped forward. Carl leaned back. His arms widespread. A gust of wind struck the plane head on. Overloaded at the back.

tilted back and soared up to 35 or 40 feet, slow seeming inevitable, the whole structure turned vertically upward. Carl dangled there against a flimsy sheet of wood and cotton, which for part of a second stuck straight up against the wind, like a paper on a screen door. The plane turned turtle slithered sideways through the air and dropped, horizontal now but upside down, Carl on top, 35, 40 feet down. I'm up against it, was his only thought while he was falling. The left tip of the plane smashed against the ground, crashing, horribly jarring, but it broke the fall. Carl shot forward and landed on his shoulder. He got up, rubbing his shoulder, wondering at the suspended life in the faces of the other two as they ran downhill

toward him. Jiminy, he said. Glad the glider broke the floor. Wish we had time to make a new glider with wing warp. Say, we'll be late on the job. Better beat at PDQ. The other stood gaping. End of chapter 7. Chapter 8 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Ligrevox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 8. A pile of shoes and noseguards and bicycle pumps and broken hockey sticks. A wall covered with such stolen signs as East College Avenue, and Pats Presser, ladies' garments, carefully done, and Dr. Sloat's liniment for young and old, a broken back couch with a red and green afghan of mangy tassels, an ink-spattered wooden table, burned in small black spots along the edges, a plaster bust of Martha Washington,

with a mustache added in ink, a few books, an inundation of sweaters and old hats, and a large, expansive mouth-hagon. Such were a few of the interesting characteristics of the room which Carl and the Turk were occupying as roommates for sophomore year at Plato. Most objectable sounds came from the room constantly. The gang's song suggested last their imitations of cats and fowls and foghorns. These noises were less ingenuous, however, than the devices of the gang for getting rid of tobacco smoke, such as blowing the smoke up the stove.

Carl was happy. In this room he encouraged damning Jeannie Lindermbeck to become adaptable. Here he scribbled to Gertie and Ben Rusk, little notes decorated with badly drawn caricatures of himself loafing. Here with the Turk he talked out half the night, planning future glory in engineering. Carl adored the Turk for his frankness, his lively speech, his interest in mechanics, and in Carl.

Carl was still out for football, but he was rather light for a team largely composed of 180-pound Norwegians. He had a chance, however, he drove the banker's car two or three evenings a week and cared for the banker's lawn and furnace and cow. He still boarded at Mrs. Hinkle's, as did jolly May Thurson, whom he took for surreptitious rides in the banker's car, after which he wrote extra long and pleasant letters to Gertie. It was becoming harder and harder to write to Gertie,

because he had, in his freshman year, exhausted all the things one can say about the weather without being profane, when in October a new bank clerk storm meteor-like into the Jerusalem's social horizon and became devoted to Gertie, as faithfully reported in letters from Joe Jordan. Carl was melancholy over the loss of a comrade,

but he strictly confined his morning to leisure hours and with books, football, and chores, for the banker he was a busy young man. After about 10 days it was a relief not to have to plan letters to Gertie. The emotions that should have gone to her Carl devoted to Professor Fraser's new course in modern drama. This course was officially announced as a study of Bernard Shaw, Isbun-Sinberg, Panero, Hopman, Studerman, Malertic, De Anzio, and Rustand,

but unofficially announced by Professor Fraser as an attempt to follow the spirit of today, wherever it should be found in contemporary literature. Carl and a Turk were bewildered but staunchly enthusiastic disciples of the course. They made every member of the gang enroll in it, and discouraged in attention in the lecture room by dexterous sidekicks. Even to his ex-roommate, Plain Smith, the grim and slovenly schoolteacher who had called him Bub,

and discouraged his confidences, Carl presented the attractions of Professor Frazier's lectures when he met him on campus. Smith looked quizzical and guessed that plays and playactin were useless, if not actually immoral. Yes, but this isn't just plays, my young friend, said Carl, with the hauteur new,

but not exceedingly impressive to Plain Smith. He takes up all these new stunts, all this new philosophy of being stuff they have in London, in Paris. There's something besides Shakespeare and the Bible. He added, intending to be spiteful, it may be stated that he did not like, plain Smith. What new philosophy? The spirit of brotherhood, I suppose you're too orthodox for that.

Oh, no, Sonny, not for that, not for that. And it ain't so very new. That's what Christ taught. No. Sonny, I ain't so orthodox, but what I'm willing to have them show me anything that tries to advance brotherhood. Not that I think it's very likely to be found

in a lot of New York plays, but I'll look at one lesson anyway, and Plain Smith clumped away, humming Greenland's icy mountains. Professor Fraser's modern drama course began with Isban. The first five lectures were almost conventional. They were an attempt to place contemporary dramatist

with reflections on the box office standpoint, but his sixth lecture began rather unusually. There was an audience of 64 in lecture room, May, earnest girl, students, bringing out notebooks and spectacle cases, frivolous girls, feeling their black hair, and the men settling down with the come, let's get it over here, or glowing up worshiply like Eugene Field-Lenderbeck, or determined not to miss anything like Carl. The captious college audience credulous as two statements of fact and heavily unresponsive to the spirit.

Professor Fraser, younger than half a dozen of the plow-trained undergraduates, thin of hair, and sensitive a face sitting before them, with one hand in his pocket, and the other nervously tapping the small reading table, spoke quietly. I'm not going to be a lecturer today. I'm not going to analyze the plays of Shaw, which I assigned you.

You're supposed to have read them yourselves. I'm going to imagine that I am at tea in New Haven or down in New York at dinner in the basement of the old river route, talking with a bunch of men who are trying to find out where the world is going. and why and when and how and asking who are the prophets who are going to show it the way. We'll be getting excited over Sean Wells. There's something really worth getting excited over. These men have perceived that this world is not a crazy quilt of unrelated races,

but a collection of human beings completely related, with all our interests, food and ambitions, and a desire to play absolutely in common, so that if we should take thought altogether and work together, as a football team does, we would start making a perfect world. That's what socialism of which you're beginning to hear so much and of which you're going to hear so much more means. If you feel genuine impelled to vote the Republican ticket,

that's not my affair, of course. Indeed, the Socialist Party of this country constitutes only one branch of international socialism, But I do demand of you that you try to think for yourselves, if you are going to have the nerve to vote at all. Think of it, to vote how this whole nation is to be conducted. Doesn't that tremendous responsibility demand that you do something more than inherit your way of voting? That you really think, think hard, why you vote as you do.

Pardon me for getting away from the subject proper. Yet, am I actually? for just what I have been saying is one of the messages of Shaw and Wells. The great vision of the glory that shall be, not in one sudden millennium, but slowly advancing toward joys of life, which we can know more provision than the Arab original medicine man could imagine an x-ray.

I wish that this were the time and the place to rhapsodize about that vision, as William Morris has done, in news from nowhere. You tell me that the various, brands of socialist differs so much in their beliefs about their future that the bewildered layman can make nothing at all of their theories. Very well. They differ so much because there are so many different things we can do with this human race. The defeat of death, the life period advancing to ten-score years all crowded with happy activity. The solution of labor's problem, increasing

safety and decreasing hours of toil, and a way out of the unhappy consumer who is ground between labor and capital, a real democracy, and the love of work that shall come when work is not relegated to wage slaves, but joyously shared in a community inclusive of the living beings of all nations, France and Germany, uniting precisely as Saxony and Prussia and Bavaria have united, and most of all a general will beaacet on that the fact that we cannot accomplish all these things at once does not indicate that they are hopeless and understanding that one of the wonders of the future is the fact that we shall always in all ages have improvements to look forward to fellow students object as strongly as you wish to the petty narrowness and vituburation of certain street corner ranters but do not be petty and narrow and vituport even doing it now to relate all this to the plays of Bernard Shaw.

When he says, Professor Fraser's utterances seem tamely conservative nowadays, but this was in 1905, in a small, intensely religious college among the furrows. Imagine a devout pastor when his son kicks the family Bible and you have

the mental state of half the students of Plato upon hearing a defense of socialism. Carl catching echoes of his own talks with Bone Stillman in the lecture, exultantly glanced about and found the class staring at one another with frightened anxiety. He saw the grim, plain smith, not so much angry as ill. He saw two class clowns, snickering at the ecstasy in the eyes of Jeannie Linderbeck.

In the cornered drugstore, popularly known as the club, where all the college bloods gather to drink lemon phosphate, an excited old man whose tireless collar was almost concealed by his tobacco-stained beard, pushed back his black slouch hat with the GAR cord and banged his fist on the prescription counter shouting, half at the clerk and half at the students matching pennies on the soda counter. I've lived in Plato, man and boy, for 47 years. Ever since it weren't nothing but a frontier trading post. I packed logs on my back and I trapped 53 miles to get me a yoke of oxen.

I remember when the Indians went riding during the war and the cavalry rode here from St. Paul and this town has always stood for decency and law and order. But when things come to such a past that this fellow Frasier or any of the rest of those infidels from one of those here eastern colleges is allowed to stand up on his hind legs in a college building and bray about anarchism

and tell us to trample on the old flag that we fought for and none of these professors that call themselves reverence, step in and stop them. Then let me tell you, I'm about ready to pull up stakes and go out west. Where there's patriotism and decency still, and where they'd hang one of those foreign anarchists to the nearest lamp post.

Yes, sir, and this fellow Frasier too, if he encouraged them in their crank notions. Got no right in this country anyway. Better deport them if they ain't satisfied with the, way we run things. I won't stand for preaching anarchism and never knew any decent place that would. Never since I was a baby in Canada. Yes, sir, I mean it. I'm an old man, but I'll pull up stakes and go plugging down to Santa Fe Trail first, and I mean it. There's your bog bidders, Mr. Goff, said the clerk hastily as a passerby was drawn into the store by the old man's tirade. Mr. Goff

stalked out muttering and the college sports at the soda counter grinned at one another. but Gus Osberg of the junior class remarked to Carl Erickson. At that, though there's a good deal of what to old Goff says, bet a hat proxy won't stand for Prasher's talking anarchy. Fellow in the class told me it was fair stuff he was talking. Regular anarchy. Rats, it wasn't anything of the kind, protested Carl. I was there, and I heard the whole thing.

He'd just explain what this Bernard Shaw that writes plays meant by socialism. Well, even so, don't you think it's kind of unnecessary to talk publicly, right out in a college lecture's room about socialism? Inquired a senior who was high up in the debating society. Well, thunder, was all Carl said, as the whole group stared at him.

He felt ridiculous. He was afraid of seeming to be a crank. He escaped from the drugstore. When he arrived at Mrs. Henkel's boarding house for supper the next evening, he found the students passing from hand to hand a copy of the town newspaper, the Plato Weekly Times, which bore on the front page what the town regarded as a red-hot news story. Plato Professor talks sedaciously.

As we go to press, we learn that rumors are flying about the campus that the powers that be are highly incensed by the remarks of a well-known member of the local faculty, praising socialism and other form of anarchy. It is said that one of the older members of the faculty will demand from the airing teacher an explanation of his remarks, which are alleged to have taken the form of a defense of the English anarchists Bernard Shaw. Those on the QV are expecting sensational developments, and campus talk is so extensively occupied with the discussions of the affair that the important coming game with St. John's College is almost forgotten.

While the Times has always supported Plato College as one of the chief glories in the proud crown of Minnesota learning, we can but illy stomach such news. It goes without saying that we cannot too strongly disapprove, express our disapproval of such incendiary utterances, and we shall, fearless, to report the whole of this fair, let the chips fall where they may. There, Mr. Erickson, said Mrs. Henkel,

a plump, decent disapproving person, who had known too many generations of late Platonians, to be impressed by anything. You see what the public thinks of your professor Frasier? I told you people wouldn't stomach such news, and I wouldn't wonder if they strongly disapproved. This ain't anything but gossip, said Carl feebly. But as he read the account in the weekly times,

he was sick and frightened. Such was his youthful awe of print. He wanted to beat the mossy whiskered editor of the Times who always had white food stains on his lapels. When he raised his eyes, the coquette made Torthson tried to cheer him. It'll all come out in the wierry, don't worry. Those editors have to have something to write about or they couldn't fill up the paper. He pressed her foot of the table.

He was chatty and helped to keep the general conversation away from the Frazier affair. But he was growing more and more angry with a desire for effective action which expressed itself within him only by, I'll show him, makes me so sore. Everywhere they discussed and rediscussed Professor Frazier, in a dressing room of the gym-dation where the football squad dressed in the sweat-reaking air and shouted at one another, balancing each on one leg

before small lockers, and rubbing themselves with brown, unclean Turkish towels, and they ate rooms of girl coeds with their banners and cushions and pink cuffeters and shafing dishes of nut fudge and photographic postal cards showing the folks at home. In the close, horse-smelling lamp-robe and whip-scattered office of the town livery stable where Mr. Gop droned with the editor of the Times.

Everywhere, Carl heard the echoes and resolved, I've got to do something. End of Chapter 8. Chapter 9 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis Chapter 9

The day of Professor Fraser's next lecture A rain sodden day at the end of October with this stubble field bleakly shelterless beyond the campus The rain splashed up from pools on the worn brick walls and drift from trees and whipped about buildings soaking the legs and leaving them itchingly wet And the feet sloshingly uncomfortable Carl returned to his room at one, talked to the Turk.

His feet thrust against the side of their rusty stove. He wanted to keep three o'clock the hour of Frasier's lecture from coming. I feel as if I was in for a fight. Scared to death about it. Listen to that rain outside. Gee, but the old dame keeps these windows dirty. I hope Frasier will give it to them. Good and hard.

I wish we could applaud him. I do feel funny like something tragic was going to happen. Uh, tie that dog outside, yawn to Turk, staunch adorned of Carl, and therefore of Professor Fraser, but not imaginative. Come on, young girl, I'll play a slick little piece on the mouth organ, eh? Oh, thunder, I'm too restless to listen to anything except a cannon. Carl stumped to the window,

and pondered on the pool of water flooding the graying grand, stems in the shabby yard. When it was time to start Professor Frazier's lecture, the Turk blurted, when we stay away and forget about it. Get her off your nerves. Let's go down to the bowling alley and work up a sweat. Not a chance, Turk.

He'll want all the supporters he's got, and you'd hate to stay away as much as I would. Feel cheered up now. All ready for the scrap. Yep, come on. All right, Governor, I like a scrap, all right, but I don't want to see you get all worked up. Through the rain across the campus,

an unusual number of students in shining cheap black raincoats were hastening to the three o'clock classes, clattering up the stone steps of the academic building, talking excitingly, glancing up at the arched doors as though they expected to see something startling. Dozen stared at Carl. He felt rather important. It was plain that he was known as a belligerent,

a supporter of Professor Frazier. As he came to the door of Lecture Room A, he found that many of the crowd were deserting their proper classes to attend the Fraser event. He bumped down into his own seat, gazing back super seriously, at the outsiders who were edging into unclaimed seats at the back of the room or standing about the door,

students from other classes, town girls, young instructor in French, German, and music. A couple of town club women in glasses and galoshes, and Wolling Stockings, bunchy at the ankles. Everyone was rapidly whispering, watching everyone else, peeping often at the platform and the small door beside it, through which Professor Fraser would enter.

Carl had a smile ready for him, but there was no chance that the smile would be seen. There must have been 150 in the room, seated in standing, though there were but 70 in the course, and but 256 students in the whole college that year. Carl looked back. He clenched his fist and pounded the soft side of it on his thigh, drawing in his breath, puffing in and out a long, exasperated, hell! For the Greek professor,

the comma-sized, sandy-whiskered, Marionette, to whom nothing that was new was moral, and nothing that was old was to be questioned by any undergraduate. Stalked into the room, like indignant Napoleon, posing before two guards and a penguin at St. Helen. A student in the back row driftily gave the Greek god his seat. The god sat down with a precise nod. Instantly, a straggly man with a cellular collar left the group by the door, whisk over to the Greek professor, and fawned upon him. It was the fearless editor and owner, also part-time typesetter,

of the Plato Weekly Times, who dated back to the days of Washington, flatbed hand presses, and pure Jeffersonian politics. and feared neither man nor devil, though he was uneasy in the presence of his landlady. He obstinationally flapped a wad of copy paper in his left hand, and shook a spatter of ink drops from a fountain pen as he interviewed the Greek professor who could be seen, answering pompously. Carl was hating them both, fearing the Greek as a faculty spy on Frazier, picturing himself kicking the editor when he was aware of a rustling all over the room.

a general turning of heads toward the platform. He turned. He was smiling like a shy child in his hero worship. Professor Frazier was inconspicuously walking through the low door beside the platform. Frazier's lips were together. He was obviously self-conscious, his motions were jerky. He elaborately did not look at the audience.

He nearly stumbled upon the steps up to the platform. His hands shook as he drew papers from a leather portfolio and arranged them on the small reading table. One of the papers escaped and sailed off the platform nearly to the front row. Nearly everyone in the room snickered. Frasier flushed. A girl student in the front row nervously bounded out of her seat,

picked up the paper and handed it up to Frasier. They both fumbled it, and their hands nearly touched. Most of the crowd laughed audibly. Professor Frasier sat down in his low chair, took out his watch, with the twitching hand and compared his time with the clock at the back of the room.

And so closely were the amateur executioners observing their victim that every eye went back to the clock as well. Even Carl was guilty of that imitation. Consequently, he saw the editor standing at the back, make notes on his copy paper and smirk like an ill-bred hound, stealing a bone.

And the Greek professor stared at Fraser's gosh movements. with a grim smugness, that indicated. Quite the sort of thing I expected. The Greek's elbows were on the arm of the seat, and he held up before his breast, a small red leather-covered notebook, which he super-sufflesedly tapped with a thin pencil. He was waiting, like a judge of the Inquisition.

Old Greeks going to take notes and make a report to the faculty about what Frasier says, reflected Carl. If I'd go and get a hold of his notes and destroy them. Carl turned again. It was just three. Professor Frazier had risen. Usually he sat while lecturing. Fifty whispers commented on that fact.

Fifty regular members of the course became self-important through knowing it. Frazier was leaning slightly against the table. It moved an inch or two with his weight. But by this time, everyone was too high-strung to laugh. He was pale. He rearranged his papers. He had to clear his throat twice before he could speak.

in the now silent, vulturously attentive room, smelling of wet second-rate clothes. The gusty rain could be heard. They all hitched in their seats. Frasier can't be going to retract, groaned Carl, but he's scared. Carl suddenly wished himself away from all this useless conflict, out-tramping the wet roads with the turk or sloshing through the puddles at thirty-five miles an hour in the banker's car. He noted stupidly that Jeannie Linderbeck's hair was scarcely combed.

He found he was saying, Frasier flunk, flunk, flunk, flunk, he's going to flunk, flunk, flunk. Then Frazier spoke. His voice sounded harsh and unrhythmical, but soon swung in to the natural periods of a public speaker as he got into his lecture. My friends, said he, a part of you have come here legitimately to hear a lecture. a part to satisfy the curiosity aroused by rumors to the effect that I am likely to make in decorous and indecent remarks, which your decorum and decency make you wish to hear,

and of which you will carry away evil and twisted reports to gain the reputation of being fearless defenders of the truth. It is a temptation to gratify your desire and shock you, a far greater temptation than to be repentant and reactionary. Only it occurs to me that this place and time are supposed to be devoted to a lecture by Henry Frazier on his opinions about contemporary drama. It is in no sense to be given to the pulling defense of a martyr, nor to the sensational self-advertisement of either myself or any of you.

I have no intention of devoting any part of my lecture aside from these introductory adumbrations to the astonishing number of new friends whose bright and morning faces I see before me. I shall neither be so insincerely tactful as to welcome you, nor so frightened as to ignore you, nor shall I invite you to come to me with any complaints you have about me. I am far too busy with my real work.

I am not speaking patiently. I am not patient with you. I am not speaking politely, truly. I do not think that I shall much longer. be polite. Wait, that sounds now in my ears rhetorical. Forgive me, and translate my indiscretions into more colloquial language. Though from rumors I have overheard, I fancy some of you will do that anyway, and now, I think you see where I stand. Now then, for such a view as have genuine interest in the brilliant work of Bernard Shaw, I shall first continue the animate visions on the importance

of his social thought and endeavored to link it with the great and growing vision of H.G. Wells, novelist and not dramatist, though he is, because of the significance of his new book, tips and mankind in the making, and point out the serious purpose that seems to me to underlie Shaw's sarcastic picture of life's shams. In my last lecture, I endeavored to present the destructive side of present social theories as little as possible to dwell more on the keen desire of the modern thinkers for constructive imagination. But I judged that I was regarded as too destructive,

which amuses me and to which I shall apply, the antidote of showing how destructive modern thought is and must be, whether running was subtly smoking torch of individuality in Bakunian or hissing in Natchee, or laughing at Olympus in Bernhard. My radicalism has been spoken of. Radical? Do you realize that I am not suggesting that there might possibly someday be a revolution in America, but rather that now I am stating that there is this minute, and for some years, has been

an actual state of warfare, between capital and labor. Do you know that daily, more people are saying openly and violently that we starve our poor, We stuff our children with useless, bookishness, and work the children of others in mills and let them sell papers on the streets in red-light districts at night. And thereby prove our state nothing, short of insane,

if you tell me that there is no revolution because there are no barricades, I point out to actual battles at Homestead, Pullman, and the rest. If you say that there has been no declaration of war, open war, I shall read you editorials from the appeal to reason. Mind you, I shall not say whether I am enlisted for or against the Revolutionary Army, but I demand that you look about you and understand the significance of the industrial disturbances and religious unrest of the time.

Never till then will you understand anything. Certainly not that Shaw is something more than an effluent terrible. Ibsen, something more than a near old nature. old man with dysphoria and a silly lack of interest in skating. Then you will realize that in the most extravagant utterances of a red-shirted strike leader, there may be more fervent faith and honor. Oftentimes, then in the virgin prayers of a girl who devoutly attends Christian endeavor, but presumes to call Emma Goldman, that dreadful woman,

follow the labor earlier, or fight him, good and hard, but do not overlook him. But I must be more systematic. When John Tanner's independent chauffeur of whom you have, I hope you have, read in man and Superman, Carl looked about. Many were frowning a few leaning sideways to whisper to neighbors with a perplexed headshake that plainly meant, I don't quite get that. Wet feet were shifted carefully, breathed caught quickly, hands nervously played with lower lips. The Greek professor was writing something.

Carl's ex-roommate Plain Smith was rigid, staring unyieldingly at the platform. Carl hated Smith's sinister stillness. Professor Fraser was finishing his lecture. If it please you, flunk this course. Don't read a single play I assigned to you. Be disrespectful, disbelieve all my contentions, and I shall be content. But do not. As you are living souls, blind yourself to the fact that there is a worldwide movement

to build a wider new world, and that the world needs it, and that in Jamaica Mills, on land owned by a director of Plato College, there are two particularly vile saloons, which you must wipe out before you disprove me. Silence for ten seconds, then. That is all.

The crowd began to move hesitantly while Professor Frazier hastily picked up his papers and raincoat and hurried out through the door beside the platform. Voices immediately rose in a web of talk, many-colored, hot-colored. Carl babbled to the man next to him. He's sure at Broad. He doesn't care whether they're conservatives or not. And some sensation at the end.

What? Him. The sophomore was staring, yes, why sure. What do you mean? demanded Carl. Well, and what do you mean by broad? Sure. He's broad just like a razor edge.

Huh? "'Hechoed the man down the row, a YMCA senior. "'Do you mean to say you liked it?' "'Why, sure, why not, didn't you?' "'Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. "'All he said was that scarlet women like Emma Goldman "'were better than a C.E. girl, "'and that he hoped his students would bluff the course and flunk it,

"'and that we could find booze at Jamaica Mills "'and a few little things like that. "'That's all, sure. "'That's the sort of thing we came here to study. The senior was buttoning his raincoat with angry fingers. That's why the man was insane, and the way he denounced decency, and, oh, I can't talk about it. Well, my gosh, of all the sputtered, Carl.

You and your YMCA calling yourself religious and misrepresenting like that. You and your, why, you ain't worth arguing with. I don't believe you came to study anything. You know it all already. Passionate, but bewildered, trying not to injure the cause of Frasier by being nasty, he begged. Straight.

Didn't you like his spiel? Didn't it give you some new ideas? The senior vouchsafed? No, me and my YAM didn't like it. Now, don't let me keep you, Erickson. I suppose you'll be wanting to join Dear Mr. Frazier in a highball.

You're such a pet of his. Did he teach you to booze? I understand you're good at it. "'You apologize, or I'll punch your face off,' said Carl. "'I don't understand Professor Fraser's principles like I ought to, "'but I'm not fighting for them. "'Probably would have a new enough. "'But I don't like your face.

"'It's too long. "'It's like a horse's face. "'It's an insult to Fraser to have a horse-faced guy listen to him. "'You apologize for having a horse-face. "'See?' "'You're bluffing. "'You wouldn't start anything here anyway. "'Pologize.'

"'Carl's fist clenched. "'People were staring. "' Cut it out, will you?' I didn't mean anything. He wouldn't, snap, Carl, and rammed his way out, making wistful boys' plans to go to Frasier with devotion and offers of service in a fight

whose causes grew more confused to him every moment. Beside him, as he hurried off to football practice strode a big lineman of the junior class, cajoling, "'Calm down, son, you can't lick the whole college. But it makes me so sore. Oh, I know, but it strikes me that no matter how, How much you like Frasier?

He's gone pretty far when he said the anarchist had more sense than decent folks. He didn't. You didn't get him. He meant, oh, Lord, what's the use? He did not say another word as they hastened to the gymnasium for indoor practice. He was sure that they who knew of his partisanship would try to make him lose his temper. Dear Lord, please just let me take out one bone head and beat him to a pulp. and then I'll be good, and not open my head again,

was his perfectly reverent prayer as he stripped before his locker. Carl and most of the other substitutes had to wait, and most of them gossiped of the lecture. They all greedily discussed Fraser's charge that some member of the corporation owned saloon lots and tried to decide who it was, but not one of them gave Fraser credit. Twenty times Carl wanted to deny,

twenty times speech rose in him so hotly that he drew a breath and opened his mouth, but each time he muttered to himself. Oh, shut up! You'd only make them worse. Students who had attended the lecture declared that Professor Fraser had advocated a bomb-throwing and obscenity, and the others believing, marveling, well, well, well, well, with unsecuritous appreciation of the scandal. Still, Carl sat aloof on a pair of horizontal bars, swinging his legs with agitated quickness,

while the others covertly watched him. Slim, wire-drawn, his china-blue eyes blurred with fury, his fair north skin glowing dull red, his chest strong under his tight football jersey, a clean-carved boy. The rubber band of his noseguard snapped harshly as he plucked at it, playing a song of hatred on that hard little harp. An insignificant thing made him burst out. Tommy LeCroy, the French Canuck, a quick, grinning, evil-spoken tobacco-chewing,

rather likable young thug, stared directly at Carl and said loudly, "'Another thing I noticed was that Frasier didn't have his pants pressed. Funny, ain't it? That when even these dudes from Yale get to be cranks, They're short on baths and tailors. Carl slid from the parallel bars. He walked up to the line of substitutes, glanced nearly along them.

Dramatized himself as a fighting rebel, remarked. Half of you were too dumb to get Frasier, and the other half are old women gossips, and ought to be drinking tea, and gloomed away to the dressing room. While behind him, the substitutes laughed, and someone called, Sorry you didn't like us,

but we'll try to bear up. Going to lick the whole college, Erickson? His ears burned in the dressing room. He did not feel that they had been much impressed. To tell the next day or two in detail would be to make many books about the mixed childishness and heroic fineness of Carl's partisanship.

To represent a thousand rumors running about the campus to the effect that the faculty would demand for, Frazier's resignation. To explain the reason why Frazier's charge that a plateau director owned land used by saloons was eagerly whispered for a little while then quite forgotten, while Frazier's reputation as a crank was never forgotten. So much does Muck represent the Muck Raker. To describe Carl's brief call on Frasier and his confusing discovery that he had nothing to say,

to repeat the local papers courageous reports of the Fraser Fair. Turk's great oath to support Frazier. Through hell and high water, Turks repeated defiance. Well, by golly, we'll show the mutts, but I wish we could do something. To chronicle dreary classes whose dullness was evident to Carl now after his interest in Frazier's lectures. Returning from Jeannie Linderbeck's room, Carl found a letter from Gertie Cowles on the black walnut hat-rack, without reading it but successfully,

befooling himself into the belief that he was glad to have it. He went whistling up to his room. Ray Cowles and Howard Griffin. Those great seniors sat tilted back in wooden chairs, and between them was the Lord of the World. Mr. Bajorkin, the football coach, a large, amiable, rather religious young man who believed in football, foreign missions, and the Democratic Party.

Hello, waiting for me the Turk, faltered Carl, gravely shaking hands all around. Just dropped up to see you for a second, said Mr. Bajorkin. Sorry the Turk wasn't here. Carl had an ill-defined feeling that he wanted to keep them from becoming serious as long as he could. Ray Cowles cleared his throat. Never again with the black hair Adonis blossom of the flower of Girolaman.

Be so old and sadly sage as then. We want to talk to you seriously about something for your own sake. You know, I've always been interested in you, and Howard, and, of course, we're interested in you as Frat Brothers, too. For old Geroliman and Plataway, Mr. Bajorkin believes, might as well tell him now, don't you think, Mr. Bajorkan? The coach gave a rigorously gracious nod. Hitching about on the woodbox,

Carl felt the bottom drop out of his anxious stomach. Well, Mr. Bajorkin thinks you're practically certain to make the team next year. And maybe you may even get put in the Hamlin game for a few minutes this year and get your pee. Honest? Yes, if you do something for old Plato, same as you expect her to do something for you. Ray was quite sincere, but not if you put the team discipline on the bum and disgrace he'll make a chai. Of course, I can't speak as an actual member of the team, but still, as a senior, I hear things. I mean disgrace.

Don't you know that because you've been getting so savage about Frasier, the whole team's getting mad, said the coach. Cowles and Griffin and I have been talking over the whole proposition. You're boosting Frasier. Look here, from Carl. I won't crawl down on my opinion about Frasier. Folks haven't understood him. Lord love you, son, Spluth, Howard Griffin.

We aren't trying to change your opinion of Frasier. Were you friends, you know? We're proud of you standing up for him. Only thing is, now that he's practically fired, just tell me how it's going to help him or you or anybody else now, to make everybody sore by roasting them because they can't agree with you. Boost, don't knock. Don't make everybody think you're a crank.

To be frank, added Mr. Bejorkin, you're just as likely to hurt Frazier as to help him by stirring up all this bad blood. Look here. I suppose that if the faculty had already fired Frasier, you'd still go ahead trying to buck them. Hadn't thought about it, but suppose I would.

Afraid it might be that way, but haven't you seen by this time about how much good it does for one lone sophomore to try to run the faculty? It was the coach talking again but the gravely nodding, Mandarin-like heads of Howard and Ray accompanied him.

Mind you, I don't mean to disparage you personally, but you must admit that you can't hardly expect to boss everything. Just what good'll do to go on shouting for Frasier. Quite aside from the question, whether he is likely to get fired or not. Well, Grunda Carl nervously massaging his chin, I don't know as it will do any direct good, except maybe waking this darn conservative college up a little,

but it does make me so doggone sore. Yes, yes, we understand, old man, the coach said, but on the other hand, here's the direct good of sitting tight and playing the game. I've heard you speak about Kipling. Well, you're like a young officer, a sublatern they call it. Don't they in the Kipling story, a fellow that's under orders, and it's part of his game to play hard and keep his mouth shut, and not to criticize his superior officers,

ain't it? I suppose so, but... Well, it's just the same with you. Can't you see that? Think it over. What would you think of a lieutenant that trying to boss all the generals? Just same thing. Besides, if you sit tight,

you can make the team this year. I can practically promise you that. Do understand this now. It isn't a prime. We want you to be able to play and do something for old Play-Doh. In a real way, in athletics.

But you most certainly can't make the team if you're going to be a disorganizer. All we want you to do, put in Ray Cowles, is not to make a public spectacle of yourself, as I'm afraid you've been doing. Admire Frazier all you want to and talk about him to your own bunch. And don't back down on your own opinions, only don't think you've got to go around yelling about him. People get a false idea of you.

I hate to have to tell you this, but some of the fellows, even in Omega Chai, have spoken about you and wondered if you really were a regular crank. Of course he isn't, you poor cheese, I tell him, but I can't be around to answer everyone all the time, and you can't lick the whole college. That ain't the way the world does things. You don't know what a bad impression you make when you're too brash.

See how I mean? As the Council of Sears rose, Carl timidly said to Ray, straight now. Have quite a lot of the fellows been in saying I was a goat? Good many, I'm afraid. All talking about you. It's up to you. All you got to do is not think you know at all. Keep still. Keep still till you understand the faculty's difficulties just a little better. Sabby? Don't that sound fairly reasonable? End of chapter nine.

Chapter 10 of the Trail of the Hawk. This paper box recording is in the public domain. Main. Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mikevindetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 10 They were gone. Carl was full of the nauseating shame which a matter-of-fact man, who supposes that he has never pilloried, knows when a conscientious friend informs him that he has been observed,

criticized, and that his enthusiasms have been regarded as eccentricies, his affectionate approaches toward friendship as impertinence. There seemed to be hundreds of people in the room, nudging one another, waiting agape for him to do something idiotic. A well-advertised fool on parade. He's talked about now shamefaced, now bursting out with a belligerent, "'Aughts, I'll show them. How plaintively beseeching. I don't suppose I'm helping Frasier, but it makes me so darn sore when nobody stands up for him. And he teaches stuff they need so much here.

Gee, I'm coming to think this is a pretty rough-neck college. He's the first teacher I ever got anything out of and, oh, hang it. One day I have to get mixed up in all this for, when I was getting along so good. And if it isn't going to help him... His right hand became conscious of Gertie's letter crumpled in his pocket. As turning the letter over and over gave him surprisingly small knowledge of its contents, he opened it. Dear Carl, you are just silly to tease me about any bank clerk. I don't like him anymore at all, and he can go with Linda all he likes.

Much I care. We are enjoying good health, though it is getting quite cold now, and we have the furnace running now, and it feels pretty good to have it. We had such a good time at Adelaide's party. She wore such a pretty dress, she flirted terribly with Joe Jordan, though, of course, you'll call me a cat, for telling you because you like her so much better than me and all. Oh, I haven't told you the news yet.

Joe has accepted a position at St. Hilary in the mill there. I have some pretty new things for my room, a beautiful hand-painted picture. Before Joe goes, there is going to be a party for him at Cimanez. I wish you could come. I suppose you have learned to dance well. Of course, you'd go to lots of parties at Plato, with all the pretty girls and forget all about me. I wish I was in Minneapolis.

It is pretty dull here. And such good talks you and me had, didn't we? Oh, Carl, dear. Ray writes us, You are sticking up for that crazy Professor Frasier. I know it must take lots of courage, and I admire you lots for it, even if Ray doesn't.

But, oh, Carl, dear, if you can't do any good by it, I hope you won't get everybody talking about you without, it's doing any good. Will you, Carl? I do so expect you to, to succeed wonderfully, and I hope you won't blast your career even to stand up for folks when it's too late and won't do any good. We all expect so much of you.

We are waiting. You are our night, and you aren't going to forget to keep your armor bright, nor forget. Yours is ever, Gertie. Hmm, remarked, Colonel. Don't know about this knight in armor business, and looks well. I would, with a wash boiler and a few more tons. a junk-hon, hmm. Expect you to succeed wonderfully.

Oh, I don't suppose I had ought to disappoint him. Don't see where I can help Frasier anyway, not a bit. The Frasier affair seemed very far from him, very hysterical. Two of the gang ambled in with noisy proposals in regard to a game of poker, Penny Antie. But the thought of cards bored him, leaving them in possession, one of them smoking the Turk's best pipe, which the Turk had been, and so careless as to leave in sight, he strolled out on the street and over to the campus.

There was a light in the faculty room in the academic building, yet it was not a first and third Thursday dates on which if the faculty regularly met. Therefore, it was a special meeting, therefore. Promptly, without making any plans, Carl ran to the back of the building, she knitted up a water spout humming just before the battle mother, pried open a classroom window with his large jackknife of the variety technically known as a toad-stabber,

changing his tune to onward Christian soldiers. Climbed in, tipped out to the room, stopping often to listen, felt along the plaster walls to find the door. Ease the door open, calmly sat down in the corridor, pulled off his shoes, and said, Ouch, it's cold on the feats. Slipped into another classroom in the front of the building, put on his shoes, crawled out of the window. walked along a limestone ledge one foot wide to a window of the faculty room and peeped in. All of the 11 assistant professors and full professors

except Frasier were assembled with President S. Alcott Wood in the chair and the Greek professor addressing them, referring often to a red leather covered notebook. Hmm, making a report on Frazier's lecture, said Carl, clinging precariously to the rough faces of the stones. Auguste swooped around the corner of the building. He swayed, gripped the stones more tightly, and looked down. He could not see the ground.

It was 35 or 40 feet down. Almost fell. He observed, gosh, my hands are chilly. As he peered in the window again, he saw the Greek professor, pointing directly at the window, while the whole gathering started, turned, stared. A young assistant professor ran toward the door of the room. Going to cut me off, doggone it, said Carl. They'll wait for me at the math room window.

Hooray, I've started something. He carefully moved along the ledge to a point halfway between windows and waited flat against the wall. Again he glanced down from the high, windy, narrow ledge. It'll be a long drop. My hands are cold. I could slip. Funny, I ain't really much scared, though. Say, where'd I do just this before? Oh, yes, he saw himself as little Carl lost with gritty in the woods caught by Bone Stillman at the window.

He laughed out as he compared the bristly, virile face of bone, with the pasty face of the young professor. Seems almost as though I was back there doing the same thing right over. Funny. But I'm not quite as scared as I was then. Guess I'm growing up. Hello. Here's our cunning Spanish inquisition rubbering out of the next window. The window of the mathematic classroom next to the faculty room had opened. The young professor, who was pursuing Carl, peppered the night with violent words, delivered in a rather pedographic voice. Well, sir, we have you. you might as well come and give yourself up. Carl was silent.

The voice said, conversationaly, He's staying out there. I'll see who it is. Carl half made out a head thrusting itself from the window, then heard the stuttle voice. Can't seem. Loudly again, the pursuing professor yapped. I see you.

You're merely wasting time, sir. You might just as well come here now. I shall let you stay there till you do. Softly. Hurry back in the way. the faculty room and see if you can get him from that side. Bet it's one of the sneaking Frasier fraction. Carl said nothing, did not budge.

He peeped at the ledge above him. It was too far for him to reach it. He tried to discern the mass of the ground in the confusing darkness below. It seemed, miles down, he did not know what to do. He was lone as a maitless hawk. There on a ledge against the wall, whose stones were pinchingly cold to the small of his bag and spread-eagled arms. He swayed slightly, realized with trembling nausea what would happen if he

swayed too much. He remembered that there was pavement below him, but he did not think about giving himself up. From the mathematics room window came, watch him, I'm going out after him. Young professor's shoulders slid out the window. Carl carefully turned his head and found that now a form was leaning from the faculty room window as well. Got me on both sides, darn it. Well, when they haul me up on the carpet, I'll have the pleasure of telling them when I think of them. The young professor had started to edge along the ledge.

He was coming very slowly. He stopped and complained to someone back in the mathematics room. This beastly ledge is icy, I'm afraid. Car piped, look out, you're slipping. In a panic, the professor slid back into the window. As his heels disappeared through it, Carl dashed by the window running sideways along the ledge, while the professor was cautiously risking his head in the night air, outside the window again, gazing to the left, where he had reason to suppose Carl would have the decency to remain.

Carl was rapidly warming to the right. He reached the corner of the building, felt for the rain water pipe, and slid down it. With his coat-tail protecting his hands, halfway down the cloth slipped and his hand was burnt against the corrugated tin. considerable slide. He murmured as he stuck the gown and blew softly on his raw palm. He walked away, not at all like a melodramatic hero of a slide-by-night,

but like a matter-of-fact young man, going to see someone about business of no great importance. He abstractedly brushed his left sleeve or his waistcoat now and then as though he wanted to appear neat. He tramped into the telephone booth of the corner drugstore called up Professor Frazier. Hello, Professor Frasier?

This is one of your students in modern drama. I've just learned I happen to be up on the academic building, and I happen to find out that Professor Drood is making a report to the faculty special meeting about your last lecture. I've got a hunch. He's going to slam you. I don't want to butt in, but I'm awfully worried.

I thought perhaps you ought to know. Who? Oh, I'm just one of your students. You're welcome. Jose, Professor, good luck. Goodbye. Immediately without even the excuse that some evil mind in the gang had suggested it, he prowled out to the Greek professor's house and tied both the front and back gates.

Now the fence of that yard was high and strong and provided with shark pickets, and the professor was short and dignified. Carl regretted that he could not wait for the pleasure of seeing the professor fumble with the knots and climb the fence, but he had another errand. He walked to the house of Professor Frazier. He stood on the walk before it. His shoulder straightened, his heels snapped together, and he raised his arm in a formal salute.

He had saluted the greatness of Henry Frazier. He had saluted his own soul, he cried. I will stick by him as long as the Turk Karenium. I won't let Omega Chi and the coach scare me. Not the whole caboodle of them. I... Oh, I don't think they can scare me. End of Chapter 10.

Chapter 11 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti. Mike Vendetti.com Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 11 The students of Plato were required to attend chapel every morning. President S. Alcott Wood

earnestly gave out two hymns and, between them, informed the Almighty of the more important news events of the past 24 hours, with a worried advisory manner which indicated that he felt something should be done about them at once. President Wood was an honest, anxious body, something like a small, learned, scotch linen draper. He was given to being worried in advisory

and to sitting up till midnight in his unventilated library, grinding at the task of putting new wrong meanings into perfectly obvious statements in the Bible. He was a series of circles, round, head with smooth gray hair that hung in a bang over his round forehead, round face, with round red cheeks, absurdly heavy gray mustache, that almost made a circle around his funeral mouth, round button of nose, round heavy shoulders, round little stomach, in a gray sack suit, round dumplings of feet in Congress shoes that were never quite fresh blacked

or quite dusty. A harassed, honorable, studious, ignorant, humorless, joke-popping, genuinely conscientious, thumb of a man. His prayers were long and intimate. After the second hymn, he would announce the coming social events, class prayer meetings, and lanternslide lectures by missionaries. During the prayer and hymns, most of the students hastily prepared for first-hour classes, with lists of dates inside their hymn books,

or they read tight-folded copies of the Minneapolis Journal or Tribune. But when the announcements began, all Plato College sat up to attention, for Plexie Wood was very likely to comment with pedantic sarcasm on student peccadillo's, on cards and v-neck gowns, and the unforgivable crime of smoking. As he crawled to the bare unsympathetic chapel, the morning after spying on the faculty room, Carl looked restlessly to the open field sniffed at the scent of burning leaves, watched a thin stream of blackbirds in the windy sky. He sat on the edge of a pew, nervously jiggling his crossed legs.

During the prayer in hymns, a spontaneously borne rumor, that there would be something sensational in President Wood's announcements went through the student body. The president, as he gave out the hymns, did not look at the students, but sadly smoothed the neat green cloth on the reading stand. His prayer, timid, was for guidance to comprehend the will of the Lord. Carl felt sorry for him. Poor man's fussed.

ought to be. I'd be, too, if I tried to stop a ten-inch gun like Frasier. He's singing hard, announcements now. What's he waiting for? Jiminy, I wish he'd spring it and get it over. Suppose he said something about last night. Me. President Wood stood silent.

His glance drifted from row to row of students. They moved uneasily. Then his dry, precise voice declaimed, My friends, I have an unpleasant duty to perform this morning, but I have sought guidance and prayer, and I hope. Carl was agonizing. He does know it's me. He'll ball me out and fire me publicly.

Sit tight, Erickson, hold your nerve. Think of good old Turk. Carl was not a hero. He was frightened. In a moment now all the eyes in the room would be unwinkingly focused on him. He hated this place of crowding, curious young people and drab text hung walls. In the last row he noted the pew in which Professor Fraser sat infrequently. He could fancy Frasier there, pale and stern.

I'm glad I spied on him. Might have been able to put Frasier wise to something definite if I could just have overheard him. President Wood was mincing on. And so, my friends, I hope in devotion to the ideals of the Baptist Church, we shall strive ever onward and upward, and even our smallest daily concerns, per Espera Adesterra Astha, not in a spirit of materialism and modern unrest,

but in a spirit of duty. I need not tell you that there has been a great deal of rumor about the so-called faculty dissensions. But let me earnestly beseech you to give me your closest attention when I assure you that there have been no faculty dissensions. It is true that we have found certain teachings rather out of harmony with the ideals of Plato College.

The word of God in the Bible was good enough for our fathers who fought to defend. This great land, and the Bible is still good enough for us, I guess, and I cannot find anything in the Bible. about such doctrines as socialism and anarchism and evolution. Probably most of you have been fortunate enough to not have wasted any time on this theory called evolution. If you don't know anything about it,

you have not lost anything. Absurd as it may seem, evolution says that we are all descended from monkeys, in spite of the fact that the Bible teaches us that we are children of God, If you prefer to be the children of monkeys rather than of God, well, all I can say is, I don't, laughter. But thou old fellow Satan is always busy,

going to and fro, even in colleges, and the unrestrained, overgrown, secularized colleges of the East, they have actually been teaching this doctrine openly for many years. Indeed, I am told that right at the University, of Chicago, though it is a Baptist institution, they teach the same silly twaddle of evolution, and I could not advise any of you to go there for graduate work. But these scientific fellows that are too wise for the Bible fall into the pits they themselves have digged. Sooner or later, and they have been so smart in discovering new things about evolution, that they have

contradicted almost everything that Darwin, who was the high priest of this, a vulnerable cult, first taught, and they have turned the whole theory into a hodgepodge of contradiction from which even they themselves are now turning in disgust. Indeed, I am told that Darwin's own son has come out and admitted that there is nothing to this evolution. Well, we could have told him that all along and told his father and saved all their time, for now they are all coming right back to the Bible. We could have told them in the first place that the word of God definitely explains the origin

of man, and that anybody who tried to find out rather we were descended from monkeys was just about as wise as the man who tried to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Carl was settled down in his pew safe.

President Wood was in his stride. All this evolutionary fad becomes ridiculous, of course, when a mind that is properly trained in clear thinking by the diligent pursual of the classics strips it of its pseudoscientific rags and shows it straight out from the shoulder in the fire of common sense and sound religion and here is the point of my disquisition on the self-same evolution this bombast of the self-pushing scientists are founded

all such unchristian and un-american doctrines as socialism and anarchism and the lust of feminism with all their followers, such as Shaw and the fellow who tried to shoot Mr. Frick, and all the other atheists of the stripe that thinks so well of themselves, that they are quite willing to overthrow the grand old institutions that our forefathers founded on the Constitution, and they want to set up instead. Oh, they're quite willing to tell us how to run the government. They want to set up a state in which all of us, who are honest enough to do a day's work,

shall support the lazy rascals who aren't. Yet they are very clever, men. They can pull a wool over your eyes and persuade you if you let them. That, a universal willingness to let the other fellow do the work while you paint pictures of flowers and write novels about the abomination of Babylon

is going to evolute a superior race. Well, when you think they are clever, the Shah and this fellow Wells, and all of them that copy, Robert G. Engersall, just remember that the cleverest fellow of them all is the old Satan, and that he's been advocating just such lazy doctrines ever since he stirred up rebellion and discontent in the Garden of Eden. If these things are so, then the teachings of Professor Henry Frazier, however sincere he is, are not in accordance with the stand which we have

taken here at Plato. My friends, I want you all to understand me. Certain young students, of Plato appear to have felt that the faculty have not appreciated Professor Frazier. One of these students, I presume it was one of them, went so far as to attempt to spy on faculty meetings last night. Who that man is, I have means of finding out at any time, but I do not wish to, for I cannot believe that he realized how dishonest was such sneaking. I wish to assure the malcontents that I yield to no one, one in my admiration of Professor Frazier's eloquence and learning in certain subjects.

Only we have not found his doctrines quite consistent with what we are trying to do. They may be a lot more smart and newfangled than what we have out here in Minnesota, and we may be a lot of old fogies. But we are not narrow, and we wish to give him just as much right of free speech. We wish there is no slightest a deserone. in fact to impose any authority on anyone. But against any pervasive doctrine, we must, in all honesty, take a firm stand.

We carefully explain this to Professor Frazier and permit me to inform those young men who have taken it upon themselves to be his champions that they would do well to follow his example. For he quite agrees with us as to the need of keeping the Plato College doctrine consistent. In fact, he offered his research to the general which we reluctantly accepted.

Very, very reluctantly. It will take effect the first of the month, and, owing to illness in his family, he will not be giving any lectures before then. Students in his classes, by the way, are requested to report to the dean for other assignments. And so you see how little there is to the cowardly rumors about faculty dissensions.

Liar, liar, dear God, they've smothered that kind. straight Frazier. Carl was groaning. Now my friends, I trust you understand our position, and, uh, President Wood drew a breath, slapped the reading stand, and piped angrily. We have every desire to permit complete freedom of thought and speech among the students of Plato. But on my word, when it comes to a pass where a few students can cause this whole great institution to forget its real tasks and devote all its time to quarreling about a fad like socialism, then it's time to call a halt.

If there are any students here who, now that I have explained that Professor Frazier leaves us of his own free will, still persist in their stubborn desire to create trouble and feel that the faculty have not treated Professor Frazier properly or that we have endeavored to coerce him, then let them stand up right here and now. In chapel, I mean it. Let them stop this cowardly running to and fro in secret gossip. Let them stand up before us in token of protest here and now, or otherwise hold their peace. So well trained to the authority of schoolmasters

with the students of Plato, including Carl Erickson, that they sat as uncomfortable as though they were individually accused by the plump pedant, who words weakly glaring at them, his round, childish hand, clutching the sloping edge of the oak reading stand, his sack coat wrinkled at the shoulders and sagging back from his low linen collar.

Carl sighted back at Frasier's pew, hoping that he would miraculously be there to confront the dictator. The pew was empty as before. There was no one to protest against the ousting of Frazier for saying what he believed true. Then Carl was agitated to find that Carl Erickson, A backyard boy was going to rise and disturb all those learned people.

He was frightened again, but he stood up, faced a president, effectively folded his arms, hastily unfolded them, and put his hands in his pockets, one foot before the other, one shoulder humped a little higher than the other. The whole audience was staring at him. He did not dare peep at them, but he could hear their murmur of amazement. Now that he was up he rather in jose. enjoyed defying them.

Well, young man, so you are going to let us know how to run Plato, teetered the president. I'm sure everybody will feel much obliged to you. Carl did not move. He was aware of Jeannie Linderbeck raising to his left. No one else was up, but with Jeannie's frail adherence, Carl suddenly desired to rouse everyone to stand for Frazier and Freedom. He glanced over at the one man,

whom he could always trust to follow him, the Turk. A tiny movement of Carl's lips, a covert uptoss of his head, warned the Turk to rise now. The Turk moved, started to rise slowly, as though under force he looked rather shame-faced. He uncrossed his legs and put his hands on the pew on either side of his legs. Shame, trembled of girl's voice in the junior section. Sit down. Two or three voices of men softly snarled.

with the rustle of mob muttering. The Turk hastily crossed his legs and slumped down in his seat. Carl frowned at him imploringly, then angrily. He felt spiritually naked to ask support so publicly, but he had to get the Turk up. The Turk shook his head beseechingly. Carl could fancy him grunting. On thunder, I'd like to stand up, but I don't want to be a goat.

Another man rose. I'll be darned, thought Carl. it was the one man he would expect not to support the heretic Frasier. It was Carl's rustic ex-roomate, Plain Smith. Jeannie was leaning against the pew in front of him, but Plain Smith bulked more immovable than Carl. No one joined to three, although the chapel was an undertone of amazement, comment,

and a constant low hissing of, Sit down! The president facing them looked strained. It occurred to Carl that S.S. Alcott Wood had his side of the question. He argued about the matter feeling detached from his stolidly defiant body. Then he cursed the president for keeping the mare. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to cry out. President Wood was speaking. Is there anyone else stand up, if there is? No one else? Very well, young man. I trust that you are now satisfied with your heroism,

which we have all greatly appreciated. I am sure. laughter. Chapel dismissed. Instantly a swirl of men surrounded Carl, questioning, What'd you do it for? Why didn't you keep still? He pushed out through them.

He sat blind through the first-hour quiz in physics with the whole class watching him. The thought of the Turks' failure to rise kept unhappy vigil in his mind. The same sequence of reflections ran around like midnight mice in the wall. Just when I needed him. after all his talk, and us so chummy, sitting up all hours last night and then the Turk

throws me down. When he'd said so many times he just wanted the chance to show how strong he was for Frasier, damn coward. I'll go room with Jeannie. By gosh. Oh, I got to be fair to the Turk. I don't suppose he could have done much real good standing up. Of course, it does make you feel kind of a poor nut doing it.

Jeannie looked. Yes, by the Jim Hill. There you are. Poor little scrawny Jeannie. Oh, yeah, sure. It was up to him to stand up. He wasn't afraid. And the Turk, the big stiff?

He was afraid to. Just when I needed him. After all, our talk about Frasier's sitting up all hours. Through the black whirlpool in his head, pierced and irritated, Mr. Erickson, I said, Have you gone to sleep? I understand you were excellent at standing up. What is your explanation of the phenomenon?

The professor of physics and mathematics, the same who had pursued Carl on the ledge, was speaking to him. Carl mumbled sullenly. Not prepared. The class sniggered. He devoted a moment to hating them as Pariah's hate. Then, through his mind, went whirling again. Just wait till I see the Turk.

End of Chapter 11. Chapter 12 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Libre Vox recording is in the post. public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 12. A notice from the president's office commanding Carl's instant presence was in his post-office

box. He slouched into the waiting room of the offices of the president and dean. He had an incarnate desire to say exactly what he thought to the round woolly president would. Plain Albert Smith was leaving the waiting room. He seized Carl's hand with his plumb and paw and said, "'Good-bye, boy,' he growled.

There was nothing gallant about his appearance, his blue flannel shirt, dusty with white fuzz, his wrinkled brick-red neck, the oyster-like ear at which he kept fumbling with a seamy fingernail of his left hand. But Carl's salute was a salute to the new king. "'What do you mean, goodbye, Al?' "'I've just resigned from Plato, Carl.'

"'How'd you happen to do that? Did they summon you here?' "'No, just resigned,' said Plain Smith. "'One time when I was school teaching I had set to with a school committee of farmers about teaching the kids a little botany. They said the three hours were enough. I won out, but I swore I'd stand up for any teacher that tried to be honest the way he's seen it. I don't agree with Frasier about those socialists and all.

A fellow that's worked at the plow like I have knows a man wants to get ahead for his woman and himself. first of all, and let the walking delegates do the work, too. But I think he's honest, all right, and well, I stood up, and that means losing my scholarship. They won't try to fire me. Guess I'll mosey on to the U of M. Can't probably live there as cheap as here, but cousin of mine owns a big shoe store,

and maybe I can get a job with him. Boy, you were plucky to get up. Glad we've got each other finally. I feel as though you'd freed me from something, God bless you. To the dean's assistant in the waiting room, Carl grandly stated. Erickson, 1908. I'm to see the president.

It's been arranged here to see the dean instead. Sit out. Dean's engaged just now. Carl was kept waiting for a half hour. He did not like the transference to the dean, who was no anxious old lamb like S. Alcott would, but a young collegiate climber, with a clip mustache,

A gold eyeglass chain over one year, a curt voice many facts, a spurious appreciation of music and no melanchus. He was a graduate of the University of Chicago and aggressively proud of it. He had earned his way through college, which all tradition and all fiction pronounce the perfect manner of acquiring a noble independence and financial ability. Indeed, the blessing of early poverty is in general praised as the perfect training for acquiring enough wealth to save one's old children from the curse

of early poverty. It would be safer to malign George Washington and the Boy Scouts, professional baseball, and the YMCA than to suggest that working one way through college is not necessarily manlier than playing and dreaming and reading one's way through. Defidently, without generalizing, the historian reports this fact about the dean. He had lost the graciousness of his rusticest, clergyman father, and developed an itchingly bustling manner, a tremendous readiness for taking charge of everything in sight, by acquiring during his undergraduate days a mastery of all the petty ways of earning money, such as charging meek and stupid wealthy students too much for private tutoring and bullying his classmates into patronizing the laundry whose agent he was.

The dean stuck his little finger far out into the air when drinking from a cup, and like to be taken for a well-dressed man of the world. The half-hour of waiting gave Carl a feeling of the power of the authorities, and he kept seeing Plain Smith in his cousin's shoe store trying to fit women's shoes with his large red hands. When he was ordered to step into the dean's office now, he stumbled in, pulling at his soft felt hat. With his back to Carl, the dean was riding at a roll-top desk,

The burnish top of his narrow, slightly bald head seemed efficient and formate role. Not glancing up, the dean snapped. Sit down, young man. Carl sat down. He crumpled his hat again. He stared at a framed photograph and moved his feet about, trying to keep them quiet. More waiting. The dean inspected Carl over his shoulder.

He still held his pen. The fingers of his left hand tapped his desk tablet. He turned in his swivel chair deliberately as though he was now ready to settle everything permanently. Well, young man, are you prepared to apologize to the President and faculty? Apologize for what? President said those that wanted to protest.

Now we won't have any blustering, if you please, Erickson. I have the slightest doubt that you are prepared to give an exhibition of martyrdom. That is why I ask the privilege of taking care of you, instead of permitting you to distress, President Wood any further. We will drop all this posing, if you don't mind. I assure you that it doesn't make...

Aye. The slightest impression on me, Erickson. Let's get down to business. You know perfectly well that you have stirred up all the trouble you... I... Good in regard to Mr. Frazier. And I think I really think that we should either have to have your written apology

and you promise to think a little more before you talk. Hereafter, or else we shall have to request your resignation from the college. I'm sorry that we apparently can't run this college to suit you, Erickson. But as we can't, why? I'm afraid we shall have to ask you not to increase our inefficiency by making all the trouble you can. Wait now. Let's not have any melodrama.

You may as well pick up that hat again. It doesn't seem to impress me much when you throw it down, though doubtless it was very dramatically done. Oh, yes, indeed, very dramatic. See here, I know you, and I know your type, my young friend, and I haven't. Look here. Why do I get picked out as the goat, the one to apologize, because I stood up first.

When Prexie said to, Oh, not at all. say it's because you quite shamelessly made motions at others while you stood there and did your best to disaffect men who hadn't the least desire to join in your trouble-making. Now I'm very busy, young man, and I think this is all the time I shall waste on you. I so expect to find your written. Say honest, Dean, Carl suddenly laughed. May I just say one thing before I get thrown out?

Certainly, we have every desire to deal just. with you, and to always give, always to give you every opportunity. Well, I just wanted to say, in case I resign and don't see you again, that I admire your nerve. I wish I could get over feeling like a sophomore talking to a dean, and then I could tell you I hadn't supposed there was anybody who could talk to me the way you have and get away with it. I'd always thought I'd punch their head off. And here you had me completely buffaloed. It's wonderful. Honestly, it never struck me till just this second that there isn't any law that compels me to sit here and take all this. You had me completely hypnotized. You know, I might

retort cruthfully and say, I am not accustomed to have students address me in quite this manner. I'm glad, however, to find that you are sensible enough not to make an amusing show of yourself by imagining that you are making a noble flight for freedom. By decision of the president of myself, I am compelled to give you this one chance only. Unless I find your apology in my letterbox hereby five this evening, I shall have to suspend you or bring you up before faculty for dismissal. But my boy, I feel that perhaps for all your mistaken notions,

you do have a certain amount of courage, and I want to say a word. The dean did say a word. In fact, he said a large number of admirable words regarding the effect of Carl's possible dismissal on his friends, his family, and with an almost tearful climax on his mother. Now go and think it over. Pray over it, unselfishly, my boy, and let me hear from you before five.

Only, the reason why Carl did visualize his mother, the reason why the Erickson Kitchen became so clear to him that he saw his tired-faced mother, reaching up to wind the alarm clock that stood beside the ball of odd string. On the shelf above, the water pail, the reason why he felt caved in at the stomach was that he knew he was going to leave plateau,

and he did not know where in the world he was going. A time of quick action, of bursting the pond's even of friendship. He walked quietly into Jeannie Linderbeck's neat room with the rose-hued comforter, on a narrow brass bed, Passet, partowed, Copley prints, and a small oak table

with immaculate green desk blotter, and said goodbye. His hidden apprehension, the cold, empty feeling of his stomach, the nervous intensity of his emotions told him that he was already on the long trail that leads to fortune, then Bowery lodging houses,

and death and happiness, even while he was warning himself that he must not go, that he owed it to his folks to apologize and stay. He was stumbling into the bank and drawing out his $92. It seemed a great sum. While waiting for it, he did sums on the back of a deposit slip. $92 out of the bank, $2.27 in pocket.

About 10 cents in room, total, 9437. O. Taylor, $1.45, Turk, $25. To Minneapolis, $3.5. To Chicago, probably $15 to $18 to New York, $20 to 30. To Europe, stearage, $40. Total about, $92.75 would take me to Europe. Golly, I could go to Europe, to Europe. Now, if I wanted to and have maybe two plunks over or grub on the railroad, I'd have to allow something for tips, I guess.

Maybe it wouldn't be as much as $40 for steerage. O' to allow. Oh, thunder, I've got enough to make a mighty good start seeing the world anyway. On the street a boy was selling extras of the Plato Weekly Times with the heading. President Crushes Student Rebellion. Plato demonstration for anarchists handled without gloves.

Carl read that he and two other students who are alleged to have been concerned in Several student pranks had attempted to break up a chapel meeting, but had been put to shame by the famous administrator S. Alcott Wood. He had never seen his name in the press, except some three times in the local items of the Jolongman Dynamite. It looks so intimidatingly public that he tried to forget it was there. He chuckled when he thought of Plain Smith and Jeannie Linderbeck,

as concerned in student pranks. But he was growing angry. He considered staying and fighting his opponents to the end. Then he told himself that he must leave Plato, after having announced to Jeannie, that he was going. He had made all his decisions except the actual deciding. He admitted his noonday dinner and tramped into the country, trying to plan how and where he would go.

As evening came, cloudy and chill in a low-wooded tract, miles north of Plato, with dead boughs kneeling in the, uneasy air, threatening a rain that never quite came, the loneliness of the land seemed to be fog all the possibilities of the future. He wanted the lamp-lit security of his room with the Turk and the gang in red sweaters, singing ragtime with the Fraser Fair a bad dream that was forgotten. The world outside Plato would all be like those lowering woods in dreary swamps. He turned.

He could find solace only in making his mind a blank, sullen, dull. He watched the sunset, watched the relying cumulus clouds mimic the Grand Canyon. He had to see the Grand Canyon. He would. He had turned the corner. His clammy heart was warming.

He was slowly coming to understand that he was actually free to take youth's freedom. He saw the vision of America through which he might follow the trail like the pioneers whose spiritual descendant he was. How noble was the panorama that thrilled this one-generation American can be understood only by those who have smelled our brown soil,

not by the condescending gods from abroad who come hither to gather money by lecturing on our evil habit of money-gathering and returned to Europe to report that America is a land of Irish politicians, Jewish theatrical managers, and mining millionaires who invariably say, I swan to calculate all of them huddled in unfriendly hotels or in hobbles set on hopeless prairie, not such the Americans that lifted Carl's chin in wonder.

Cities of tall towers, tawny deserts of the southwest, and the flawless sky of cornflower blue over sagebrush, and painted butte, silent forests of the northwest. Golden China Dragons of San Francisco, old orchards of New England, the oily Gulf of Mexico, where tramp steamers puffed down to Rio, a snow-piled cabin among somber pines of northern mountains.

Elsewhere, elsewhere, elsewhere, beyond the skyline under larger stars where men ride jesting and women smile, names alluring to the American, he repeated. Shannon Doa, Santa Yanez, the little big horn, Baton Rouge, the Great Smokies,

Rappahannock, Arizona, Cheyenne, Mangahelia, Anders Grogan, Canyon, and Bayou, Sycamore and Mesquite, Broadway and El Camino Real. He hurled along into Blito. He went into Mrs. Hankles for supper. He smiled at the questions dumped upon him.

He faded answering. He took May Thurston aside and told her he was leaving Plato. He wanted to call on Professor Frazier, he did not dare. From a pleasant gentleman drinking tea, Frazier had changed to a prophet whom he revered. Carl darted into his room. The Turk was waiting for him. Carl cut short the Turk's apologies for not having supported Frazier with the dreadful curt pleasantness of an alienated friend,

and as he began packing his clothes in two old suitcases, insisted, "'It's all right. Was your biz whether you stood up in chapel or not?' He hunted diligently through the back of the closet for a non-existent shoe in order to get away from the shame-faced melancholy which covered the Turk when Carl presented him with all his books, his skis, and his pet hockey stick. He prolonged a search because it had occurred to him that, as it was now 11 o'clock,

The train north left at midnight. The Minneapolis train at 2 a.m. It might be well to decide where he was going when he went away. Well, Minneapolis and Chicago, beyond that, he'd wait and see. Anywhere. He could go anywhere in the world now. He popped out of the closet cheerfully. While the Turk mooned, Carl wrote short, honest notes to Gertie,

to his banker employer, to Benny Rusk, whom he addressed as friend Ben, he found himself writing a long and spirited letter to Bone Stillman, who came out of the backwater of ineffectuality as a man who had dared. Frankly, he wrote to his mother. His mammy, he wistfully called her. To his father he could not write. With quick thumps of his fist he stamped the letters, then glanced at the Turk.

He was gay, mature, business-like, ready for anything. I'll pull out in half an hour now, he chuckled. Gosh, sighed to Turk. I feel as if I were responsible for everything. Say, here's the letter I forgot to give. You came this afternoon. The letter was from Gertie. Dear Carl, I hear that you were standing for that Frazier

just as much as ever, and really, Carl, I think you might consider other people's feelings a little and not be so selfish. Without finishing it, Carl tore up the letter in a fury. Then, poor kid. Yes, she means, well, he thought, and made an imaginary bow to her, in farewell.

There was a certain amount of the milk of human kindness in the frozen husk he had for a time become, but he must be blamed for icily rejecting the Turks' blundering attempts to make peace. He courteously, courteously, between those two, declined the Turks' offer to help him carry his suitcase to the estation. That was like a slap. Goodbye.

Hang on, tidy said, as he stooped to the heavy suitcases and marched out the door without looking back. By some providence he was safe from the crime of chilly self-righteousness. On the darkness of the stairs he felt all at once how responsive a chum the Turk had been. He dropped the suitcases, not caring how they fell, rushed back into the room and found the Turk still staring at the door. He cried. Oh man, I was safe, you Yahoo!

Are you going to make me carry both my valises to the depot? They rushed off together, laughing, promising to write to each other. The Minneapolis train pulled out with Carl trying to appear commonplace. None of the sleepy passengers saw that the golden fleece was draped about him, or that under his arm, he bore the harp of Ulysses. He was merely a young man, taking a train at a way station. End of Part 1. Part 2, Chapter 13 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Lieber Vox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti,

Mike Vindetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis Chapter 13. There are today in the mind of Carl Erickson many confused recollections of the purposeless wanderings

which followed his leaving Plato College. For more than a year he went down, down in the social scale, down to dirt and poverty and association with the utterly tough and reckless. But day by day his young joy of wandering

matured into an ease and dealing with whatever man or situation he might meet. He missed the opportunity of becoming a respectable citizen which Plato offered. Now he did all the grubby things which Plato obligated, that her sons might rise to a place in society to $1,800 a year, and the possession of evening clothes and a knowledge of Greek. But the light danced more perversely in his eyes every day of his robing.

The following are the several jobs for which Carl first, applied in Chicago, all of the while frightened by the roar and creeping shadows of the city. Tutoring the children of a millionaire brewer, keeping time on the Italian and Polack washers of a window washing company, reporting on an Enveston newspaper, driving a taxi cab, a motor truck, keeping books for a suburban real estate firm. He had it ground into him as grit is ground into your face when you fall from a bicycle that everyone in the city of millions is too busy to talk to a stranger unless he sees a sound reason for talking. He changed the Geroloman dynamite's phrase,

except a position to get a job, and he got a job as Packer in the department store, big as the whole of Jerolaman. Since the street throngs had already come to seem no more personal and separable than the bricks in the buildings, he was not so much impressed by the crowds in the store as by the number of things for women to hang

upon themselves. He would ramble at lunchtime to stare at them and marvel. You can't beat it. From 8 till 1230 and from 1 till 6 or 7, during nearly two months Carl stood in a long brick-walled stuffing room, inundated by floods of things to pack, wondering why he had ever left Plato to become the slave of a swede foreman. The great world as he saw it through a tiny hole in one of the opaque wireglass window consisted of three bars of a rusty firescape landing against a yellow brick wall with a smudge of black on the wall below the landing. Within two days he was calling the packing room a prison, the ceaseless rattle of speckled gray wrapping paper, the stamp of feet on the gray cement floor, the greasy gray hair of the packer next to him, the yellow-stained,

cracked gray wash bowl that served for thirty men. Such was his food for dreams. Because Because his muscles were made of country earth and air, he distanced the packers from the slums. However, he became incredibly swift at nailing boxes and crates and smashing the heavy wrapping paper into shape about odd bundles. The foreman promised to make Carl his assistant. But on the cold December Saturday, when his elevation was due, he glanced out of a window. And farewell, all ambition as a packer. The window belonged to the Florida bakery and lunchroom, where Carl was chastely lunching.

There was dirty sawdust on the floor, six pine tables painted red, and adorned with ketchup bottles whose mouths were clotted with dried ketchup, and a long counter scattered with bread and white cakes and petrified rolls. Behind the counter, a snuffling, ill-natured fat woman in slippers, handed bags of cruellers to shrill-voiced children who came in with pennies. The table were packed, with overworked and underpaid men, to whom lunch was merely a means of keeping themselves from feeling, inconveniently empty, a state to which the lead-like vines of the Florida lunchroom were a certain

prevention. Carl was gulping down salty beef stew and bitter coffee served in handleless cups half an inch thick. Beside him, elbow jogging elbow, was a surly-faced man in overhauls. The old German waiters shoveled about and bawled, "'Eh, beef, vistin, and cheesecake!' dishes clattered incessantly. The sicky sweet scent of old pastry of coffee rings with stony serazins and buns smeared with dried coconut fibers, seemed to permeate even the bitter coffee. Carl got down most of his beef stew, attacked, and gave up a chunk of hard-boiled potato, and lighted a cheap Virginia cigarette.

He glanced out of a dirty window. Before it, making inquiries of a big, leisurely policeman was a slim, exquisite girl of 20, rosy-cheeked, smart of hat, impeccable. of gloves with fluffy white furs beneath her chin, which cuddled into the furs with a hint of a life, bright and spacious. She laughed as she talked to the policeman. She shrugged her shoulders with the exhilaration of winter and skipped away. Bet she'd be a peach to know. Fat chance I'd have to meet her wrapping up baby carriages for the North Shore commuters all day. All day. Well, guess I'm going to honorably discharge myself. He left the job that

afternoon. His satiny Norse cheeks shone as he raced home through a rising blizzard, after dinner at the Florida Larnchum, where he had allowed himself a ten-cent dessert for celebration. But when he lolled in his hall bedroom, with his eyes attracted

as usual to the three cracks in the blue-painted ceiling, which made a rough map of Africa, when he visioned lands where there were lions and desert instead of department store packages, his happiness wilted in face of the fact that he had only $10.42. With $8 do him from the store the following Tuesday, several times he subtracted to $3 he owed the landlady from the 1842, but the result persisted

in being only $15.42. He could not make $15.42 a pair reasonable sum with which to start life anew. He had to search for a new job that evening, only he was so tired. It was so pleasant to lie there with his sore feet cooling against the wall, picturing a hunt in Africa, with native servants bringing him things to eat, juicy steaks and French fried potatoes and gallons of ale, or a past which he may have been ignorant in assigning to the African jungles, but which seemed particularly well chosen, after a lunchroom dinner of watery corned beef hash, burnt German fried potatoes, and indigestible hot minced pie. Its thoughts drifted off to Plato, but Carl had a certain resoluteness, even in those loose days.

He considered the maneuvers for a new job. He desired one which would permit him to go to theaters with the girl in white furs whom he had seen that noon, the unknown fairy of his discontent. It may be noted that he took this life quite seriously, though he did not suppose that he was going to continue dwelling in a hall, bedroom, yet never did he regard himself as a collegian or in El Richard on an amusing masquerade, pretending to be no better than the men with whom he worked. Carl was no romantic hero incognito. He was a workman, and he knew it. Was not his father a carpenter, his father best friend

a tailor? Had he not been a waiter in Plato? But not always a workman. Carl had no conception of worldwide-class consciousness. He had no pride in being a proletarian. Though from Bones' musings and Fraser's lectures, he had drawn a vague optimism about a world syndicate of nations. He took it for granted that he was going to be rich as soon as he could. Job. He had to have a job. He got stiffly up from the iron bed, painfully drew on his shoes,

after inspecting the hole in the sole of the left shoe, and the ripped seam at the back of the right. He pulled tight the paper-thin overcoat which he had bought at a second-hand dealer's shop and dared a Chicago blizzard, with needles of snow thundering by on a 60-mile gale. Through a street of in utterably drab stores and saloons, he plowed to the unaligned taxi-cab company's garage. Felt lonely, cold, but he observed with ceaseless interest the new people, different people, who sloped by him in the dun web of the blizzard.

The American marveled at the recently immigrated Slavs, Astration Cap. He had hung about the unallied garage on evenings when he was too poor to go to vaudeville. He had become decidedly friendly with the night washer, a youngster from Minneapolis. Trotting up to the washer, who was digging cake snow from the shoes of a car, he blurted. Say, Coogan, I beat my job at, uh, how's chances of getting a taxi to drive? You know, I know the game. You? Driving a taxi?

Stammered the washer. Why say there was a guy that was a road tester for the Blucks company, and he got a cousin that knows Bathhouse John, and that guy with all his pull has been trying to get on driving here for the last six months, and he landed it. So you see about how much chance you got? Gosh, it don't look much like I had much chance, for fact. Tell you what I'll do, though.

Why don't you get on at some of the time? automobile factory and then you could ring in as a chauffeur as soon as you got some recommends you could take it to the ymc employment bureau the washer gouged at a clod of ice with his heel swore profusely and went on here you go over to the lone star motor company's office over on the salm monday and ask for bill coogan on the sales end he's my cousin and you tell him to give you a card to the foreman out at the works and i guess maybe you'll get a job all right. Tuesday morning, after a severe questioning by the foreman, Carl was giving a week's tryout without pay at the lodestar factory. He proved to be one of those much-sought freaks

in the world of mechanics, a natural filer. The uninspired filer, unaware of the niceties of the art, saws up and down, whereas the instinctive filer, like Carl, draws his file evenly across the metal and the result fits its socket truly. So, he was given welcome. paid twenty-five cents an hour and made full member of exactly such a gang as he had known at plato after he had laughed away the straw boss who tried to make him go and ask for a left-handed monkey ranch he roomed at machina's boarding-house and enjoyed the furious discussions over religion and the question of air versus water-cooling far more than he'd ever enjoyed the polite jesting at mrs hinkles he became friendly with the foreman of the repair shop and was promised a chance. While the driver who made the road tests of the cars was ill, Carl was called on as a substitute. The older workman warned him that no one could begin road testing so early and hold the job. But Carl happened to drive the vice president of the firm. He discussed bass fishing

in Minnesota with the vice president, and he was retained as a road tester, getting a chauffeur's license. Two months later, when he was helping in the overhauling of a car on the repair shop, he heard a full-bodied man with a smart English overcoat and a supercilious red face asked curtly of the shop foreman, where he could get a crack chauffeur right away, one that can give the traffic cops something to do for their money.

The foreman always stopped to scratch his chin when he had to think. This process gave Carl time to look up from his repairs and blindly remark, That's me. Want to try me? Half an hour later, Carl was engaged at $25 a week

as the ruddy one's driver. Before Monday noon he had convinced the Ruddy One that he was no servant but a mechanical expert. He drove the Ruddy One to his investments and securities office in the morning and back at five to restaurants in the evening, not infrequently with the wind whipping about the corners, he slept peacefully in the car till two in the morning outside a cafe, and he was perfectly happy.

He was at last seeing the great world. As he maneuvered along State Street, he rejoiced in the complications of the traffic and tooted his horn unnecessarily. As he waited before tall buildings at noon, he gazed up at them with a superior air of boredom because he was so boeously proud of being a part of all this titanic life that he was afraid he might show it.

He gloried in every new road in driving along the lakeshore where the horizon was bounded, not by unimaginative land, but by restless water. Then the ruddy one's favorite roads began to be familiar to Carl, too familiar, and he so hated his thought of an employer that he caught himself muttering while driving. Thank the Lord I sit in front and don't have to see that chunk of raw beefsteak he calls a neck. While he waited for the fifth time before a certain expensive but not exclusive roadhouse, with the bouncing giggles of girls inside spoiling the spring,

night, he studied the background as once he had studied his father's woodshed. He was not, unfortunately, shocked by wine and women, but he was bored by box trees. There was a smugly clipped box tree on either side of the carriage entrance, the leaves like cheap green lacquer in the glare of the arc light, which brought out all the artificiality of the gray and black cinder drive. He felt that five pilgrimages to even the best of box trees, were enough. It would be perfectly unreasonable for a free man to come here to stare at box trees a sixth time. All right, he growled. I guess my wandering boy tonight is going to beat it again. While he drove to the garage, he pondered. Is it worth 25 plunks to me to be able to beat

it tonight instead of waiting four days till payday? Nope, I'm a poor man. But at 5 a.m., he was hanging about the railroad yards at Hammond, recalling the lessons of youth in flipping trains, and at seven he was standing on the bumpers between two freight cars, clinging to the brake rod, looking out to the open meadows of Indiana, laughing to see farmhouses ringed with apple blossoms and sweet with April morning. The cinders stormed by him.

As he swung with the cars on curves, he saw the treacherous wheels grinding beneath him. But the clunk of chick, clunk of chick, Clunk a chick of the tracks, he hummed. Never turned back, never turned back, never turned back. End of chapter 13. Chapter 14 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Libravox recording is in the public domain,

recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 14. A young hobo named Carl Erickson crawled from the rods of an N&W freight car at Roanoke, Virginia, on a May day with spring at full tide and the Judas trees, a singing pink, on the slopes of the Blue Ridge. Hmm, glunted the young hobo.

I like these mountains, guess I'll stay here a while, Virginia. Plantations and Civil War history in Richmond and everything in me here. Frowsy old hobo poked a somnolent head up from a pile of lumber near the tracks, and yawned welcome to the recruit. Hello, Slim, how's tricks? Pretty good. What's the best section to batter for a poke-out, Billy? Do it right over that way, straight out.

Much obliged, said Slim. Firstwhile Erickson, say, do you know of any jobs in this? Any what's? Jobs. Jobs? You're looking for... Say, you beat it. Go on.

Chase yourself. Go on now. Don't stand there. You ain't no decent bow. You're none of those young for. fortune of workmen that's spoiling the proffish. The veteran stared at Carl reprovingly, yet with a little sadness, too, at the thought of how bitterly he had been deceived in this young comrade, and his uncombed head slowly vanished amid

the lumber. Carl grinned and started uptown. He walked into four restaurants. At noon and white jacket, he was bustling about his waiter in the dining room of the Owaska Homony Hotel, which had white service as a feature. Within two days, he was boon companion of a guest of the Waka Hominy, Parker High, an actor famous from Cape Charles to Shoxerville, now playing heavies at Roanoke in the Great Riley Tent Show,

presenting a popular repertory of famous melodramas under canvas, rain or shine, admittance, 25 cents, section reserved for color people, the best show under canvas this week only. When Parker High returned from the Thurbanes, theater. Carl sat with him in a room which had calico-like wallpaper, a sunken bed with a comforter, out of which oozed a bit of its soiled cotton entrails, a cracked water pitcher on a staggering washstand, and a beautiful new cuspidor of white china hand-painted with pink moss roses tied with narrow blue ribbon. Carl listened credulously to Hyes' confidences as to how jealous

was Riley, the actor-manager of Hye's art, now Hye, had knocked them all down in a stock company at Newport News and that E.H. Southern had said to him when they met in Richmond as guests of the Seven Pines Club. Say, Raspi, you're a smart young fellow, good-looking, educated. Why don't you try to get an engagement? I'll knock you down to Riley. The second juvenile's going to leave on Saturday, and there ain't hardly time to get anybody from Norfolk. Golly, that'd be great, cried Carl, who, like every human being since Eden, with the possible exceptions of Calvin and Richard Mansfield, had a secret belief that he could be a powerful actor. "'Well, I'll see what I can do for you,' said High at parting, alternately snapping his suspenders

and scratching his head. Though he was in his stocking feet and coatless, though the back of his neck was a scraggle of hair, Parker High was preferable to the three Swiss wist. waiters, snoring in the hot room under the eaves, with its door half open, opposite the half-open door of the room where Negro chambermaids tumbled and snorted an uncouth slumber. Carl's nose wrinkled with bitter fastidiousness as he pulled off his clothes, sticky with heat, and glared at the swathed forms of the waiters. He was the aristocrat among proletarians, going back to his own people of the great Riley Tent Show.

A second juvenile of the tent show, Carl received only $12 a week, but Mr. Ronnie made him promises rich as the Orient barrel and permitted him to follow the example of two of the bandsmen and pitch a cot on the trampled hay flooring of the dressing-room tent, behind the stage. There, also, Carl prepared breakfast on an alcohol stove. The canvas creaked all night,

Negroes and small boys stuck inquisitive heads under the edge of the canvas, but it was worth it, to travel on again, to have his mornings free except for an hour's rehearsal, to climb to upland meadows of Virginia and Kentucky, among the pines and laurel, and rhododendrum tramping up past the log cabins plastered with mud, where Pekinny's stared shyly, past Glens shining with dogwood and friendly streams. Once he sat for an hour on Easter knob, gazing through a distant pass whose misty blue, he pretended was the ocean. Once he heard there were moonshiners back in the hills.

He talked to bearded drunkards and their son bondeded wives, and when he found a Confederate veteran, he listened to the tale of the defense of Richmond, delighted to find that the boys in gray were not merely names in the history books. Of all these discoveries he wrote to his mother, wishing that her weary snow-bleached life might know the Southern Sun, and the first five dollars he saved,

he sent to her. But as soon as Carl became an actor, Parker Hay, grew jealous of him and was gratingly contemptuous when he showed him how to make up, among the cheap actors jammed in the men's dressing room before a pine board set on two saw-horses under the light of a flurring kerosene torch. Carl came to hate high,

and he splotched face his pale large eyes and yellow teeth and the bang on his forehead, his black string tie that was invariably a screw, his slovenly blue suit, his foppishly shaped tan button-down shoes with bulldog toes, high invariably jeered. Don't make up so heavy. Well, put a little rouge on your lips. What do you think you are, a blooming red-lipped venus?

Try to learn to walk across the stage like you had one leg that wasn't wood anyway. It's customary to go to sleep. when you're playing a listening role, but don't snore. Oh, you're a swell actor. Think of me swallowing your story about having been to college. Don't make up your eyebrows so heavy, you fool. Why you ever wanted to be an actor. The great Riley agreed with all that Hay said

and marveled with Hay that he had ever tried an amateur. Carl found the dressing room a hay dusty hell, but he enjoyed acting in the Willows Penny Alabama Anel, Moonshiner's daughter, and the Crook's Revenge, far more than he had enjoyed picking phrases out of Shakespeare at a vaguely remembered Plato. Since in Geroloman in Plato, he had been brought up on melodrama. He believed as much as he did the audience in the plays.

It was a real mountain cabin, from which he fired wonderfully loud guns in the Moonshiner's daughter, and when the old mountaineer cried, "'I ain't going to steal my gal,' Carl was damp at the eyes and swore with real fervor, the oath to protect the girl sure that in the ravine behind the backdrop his bearded foemen were lurking. The cook's revenge was his favorite, for he was cast as a young millionaire and wore evening clothes secondhand. He held off a mob of shrieking gangsters crouched behind an overturned table in a gambling den. He coolly stroked the lovely hair of the enjoin Miss Evelyn Leibouisei,

with one hand leveled a revolver, with the other, and made fearless jest the while to the infinite excitement of the audience, especially of the Hayahaya Hayan Negroes, whose faces under the flicker of lowered calcium carbide lights made a segregated strip of yellow-black polka-dotted, with white eyeballs. When the people were before him respectful to art under canvas, Carl could love them,

but even the tiniest raggedy breech darky was bold in his curiosity about the strolling players when they appeared outside, and Carl was self-conscious about the giggles and stares that surrounded him when he stopped on the street or went into the drugstore for the comfortable solace of a banana split. He was in a rage whenever a well-dressed girl peeped at him amusedly from a one-long runabout. The staring so flustered him

that even the pride of coming from Chicago and knowing about motors did not prevent his feeling feeble at the knees as he tried to stalk by the grinning motored aristocracy. He would return to the show tent to hate the few taughty drops and flats. The patch of greens spattered with dirty white which variously simulated a daisy field,

a mountainside, and that part of Central Park, directly opposite the Fifth Avenue residence of the millionaire counterfeiter, who, you will remember, always comes out into the street to plot with his confederates. Carl hated with peculiar heartiness, the enemic, palely varnished, folding garden bench, which figured now as a seat in the moonshiner's den, and now with a cotton leopard skin draped over it, as a foet in the luxurious drawing-room of Mrs. Van Antwerp, The garden bench was, however, associated with his learning to make stage love to Miss Evelyn

Laelouisi. It was difficult to appear unconscious of fifty small boys all smacking their lips in unison while they kissed the air one centimeter in front of Miss Leviso's lips, but he learned the art. Indeed, he began to lessen the centimeter for safety. Miss Evelyn Leesuey, Kristen, Lena, looked. and her presumptive to one of the best delicatessons in Newport News reveled in love-making on and off. Carr was attracted by her constantly, uncomfortably.

She smiled at him in the wings, smoothed her fluffy blonde hair at him, and told him in confidence that she was a high school graduate, that she was used to much, oh, much better companies, and was playing under canvas for a lark. She bubbled, "'Huck!' "'Louis, say, ain't it hot?' "'Honest, Mr. Erickson.

"'I don't see how you stand it like you do.' "'Say, honest, that was swell business "'you pulled in the third act last night. "'Say, I know what let's do. "'Let's get up a swell act and get on the peanut circuit. "'We'll hit Broadway with a noise like seventeen marine bands. "'Say, honest, Mr. Erickson, "'you'd do awful well for—'

I bet you ain't no amateur. I bet you've been on before. He devoured it. One night, finding that Miss Evelyn made no comment on his holding her hand, he lured her out of the tent during a long wait, trembled, and kissed her. Her fingers gripped his shoulders agitately, plucked at his sleeve, as she kissed him back, she murmured. Oh, you had not to do that.

But afterwards she would kiss him every time they were alone. and she told him with confidential giggles of Parker Hyde's awkward attempts to win her. Hayes' most secret notes she read till Carl seriously informed her that she was violating a trust. Miss Evelyn immediately saw the light and promised she would never, never, never do anything like that again. In honest, she hadn't realized she was doing anything desirable, but Hay was such an old pest, which was an excuse for her weeping on his shoulder and his kissing the tears away. All day he looked forward to their meetings,

yet constantly the law of the adventure, which means the instinct of practical decency, warned him that this was no more for him, that he must not make love where he did not love, that his good-hearted vulgarian was too kindly to tamper with and too absurd to love, only

And again his breath would draw in with swift exultation as he recalled how elastic were her shoulders to stroke. It was summer now, and they were back in Virginia. During the eastern shore, Carl the Prairie-born, had been within five miles of the open Atlantic, though he had not seen it. Along the endless flat, potato fields broken by pine groves under whose sultry shadow

Negro cabin sweltered, the heat clung persistently. The show tent was all. always filled with a stale scent of people. At the town of Nankawak, the hotel was not all it might have been. Evelyn La Ewece announced that she was good and sick of eating a vaudeville dinner with the grub axe stuck around your plate in a lot of bird bath-tubs, little masses of turnips and dab of spinach, and a fried cockroach. And when it comes to sleeping another night in a bed like a gridiron, no thank you.

And believe me, if I see that old Rube Hotel keeper comb his whiskers at the hall hat rack again, he keeps a baby comb in his vest pocket with a lead pencil and a cigar some drummer gave him. If I have to watch him comb that alfalf again, I'll bite his ears off and get pinched by the SPCA. With Miss Lubley, the old lady and complacent, unofficial chaperone of the show, Eve was going to imitate Carl and the two bandsmen. and sleep in the dressing-room tent, over half of which was devoted to women of the company. Every day Carl warned himself that he must go no further,

but every night, as Eve and he parted to sleep, with only canvas partition between them, he cursed the presence of the show chaperone, and the two bandsmen, always distressingly awake and talking till after midnight. A hot June night. The whole company had been invited to a dance at the UCV Hall, the two bandsmen were going, the chaperone, lively old lady with experience on the burlesque

circuit, was gaily going, Carl and Eve were not. It had taken but one glance between them to decide that. They sat outside the silent tent on a wardrobe trunk. What manner of night it was, whether starlit or sullen, Carl did not know. He was aware only that it was oppressive, and that Eve was in his arms in the darkness. He kissed her moist, hot neck. He babbled incoherently of the show people, but every word he said meant that he was palpitating because her soft body was against his. He knew, and he was sure that he knew,

that when they discussed high-string tie and pretended to laugh, they were agitately voicing their intoxication. His voice unsteady, Carl said, Jiminy, it's so hot, Eve. I'm going to take off the darn shirt and collar and put on a soft shirt. To say, why don't you put on a kimono or something?

Be so much cooler. Oh, I don't know as I ought to. She was frightened. Oz et. Like madness. Do you think it would be all right? Why not? Guess anybody's got a right to get cool night like this?

Besides, they won't be back till 4 a.m. And you got to get cool. come on. And he knew, and he was sure that she knew, that all he said was pretense. But she rose and said nebulously, as she stood before him, ruffling his hair, well, I would like to get cool. If you think it's all right. I'll put on something cooler anyway. She went. Carl could hear rustling in the women's end of the dressing-room tent. Fevered, he listened to it. Fevered, he changed to an outing shirt. opened at the throat.

He ran out not to miss a moment with her. She had not yet come. He was too overwrought to heed a small voice in him, a voice born of small fields, colored with sunset and trained in the quietudes of Henry Frasher's house, which insisted, Go slow, stop.

A lot of her voice throbbed like a pulsing in the artery of his neck. She's coming. Through the darkness, her light garment swished against the long grass. He sprang up. Then he was holding her, bending her head back, he exalted to find that his gripping hand was barred from the smoothness of her side only by thin silk that glided and warmed under his fingers.

She sat on his knees and snuggled her loosened hair, tingling against his bare chest. He felt that she was waiting for him to go on. Suddenly he could not, would not go on. Dearest, we mustn't, he mourned. Oh, Carl, she sighed. stopped, and stopped his word with clinging lips. He found himself waiting till she should finish the kiss that he might put an end to this.

Perhaps he was checked by provincial prejudice about chivalry, but perhaps he had learned a little self-control. In any case, he had stopped for a second to think, and the wine of love was gone flat. He wished she would release him. Also, her hair was tickling his ear. He waited patiently till she should finish the kiss. Her lips grew violently from his, and she accused,

"'You don't want to kiss me. Look here, I want to kiss you all right, Lord.' For a second his arms tightened. Then he went on cold. But we'll both be good and sorry if we go too far. It isn't just a cowardly caution. It's, oh, you know. Oh, yes, yes, yes, we mustn't go too far, Carl.

But can't we just sit like this? Oh, sweetheart, I am so tired. I want somebody to care for me a little. That isn't wicked, is it? I want you to take me in your arms and hold me close, close and comfort me. I want so much to be comforted. We needn't go any further, need we?

Oh, now, good Lord, Eve, look here. Don't you know we can't go on and not go further? I'm having a hard enough time. He sprang up, shakily lighting a cigarette. He stroked her hair and begged. Please go, Eve. I guess I haven't got very good control over myself. Please, you make me.

Oh, yes, yes, sure. Blame it on me, sure. I made you let me put on a kimono. I'm leading your pure, wide, shriveled peanut of a soul into temptation. Don't you ever dare speak to me again. Oh, you, you, she flounced away. Carl caught her in two steps. See here, child, he said gravely.

If you go off like this, we'll both be miserable. You remember how. happy we were driving out to the old plantation at Pasoen't. Oh, God, won't you men never say anything original? Remember it. Of course I remember it. What do you suppose I wore that little branch of laurel you picked for me? Wore it here, here on my breast, and I thought you care if I hid it there,

where there wasn't any grease paint, and you don't, you don't care. And we picnic, and I sang all the time. I put up those sandwiches and hid the grapefruit in a basket to surprise. you. Darling, Eve, I don't know how to say how sorry I am, so terribly sorry. I've started things going. It is my fault. But can't you see I've got to stop it before it's too late, just for that reason. Let's be chums again. She shook her head. Her hand crept to his, slid over it, drew it up to her breast. She was swaying nearer to him. He pulled his hand free and fled to his tent. Perhaps his fiercest jibed himself was that he,

had to play the role of Virgin Galahad, rejecting love, which is praised in books and ridiculed in clubs. He mocked at his sincere desire to be fair to Eve, and between mockeries he strained to hear her moving beyond the canvas partition. He was glad when the bandsman came erupting home from the dance. Next day she went out of her way to be chilly to him. He did not woo her friendship. He had resigned from the great Riley Show, and he was going, going. Going anywhere as long as he kept going. End of Chapter 14. Chapter 15 of the Trail of the Hawk.

This Labor Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 15. He had been a jolly mechanic again in denim overalls, and jumper and a defiant black skull cap with a long, shiny visor. The tender of the motorboat fleet at an Ontario summer hotel, one day he had looked up, sweating and greasy,

to see Howard Griffin of Plateau, parading past in white flannels. He had muttered, I don't want them to know I've just been bumming around. I'll go someplace else. And I'll do something worthwhile. Now he was on the train for New York, meditating and personally on his uselessness,

considering how free of moss his rolling had kept him. He could think of no particularly masterful plan for accumulating moss. If he had not bought a ticket through to New York, he would have turned back to seek a position in one of the great automobile factories that now, this early autumn of 1906, were beginning to distinguish Detroit.

Well, he had enough money to last for one week in New York. He would work in an automobile agency there. Later, he would go to Detroit and within a few years be president of a motor company, rich enough to experiment with motorboats and to laugh at Howard Griffin or any other plutonian. So he sketched his conquering entrance into New York.

Unfortunately, it was an evening, and having fallen asleep in Poughkeepske, he did not awake till the brakeman shook his shoulder at the Grand Central Station. He had heard of the old Grand Union Hotel and drowsily, with the stuffy nose and sandy eyes an unclean feeling about the teeth that overpower one who sleeps in a smoking car, he staggered across to the hotel and spent his first conquering night

in filling a dollar room with vulgar sounds of overweary slumber. But in the morning, when he started along 42nd Street, when he breakfasted at Child's restaurant, like a gigantic tiled bathroom, and realized that the buckwheat cakes were New York buckwheat's. When he cited the Noble Times building and struck out for Broadway, the magic name that promised marble palaces, even if it provided two-story shacks.

When he bustled into a carburetor agency and demanded a job, then he found the gateway of wonder. But he did not find a job. Eight nights after his arrival, he quietly paid his bill at the hotel, tipped a curly-headed bellboy, checked his baggage, which consisted of a shirt, a razor, in an illustrated catalog of automobile accessories,

put his toothbrush in his pocket, bought an evening paper in order to feel luxurious, and walked down to the Charity Organization Society with 10 cents in his pocket. In the Joint Application Bureau, filled with desks and filing cabinets, where poor men ceased to be men and become cases, Carl waited on a long bench

till it was his turn to tell his troubles to a keen, kindly, gray-bearded man behind him. a roll-top desk. He asked for work. Work was, it seemed, the one thing the society could not give. He received a ticket to the municipal lodging house. This was not a hygienic hostelry of today, but a barracks on First Avenue. Carl had a chunk of bread with too much soda in it, and coffee with too little coffee in it, from a contemptuous parsonage in a white jacket who, though his cuffs were grimy, showed plainly that he was too good. to wait on bombs.

Carl leaned his elbows on the long scrub table and chewed the bread of charity sullenly, resolving to catch a freight next day and get out of town. He slept in a narrow bunk near a man with consumption. The room reeked of disinfectants and charity. The east side of New York are whirlwind of noise and smell and hovering shadows, the jargon of Jewish matrons in brown shawls

and orthodox wigs, shaffering for cabbages and black cotton stockings and gray woolen undershirts with excitable push-cart proprietors who had beard so prophetic that it was startling to see a frivolous cigarette among the river in Maine. The scent of fried fish and decaying bits of kosher meat and hallways as damnably rotten as floor as they were profitable to New York's nicest circles. The tall gloom of six-story tenements that made a pretty pretty

prison wall of dulled yellow bristling with bedding piled, fire escapes, and the curious heads of frowsy women, a potpourri of Russian signs, Yiddish newspapers, synagogues, with six-pointed gilt stars, bakeries with piles of rye bread crawling with caraway seeds, shops for renting wedding finery that looked as if it could never fit anyone, second-hand furniture shops with folding iron beds, a filthy baby holding a baby slightly younger and filthier, mangy cats, slinking from pile to pile of rubbish, and a withered geranium in a tin can whose label was hanging loose and showed rust stains amid the dry paste on its back. Everywhere crowds of vulnerable Jews and dark clothes and noisily playing children that catapulted into your legs, the longer

blocks in which we train the victims of Russian tyranny to appreciate our freedom, a whirlwind of alien ugliness and foul smells and incessant roar, and the death-listing ambition of young Jews to know Ibsen and syndicalism. It swamped the courage of hungry Carl as he roamed through Rivington Street in Essex and Hester, vainly seeking jobs from shopkeepers too poor to be able to bathe. He felt that he, not these, matter-of-fact crowds, was alien. He was hungry and tired. There was nothing heroic to do, just go hungry. There was no place where he could sit down. The benches of the tiny, hard-trutton part, were full. If he could sit down, if he could rest one little hour, he would be able to go

and find freight yards where there would be the clean clang of bells and rattle up trucks instead of garbled Yiddish. Then he would ride out into the country, away from the brooding shadows of this town, where there were no separable faces, but only a fog of ceaselessly moving crowds. Late that night he stood aimlessly, talking to a hobo on a dirty corner of the Bowery, where the early September rain drizzled through the gaunt structure of the elevated. He did not feel the hunger so much now, but he was meekly glad to learn from his new friend, the hobo, that in one more hour he could get food in the breadline. He felt very boyish, and would have confided the fact that he was starving to any woman,

to anyone but this transcontinental hobo, the tramp royal, trained to scorn hunger. Because he was one of them he watched incuriously, the procession of vagrants, in coats whose collars were turned up and fastened with safety pins against the rain. The vagrants shuffled rapidly by, their shoulders hunched, their hands always in their trouser pockets, their shoe heels always ground down and muddy. and incuriously he watched the saloon keeper whose face was plastered over with a huge mustache come out and hang a sign. Porter wanted N.m. on the saloon door. As he slouched away to join the breadline, a black deuce in the world's discard,

Carl was wondering how he could get that imperial appointment as Porter in a Bowery saloon. He almost forgot it while waiting in the breadline so occupied was he in, hating two collegians, who watched the line with that open curiosity which, nice, clean, respectable young men, suppose the poor never notice. He restrained his desire to go over and quote Greek at them because they were ignorant, and not to blame for being sure that they were of clay superior to anyone in the breadline, and partly because he had forgotten his Greek. He came back to the Bowery briskly, alone with the manhood of a loaf,

of bread in him. He was going to get that job as Porter. He planned his campaign as a politician plans to become a statesman. He slipped the sign, Porter wanted in a.m. from its nail and hit it beneath his coat. He trapped the block all night, and as suspicious characters always do to avoid seeming suspicious, he begged a match from a policeman who was keeping an eye on him. The policeman chatted with him about baseball and advised him to keep away from liquor and missions. At 5 a.m., Carl was standing at the saloon door. When the bartender opened it, Carl bounced in, slightly dizzy, conscious of the slime of mud on his fraying trouser ends. The saloon had an air of cheap crime and a floor covered with clotted sawdust.

The bar was the slab of dark brown wood so worn that semicircles of slivers were showing. The nasty gutter was still filled with cigarette ends and puddles of beer and bits of free lunch cheese. "'What that job as Porter?' said Carl. "'You do, do you? Well, you wait and see who else comes to get it. Nobody else is coming to come.' "'How do you know they ain't?' Carl drew the sign from beneath his coat

and carefully laid it on the bar. That's why.' "'Well, you got nerve. You got the nerve of a Republican on 14th Street, like the fellow says. You must want it. Well, all right. I guess you can have it if the boss don't kick.

Carl was accepted by the boss who gave him a quarter and told him to go out and get a regular feed. He hummed over breakfast. He had been accepted again by all men when he had been accepted by the proprietor of a Bowery saloon. He was going to hold this job no matter what happened. The Rolling Stone was going to gather moss. For three months, Carl took seriously the dirtiest things in the world. world. He worked 16 hours a day for $8 a week, cleaning Cuspidors, scrubbing the floor, scattering clean sawdust, cutting the more rotten portions off the free lunch meat. As he sloped

about the half-frozen brittle rags, hobos pushed him aside and spat on the floor. He had just cleaned. Of his $8 a week, he saved four. He rented an air shaft bedroom in the flat of a Jewish sweatshop, worker for $1.75 a week. It was occupied daytime by a cook in an all-night restaurant who had taken a bath in 1900 when at Coney Island on an excursion of the Pip O'Killigan Association. The room was unheeded and every night during January, Carl debated whether to go to bed with his shoes on or off. The sub-landlord's daughter was a dwarfish, blotched-faced, passionate child of With moist eyes and very low-cut wastes, of course, foyle, which she pronounced voile, she would stop Carl in the dark, railroad hallway, and chewing gum rapidly chatter about the

isleman at Warman's, and what a small time there would be at the coming ball of the Thomas J. Monaghan Literary and Social Club, tickets 25 cents for Lady and Gent, including hat-check. She let Carl know that she considered him close-fisted for me. never taking her to the movies on Sunday afternoons. But he patted her head and talked to her like a big brother and kept himself noticing that she had clinging hands and would be rather pretty. And he bought her a wholesome woman's magazine to read, not an entirely complete solution to the problem of what to do with the girl

whom organized society is too busy to nourish. But the best he could contrive just then. Sundays, when he was free for part of the day, he took his book of recipes. for mixed drinks to the reading room of the Tompkins Square Library and gravely studied them, for he was going to be a bartender. Every night when he staggered from the comparatively clean air of the street into the fetid chill of his room,

he asked himself why he, son of northern tamaracts and quiet books, went on with this horrible imitation of living. And each time answered himself that, whether there was any real reason or not, he was going to make good on one job, at least, and that the one he held, and admonished himself that he was very well paid for a saloon porter. If Carl had never stood in the bread line,

if he had never been compelled to clean a saloon gutter artistically, in order to keep from standing in that breadline, he would surely have gone back to the commonplace in this, from which everyone except Boone Stillman and Henry Frazier had been assuredly training him all his life. They who knew how naturally life runs on in any sphere will understand that Carl did not at this time feel that he was debased. He lived 24 hours a day and kept busy,

with no more wonder at himself than is displayed by the professional burglar or the man who devotes all his youth to learning Greek or soldiering. Nevertheless, the work itself was so much less desirable than driving a car or wandering through the moonlight with Eve La Eweecee. In days wonderful and lost that, to endure it, to conquer it. He had to develop a control over temper and speech and body, which was to stay with him in windy mornings of daring. Within three months, Carl had become assistant barkeeper,

and now he could save $8 a week. He bought a couple of motor magazines and went to one vaudeville show and kept his sub-landlord's daughter from running off with a cadet, wondering how soon she would do it in any case, and receiving a depressing insight into the efficiency of society for keeping in the mire most of the people born there. Three months later at the end of winter, he was ready to start for Panama. He was going to Panama because he had read in a Sunday newspaper

of the canal's marvels of engineering and jungle. He had avoided making friends. There was no one to give him. farewell when he emerged from the muck. But he had one task to perform, to settle with the saloon snobb. Petey McGuff was the name of this creature. He was an oldish and wicked man born on a Bowery. He had been a heavyweight prize fighter in the days of John L. Sullivan. Then he had met John, and been ever since an honest crook, who made an excellent living by conducting a boxing school in which the real work was done by assistance. He resembled a hound with a neat,

black bow tie, and he drooled tobacco juice down his big, raw-looking, moist, bristly, two-masculine chin. Every evening from eleven to midnight, Pedy McGub, sat at the round table in the mildewed corner at the end of the bar, drinking old-fashioned whiskey cocktails made with Berman, playing Canfield, staring at the nude models plastered on the milky surface of an old mirror and teasing Carl. Here, boy, come here and wipe off the whiskey you spilled. Come on, you tissy cat.

Get on the job. You look like Sunday school hairy, mommy little rosy-cheek boy. Someday I'm going to bust your beaser. God, it makes me sick to sit here and look at those goy, golly, coolly cheeks. Come here, Lizzie, and wipe this table again. On the jump, daughter. Carl held himself in. Hundreds of times he snarled to himself.

I won't hit him. I will make good on this job anyway. He created a grin which he could have fixed easily. Now he was leaving. He had proven that he could hold a job. Had answered the unspoken criticism from Plato, from Chicago garages from the Great Riley Show. For the first time since he had deserted college,

he had been able to write to his father to answer the grim carpenter's unspoken criticisms of the son who had given up his chances for an education. And proudly he had sent to his father a little check. He had a beautiful new $15 suit of blue serge at home. In his pocket was his ticket, steerage by the P.R. line to Cologne. And he would be off for blue water next noon.

His feet danced behind the bars as he filled schooners of beer and scraped off their foam with a celluloid ruler. He saw himself in Panama with a clean man's job, talking to cosmopolitan engineers against the background of green and scarlet jungle. And, oh yes, he was going to beat Peter McGuff that evening and get back much of the belligerent self-respect, which he had been drawing off into schooners with the beer. Old Pity rolled in at two minutes past eleven,

warmed his hands at the gas stove, poked disapprovingly at the pretzels on the free lunch counter, and bawled at Carl. Hey, you'll keep away from that cash register. Wipe them golly's tears away, will you, hang us? And bring us a little health destroyer in a couple of matches. Carl brought a whiskey cocktail. Where's the matches, you tissy cat?

Carl wiped his hands on his apron and beamed. Well, so the old soak is getting too fat and lazy to reach over the bar and get his own. You'll last quick now. Oh, is that so for de love of Mike? Do you mean to tell me Lizzie is talking back? What do you know about that? What do you know about that? You'll get sick on us here.

First thing we know. When was you hoided? Peter McGaff's smile was absolutely friendly. He made Carl hesitate, but it has become one of the principles of cosmic ethics that he had to thump Pedy, and he growled. I'll give you all the talking back you want, you big stiff. I'm getting through tonight.

I'm going to Panama. Oh, straight is that? That's what I said. Well, that's fine, boy. I've been watching you, and I see you wasn't cut out to be no saloon porter. I made a little bit with myself. You was educated. Why, your cuffs ain't even dooty, not very dooty.

Of course you kind of need a shave, but them little blonde hairs don't show much. I seen you as a gentleman, even if the bums didn't. You're too good to be a rum peddler. Glad you're going, boy, mighty glad. Sit down and tell us about it. We'll miss you here. I was just saying the other night to Mike here, there ain't one fella in one hundred could a stood the kidding from an old he won like me.

kept his mouth shut and grinned and he said nothing to nobody that's what wins fights but say boy i'll miss you i sure will i get to be kind of lonely as the boys drop off like boosers always does oh hell i won't spill me troubles like an old tissy cat so are you going to panama i want you to sit down and tell me about it what's you taken boy just a cigar i'll miss you too, Petty. Tell you what I'll do. I'll send you some postcard from Panama. Next noon as the SS Panama pulled out of her ice-line dock Carl saw an old man, shivering on the war and frantically waving goodbye. Petey McGuff. End of Chapter 15. Chapter 16 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 16 The SS Panama had passed Waddling's Island and steamed into storyland. On the white scrub decked, after the wheelhouse, Carl sat with his friends of the steerage, dirty men, all, used to open places, old Ed, the rock-driller, long, Irish, huge-handed, irate kindly. Harry, the young mechanic from Cleveland.

Ed and an oiler were furiously debating about the food of "'Ah, it's rutting, all of it. "'Look here, Ed. "'How about the chicken they give the steerage on Sunday?' "'Chicken? I didn't see no chicken. "'I see some seagulls, though. "'No wonder there ain't no seagulls following us. "'They shot him, cooked them on us.

"'Say,' mused Harry, "'make me think of when I was shipbuilding in Philly. "'No, it was when I was broke in K.C. and a guy.' "'Carl smiled in content, "'exulting in the talk of the men of the road, exulting in his new blue-surge suit, his new silver-gray tie with no smell of the saloon about it, fingernails that were growing pink again,

and the sunset that made glorious his petty prides. A vast plain of unrippling plum-colored sea was set with mirror-like pools, where floated tree branches so suffused with the light that the gladheart blessed them. His first flying fish leaped silvery from, from the Silver Sea and Carl cried almost aloud. This is what I've been waiting for all my life.

Aloud to Harry, say, what's it like in Kansas? I'm going down through there someday, he spoke harshly. But the real Carl was robed in light and murmurous wake of evening with the tropics down the skyline. Lying in his hot steerage bunk, stripped to his undershirt, Carl peered through the state room, window to the swishing night sea, conscious of the rolling of the boat of the engine shaking her, of bolts studding the white iron wall, of life preservers over his head, of stokers singing on

the gangway as they dumped the clinkers overboard, the Panama was pounding on, on, on, and he rejoiced. This is just what I wanted, always. They are creeping in toward the wharf at Cologne. He is seeing Panama, first a point of palms, then the hospital, the Red Ruffs of the ICC quarters at Christopal, and Negroes on the sun-blistered wharf. At last, he is free to go to shore in Wonderland, a melody of Cologne and Christopal, Panama, and the Canal Zone of 1907. Spaghetti policemen like monkeys chattering bad Spanish, and big-smiling canal zone policemen in khaki with the air of soldiers.

Jamaica Negroes with the conical heads and brown barbadoes Negroes, they grows with cockney accents. English engineers and lordly puggries and tourists from New England who seem servants of their own tortoiseshell spectacles. Comfortable Ebbin mammies with silver bangles and kerchiefs of stabbing scarlet dressed in starched pink and blue gingham,

vendig guavas and green tobaga island pineapples. Carl Gapes at Panamanian nuns in Chilean consuls, French peasant laborers, and indigent Irish foreman and German concessionaires with dueling scars and high collars. Gold, Spanish signs and spigatory money and hotels with American cuspidors and job hunters,

tin roofs and arcades. Shops open to the street in front, but mysterious within, giving glimpses of the canny Chinese proprietors, smoking tiny pipes, trains from towns along canal, and sometimes the black funeral car, bound for Monkey Hill Cemetery.

Gambling houses. where it is considered humorous to play, Where is my wandering boy tonight? On the phonograph while wandering boys sit at poker and less cleanly places named after the various states. Negro wenches in yellow calico dancing to fiddle tunes older than voodoo, Indian planters coming sullenly in with pale green bananas, memories of the Spanish mane,

and Morgan's braid of pieces of aid in cutlass hoe, capes of coconut palms running into a welcome, of surf, hutson piles streaked with moss, round whose bases land crabs scuttle with a dry rattling that carries far in the hot, moist, still air, and suggest the corpses of disappeared men found half devoured. Then for contrast, the transplanted north, with its seriousness about the service, the American avenues and cool breezes of Christobal, where fatball chiefs of the ICC drive pompously with political guests who in 1907 are still incredulous about the success of the military socialism of the canal, and where wives, from Oklahoma or Boston, seated in Grand Rapids Golden Oak Rockers

on the screen porches of bungalows, talk of hats and children, and mail orders, and cards, and the colonel, and malaria fever, and Chiquita, and the colubrit slide, colonel, a kaleidoscope of crimson and green and dazzling white, warm-hued peoples and sizzling roofs, with echoes from the high endeavor of the canal and whispers from the unknown bush, drenched with sudden rain like escaping steam, or languid under the desert glare of the sky, where hangs a gyre of buzzards whose slow circles are stiller than death and calmer than wisdom. Lord, sighs Carl Erickson from Jeroleman, this is what I've wanted ever since I was a kid.

At Pedro Miguel, which the canal employees always called Peter McGill, he found work, first as an unofficial timekeeper, presently after examinations as a stationary engineer on the role of the ICC. Within a month, he showed no sign of his Bowery experiences beyond a shallow hollow and his smooth cheeks. He lived in quarters like a college dormitory, communistic and jolly, littered with shoes and cube-cut tobacco and college banners, clean youngsters, dropping in for an easy chat,

and behind it all, the mystery of the bush. His roommate, a conductor on the P.R.R. was a globetrotter. And through him, Carl met the adventurers whom he had been questing ever since he had run away from Oscar Erickson's woodshed. There was a young engineer from Boston Tech, who swore every morning at 707, when it rained boiling water, as enthusiastically as though it had never done such a thing before, that he was going to Chihuahua mining.

There was Cockay Corbett, an ex-sailer who was a moral and a lacquer shemen, and knew more about blackbirding and copra and Kenax, and the rum-holes from Nagasaki to Mambosa, then it is healthy for a civil servant to know. Every Sunday, a sad-faced man with ash-colored hair and bony fingers, who had been a lieutenant in a lieutenant in a man, a Peruvian Navy, a teacher in St. John's College, China, and a subcontractor for railroad construction in Montana, and who was now a minor clerk in the cool, lofty offices of the

Materials and Supply Department, came over from Cologne, relaxed in a tilted back chair, and fingered the Masonic charm on his horsehair watchguard. While he talked with the PRR conductor and the others about Ruby hunting and the relief of Peking, and where is Hector MacDonald and is John Orth dead, and shall we try to climb Chimbingbazo, and chesuit guns in pig-sticking and Swahili tribal lore? These were a few of the topics regarding which he had inside information. The other drawled about various strange things which make a man discontented and bring him no good.

Carl was a full member of the circle because of his tales of the Bowery and the Great Riley Show, and because he pretended. to be rather an authority on motors for dirigible, about which he read in aeronautics at the YMCA reading room. It is true that at this time early 1907, the rights were still working in obscurity, unknown even in their own Dayton, though they had a completely successful machine stowed away,

and as yet Glenn Curtis had merely developed a motor for Captain Baldwin's military dirigible. But Langley and Maxim had endeavored to launch power-driven heavy than air machines. Lively Santos Dumont had flipped about the Eiffel Tower and his dirigible and actually raised himself from the ground in a ponderous aeroplane. And in May 1907, a sculptor named Delrange flew over 600 feet in France. Various crank inventors were solving the problem of flight every day. Man was fluttering on the edge of his earthly nest, ready to plunge into the air. Carl was able to make technical sounding predictions, which

caught the imagination of the restless children. The adventurers kept moving. The beach-combing ex-sailer said that he was starting for Valparaiso, started for San Domingo, and landed in Tahiti, whence he sent Carl one postcard worded, What price, TT? The engineer from Boston Tech kept his oath about mining in Chihuahua. He got the appointment as assistant superintendent of the Trace Rees mine,

and he took Carl with him. Carl reached Mexico and breathed the air of high-lying desert and hill. He found rare days purposeless and wonderful as the voyagers of ancient Norse Erickson's, days of learning Spanish and sitting quietly balancing a 3220 Marlin, waiting for bandits to attack, the joy of repairing machinery and helping to erect a new crusher, nursing peons with broken legs, and riding cow ponies down black mountain trails at night

under an exhilarating splendor of stars. It never seemed to him that the machinery desecrated the mountains during grandeur. Stolen hours he gave to a building of box kites with cambered wings after rapturously learning. In the autumn

of 1908 that in August a lanky American mechanic named Wilbur Wright had startled the world by flying an aeroplane many miles publicly in France that before this on July 4, 1908, another Yankee mechanic Glenn Curtis had covered nearly a mile for the Scientific American Trophy,

after a series of trials made in company with Alexander Graham Bell, J. A. D. McCurdy, Casey Baldwin, and Augustus Post. He might have gone on until death, dealing with excitable greasers and hysterical machinery, but for the coming of a new mine superintendent, one of those Englishmen, stolid red mustache, pipe-smoking, eyebrow lifting, who at first seemed beefily dull, but proved to have known everyone from George Moore to Marconi. He inspected Carl hundreds of times, then told him that the period had come

when he ought to attack a city, conquer it, build up her reputation, cumulatively, that he needed a contrast to plutonians and Bowery bums and tropical tramps, and even to his beloved engineers. You can do everything but order a petite d'Orie A-Dou, but you must learn to do that too. Go make 10,000 pounds and study Palm Hall and the boulevards and then come back to us in Mexico. I'll be sorry to have you go. With your damned old silky hair like a woman's and your wink like guitar is when it comes up here to threaten us. But don't let the hinterland enslave you too early.

A month later, in January 1909, age 23 and a half, Carl was steaming out of El Paso for California. with $1,000 in savings of beautiful new Stetson hat and an ambition to build up a motor business in San Francisco. As the desert sky swam with orange light and a white-browed woman in the seat behind him hummed Merseta's song from the Bohemi. He was homesick for the outlanders, whom he was deserting that he might stick for 20 years in one street and grub out a hundred thousand dollars.

End of Chapter 16. Chapter 17 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Lieberbox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 17. On a grassy side street of Oakland, California, was Jones and Erickson's garage,

gasoline repairs, motorcycles and bicycles for rent, Oakland agents for Bristol Moignitos. It was perhaps, Perhaps the cleverest garage in Oakland in Berkeley for the quick repairing of motorcycles and newlywed owners of family runabouts swore that Carl Erickson could make a carburetor out of a tomato can

and even be agreeable when called on for repairs at 2 a.m. He had doubled Old Jones's business during the nine months, February to November 1909, that they had been associated. Carl believed that he thought of nothing but work and the restaurants and theaters of civilization, no more rolling for him until he had gathered moss.

He played that he was a confirmed businessman. The game had hypnotized him for nearly a year. He whistled as he cleaned plugs and glanced out at the eucalyptus trees in the sunny road without wanting to run away. But just today, just this glorious rain-cleans November day, with high blue skies and sunlight on the sunlight feathery pepper trees. He was going to sneak away from work and have a celebration all by

himself. He was going down to San Mateo to see his first flying machine. November 1909. Blois had crossed the English Channel McCurdy had in March 1909 calmly pegged off 16 miles in the silver dart biplane. Poulin had gone 81 miles and had risen to the incredible height of 500 feet, to be overshadowed by overright 1600 feet, Glenn Curtis had won the Gordon Bennett Cup at Rames. California was promising to be the van of aviation. She was remembering that her own Montgomery had been one of the pioneers. Los Angeles was planning a giant meet in January.

A dozen cow pasture aviators were taking credulous young reporters, aside and confiding that next day or next week, or at latest, next month. they would startle the world by ascending in machines on entirely new and revolutionary principles on which they had been working for ten years. Sometimes it was for eight years they had been working. But in always, they remarked that the model from which the machine will be built

has flown perfectly in the presence of some of the most prominent men in the locality. These machines had a great deal to do with the mysterious qualities of gyroscopes and helicopters. Now, Dr. Josiah Bagby, the San Francisco physician and oil-burning marine engine magnet, had really brought three genuine Bloid monoplanes from France, with Carmel, graduate of the Bolloyt School, and licensed French aviator for working pilot, and was experimenting with them at San Mateo near San Francisco, where the grandsons of the 49ers play polo. It had been rumored that he would open a school for pilots,

and build Bolloyte-type monoplanes for the American market. Carl had lain awake for an hour the night before picturing the wonder of flight that he hoped to see. He rose early, put on his politest garments, and informed grumpy old Jones that he was off for a frolic. He wasn't sure, he said, whether he would get drunk or get married. He crossed the bay, glad of the seagulls, the glory of Mount Tamopias, and San Francisco's hill behind Ferry Hill. He consumed a Pacific Sunday with the feeling of holiday and hummed Mandalay. On the trolley to San Mateo, he read over and over the newspaper account of Bagby's monoplanes. Walking through San Mateo, Carl swung his cocky green hat and scanned the sky for aircraft.

He saw none. But as he tramped out on the flying field, he began to run at the sight of two wide cambered wings, rounded at the ends like the end of one's thumb attached to a fragile, belong body. of open framework. Men were gathered about it, a man with a short, crisp beard, and a tight woolen toboggan cap was seated in the body, the wings stretching on either side of him. He scratched his beard and gesticulated.

A mechanic revolved a propeller, and the unmuffled motor burst out with it. Whose music rocked Carl's heart. Black smoke hurled back along the machine. The draught tore at the hair of two men crouched on the ground, holding the tail. They let go. The monoplane ran forward along the ground and suddenly was off it. A foot up, ten feet up, really flying. Carl could see the aviator calmly staring ahead, working his arms as the machine turned and slipped away over distant trees.

His first impression of an aeroplane in the air had nothing to do with birds or dragonflies or the miracle of it because he was completely absorbed in an impression of Carl Erickson. which he expressed after this wise, I am going to be an aviator. And later, yes, that's what I've always wanted. He joined the group in front of the hangar tent. Working men were hammering on wooden sheds back of it. He recognized the owner Dr. Bagby from his pictures.

A lean man of sixty with a sallow complexion, a gray mustache, like a rat tail, a broad black, countryified slouch hat. On the back of his head, a gray sack suit which would have been respectable but unfashionable at any period whatsoever. He looked like a country lawyer who had served two terms in the state legislature. His shoes were black but not blackened, and had no toecaps, the comfortable shoes of an oldish man.

He was tapping his teeth with a thin, corded forefinger and remarking in a monotonous voice to a Mexican youth plump and polite and well-dressed. Well, Tony, I guess those plugs were better. I guess those plugs were better, eh? Bagby turned to the others, marvelled at them as if trying to remember who they were and said slowly, I guess those plugs were all right, eh? The monoplane was returning for a time apparently not moving like a black mark painted on the great blue sky, then soaring overhead the sharply cut outlines clear as a pen and ink drawing,

then landing, bouncing on the slightly uneven ground. As the French aviator climbed out, Dr. Bagby's sad face brightened, and he suggested, Those plugs went better, monseur, eh? I've been thinking, maybe you've been giving her too rich a mixture. While they were wiping the gnome engine, Carl shyly approached Dr. Bagby. He felt frightfully an outsider, wondered if he could ever be intimate with the magician, as was the plump Mexican youth they called Tony. He said,

"'Ah?' "'Once or twice and blurted. "'I want to be an aviator.' "'Yes, yes,' said Dr. Bagby, gently, glancing away from Carl to the machine. He went over, twanged a supporting wire, and seemed to remember that someone had spoken to him. He returned to the fevered Carl, walking sideways,

staring all the while at the resting monoplane, so efficient yet so quiet now and slender and feminine. Yes, yes, so you'd like to be a little. an aviator. So you'd like, like, hey boy, don't touch that, to be an aviator. Yes, yes. They all would, my boy. They all would. Well, maybe you can be some day. Maybe you can be, someday. I mean now, right away. I heard you were going to start a school, want to join. Mm-hmm, signed Dr. Bagby, tapping his teeth, jingling his heavy gold watch chain, brushing a trail of cigar ashes from a lapel,

then staring abstractly at Carl who was turning his hat swiftly round and round so flushed of cheeks so excited to buy that he seemed twenty instead of twenty-four. Yes, yes, so you'd like to join. But that would cost you five hundred dollars, you know. Right. Well, you go talk to Monsieur about it.

Monsieur Cameroo. He is a very good aviator. He is a licensed. aviator. He knows Henry Farman. He studied under Berloid. He is the boss here. I'm just the poor old fellow that stands around. Sometimes Monsor takes me up for a little ride on our machine. Sometimes he takes me up, but he is the boss. He is the boss, my friend. You'll have to go see him. And Dr. Bagby walked away, apparently much discouraged about life. Carl was not discouraged about life. He swore that now he would be an aviator even if he had to go to Dayton or Hammondsport or France.

He returned to Oakland. He sold his share in the garage for $1,150. Before the end of January, he was enrolled as a student in the Bagby School of Aviation and Monoplin Building. On an impulse, he wrote of his wondrous happiness to Gertie Cowles, but he tore up the letter. Then proudly, he wrote to his father that the lost boy found himself. For the first time in all his delusatory writing of home letters, he did not feel impelled to defend himself. End of Chapter 17. Chapter 18 of the Trail of the Hawk.

This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti. Mike Vendetti.com Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 18. Crude were the surroundings where Karmu turned out some of the best monoplane pilots America will ever see. There were two rude shed hangers in which they kept the three imported Berleroits,

a single-seat racer of the latest type, Berloid 12, passenger-carrying machine with the seat under the plane and the Petit Marie, the school machine, which they usually kept throttled down to four or five hundred, but in which Karnu made such small, Spirited flights as the one Carl had first witnessed. Back of the hangars was the workshop, which had little architecture, but much machinery.

Here the pupils were building two Brilleroy-type machines and trying to build an eight-cylinder V motor. All these things had Bagby given for the good of the game, expecting no profit in return. He was one of the real martyrs of aviation, this sapless, oldish man, never knowing the joy of the air, yet devoting a lifetime of ability to helping man sprout wings and become Superman. His generosity did not extend to living quarters.

Most of the students lived in the hangars, dined on hamburger sandwiches, fried eggs, and Mexican enchiladas served at a lunch wagon anchored near the field. That lunch wagon was their club. Here squatted on high stools, treating one another to ginger-eastern, They argued over torque and angles of incidents and monoplanes versus biplanes. Except for two unpopular aristocrats who found boarding houses in San Mateo, they slept in the hangars, in their overall sprawled on mattresses covered with horse blankets. It was bed at 8.30.

At four or five, Carmo, would crawl out, scratch his beard, start a motor, and set every neighborhood dog to howling. The students would gloomily clump over to the lunch wagon for a hand. ham and egg breakfast. The first flight began at dawn if the day was clear. At eight, when the wind was coming up, they would be hurt in a workshop, adjusting and readjusting, machining down bearings, testing wing strength, humming and laughing and busy. A life of gasoline and hammers and straining arm temps to get balance exactly right. A happy life of good fellows in the achievements of machinery and preparation for daring the upper air. A life of very very

ordinary mechanics and of sheer romance. It was a grievous hearsay that aviation is most romantic when the aviator is portrayed as a young god of noble rank and a collar high and spotless, carelessly driving a transatlantic machine of perfect efficiency. The real romance is that a perfectly ordinary young man, the sort of young man who cleans your car at the garage, perastically real young man, wearing overalls faded to a thin blue, splitting his affinatives and frequently having, for idle, a bouncing, ingenue, should be a rickety structure of wood, and, pericle be able to soar miles in the air and fulfill the dream of all the grieving ages. In English and American fiction, there are now nearly as many airplanes as rapiers or roses.

The fictional aviators are society amateurs, wearers of evening clothes, frequenters of the club, journalists and civil engineers, and lordlings and international agents and gentlemen detectives who draw, oh yes, I fly a bit. New sensation, you know? Tired of polo. And immediately thereafter, use the airplane to raid arsenals, rescue a maiden from robbers, or a large ruby from its lawful but heathen possessors, or prevent a zeppelin from raiding the coast. But they never by any chance fly these machines before gum-chewing thousands for hire.

In England, they absolutely must motor from the club to the flying field in a powerful Rolls-Royce car. The British aviators of fiction are usually from Oxford and Eaton. They are splendidly languid and modest and smartly dressed in society. but when they condescend to an adventure or to a coincidence,

they are very devils, six feet of steel and sinew boys of the bulldog breed with a strong trace of hummingbird. Like their English kindred, the Americans take up aviation only for gentlemanly sport, and they do go about rescuing things. Nothing is safe from their rescuing, but they do not have Rolesroy's cars. Carl and his class at Bagby's were not of this gilded race.

Carl's flying was at soaredly real as laying brick for a one-story laundry in a mill town. Therefore, being real, it was romantic and miraculous. Among Carl's class was Hank O'Dell, the senior student, tall, thin, hopelessly plain of face, a drawling, rough-haired, eagle-nosed Yankee, who grinned shyly in whose Adam's apple works slowly up and down when you spoke to him, an unimaginative lover of dogs and machinery,

the descendant of Lexington and Gettysburg, and a Flinty Vermont farm, an ex-fireman, ex-Sargent of the Army, ex-teamster. He always wore a khaki shirt, the wrinkles of which caught the grease in black lines like veins, with black trousers, blunt and towed shoes,

and a pipe, the most important part of his costume. There was the round, anxiously polite Mexican, Tony Bino, called Tony Bean, wealthy, simple, fond of the violin, and of fast motoring. There was the school grouch, surly Jack Ryan, the chunky ex-shofer. There were seven nondescripts, a clever Jew from Seattle, two college youngsters, an apricot rancher's son, a circus acrobat who wanted a new line of tricks, a dull ensign detailed by the Navy, and an earnest student of aerodynamics age 40,

who had written marvelously dull books on air currents and had shirkingly made himself a fair balloon pilot. The Navy Ensign and the student were the snobs who lived away from the hangers in boarding houses. There was Lieutenant Forrest Havlin detailed by the army. Havland, the perfect gentle knight, the well-beloved, the nearest approach to the gracious fiction aviator of them all,

yet never drawling and affected modesty, never afraid of Greece, smiling and industrious and reticent, smooth of hair and cameo of face, wearing khaki riding breeches, and tan patis instead of overalls, always a gentleman, even when he tried to appear a workman. He pretended to be enthusiastic about the lunch wagon and never referred to his three generations of army officers,

but most of the others were shy of him and Jack Ryan, the school grouch, was always trying to get him into a fight. Finally, there was Carl Erikson, who slowly emerged as star of them all. He knew less of varro dynamics than the timid specialist, less of practical mechanics than Hank O'Dell, but he loved the fun of daring more. He was less ferocious in competition than was Jack Ryan,

but he wasted less of his nerve. He was less agile than the circus acrobat, but knew more of motors. He was less compactly easily than Lieutenant Havlin, but he took better to overalls than sleeping in hangers and mucking in grease. He whistled ragtime while Forrest Havland, a McDowell. Carl's earliest flights were in the school machine, Petit Marie, behind Carmo the instructor. Reporters were always about talking of impressions,

and Carl felt that he ought to note his impressions on his first descent, but all that he actually did notice was that it was hard to tell at what instant they left the ground. That, when they were up, the wind threatened to crush his ribs and burst his nostrils, that there must be something perisely wrong because the machine climbed so swiftly,

and, when they were down, that it had been worth waiting a whole lifetime for the flight. For days he merely flew with the instructor till he was himself managing the controls. At last, his first flight by himself. He had been ordered to try, a flight three times about the aerodrome at a height of 60 feet and to land carefully without panicking. And be sure, monsieur. Be very sure you do not cut off too much high from the ground,

said Carmo. It was a day when five reporters had gathered and Carl felt very much in the limelight, waiting in the knuckle of the machine for the time to start. The propeller was revolved. Carl drew a long breath and stuck up his hand, and the engine stopped. He was relieved. It had seemed a terrific responsibility to go up alone. He wouldn't now, not for a minute or two. He knew that he had been afraid. The engine was turned over once more, and once more stopped.

Carl raged and never again in all his flying did real fear return to him. What the deuce is the matter, he snarled. Again, the propeller was revolved, and this time the engine hummed sweet. The monoplane ran along the ground, its tail lifting, and the blast, till the whole machine seemed delicately poised on its tiptoes. He was off the ground, his rage leaving him as his fear had left him. He exulted at the swiftness with which a distant group of trees shot at him. Under him he turned, and the machine mounted a little on the turn,

which was against the rules, but he brought her to even, even keels so easily that he felt all the mastery of the man who has finally learned to be natural on a bicycle. He tilted up the elevator slightly and shot across a series of fields climbing. It was perfectly easy. He would go up, up. It was all automatic now, cloaked toward him for climbing, away from him for descent, toward the wing that tipped up in order to bring it down to level. The machine obeyed perfectly, and the footbar for steering to right and left, responded to such

light motions of his foot. He grinned exultantly. He wanted to shout. He glanced at the barometer and discovered that he was up to 200 feet. Why not go on? He sailed out across San Mateo and the sense of people below, running and waving their hands, increased his exultation. He curved about at the end, somewhat afraid of his ability to turn, but having all the air,

there was to make this turn in, he headed back toward the aerodrome. Already he had flown five miles. Half a mile from the aerodrome he realized that his motor was slacking, missing fire, that he did not know what was the matter, that his knowledge had left him stranded there, 200 feet above the ground, that he had come down at once, with no chance to choose a landing place and no experience in gliding. The motor stopped altogether. The ground was coming up at him too quickly. He tilted the elevator and rose, but as he was vol-planning, this cut down the speed, and from a height of ten feet above the field the machine dropped

to the ground with a flat plop. Something gave way, but Carl sat safe, with the machine canted to one side. He climbed out, cold about the spine, and discovered that he had broken one wheel off of the landing chasses. All the crowd from the flying field were running toward him, yelling. He grinned at the foolish sight they made with their legs and arms strewn about in the air, as they galloped over the rough ground. Lieutenant Havlin came up, panting, all right, old man? Good. He seized Carl's hand and wrung it. Carl knew that he had a new friend. Three reporters poured questions on him. How far had he flown? Was this really his first assent by himself? What were his sensation?

How had the motor stopped? Was it true? He was a mining engineer, a wealthy motorist? Hank O'Dell, the shy eagle-nosed Yankee, running up as jerkly as a cow in a plowed field, silently patted Carl on the shoulder, and began to examine the fractured landing wheel. At last, the instructor, Monsieur Carmo.

Carl had awaited Mr. Carmar's praise as the crown of his long fright. But Carmel pulled his beard, opened his mouth once or twice, then shrieked. "'What the devil you think you are? A millionaire that we build machines for you to smash them? I told you to fly three-time around. You fly to Algiers and back.

You think you were another farming, brother? You are a damn fool. Suppose your motor, he stopped, while you fly over San Mateo. Where you land? In a well? In a chimney? Ain?

You know nothing yet. Next time you do what I tell you, That was a flight, a flight to make a flight. That was fine, fine. You make the heart to swell. But next time you break the chassis and kill yourself, Man do Tony, I scold you, Carl was humble. But the courier reporters read upon the front page

the story of marvelous first flight by Bagby student and predicted that a new Curtis was coming out of California. Under a half tone ran the caption, Erikson, the new hawk of the birdmen. The camp promptly nicknamed him the hawk. They used it for plaguing him at first, but it survived as an expression of fondness, Hawk Erikson, the cheeriest man in the school,

and the coolest flyer. End of Chapter 18. Chapter 19 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Libervox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 19. Not all of their days were spent at work. There were mornings when the wind would not permit an ascent,

and when there was nothing to do in the workshop. They sat about to lunch wagon wrangling endlessly, or like Carl and Forrest Havlin, wandering through fields which were all one flame with poppies. Lieutenant of Havlin had given up trying to feel, comfortable with the naval ensign student, who was one of the solemn worthies who cleared their throats before speaking, and then speak in measured terms of brands of cigars and weather. Gradually, working side by side with Carl, Havlin seemed to find him a friend in whom to confide.

Once or twice they went by trolley to San Francisco to explore Chinatown or drop in on soldier friends of Havland at the Presidio. From the porch of a studio on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. They were looking down on the islands of the bay, waiting for the return of an artist whom Havelin knew. Inarticulate dreamers both, they expressed in monosimovals the glory of blue water before them. The tradition of RLS and Frank Norris, the future of aviation. They gave up the attempt to explain the magic of San Francisco, that city personality which transcends the opal hills and rare amber sunlight,

festivals and the transplanted Italian hill town of Telegraph Hill. Miners sailing out for Japan and memories of the 49ers. It was too subtle a spirit. Too much of it lay in human life, with the passion of the Riviera linked to the strength of the north for them to be able to comprehend its spell. But regarding their own ambitions to do, they became eloquent. I say, hesitated Hablin.

Why is it? I can't get in with most of the fellows at the camp the way you can. I've always been chummy enough with the fellows at the point, and at posts, because you've been brought up to be afraid to be anything but a gentleman. Oh, I don't think it's that. I can get fond as the deuce of some of the commonest common soldiers, and Lord, some of them come from the Bowery and all sorts of impossible places. Yes, but you're not.

you always think of them as common. They don't think of each other that way. Suppose I'd worked. Well, just suppose I'd been a Bowery bartender. Could you be loafing around here with me? Could you go off on a bat with Jack Ryan? Well, maybe not. Maybe working with Jack Ryan is a good thing for me. I'm getting now so I can almost stand his stories. I envy you knocking around with all sorts of people. Oh, I wish I could call Ryan Jack and feel easy about it. I can't. Perhaps I've got a little of the sublatern snob someplace in me. You? You're a prince. If you've elevated me to a princedom, the least I can do is invite you down home for a weekend, down to the San Spirro Presidio. My father's commandant there. Oh, I'd like to do that, but I haven't got a dress suit. Buy one. Yes, I couldn't do that,

but old rats forest. I've been knocking around so long I feel shy about my table manners and everything. I'd probably eat pie with my fingers. You make me so darn tired, hawk. You talk about my having to learn to chum with people and overalls. You've got to learn not to let people in evening clothes put anything over on you. That's your difficulty from having lived in the backcountry these last two or three years. You have an instinct for manners.

but I did notice that as soon as you found out I was in the army, you spent half the time disliking me as a militantist, and the other half expecting me to be haughty. Lord knows what over it. It took you two weeks to think of me as Forrest Havilland. I'm ashamed of you. If you're a socialist, you ought to think that anything you like belongs to you. That's a new kind of socialism.

So much the better. me and Carl Marx, the economic inventors. But I was saying, if you act as though things belong to you, people will apologize to you for having borrowed them from you. And you've got to do that, Hawk. You're going to be one of the best known flyers in the country. And you'll have to meet all sorts of big guns, generals and senators and female climbers,

that work the peace societies for social position, and so on. And you've got to know how to meet that. Anyway, I want you to come down to San Sparito. To San Sparito they went. During the three days preceding, Carl was agonized at the thought of having to be polite in the presence of ladies, no matter how brusquely he told himself, I'm as good as anybody. He was uneasy about folks in slang and fingernails,

and looked forward to the ordeal with as much pleasure as a man about to be hanged. Hanged, in a good cause, but thoroughly. yet when colonel havalon met them at sandsparito station and carl heard the kindly salutation of the gracious fat old and indian fighter he knew that he had at last come home to his own people an impression that was the stronger because the house of oscar ericson had been so much house and so little home the colonel was a widower and for his only son he showed a proud affection which included carl the three of them sat in state after dinner on the porch of quarter-shoulders number one, smoking cigars and looking down to a spur of the Santa Lucia Mountains, where it plunged into the foam of the Pacific. They talked of aviation and eugenics, and the B'nai Mercier Gun of the post-doctor's sister who had come from the east on a visit and of a riding test, but their hearts spoke of affection. Usually it is a man and woman

that make home, but three men, a stranger, one of them, talking of motors on a porch, in the enveloping dusk, made for one another a home to remember, always. They stayed over Monday night for a hop, and Carl found that the officers and their wives were as approachable as Hank O'Dell. They did not seem to be waiting for young Erickson to make social errors. When he confessed that he had forgotten what little dancing he knew, the sister of the post-doctor took him in hand,

retought him the waltz, and asked with patient admiration. How does it feel to fly? Don't you get frightened? I'm terribly in awe of you, Mr. Havilland. I know I should be frightened to death because it always makes me dizzy just to look down from a high building. Carl slipped away to be happy by himself

and hid in the shadow of palms on the porch, leapt in the flutter of pepper trees. The orchestra began a waltz that set his heart singing. He heard a girl cry, Oh, goody! The blue Danube! We must go and dance to that. The Blue Danube, the name brought back the novels of General Charles King, as he had read them in high school days,

flashed the picture of a lonely post, yellow-lighted like a topaz, on the night's swath desert, a rude ballroom, a young officer dancing to the Blue Danube's intoxication, a hot riding, dusty courier, hurling in with the news of an Apache outbreak, a few minutes later a troop of cavalry slanting out through the gate horseback with a farewell burning the young officer's lips. He was in just such an army story now. The scent of Royal climbing roses enveloped Carl as that picture changed into others. San

Spireto Presidio became a vast military encampment over which Hawk Erickson was flying. From his monoplane he saw a fairy town with red roofs rising to a tower of fantastic turrets. That was doubtless the memory of a magazine cover painted by Maxfield Parish. He was wandering through a poppy field, with a girl dusky of eyes, soft black of hair, ready for her any jaunt, pictures bright and various as tropic shells born of music and peace

and his affection for the havelins, pictures which promised him the world. For the first time Hawk Erickson realized that he might be a personage instead of a backyard boy. The girl with twilight eyes was smiling. The Bagby camp broke up on the 1st of May, with all of them except one

of the nondescript collegians and the air current student, more or less trained aviators. Carl was going out to tour of small cities for the George Flying Corporation, Lieutenant Havilland was detailed to the Army Flying Camp. Parting with Havland and kindly Hank O'Dell with Cameroo and Aux anxiously polite, Tony Bean, was as wistful as the last night of senior year.

Till the old moon rose sat behind tulip trees. They sat on packing boxes by the larger hangar, singing in close harmony, sweet adeline, teasing. I've been working on the railroad. Hayride classics with barbershop chords. The songs are called, but tears were in Carl's eyes as the miners sobbed from the group of comrades who, who made fun of one another,

and were proassic and pounded their heels on the packing boxes, and knew that they were parting to face death. Carl felt Forrest Habblin's hand on one shoulder. Then an awkward pat from tough Jack Ryan's paw, as Tony Bean's violin turned the plaintive half-light into music and broke its heart in the moonlight sonata. End of Chapter 19. Chapter 20 of the Trail of the Hawk

This Lieber Vox recording is in the public domain Recording by Mike Vendetti. Mike Vendetti.com Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 20. Your piston ring burnt off and put the exhaust valve on the blink. That means one cylinder out of business, growled Hawk, Erickson. I could fly maybe, but I don't like to risk it in this wind. It was bad enough this morning when I tried it.

Oh, this hick town's going to be the death of us, all right. With Riverport tomorrow and a contract, nice as pie. If we can only get there, Grondy's manager, Dick George, a fat man, with much muscle and more diamonds. Listen to that crowd, yelling for blood. Sound like a bunch of lumberjacks with a circus slow and starting. The headline features of Bonamawaska County Fair was Hawk Erickson, showing the most marvelous aerial feats of all the ages with the scientific marvels of aviation

in his famous French-Bloid flying machine. The first flying machine ever seen in this state, no balloon or fake, come to Onwaska by the St. L.N. The spring fair was usually a small gathering from farmers to witness races and new agricultural implements. But this time, every road for 30 miles was dust-fogged with buggies and, and Democrat wagons, and small motorcars, 10,000 people, were packed about the racetrack. It was Carl's third aviation event,

a neat, though not imposing figure in a snug blue flannel suit, with his cap turned round on his head. He went to the flap of the rickety tent, which served as his hanger, a fierce cry of, fly, fly! Why don't he fly? Was coming from the long black lines edging the track, and from the mound of people on the small grandstand.

The pink blower of their faces turned toward him, him, Carl Erickson. All of them demanding him. The five meek police of Onomwaska were trotting back and forth, keeping them behind the barriers. Carl was apprehensive list his ten thousand-fold demand, drag him out, make him fly, despite a wind that was blowing the flags out straight and whisking up the litter of newspapers and crackerjack boxes and pink programs. While he stared out an official crossing the track, fairly leaned up against the wind which seized his hat and sailed it to the end of the track.

Some wind, Carl grinned, stulledly, and went to the back of the silent tent. To reread the local paper's accounts of his arrival at Onomano Waska, It was a picturesque narrative of the cheering mob following him down the street. Gee, that was me, they followed. Crowding into the office of the Astor House and making him autograph hundreds of cards, of girls throwing roses from geraniums is more like it, from the windows. A young man wrote an enthusiastic female reporter, handsome as a Greek god, but honestly, I believe he is still in his twenties,

and he is as slim and straight as a soldier. Flaxen-haired and rosy-cheeked, the birdman, the god of the air. Handsome as a Greek, Carl commented. I look like a Minnesota Norwegian. And that ain't so bad, but handsome? Eweck. Sure they love me, all right. Hear them yell?

Oh, they love me like a dog does a bone. St. Jeremiah talk about football rooting. Come on, Greek god bug up. He glanced rarely about the tent, its flooring of long dry grass, stained with ugly dark blue lubricating oil under the tan light coming through the canvas. His manager was sitting on a suitcase,

pretending to read a newspaper, but pinching his lower lip and consulting his watch, jogging his foot ceaselessly. Their temporary mechanic, who had given up trying to repair the lame valve, squatted with a bent head, biting his lip, hearkening to the blood-hungry mob.

Carl's own nerves grew totter and totter as he saw the manager's restless foot and the mechanic's tension. He strolled to the monoplane, his back to the tent opening. He started as the manager exclaimed, Here they come after us. Outside the tent a sound of running. The secretary of the fair, a German hardware dealer with an automobile cap, like a yachting cap, panted in. Gasping.

Come quick. They won't wait any longer. I've been trying to calm them down, but they say you got to fly. They're breaking over the barriers onto the track. The police can't keep them back. Behind the secretary came the chairman of the entertainment committee, a popular dairyman who was pale as he demanded.

You got to play ball, Mr. Erickson. I won't guarantee what'll happen if you don't play ball. Mr. Erickson. You got to make him fly, Mr. George. The crowd's breaking. Behind him charged the black press of people. They packed before the tent trying to peer in through the half-closed tent opening,

like a crowd about a house where a policeman is making an arrest furiously. Where is it, coward? Fake. Bring him out. Why don't he fly? He's a fake. His flying machine's never been off the ground. He's a foreflusher. Run him out of town. Fake, fake, fake! The secretary and chairman stuck out depreciatory heads and coaxed the mob. Carl's manager was an old circus man. He had removed his collar, tie, and flashy diamond pin, and was diligently wrapping the thong of a blackjack about his wrist. Their mechanic was crawling under the side of the tent. Carl caught him by the seat of his overalls and jerked him back.

As Carl turned to face the tent door again, the manager ranged up beside him, trying to conceal the blackjack in his hand and casually murmuring. Scared, Hawk? Nope. Too mad to be scared. The tent flap was pulled back, tossing hands came through. The secretary and chairman were brushed aside,

the mob leader, a red-faced, loud-voiced town sport. Very drunk, shouted. Come out and flyer, we'll tar-feather you. You come out, you fake, you foreflusher, echoed the voices. The secretary and chairman were edging back into the tent beside Carl's cowering mechanic. Something broke in Carl's hold on himself. With his arm drawn back, his fist aimed at the point of the mob leader's jaw, he snarled.

You can't make me fly. You stick that ugly mug of yours finny farther in and I'll bust it. I'll fly when the wind goes down. You would, would you? As the mob leader started to advance, Carl jabbed at him. It was not a very good jab, but the leader stopped. The manager, blackjack in hand, caught Carl's arm and ordered, Don't start anything.

They can lick us. Just look, ready. Don't say anything. We'll hold them till the cops come. but Nick's on the punch. Right, Captain, said Carl. It was a strain to stand motionless, facing the crowd, not answering their taunts,

but he held himself in, and in two minutes a yell came, "'Jesus! The cops!' The mob unwillingly swayed back as Onomuasca's heroic little band of five policemen wiggled through it, requesting their neighbors to desist. They entered the tent,

and after accepting cigars from Carl's manager, Coley told him that Carl was a fake and lucky to escape, that Carl would better jump right out and fly if he knew what was good for him. Also, they nearly arrested the manager for possessing a blackjack and warned him that he'd better not assault any of the peaceful citizens of beautiful on a monowaska. When they had coaxed the mob behind the barriers by announcing that Erickson would now go up, Carl swore, I won't move, they can't.

can't make me. Secretary of the Fair, who had regained most of his courage, spoke up pertly. Then you better return the 500 advance pretty quick, sudden, or I'll get an attachment on your fake flying machine. You go. Next, next, hawks, don't hit him. He ain't worth it. You go at hell, brother, said the manager mechanically. But he took Carl aside and groan. Gosh, we got to do something. It's worth two thousand. dollars to us, you know. Besides, we haven't got enough cash in our jeans to get out of town, and we'll miss the Big Riverport purse.

Still, suit yourself, old man. Maybe I can get some money by wiring to Chicago. Oh, let's get it over, Carlside. I'd love to disappoint on the Montewasca. We'll make $15,000 this month and next anyway, and we can afford to spit them in the eye. But I don't want to leave you in the hole. Here, you, mechanic.

open up that tent flap, all the way across. No, no, not like that, you boob. So come on, now help me push out the machine. Here you, Mr. Secretary. Hustle me a couple of men to hold her tail. The crowd rose the fickle crowd, scenting the promised blood and applauded as the monoplane was wheeled upon the track,

and turned to face the wind. The mechanic and two assistants had to hold it as a dust-filled gust caught it beneath the wings, As Carl climbed into the seat and the mechanic went forward to start the engine, another squall hit the machine and she almost turned over, sideways. As the machine rited, the manager ran up and begged, You never in the world can make it in this wind, Hawk. Better not try it.

I'll wire for some money to get us out of town with then. And on them on a-o-o-waska can go soak its head. Nope, I'm getting sore now, Dick. Hey, Hugh, mechanic. Hurt that wing when she dipped? All right, start it quick. Well, it's calm. The engine word, the assistance let go of the tail.

The machine labored forward, but once it left the ground, it shot up quickly. The headwind came in a terrific gust. The machine hung poised in air for a moment, driven back by the gale nearly as fast as it was urged forward by its frantically revolving propeller. Carl was as yet too doubtful of his skill to try to climb above the worst of the wind, if he could only keep a level course. He fought his way up one side of the racetrack. He crouched in his seat, meeting the sandy blast with bent head.

The parted lips which permitted him to catch his breath were stubborn and hard about his teeth. His hands played swiftly, incessantly over the control as he brought her back to an even keel. He warped the wing so quickly that he bounced like an acrobat, sitting rockingly on a tight wire. He was too busy to be afraid or to remember that there was a throng of people below him. but he was conscious that the grandstand at the side of the track halfway down was creeping toward him. More every instant did he hate the clamor of the gale, and the stream of minute drops of oil blown back from the engine that spattered on his face. His ears strained from misfire of the engine.

If it stopped, he would be hurled to earth, and one cylinder was not working. He forgot that. Kept the kloche moving, fought the wind with his, will as with his body. Now, he was aware of the grandstand below him. Now at the Thiel at the end of the track. He flew beyond the track and turned. The whole force of the gale was thrown behind him,

and he shot back along the other side of the racetrack at 80 or 90 miles an hour. Instantly he was at the end. Then a quarter of mile beyond the track, over plowed fields where upward currents of warm air increased the pitching of the machine as he struggled to turn her again.

and faced the wind. The following breeze was suddenly retarded, and he dropped forty feet, tailed down. He was only forty feet from the ground falling straight when he got back to even keel and shot ahead. How safe the nest of the nacelle, where he sat seemed then. Almost gaily he swung her in a great, wavering circle, and the wind was again in his face, hating him, pounding him,

trying to get under the wings and turn the machine turtle. Twice more he worked his way about the track. The conscience of the beginner made him perform a diffident Dutch roll before the grandstand, but he was growling, and that's all they're going to get. See? As he soared to earth,

he looked at the crowd for the first time. His vision was so blurred with oil and wind-sornness that he saw the people only as a mass, and he fancied that the stretch of slough-hatches and derbies was a field of mushrooms, swaying, and tilted back. He was curiously unconscious of the presence of women. He felt all the spectators as men who had bawled for his death, and whom he wanted to hammer as he had hammered the wind.

He was almost down. He cut off his motor, glided horizontally three feet above the ground, and landed, while the cheers cloaked even the honking of the parked automobiles. Carl's manager, fatly galloping up shrill, How was it, old man? Oh, it was pretty windy, said Carl, crawling down, rubbing in the kinks out of his arms. But I think the wind's going down,

tell the announcer to tell our dear neighbors that I'll fly again at five. But weren't you scared when she dropped? You went down so far that the fence plum hid you. Couldn't see it all. Ugh, sure thought the wind had you. Weren't you scared then? You don't look it.

Then, oh, then, oh yes, sure, I guess I was scared all right. Say, we got that seat padded so she's darn comfortable now. The crowd was collecting. Carl's manager chuckled to the president of the Fair Association. Well, that was some flight, eh? Oh, he went down the opposite side of the track pretty fast, but why the dickens was he slow going up my side?

My age ain't so good now that it's done me any good. If a fellow speeds up when he's a thousand miles away, and there's all these tricks in the air. That, murmured Carl to his manager, is the identical man that stole the blind cripple's crutch to make himself a toothpick. End of Chapter 20. Chapter 21 of the Trail of the Hawk.

This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 21. The Great Belmont Park Arrowmeat, which woke New York to aviation in October. 1910 was coming to an end. That clever new American flyer, Hawk Erickson, had won only sixth place in speed, but he had won first prize in duration by a flight of nearly six hours,

driving round and round and round the pylons, hour on hour, safe and steady as a train, never taking the risk of sensational banking nor spiraling like Johnstone, but amusing himself and, breaking the tedium by keeping an eye out on each circuit for a fat woman in a bright lavender topcoat who stood out in the dark line of people that flowed beneath. When he had descended acclaimed the winter, thousands of heads turned his way as though on one lever. The pink faces flashing in such October sunshine as had filled the backyard of Oscar Erickson in Giroleman

when a lonely Carl had performed duration feats for a sparrow. That same shy Carl wanted to escape from the newspaper men who came running toward him. He hated their incessant questions, always the theme. Were you cold? Could you have stayed up longer? Yet he had seen all New York go mad over aviation, rather over news about aviation. The newspapers had spread over front pages his name and the names of the other flyers. Carl chuckled to himself with bashful awe. Gee, can you beat it? That's me. When he beheld himself referred to an editorial and interview and picture caption as a Superman, a god. He heard crowds rustle.

Look, there's Hawk Erickson. As he walked along the barriers, he heard cautious predictions from fellow flyers and loud declarations from outsiders that he was the coming cross-country champion. He was introduced to the mayor of New York, two cabinet members, an assortment of senators, authors,

bank presidents, generals, and society railbirds. He regularly escaped from this, them and their questions to help the brick-necked Hank Odell from the Bagby School who had entered for the meet but smashed up on the first day and never since had been whistling and working over his machine and encouraging Carl, good work, bud, you've got them all going. With vast secrecy and a perception that this was twice as stirring as steadily buzzing about his Beloit, he went down to the Bowery and in front of him.

front of a saloon where he had worked as a porter four years before. He bought a copy of the evening world because he knew that on the third page of it was a large picture of him and assigned interview by a special writer. He peered into the saloon windows to see if Pedy McGuff was there, but did not find him. He went to the street on which he had bordered in the hope that he might do something for the girl who had been going wrong. The tenement had been torn down. The tenement had been torn down with blocks of others to make way for a bridge terminal, and he saw the vision of the city's pitiless progress. This quest of old acquaintances made him think of Girolaman. He informed Gertie Cowles that he was now in the aviation game and everything was going very well. He sent his

mother a check for $500 with awkward words of affection. A greater spiritual adventure was talking for hours over a small table in the basement of the Vavrut. to Lieutenant Forrest Havlin, who was attending the Belmont Park meet as a spectator, theirs was the talk of tired friends, droning on for a time and amused comment, raising to sudden table-pounding enthusiasm over aviators or explorers with exclamations of, is that the way it struck you to? I'm often glad to hear you say that, because that's just the way I felt about it. They leaned back in their chairs and played with spoons and reflectively broke up matches and volubly sketched plans of controls drawing on the tablecloth.

Carl took the sophisticated atmosphere of the Bereav route quite for granted. Why shouldn't he be there? And after the interest in him at the meet, it did not hugely abash him to hear a group at the table behind him ejaculate. I think that's all Curricson, the aviator. Yes, sir. That's who it is. Finally, the gods gave to Carl a new mechanic, a prince of mechanics, Martin Ducarill. Martin was a tall, thin, hatchet-faced, toussel-headed, slow-spoken, irreverent Irish Yankee from Fall River, the perfect type of American aviators. For while England sends out its stately soldiers of the air in France's short, excitable geniuses, practically all American aviators and aviation mechanics are either long-faced and lanky like Martin Dockerel and Hank O'Dell,

or slim, good-looking youngsters of the college track team type, like Carl and Forrest Haviland. Martin Dockerel ate pumpkin pie with his fingers, played marching through Georgia on the mouth organ, admired burlesque-show women in sausage-shaped pink tights, and wore ball-bragging salks, that always reposed in wrinkles over the top of his black shoes with frayed laces. But he probably could build a very decent motor in the dark

out of four-ten cans and a crowbar. In AD 1910, he still believed in hell and plush albums, but he dreamed of wireless power transmission. He was a free and independent American citizen, who called the Count de Lesbiz. Elisup! But he would have gone with Carl,

aeroplaning to the South Pole upon five minutes notice, four minutes to devote to the motor, and one minute to write with purple indelible pencil, a postcard to his aunt in fall, River. He was precise about only two things, motor timing and calling himself a mechanigan, not a mechanic. He became very friendly with Hank O'Dell, helped him repair his broken machine, went with him to vaudeville or stood with him before the hangar, watching the automobile parties of pretty girls with lordly chaperones that came to call on Graham White and Drexel.

Some heart winners, them guys, but I back my boss against them and everybody else. Aunt Martin would say. The meat was over, the aviators were leaving. Carl said farewell to his new and well-loved friends, the pioneers of aviation. Latum, Monsiant LeBlanc, McCurdy, Ely, de Lescent, Mars, Willard, Drexel, Graham White, Hawksley, and the rest.

He was in the afterglow of the meat for with Titherington, the Englishman, and Tad Warren, the right flyer, He was going to race from Belmont Park to New Haven for a $10,000 prize jointly offered by a New Haven millionaire in a New York newspaper. At New Haven, the three competitors were to join with Tony Bean of the Bagby School and Walter McMannies flying a Curtis in an exhibition meet. Enveloped in baggy overalls over the blue flannel suit which he still wore when flying, Carl was directing Martin Dockerel and changing his spark plugs, which were foul. About him, the aviators were having their machines packed, laughing, playing tricks on one another, boys who were virile men, mechanics in denim, who stammered to the reporters.

Oh, well, I don't know. Yet who were for the time, more celebrated than Roosevelt or Harry Thaw, or Bernard Shaw or champion Jack Johnson? Before 9.45 a.m., when the race to New Haven was scheduled to start, the newspapermen gathered. But there were not many outsiders. Carl felt the lack of the stimulus of thronging devotees. He worked silently and sullenly. It was the morning after he missed for his tablet. He began to be anxious.

Could he get off in time? Exactly at 9.45, Tithrington made a magnificent start in his Henry Fairman biplane. Carl stared till the machine was a dot in the clouds, then worked feverishly. Tad Warren, the second contestant, was testing out his motor ready to go. At that moment, Martin Dockerel suggested that the carburetor was dirty. I'll fly with her the way she is, Carl snapped, shivering with the race fever.

A cub reporter from the City News Association piped like a fox terrier. What time they get off, honk? Dan Sharp. No, I mean what time whether you really get off? Carl did not answer. He understood that the reporter's life. were doubtful about him, the youngster from the west who had been flying for only six months. At last came the inevitable pest.

The familiar suggestive outsider, a well-dressed, well-meaning old Bory was, a complete stranger. He put his podgy hand on Carl's arm and puffed, Well, Hawk, my boy, give us a good flight today, not but what you're going to have trouble. There's something I want to suggest to you, if you'd use a gyroscope. I'll beat it, startled Carl. He was ashamed of himself, but more angry than ashamed. He demanded a Martin aside, all right, hey. Can I fly with a carburetor as she is, eh?

All right, boss, calm down, boss, calm down. What I mean? Look here, Hawk. I don't want to butt in. You can have old Martin for a chopping block any time you want to cut wood. But if you don't calm down, you'll get so screwed up with nerves that you won't have any control. Well, come on, boss, speak pretty.

Just keep your shirt on, and I'll hustle like a steam engine. Well, maybe you're right, but these assistant aviators in the crowd get me wild. All right, hooray, here it goes. Say, don't stop for anything after I get off. Leave the boys to pack up, and you hustle over to Sea Cliff for the speedboat.

You ought to be in New Haven almost as soon as I am. Calmer now, he peeled. off his overalls, drew a wool-lined leather jacket over his coat, climbed into the cockpit and inspected the indicators. As he was testing the spark, Tad Warren got away. Third and last was Carl. The race fever shook him. He would try to save time, like the others, he had planned to fly from Belmont Park across Long Island to Great Neck

and crossed Long Island Sound where it was very narrow. He studied his maps. By flying across to the vicinity of Hempstead Harbor, and making a long diagonal flight over water straight over to Stamford, he would increase the factor of danger but save many miles, and the specifications of the race permitted him to choose any course to New Haven. Thinking only of the new route, taking time only to not goodbye to Martin Deckerrell and Hank O'Dell,

he was off into the air. As the ground dropped beneath them and the green, clean spaces in numerous towns of Long Island, spread themselves out, he listened to the motor. Its music was clear and strong. Here, at least, the wind was light. He would risk the long-over-water flight very long, they thought, in 1910.

In a few minutes, he sighted the hills about Welsland and began to climb up to 3,000 feet. It was very cold, his hands were almost numb on the control. He descended to a thousand feet, but the machine jerked like a canoe shooting rapid, and the gust had swept up from among the hills. The landscape rolls swiftly at him over the ends of the wings, now on one side, now on the other, as the machine rolled.

His arms were tired with the quick, incessant wing warping. He rose again. Then he looked at the sound, and came down to three hundred feet, least he lose his way, for the sound was white with fog. No wind out there. The water and cloud blurred together, and the skyline was lost in a mass of somber mist,

which ranged from filmy white to the cold, dead gray of old cigar ashes. He wanted to hold back, not dash out into that danger-filled twilight. But already he was roaring over gray-green marshes, then was above fishing boats that were slowly rocking in water dully opaque as a dim old mirror. He noted two men on a sloop, staring up at him, with foolish, gaping, mist-wet faces. Instantly they were left behind him.

He rose to get above the fog. Even the milky, sulky water was lost to sight. He was horribly lonely, abominably lonely. At 500 feet altitude, he was not yet entirely above the fog. Land was blotted out. Above him gray sky and thin-worthy filaments of vapor. Beneath him, only the fog bank. erupting here and there like the unfolding of great white flowers as warm currents of air burst up through the mist blanket.

Completely solitary. All his friends were somewhere far distant, in a place of solid earth and sun-warmed hangers. The whole knowable earth had ceased to exist. There was only slaty void, through which he was going on forever, Or perhaps he was not moving, always the same coil of mist about him. He was horribly lonely. He feared that the fog was growing thicker. He studied his compass with straining eyes. He was startled by a gulls plunging up through the mist ahead of him and disappearing. He was the more lonely when it was gone.

His eyebrows and cheeks were wet with the steam, drops of moisture shone desolately on the plains. It was an unhealthy shine. He was horribly lonely. He pictured what would happen if the motor should stop, and he should plunge down through that filmy vapor. His pontoonless, frail monoplane would sink almost at once. It would be cold swimming.

How long could he keep up? What chance of being found? He didn't want to fall. Cockpit seemed so safe with its familiar watch and map stand and supporting wires. It was home. The wing stretching out on either side of him seemed comfortably solid,

adequate to hold him up, but the body of the machine behind him was only a framework, not even enclosed, and cut in the bottom of the cockpit was a small hole for observing the earth. He could see fog through it, in unpleasant contrast to the dull yellow of the cloth sides and bottom.

Not before had it daunted him to look down through that hole, Now, however, he kept his eyes away from it, and while he watched the compass and oil gauge and kept straight course, he was thinking of how nasty it would be to drop, drop down there, and have to swim. It would be horribly lonely swimming about a wrecked monoplane,

hearing steamers, foghorns, hopeless and afar. As he thought that, he actually did hear a steamer, hoarsely whistreling, and swept above it, irresistibly. He started, his shoulders grouped. More than once he wished that he could have seen Forrest Havlin again before he started. He wished with all the poignancy of a man's affection for a real man, that he had told Forrest when they were dining at the river at the river how happy he was to be with him.

He was horribly, lonely. He cursed himself for letting his thoughts become thin and damp as the vapor about him. He shrugged his shoulders. He listened thankfully to the steady purr of the engine and the whir of the propeller. He would get across. He ascended, hoping for a glimpse of the shore. The fog-smothered horizon stretched further and further away. He was unspeakably lonely.

Through a tear in the mist, he saw sunshine reflected from houses on a hill, directly before him, perhaps one mile distant. He shouted, he was nearly across, safe, and the sun was coming out. Two minutes later, he was turning north. between the water and a town which his map indicated was Stamford. The houses beneath him seemed companionable, friendly, and the hand-waving crowds and factory whistles gave him raucous greeting. Instantly, now that he knew where he was,

the race fever caught him again. Despite the strain of crossing the sound, he would not for anything have come down to rest. He began to wonder now how far ahead of him were Tetherton and Tad Warren. He spied a train running north out of Stamford, swung over above it and raced with it. The passengers leaned out of the windows. Trainmen hung perilously from the open doors of vegetable platforms. The engineer tutored his frantic greetings to a fellow mechanic,

who above him in the glorious bird sent telepathic greetings which the engineer probably never got. The engineer speeded up. The engine puffed out vast, feathery plumes of dull black smoke, but he drew away from the train as he neared south Norwalk. He was ascending again when he noticed something that seemed to be a biplane, standing in a field, a mile away. He came down and circled the field. It was Titherington's foreman biplane.

He hoped that the kindly Englishman had not been injured. He met out Titherington talking to a group about the machine. Relieved he rose again, amused by the ant-hill appearance as hundreds of people, like black bugs, ran toward the stalled biplane, from neighboring farms and from a trolley car standing in the road. He should not have been amused just then. He was too low. Directly before him was a hillside crowned with trees.

He shot above the trees, cold in the stomach muttering. Gee, that was careless. He sped forward. The race fever again. Could he pass Ted Warren as he had passed Tetherington? He whirled over the town, shivering but happy in the mellow, cool October air, far enough from the water to be out of what fog the brightening sun had left behind. The fields rolled beneath him, so far down that they were turned into continuous and wonderful masses of brown and gold.

He sang to himself. He liked Titherington. He was glad that the Englishmen had not been injured. But it was good to be second in the race, to have a chance to win a contest, which the whole country was watching, to be dashing into a rosy dawn of fame. But while he sang, he was keeping a tense lookout for Tad Warren. He had to pass him. With the caution of the Scotch-like Norwegian,

he had to cloach constantly on the jiggle, with ceaseless adjustments to the wind, which varied constantly as he passed over different sorts of terrain. Once the breeze dropped him sideways, he shot down to gain momentum, brought her to an even keel, and as he set her nose up again, laughed boisterously. Never again would he be so splendidly young,

never again so splendidly sure of himself and of his medium of expression. He was to gain wisdom, but never to have more joy of the race. He was sure now that he was destined to pass Tad Warren. The sun was even brighter, the horizon ever wider, rimming the saucer-shaped earth. When he flew near the sound, he saw that the fog had almost passed. The water was gentle and colored like pearl.

lapping the sand smoking towards the radiant sky. He passed over summer cottages, vacant and asleep, with fantastic holiday roofs of red and green. Gulls soared like flying sickles of silver over the Oval Sea. Even for the racer, there was peace. He made out a mass of rock covered with autumn-hued trees to the left, then a like rock to the right. West and East Rock, New Haven, he cried.

The city mapped itself. before him like square building blocks on a dark carpet, with railroad and tolly tracks like flashing spider webs under the October noon. So he had arrived, then, and he had not caught Tadwarn, he was furious. He circled the city looking for the green, where, in this day before the Aero Club of America battled against Over City flying, he was to land. He saw the Yale campus lazy beneath its elms, its towers and turrets, dreaming of Oxford, his anger left him.

He plunged down toward the green, and his heart nearly stopped. The spectators were scattered everywhere. How could he land without crushing someone? With trees to each side and a church in front, he was too far down to rise again, his back pressed against the back of the little seat, and it seemed automatically to be trying to restrain him

from this tragic landing. The people were fleeing, and front there was a tiny space, but there was no room to sail horizontally and come down lightly. He shut off his motor and turned the monoplane's nose directly at the earth. She struck hard, bounced a second. Her tail rose, and she started with dreadful deliberateness to turn turtle. With a vault, Carl was out of the cockpit and clear of the machine as she turned over.

Oblivious of the clamorous crowd which was pressing in about him, cutting off the light, replacing the clean smell of gasoline and the upper air by the hot odor of many bodies, He examined the model plane and found that she had merely fractured the propeller and smashed the rudder. Someone was fighting through the crowd to his side. Tony Bean, Tony, the round, polite Mexican from the Bagby School. He was crying, "'Ambri, what a landing! You have saved lives. Get out of the way, all you people!'

Carl grinned and said, "'Good to see you, Tony. What time did Tad Warren get here? Where's—' "'Ye's not here?' "'What? Huh? How's that?'

"'Do I win?' "'That's—I have—he—I hope he hasn't been hurt.' "'Yes, you win.' A newspaper man standing beside Tony said. Warren had to come down at Great Neck. He sprang his shoulder, but that's all. That's good. "'But you,' insisted Tony,

"'on't you badly jarred, Hawk?' "'Not a bit.' The gaping crowd hanging its large collective ear toward the two aviators was shouting, "'Aray, he's all right.' As their voices rose, Carl became aware that all over the city hundreds of factory whistles and bells were howling their welcome to him, the victor. The police were clearing away for him as the police captain touched a gold flashing cap to him. Carl remembered how afraid of the police that hobo Slim Erickson had been.

Tony and he completed examination of the machine with Tony's mechanic and sent it off to a shop to await Martin Docherill's arrival by speedboat and racing automobile. Carl went to retrieve congratulations and a check from the prize giver and a reception by Yale officials on the campus. Before him, along his lane of passage, was a kaleidoscope of hands sticking out from the wall of people, hands that reached out and shook his own, till they were sore, hands that held out pencil and paper to beg for an autograph, hands of girls with golden flowers of autumn, hands of dirty, eager, small boys, weaving intermineral hands, Dizzy, with a world peopled only by writhing hands, yet moved by their greeting. He made his way across the green,

through Phelps' gateway and upon the campus. Twisting his cap and wishing that he had taken off his leather flying coat, he stood upon a platform and heard officials congratulating him. The reception was over, but the people did not move, and he was very tired. He whispered to a professor, Is that a dormitory there behind us? Can I get into it to get away?

The professor beckoned to one of the collegians and replied, I think Mr. Erickson, if you will step down, they will pass you into Vanderbilt Courtyard by the gate, back of us, and you will be able to escape. Carl trusted himself to the bunch of boys forming behind him and found himself rushed into the comparative quiet of a tutor courtyard. A charming youngster, hatless, and sleek of hair, cried, right this way mr ericson up the staircase over the tower and we'll give him a slip from the roar voices to the dusky quietitude of the hallway was a joyous escape

suddenly carl was a youngster permitted to see gale a university so great that from plato college it had seemed an imperial myth he stared at the list of room occupants framed and hung on the first floor he peeped reverently through an open door at a suite of rooms he was taken to a room with a large collection of pillows, fire-arms, morse chairs, sets of books, in crushed Levant, tobacco jars and pipes, a restless and boyish room, but a real haven. He stared out upon the campus and saw the crowd studdledly waiting for him. He glanced around at his host and waved his hand depreciatingly, then tried to seem really grown-up, really like the famous Hawk Erickson.

But he wished that Forrest Hablin were there so that he might marvel. Look at him, will you? Waiting for me, can you beat it? Some start for my Yale course. In a big chair with a pipe supplied by the youngster, he shyly tried to talk to a senior in the great world of Yale. He himself had not been able to climb to seniorhood even at Plato, while the odd youngster shyly tried to talk to the great aviator.

He picked up a Yale catalog, and he vaguely ruffled its pages, thinking of the difference between its range of courses in the petty and flexible curriculum of Plateau. Out of the pages leaped the name Fraser. He hastily turned back. There it was, Henry Frazier, A.M. Ph.D. assistant professor in English literature. Carl rejoiced Boisely that after his defeat of Plato,

Professor Frazier had won to victory. He forgot his own triumph for a second he longed to call on Frazier and pay his respects. No, I growled to himself. I've been so busy hiking that I've forgotten what little book learned I ever had. I'd like to see him, but by gum, I'm going to begin studying again. Hidden away in the youngster's bedroom for a nap. He dreamed uncomfortably of Frazier and Books. That did not keep him from making a good altitude flight at the New Haven meet that afternoon, with his hastily

repaired machine and a new propeller. But he thought of new roads for wandering in the land of books, as he sat, tired and sleepy, but trying to appear bright and appreciative at the big dinner in his honor, the first sacrificial banquet to which he had been subjected, with earnest gentleman in evening clothes glad for an excuse to drink just a little too much champagne with mayors and councilmen and bankers, with the inevitable stories about the man who was as accused of stealing umbrellas and about the two skunks on a fence, eminiously watching a motor car. equally inevitable were the speeches praising Carl's flight as a remarkable achievement destined to live

forever in the annals of sport and heroism and to bring one more glory to the name of our fair city. Carl tried to appear honored, but he was thinking, rats, I'll live in the animals of nothing. Curtis and Brookins and Oxley have all made longer flights than mine in this country alone, and they're aviators, I'm not worthy to fill the gas tanks of. Gee, I'm sleepy. Got to look polite, but I wish I could beat it. Let's see.

Now look here, young Carl, starting in tomorrow. You'll begin to read oodles of books. Let's see. I'll start out with Forst's favorites. The David Cockfield and that book by Wells, Tonobangay, that's got aerial experiments in it in Jude Theob obscure. I guess it is, and the damnation of Thornware, wonder what he was. were damned. And McTeague and Walden and War and Peace and Madame Bovray and some Turgov and

some Balzac, and something more serious. Guess I'll try William James' book on psychology. He bought them all next morning. His other belongings had been suited to rapid transportation and Martin McDougarle grumbled,

"'That's a swell line of baggage, all right, one toothbrush, a change of socks and 97,000 books.' Two nights later in a hotel at Portland, Maine. Carl was plowing through the psychology. He hated study. He flipped the pages angrily and ran his fingers through his corn-colored hair.

But he sped on, concentrated, stopping only to picture a day when the people who honored him publicly would also know him in private, somewhere among them. He believed was the girl with whom he could play. He would meet her at some aerial race and she would welcome him as eagerly as he welcomed her.

Had he perhaps already met her? He walked over to the writing table and scrawled a note to Gertie Cowles regarding the beauty of the Yale campus. End of Chapter 21. Chapter 22 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Librevox recording is in the public domain recording by Mike Vendetti.

Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 22. Editor's note, The following pages are extracts from a diary kept by Mr. C. O. Erikson in a desultory fashion from January 1911 to the end of April 1912.

They are reprinted quite literally. Apparently Mr. Erickson had no very precise purpose in keeping his journal. At times it seems he intended as material up for future literary use, at others as comments for his own future amusement. at still others as a sort of a long letter to be later sent to his friend, Lieutenant Forrest Havland, U.S. Army.

I have already referred to them in my psychoanalysis of the subconscious with reference to active temperaments, but here reprint them less for their appeal, to us as scientific study of reactions than as possessing doubtless, for those interests in pure narrative, a certain curt expression of somewhat unusual exploits, however inferior is their style to a more critical thesis on the adventurous. May 9, 2011, arrived at Miniolla Flyingfield, New York, to try out new Bagby Monoplane I have bought. Not much accommodation here yet, many of us housed in tents.

Not enough hangers, we sit around and tell lies in the long grass at night, like a bunch of kids out camping. Went over and had a beer at Peter McLaughlin's today. That's where Glenn Curtis started out to make his first flight for Scientific America Cup. Like a new Bagby machine better than the Blois. In many respects, has non-lifting tail as should all modern machines. Rudder and elevator a good deal like the Newport, one passenger, roomy cockpit, and the enclosed fuselage, Bloyte control, nearer streamlined than any American plane yet. Span, 33,000. Span, 33,000. 3.6 feet length 24 cord of wing at fuselage, 6 feet 5 inches. Chauverer propeller 6 foot 6 inches, pitch 4 foot 5.

Dandy new gnome engine, 70 horsepower, should develop 60 horsepower at 80 mile per hour. Martin Deckerl, my mechanic, and is pretty cute. He said to me today when we were getting workbench up, I bet a hat the spectators all flock here now. Not that you're any better flyer than some of the other boys, but you got the newest plane for them to write their names on. Certainly a scat of people budding in, came in autos and motorcycles and on foot,

and stand around watching everything you do, till you want to throw a monkey wrench at them. Hank O'Dell has joined the Associated Order of the Pyramid, and just now he is sitting out in front of his tent, talking to some of the grandworthy high mighties of it. I guess fat old boy with a yachting cap and a big brass watch chain, and an order of pyramid charm big as your thumb, and a tough young fellow with a black satin shirt and his hat on sideways,

with a cigarette hanging out one of a corner of his mouth. Since I wrote the above a party of sports, the women in fadeaway gowns made to show their streamlined forms came budding in, poking their fingers at everything, while the slob that owned their car explained everything wrong. This is a biplane, he says. You can see there's a plane sticking out on each side of the place where the aviator sits. It's a new aeroplane, that's the way he pronounced it.

And that dingus in front is a whirling motor. I was sitting here at the workbench, riding hot as hell and sweating, and in khaki pants and soft shirt and black sneakers, and the big boss comes over to me and says, "'Where's Hawk Erickson, my man?' "'How do I know I says?' "'When will he be back?' says he, as though he was thinking of getting me fired,

P.D.Q. For being fresh. "'Next week. He ain't come yet.' He gets sore and says, "'Here, my man. I read to the papers today that he has just joined the flying colony. Permit me to inform you that he is a very good friend of mine. If you will ask him, I am quite sure

that he will remember Mr. Porter Carruthers, who was introduced to him at the Belmont Park meet. Now, if you will be so good as to show the ladies myself about, well, I ask Hawk, and Hawk seemed to be unable to remember his friend, Mr. Carruthers, who was one of the thousand or so people recently introduced to him, but he told me to show them about, which I did, and told them the gnome was built radial to save room, and the wires overhead were a frame for a little roof for bad weather,

and they gasp and nodded to every fool thing I said, swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, till one of the females showed her interest by saying, how fascinating! Let's go over to the Garden City Hotel, Porter, I'm dying for a drink. I hope she died for it. May 10th. Up at three trying-out machines. Smash landing chasses in coming down shook me up a little.

Interesting how when I rose it was dark on the ground, but once up was a little red in the east like smoke from a regular fairy city. Another author out today bothering me for what he called copy. Must say I've met some darn decent people in this game, though. Today there was a girl came out with Billy Morrison of the New York Courier. She's an artist but crazy about outdoor life, etc. Named Estrinash.

Red-haired girl, slim as a match, but the strangest face. Pale, but it lights up when she's talking to you. Took her up and she was not scared. Most are. May 11. Miss Ishter Nash came out by herself. She's thinking quite seriously about learning to fly.

She sat around and watched me work, and when nobody was looking, smoked a cigarette. has recently been in Europe, Paris, London, etc. Somehow when I'm talking to a woman like her, I realize how little I see of women with whom I can be really chummy, though I meet so many people at receptions, etc. Sometimes just after I've been flying before thousands of people, I beat it to my hotel and would be glad for a good chat with the night clerk.

Of course, I can bank on Martin Dickerel to the limit, but when I talk to a person like Miss Nash, I realize I need someone who knows Goodhart from bad, though Miss Nash doesn't insist on talking like a highbrow, indeed, is picking up aviation technologies very quickly. She talks German like a native. Think Miss Nash is perhaps older than I am, perhaps a couple of years, but doesn't seem to make any difference.

Reading a little German tonight, almost forgot what I learned of it in Plato. May 14th, Sunday. Went into town this afternoon and went with Istra to dinner at the Lafayette. She told me all about her experiences in Paris and studying art. She is quite discontented here in New York. I don't blame her much. It must have been bully over in Paris.

We sat talking till ten. Like to see Verdun's fly, and the Louvre, and the gay Grissetti's too by heck. Istra ought not to drink so many cordials. Knicks on the booze you learn when you try to keep in shape for flying. Though Tad Warren doesn't seem to learn it. After ten, we went to studio where Istra is staying in Washington Square, several for friends there and usual excitement and fool questions about being an aviator.

It always makes me feel like a boob. But they saw Istra and I wanted to be alone and they beat it. This is really dawn, but I'll date it May 14. which is yesterday. No sleep for me tonight, I'm afraid. Going to fly around New York in aerial derby this afternoon. Must get plenty of sleep now.

May 15th. One derby. Not much of an event, though. Struck rotten currents over Harlem River. Machine rolled like a whale back. Isht her out here tomorrow, glad. But after last night, I'm afraid I'll get so I depend on her and the aviator that keeps his nerve

has to be sort of a friendless cuff. some ways. May 16th. Istra came out here. Seems very discontented. I'm afraid she's the kind to want novelty and attention incessantly.

She seems to forget that I'm pretty busy. May 17th. Saw Easter in town. She forgot all her discontent and her everlasting dignity and danced for me, then came over and kissed me. She is truly a wonder.

Can hum a French song, so you think you're among the peasants, but she expects absolute divine. devotion and constant amusing, and I must stick to my last if a mechanic like me is still out to anything. May 18th. Esther came out here, she sat around and looked bored, wanted to make me sore, I think. When I told her I had to leave tomorrow morning for Rochester and couldn't come to town

for dinner, etc. She flounced home. I'm sorry, I'm mighty sorry. Poor kid. She's always going to be discontented wherever she is. And always getting someone in herself. all wrought up. She always wants new sensations yet doesn't want to work, and the combination isn't very good. It'd be great if she really worked at her painting, but she usually stops her

art just this side of the handle of the paintbrush. Curious thing is that when she'd gone and I sat thinking about her, didn't miss her so much as Gertie Cowles. I hope I see Gertie again someday. She's a good pal. Ishtra wanted me to name my new monoplane, Bebette, because she said, says it looks cunning, with which the Lord knows it doesn't. It may look efficient, but not cunning. But I don't think I'll name it anything, though she says it shows lack of imagination. People, especially reporters, are always asking me this question. Do aviators have imagination? I'm not sure I know what imagination is. It's like this stuff about sense of humor. Both phrases are pretty bankrupt now. A few years ago when I was running a car,

I would make believe I was different people, like a king driving through his kingdom. But when I'm warping and banking, I don't have time to think about making believe. Of course, I do notice sunsets and so on a good deal, but that is not imagination. And I do like to go to different places, possibly. I take the imagination out of that way. I guess imagination is partly wanting to be places where you aren't. Well, I go when I want to, and I like that best. bitter. Anyway, darn if I'll give my monoplane a name. Tad Warren has been married to a musical

comedy so brett, with ringlets of red-brown hair. Ishtra's hair is quite bright red, but this woman has dark red hair, like the color of California redwood chips. No, maybe darker. And she wears a slimsy, bright blue dress with the waistline nearly down to her knees, and skirt pretty short, showing a lot of ankle and a kind of hat I never noticed before. Must be getting stylish now, I guess. Flops down so it almost hides her face like a basket. She's a typical wife of a 10-horsepower aviator with exhibition fever. She and Tad go joyriding almost every night with a bunch of gasoline and alcohol sports

and all have about five cocktails and dance a new California dance called the Turkey Trot. This bunch of named Tad's Tad's. new, right Sammy. And they think it's quite funny to yell, Hello, Sammy, how are you? Come have a drink. I guess I'll call mine a monoplane and let it go at that. July 14, Quebec. Lost race, Toronto to Quebec. Had fair chance to win, but motor kept misfiring, couldn't seem to get plugs that would work. Smashed hell out of elevator coming down on tail when landing here. Glad Hank Odell won since I lost. Hank has designed new rocker arm for severing motor valves. All of us invited a usual big dinner, never did see

so many uniforms, also members of Canadian Parliament. I don't like to lose a race, but thunder. Doesn't bother me long. Good flayasol at dinner. Sat near a young lieutenant, lieutenant, I suppose it is, who made me think of Forrest Havlin. I miss Forrest a lot. He's doing some good flying for the army, flying Curtis Hydro now, and trying out muffler for military scouting. What I like as much as anything about him is disease. I hope I'm learning a little of it anyway. This stuff is all confused, but must hustle off to reception at summer school of Royal College for females.

Must send all this to Old Forest to read some day. If you ever see this forest, Hello, dear old man. I thought about you when I flew over military post. Later. Big reception felt like an awful nut, so shy I didn't hardly dare look up off the ground. After the formal reception, I was taken around the campus by the Lady President, nice old lady with white hair and diamond combs in it.

What seemed to more than a million pretty girls kept dodging out of doorways and making snapshots of me. Good thing I've been reading quite a little lately. As the Lady Principal, that was it, not Lady President, talked very highbrow. She asked me what I thought of this terrible lower-class unrest. Told her I was a socialist, and she never batted an eye. Of course, an aviator is permitted to be a nut. I wonder if I'm a good socialist, as a matter of fact, I do know that most governments,

maybe I'll permit most children to never have a chance, start them out by choking them with dirt and TB germs. And how can we make international solidarity seem practical? To the dub average voters. How? Letter from Gertie tonight forwarded here. She seems sort of bored in Jerusalem, but is working hard with Village Improvement Committee of Women's Club for restroom for farmers' wives, also getting up P.E. Sunday school picnic. Be good for Istra if she did common nice things like that, since she won't really get busy with her painting, but how she'd hate me for suggesting that she would be what she calls rejoice.

Guess Gertie is finding herself. Well, Piers truly, but sleepy is finding. himself too. How I love my little bed. End of Chapter 22. Chapter 23 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Libravox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti. Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 23. The Diary of Mr. Erickson continued, editor. August 20, 1911 as before. Big Chicago meet over. They sure did show us a good time, never saw better meat.

One finals in duration today, also am second in altitude, but Nick's on the altitude again. I'm pretty poor at it. I'm no Lincoln Beachy. Don't see how he breathes. His 11,578 feet with some climb. Tomorrow starts my biggest attempt by far, biggest distance flight ever tried in America,

and rather niftier than even the year, European circuit and British circuit that Belmont has won, to fly as follows. Chicago, to St. Louis, to Indianapolis, to Columbus, to Washington, to Baltimore, to Philadelphia, to Atlantic City, to New York. The New York Chronicle, in company with papers a long line, gives prize of $40,000, ought to help bank account if win, in spite of big expenses to undergo. Now have $30,000 stowed away and have sent Mother 3,000. To fly against my old teacher, Monsieur Camernou. Antony Bean, Walter MacMonis,

Monsieur Burefort, the Frenchman, Tad Warren, Billy Witzer, Chick Bernard, Aaron Solomons, and other good men. Special New York Chronicle reporter, fellow named Forbes aside to me, and he hangs around all the time, sort of embarrassing.

Hurry, spelled it right, I guess, but I'm getting used to the reporters. Martin Dockerel has an ambition. He said to me today, "'Fey Hank, if you win the big race, you got to give me five plunks for my share, and then I'm by gum. I'm going to buy two razorstrops.'

"'What for?' I said. "'I bet there ain't anybody else in the world "'it owns two razorstrops.' "'Not much to say about banquet, "'lots of speeches, good grub. "'What tickles me more than anything "'is my new flying garments, "'not clothes, but garments by heck.'

I'm going to be a regular little old aviator in the melodrama. I've been wearing plain suits and a cap. Same good old cap. Always squeege you on my head. But for the big race, I've got riding breeches and patis and a silk shirt and a tweed Norfolk jacket and new leather coat and French helmet with both felt and springs inside the leather.

This last really valuable. The real stage aviator, that's me, watch the photographers fall for it. I bet Tad Warren's Norfolk jacket is worth ten thousand a year to him. I pretend to Martin that I was quite serious about the clothes, the garments I mean. I dolled myself all up last night and went swelling into my hangar, and anxiously asked Martin if he didn't like the get-up.

Andy nearly threw a fit. Good Lord, he groans. He looked like an aviator on a lady's home journal cover, guaranteed not to curse, swear, or chao tobacco. What's become of that girl you was kissing last time I seen you on the cover? August 25th. Not much time to write diary on race like this. It's just saw wood all the time or lose.

Bad wind today. Sometimes the wind don't bother me when I'm flying, and sometimes like today, it seems that though the one thing in the whole confounded world is a confounded wind, that roars in your ears and makes your eyes water, and sneaks down your collar to cheer of your spine, and go scooting up your sleeves unless you have gauntlets, and makes your ears sting. Roar, roar, roar, roar, the wind's worse than the noisiest old cast iron tin can for aughtily motor.

You want to duck your head and get down out of it. And, Lord, it tires you so. Aviation isn't all brilliant risks and daring dives, and that kind of blankety-blank circus business, not by a long shot. It ain't lots of it's just sticking there and bucking the wind. Like taxi driver, speeding for a train and a storm. Tired tonight and mad. September 5th, New York.

I win. Plenty smashes, but only got jarred. I beat out Buford by eight hours and Aaron Solomon's by nearly a day. Carmew's machine hopelessly smashed in Columbus, but he is not hurt, but poor Tad Warren killed crossing Illinois. September 8th. Had no time to write about my reception here in New York till now. I've been worrying about poor Tad Warren's wife, a bunch of us got together. and made up a purse for her.

Nothing more pathetic than those poor little women that poked down the cocktails to keep excited, then go to pieces. I don't believe I was very decent to Tad, sitting here alone in a hotel room. It seems twice as lonely after the fuss and feathers these last few days. Fellow thanks of all the rotten things he ever did, poor old Tad.

Too late now to cheer him up. Too late. Wonder if they shouldn't have called Opryce when he was scared. killed. Wish Isstra wouldn't keep calling me up. Have I got to be rude to her? I'd like to be decent to her, but I can't stand the cocktail life. Lord, that time she danced, though. Poor Tad was... Oh, hell. To get back to the reception. It was pretty big. Parade of the Aero Club and Squadronie. Me in an open-faced hack, feeling like a boob while 60-11 billion people cheered. Then reception by mayor, me delivering letter from mayor to Chicago, which I had cutely

sneaked out in Chicago and mail to myself here. New York General Delivery, so I couldn't lose it on the way. Then biggest dinner I've ever seen, must have been a thousand there, at the Astor, me very natty in a new dress suit. A, beau, I fooled them. It was ready-made and cost me just 37-50 and fitted like my skin. Mayor, presidents of boroughs of New York District of District District of, attorney, vice president of U.S. Lieutenant Governor of New York,

five or six senators, chief of ordinance, USA, Arctic explorers, and hundreds like that. But most of all, Forrest Havlin whom I got them to stick right up there near me. Speech is mostly about me. I nearly rubbed the silver off my flossy new cigarette case, keeping from looking foolish while they were telling about me and the future of aviation and all them interesting subjects. Forrest and I sneaked off from the reporters next afternoon. Had a quiet dinner down in Chinatown. We have a bully plan, if we can make it.

And if he can get leave, we will explore the headwaters of the Amazon with a two-passenger Curtis flying boat, maybe next year. Now the reception fans have done their darndest and all the excitement is over, including the shouting. And I'm starting for Newport to hold a little private meet of my own. Back by Thomas J. Watersell, the steel magnet. and by tomorrow night, New York will forget me.

I realized that after the big dinner. I got on the subway at Times Square, jumped quick into the car just as the doors were closing. And the guard yapped at me. What are you trying to do, Billy, kill yourself! He wasn't spending much time thinking about famous Hawk Erickson, and I got to thinking how comfortable New York will manage to go on being when they no longer read in the morning paper

whether I dined with the governor or with Martin Dockerel at Beezoo Junction Depot lunch counter. They forget us quick. And already there's a new generation of aviators. Some of the old giants are gone, poor Moseaunt and Hoxie, and Johnstone and the rest killed. And there's coming along a bunch of youngsters that can fly enough to grab the glory.

And they spread out the glory pretty thin. They go as old fellows except Pichy, a few better on aerial acrobatics, and that's what the dear old people like. For a socialist, I certainly do despise a people's taste. I won't do any flip-flops in the air no matter what the country fair managers write me. Somehow, I'd just as soon be alive in exploring the Amazon with Old Forest is dead

after brilliant feats of fearless daring. Go to it, kids, good luck. Only test your supporting wires. And don't try to rival Lincoln Beachy. He's a genius. Glad got a secretary for a couple of times. days to handle all the mail. Hundreds of baking letters and mashed notes from girls since I won the big prize. Makes me feel funny. One nice thing out of the mail, letter from the Turk, Jack, Terry,

that I haven't seen since Plato. He didn't graduate. His old man died. And he is assistant manager of quite a good-sized fisheries out in Oregon. Glad to hear from him again. Funny. I haven't thought of him for a year. I feel lonely and melancholy tonight in spite of him. of all I do to cheer up. Let up after reception, etc. I suppose I feel like calling up Bistra after all, but mustn't. I ought to hit the hay, but couldn't sleep. Poor Tad Warren.

The following words appear at the bottom of a page in a faint, fine handwriting, unlike Mr. Erickson's usual scrawl, the editor. Whatever spirits there be of the present world or the future, take this prayer from a plain man who knows little of monism or Trinity or Lugas, and give to Tad another chance as a child who never grew up. September 11, off to Kokomo to fly for Farmers Alliance. Easy meat here, Newport, Rhode Island, yesterday just straight flying and passenger carrying,

dandy party given for me after it by Thomas J. Watersell, the steel man. Have read of such parties, bird party in a garden, Watersell has many acres in his place and a big house with a wonderful brick terrace and more darn convenient things than I ever saw before. Breakfast room out on the terrace and swimming pool and little gardens and one outside of each guestroom. Rooms all have private doors, houses mission style, built around patio.

All the Newport's swells came to party dressed as birds, and I had to dress as a hawk. They had to costume already, wonder how they got and measurements. Girls in the dance of the birds. Much silk stocking, very pretty. At end of dance, they were all surrounding me in semicircle. I stood out on lawn beside Mrs. Watercell, and they bowed blow to me, bluttering their silk wings and flashing out many colored electric globes, concealed in wings, and looked like hundreds of rainbow-colored fireflies in the darkness. Just then the big lights were turned on again, and they let loose hundreds of all kinds of birds,

and they flew up all around me, surprised me to death. Then for Grubb, best sandwiches I ever ate. Felt much flattered by it all. Somehow did not feel so fully, as at banquets and speeches. After the party was all over quite late, I went with Watercell for a swim in his private pool, most remarkable thing ever saw. He said everybody has Roman baths and Pompeii baths,

and he was going to go them one-bedder, so he has a Egyptian bath, the pool itself like the inside of an ancient temple, long vista of great big green columns and a big idol at the end, and the pool, all in green marble with lights underneath, the water in along the columns and the water itself, just heat of air, so you can't tell where the water leaves off and the air above it begins hardly,

feel as though you were swimming in air through a green twilight. Darnest sensation ever felt, and the idol and column sort of awe you. I enjoyed the swim and the room they gave me, but I had lost my toothbrush, and that kind of spoiled the end of the party. I noticed Watercell only half introduced his pretty daughter to me. They liked me as a lion, but, and yet, they seemed to like me personally well enough, too. If I didn't have old Martin trailing along and smoking his corn cob pipe and saying what he thinks,

I'd die of loneliness, sometimes on the hike from meat to meet. Other times have jolly parties, but I'd like to sit down with the cowlaces and play poker, not have to explain who I am. Funny. Never used to feel lonely when I was bumming around on frets and so on, not playing any special attention to anybody. October 23rd, I wonder how far I'll ever get as an aviator. The newspapers all praise me as a hero.

Hero hell. I'm a pretty steady flyer, but so would plenty of chauffeurs be. This hero business is mostly bunk. It was mostly chances my starting to fly at all. Don't suppose that it's all accident to be. become a great flyer as Geros or Ferdines or Beachly. But I'm never going to be a Geros, I guess, like the man that can jump 12 feet but never can get himself to go any further.

December 1st. Carmel killed yesterday, flying at San Antonio. Motorback fire, machine caught fire, burned him to death in the air. He was the best teacher I could have had, patient and wise. I can't write about him. And I can't get this insane question out of my mind. Was his beard burned? I remember just how it looked.

Didn't think of that when all the time I ought to remember how clever and darn decent he was. Carmel will never show me new stunts again. And Ely killed in October. Cromwell Dixon gone, the plucky youngster, Professor Montgomery, Newport, Todd, Shriver,

whom Martin Dickerel and Hank O'Dell like so much, and many others all dead, like Moissant. I don't think I take any undue risks, but it makes me stop and think, and Hank O'Dell with a busted shoulder. Captain Paul Beck once told me he believed it was mostly carelessness, these accidents, and he certainly is a good observer, but when I think of a careful constructor like Newport, punk money I'm making. Thank heaven there will be one more good year of the game, 1912, but I don't know about 1913, Looks like the exhibition game would blow up then.

Nearly everybody that wants to has seen an airplane fly once now, and that's about all they want. So goodbye aviation, except for military use and flying boats for sportsmen. At least goodbye during a slump of several years. Hope to Thunder Forest and I will be able to make our South American hike, even if it cost every cent a half.

That will be something like it, seeing new country, instead of scrapping with fare managers about money. December 22nd. Array. Christmas time at sea. Quite excited to smell the oceans again and go rolling down the narrow gangways between the white state room doors.

Off for a month flying in Brazil and Argentina with Tony Bean. We'll look up data for coming exploration of Amazon headwaters. Martin Dockerel, like a regular Bo Bromel, in new white flannels, parading the deck, making eyes at pretty greaser girls. It's good to be going. February 22nd, 1912, George Washington's birthday. He'd have busted

that no-line proviso if he'd ever advertised an arrow meet. Start a flight New Orleans to St. Louis. Looks like really big times, old-fashioned jubilees all along the road and lots of prizes. Though take a chance, only measly little $2,500 prize guaranteed, but vague promises of winnings at towns all along where stop for short exhibitions. Beach of contestants has to fly at scheduled towns for percentage of gate receipts. February 23rd. What a rotten flight today. Small crowd out to see me off, no sooner up than trouble with plugs. Wanted to land but nothing but bayous, rice fields, cane breaks and marshes. Farmer shot at my machine. Soon motor stopped on me and had to come down a whopping on a small plowed field. Smash landing gear. Got an awful char.

Nothing serious, though. It was two hours before a local blacksmith and I repaired chassis and clean plugs. Start off after coaching three scared darkies to hold the tail while the blacksmith spun the propeller. It would give it a couple of bats, then dodge out of the way too soon while I sat there and tried not to look mad, which by gum I was plenty mad, landed in this bum town called Fourth in the Race, and found sweet refuge in the chills and fever hotel, Wish I was back in New Orleans. Cheer up.

Having others ahead of me and the race just adds a little zip to it. Watch me tomorrow. And I'm not the only hard luck artist. Aaron Solomon's bust a propeller and nearly got killed. Later. Cable. Tony Bean is dead. Killed flying.

My God, Tony, impossible to think of him as dead. Just a few days ago we were flying together and calling on senioritas and he playing the fiddle and laughing. Always so polite. like he used to fiddle us into good nature when we got discouraged at Bagby School. Seems like it was just a couple of minutes ago we drove his big car through Avenita DiMio and everybody cheered him. He was hero of Buenos Aires, yet he treated me as the big chief.

Cable Graham forwarded from New Orleans dated yesterday. Beno killed, fell 200 feet. And tomorrow I'll have to be out and jolly the rustic meat managers again. I want to go off someplace, be quiet, and think. Wish I could get away. Be off to South America with Forest. February 24th. Rotten luck continues.

Back in the same town again. Got up yesterday and mortar misfired. Had to make quick landing in a bayou and a haul-out machine myself aided by scared kids. Got back here and found gasoline pipe fouled, small a piece of tin stuck in it. Martin feels as bad as I do at Tony's death, though he doesn't. doesn't say much of anything. Gosh, that Tony such a nice little cuss? About all he said.

But it looked white around the gills. February 25th, another man has dropped out. I am third, but still last in the race. Race fever got me today. I didn't care for anything but winning, got off to a good start, then took chances. Machine wobbled like a board in the surf.

I'm having some funny kind of chicken creole, I guess it is for lunch, writing this in hotel dining room. Later, past Aaron Solomon's, am now second in the race, landed here just three hours behind Walter McMonies. Three letters forwarded here from Forest, he is flying daily at Army Aviation Camp, also from Gertie Cowell,

she and her mother in Minneapolis, attending a week of Grand Opera. Also, to my surprise, short note from Jack Ryan, the Grouch, saying he has given up flying and gone back into motor business. There won't be much more than money to pay expenses on this trip. Tomorrow I'll show them some real flying. Later, telegram from St. Louis newspaper, Sweet Business, says that promoters of race have not kept promises to remove time limit as they promised.

Doubt if either Walter, Macmonies, or I can finish in time, set. February 26th, Bad luck continues, but made fast flight after two forced descents. One of them had to make difficult. landing, plane down on railroad track, avoiding telegraph wires, and get machine off track, as could hear train coming. Awful job. Nerves not very good. Once went up a 200 feet height, from which Tony Bean fell, I saw his face, bright in air, in front of me, and jumped so I jerked the stuffings out of control wires. March 15th. Just got out of hospital after three weeks there, broken legs still in splints. Glad Walter McCam got through in time limit, got pried.

Two weak and shaky to write much. Shoulder still hurts. March 18th. How I came to fall, fall that broke my leg three weeks ago, was flying over rough country when bad gust came through hill to file, wing crumpled, up at 400 feet.

Machine plunged forward, then sideways. Gosh, I thought I'm gone, but will live as long as I can, even a few seconds more, and kept working with elevator, trying to write her even a little. Ground coming up fast. Must have jumped, I think.

Landed in March that saved my life, but woke up at Doctor's House, leg busted, and shoulder bat, etc. Machine shot to pieces. But Martin Duckerel has it pretty well repaired. He and the Doc and I play poker every day. Martin always wins with his doggone funeral face no matter though he has an ace full.

March 24th. Leg all right, pretty nearly. Rigged up steering bars so I can work it with one foot. Flew a mile today, went not badly. Hope to fly to Springfield, Illinois next week. We'll be able to make Brazil trip with Forrest Havland all right. The dear old boy has been writing me every day while I've been on the bum. Newspapers have made a lot of my flying so soon again.

Several engagements and now things look bright again. Reading lots and chippers can be. March 25th. Forrest Havlin's dead. He was killed today. March 27th. Disposed a monoplane by telegraph. Gartman-Jobb was Sunset Aviation Company.

March 28th. Started for Europe. May 8th. Paris. Forrest and I would have met today in New York. Perfect plans for Brazil trip. May 10th. I'm still trying to answer a letter from Forrest's father.

I can't seem to make it go right. If I could have seen Forrest again. But maybe they were right. Holding funeral before I could get there. Captain Farber says Forrest was terribly crushed, falling from 1700 feet. And I wish I didn't keep thinking of plans of our Brazil trip, then remembering that we won't make it after all.

I don't think I will fly till fall anyway. Though I feel stronger now after rest in England. Titherton has beautiful place in Devonshire. England seems to stick to biplane. Can't make them see monoplane. Don't think I shall fly before fall. Today I would have been with Forest Habland in New York. I think he could have got leave for Brazil trip.

We would Take and Martin Tony promised to meet us in Rio I like France but can't get used to language Keep starting to speak Spanish Maybe I'll fly here in France But certainly not for some time Though massage has fixed me all okay

M studying French Maybe shall bicycle through France Memo Write to Colonel Havlin When I can Must when I can End of Chapter 23 End of Part 2.

Chapter 24 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Labor Vox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 24. In October 1912, a young man came with an enthusiastic letter from the president of the Arrow Club to old Stephen Van Zyle, vice president and general manager of the Van Zyle Motor Corps.

Corporation of New York. The young man was quiet, self-possessed, an expert in regard to motors, used to meeting prominent men. He was immediately set to work at a tentative salary of $2,500 a year to develop the plans of what he called the Turrachar, an automobile with all camping accessories which should enable motorists to travel independent of ends, add the joy of camping to the joy of touring, and and a feature of nearly all inventions, add money to the purse of the inventor.

The young man was Carl Erickson, whom Mr. Van Zyle had seen fly at New Orleans during the preceding February. Carl got the idea of the touring car while wandering by motorcycle through Scandinavia and Russia. He was, at this time, 27 years old, not at all remarkable in appearance, nor to be considered handsome,

but so clean, so well bathed, so well set up and evenly tanned, that one thought of the swimming, dancing, tennis-playing citymen of good summer resorts and impression enhanced by his sleek-grown silk hair and small pale mustache. His clothes came from London, his watch chain was the thin line of platinum and gold, his cigarette case of silver engraved in inconspicuous bands. A modest and sophisticated cigarette case which he had possessed,

long enough to forget that he had it. He was apparently too much the easy, well-bred, rather inexperienced Yale or a Princeton man, not Harvard. There was a tiny twang in his voice, and he sometimes murmured, gee, to know much about life or work as yet, and his smooth rosy cheeks made it absurdly evident that he had not been away from the college installation

for more than two years. But when he got to work, work with draftsmen and stenographers, when a curt kindliness filled his voice, he proved to be concentrated, unafraid, of responsibility, able to keep many people busy, trained to something besides family tradition and the collegians, naive belief that it matters who wins the next game. His hands would have given away the fact that he had done things. They were large, broad, the knuckles, heavy, thought. palms calloused by something rougher than ore and tennis racket.

The microscopic traces of black grease did not for months quite come out of the cracks in his skin, and two of his well-kept but thick nails had obviously been smashed. The men of the same rank as himself in the office, captains and first-lieutenants of business, said that he simply ate up work. They fancied with the eager old womaness of office-comers. gossip, that he had a secret sorrow, for though he was pleasant enough, he kept very much to himself. The cause of his retirement from aviation was the theme of many romantic legends. They did not know precisely what it was he had done in the prehistoric period of a year before,

but they treated him with reverence instead of the amused aloofness, with which an office usually waits to see whether a new man will prove to be a fool or a groufell. a clown or a good fellow. The stenographers and filing girls and telephone girls followed with yearning eyes the hero's straight back, the girl who discovered in an old New York Chronicle, lining a bureau drawer, an interview with Carl became very haughty over its possession

and lent it only to her best lady friends. The older women, who knew that Carl had had a serious accident, whispered in cloakroom confidences. poor fellow and so brave about it. Yet all the while Carl's china blue eyes showed no trace of pain nor sorrow, nor that detestable appeal for sympathy called being brave about his troubles. There were many thoughtful features which fitted the tourer car, for use in camping,

extra-sized baggage box whose triangular shape made the car more nearly streamlined, Special folding silk tints, folding aluminum cooking utensils, electric stove run by current from the car, electric battery light attached to a curtain rod. But the distinctive feature was one which Carl could patent, was the means by which a bed was made up inside the car as pullman seats are turned into berths. The back of the front seat was hinged and dropped back to horizontal.

The upholstery back of the seat could be taken out and also placed on the horizontal. with blanket spread on the level space thus provided, with the extra heavy top and side curtains in place, and the electric light switched on, tourists, had a refuge cleaner than a country hotel and safer than a tent. The first tour of car was being built. Carl was circularizing a list of possible purchasers

and corresponding with makers of camping goods. Because he was not office broken, he did not worry about the risks of the new enterprise, the stupid details of affairs had for him a soul, the adventure of business. To be consulted by draftsmen and shop foreman, to feel that if he should not arrive it, 8.30 a.m. to the second, the most important part of all the world's business

would be halted in stenographer's lowell in expensive idleness, to have the chief, old Van Zile, politely anxious as to how things were going, to plan ways of making a million dollars and not have the plans, seemed fantastic. All these made it interesting to overwork and hypnotized Carl into a feeling of responsibility, which was less spectacular than flying before thousands, but more in accordance with the spirit of the time and place. Inside the office, busy and reaching for success

outside the office, frankly bored. Carl was a dethroned prince. He had been accustomed to a more than royal court of admirers. Now he was a nobody, the moment he went twenty feet from his desk, he was forgotten. He did not seek out the many people he had met when he was an aviator and a somebody, he believed, perhaps foolishly,

that they liked him only as a personage and not a person. He sat lonely at dinner in cheap restaurants with stains on the tablecloths, for he had put much of his capital into the new Turricar Company, mothered by the Van Zale Corporation. And aeroplanes, accessories, traveling expenses, and the like had devoured much of his large earnings at aviation

before he had left the game. In his large, shabby, fairly expensive, furnished room on 75th Street, he spent unwilling evenings working on Turricar plans or reading French, French technical motor literature, light novels, Balzic, anything. He tried to keep in physical form, and much though the routine and silly gestures of gymnasium exercise bored him, he took them three times a week. He could not explain the reason, but he kept his identity concealed to gymnasium, giving his name

as O. Erickson. Even at the Aero Club, where Scores knew him by sight, he was a nobody. Aviation, like all pioneer arts, must look to the men who are doing new things. things or planning new things, not to heroes past. Carl was often alone at lunch at the club. Any group would have welcomed him, but he did not seek them out. For the first time, he really saw the interior decorations of the club. In the old days, he had been much too busy talking with active comrades to gaze about, but now he stared for five minutes together at the stamped leather wall covering of the dining room. He noted much too carefully for the

for a happy man, the trophies of the lounging room. But at one corner, he never glanced, for here was a framed picture of the forgotten Hawk Erickson, landing on Governor's Island, winner of the flight from Chicago to New York. Such a beautiful swoop. There is no doubt of the fact that he disliked the successful new aviators. He did so because he was jealous of them.

He admitted the fact, but he could not put into his desire, to be a good boy, one-quarter of the force that inspired his resentment at being a lonely man and a nobody. But since he knew he was envious, he was careful not to show it, not to inflict it upon others. He was gracious and added a wrinkle between his brows and said, gosh, and ain't, much less often. He had few friends these days, death had taken many, and he was wary of lion-hunters, in dull seasons, condescended to ex-liance and dethroned princes.

But he was fond of a couple of Aero Club men, an automobile ex-racer, who was a selling agent for the Van Zyle Corporation, and Charlie Forbes, the bright-eyed, curly-headed, busy, dissipated little reporter who had followed him from Chicago to New York for the Chronicle. Occasionally, one of the men with whom he had flown Hank O'Dell or Walter McMonnie's, or Lieutenant Rutherlitz of the Navy, came to town, and Carl felt natural again.

As for women, the only girl he had known well in years, Mr. Nash, the painter, had gone to California to keep house for her father till she should have an excuse to escape to New York or Europe again. Inside the office, a hustling, optimistic young businessman, for the rest of the time a dethrone prince. Such was Carl Erickson in November 1912, when a letter from Gertrude Cowles, which had pursued him all over America and Europe,

finally caught him. West 157th Street, New York. Carl Deere, oh, such excitement, we have come to New York to live. Ray has such a good position with a big New York real estate company, and Mama and I are going to make a home for him, even if it's only just a flat.

But it's quite a big one and looks out over the duckiest old house that must have been adorning Harlem for heaven knows how long, and our house has all modern conveniences, elevator and all. Thank, Carl. I'm going to study dancing at Madame Venashwaka school. She was with the Russian ballet, and really is almost as wonderful a dancer as Isidore Duncan or Pavlova.

Perhaps I'll teach all these ducky new dancers to children some day. I'm just terribly excited to be here, like the silliest, gushest little girl in the world. And I do hope so much you will be able to come to New York and honor us with your presence at dinner, famous aviator,

R. Carl, and we are so proud of you. If you will still remember simple people like us, do come anytime. Wonder where you will be when this reaches you. I read in the papers that your accident isn't serious, but I am worried.

Oh, Carl, you must take care of yourself. Yours as ever. Gertie. P.S. Mama sends her best regards, so does Ray. He has a black mustache now. We tease him about it dreadfully. Gee.

One minute after reading the letter in his room, Carl was standing on the chased black and white tiles of the highly respectable white-arched hall downstairs, asking information for the telephone number of West 157th Street. While his landlord, a dry-bearded goat of a physician, who had failed in the practice of medicine and was now failing in the practice of rooming houses,

listened from the front of the hall. Glad to escape from the funerally genteel house, Carl hastily changed his collar and tie, and, like the little boy, Carl, whom Gertie had known, dog-totted, to the subway, which was going to take him home. End of Chapter 24. Chapter 25 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain,

recording by Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 25. Before the 12-story Bendingo apartments, Carl scanned the rows of windows which pierced the wall like Bank Swallows' nests on a bold cliff. One group of those windows was home, Geroloman, and memories. Gertie's faith and understanding. It was she who had always understood him.

In anticipation he loitered through the big marble and stucco, rug and rubber tree, nigger hallboy and Jew tenant hallway. What would the Cowleses be like now? Gertie met him in the coat-smelling private hall of the Cowles' apartment, greeted him with both hands clasping his, and her voice catching on, Oh, Carl, it's so good to see you. Behind Gertie was a swishing, stiff-backed Mrs. Cowles,

piping in a high-worn voice. Mr. Erickson, a friend from home, such a famous friend. Gertie drew him into the living room. He looked at her. He found not a girl, but a woman of thirty, plump, solid, with the tiniest wrinkles of past unhappiness or anewy, at the corners of her mouth. but her eyes radiant with sweetness,

and her hair appealingly soft and brown above her wide calm forehead. She was gowned in lavender crape de cheney, with panniers of satin elaborately sprinkled, with little bunches of futurist flowers, long jet earrings, a low-cut neck that hinted of a comfortable bosom, eyes shining hands firm on his arm,

voice ringing. She was unaffectedly, glad to see him. Her childhood playmate, whom she had not be held for seven years. Mrs. Cowles was waiting for them to finish their greetings. Carl was startled to find Mrs. Cowell smaller than he had remembered. Her hair nearly white and not perfectly matched. Her face criss-crossed with wrinkles deeper than her age justified. But her old disapproval of Carl, son of a carpenter and cousin of a hired girl, was gone. She even laughed mildly like a kitten sneezing, and from a room somewhere beyond, Ray shot it.

You're right there in a second, old man. Crazy to have a look at you. Carl did not really see the living room, their background. Indeed, he never really saw it. There was nothing to see. Chairs and a table and pictures of meadows and roses. It was comfortable, however, and had conveniences, a folding card table, a cribbage board, score pads for whist, and, and 500, a humidor of cigars, a large Morris chair, and an ugly but well-padded couch of green-tuffed at velveteen. They sat about in chairs talking. Ray came in, slapped Carl on the back, roared,

Well, here's the stranger. Holy Mike, have you got a mustache, too? Better shave it off before Gertie starts kidding you about it. Have a cigar. Carl felt at home for the first time in a year. For the first time, talked easily. Say, Gertie, tell me about my folks in Boone Stillman. Well, I saw your father just before we left, Carl.

You know, he still does quite a little business. We got your mother to join the Nautilus Club. She doesn't go very often, but she had a nice paper about Java and its products, and she helps us a lot with the restroom. I haven't seen Mr. Stilman for a long time. Ray? What has... Ray?

I think Old Bone's off in some expedition or other. "'Fellow told me "'Bone was kind of a forest ranger "'or mine inspector, "'or some darn thing up in the big woods. "'He must be pretty well along towards seventy "'now at that.' "'Carle.

"'So Dad's getting along well? "'His letters aren't very committal. "'Oh, say Gertie, "'whatever became of Ben Rusk, "'I've lost track of him entirely. "'Gertie. "'Why, didn't you know? "'He went to Rush Medical College.

"'They say he did splendid there. He stood awfully well in his class, and now he's in practice with his father at home. Carl. Rush? Gertie. Yes. You know, in she... Carl.

Oh, yes, sure. In Chicago, sure. I remember. Now, I saw it when I was there one time. Why, that's the school his father went to, wasn't it? Ray. Yes, that's the one. The point seems settled.

Carl. Well, well, so Ben did study medicine after. Oh, say, how's Adelaide Benner? Gertie. Why, you'll see her. She's coming to New York in just a couple of weeks to stay with us till she gets settled. Just think.

She used to have a whole year here, studying domestic science, and then she's to have a perfectly dandy position teaching in the Fargo High School. I'm not supposed to tell. You mustn't breathe a word with it. Mrs. Cowell's interrupting. Adelaide is a good girl. Ray, don't tilt your chair.

Gritty. Yes, isn't she, Mama. Well, I was just saying, between you and me, Carl, she is to have the position in Fargo already in waiting for her, though, of course, they can't announce it publicly with all the cats that would like to get it and all. Isn't that fine, Carl, certainly is. Remember the time we had the May party at Adelaide's, and all I could get for my basket was rag babies and Mayflowers?

Gee, but I felt out of it. Gertie. We did have some good parties, didn't we? Ray. Don't call that much of a good party for Carl. Ring off, Gert. You got to wrong number that time, all right. Gertie, flushing.

Oh, I didn't mean. But we did have some good times. Oh, Carl, will you ever find a lot? forget the time you and I ran away when we were just babies? Carl, I'll never forget. Mrs. Cowles. I'll never forget that time,

mine lands, I thought I should die. I was so frightened. Carl. You've forgiven me now, though, haven't you? Mrs. Cowles. My dear boy, of course I have. She wiped away a few tears with a gentlewoman handkerchief of lace and thin linen.

Carl crossed the room and kissed her pale vein, and silverly old hand, abashed he subsided on the couch, and trying to look as though he hadn't done it. Carl. Oh, say, what did become of, I can't think of his name, you know, I know his name well as I know my own, but it slipped me just for the moment. You know, he ran the billiard parlor, the son of the...

From Mrs. Cowles, a small disapproving sound from Ray, a grin of knowing naughtiness and a violent headshake. Gertie gently. Yes, he has left Geroloman. Clemmy, mean? Carl hastily wondering what Eddie Clem had done. Oh, I see. Have there been many changes in Jeroloman?

Mrs. Cowles. Do you write to your father and mother, Carl? You ought to. Carl. Oh, yes, I write to them quite often now, though for a time I didn't. Mrs. Cowles. I'm glad my boy, it's pretty good after all to have some folks that you can depend on, isn't it? When I first went to Jerolum, I thought it was a little pokey, but now I'm older and I've been there so long and all that I'm almost afraid of New York, and I declare.

I do get real lonely for home sometimes. I'd be glad to see Dr. Rusk Benfather. I mean the old doctor driving by, though, of course, you know, I live. I lived in Minneapolis a great many years, and I do feel I ought to take advantage of the opportunities here, and I've thought quite seriously about taking up French again. It's so long since I've studied it. You ought to study it.

You will find it cultivates the mind. You must be sure to write often. To your mother, there's nothing you can depend on like a mother's love, my boy. Rie. Hey, look here, Carl. I want to hear something about all this aviation. How does it feel to fly anyway? I'd be scared to death.

It's funny, I can't look off the top of a skyscraper without feeling as though I wanted to jump. Gosh, hi. Gertie. Now you just let Carl tell us when he gets ready, you big bad brother. Carl wants to hear all about home first, all these years. You were asking about the changes.

There haven't been so many. You know, it's a little slow, there. Well, of course, I almost forgot. Why, you haven't been in Jerolum since they built up what they used to be Tubbs' pasture, Carl. Not the old pasture by the lake. Well, well, is that a fact? Oh, gee. I used to snare gophers there, Gertie. Oh, yes. Why, you simply wouldn't know it. Carl, it's so much changed. There must be a dozen houses on it now. Why, there's a cement walks and everything, and Mr. Upham has a house there, a real nice one with a screened-end porch and everything. Of course, you know they've put in the sewer now, and there's lots of modern

bathrooms, and almost everybody has a Ford. We would have bought one, but planning to come away so soon. Oh, yes, and they've added a fire escape to the schoolhouse, Carl. Well, well, we'll say, Ray, how was Howard Griffin getting along? Ray. Why, Howard's graduated from Chicago Law School, and he's practicing in Denver. Doing pretty well, I guess, settled down and got quite some real estate holdings. Have another cigar, old man. Say, speaking of Plano, of course, you know they ousted old S. Alcott Woodsky, for the presentcy, for hearsay, something about baptism, and the dean succeeded him. Poor old cuss, he wasn't as mean as the dean anyway. Say, Carl, I've always thought,

they gave you a pretty raw deal there. Gertie, interrupting. Perfectly dreadful, Ray. Don't put your feet on the couch. I brushed it thoroughly just this morning. It was simply terrible, Carl. I've always said if Plato couldn't appreciate her greatest son. Mrs. Carl's sleepily.

Outrageous and don't put your feet on the chair, Ray. Ray, leave my feet alone. Everybody knew you were dead. right and standing up for Prof. Frazier. You remember how I roasted all the fellows in Omega Chai when they said you were nutty to boost him? And when you stood up in chapel, Lord, that was nervy, Gertie. Indeed, you were right, and now you've got so famous, I guess. Carl. Oh, it ain't so. Mrs. Collins. I was simply amazed. Children, if you don't mind, I'm afraid I must leave you.

Mr. Erickson, I am so ashamed to be so sleepy or so early. When we lived in Minneapolis before Mr. Cowles passed away, he was a regular nighthawk and we used to sit, sit, a yawn, sit up all hours, but tonight, Gertie. Oh, must you go so soon? I was just going to make Carl a rarebit. Carl has never seen one of my rarebits. Mrs. Cowles.

Make him one by all meets, my dear, and you young people sit up and enjoy yourselves just as long as you like. Good night, all. Ray, will you please be sure to see that that window is fastened before you go to bed? I get so nervous when... Mr. Erickson, I'm very proud to think that one of our Jeroloma boys should have done so well. Sometimes I wonder if the Lord ever meant men to fly. What with so many accidents, and you know aviators often get killed and all...

I was reading the other day, such a large percentage. But we have been so proud that you should lead them all. I was saying to a lady on the train that we had a friend who was a famous aviator. She was so interested to find that we knew you. Good night. They had the wealth for ever with beer and Carl helped to make it. Gertie summoned him into the scoured kitchen, saying with a beautiful casualness, as she tied an apron about him.

We can't afford a hired girl, I suppose I should say a maid, because Mama has put so much of our money into Ray's business. You know, you mustn't expect anything so very grand, but you'll like to help, wouldn't you? You're to chop the cheese. Cut it in weeny cubes. Carl did like to help. He boasted that he was the champion cheese chopper of Harlem and the Bronx,

one-33-ringside. While Gertie was toasting crackers and Ray was buying bottles of beer in the newspaper, it all made Carl feel more than ever at home. It was good to be with people of such divine understanding that they knew what he meant when he said, I suppose there have been worse teachers than Prof. Larson. When the rarebit lay pale in death,

the saddened debacle of hardened cheese, and they sat with their elbows on the modified mission dining table. Gertie exclaimed, Oh, Ray, you must do that new stunt of yours for Carl. It's screamingly funny, Carl. Ray Rose had his collar and tie off in two joking jerks, buttoned his collar on a backward. Cheerfully turned his waistcoat backside foremost,

lengthened his face to an expression of uncutatious sanctimonious and turned about. transformed in one minute to a fair imitation of a strange curate. With his hands folded, Carl droned, Now, sister, it behooveth us here at St. Timothy's Church, while Carl pounded the table in his delight at seeing Ray, the broad-shouldered, the lady-killer, the capable businessman, drop his eyes and yearn.

Now you must do a stunt, shrieked Ray, and Gertie and Carl, hesitatingly sang, what I remembered that Forest Hablans fully saw. I went up and a balloon so big the people on the earth looked like a pig, like a mice, like a Cady did, like fleas, and like fleas, and. Then without solicitation, Gertie decided to dance, gather the golden sheaves which she had learned at the school of Memmen, Veleshaka, late though not very late, of the Russian ballet. She explained her work, outlined the theory of sensuous and aesthetic dancing,

mentioned the backgrounds of Bax and the glories of Nugensky, told her ambition to teach the new dancing to children. Carl listened with awe, and with awe did he gaze as gurg that gathered the golden sheaves, purely hypothetical sheaves, in a field occupying most of the living room. After the stunts, Ray delicately vanished. It was not so much that he's datedly went off to bed as that. Presently, he was not there. Gertie and Carl were snugly alone,

and at last he talked of Forrest Havland and Tony Bean of flying and falling, of excited crowds, and the fog-filled air lanes. In turn, she told of her ambition to do something modern and urban. She had hesitated between dancing and making exotic jewelry. She was glad she had chosen the former. It was so human. It put one in touch with people. She had recently gone to dinner with real bohemians,

spirits of fire splendidly in contrast with the dull plotters of Jerolaman. The dinner had been at a marvelous place on West 10th Street, very foreign. Everyone drinking wine and eating spaghetti and little red herrings, and the women fearlessly smoking cigarettes, some of them. She had gone with a girl from Madame Vaiskovskis school, a glorious creature from London, Nebraska, who lived with the most fascinating girls at the Three Arts Club. They had met an artist with black hair and languishing eyes,

who had a Yankee name but sang Italian songs divinely, upon the slightest pretext so bubbling was he, with Joyce Dever. Carl was alarmed. Gosh, he protested. I hope you aren't going to have much to do with the long-haired bunch. I have invented a name for them. It's the Hobo-Bohemians. Oh, no.

I don't take them seriously at all. I was just glad to go once. Of course, some of them are clever. Oh, yes, aren't they clever? But I don't think they last very well. Oh, no, I'm sure they don't last well. Oh, no, Carl. I'm too old and fat to be able.

Bohemian, a hobo- bohemian, I mean so nonsense. You look so, oh, thunder. I don't know just how to express it. Well, so real. It's wonderfully comfortable to be with you all again. I don't mean you're just the so good to her mother sort, you understand. But I mean, you're dependable as well as artistic. Indeed, I won't take them too seriously, besides.

I suppose lots of the people that, go to Bohemian restaurants. I'm really artists at all. They just go to see the artist. They're just as romantic as can be. Don't you hate bromides? Of course, I want to see some of that part of life. But I think, oh, don't you think those artists

and all are dreadfully careless about morals? Well, yes, she breathed reflectively. No, I keep up with my church and all. Indeed I do. Oh, Carl, you must come to our church, St. Orgels. It's too sweet for anything. It's just two blocks from here, and it isn't so far up there. You know, not with the subway, not like commuting.

It has the loveliest chapel and the most wonderful rilios. And the services are so inspiring in high church, not like that horrid St. Timothy's at home. I do think a church service ought to be beautiful, don't you? It isn't as though it were like a lot of poor people who have their souls saved in a mission. What church do you attend? You will come to St. Orgo's sometime, won't you?

Be glad to, Mosei, before I forget it. What is Samina doing now? Is she married? I propose of this subject, Gertie let it be known that she herself was not betrothed. Carl had not considered that question, but when he was back in his room, he was glad to know that Gertie was free.

At Omega Chi Delta Club, Carl lunched with Ray Cowles. Two nights later, Ray and Gertie took Carl and Gertie's friend the glorious creature from London, Nebraska, to the opera. Carl did not know much about opera. In other words, being a normal young American

who had been waterproofed with college culture, he knew absolutely nothing about it. But he gratefully listened to Gertie's clear explanation of why Menom Vahashkoska preferred Wagner to Varni. He had, in the meantime, received a formal invitation for a party to occur at Gertie's for the coming Friday evening. Thursday evening, Gertie coached him in a new dance to Turkey Trot. She also gave him a lesson in the Boston with a new dip invented by Menem Vashkaakaska,

which was certain to sweep the country because, of course, Vasca Koshka was the only genuinely qualified Matisse de Dants in America. It was a beautiful evening, home. Ray came in and the three of them had coffee and thin sandwiches at Gertie's suggestion. Ray again turned his collar around and performed his clergyman stunt.

While the impersonation did not perhaps seem so humorous as before Carl was amused, and he consented to sing the eye went up in a balloon so big song, so that Ray might learn it and sing it at the office. It was captivating to have Gertie say quietly as he left. I hope you'll be able to come to the party a little early tomorrow, Carl. You know, we count on you to help us.

End of Chapter 25. Chapter 26 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Libravox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti, Mikevindetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 26. The party was on at the Cowls Flat. People came. They all set to it, having a party,

being lively and gay, whether they wanted to or not. They all talked at once and had delicious shocks over the girl from London, Nebraska, who, having moved to Washington Place just a block or two from ever so many artists, was now smoking a cigarette and wearing a gown that was black and clinging. It was no news to her that men tended to become interested in her ankles, but she still went to church and was accepted by quite the nicest of

the St. Ogleset, to whom Gertie had introduced her. She and Gertie were the only thoroughly qualified representatives of art, but beauty and gallantry and wit were common. The conspirators in holding a party were on the mail side, an insurance adjuster who was a frat brother to Carl and Ray, Though he came from Mitchell and college, a young lawyer ever so jolly with a banjo, a banning clergyman who was spoken of with the masculine approval

because he spoke to pipe and he said charmingly naughty things. Johnson of the Holmes and Long Island Real Estate Company and his brother of the Marnhurst Development Company. Four older men, ranging from thin-haired to very bald who had come with their wives and secretly looked at their watches

while they talked brightly with one another's wives. Five young men whom Carl could not tell apart as they all had smooth hair and eyeglasses and smart dress shirts and obliging smiles in complementary references to his aviating. He gave up trying to remember which was which. It was equally hard to remember which of the women Gertie knew as a result of her girlhood visit to New York,

which from their membership in St. Ogles' Church, which from the relation to Minnesota, they all sat in rows on couches and chairs and called him, You wicked man, for reason none too clear to him. He finally fled from them and joined the group of young men who showed an ill-bred and disapproved tendency to sneak off into Ray's room for his smoke. He did not, however, escape one young woman who stood out from the Malay,

a young woman with a personality almost as remarkable as that of the glorious creature from London, Nebraska. This was the more or less married young woman named Dorothy, and affectionately called Totikins by all the St. Oracle's group. She was the kind who look at men appraisingly and expect them to come up, be unduly familiar, and be crushed. She had seven distinct methods of getting men to say indiscreet things, and three variations of reply of which the favorite was to remark with well-bred calmness. I'm afraid you have a slight error, Mr. Ah.

I didn't quite catch your name. Perhaps they failed to tell you that I attended St. Orgel's every Sunday, and have a husband and child, and I'm not at all really, you know. I hope that there has been nothing I said that has given you the idea. that I've been looking for flirtation. A thin, small female with bobbed hair was Totikins, who kept her large husband and her fat white grub of an infant, somewhere in the back blocks.

She fingered a long gold religious chain with her square, stubby hand, while she gazed into men's eyes with what she privately termed, daring frankness. Totikins the Fair, Totikins the Modern, Totikins, who had read three weeks and nearly all the wicked novel in French, and wore a long gold cross. Totikins, who worked so hard in her little flat, that she had to rest all of every afternoon and morning.

Totikins. The advanced and liberal, yet without any of the extremes of socialists and artists and vegetarians and other ill-conditioned persons who do not attend St. Orgles. Tottecans The firmly domestic Whose husband grew more worried Every year Totikins

The intensely cultured and inquisitive about life They primitively free and perversely original Who announced in public places That She wanted to live Like the spirit of the dancing Bacconet statue But had the assistant rector of St. Orgles

And for coffee every fourth Monday evening Tadikins beckoned Carl to a corner and said with her manner of amused condescension. Now you sit right down here, Hawk Erickson, and tell me all about aviation. Carl was not vastly sensitive. He had not disliked the nice young men with eyeglasses. Not till now did he realize how Tottenkin shrill references

to the dancing baccannette and the bacconeting of her mud-colored Dutch-fashioned hair had poured him. Anui was not, of course, an excuse. But it was the explanation of why he answered in this wise, very sweetly looking tauticans in the eye, and patting her hand with a brother-like and altogether maddening condescension.

No, no, that isn't the way, Dorothy. It's quite passe to ask me to tell you all about aviation. That isn't done, not in 1912. Oh, Dorothy, oh, no, no, no, No, no, no. First you should ask me if I'm afraid when I'm flying. Oh, always begin that way. Then you say that there's a curious fact about you.

When you're on a high building and just look down once, then you get so dizzy that you want to jump. Then after you've said that, let's see. You're a church member, aren't you? Well, then next you'd say, just how does it feel to be up in an airplane? Or if you don't say that, then you're simply got to say, Just how does it feel to fly anyway?

But if you're just terribly interested, Dorothy, you might ask about biplanes versus monoplanes, and do I think they'll ever be a flight across the Atlantic? But whatever you do, Dorothy, don't fail to ask me if I'll give you a free ride when I start flying again. And we'll fly and fly like birds. you know, or like the dancing baccarat. That's the way to talk about aviation.

And now, you tell me all about babies. Really, I'm afraid babies is a rather big subject to tell all about at a party, really, you know. That was the only time Carl was not bored at the party. And even then, he had spiritual indigestion from having been rude. for the rest of the time. Everyone knew everybody else and took Carl aside to tell him that everybody was the most conscientious man in our office, Erickson,

why the boss would trust him with anything. It's saddened, Carl, to hear the insurance adjuster boom, Oh, you toddikins, across the room at ten-minute intervals like a human foghorn on the sea of Van Wye. They were all so uniformly placed. light so neat-minded and church-going and dull. Nearly all the girls did their hair in coquettaries one exactly like another. Carl is not to be pitied.

He had the pleasure of martyrdom when he heard the younger Johnson tell of Martinhurst the suburb beautiful. He believed that he had reached the nider of boredom, but he was mistaken. After simple and pleasing refreshments of the wooden play late in paper napkin school, Gertie announced, now we're going to have some stunts.

And you're each to give one. I know you all can, and if anybody tries to beg off, what will happen? My brother has a new one. For the third time that month, Carl saw Ray turn his collar around and become clerical,

while everyone rustled with delight, including the jolly, banting clergyman. And for the fourth time, He saw Gertie dance gather the golden sheaves. She appeared shy and serious in bloomers and flat dancing shoes, which made her ample calves bulged the more. She started at sight of the harvest moon,

and, well, she may have been astonished if she did indeed see a harvest moon there above the gilded buffalo horns on the unit bookcase, rose to her toes, flapped her arms, and began to gather the sheaves, to her breast, with enough plump and panting energy to enable her to gather at least a quarter section of them before the whistle blew. It was not only aesthetic, but close to the soil. Then to Banjo accompaniment, the insurance adjuster sighed for his old Kentucky home,

which Carl judged to have been located in Brooklyn. The whole crowd joined in the chorus and, suddenly with a shock that made him despise himself for the cynical superiority which he had been enjoying, Carl remembered that Forrest Havlin, Tony Bean, Hank Odell, even Sirley Jack Ryan, and the Alien Carnot had sung, my old Kentucky home, on their last night at the Bagby School. He felt their beloved presences in the room. He had to fight against tears as he too joined in the chorus.

Then weep no more, my lady. He was beside a California poppy field. The blossom slumbered beneath the moon, and on his shoulder was the hand of Forrest Havland. He had repented. He became part of the group. He spoke kindly to Totikins, but presently Totikins proposed her well-advertised return to her husband and baby,

gave a ten-minute dramatic recital from Byron, and the younger Johnson sang a Swiss mountaineer song with Yotles. Gertie looked spectrously at Carl twice during this offering. He knew that the gods were plotting an abominable thing. She was going to call on him for the stunt, which had been inescapably identified with him, the song. I went up in a balloon so big. He met the crisis heroically.

He said loudly as the shaky strains of the Swiss ballad died on the midnight mountain air of the 157th Street, while the older men concealed yons and applauded, and the family in the adjoining flat wrapped on the radiator. I'm sorry, my throat's so sore tonight. Otherwise, I'd sing a song I learned from a fellow in California. Balloons big. Kurtie stared at him dumbfoundedly,

but passed to a kitten-faced girl from Minnesota, who was quite ready to give an imitation of a child whose doll has been broken. Her stunt was greeted with Oh, how cunning. Please do it again. She prepared to do it again. Carl made hasty motions of departure, pathetically holding his throat.

He did not begin to get restless till he had reached 96th Street and had given up his seat in the subway to a woman who resembled Totikins. He wondered if he had not been at the old home long enough. At 72nd Street, on an inspiration that came as the train was entering the station,

He changed to a local and went down to 59th Street. Found an all-night garage, hired a racing car, and at dawn he was driving furiously through Long Island, a hundred miles from New York, on a roadway perilously slippery, with falling snow. End of Chapter 26. Chapter 27 of the Trail of the Hawk. The Sleevervox recording is in the public domain,

recording by Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lof the Hawk by Sinclair. Lewis. Chapter 27. Carl wished that Adelaide Banner had never come from Jerolaman to study domestic science. He felt that he was a sullen brute, but he could not master his helpless irritation as he walked with Adelaide and Gertie Cowles through Central Park on a snowy Sunday afternoon of December. Adelaide assumed that one remained in the state of mind called Jeroloman all one's life, that however famous he might be, the son of Oscar Erickson, was not sufficiently refined from his cowls of the big house on the hill, though he might improve under Cowell's influences.

He was still a person who had run away from Plato. But that assumption was far less irritating than one into which Adelaide threw all over-fated yearning that Gertie and he were in love. Adelaide kept repeating with coyish-linous. Isn't it too bad you two have me in the way, and, don't mind poor me, and he will turn her back any time you want her to. And Gertie merely blushing, murmuring, don't be as silly. At 18th Street, Adelaide announced, Now I must leave you children. I'm going over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I do love to see art pictures. I've always wanted to. "'Now be as good as you can, you two.' Gertie was mechanical about replying. "'Oh, don't run away, Eddie, dear.' "'Oh, yes, you too will miss an old maid like me terribly.' And Adelaide was off, a small, sturdy, undistinguished figure, with an underlying loyalty to Gertie and to the idea of marriage.

Carl looked at her bobbing back with wrinkles in her cloth jacket over the shoulders. as she melted into the cloud of glossy fur-trimmed New Yorkers. He comprehended her goodness, her devotion. He sighed, If she'd only stop this hinting about Gertie and me. He was repentant of his irritation and said to Gertie, who was intimately cuddling her arm into his, Adelaide's an awful good kid.

Sorry she had to go. Gertie jerked her arm away, averted her profile, If you miss her so much, perhaps you'd better run after her. Really, I wouldn't interfere, not for worlds. Why, hello, Gertie. What seems to be the matter? Don't I detect the chill in the atmosphere? So sorry you've gotten refined on me,

which is going to suggest some low-brow amusement like tea at the casino. Well, you ought to know a lady doesn't. Oh, now Gertie, dear, not. lady. I don't think you're a bit nice, Carl Erickson. I don't, to be making fun of me when I'm serious. Why haven't you been up to see us? Mama and Ray have spoken of it, and you've only been up once since my party. And then you were, oh, please, let's not start anything. Sorry I haven't been able to get up oftener, but I've been taking work home. You know how it is. You know, when you get busy with your dancing school?

Oh, I meant to tell you, I'm through, just through with Byshkawaska, and her horrid old school. She's a cat, and I don't believe she ever had anything to do with the Russian ballet either. What do you think she had the infantry to tell me? She said I wasn't practicing and really trying to learn anything, and I've been working myself into, really, my nerves were in such a shape. I would have been in danger of a nervous breakdown if I had kept on. Todikins told me she had a nervous breakdown and had me see her doctor.

Such a tear, Dr. Sinclair, so refined and sympathetic, and he told me I was right in suspecting that nobody takes Byshikoska seriously anymore. And besides, I don't think much of all this symbolic dancing anyway, and at last, I found what I really want to do. Oh, Carl, it's so wonderful. I'm studying ceramics with Miss Dietz. She's so wonderful and temperamental, and she has the dearest studio in Grameci Park.

Of course, I haven't made anything yet, but I know I'm going to like it so much. And Miss Deets says I have a natural taste for vases and... Huh? Oh, yes, vases, I get you. Don't be vulgar. I'm going to go down to her studio, and work every other day, and she doesn't think you have to work like a scrub woman to succeed,

like that horrid Pichakka did. Miss Dietz has a temperament herself, and, O'Carl, she says that Gertrude isn't suited to me, and Gertie certainly isn't, and she calls me El Turda. Don't you think that's a sweet name? Would you like to call me a turdus sometimes? Look here, Gertie. I don't want to butt in, but I'm guessing at it. Looks to me as though one of these artistic rafters was working on you.

What do you know about this Dietz person? Has you done anything worthwhile? And honestly, Gertie. By the way, I don't want to be brutal, but I don't think I could stand El Trude. It sounds like Totikins. Oh, really, Carl? Wait a second.

How do you know you've got what you call temperament? Go to it and good luck, if you can get away with it. But how do you know it isn't simply living in a flat and not having any work to do, except developing a temperament? Why don't you try working with Ray in his office? He's a mighty good business man. This is just to suggest... Now, really, this is...

Look here, Gertie, the thing I've always admired about you is your wholesomeness and... Wholesome... Oh, what a word! Miss Deetz was saying just the other day, it's as bad. But you are wholesome, Gertie. That is, if you don't let New York turn your head, and if you'd use your ability on a real job

like helping Ray or teaching, yes, or really sticking to your ceramics or dancing and leave the temperament business to those who can get away with it. No, wait, I know I'm budding in. I know that people won't go and change their natures because I ask them to. But did you see you? And Ray and Adelaide, you are the friends I depend on, and I so hate to see.

Oh, Carl, dear. You might let me talk, said Gertie, in tones of maddening sweetness. As I think it over, I don't seem to recall that you've been an authority on temperament for so very long. I seem to remember that you weren't so terribly wonderful in Jeroloman. I'm glad to be the first to honor what you've done in avixta. but I don't know that it gives you the right to. Never said it did, Carl insisted with fictitious good humor. Assume that you are an authority on temperament, Nart.

I'm afraid that your head has been just a little turned by. Oh, hell, I'm sorry. That just slipped. It shouldn't have slipped, you know. I'm afraid it can't be passed over so easily. Dirty might have been a bustling Jerolum school teacher, pleasantly bidding the dirty Rakeson boy. Now go and mors the little hands.

Carl said nothing. He was bored. He wished that he had not become entangled in their vague discussion of temperament. Even more brightly, Gertie announced, I'm afraid you're not in a very good humor this afternoon. I'm sorry that my plans don't interest you. Of course, I should be very temperamental if I expected you to apologize for cursing and swearing.

So I think I'll just leave you here, and when you feel better. She was infuriingly cheerful. I should be pleased to have you call me up. Goodbye, Carl. And I hope that your walk will do you good. She turned into a footpath, left him muttering in tones of youthful injury.

Jiminy, I've done it now. He was in Girolaman, a Victoria drove by with a dowager who did not seem to be humbly courting the best set in Girolaman. A grin lightened Carl, face, he chuckled. By golly, Gertley handled it splendidly. I'm to call up and be humble and then bing. The least I can do is to propose and be led to the altar and teach a Sunday school class

at St. Orgels for the rest of my life. Come hither, Hawk Erickson. Let us hold counsel. Here's the way Gertie will dope it out, I guess. El Truda. I'll dine in solitary regret for saying, hell. No. First I'm to walk downtown alone and busy repenting and then I'll feed alone, and by eight o'clock I'll be so tired of myself that I'll call up and beg pretty rats. It's rotten mean to dope it out like that, but just the same. Me that have done what I've done, worried to death over one accidental hell. Hey there, you taxi. Grandly he wrote to the park and in an unrepentant manner bowed to every pretty woman he saw to the disapproval of their silk-hatted escorts. He forgot the existence of Gertie Cowles and the old home folks, but he really could not afford a taxi cab and he had to make up for it by economy.

At 7.30, he gloomily entered Megal Eaton's restaurant on 42nd Street, the least unbearable of the popular prices tables for ladies, dens, and slumped down at a table near the window. There were a few diners. Carl was much as stranger as the morning when he had first invaded New York to find work with an automobile company. And he had passed this same restaurant. Still, was he a segregated stranger? Despite the fact that two blocks away in the Aero Club,

two famous aviators were agreeing that there had never been a more consistently excellent flight in America than Hawk Erickson's race from Chicago to New York. Carl considered the delights of the Cowles Flat, Ray's story about Plato and business and the sentimental things Gertie played on the guitar. He suddenly determined to go off someplace and fly an airplane, as suddenly knew that he was not yet ready to return to the game. He read the evening telegram and cheerlessly peered out of the window at the gray snowvale, shrouded the 42nd Street.

As he finished his dessert and sturdy's coffee, he stared into a streetcar, stalled in a line of traffic outside. Within the car, seen through the snow mist, was a girl of 22 or three with satiny slim features and ash-blond hair. She was radiant in white fox furs, Carl Crane to watch.

He thought of a girl who, asking a direction before the Florida lunchroom in Chicago, had inspired him to become a chauffeur, The girl in the streetcar was listening to her companion who was a dark-haired girl with humor and excitement about life in her face, well-set-up, not tall, in a smartly tailored coat of brown pony skin, and a small hat that was all lines and no trimming. Both of them seemed amused, possibly by the lofty melancholy of a traffic policeman beside the car, who raised his hand as though he had high ideals and a slight stomachache.

The dark-haired girl tapped her round knees with the joy of being alive. The street car started. Carl was already losing in the city jungle with two acquaintances whom he had just made. The car stopped again, still blocked. Carl seized his coat, dropped a 50-cent piece on the cashier's desk, did not wait for his ten-cent change, ran across the street, barely escaping a taxi cab, galloped around the end of the car, swung up on the platform. As he took a seat opposite the two girls, he asked himself just what he expected to do now.

The girls were unaware of his existence, and why had he hurried? The car had not started again. But he studied his unconscious conquest from behind his newspaper, vastly content. In the unnatural quiet of the stalled car, the girls were irreverently discussing George. He heard enough to know that. that they were of the rather smart, rather cultured class known as New Yorkers. They might be Russian-American princesses or social workers or ill-paid governesses or actresses or merely persons with one motor-car and a useful papa in the family.

But in any case, they were not the kind he could pick up. The tall girl of the ash-blond hair seemed to be named olive, being quite un-olive-taint, while her livelier companion was apparently christened Ruth. Carl wearied of Olive's changeless beauty as quickly as he did of her silver-handled umbrella. She merely knew how to listen. But the less spectacular, less beautiful, less languorous, dark-haired Ruth, was born a good comrade. Her laughter marked her as one of the women whom earthquake and flood and childbearing cannot rob of a sense of humor.

She would have the inside view, the sophisticated understanding, everything. The car was at last free of the traffic. It turned a corner and started northward. Carl studied the girls. Ruth was 24 perhaps or 25, not tall, slight enough to nestle, but strong and self-reliant. She had quantities of dark brown hair, crisp and glinty, though not sleek, with eyebrows noticeably dark and heavy. Her smile was made irresistible by her splendidly shining teeth, fairly large but close set and white, and not only the corners of her eyes joined in

her smile, but even her nose, her delicate, yes, piquant nose, which could quiver like a dears, when she laughed. Carl noted Ruth had a trick of lifting her heavy lids quickly and surprising one with a glint of blue eyes where brown were expected. Her smooth, healthy, cream-colored skin was rosy with winter, and looked as though in summer it would tan evenly without freckles. Her chin was soft, but without a dimple, and her jaws had a clean, boyish leanness. Her smooth neck and delicious shoulders were curved, not fatty, but with youth and happiness. They were square, capable shoulders, with no mid-Victorian droop about them. Her waist was slender naturally, not from stays.

Her short but not fat fingers were the ideal instruments for the piano. Slim were crossed feet and her unwrinkled pumps. Foolish foot gear for a snow evening seemed eager to dance. There was no hint of the coquette about her. Physical appeal this Ruth had, but it was the allure of sunlight and meadows of tennis and abode with bright, canted sails, not of boudoir nor garden-dizzy scented with Jasmine. She was young and clean, sweet without being sprinkled with pink sugar,

too young to know much about the world's furious struggle, too happy to have realized its inevitable soaredness, yet born a woman who would not always wish to be protected, and round whom all her circle of life would center. So Carl inarticulately mused, with the intentness which one gives to strangers in a quiet car, till he laughed. I feel as if I know her like a book. The century's greatest problem was rather he would finally prefer her to Ollie if he knew them, if he could speak to them, but that was in New York, more difficult than beating up policemen

or getting acquainted with the mayor. He would lose them. Already they were rising, going out. He couldn't let them be lost. He glanced out of the window, sprang up with an elaborate pretense that he had come to his own street. He followed them out, still conning headlines in the paper. He gave absorption, said, plain that it all might behold,

that he was a respectable citizen to whom it would never occur to pursue strange young women. His new friends had been close to him in the illuminated car, but they were alien, unapproachable, when they stood on an unfamiliar street crossing, snow dimmed and silent with night. He stared at a street sign and found that he was on Madison Avenue, up in the 50s.

As they turned east on 50 Blanketh Street, he stopped under the streetlight, took an envelope from his pocket, and found on it the address of that dear old friend living on 50 Blanketh, on whom he was going to call. This was to convince the policeman of the perfect purity of his intentions. The fact that there was no policeman nearer than the man on fixed post a block away

did not lessen Carl's pleasure in the make-believe. He industriously inspected the house numbers as he followed the quickly-moving girls and frequently took out his watch. Nothing should make him late in calling on that dear old friend. Not since Adam glowered at the intruder even, has a man been so darkly uninterested in two charmers. He stared clear through them. He looked over their heads.

He observed objects on the other side of the street. Indignantly told the imaginary policeman who stopped him that he hadn't even seen the girls till this moment, that he was the victim of a plot. The block through which the cavalcade was passing was lined with shabby genteel brownstone houses, with high stoop's and haughty dark doors, and dressmaker's placards or doctor's cards in the windows.

Carl was puzzled. The girls seemed rather too cheerful to belong in this decade and gloomy block, which in the days when horsehair furniture and blankets had mattered, had seemed imposing, but the girls ascended the steps of a house which was typical of the row, except that five motor-car stood before it. Carl passing went up the steps of the next, house and rang the bell.

What a funny place, he heard one of the girls, he judged that was Ruth, remarked from the neighboring stoop. Looks exactly like Aunt Emma when she wears an Alexandria bang. Do we go right up? Oughtn we to ring? You ought to be the craziest party, anarchists. A party, eh, thought, Carl? Ought to ring, I suppose, but...

Yes, there's sure to be all sorts of strange people at Mrs. Hallets, said the voice of the other girl when the door closed upon both of them. And an unabashed Carl realized that a maid had opened the door of the house at which he himself had rung, and was glaring at him as he craned over to view the next door stoop. Where? Does Dr. Brown live here? He stuttered. Now he don't, the maid snap closing the door, Carl groan.

You don't. Dear old Brown, not live here, huh? what shall I do? In remarkably good spirits, he moved over in front of the house into which Ruth and Olive had gone. People were coming to the party in twos and threes. Yes, the men were in evening clothes.

He had his information, swinging his stick, up at a level with his shoulder at each stride. He raced the 59th Street and the nearest taxi stand. He was whirled to his room. He literally threw his clothes off. He shaved hastily, singing, will you come to the ball from the Quaker girl, and slipped into evening clothes in his suavest dress shirt,

seizing things all at once, top hat, muffler, gloves, pocketbook, handkerchief, cigarette case, keys, and hanging them about him as he fled down the decorous stairs, he skipped to a taxi cab and started again for 50 Blanketh Street. At the house of the party he stopped to find on the letterbox in the entry of the name Mrs. Hallett, mentioned by Olive.

There was no such name. He tried the inner door, it opened. He surely began to mount steep stairs, which kept on for miles, climbing among slate-colored walls past empty wall niches with tolless plaster structures. The hallways dim and high and snobbish and the dark old double doors scowled at him. He boldly returned the scowl. He could hear the increasing din of a talk party coming from above. When he reached the top floor he found a door open on a big room,

crowded and shrilly chattering people in floored clothes. There was a hint of brassware and paintings and silken Turkish rugs, but no sight of Ruth or Olive. A maid was bobbing to him, and breathing, That way, please, at the end of the hall. He went meekly. He did not dare to search the clamorous crowd for the girls as yet. He obediently added his hat and coat and stick

to an uncomfortable-looking pile of ramps, writhing on a bed in a small room that had a complete print of sergeant's profits, a calendar, and an unimportant white rocker. It was time to go out and face the party, but he had stage fright. While climbing the stairs he had believed that he was in touch with the two girls, but now he was separated from them by a crowd, further from them than when he had followed them down the unfriendly street, and not till now did he quite grant.

for the fact that the hostess might not welcome him. His glowing game was becoming very dull-toned. He lighted a cigarette and listened to the beating surf of the talk in the other room. Another man came in. Like all the rest, he gave up the brilliant idea of trying to find an unpreempted place for his precious newly iron silk hat

and resigningly dumped it on the bed. He was a passable man with a gentlemanly mum. mustache and good pumps. Carl knew that fact because he was comparing his own clothes and deciding that he had none the worst of it. But he was relieved when the wax mustache moved a couple of times and its owner said in a friendly way, Beastly Jam, may I trouble you for a match? Carl followed him out to the hostess, a small busy woman who made a business of being vivacious and letting the light catch the fringes of her gold hair as she nodded.

Carl, nonchalantly, shook hands with her bubbling, so afraid couldn't get here, my play, but at last. He was in a panic, but the hostess, instead of calling for the police, gushed, I'm so glad you could come, combining a kittenish mechanical smile for him with a glance over his shoulder at the temporary butler. I want you to meet Miss Muller, Mr. Uh, Mr. I knew you'd forget it. Carl was brotheringly in protecting in his manner, manner, Erickson, Oscar Erickson.

Oh, of course, how stupid of me. Miss Moller, want you to meet Mr. Osker Erickson, you know. So happy to meet you, Miss, mm, said Carl, tremendously well-bred in manner. Can we possibly go over here and be clever in a corner, do you think? He had heard Colonel Hablin say this, but his manner gave it in no quotation marks. presumably he talked to Miss Moller about something usual, the Snow or the party or Owen Johnson's novels. Presumably, Miss Morrell had eyes to look into and banalities to look away from.

Presumably, there was something in the room besides people and talk and rugs hung over the bookcases. But Carl never knew. He was looking for Ruth, did not see her. Within ten minutes he had maneuvered himself free of Miss Moller and was searching for Ruth. his nerves quivering amazlingly with the fear that she might already have gone. How would he ever find her? He could scarce ask the hostess, say, where's Ruth? She was nowhere in the fog of people in the big room, if he could even find Olive. Strolling, nodding to perfectly strange people who agreeably nodded back under the mistaken impression

that they were glad to see him, he systematically checked up all the groups. Ruth was not among the punch-table devotees who were being humorous and amorous over cigarettes, not among the caustic wits exclusively assembled in a corner, not among the shy sisters aligned on the Davenport and wondering why they had come, not in the general Malstorm in the center of the room. He stopped calmly to greet the hostess again,

remarking, "'You look so beautifully sophisticated tonight "'and listen suavely to her fluttering remarks. He was the picture of the cynical city man, who has to be nowhere at no special time. But he was not cynical. He had to find Ruth. He escaped, and between the main room and the dining room

penetrated a small den filled with woody young men, old stories, cigarette smoke, and siphons. Then he charged into the dining room where there were candles and plate, much like silver and Ruth and Olive at the farther end. End of Chapter 27. Chapter 28 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Lieber Vox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti.com.

Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 28. He wanted to run forward, take their hands, cry, at last. He seemed to hear his voice wording it, but, not glancing at them again, he established himself on a chair by the doorway between the two rooms. It was safe to watch the two girls in this babble, where words swarmed and battled everywhere in the air. Ruth was in a brown velvet frock, whose golden tones harmonized with her brown hair.

She was being enthusiastically talked at by a man to whom she listened with a courteously amused curiosity. Carl could fancy her nudging olive, who sat beside her on the Jacobian settee, and was attended by another talking man. Carl told Ruth, though he did not know that he was telling her, that she had no right to be so blasted New Yorkishly, superior and condescending,

but he admitted that she was scarcely to blame for the man, made kindergarten gestures and emitted conversation like air from an exploded tire. The important thing was that he heard the man call her Miss Winslow. Great. Got her name, Ruth Winslow. Watching the man's lips, occasionally trying to find an excuse for eavesdropping and giving up the quest because there was no excuse, he discovered that Ruth was being honored with a thrilling account of aviation. The talking man, it appeared, knew a great deal about the subject.

Carl heard through a rift in the cloud of words that the man had once actually flown as a passenger with Henry O'Dell for five minutes on end. judging by the motions with which he steered a monoplane through perilous abysses, the reckless spirit kept flying as a passenger. Ruth Winslow was obviously getting bored, and the man showed no signs of boloplaning as yet. Olive's man departed, and Olive was also listening to the parlor aviator, who was unable to see that a terrific fight was being waged by the hands of the two girls in the space between them.

It was won by Ruth's hand, which got a death grip on Olive's thumb and held it, to Olive's agony, while both girls sat up straight and beamed propriety. Carl walked over and smoothly ignoring the pocket entertainer said, "'So glad to see you, Miss Winslow, I think this is my dance?' "'Yes, from Miss Winslow, while the entertainer drifted off into the floatsome of the party. Ollie went to join a group about the hostess who had just come in to stir up in birth and jocund merriment in the dining room

as it had settled down into a lower state of exhilaration than the cannons of talk parties require. Said Carl to Ruth? Not that there's any dancing, but I felt you'd get dizzy if you climbed any higher in that airplane. Ruth tried to look haughty, but her dark lashes went up and her unexpected blue eyes grinned at him, boyishly.

Gee, she's clever, Carl was thinking. Since to date her only remark had been, Yeah, yes, he may have been premature. That was a fully strangle hold now you got on Miss Olive's hand, Miss Winslow. You saw our hands? Perhaps. Tell me a good way to express how superior you and I are to this fool party in its noise. Isn't it a fool party?

I'm afraid it really is. What's the purpose of it anyway? Do the people have to come here and breathe this air? I wonder. I asked several people that, and I'm afraid they think I'm crazy. But you are here. Do you come to Miss Salisbury's often? Never been before.

Never seen a person here in my life before except you and Miss Olive. Came on a bet. Chap bet, I wouldn't dare come without being invited. I came. Bought to the hostess and told her I would. was so sorry my play rehearsals made me late, and she was so glad I could come, after all, you know? She's never seen me in her life.

Or are you a dramatist? I was in the other room, but I was a doctor in the hall and a sculptor on the stairs, so I'm getting sort of a confused myself. As confused as you are trying to remember who I am, Miss Winslow. You already don't remember me at all. T. it, wasn't it, at Vanderbilt or the plaza? "'Oh, yes, it must have been. I was trying to remember.' Carl grinned. The chap who introduced me to you called me Mr.

Um-um, because he didn't remember my name either. So you've never heard it. It happens to be Erickson. I'm on a mission, serious one. I'm planning to go out and buy a medium-sized bomb and blow up this bunch. I suspect there's poets around. "'I do, too,' sighed Ruth. I understand that Mrs. Salisbury always has seven lawyers and 19 advertising men and a dentist and a poet and an explorer at her affairs. Are you the poet or the explorer? I'm the dentist, I think.

You don't happen to have done any authoring, do you? Well, nothing except an epic poem on Jonah and the whale, which I wrote at the age of seven. Most of it consisted of a conversation between them. While Jonah was in the whale's stomach, which I think showed agility on the part of the whale. wheel. Then maybe it's safe to say what I think of authors and more or less of poets and painters and so on. One time I was in charge of some mechanical investigations and a lot of writers used to come around looking for what they called copy. That's where I first got my grouch on them and I've never really got over it. And coming here tonight and hearing the literary talk, I've been thinking

how those authors have a sort of an admiration trust. They make often. authors the heroes of their stories and so on, and so they make people think that writing is sacred. I'm so sick of reading novels about how young Bill, as had a pure white soul, came to New York, and had an horrible time till his great novel was accepted. Authors seem to think they're the only ones that have ideals. Now, I'm in the automobile business,

and I helped to make people get out into the country. bet a lot more of them get out because of motoring than because of reading poetry about spring. But if I claimed a temperament because I introduced the motorist Soho into the daisy, everyone would die laughing. But don't you think that art is, oh, the object of civilization and that sort of thing? I do not, honestly, Miss Winslow. I think it would be a good stunt to get along without any art at all for a generation. and see what we miss.

We probably need dance music, but I doubt if we need opera. Funny, how the world always praises its opera singers so much and pays them so well, and then starves at shoemakers, and yet it needs good shoes so much more than it needs opera, or war or fiction. I'd like to see all the shoemakers get together

and refuse to make any more shoes till people promise to write reviews about them, like all those book reviews. Then just as soon as people's shoes began to wear out, and they'd come right around, and you'd read about the new masterpiece of Mr. Regal and Mr. Walkover and Mr. Stetson. Yes, I can imagine it. This lace boot is one of the most vital and gripping and wholesome shoes of the season, and probably all the young shoemakers would sit around, cafes, looking quizzical and artistic.

But don't you think their theory is dangerous, Mr. Wood? You give me an excuse for being content with being a commonplace upper west sider, and aren't authors better than commonplaces? We're so serious that I almost suspect you of having started to be an author yourself. Really not, as a matter of fact, I'm the kitty in patched overalls you used to play with when you kept house at the willows. Of course, in the forest of our den, and you had a toad that you traded for my hair ribbon.

And we ate bread and milk out of blue bowls. Oh, yes, she agreed. Blue bowls with bunny rabbits painted on them. And giants in six-cylinder castle. With warders and dungeons deep. And Jack, the giant killer, but certainly bunnies. Do you really like bunnies? Her voice caressed the word.

I like them so much that when I think of them, I know that there's one. thing worse than having a cut-rate literary salon, and that's to be too respectable, to Upper West Side. To dare to eat bread and milk out of blue bowls. Yes, I think I shall have to admit you to the Blue Bowl League, Mr. Erickson, speaking of which, tell me, who did introduce us? You and me, I feel so apologetic and for not remembering.

May and I have a mystery, Miss Wenzel. At least as long as I have this new shirt, which, you observed with some approval while I was drooling on about authors. It makes me look like a count, you must admit, or maybe like a knight of the order of the bunny rabbit. Please, let me be a mystery still. Yes, you may. Life has no mysteries left except Olive's coffeture and your beautiful shirt. Does one talk about shirts at a second meeting? Apparently one does. Yes, tonight, I must have a Do you swear as a man of honor that you are at this party dishonorably uninvited? I do, Princess.

Well, so am I. Olive was invited to come with a man, but he was called away and she dragged me here, promising me I should see. Anarchist? Yes. And the only nice lovable crank I found except you with your vulgar prejudice against the whole race of authors is a dark-eyed female who sits on a couch out in the big room, like a Mrs. St. Simon stylist, in a tight skirt, and drags you in

by her glittering eye, looking as though she was going to speak about theosophy, and then ask you if you think a highball would help her cold. I think I know the one you mean. When I saw her she was talking to a man who's beating whiskers dashed high on a stern and rock-bound face. Thank you. I like that fairly well, too, but unfortunately, I stole it from a chap named Havland. My own idea of witty conversation is... Some car you got.

What's your magneto? Look, Olive Dunlavy seems to stress the number of questions I shall have to answer about you. Well, Olive and I felt very low in our minds today. We decided that we were tired of select associations and we should seek the primitive, and maybe even life in the raw. Olive knows a woman, mountain climber,

who always says she longs to go back to the wilds. So we went down to her flat. We expected to have raw meat sandwiches at the very least, but the savage woman gave us such long and double chicken sandwiches and pink cakes and nobiscos and told us how well her son was doing in his old French course at Columbia. So we got lower and lower in our minds, and we decided we had to go down to Chinatown for dinner.

We went too. I've done a little settlement work. Dear me, I'm telling you much about myself. Oh, man of mystery. It isn't quite done, I'm afraid. Please, Miss Winslow, in the name of the, what is it, order of the blue bowl. He was making a mental note that Alba's name was Dunlaby.

Well, I've done some settlement work. Did you ever do any by chance? I once converted a Chinaman to Lutheranism. I think it was my nearest approach, and, said Carl. My work was the kind where you go and look at three dirty children and teach them that they'll be happy, if they're good. When you know perfectly well that their only chance to be happy is to be bad as anything and sneak off and go swimming in the East River. But it kept me from being much afraid of

the Bowery. We went down on the surface cars. But Olive was scared beautifully. There was the dearest, most inoffensive old man and most perfect state of intoxication sitting next to us in the car. And when Olive moved away from him, he winked over at me and said, honor your shrubles, ma'am, for very good form, I think all they've ought to be going to murder us. She was sure he was the wild, dying remnant of a noble race or something, but even she was disappointed in Chinatown. We had expected opium fiends, like in the melodramas they used to have on 14th Street, before the movies came, but we had a disgustingly clean table with a mad, reckless picture

worked in silk, showing two doves and a boiled lotus flower, hanging nearest, to intimidate us. The waiter was a Harvard graduate, I know perhaps Oxford, and he said, may I suggest ladies very nice Chinese dinner? He suggested Chalmaine. We thought it would be either bird's nest or rat's tails, and it was simply crisp noodles with the most innocuous sauce, and the people? They were all stupid tourists like herself, except for a jab. with his Cunnan's Sunday tie,

and his little trousers also politely pressed in his clean pocket-hanging, and he was reading the Presbyterian. Then we came up here, and doesn't seem to be so very primitive here either. The most aggravating, it seems to me, I've been telling you an incredible lot about our silly adventures. You're probably the man who won the Indianapolis motor race or discovered electricity or something. Through her narrative, her eyes had held his.

but now she glanced about, noticed Olive, and seemed uneasy. I'm afraid I'm nothing so interesting, he said, but I have wanted to see new places and new things, and I've more or less seen them. When I got tired of one town, I've simply up and beat it. And when I got there, wherever it was, I look for a job. Well, I haven't lost anything by it. Have you really?

That's the most wonderful thing to do in the world. My travelers have been Cook's Tours, with our own little Thomas Cook and son, right in the family. I've never had even the mad freedom of choosing between tour of the Irish bogs and the educational pilgrimage to the shrines of the celebrated brewers. My people have always chosen for me, but I've wanted.

One doesn't merely go without having an objective, or an excuse for going, I suppose. I do, declared Carl, but may I be honest, yes? Intimacy was about them. They were two travelers from far land, come together in the midst of strangers. I speak of myself as globe-trotting, said Carl. I've been, but for a good many weeks I have been here in New York,

knowing scarcely anyone and restless, yet I haven't felt like hiking off, because I was sick for a time, and because a chap that was going to go to Brazil with me, died suddenly. To Brazil, exploring? "'Yes, just a stab at it, pure amateur. "'I'm not at all sure I'm just making believe

"'when I speak of the blue bowls and so on. "'Tell me, in the West one could speak of seeing the girls' home. "'How would one say that gracefully in New Yorkies, "'so that I might have a chance to beguile Miss Olive Donleby "'and Miss Ruth Winslow into letting me see them home?' "'Really, we're not the least bit afraid to go home alone. "'I won't tease, but... May I come to your house for tea sometime?'

She hesitated. It came out and with a rush. Yes, do come up. Next Sunday, if you'd like. She bobbed her head to Ollie Monroe's. Any address, he insisted. Blank West 92nd Street. Good night.

I have enjoyed the Blue Bowl. Carl made his descent to voyage to the hostess and tramped up town through the flying snow, swinging a stick like an orchestra conductor and whistling a waltz. As he reached home, he thought again of his sword parting with Gertie in the park, years ago that afternoon. But the thought had to wait in the anteroom of his mind

while he rejoiced over the fact that he was to see his new playmate, the coming Sunday. End of Chapter 28. Chapter 29 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Van Deddy, Mike Van Deddy.com, Trail of the Hawk, by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 29

Like a country small boy, waiting for the coming of his city cousin, who will surely have new ways of playing Indians, Carl, prepared to see Ruth Winslow and her background. What was she? Who, where? He pictured her as dwelling in everything from a millionaire's imitation chateau

with footmen and automatic elevators to a bachelor gal's flat on an old-fashioned red-brick Harlem tenement. But more than that, what would she herself be like against that background? Monday, he could think of nothing but the joy of having discovered a playmate. The secret popped out from behind everything he did. Tuesday, he was worried by finding himself unable to remember whether Ruth's hair with black or dark brown. Yet he could visualize olive's ash blonde.

Why? Wednesday afternoon, when he was sleepy in the office after eating too much beefsteak and kidney pie, drinking too much coffee, and smoking too many cigarettes, at lunch with Mr. Van Zale, when he was tortured by the desire to lay his head on his arms

and yield to drowsiness. He was suddenly invaded by a fear that Ruth was stombish. It seemed to him that he ought to do something about it immediately. The rest of the week he merely waited to see what sort of person the totally unknown Miss Ruth Winslow might be. His most active occupation outside the office

was feeling guilty over not telephone to Gertie. At 3.30 p.m. Sunday, he was already encased in funeral morning clothes and warning himself that he must not arrive at Miss Winslow's before five. His clothes were new, stiff as though they belonged to a wax dummy. Their lines were straight and without individuality. He hitched his shoulders about and kept going to the mirror to inspect the fit of the collar.

He repeatedly re-brushed his hair regarding the unclean state of his military brushes with disgust. About six times he went to the window to see if it had started to snow. At ten minutes to four, he sternly jerked on his coat and walked far north of 92nd Street, then back. He arrived at a quarter to five, but persuasive. He awaited himself that this was a smarter hour of arrival than five. Ruth Winslow's home proved to be a rather ordinary three-story and basement Greystone dwelling, with heavy Russian net curtains at the broad, clear, glassed windows of the first floor, and an attempt to escape from the stern drabness of the older type of New York houses

by introducing a box stoop and steps with a carved stone baslead, at the top of which perched a meek old lion of 1890, with battered ears and truly sensitive stone nose, a typical house of the very well-to-do yet not wealthy upper-middle class, a house predicating one motor-car, three not-expensive maids, brief European tours, and the best preparatory schools and colleges for the sons. A maid answered the door and took his card,

a maid in a frilly apron and black uniform, neither a butler nor a slatantly biddy. In the hall, as the maid disappeared upstairs, Carl had an impression of furnace heat and respectability, rather shy, uncomfortable, anxious to be acceptable, warning himself that as a famous aviator, he need not be in awe of anyone, but finding that the warning did not completely take,

he drew off his coat and gloves, and, after a swift inspection of his tie, gazed about with more curiosity than he had ever given to any other house. For all the stone line in front, this was quite the old-lined English basement house, with the inevitable front and back parlors. Though here they were modified into drawing-room and dining-room.

The walls of the hall were decked with elaborate, meaningless scrolls and plaster-based relief, echoed by raised circles on the ceiling just above the hanging chandelier, which was expensive and hideous, a clutter of brass and knobby red and blue glass. The floor was of hardwood and squares, dark and richly polished, highly self-respecting, a floor that assumed civic responsibility from a Republican point of view

and a sound conservative business established since 1875 or 1880. By the door was a huge Japanese vase, convenient either for depositing umbrellas or falling over in the dark. Then a long mirror in a dull red mahogany frame, and a table of mahogany so refined that no one would ever dream of using it for anything more useful than calling cards. It might have been the table by the king's bed, on which he leaves his crowns on a little purple cushion at night, solid and ostentation. The drawing room to the left was dark and still unsympathetic and expensive, a vista brocade-covered French gilt chairs, and a marketeed table, and a table of onyx top, on which was one book bound in ooze cap,

and one vase, cream-colored, heavy carpet, and a crystal chandelier of fairly meticulous paintings of rocks and thatched cottages, and ragged newsboys with faces like Daniel Webster, all of them in large gilt frames, protected by shadow boxes. In a corner was a cabinet of gilt and glass, filled with Dresden China figurines and toy tables and a carbon-swis musical powder box. The fireplace was of smooth, chilly white marble

with the normal little clock on the mantelpiece, and a fire screen painted with Watu Shepherds and shepherdesses. making silken unreal love and scandously neglecting silky unreal sheep. By the hearth were shiny fire irons, which looked as though they had never been used. The whole room looked as though it had never been used, except during the formal calls of overdressed matrons with cardcases and prejudices. The one human piece of furniture in a room a couch soft and slightly worn on which lovers might have sat and small boys bounced.

was trying to appear useless to, under its row of stiff satin cushions with gold cords, well-dusted chairs on which no one wished to sit, expensive fireplace that never shone, prized pictures with less imagination, than the engravings on a bond. That drawing-room had the soul of a banker with side-whiskers. Carl, by no means, cataloged all the details, but he did get the effect of engrowing prosperity. It was not certain that he thought the room hadn't bad taste.

It is not certain that he had any artistic taste whatsoever, or that his attack upon the pretentiousness of authors had been based on anything more fundamental than a personal irritation due to having met blatant camp followers of the arts. And it is certain that one of his reactions, as he surveyed the abject respectability of the room, was a slight awe at the solaceous. of social position which it represented and which he consciously lacked.

But rather from artistic instinct or from ignorance, he was sure that into the room ought to blow a sudden great wind, with the scent of forest and snow. He shook his head when the maid returned, and he followed her upstairs. Surely, a girl reared here would never run away and play with him. He heard lively voices from the library of bed. He entered a room to be lived in and be happy in with a jolly fire on the hearth and friendly people on a big brown Davenport.

Ruth Winslow smiled at him from behind the colonial silver and thin cups on the tea table. And as he saw her light-filled eyes, saw her cock her head, slight gaily in welcome, he was again convinced that he had found a playmate. A sensation of being pleasantly accepted warmed him as she cried. so glad, and introduced him, gave him tea and a cake with nuts in it. From a wing chair, Carl searched the room and the people. There were two paintings of pale night sea and an arching Japanese bridge under sliding rain, both imaginative and well done.

There was a mahogany eschatir, which might have been stiff, but was made human by scattered papers on the great blotter and books crammed into the shelves. Other books were heaped on a table as though people had been reading them. Later he found how amazingly they were assorted. The latest novel of Robert Chambers beside H.G. Wells, first and last things. A dusty, expensive book on Italian sculpture

near a cheap reprint of Dodo. The chairs were capricious, the piano workman-like, upright, not dominating the room, but ready for music. And in front of the fire was an English setter, an aristocrat of a dog, with the light glittering on his slowly waving tail. The people fitted into the easy life of the room.

They were New Yorkers, and unlike over half the population born there, considering New York a village, where one knows everybody and remembers when 14th Street was the shopping center. Olive Dunlevy was shinily present, her ash-blond hair in a new cofurture. She was arguing with a man of tight morning clothes

and a high-bred face about the merits of Parsafil which Olive declared no one ever attended except as a matter of conscience. Now, Georgie, she said. I said Georgie, you shall have your opera, and you shall jolly well have it alone too. Olive was vivid about it all, but Carl saw that she was watching him, and he was shy as he wondered what Ruth had older. Oliver's brother, Philip Dunleby, a clear-faced, slender, well-bathed boy of 26, with too high forehead, with discontent in his face, and in his thin voice carelessly well-dressed in a soft gray suit and an impressionistic tie, was also inspecting Carl, while talking to a pretty, commonplace, finishing school-finished girl. Carl instantly disliked Philip Donleby, and was afraid of his latent sarcasm.

Indeed, Carl felt more and more that beneath the friendliness with which he was greeted, there was no real welcome as yet, save possibly on the part of Ruth. He was taken on trial. He was a Mr. Erickson, not any Mr. Erickson in particular. Ruth, while she poured tea,

was laughing with a man and a girl. Carl himself was part of a hash group, an older woman who seemed to know Rome and Paris better than New York and might be anything from a milliner to a modern era, a keen-looking youngster with tortoise-shell spectacles. Finally, Ruth's elder brother, Mason J. Winslow, Jr. A tall, thin, solemn, intensely well-intoned man of 37, with a long, clean-shaven face,

and a long narrow head whose growing baldness was always spoken of as a result of his hard work. Mason J. Winslow, Jr., spoke hesitantly, worried over everything, and stood for morality and good business. He was rather dull in conversation, rather kind and manner, and accomplished solid things

by unimaginatively sticking at them. He didn't understand people who did not belong to a good club. Carl contributed a few careful platitudes to a frivolous discussion of whether it would not be advisable to solve the woman's suffrage question by taking the vote away from men

and women both and conferring it on children. Mason Winslow ambled to a big table for a cigarette and Carl pursued him. While they stood talking about the times are bad, Carl was spying upon Ruth and the minute her current group wandered off

to the Davenport, he made a dash for the tea table and got there before Olive's brother Philip Donlevy, who was obviously maneuvering like himself. Philip gave him a convert. War you, fellow. Glance took a cake

and retired. From his wicker chair facing Ruth, Carl said gloomily, it isn't done. Yes, said Ruth, I know it. But still, some very smart people are doing it this season. But do you think the woman

that writes, what the man will wear in the theater program would stand for it? Not gravely considered Ruth, if there were black-stitching, on the dress glove. Yes, there is some authority for frilled shirts. You think it might be considered then? I will not come between you and your haberdasher, Mr. Herrickson. This is a foolish conversation. But since you think the better classes do it, gee, it's getting hard for me to keep

up this kind of dolly dialogue. What I wanted to do was to request you to give me concisely, but fully, a sketch of who is Miss Ruth Winslow, and save me for making any pet particular breaks. And hereafter, I warn you, I am going to talk like my cousin, the carpet slipper model. Name Ruth Winslow, age between 20 and 30. Father, Mason Winslow, manufacturing contractor for concrete. Brothers, Mason Winslow, Jr., whose poor dear head,

is getting somewhat bald. as you observe, and Bobby Winslow, nearer do well, who is engaged in subverting discipline at medical school and who dances divinely. My mother died three years ago. I do nothing useful, but I play a good game of bridge and possess a voice that those who know pronounce passable. I have a speaking knowledge of French,

a reading knowledge of German, and a singing knowledge of Italian. I am wearing an imported gown, for which the house of Winslow will probably never pay. I live in this house. I am an Episcopalian, not so much high church as highly infrequent church. I regard the drawing room downstairs as the worst example of late Victorian abominations in my knowledge, but I shall probably never persuade father to change it because Mason thinks it is sacred to the past. My ambition is life is to be catty to the Newport set

after I've married an English diplomat with a divine mustache. Never had to be a very much. Never having met such a personage outside of Tattler and Vogue, I can't give you very many details regarding him. Oh, yes, of course. He'll have to play a marvelous game of polo and have a chateau in province and also a ranch in Texas where I shall wear riding breeches

and live next to nature and have a Chinese cook in blue silk. I think that's my whole story. Oh, I forgot. I play at the piano and am ignorant and completely immersed in the world's traditions of the wealthy mix of the Upper West Side. And I always pretend that I live here

instead of on the Upper East Side because the air is better. What is the Upper West Side is a state of mind? Indeed, it is not. It is a state of pocketbook. The Upper West Side is composed entirely of people born in New York who want to be in society, whatever that is,

and can't afford to live on Fifth Avenue. You know, everybody who went to school with everybody and played in the park, with everybody, and mostly your papa is in wholesale trade and haughty about people in retail. You go to Europe one summer and to the Jersey coast the next. All your clothes and parties and weddings and funerals might be described as elegant. That's Upper West Side. Now, the dread truth about you. Do you know after the unscrupulous way in which you've followed up a mere chance introduction at a T somewhere, I suspect you to be a well-behaved young man who leads an entirely blameless life, or else you'd never dare

to jump the fence and come and play in my backyard when all the other boys politely knock at the front door and get sent home. Well, I'm a wage-slave of the Van Zale Motor People, in charge of the Turricar Department. age 28, almost, habits, all bad. No, I'll tell you, I'm one of those stern, silent men of granite, you read about. And only my man knows the human side of me, because all the guys on Wall Street tremble in my presence. Yes, but then how can you belong to the blue bullsodality? Yes, I've got it. You must have read novels in which the stern, silent man of granite has a secret tenderness in his heart, and he keeps the band of the first

cigar he ever smoked, and a little safe in the wall, and the first dollar he ever made in a frame. That's me. Of course, the cigar was given him by his flaxen-haired sweetheart, back in Jensen Corner, and in the last chapter he goes back and marries her. Not always, I hope. Of what Carl was thinking is not recorded. Well, as a matter of fact, I've been a fairly industrious young man of granite the last few months, getting out the Tauricar. What is the tourcar? It sounds like an island inhabited by cannibals,

exports hemp and coconut, see pink dotted map, nor by nor east of Mogadar, Carl explained. I'm terribly interested, said Ruth, but she made it sound as though she really was. I think it's so wonderful. I want to go off tramping through the, Berkshires, I'm so tired of going to the same old places. Sometime, when you're quite sure I'm an esteemable young YMCA man, I'm going to try to persuade you to come out for a real trap. She seemed to be considering the idea, not seriously, but Philip Donnellaby, inventured.

For some time Philip had been showing signs of interest in Ruth and Carl. Now he sauntered to the table, begged for another cup of tea, said agreeable things in regard to putting orange marmalade in tea, and calmly established himself. Ruth turned toward him. Carl fancied that there was for himself in Ruth's voice. Something more friendly in her infectious smile, something more intimate than she had given the others,

but when she turned precisely the same churry expression upon Philip, Carl seemed to have lost something which he had trustingly treasured for years. He was the more forlorn as, Olive Donovly joined them. Anne, Ruth, Philip, and Olive discussed the engagement of one Mary Meldon. Olive recalled Miss Meldon as she had been in school days. At the convent of the Sacred Heart, Philip told them for her flirtations at the Old Long Beach Hotel. The names of New York people whom they had always known, the names of country clubs.

Walter Sol and Meadowbrook and Peace Waters, the names of streets with the sharp differentiation between 74th Street and 75th Street. Durland's Writing Academy, the rink of a Monday morning, and other souvenirs of a New York childhood, the score of the last American polo team, and the coming dances, and these things shut Carl out as definitely as though he were a foreigner. He was lonely.

He disliked Phil Donnelly's sarcastic references. He wanted to run away. Ruth seemed to realize that Carl was shut out, said she to Phil Donalopee. I wish you could have seen Mr. Erickson saved my life last Sunday. I had an experience. What was that? Ask the man whom Olive called Georgie joining the tea table set. The whole room listened as Ruth recounted the trip to Chinatown,

Mrs. Salisbury's party, and the hero who had once been a passenger on an airplane. Throughout she kept turning toward Carl, it seemed to reunite him to the company. As she closed, he said. The thing that amused me about the parlor aviator was his laying down the law about the Atlantic will be crossed before the end of 1913 and his assumptions that we'll all have airplanes in five years. I know from my own business, the automobile business, about how much such prophecies are worth. Don't you think the Atlantic will be crossed soon?

asked the keen-looking man with the tortoise-shell spectacles. Bill Dunlavy broke in with an air of amused sophistication. I think the parlor aviator was right, really. You know, aviation is too difficult as subject for the layman to make any predictions about, either what it can do or can't do. Oh, yes, admitted Carl, and the whole room breathed. Oh, yes.

Dunlavy went on in his thin, overbred, insolent voice. Now I have a on good authority from a man who's a member of the Aero Club that next year will be the greatest year aviation has ever known and that the rights have an airplane up their sleeve which with they'll cross the Atlantic without a stop

during the spring of 1914 at the very latest. That's unfortunate because the aviation game has gone up completely in this country except for a hydro aeroplaning and military aviation and possibly it never will come back. said Carl, a hint of peek in his voice.

"'Well, does your authority for that?' Phil turned a large, bizarre ring round on his slender, left little finger, and the whole room waited, testing this positive-spoken outsider. "'Well, drawled Carl, I have fairly good authority. Walter McMannies, for instance, and he is possibly the best flyer in the country today, except for Lincoln Beachy.'

"'Oh, yes, he's a good flyer, said Phil, contemptuously, with a shadowy smile for Ruth. Still, he's no better than Aaron Solomon's, and he isn't half so great a flyer as that chap with the same surname as your own, Hawk Erickson, whom I myself saw coming up the Jersey Coast when he won the big race to New York. You see, I've been following this aviation pretty close.

Carl saw Ruth's head drop an inch, and her eyes closed to a slit as she inspected him with sudden surprise. He knew that it had just occurred to her who he was. Their eyes exchanged understanding. She does get things, he thought and said lightly. Well, I honestly hate to take the money, Mr. Don Levy, but I'm in a position to know that McMonys is a better flyer today than Erickson is. But see here, because I happen to beaawk Erickson.

What a chump I am! groaned the man in toward the sail's spectacle. Of course, I remember your picture now. Phil was open-mouthed. Ruth laughed. The rest of the room gasped. Mason Winslow, long and bald, was worrying over the question of how to receive aviators at tea. Aunt Carl was shy as a small boy caught stealing jam.

End of Chapter 29. Chapter 30 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Lieber Vox recording is in the public domain. recording by Mike Vendetti, MikeVendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 30. At home, early that evening, Carl's doctor-landlord, gave him the message that a Miss Gertrude Cowles had called him up, but had declined to leave a number.

The landlord's look indicated that it was no fault of his if Carl had friends who were such fools that they didn't leave their numbers. Carl got even with him by going out to the corner drugstore to telephone Gertie instead of giving him a chance to listen. Hello, said Gertie over the telephone. Oh, hello, Carl. I just called to tell you Adelaide is going to be here this evening, and I thought perhaps you might like to come up if you have anything better to do.

Carl did have something better to do. He might have used the whole evening and being psychological about Ruth and Phil Donnelly and English basement houses with cream-colored drawing rooms, but he went up to Gertie's. They were all there, Gertie and Adelaide, Ray and his mother, and Miss Green an unidentified girl from Minneapolis, all playing Parchisi, explaining that they thought it not quite proper to play cards on Sunday, but that Parchisi was different.

Ray winked at Carl as they said it. The general atmosphere was easy and livable. Carl found himself at home again. Adelaide told funny antecedents about her school of domestic science and the chief teacher who wore her hair and a walnut on top of her head and interrupted her lecture on dietetics to chase a cockroach with a ruler. As the others began to disappear, Gertie said to Carl, Don't go till I read you a letter from Ben Rusk I got yesterday.

Lots of news from home. Joe Jordan is engaged. They were left alone. Gertie glanced at him immediately. He stiffened. He knew that Gertie was honest, kindly, with enough sense of display to catch the tricks of a new environment. But to her, matrimony would be the inevitable sequence of a friendship, which Ruth or Olive could take easily, pleasantly for its own sake. And Carl, the young man just starting

in business, was unheroically afraid of matrimony. Yet his stiffness of attitude disappeared when Gertie had read the letter from Jerolaman and mused, chin on hand, dreamily melancholy, I can just see them out slaying. Sometimes I wish I was out there. honest, Carl, for all the sea and hills here, don't you wish sometimes it were August, and you were out home camping on a wooden bluff over a lake? Yes, she cried. I've been away so long that I don't ever feel homesick for any particular part of the country. But just the same, I would like to see the lakes, and I do miss the prairie sometimes.

Oh, I was reading something the other day. A fellow was trying to define the different sorts of terrain. Here it is, cut out of the paper. He produced from among a bunch of pocket-worn envelopes and memorandums, a clipping hack from a newspaper with a nail file, it read. The combat and mystery of the sea, the uplift of the hills, and their promise of wonder beyond, the kindness of late afternoons, nestling in small fields,

or in ample barns where red clover tops and long grasses shine against the gray foundation stones and small boys seek for hidden entrances to this castle of the farm. the deep holiness of the forest, whose leaves are the stained glass of a cathedral, through grave saints of the open, all these I love, but nowhere do I find content,

save on the Midwestern prairie, where the light of sky and plain drug the senses, where the sound of metal larks at dawn fulfills my desire for companionship, and the easy creek of the buggy as we top rise after rise, bespells me into an afternoon slumber which the nervous town shall never know. I cut the thing out because I was thinking that the prairies, stretching out the way they do,

make me want to go on and on in an aeroplane or any old thing. Lord, Lord. I guess before long I'll have to be beating it again, like the guy in Kipling that always got sick of reading the same page too long. Oh, but Carl, you don't mean to say you're going to give up your business. when you're doing so well, and aviation shows what you can do if you stick to a thing, Carl, and not just wander around like you used to do. We do want to see you succeed. His reply was rather weak. Well, gee, I guess I'll succeed all right,

but I don't see much use of succeeding if you have to be stuck down in a greasy city street all your life. That's very true, Carl, but do you appreciate the city? Have you ever been in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were gone to a single symphony concert at Carnegie Hall. Carl was convinced that Gertie was a highly superior person, that she was getting far more of the good of New York than he. He would take her to a concert, have her explain the significance of the music. It was never to occur sharply to him that, though Gertie referred frequently to concerts and pictures, she showed no vast amount of knowledge about them. She was a fixed fact in his mind had been for 20 years. He could have a surface quarrel with her because he knew the

fundamental things in her. And with these, he was sure no one could quarrel. His thoughts of Ruth and Holly were delightful surprises. His impression of Gertie was stable as the Rockies. Carl wasn't sure whether Upper Westside young ladies could be persuaded to attend a theater party upon short acquaintance. But he tried and arranged a party of Ruth and Olive and himself, Walter Magmone's, in town on his way from Africa to San Diego, Charlie Forbes of the Chronicle, and for chaperone, the cosmopolitan woman whom he admitted Ruth, and who proved to be a Mrs. Turrell, a dismayingly smart dressmaker. When he called for Ruth, he expected such a gay girl as had four tea. He was odd to find her a grand dame,

in black velvet, more dignified, apparently inches taller, and in a vice-rigally bad temper. As they drove off, she declared, Sorry, I am in such a fiddleness temper. I had a single pair of decent white gloves, and I tore some old black Spanish lace on the gown. I was going to wear in my entire family, who God, unquestionably sent, to be a trial to test me, clustered about my door while I was dressing and bawled inquiries about laundry and other horribly vulgar things. Carl did not see much of the play.

He was watching Ruth's eyes listening to her whispered comments. She declared that she was awed by the presence of two aviators and a newspaper man. Actually, she was working, working at bringing out McMonys, a shy, broad-shouldered, inarticulate youth who supposed that he never had to talk. Carl had planned to go to the Ritz for after-theater supper, but Ruth and Olive persuaded him to take them to the cafe of the rectors of that time,

where they said they had never been in a Broadway cafe and they wanted to see the famous actors with their makeups off. At the table, Carl carried Ruth off in talk, like a young Lockover out of the Middle West. Around them was the storm of highballs and brandy and club soda, theatrical talk, and a confused mass of cigar smoke, shirtfronts, white, shoulders, and drab waiters.

Yet, here was a quiet refuge for the eternal force of life. Carl was asking, Would you rather be a perfect lady and have blue bowls with bunnies on them for your very worst disposition, or be like your mountain climbing woman and have anarchists for friends one day and be off hiking through the clouds the next? Oh, I don't know.

I know I'm terribly susceptible, to the nice things of life, but I do get tired of being nice, especially when I have a bad temper, as I had tonight. I am not at all imprisoned in a harem, and as for social aspirations, I'm a nobody.

But still, I have been brought up to look at things that aren't like the home life of our dear queen, as impossible, and I'm quite sure that Father believes that poor people are poor because they are silly and don't try to be rich. But I've been reading,

and I've made to you it may say, seem silly to call it a discovery. But to me, it's the greatest discovery I've ever made, that people are just people, all of them, that the little mousy clerk may be a hero, and the hero may be a nobody. The demoterman that lets his beastly car spatter mud on my nice new velvet skirt

may be exactly the same sort of person as the swain who commiserates with me in his cunning Harvard accent. Do you think that? I know it. Most of my life I've been working with men with dirty fingernails, and the only difference between them and the men with clean nails

is a nail cleaner, and that cost just ten cents at the corner drugstore. Seriously. I remember a cook I used to talk to on my way down to Panama once. Panama, how I'd like to go there. And he had as much culture as anybody I've ever met. Yes, but generally do you find very much courtesy and that sort of thing among mechanics as much as among what calls itself the better class?

No, I don't. You don't. Why, I thought the way you spoke? Why, blessed, what in the world would be the use of their trying to climb if they already had all the rich have? You can't be as gracious as the man that's got nothing else to do, when you're about to jump ahead of the steamroller every second. That's why they ought to take things. If I were a union man, I wouldn't trust all these writers and college men and so on

that try to be sympathetic, not for one minute. They mean well, but they can't get what it means to be a real work. to have to be up at five every winter morning with no heat in the furnished housekeeping room, or to have to see his woman sick because he can't afford a doctor. So they talked, boy and girl, wondering together what the world really is like. I want to find out what we can do with life, she said. Surely it's something more than working to get tired and then resting to go back to work, but I'm confused about things.

She sighed. My settlement work, I went into it, because I was bored. But it did make me realize how many people are hungry, and yet we just talk and talk and talk. Olive and I sit up half the night when she comes to my house, and when we're not talking about the new negligets we're making and the gorgeous tea-gowns we're going to have when we're married. We rescue the poor and think we're dreadfully advanced, but does it do any good to just talk? Dear me, I split that poor infinity right down his middle. I don't know, but I do know. I don't want to be just stupidly satisfied, and

talking does keep me from that. Anyway, see here, Miss Winslow, suppose some time I suggested that we become nice and earnest and take up socialism and single-tax and this, what is it, oh, syndicationalism, and really studied them. Would you do it? Make each other study? Love to. Does Dunleavy think much? She raised her, eyebrows a bit, but hesitated. Oh, yes, no, I don't suppose he does. Or, anyway, mostly about the violin, he played a lot when he was in Yale. Thus was Carl encouraged to be fatuous, and he said in a manner which quite dismissed,

Phil Dunlubby. I don't believe he's very deep, rather light, I'd say. Her eyebrows had ascended further. Do you think so? I'm sorry. Why sorry? Oh, he's always been rather a friend of mine. Olive and Phil and I roller-skated together at the age of eight.

But, and I shall probably marry Phil some day before long. She turned abruptly to Charlie Forbes for the question. Lost. Already lost. Was the playmate a loss that disgusted him with life? He beat his spirit, cursed himself as a clumsy mechanic. He listened to Olive only by self-compulsion. It was minutes before he had the...

the ability and the chance to say to Ruth. Forgive me. In the name of the Blue Bowl, Mr. Dunlevy was rather rude to me and I've been just as rude, and to you, and without his excuse, and he would naturally want to prevent you from a wild aviator from Lord knows where.

You are forgiven, and Phil was rude, and you're not a Lord knows where, I'm sure. Almost brusquely, Carl demanded, come for a long cramp with me on the Palisades next Sunday, if you can, and if it's a decent day. You said you'd like to run away, and we can be back before dinner if you like. Let me think it over. I would like to. I've always wanted to do just that.

Think of it. The Palisades just opposite, and I never see them except for a walk of half a mile or so when I stay with a friend of mine, Laura Needham, at Winkelhurst, up in the Palisades. My mother never approved of a wilder wilderness in Central Park and the habit. I've never been able to get Olive to explore. But it isn't conventional to go on long tramps with even the nicest new Johnny, is it? No, but I know. You'll say who makes the convention, and of course there's no answer, but they.

But they are so all present. They. Oh, yes, yes, yes, I will go. But you will let me be back by dinner time, won't you? Will you call for me about two? And can you... I wonder if a hawk out of the windy skies can understand how daring a dove

out of 92nd Street feels it going walking in the palisades. End of chapter 30. Chapter 31 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 31. the iron hudson flowed sullenly far below the ice enameled rock on the palisades where stood ruth and carl shivering in the abrupt wind that cut down the defile

the scowling slaty river was filled with ice floes and chunks of floating water drenched snow that broke up into booming sheets of slush the sky was solid cold gray with no arch and no hint of the lost sun crows winging above them stood out against the sky like pencil marks on clean paper. The estates in Upper New York City across the river were snow-cloaked, the trees chilly and naked, the houses standing out as though they were freezing and longing for their summer wrap of ivy.

And naked were the rattling trees on their side of the river. On the palisades? But the cold breezes enlivened them, the sternness of the swift, cruel river and miles of brown shore made them gravely happy. As they trapped briskly off,

atop the hills towards the ferry to New York, five miles away. They talked with a quiet, quick seriousness, which discovered them to each other. It was too cold for conversational fencing. It was too splendidly open for them not to rejoice in the freedom from New York streets and feel like heroes conquering the miles. Carl was telling of Girolaman, of Plato, of his first flights before country fairs, something of what it meant to be a newspaper hero, and of his loneliness as a dethroned prince. Ruth dropped her defenses of a chaperoned young woman, confessed that now that she had no mother to keep her mobilized

and in the campaign to get nearer to society, and a decent marriage, she did not know exactly what she wanted to do with life. She spoke tentatively of her vague settlement work, in all she said, revealed an honesty as forthright as though she were a god-eyed fanatic instead of a lively-voiced girl in a blue corduroy jacket with collar and cuffs of civet and buttons from Venice.

Then Carl spoke of his religion, the memory of Forrest Havland. He had never really talked of him to anyone save Colonel Havland and Titherton, the Englishave-eater. But now this girl, who had never seen Forrest, seemed to have known him for life. Carl made vivid by his earnestness, the golden hours of work together in California, the confidences in New York restaurants,

his long passion for the Brazilian trip. Ruth's eyes looked up at him with swift comprehension, and there was a tear in them as he told in ten words of the message that Forrest was dead. They turned gay, Ruth's sturdy, charming shoulder, shrugging like a Frenchman's, with the exhilaration of fast-walking in keen air, while her voice light and cheerful with graceful modulations

and the singer's freedom from Twang rejoiced. I'm so glad we came, I'm so glad we came, but I'm afraid of the wild beasts I see in the woods there. They have no right to have twilight so early. I know a big newspaper man who lives in Pompton, New Jersey, and I'm going to ask him to write the governor about it. The legislature ought to pass a law that dusk shan't come till seven. Saturday afternoons.

Do you know how glad I am that you made me come, and how honored I am to have you tell me, Lieutenant Havland, and the very bad Carl that lived in Girolaman. It's, I'm glad. Say, G, we'll have to hurry like the dickens if we're going to catch a fairy in time to get you home for dinner. I'm an idea. I wonder if we dare.

I have a friend sort of a distant cousin who married her, a husband in Wilkenhurst, on the palisades not very far from the ferry i wonder if we couldn't make her invite us both for dinner of course she'll want to know all about you but we'll be mysterious and that will make it all the more fun don't you think i do want to prolong our joint you see i can't think of anything i'd rather do but do you dare impose a perfectly strange man on her oh yes i know her so well that she told me what kind of tie her husband had on when he proposed let's do it a telephone there's some shops i had there and that settlement ought to be a telephone there i'll make her give us a good dinner if laura thinks she'll get away with hash and a custard with a cherry in it she'd better undeceive herself they entered a tiny wayside shop with a sale of candy and padlocks and mittens while ruth telephoned to her friend mrs laura needham karl bought red and blue and lemon-colored all-day suckers and a sugar mouse and a candy kitten, with green ears and real whiskers. He could not but hear Ruth telephoning,

and they grinned at each other like conspirators, her eyelids and little wrinkles as she tried to look wicked, her voice amazingly innocent as she talked. Carl, carefully arranging his purchases before her, making the candy kitten pursue the sugar mouse round and round the telephone. Hello, hello. Is Mrs. Needham there? Hello. Oh, hello, Laura, dear. This is Ruth? Fine. I feel fine. But chilly. Listen, Laura, I've been taking a tramp along the palisides.

Am I invited to dinner with his swain? What? Oh, yes I am. Certainly. I'm invited to dinner. Well, my dear, go in town by all means with my blessing, but that shan't prevent you from having the opportunity to enjoy being hospitable. I don't know. What fairy do you catch? The 7.20? No, no. No. I don't think we can get there till after that, so you can go right ahead and have the biddy get ready for us. All right. That is good of you, dear, to force the invitation on me. She flushed as her eyes met Carls, she continued. But seriously, will it be too much of attacks on the biddy if we do come?

We're dreadful cold, and that's a long, cool way to town. Thank you, dear. I shall be returned unto you. After not too many days. What? Who? Oh, man. Why, yes, it might be, but I'd be twice as likely to go tramping with Olive as with Phil. No, it isn't. Oh, as usual. He's getting to be quite a dancing man. Well, if you must know, oh, I can't give you his name. He's—' she glanced at Carl,

appraisingly. He's about five foot tall, and has a long French shovel beard and a lovely red nose, and he's listening to me describe him. Carl made the kitten chase the mouse furiously. Perhaps I'll tell you about him sometime. Goodbye, Lord, dear. She turned to Carl, rubbing her cold ear with the telephone receiver and pressed against it. Anne caroled,

her husband is held late at the office, and Laura is going to meet him in town, and they're going to the theater, so we'll have the house all to ourselves. Exciting? She swung around to telephone home, to tell them she would not be there for dinner. As they left the shop,

went over a couple of blocks for the Winkinhurst trolley, and boarded it, Carl did some swift thinking. He was not above flirting, or if the opportunity offered, carrying the flirtation to the most delicious, exciting, uncertain length they could. Here, with dinner in their own house,

with a girl interesting yet unknown, there was a feeling of sudden intimacy, which might mean anything. Only when their joined eyes had pledged mischief while she telephoned. She had been so quiet, so frank, so evidently free from a shame-faced erotic curiosity, that now he instantly dismissed the query. How far could I go? What does she expect, which outside of pure romances really does come to men? It was a wonderful relief to dismiss the query, a simplification to live in the joy each moment gave of itself.

The hour was like a poem, yet he was no extraordinary person. He had, in the lonely years of a dead room, been tortured with the unmaral longings which, good or bad, men do feel. As they took their seats in the car and Ruth beat on her knees with her fur-lined gloves, he laughed back, altogether happy, not pretending as he had pretended with Eve la'Iwisi. Happy, but hungry. Mrs. Needham should have been graciously absent by the time they reached her house, a suburban residence with a large porch.

But as they approach, Ruth cried, Shh, there seems to be somebody moving around in the living room. I don't believe Laura's gone yet. That would spoil it. Come on, let's peep. Let's be Indian scouts. Cautioning each other with warning pads, they tiptoed guiltily to the side of the house and peered, in and at the dining-room window, where the shade was raised a couple of inches above the sill. A noise at the back of the house made them start and flattened against the wall.

Big Chief, whispered Carl, the Redskins are upon us. But old brown barrel shall make many and one the bite the dust. Hush, silly. Oh, it's just the maid. See, she's looking at the clock and wondering why we don't get here. But maybe Mrs. Needham is in the other room. No, because the maid sniffing around. There, she's reading a postcard.

Someone left on the side table. Oh, yes. And she's chewing gum. Laura has certainly departed. Probably Laura's chewing gum herself at the present moment. Now that she's out from under the eye of the maid, Laura always was refined, but I wouldn't trust her to be proof against a feeling of wild dissipation

you can get out of chewing gum if you live in Winquellhurst. They had rung the doorbell on the porch by now. I'm so glad, said Ruth, that Laura's gone. She is very literal-minded. She might not understand that we could be hastily married, and even lease a house this way, and still be only tea acquaintances. The maid had not yet answered.

Waiting in the still porch, winter everywhere beyond it, Carl was all excited anticipation. He hastily pressed her hand, and she lightly returned their pressure, laughing, breathing quickly. They started like convicted lovers as the maid opened the door.

The consciousness of their staring made them over-embarrassed, and they stammered before the maid. Ruth fled upstairs while Carl tried to walk up bravely, though he was tingling with the game. When he had watched, discovering as everyone newly discovers

after every long chilly walk, that water from the cold tap feels amazingly warm on hands, congealed by the tramp. And was loitering in the upper hall. Ruth called to him from Mrs. Needham's room. I think you'll find hairbrushes and things in Jack's room on the right. Oh, I'm very stupid. I forgot this was our house.

I mean in your room, of course. He had a glimpse of her twisting up a strand of naturally wavy brown hair, a silver-backed hairbrush bright against it. Her cheeks flushed to an even crimson, her blue, corduroy jacket off, warmly intimate in its stead a blouse of blue satin, opening in a shallow triangle at her throat. With a tender, big brotherness he sought the room that was his, not Jacks. No longer was this the house of other people, but one in which he belonged. No, he heard himself explain. She isn't beautiful. Ister Nash was nearer that, but golly. She is such a good pal,

and she is beautiful if an English lane is. Oh, stop. Yes, Miss Winslow, coming. Am I ready for dinner? Watch me. She confided as he came out into the hall. Isn't it terribly confusing to have our home, and even three Toby children already made for us this way?

Her glance, eyes that always startled him with blue where dark brown was expected. Even teeth, showing headcock side-long, cheeks burning with fire of December snow. Her glance and all her manner trusted him, the outlaw. It was not as an outsider, but as her comrade, that he answered. Golly, have we a family, too? I always forgot, so sorry.

But you know, get so busy at the office. Why, I think we have one. I'll go look in the nursery and make sure, but I'm almost positive. No, I'll take your word for it. You're a roundhouse more than I am, but, oh, say, speaking of that, that reminds me, woman, if you think I'm going to buy you a washing machine this year, when I've already bought you a napkin ring and a portrait of Martha Washington, oh, well, I knew I should have a cruel husband.

Joy, I think the maid is prowling about and trying to listen. Shh, the story Laura will get out of her. While the maids served dinner, there could scarce have been a more severely correct pair. though Carl did step on her toe when she was saying to the maid in her best offhand manner, O lay, will you please tell Miss Needham that I stole a handkerchief from my, I mean from her room. But when the maid had been unable to find any more imaginary crumbs to brush off the table and had left them alone with their hearts and the dessert, a most rowdy young married couple quarreled violently over the washing machine,

he still refused to buy for her. Carl insisted that as suburbanites, they had to play cards, and he taught her pinnuckle, which he had learned from at the bartender of the Bowery Saloon, but the cards dropped from their fingers, and they sat before the gas log in the living room in a lazy, perfect happiness when she said, all the while we've been playing cards and playing the still more dangerous game of being married. I've been thinking how glad I am to know about your life. somehow. I wonder if you have told still very many.

Practically no one. I do. I'm really not fishing for compliments, but I want to be found understanding. There never been anyone so understanding. Silent then, Carl glanced about the modern room. Ruth's eyes followed. She nodded as he said, but it's really an old farmhouse out in the hills where the snow is deep, and there's logs in the fireplace. Yes, and rag carpets. And, oh, Ruth, listen to bobsled with, golly, I suppose it is a little premature to call you Ruth,

but after our being married all evening, I don't see how I can call you Miss Winslow. No, I'm afraid it would scarcely be proper under the circumstances. Then I must be Mrs. Erickson. Oh, it makes me. me think of Norse galleys and Northern Seas, of course. Your galley was the airplane. Mrs. Eryk. Her voice ran down. She flushed and said defensively, What time is it? I think we must be starting. I telephoned I would be home by ten.

Her tone was conversational as her words. But as they stood waiting for a trolley car to the New York ferry, on a street corner transformed by an arc light that swung in the wind and cast wavering films of radiance among the vague wintry trees of a woodlot. Ruth tucked her arm under his, small beside his great bolster, and sighed like a child. Very cold. He rubbed her hand protectingly, her mouse-like hand in its fur-line glove. His canny, self-defensive scotch-like Norse soul, opened its gates.

He knew a longing to give her passion to protect her, a whelming desire to have shy secrets with this slim girl. All the poetry in the world sounded its silver harps within him because his eyes were opened, and it was given to him to see her face, gently he said. Yes, it's cold, and there's big gray ghosts hiding there in the trees, with their leathery wings that were made out of sea fog, by the witches, folded in the front of them and they're glumming at us

over the bony, knobby joints on their wings, with big round platter eyes, and the wind is calling us. It's trying to snatch us on the Arctic snowfields to freeze us, but I'll fight them all off. I won't let them take you, Ruth. I'm sure you won't, Carl. And oh, you won't let Bill Donoghue

keep you from running away, not for a while yet? Maybe not. The sky cleared, she tilted up her chin and adored the stars, stars like the hard, cold, fighting sparks that fly from a trolley wire. Carl looked down fondly, noting how fair-skinned was her forehead,

in contrast to her thick, dark brows, as the arc light's brilliance rested on her worshipping face. Her lips, a tremble, slightly parted. She raised her arms, her fingers widespread, praising the star gods. She cried only, Oh, all this! But it was a prayer to a prayer to a little.

a greater god pan, shaking his snow-encrusted beard to the roar of northern music. To Carl, her cry seemed to pledge faith in that star sky and the long trail and glorious restlessness that by a dead fireplace of white smooth marble would never find content. Like sword points those stars are, he said then. Then they heard the trolley car's flat wheels grinding on a curve. Its searchlight changed the shadow-haunted woodland to a sad group of scanty trees, huddling in front of an old billboard

with its top broken and the tattered posters flapping. The wanderers stepped from the mystical romance of the open night into the exceeding realism of the car. Highly realistic, wooden floor with small muddy pools from lumps of dirty melting snow, hot air. A smile of Italian workmen, a German conductor with the sniffles, a row of shoes, mostly wet and all wrinkled. They had to stand, most realistic of all,

they read the glossy car signs advertising soap and little cigars and the enterprising local advertisement of William P. Smith and Sons, all northern New Jersey real estate, cheaper than rent. So instantly, the children of the night turned into two sophisticated young New Yorkers, who apologizing for fresh air yawns, talked of the theatrical season. But for a moment, a strange look of distance dwelt in Ruth's eyes, and she said,

I wonder what I can do with the winter stars we found? Will 92nd Street be big enough for them? End of Chapter 31. Chapter 32 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. The Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair. Air Lewis, Chapter 32.

For a week, the week before Christmas, Carl had seen neither Ruth nor Gertie, but of the office he had seen too much. They were rushing work on the to-gir-car to have it on the market early in 1913. Every afternoon or evening he left the office with his tongues scaly from too much nervous smoking, poked dully about the streets not much desiring to go anyplace nor to watch the crowds. After all, the curiosity had been drawn out of the house. of him by hours of work. Several times he went to a super movie,

a cinema palace on Broadway, above 72nd Street, with an entrance in New York colonial architecture, crowds of well-to-do Jewish girls in opera cloaks. On the two bright mornings of the week, he wanted to play truant from the office, to be off with Ruth over the hills and far away. Both mornings,

there came to him a picture of Gertie, wanting to slip out and play like Ruth, but having no chance. He felt guilty because he had never bidden Gertie to come tramping and guiltily he recalled that it was with her that the boy Carl had gone to seek out fortunes. He told himself that he had been depending upon Gertie for the bread and butter of friendship and begging for the opportunity to give the stranger, Ruth Winslow, dainties of which she already had too much.

When he called Sunday evening he found Gertie alone reading a love story in a woman's magazine. So glad you came, she said. I was getting quite lonely. She was as gratefully casual as ever. Say, Gertie, I've got a plan. Wouldn't you like to go for some good long hikes in the country? Oh, yes, that would be fine when spring comes. No, I mean now in the winter. She looked at him heavily. Why, isn't it pretty cold, don't you think? He prepared to argue, but did not think of her as looking heavily. He did not bring. He did not draw swift comparisons between Gertie's immobility and Ruth's lightness. He was used to Gertie, was in her presence comfortably understanding and understood,

but find whatever he expected in her as easily as one finds the editorial page or the sporting page in a familiar newspaper. He merely became mildly contentuous and made questioning noises in his throat as she went on. You know, it's pretty cold here. You can say all you want about the cold and all that in Minnesota, but really, through humidity? Rats, it isn't so very cold, not if you walk fast.

Well, maybe anyway. I guess it would be nice to explore some. All right, let's. I do think people are so conventional, don't you? Said Gertie, while Carl discernly stole one of Ray's best cigars out of the humidor. Awfully conventional,

not going out for good long walks. Dorothy Gibbons and I did find the nicest place to walk up in the the Bronx Park, and there's such a dear little restaurant right on the water. Of course, the water was frozen, but it seemed quite wild, you know, for New York? We might take that walk whenever you'd like to. Oh, Bronx Park, gee, Gertie, I can't get up much excitement over that. I want to get away from this tame city and forget all about offices and parks and people and everything like that. No, no, now she clucked in a patronizing way.

We mustn't ask New York to give us wilderness, you know. I'm afraid that would be a little too much to ask of it. Don't you think so yourself? Carl groaned to himself. I won't be mothered. He was silent. His silence was positively noisy. He wanted to her to hear it.

But it is difficult to be sulky with a bland plump woman of thirty, who remembers your childhood trick of biting your nails, and glances up at you from her embroidery, occasionally, patting her brown silk hair or smoothing her brown silk waist in a way, which implies a good digestion, a perfect memory of morning's lessons of her Sunday school class, and a mild disbelief in men,

as anything except relatives, providers, card players, and nurslings. Carl gave up the silence cure. He hummed about the room running over the advertising pages of magazines, discussing Plateau fraternities, and waiting till it should be time to go home. Their conversation kept returning to the fraternities. There wasn't much else to talk about. Before tonight they had done complete justice to all other topics. Jerolaman, Benny Rusk, Joe Jordan's engagement, Adelaide Banner, and symphony concerts.

Gertie embroidered, padded her chair, smoothed their waist, looked cheerful, rocked and spoke, embroidered, patted her chair, smoothed her sleeve, looked amiable, rocked and spoke. Embroidered, pat. At a quarter to ten, Carl gave himself permission to go, said he. I'll have to get on the job pretty early tomorrow, not much taking a.Z. here in New York. The way you can in Girolam, eh? So I guess I'd better. I'm sorry you have to go so early. Gertie carefully stuck her embroidery needle into her doily, rolled it up, the doily.

meticulously, laid it down in the center table, straightened the pile of magazines which Carl had deranged and rose. But I'm glad you could drop up this evening. Come up any time. You don't have anything better to do. Oh. What about a tramp? If you know some place that is better than Bronx Park,

we might try it. Why, yes, why sure. We'll have to sometime. And Carl? You're coming up to have Christmas turkey with us, aren't you? I'd like to, a lot, but darn't. it, I've accepted another invitation. That was absolutely

untrue, and Carl was wondering why he had lied. When the storm broke, Gertie's right arm, effectively held out from the elbow, the hand drooping in the attitude of a refined hostess saying goodbye, dropped stiffly to her side.

Slowly she thrust out both arms, shoulder high, on either side. With her fist clenched her head back and slightly on one side, her lips open in agony, the position of crucifixion. Her eyes looked up, unseen, then closed tight. She drew a long breath like a sigh that was too weary for sound, and her plump, placid left hand clutched her panting breast, while her right arm dropped again. All the passion of tragedy seemed to shrink in her hopeless gesture, and her silence was a wall muffled and despairing.

Carl stared, twisting his watch-chain with nervous fingers, wanting to flee. It was raw woman, with all the properties of Jerolaman and St. Orgel's cut away, who spoke, her voice constantly rising. Oh, Carl, Carl, why, why, why? Why don't you want me to go walking with you now? Why don't you want to go anywhere with me any more? Have I displeased you? Oh, I didn't mean to.

Why do I bore you so? Oh, Gertie, she'd thunder, whimpered at this made youth. A more mature Hawk Erickson struggled to life and sooth her. Gertie, honey, I didn't mean, listen. But she moaned on, standing rigid, her left hand on her breast, her eyes red, moist, frightened, fixed. We always played together, and I thought here in this city we could be such good friend. with all the different new things to do together.

Why, I wanted us to go to Chinatown and theaters, and I would have been so glad to pay my share. I've just been waiting and hoping you would ask me, and I wanted us to play and see so many different new things together. It would have been so sweet, so sweet. We were good friends at first, and then you didn't want to come here anymore, and, oh, I couldn't. helped seeing it more and more and more and more.

I've been seeing it, but I didn't want to see it, but now I can't fool myself anymore. I was so lonely till he came tonight, and when you spoke about tramping, and then it seemed like you just went away from me again. Why, Gertie, he didn't seem. And long ago I really saw it, the day we walked in the park, and I was wicked about trying to make you call me El Trudeau, Carl Deere. Indeed, you needn't call me that or anything you don't like. And I tried to make you say I had a temperament and about Adelaide and all,

and you went away, and I thought you would come back to me that evening. Oh, I wanted you to come so much. He didn't even phone, and I waited up till after midnight, hoping you'd phone. I kept thinking, surely you would, and you never did. You never did. and I listened and listened for the phone to ring and every time there was a noise but it never was you, it never rang at all.

She dropped back in the Morris chair, her eyes against the cushion, her hair disordered, both her hands gripping the left arm of the chair, her sobs, throat-catching and long throb, throb, throb, and a death still air. Carl stared at her, praying for a chance to escape. Then he felt an instinct prompting him to sob, with her. Pity,

embarrassment, disgust, mingled with his alarm. He became amazed that Gertie, easy-going Gertie Cowells, had any passion at all, and indignant that it was visited upon himself. But he had to help. He moved her chair and squatting boyously on its arm, stroked her hair, begging, Gertie, Gertie, I did mean to come up that night.

Indeed I did, honey. I would have come up, but I met some friends, couldn't break away from them all evening. A chill ran between his shoulder blades. It was a shock to the pride he took in Ruth's existence. The evening in question had found Ruth for him. It seemed as though Gertie had dared with shrewish shrillness to intrude upon his beautiful hour.

But pity came to him again. Stroking her hair, he went urgently on, Don't you see, why, blessed, I wouldn't hurt you for anything. Just to-night, why you remember first thing I was, wanted us to plan for some walks. The reason I didn't say more about it was I didn't know as you'd want to much. My Gertie, anybody would be proud to play with you. You know so much about concerts and all sorts of stuff.

Anybody to be proud to. He wound up with a fictitious cheerfulness. Without some good long hikes together, hey? It's better now, isn't it, kitty? You're just tired tonight. Has something been worrying you? Tell old Carl all about it. She wiped her tears away with the adorable gesture of a child, trying to be good,

and like a child was her glance, bewildered her yet trusting, as she said in a small, shy voice. Would folks really be proud to play with me? We did used to have some tear times, didn't we? Do you remember how we found some fools gold and we thought it was gold, and hit it on the shore of the lake, and we were going to buy a ship? Do you remember? You haven't forgotten all her good times while you've been so famous, have you?

Oh, no, no. But why don't, Carl, why don't you? Why can't you care more now? Why do care? You're one of the bulliest pals I have, you and Ray. And Ray. She flung his hand away and sat, bold upright, angry. Carr retired to a chair beside the Morris chair, fidgeting,

Can you beat it? Is this Gertie and me? He inquired in a parenthesis in his heart. For a second as she stared haughtingly at him, he spitefully recalled the fact that Gertie had once discarded him for a Glee Club dentist. But he submerged the thought and listened with a rather forced Big Brother heir

as she repented of her anger and went on. "'Carle, don't you understand how hard it is for a woman to forget her pride this way?' "'The hot air of being one of the elite of Jerolaman,' again flashed out. "'Maybe if you'll think real hard. You remember, I used to could get you to be so kind to talk to me without having to beg you so hard. Why? I'd been here to New York and known the nicest people before you'd ever stirred a foot out of Jerolham. You were—' "'Oh, please forgive me, Carl. I didn't mean to be snippy. I just don't know what to think of myself,

and I did used to think I was a lady, and here I am, practically up and telling you, and... She leaned from her chair towards his, and took his hand, touching it, finding its hard, bony places, and a delicate white follows of flesh between his coarsened, yet shapely fingers,

tracing a scarce seen vein on the back, exploring a well-beloved yet ill-known country, Carl was unspeakably disconcerned. He was thinking that, to him, Gertie was set aside from the number of women who could appeal physically, quite as positively as though she were some old aunt, who had for twenty years seemed to be the same adult,

plump, an interesting age. Gertie's solid flesh, the monotony of her voice, the unimaginative fixture of her round cheeks, a certain increasing slackness about her waist, even the faint, stuffy, domestic scent of her. They all expressed to him her lack of humor and fancy and venturesomeness. She was crystallized in his mind as a good friend, with a plain soul and sisterly tendencies, awkwardly said.

You mustn't talk like that, gee Gertie. We'll be in a regular scene if you don't watch out. We're just good friends, and you can always bank on me, same as I would on you. But why must we be just friends? He wanted to be rude, but he was patient, mechanically stroking her hair again, leaning forward most uncomfortably from his chair. He stammered, "'I've been, oh, you know, I've wandered around so much that it's kind of put me out of

touch with even my best friends, and I don't know where I'm at. I couldn't make any alliances. Gee, that sounds affected. I mean, I've got to sort of start in now all over, finding where I'm at. But why must we be just friends, then? Listen, child, it's hard to tell. I guess I didn't know till now what it does mean. But there's a girl. Wait, listen, there's a girl.

At first I simply thought it was good fun to know her. But now, Lord Gertie, you'd think I was pretty sentimental if I told you what I think of her. God, I want her so much right now. I haven't let myself know. how much I wanted her. She's everything. She's sister and chum and wife and everything. It's, but I am glad for you. Will you believe that? And perhaps you understand how I felt now.

I'm very sorry I let myself go. I hope you will. Well, please go now. He sprang up, only too ready to go, but first he kissed her hand with a courtly reverence, and said with a sweetness new to him, Dear, will you forgive me if I've ever hurt you? And will you believe how very, very much I honor you. And when I see you again, there won't be... We'll both forget all about tonight, won't we? We'll just be the old Carl and Gertie again. Tell me to come when...

Yes, I will. Good night. Good night, Gertie. God bless you. He never remembered where he walked that night when he had left Gertie. The exercise, the chill of the night, gradually set his numbed mind working again,

but had dwelt with Ruth, not with Gertie. Now that he had given words to his longing for Ruth, to his pride in her, he understood that he had passed the hidden border of that misty land called Being in Love, which cardiographers have variously described as a fruitful tract of comfortable harvest, as a labyrinth with walls of rose and silver,

and as a trendless realm of unhappy ghosts. He stopped on a street corner where above a saloon with a large beer sign stretched dim tenement windows toward a dirty sky, and on that drab corner glowed for a moment the mystic light of the rose of all the world before a Tammany saloon, chin high, yearning toward a girl somewhere off to the south.

Carl Pornil recalled how Ruth had worshipped the stars. His soul soared, lark and hawk in one triumphant over the matter-of-factness of daily life. Carl Erickson the mechanic, standing in front of a saloon, with a laundry to one side and cigars and stationary shop around a corner, was one with the young priest sang mass, one of the suffragist women defying a juring mob, one with Ruth Winslow,

listening to the ringing stars. God help me to be worthy of her. Nothing more did he say in words, yet he was changed forever. Changed. True that when he got home half an hour later and in the dark ran his nose against an open door, he said, damn it!

Very naturally. True that on Monday, back in the office, that awaits its victims equally after Sunday's golden or dreary, he forgot Ruth's existence for hours at a time. True that at lunch with two Vansile automobile salesman, he ate Winder-Snitzel and shot dice for cigars, with no signs of a mystic change. It was even true that dining in the Brevard with Charlie Forbes

he thought of Istra Nash, and for a minute was lonely for Istra's artistic dissipation. Yet the change was there. End of Chapter 32. Chapter 33 of Trail of the Hawk. This Libravox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 33.

From Titherington, the Aviator in his Dovenshire home, from a millionaire amateur flyer among the orange groves at Pasadena, from his carpenter father in Jerolaman, and from Gertia, New York. Carl had invitations for Christmas, but none that he could accept. Van Zile had said pleasantly, going out to the country for Christmas? Yes, Carl had lied. Again he saw himself as the dethroned prince, and remembered that one year ago, sailing for South America,

to fly with Tony Bean. He had been the lion at a Christmas party in a shipboard, while Martin Dockerel's mechanic had been a friendly slave. He spent most of Christmas Eve alone in his room, turning over old letters and aviation magazines with pictures of Hawk Erickson, wondering whether he might not go back to that lost world. Josiah Bagby Jr., son of the eccentric doctor

at whose school Carl had learned to fly, was experimenting with hydroplanes and with bomb-dropping devices in Palm Beach and imploring Carl as the steadiest pilot in America to join him. The dully, noiseless room echoed the music of a steady motor carrying him out over a blue bay, Carl's own answer to the temp revision was,

rats. I can't very well leave the tour car now, and I don't know as I've got my flying nerve back yet, besides. Ruth. Always, he thought of Ruth. Unasy with the desire to be out dancing, laughing, playing with her. He was tormented by a question. He had been threshing out for days. Might he permissibly have sent her a Christmas present? He went to bed at ten o'clock on Christmas Eve, when the streets were surging with voices and gay steps when rollicking piano tunes from across the street, penetrated even closed windows, and a German voice as riches milked chocolate, was

caressing O' Tonnbaum, O'Tonombombaum, by a gruen-sanding bladder. Then, slept for nine hours, woke with rapturous remembrance that he didn't have to go to the office, and sang the Banks of Saskatchewan in his bath. When he returned to the house after breakfast, he found a letter from Ruth. the day before Christmas and all through the mansion. The maids with turkeys are stirring. Please, pardon the scantion. Dear playmate, you said on our tramp that I would make a good playmate,

but I'm sure that I should be a very poor one if I did not wish you a glorious Merry Christmas and a new year that will bring you all the dear things you want. I shall be glad if you do not get this letter on Christmas Day itself, if that means that you are off at some charming country house, having most chaotic, is that the way it is spelled? Probably not. Time, but if by any chance you are in town,

won't you make your playmates shout to you from her backyard, a part of your Christmas? She feels shy about sending this elusive greeting with all its characteristic sloppiness of writing, but she does want you to have a welcome to Christmas fun, and won't you please give the Turricar a pair of warm little slippers from Ruth Gaylord Winslow. P.S. Mrs. Terrell has sent me an angel miniature Japanese garden with a tiny pagoda and real dwarf trees

and a bridge that you expect an Alfred Noyes lander on and, oh, Carl, and it's a goldfish in a pool, Miss R. Winslow. All the dear things I want, Carl repeated standing tranced in the hall, oblivious of the doctor-landlords, snooping at his back. Ruth, blessed, do you know the thing I want most? Say, great. I'll hustle out and send her all the flowers in the world. Oh, no, I've got it. He was already out of the house hastening toward the subway.

I'll send her one of those lingerie tea baskets with all kinds of baby pots of preservatives and tea. T-balls and stuff. Wonder what Dunloughy's center. Rats, I don't care. Jiminy, I'm happy. Meet a Palm Beach to fly? Not a chance. He had Christmas dinner in state

with the California Exiles Club. He was craftily careless about the manner in which he touched a letter in his pocket for gloves, which tailors have been inspired to put on the left side of dress thrills. Twice, Carl called at Ruth in the two weeks after Christmas.

Once she declared that she was tired of modern life, that socialism and agnosticism shocked her, that the world needed the courtly stiffness of mid-Victorian days, as so ably depicted in the works of Mrs. Florence Barkley. Needed haircloth as a scourge for white tango dancing backs. As for her, Ruth announced she was going to be mid-Victorian just as soon as she could find a hair locket, silk mitts, and an elderly female tortoise-shell cat, with an instinctive sense of delicacy.

She sat bolt upright on the front of the most impersonal French gilt chair in the drawing-room, and asserted that Phil Don Lovey with his safe ancestry of two generations of wholesalers and strong probabilities about the respectability of still another generation was her ideal of a Christian gentleman. She wore a full white muslin gown with a blue sash, her hair primly parted in the middle, her right hand laid flat over her left in her lap. Her vocabulary was choice. For a second when she referred to winter sports at Lake Placid, she forgot herself

and tucked one smooth silk-clad, unmitdictorian leg under her. But instantly she recovered her poise of a vicarage, remarking, I have been subject to very careless influences lately. She called him neither Carl nor Mr. Erickson nor anything else, and he dared not venture on Ruth. He went home and bewilderment. As he crossed Broadway, he loitered insolently,

as though challenging the flying squadron of taxi cabs to run him down. What do I care if they hit me? He inquired savagely of his sympathetic and a plotting self. Every word she had said he examined, finding double and triple meanings, warning himself not to regard her mood seriously, but unable to make the warning take. On his next call there was a lively Ruth, who invited him up to the library, read extracts from Stephen Leelock's nonsense novels, turned companionably serious, and told him how divided were her sympathies between her father.

the conscientiously worried employer and a group of strikers in his factory. She made coffee in a fantastic percolator and played Dubassi and Ragtime. At 10.30, the hour at which he had vehemently resolved to go, they were curled up in two big chairs, eating chocolate peppermints and talking of themselves apropos of astronomy, and the tour car and Lincoln Berksley's daring, and Mason Winslow and Patriotism and Girolaman, Ruth's father drifted in from his club at a quarter to 11.

Carl now met him for the first time. He was a large stomach, bald, sober, friendly man, with a gladstone collar, a huge watch chain, kindly trousers and painfully smart tan boots, a father of the kind who gives cigars and non-committal encouragement to daughter suitors. It takes a voice with personality and modulations to make a 15-minute telephone conversation, tolerable,

and youth to make it possible. Ruth had both. For 15 minutes she discussed with Carl the question of whether she should go to Marion Brown's dinner dance at Delmonico's as Phil wished or go skiing in the Winchester Hills as Carl wished. The coming Saturday. The first Saturday in February, 1913. Carl I. They arrived at a station in the Bedford Hills, bearing long, curved, proud Norwegian skis, which seemed to hypnotize the other passengers. To Carl's joy, for he associated that suit with the palisades and their discovery of each other,

Ruth was in her blue corduroy, with high lace boots and a gray sweater jacket of silky wool. Carl displayed a Tweed Norfolk jacket, a great sweater, and mittens unabashed. He had a marvelous pack, which he informed the inside of Ruth contained Roland's sword and the magic rug of Baghdad. Together they were.

were ample-cheeked, chattering children of outdoors. For the horizon, weight of dark clouds, clear sunshine lay on clear snow as they left the train and trotted along the road, carrying their skis beyond the outskirts of the town. Country sleigh bells chinked down a hill. Children shouted and made snow houses. Elder stamped their feet and chucked fine day. New York was far off and ridiculously unimportant.

Carl and Ruth reached an open sloping field where the snow that partially covered a large rock was melting at its lacy crystal edges, staining the black rock to a shiny wetness that was infinitely cheerful in its tiny reflection of the blue sky at the zenith. On a tree whose bleak bark the sun had warmed, vagrant sparrows in hand-me-down feathers

discussed rumors of the establishment of a breadcrumb line and the better day that was coming for all totalitarian sparrows. A rounded drift of snow stood out against a red barn. The litter of corn silk and straw in a barnyard was transformed from discordant muck to a tessalon of warm silver and old gold. Not the delicate red and browns and grays alone, but everywhere the light is well, caressed the senses.

A distant dog barked, good-natured greeting to all the world. The thawing lance stirred with promise that spring might in time, returned to lovers. Oh, today is beautiful as, as it's beautiful as frosting on a birthday cake, cried Ruth, as she slipped her feet into the straps of her skis, preparing for her first lesson. These skis seem so dreadfully wrong and unmanageable. Now I get them on like seven-foot, table knives and my silly feet like orange seeds in the middle of the knives. The skis were unmanageable. One climbed up on the other, and Ruth tried to lift her own weight.

When she was sliding downhill, a hillock they spread apart, eager to chase things lying in entirely different directions. Ruth came down between them, her pretty nose plowing the wet snow crust. Carl, speeding beside her, his obedient skis exactly parallel, lifted her and brushed the snow from her furs and her nose. She was laughing. Falling, getting up, learning at last the zest of coasting and of handling those gigantic skates on level stretches.

She accompanied him from hill to hill through fences, skirting thickets, till they reached a hollow at the heart of a farm, where a brooklet led into deeper woods. The afternoon was passing. The swarthy clouds marched grimly from the east, but the low sun red-lettered the day. The country-bred Carl showed her how thin sheets of ice formed on the bank of the stream and jutted out like shells of an elfin cupboard, delicate and curious-edged as Venetian glass,

and how through an opening in the ice she could spy upon a secret world of clear water, not dead from winter but alive with piratical black bugs over sand of exquisitely pale gray, like Lilliputon, submarines, and a fairy sea. A rabbit hopped away, among the trees beyond them and Carl following its trail, read to her the forest hieroglyphics, tracks of rabbit and chipmunk of crow, of field mouse and house cat, in the snow-paved city of night animals with its edifices of twiggy underbrush. The setting sun was overclouded now, the air sharp,

the groves uneasily quiet, branches contracting in the returning, cold ticked like a solemn clock of the woodland, and about them slunk the homeless mysteries that at twilight revisit even the tiniest forest to wail of the perished wilderness. "'I know there's Indians sneaking along in there,' she whispered, "'and wolves and outlaws, and maybe a Hudson Bay factor coming in a red Mackinac coat, and maybe a mountain policeman and a lost girl. Saying which remarked Ruth, the brave young man undid his pack

and disclosed to the admiring eyes of the hungry lass, meaning me, especially the hungry, the wonders of his pack, which she had been covertly eyeing amid all the perils of the afternoon. Carl did not know it, but all his life, he had been seeking a girl who would, without apologetic explanation, begin a story with herself and him for its characters.

He instantly continued her kale. And from the pack the brave young hero whose new Norfolk jacket she admired such a lot. As I said from the pack he pulled two clammy blue hard-boiled eggs and a thermos bottle filled with tea into which I've probably forgotten to put any sugar. And then she stabbed him and went swiftly home. Don't be frivolous about food, just one hard-boiled egg, and you perish.

None of these gentle, convenience-store-box picnics for me. Of course, I ought to pretend that I have a bird-like appetite, but as a matter of fact, I could devour an English mutton-chop, four kidneys and two hot sausages, and then some plum-pudding in a box of chocolates, assorted. If this were a story, said Carl, knocking the crusted snow from dead branches, and dragging them toward the center of a small clearing,

the young hero from Jerolaman would now remind the city gal that tis only among God's free hills that you can get an appetite. And then the author would say, nothing had ever tasted so good as those trout yanked from the brook and cooked to a turn on the sizzling coals. She looked at the stalwart young man, so skillfully frying the flap jacks and contrasted him with the effeminate fops she had met on Fifth Avenue.

But meanwhile, Squaw, you better tear some good dry twigs off this brush for kindling. Gathering twigs while Carl scrabbled among the roots for dry leaves, Ruth went on again with their story. "'Yes,' said the fair maid of Wilde's obediently bending her poor patient back at a cruel behest of the stern man of granite. May I put something into the story which will politely indicate how much the unfortunate lady appreciates as heavenly snow placed in contrast at the Beasley City, even though she is so abominably treated.

Yes, but as I warned you, nothing about the effect of the out-of-doors on the appetite. All you've got to do is watch as City Broker, eat fourteen pounds a steak, three pots of coffee, and four black cigars at a Broadway restaurant, to realize that the effeminate city man occasionally gets up quite some appetite, too. My dear, she wailed, aside from the vulgarity of the thing, you know that no one ever mits to real interest in food. I am so hungry that if there is any more mention of eating, I shall go off in a corner and a howl.

You know how those adorable German Christmas stories always begin. Svara watchman, tougher shrine, Lougham boddwacht, horse, wold, common armies, matting, das, want, bitteratch. The reason why she moited bitterich was because her soul was hurt at being kept out of the secret of the beautiful, beautiful food that was hidden in the hero's pack.

Now let's have no more imaginary menus. Let's discuss Nijinsky and the musical asses till you are ready. All ready now, he proclaimed, kneeling by the pyramid of leaves, twigs, and sticks he had been erecting. He led a match and kindled a leaf. Fire ran through the mass,

and rosy light brightened the darkened snow. By the way, he said, as with cold fingers he pulled at the straps of his pack, I'm beginning to be afraid that we'll be a lot later getting home than we expected. well i suppose i'll go to sleep on a train and wake up at every station and wail and make you uncomfortable and mason will be grieved and disapproving when i get home late but just now i don't care i don't it's la belle carl do you realize that never in my twenty-four almost twenty-five now never in all these years have i been out like this in the wilds in the dark not even with Phil? And yet I don't feel afraid, just terribly happy. You do trust me, don't you?

You know I do. Yet when I realize that I really don't know you at all. He had brought out from the pack, graniteware plates and cups, a stewpan, and a coffee pot, a ruddy paper of meat and a can of peas, rolls, Johnny Cake, maple syrup, a screw-top bottle of cream, pasteboard boxes of salt and pepper and sugar, lamp-chops, coiled in a covered stup-pan, loudly broiled in their own fat, and to them the peas, heated in their can, were added when the coffee began to foam. He dragged a large log to the side of the fire and ruth there sitting, gorge shamelessly. Carl himself did not eat reticently. Light snow was falling now, driven by them on the rising wind. The fire where hot coals had piled higher and higher,

was a refuge in the midst of the darkness. Carl rolled up another log for protection from the weather and placed it at right angles to the first. You were saying at Mrs. Needham's that we ought to have an old farmhouse, he remarked, while he snuggled before the fire, her back against the log, her round knees up under her chin, her arms clasping her legs. Let's build one right here.

Instantly she was living it, in the angle between the logs she laid out of the wall. an outline of twigs, exclaiming, here is my room with low ceiling and exposed rafters, and a big open fireplace, not a single touch of pale pink or rosebuds. Then here's my room, with a workbench and a bed nine feet long

that I can lose myself in. And here outside my room, said Ruth, I'm going to have a brick terrace, and all around it you'll try growing in pots on the brick wall. I'm sorry, blessed, but you can't have a terrace. don't you realize that every brick would have to be carted 200 miles through this wilderness? I don't care. If you appreciated me, you'd carry them on your back, necessary.

Well, I'll think it over. Oh, look here. I'm going to have a porch made out of fresh saplings outside of my room, and it'll overlook the hills, and it'll have outside cots with olive-grave-ironry blankets over them, and when you wake up in the morning, you'll see the hills in the first sunlight. Glorious, I'll give up my terrace,

though I do think I was wheedled into it. Seriously, Ruth, wouldn't you like to have such a place back in the wilderness? Love it. I'd be perfectly happy there, at least for a while. I wouldn't care if I ever saw another airgate or fat rind maiden singing in thirty sharps. Listen, how would this be for a sight?

Let me stick some more wood here on your side of the fire. Once when I was up in high sierras in California, I found a wooded bluff. You looked a thousand feet straight down to a clear lake green as midsauce, pretty nearly, not a wrinkle in it. There wasn't a sound anywhere except when the leaves rustled. Then on the other side you looked up onto a peak covered with snow and a big eagle sailing overhead.

Sailing and sailing our and sailing. after hour. And you could smell the pine needles and sit there and look way off. Would you like it? Oh, I can't tell you how much. I have to go there someday. When you're president of the Van Zale Company, you must give me a tour car to go in,

and perhaps I shall let you go too. Right, I'll be chauffeur and cook and everything, quietly exultant at her sweet, unworded promise of liking. He hastily said to cover that thrill. Even a poor old low-brow mechanic like me does get a kind of poetic fervor out of a view like that. But you aren't a low-brow mechanic. You make me so dreadfully weary when you're mock-humble.

As a matter of fact, you're a famous man and I am a poor little street-wave. For instance, the way you talk about socialism when you get interested and let yourself go, really excited. I'd always thought that aviators and other sorts of heroes were such stored dubs. Gee, it'd be natural enough if I did like to talk. Imagine the training and being with the English superintendent at the mine, and I was telling you about in hearing Fraser lecture and knowing Tony Bean with the South American interest,

and most of all, of course, knowing Forrest Havilland, if I had any pep in me. Of course, I'm terribly slangy, I suppose, but I couldn't help waiting right in and wanting to talk to everybody about everything. Yes, yes, of course, I'm at Bommily slangy, too. I wonder if everyone isn't, except in books.

We've left our house a little unfinished, Carl. I'm afraid we'll have to, bless it, We'll have to be going. It's past seven now, and we must be sure to catch the 809 and get back to town about nine. I can't tell you how sorry I am. We must leave our house in the wilds. You really have enjoyed it.

He was cleaning the last of the dishes with snow and packing them away. You know, he said cautiously, I always used to feel that a girl, you say you aren't in society, but I mean a girl like you. I used to think it was impossible to play with such a girl unless a man was rich. which I excessively am not, with my little money tied up in the Turricar. Yet here we have an all-day party,

and it costs less than three really good seats at the theater. I know. Phil is always saying that he is too poor to have a good time, and yet his grandmother left him $15,000 capital in his own right, besides his allowance from his father and his salary from the law firm, and he infuriates me sometimes, aside from the tactiveness of the thing by quite plenty suggesting that I'm so empty-headed

that I won't enjoy going out with him unless he spends a lot of money and makes waiters and ushers obsequious. There are lots of my friends who think that way, both girls and the men. They never seem to realize that if they were just human beings, as you and I have been today, and not hidebound members of the dance,

and T League, they could beat that beastly artificial old city. Phil once told me that no man, mind you, no one at all, could possibly marry on less than $15,000 a year. Simply proved it beyond a question. That lets me out. Phil said that no one could possibly live on the West Side. Of course, the fact that he and I are both living on the West Side doesn't count, and the cheapest good apartments near Fifth Avenue cost $4,000 a year, and then one can't possibly get

along with less than two cars and four maids and a chauffeur. Can't be done. He's right, falsie. Only three maids might as well be dead. The pack was ready now. He was swinging it on who he's back and preparing to stamp out the fire. But he dropped his burden and faced her in the low firelight. Ruth, you won't remember.

make up your mind to marry Phil, you sure, you will? You'll play with me a while, won't you? Can't we explore a few more? She laughed nervously, trying to look at him. As I said, Phil won't condescend to consider poor me till he has $15,000 a year, and that won't be for some time, I think, considering he is too well-bred to work hard. But seriously, you will? I don't know how to put it. you will let me be your playmate even as much as phil as while we're still karl i have never played as much with anyone as with you you make most of the men i know seem very unenterprising it frightens me perhaps i oughtn't to let you jump the fence so easily you won't let phil lock you up for a while no mustn't we be going thank you for letting the outlaw come to your party. The fire's out come. With the quenching of the fire, they were left

with smothering darkness. Where do we go? She worried. I feel completely lost. I can't make out a thing. I feel so lost and so blind after looking at the fire. Her voice betrayed that he was suddenly a stranger to her. With hasty assurance, he said, Stite, see. We head for that tall oak up the slope. Then, through the clearing, keeping to the right, you'll be able to see the oak as soon as you get the firelight out of your eyes. Remember, I used to hunt every fall as a kid and come back through the dark. Don't worry. I can just make out that tree now. Right. Now for it. We carry my skis. No, you just watch your feet. His voice was pleasant, quiet, not too intimate. Don't try to guide yourself by your eyes. Let your feet find the same.

your eyes will fool you in the dark. It was a hard pull, the way back, encumbered with pack and two pair of skis which they dared not use in the darkness. He could not give her a helping hand. The snow was still falling, not very thick nor savagely wind-borne, yet stinging their eyes as they crossed open moors and the wind lipped upon them. Once Ruth slipped on a rock or a chunk of ice and came down with an infuriating jolt.

Before he could drop the skis, she struggled up and said dryly. Yes, it did hurt, and I know you're sorry, and there's nothing you can do. Carl grinned and kept silence, though with one hand as soon as he could get it free from the elusive skis, he lightly patted her shoulder. She was almost staggering, so cold was she and so tired, and so heavy was the snow kicked on her boots. when they came to a sharp rise down which shone a radiance of an incandescent light.

Rhodes right up there, blessed, he cried cheerily. Oh, I can't. Yes, I will. He dropped the skis, put one arm about his shoulder, and one about her knees. And almost before she had finished crying, Oh, no, please don't carry me! He was halfway up the slope. He set her down safe by the road. They caught the 809 train with two minutes to spare.

Its warmth and the dingy softness of the placed seats seemed pletheal. Ruth rubbed her cold hands with a smile, depreciating, intimate, and her shoulder drooped toward him. Her whole being seemed turned toward him. He cuddled her right hand within his, murmuring. See, my hand's a house where yours can keep warm. Her fingers curled tight and rested there contentedly. Like a drowsy kitten, she looked.

looked down at their two hands. A little brown house, she said. End of Chapter 23. Chapter 34 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Liebervox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti. Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis.

Chapter 34. While scientists seek germs that shall change the world, while war comes or winter takes earth captive, even while love visibly flowers a power, mighty as any of these, lashes its human-packed train, on the dusty road to futility. The day's work is the name of that power. All these days of First Love, Carl had the office for lowering background. The warm trust of Ruth's hand on a Saturday did not make plans for the tour-car

any of the less pressing on a Monday. The tyranny of 9 to 5 is stronger, more insistent, in every department of life than the most officious oligarchy. Inspectors can be bribed, judges softened, and recruiting sergeants evaded, but only the grace of God will turn 3.30 into 5.30. And Mr. Erickson of the Turriccar Company, a not vastly important employee of the mothering Van Zale Corporation, was not in time. to go home at 3.30, as a really rational man would have done when the sun gold misted the windows and suggested skating. No longer was business essentially an adventure to Carl, doubtless. He would give it up and have gone to Palm Beach to fly a hydro for Bagby Jr. had there been no Ruth. Bagby wrote that he was coming north to prepare for the spring's experiments.

Would Carl consider joining him? Carl was now between his six, salary and his investment in the Turricar company, making about $4,000 a year and saving nearly half of it against the inevitable next change in his life, whatever that should be. He would probably climb to $10,000 in five years. The Turacar was promising success. Several had been ordered at the Ambril Bule Show, the Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia agents of the company reported interest. For nor particular reason, apparently Milwaukee had taken them up first. Three Milwaukee people had ordered cars. An artist was making posters with beautiful gypsies and a tour car, and tourists whose continences showed lively appreciation of the efforts of the kind of tour car manufacturers

to please and benefit them. But the head salesman of the company laughed at Carl when he suggested that the turro car might not only bring the money, but really take people off to a larger freedom. I don't care a hang where they go with the thing as long as they pay for it. You can't be an idealist and make money. You make the money? Then you can have all the ideals you want. Give way some hospitals and libraries.

They walked and talked, Ruth and Carl. They threaded the Sunday afternoon throng on Upper Broadway, where on every clear Sunday all the apartment dwellers, if they had remembered to have their trousers pressed store their gloves cleaned in preparation, promenaded like stupid black and white peacocks, past uninteresting apartment houses, and uninspiring upper Broadway shops.

While two blocks away, glorious Riverside Drive, with its panorama of Hudson and hills and billowing clouds, its trees and secret walks in the soldiers and sailors' monument, is nearly deserted. Together, they scorned the glossy, well-to-do merchant in his newly ironed top hat

and was thus drawn together. It is written that loving the same cause makes honest friendship, but hating the same people makes alliances so delightful that one can sit up late nights talking. At the opening of the flying season, Carl took her to Hampstead Plains Aviation Field, and hearing his explanations, she at last comprehended emotionally that he really was an aviator.

They trapped through Staten Island. They had tea at the Manhattan. Carl dined with Ruth and her father once he took her brother Mason to lunch at the Arrow Club. Ruth was ill in March, not with a mysterious and romantic malady, but with the grip, which she wrote Carl made her hate the human race,

New York charity and Shakespeare. She could not decide whether to go to Europe or to die in a swoon and be buried under a mossy headstone. He answered that he would go abroad, her and every day she received tokens bearing New York postmarks, yet obviously coming from foreign ports, a souvenir card from the Perius, stating that Carl was visiting Cudson T. Dimitri of Philadelphia's, and we are enjoying our drive so much, Dem, sends his love.

Wish you could be with us. An absurd string of beats from Port Said and a box of Syrian sweets, a Hindu puzzle guaranteed to amuse victims of the grip. and gold-fabric slippers of China, with long letters, nonchalantly relating encounters with outlaws and wrecks and new varieties of disease. He called on her before her nose

had quite lost the grip, or her temper, the badness. Phil Dunleavy was there, lofty and cultured an evening-clothes, apparently not eager to go. He stayed till ten minutes to ten, and, by his manner of cold surprise, when Carl tried to influence the conversation,

was able to keep it to the Chrysler violin recitals, the architecture of St. John the Divine, and Whitney's Polo, while Carl tried not to look sulky, and maneuvered to get out the excellent things. He was prepared to say on other topics. Not unlike the small boy who wants to interrupt whist players and tell them about his new skates.

When Phil was gone, Ruth sighed and said, Voluntarily, Poor Phil, he has to work. work so hard, and all the people at the office, even the firm, are just as common as they can be. Common as the children at my beastly old settlement house. What do you mean by common, bristled Carl? Not of our class. What do you mean by our class? And the battle was set. Ruth refused to withdraw common. Carl recalled Abraham Lincoln and Golden Rule Jones and Walt Whitman on the subject of the common people.

Though as to what these sages had said, he was vague. Ruth burst out. Oh, you can talk all you like about theories, but just the same in real life. Most people are common as dirt, and just about as admissible to society. It's all very fine to be good to servants, but you would be the first to complain if I invited the cook up here.

Give her and her children education for three jobs, generations. She was perfectly unreasonable and right in most of the things she said. He was perfectly unreasonable and right in all of the things he said. Their argument was absurdly hot and hurt them pathetically. It was difficult at first for Carl to admit that he was at odds with his playmate. Surely this was a sham dissension of which they would soon tire, which they would smilingly give up. Then, he was trying not to be too contentious, but was irritated into retorting.

After 13 minutes, they were staring at each other as at intruding strangers. He remembering the fact that she was a result of city life, she the fact that he wasn't the product of city life. And fact which neither of them realized, save subconsciously, was in the background. Carl himself had come in a few years from Oscar Erickson's backyard,

to Ruth Winslow's library. He had made the step naturally, as only an American could, but it was a step. She was loftily polite. I'm afraid you can't quite understand what the niceties of life mean to people like Phil. I'm sorry he won't give them up

to the first truck driver he meets, but I'm afraid he won't, and occasionally it's necessary to face facts. Niceties of the kind he has, "'Ger—' "'Nice? "'Really?' her heavy eyebrows arched in a frown. "'If you're going to get nice on me, of course,

"'you'll have to be condescending, "'and that's one thing I won't permit. "'I'm afraid you'll find that one has to permit a great many things. "'Sometimes, apparently, I must permit great rudeness. "'Have I been rude? Have I been rude? Have? "'Yes, very. He could endure no more. Good night.

He growled and was gone. He was frightened to find himself out of the house. The door closed between them. No going back without ringing the bell. He couldn't go back. He walked a block, slow and credulous. He stood hesitant before the nearest corner drugstore, shivering in the march wind,

wondering if he dared go into the store and telephone her. He was willing to concede anything. He planned apt phrases to use. Surely everything would be made right if he could only speak to her. He pictured himself crossing the drugstore floor, entering the telephone booth, putting five cents in the slot. He stared at the red and green globes in the druggest window, inspected a display of soaps,

and recollected the fact that for a week now, he had failed to take home any shaving soap, and he had to use an ordinary hand soap. Golly, I must go in and get a shaving stick. No, darn it, I haven't got enough money with me. I must try to remember to get some tomorrow. He rebuked himself for thinking of soap when love lay dying. But I must remember to get that soap just the same.

So grotesque as man, the slave and angel. For a while he was sick with a desire to go back to the one comrade, he sharply wondered if he was not merely acting all his agony. He went into the store, but did not telephone to Ruth. There was no sufficiently convincing reason for calling her up. He bought a silly ice cream soda and talked to the man behind the counter as he drank it. All the while a tragic Ruth stood before him, blaming him for he knew not what. He reluctantly went on, regretting every step that took him from her.

But as he reached the next corner, his shoulders snapped back into defiant straightness. He thrust his hands into his side pockets of his top coat and strode away, feeling that he had shaken off a burden of niceness. He had, willy-nilly, recovered his freedom. He could go anywhere now, mingle with any sort of people, be calm and comfortable. He didn't have to take dancing lessons or fear the result of losing his job or of being robbed of his interests in the Turricar. He glanced, interestingly, at a pretty girl, recklessly, went into a cigar store

and bought a fifteen-cent cigar. He was free again. As he marched on, however, his defiance began to ooze away. He went over every word, Ruth or he had said, and when he reached his room, he sat deep in an armchair,

like a hurt animal, crouching. His coat still on, his felt hat over his eyes, his tie a trifle disarranged, his leg straight out before him, his hands and his trouser pocket. While he discontentily,

contemplated a photograph of forest habland in full-dress uniform that stood on the low bureau among tangled ties stray cigarettes a bronze aviation medal cuff buttons and a haberdasher's round package of new collars his gaze was steady and gloomy he was dramatizing himself as hero in a melodrama he did not know how the play would end but his dramatization of himself did not indicate that he was not in earnest for his portrait's suggested to him as it had before, that he had no picture of Ruth, that he wanted one. Next time he saw her, he would ask her. Then he remembered. He took out his new cigar, turned it over and over, gloweringly, and chewed it without lighting it. The right corner of his mouth, vicious in appearance. But his tone was plaintive as he mourned. How did it all start, anyway. He drew off his top coat and shoes and put on his shabby, though once expensive, slippers. Slowly he lay on his bed. He certainly did not intend to go to sleep, but he awoke at

2 a.m. dressed. The light burning, his windows closed, feeling sweaty and hot and dirty and dry mouth, a victim of all the woes since Troy burned. He shucked off his clothes as you to shuck an ear corn. When he awoke in the morning, he lay as usual greeting a shining new day, till he realized that it was not a shining day. It was an ominous day. Everything was wrong.

That something had happened, really had, was a fact that sternly patrolled his room. His chief reaction was not wreak offensive or dramatic interest, but a vexed longing to unwaste the whole affair. Hang it, he groaned. Already he was eager to. to make peace. He sympathized with Ruth. Poor kid, it was rotten to row with her. Her completely all in with the grip. At three in the afternoon he telephoned her house. Myth Ruth, he was informed,

was asleep. She was not very well. Would the maid please ask Miss Ruth to call Mr. Erickson when she awoke? Certainly the maid would. But by bedtime Ruth had not telephoned. Self-respect would not let him call again for days, and Ruth never called him. He went about alternately resentful at her stubbornness, and seeing himself as a lout cast out of heaven. Then he saw her at a distance, on the platform of the subway station at 72nd Street. She was with Phil Donnelly.

She looked well. She was talking gaily, oblivious of old sorrows, certainly not in need of Carl Erickson. That was the end. He knew. He watched them take a train, stood there alone, due at a meeting of the Aeronautical Society, but suddenly, not wishing to go, not wishing to go anywhere, nor do anything, friendless, bored, driftwood in the city.

So easily had the hawk swooped down into her life, coming by chance, but glad to remain. So easily had he been driven away. For three days he planned. a headachey way to make an end of his job and joined Bagby Jr. in his hydroplane experiments. He pictured the crowd that would worship him. He told himself stories unhappily and long about the renewed companionship of Ruth and Phil. He was sure that he, the stranger, had been a fool to imagine that he could ever displace Phil.

On the third afternoon, suddenly, apparently without cause, he bolted from the office, and at a public telephone booth he called Ruth. It was she who answered the telephone. "'Many come up to-night?' he said urgently. "'Yes,' she said that was all. When he saw her, she hesitated, smiled shamefacedly, and confessed that she had wanted to telephone him. Together like a stage chorus, they contested,

"'I was grouchy, I was beastly. I'm honestly sorry. "'Oh, you forgive? "'What was it all about?' Really, I do not know. I agree with lots of the things you? No, I agree with you, but just at the time, you know. Her lively, defensive eyes were tender.

He put his arm lightly about her shoulders, lightly, but his fingertips were sensitive to every third of her thin bodice that seemed tissue as warmly living as the smooth shoulder beneath. She pressed her eyes against his coat, her coiled dark hair beneath his chin. A longing to cry like a boy, and to care for her like a man, made him reverent. The fear of Phil vanished, intensely conscious of her hair and its individual scent. He did not kiss it. She was scared.

She sprang from him, and at the piano, hammered out a rattling waltz. It changed to gentler music, and under the shaded piano lamp they were silent, happy. He merely touched her hand. when he went, but he sang his way home, wanting to nod to every policeman. I found her again. It isn't merely play now, he kept repeating, and I've learned something. I don't really know what it is, but it's as though I learned a new language. Gee, I'm happy. End of Chapter 35 of Trail of the Hawk.

This Labor Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mikevendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 35. On an April Sunday morning, Carl rose with a feeling of spring. He wanted to be off in the Connecticut hills, among the silver-gray worm fences with larks rising on the breeze, and pools a ripple and yellow crocus blossoms of fire by the road, where towns, white and sleepy, woke to find the elms,

misted with young green. Would there be any crocuses out yet? That was the only question worth solving in the world, save the riddle of Ruth's heart. The stead brownstone houses of the New York streets displayed few crocuses and fewer larks, yet over them today was the bloom of romance. Carl walked down to the automobile district

a past Central Park, sniffing wistfully at damp grass, pale green amid old gray marveling how a bare patch of brown earth without a single blade of grass could smell so stirringly of coming spring. A girl on Broadway was selling wild violets, white and purple, and in front of wretched old houses down a side street, in the Negro district, a darkie and a tan derby, and a scarlet tie was caroling. "'And do you in the spring, de monk and birds do sing, and he flowers em so's Sweet along di yo, by you.

Above the darky's head, elevated trains roared on the 53rd Street trestle, and up Broadway streaked a stripped motor car, all steel chassis, and grease-modeled, board seat, and lured order of gasoline. But sparrows splashed in the pools of sunshine, in a lull, the darky's voice came again, chanting passionately,

into spring, spring, spring. And Carl clamored, I've got to get out today. Terrible glad it's a half-holiday. I wonder if I dare telephone to Ruth. At a quarter to three, they were rollicking down the smart side of Fifth Avenue. One could see that they were playmates

by her dancing steps and his absorption in her. He bent a little toward her, quick to laugh with her. Ruth was in a frock of flowered taffeta. I won't wait till Easter to show off my spring clothes. It isn't done anymore, she said. It's as stupid as Bobby's, not daring to wear a straw hat one single day after September 15th. Is an aviator brave enough to wear his after the 15th?

Think. I don't know you then. Last September? I can't understand it. But I knew you, blessed, because I was sure spring was coming again. And that distinctly implied Ruth. Of course it did. You've guessed my secret.

I'm the spirit of spring. Last Wednesday, when I lost my marquis ring, I was a spirit of Vettoral, but now I'm a poet. I've thought it all out and decided that I shall be the American Sapporo. At any moment, I am quite likely to rush madly across the pavement and sit down on the curb and indict several stanzas on the back of a calling card,

while the crowd gallops around me in an awed ring. I feel like kidnapping you and making you take me aeroplaning, but I'll compromise. You're to buy me a book and take me down to the Mason Epony for tea, and read me poetry while I yearn over the window boxes and try to look like Nicolette. Buy me a book with spring in it, and a princess, and a sky like this, cornflower blue with bunny rabbit clouds. At least a few in the avenue's flower garden of pretty debutants, in pairs and young university men with expensive leather-laced tan boots were echoing Ruth in gay new clothes. I wonder who they all are.

They look like an aristocracy, less but made of the very best material, said Carl. They're like maids of honor and young knights, disguised in modern costumes. They're charming. Charmingly useless, insisted our revolutionary. But he did not sound earnest. It was too great a day. for earnestness about anything, less great than joy of life,

a day for shameless luxury rating in the sun, and for wearing bright things. In shop windows with curtains of fluted silk were silver things and jades, satin gowns, and shoe-buckles of rhinestones. The sleek motor-cars whisked by in an incessant line, the traffic policeman, nodded familiarly to handsome drivers,

pools on the asphalt mirrored the delicate sky, and at every corner the breeze tasted a spring. Carr Bottergate's poems tucked it under his arm, and they trotted off in Madison Square. They saw a gallant and courtly old man with military shoulders and pink cheeks, a debonair gray mustache, and a smile of unquenchable youth,

greeting April with a narcissus in his buttonhole. He was feeding the spruceous in his buttonhole. sparrows with crumbs, and smiled to see one of them fly off, carrying a long wisp of hay, bustling away to build for himself and his sparrow bride, a bungalow in the foothills of the Metropolitan Tower. "'I love that, old man,' exclaimed Ruth. "'I do wish we could pick him up and take him with us. I dare you to go over and say,

"'I appri thee, sir, of thy good will. Come thou forth-faring, with two vagabonds who do quest high and low the land of nowhere.' something like that. Go on, Carl, be brave. Pretend you're brave as an aviator. Perhaps he has a map of Arcadia. Go ask him. Brade, too. Besides, he might monopolize you.

He'll go with us without his knowing it. Anyway, isn't it strange how you know people, perfect strangers, from seeing them once, without even speaking to them. You know them the rest of your life and play games with them. The Maision, EP&A, you must quest long, but great is your reward if you, you find it. Here is no weak remembrance of lost Paris, but a French-Canadian desire to

express what he believes Paris must be, therefore a super Paris, all in brown velvet and wicker tables, and at the black long window-edged with boxes red with geraniums, looking to a backyard garden whose rosebeds lead to a dancing fawn terminal in a shrine of ivy. They sip grenadine, heavy essence of a thousand berries. They had the place to themselves, save for Tony the waiter, with his smile of Benison, and Carl read from Yates. He had heard of Yates at Plato, but never had he known crying Curlew and Misty Mirror

in the fluttering wings of love, till now. His hand rested on her gloved hand. Tony the waiter, re-arranged the serving table, when Ruth broke the spell with, You aren't very reverent with perfectly clean gloves. They chattered like blackbirds at sunset. Carl discovered that being a New Yorker, she knew part of it as intimately as though it were village,

and nothing about the rest. She had taught him Fifth Avenue, told him the history of the invasion by shops. The social differences between East and West pointed out the pictures of friends in photographer's wall cases. Now he taught her the very, New York's he had discovered in lonely rambles. Together they explored Chelsea's vigil section

and the Oxford quadrangles of General Theological Seminary, where quiet meditation dwells in two-door corridors, Upper Greenwich Village, the home of Italian tables de Hote, clerks, social workers, and radical magazines, of alley rookeries and the ancient Jewish burying ground, Lower Greenwich Village, where run-down American families with Italian lodgers

live on streets name for kings in wooden houses with gambered roofs and colonial fanlights. From the same small panel windows where frowsy Italian women stared down upon Ruth, Ruth's ancestors had leaned out to greet General George Washington. On open wharf near Tenth Street, they were bespelled by April. The Woolworth Tower to the south

was an immortal shaft of ivory and gold against an unwinking blue sky, challenging the castles and cathedrals of the old world, and with its supreme art dignifying the commerce which built and uses it. The Hudson was lustrous with sun, and a sweet wind sang from unknown Jersey hills across the river. Mored to the wharf was a coal barge,

with a tiny dwelling cabin at whose windows white curtains fluttered. Beside the cabin was a garden tended by the bargeman's comely white-browed wife, a dozen daisies and geraniums in two starch boxes. Trudging down the river a scarred tramp steamer, whose rusty sides the sun turned to damask rose, bobbed in the slight swell, heading for an open sea, with a British flag of flicker enchanting men as they cleared deck. I wish we were going with her.

Maybe to Singapore or Nagasaki, Carl said, slipping his arm through hers, as they balanced on the string piece of the wharf. sniffing like deer at the breeze, which for a moment seemed to bear from distant burging woods, a shadowy hint of burning leaves, the perfume of spring and autumn, the eternal wander call.

Yes, Ruth mused, and moonlight in Java, and the Himalayas on the horizon, and the veil of cashmere, but I'm glad we have this, blessed. It's a day plan for lovers like us. Carl? Yes, lovers,

courting in spring like all, lovers. Really, Carl, even spring doesn't quite let me forget. The covenances are home waiting. We're not lovers? No, we... Yet you enjoy today, don't you? Yes, but... And you'd rather be loafing on a dirty wharf, looking at a tramp steamer, than taking tea on the plaza. Yes, you know, perhaps, and you're protesting because you feel it's proper to, it... And you really try to, and you really trust me so much that you're having difficulty in, seeming alarmed? Really? And you'd rather play around with me than any of the skull and bones or hasty-putting men you know.

We're a foreign diplomat with spayed beards. At least they wouldn't. Oh, yes, they would if you'd let them. Which you wouldn't. So, to sum it up, then we are lovers, and it's spring, and you're glad of it. and as soon as you get used to it, you'll be glad I'm so frank, won't you? I will not be bullied, Carl.

You'll be having me married to you before I can scream for help, if I don't start at once. Probably. Indeed, you will not. I haven't the slightest intention of letting you get away with being masterful. Yes, I know, blessed. These masterful people bore me too, but aren't we moderate enough so we can discuss frankly, the question of whether I'd better propose to you someday.

But, boy, what makes you suppose that I have any information on this subject, that I've ever thought of it? I credit you with having a reasonable knowledge that there are such things as marriage. Yes, but, oh, I'm so confused, you've bullied me into such a defensive position that my instinct is to deny everything. If you turned on me suddenly and accused me of wearing gloves, I'd indignantly deny it. Meantime, not to change the subject, I'd better be planning and watching for a suitable day for proposing, don't you think? Consider it.

Here's this young Erickson, some sort of a clerk, I believe. No, I don't think he's a university man. You know, discuss it clearly. I think it might be better to propose today. I ask your advice as a woman. Oh, Carl, dear, I think not today. I'm sorry, but I really don't think so. But sometime, perhaps?

Sometime perhaps. Then she fled from him and from the subject. They talked after that, only of the sailors that loafed on West Street, but in their voices was content. They crossed the city and on the Brooklyn Bridge, watched the suburbanites going home, crowding surface car and elevated, from their perch on the giant spider's web of steel,

they saw the Long Island sound steamers below them, passing through a maelstrom of light on waves that trembled like quicksilver. They found a small Italian restaurant, free of local color hounds, and what Carl called Hobomians, and discovered Frito Misto and Chianti and Zaginone, a pale brown custard flavored like honey,

and served in tall, thin, curving glass. while the flat proprietors in a red shawl and a large brooch came to ask them everything all right eh Carl insisted that Walter McMoney's the aviator had once tried out a motor that was exactly like her including the Italian accent there was simple and complete bliss for them in the dingy pine and plaster room adorned with fly-spec calendars and pictures of Victor Emanuel and present McKinley copies of the bulletino del and several vinegar bottles. The theater was their destination, but they first loitered up Broadway, shamelessly stopping to stare at shop windows, pretending to be Joe the shrewclerk and Becky the cashier, furnishing a block flat. Whether it was anything but a game to Ruth will

never be known, but to Carl, there was a hidden high excitement in planning a flower box for the fire escape. At a propose of nothing she said as they touched El's bows with the sweet hearting crowd. You're right. I'm sorry I ever felt superior to what I called common people. People, I love them all. It's come. We must hurry. I hate to miss that one perfect second when the orchestra is quiet and the lights wink at you and the curtains going up. During the second act of the play, when the heroine awoke to love, Carl's hand found hers. And it must have been that night when standing between the inner and outer doors of her house. Carl put his arms about her, kissed her, timidly kissed her sweet, cold cheek, and cried, bless you dear. But for some reason

he does not remember when he first did kiss her, though he had looked toward that miracle for weeks. He does not understand the reason, but there is the fact her kisses were big things to him. Yet possibly there were larger psychological changes, which occulted everything else at first, but it must have been on that night he first kissed her, for certainly it was when he called on her a week later that he kissed her for the second time. They had been animated but to chorus that evening a week later.

He had tried to play an improvisation called the Battle of San Juan Hill, with a knowledge of the piano limited to the fact that if you struck alternate keys at the same time, there appeared not to be a discord. "'I must go now,' he said slowly, as though the bald words had a higher significance. She tried to look at him and could not. His arms encircled her. With frightened happiness, she tilted back her head, and there was the ever-new surprise of the blue-o-iruses under dark brows.

Uplifted wonder her eyes spoke. His head drooped till he kissed her lips. The two bodies clamored for each other, but she unwound his arms crying, No, no, no. He was enfolded by a sensation that they had instantly changed from friendly strangers to intimate lovers.

As she said, I don't understand it, Carl. I've never let a man kiss me like that. I suppose I flirted like most girls, but and been kissed sketchily at silly dances but this oh Carl, Carl, dear, don't ever kiss me again until, oh, not till I know why I'm scarcely acquainted with you. I do know how dear you are, but it appalls me when I think of how little background you have for me. Dear, I don't want to be soared and spoil this moment, but I do know that when you're gone,

I'll be a coward to remember that there are families and things and want to wait till I know how they like you at the very least. Good night, and I... Good night, dear, blessed. I know. End of Chapter 35. Chapter 36 of Trail of the Hawk. This leverbox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis.

Chapter 36. There were, as Ruth had remarked, families. When Carl was formally invited to dine at the Winslow's on a night late in April, his only anxiety was as to the condition of his dinner coat. He arrived in a state of easy briskness, planning apt and sensible remarks about the business situation for Mason and Mr. Winslow. As the maid opened the door, Carl was wondering if he would be able to touch Ruth's hand under the table. He had an anticipatory fondness for all of the small friendly family group,

which was about to receive him, and he was cast into a den of strangers. Most of them comprised in the one eclectic person of Aunt Emma Truigate Winslow. Aunt Emma Trugate Winslow was the general commanding in whatsoever group she was placed in by Providence, with which she had a strong influence. At a White House reception, she would pleasantly but firmly

have sent the president about his business and have taken his place in a receiving line. Just now, she sat in a prehistoric s-chair, near the center of the drawing room, pumping out of Phil Donalevy most of the facts about his chief's private lives. Aunt Emma had the soul of a six-foot dowager duchess and should have had an eagle nose

and a white pompadour. Actually, she was of medium height with a not unduly maternal bosom, a broad commonplace face, hair the color of faded grass, a blunt nose with slightly enlarged pores, and thin lips that seemed to be a straight line when seen from the front,

but seen in profile, puffed out like a fish's. She had a habit of nodding intelligently even when she was not listening, and another habit of rubbing her left knuckles with the fingers of her right hand. Not imposing in appearance was aunt and, Trugate Winslow, but she was born to discipline a court. An impeccable widow was she, speaking with a broad A and dressed exquisitely in a black satin evening gown. By such simple-hearted

traits as being always right about unimportant matters and idealistic wrong about important matters, politely intruding into everything being earnest about the morality of the poor and auctioned bridge and the chaperoning of nice girls. Possessing a working knowledge of Wagner and Rodin, wearing $15 corsets, and believing on her bended knees that to Trugates and Winslow's were the noblest families in the social register.

Aunt Emma True Great Winslow had persuaded the whole world, including even her near English butler, that she was a superior woman. Family traditions said that she had only to raise a finger to get into really smart society. Upon the death of Ruth's mother, Aunt Emma had taken it as one of her duties,

along with symphony concerts and committees, to rear Ruth properly. She had been neglecting this duty so far to permit the invasion of a barbarian named Erickson, only because she had been in California with her young son, Arthur. Just now, while her house was being opened, she was staying at the Winslow's. with author and a peculiar beasty Japanese spaniel named Takasan.

She was introduced at Carl, she glanced him over and passed him on to Olive Dono Levi. All in 45 seconds, when Carl had recovered from a sensation of being a kitten drowned in a sack, he said agreeable things to Olive and observed the situation in the drawing room. Phil was marked out for Aunt Emma's favors. Mr. Winslow sat in a corner, apparently crushed with restorative conversation administered by Ruth. Mason Winslow was haughtingly attentive to a plain, well-dressed, amiable girl named Florence Cruden, who had prematurely gray hair, the weak end habit, and a weakness for baby talk.

Ruth's medical student brother, Bobby Winslow, was not there. The more he saw Bobby's kind Aunt Emma, the more Carl could find it in his heart to excuse Bobby for having escaped the family dinner. karl had an uncomfortable moment when aunt emma and mr winslow ask him questions about the development of the tour of car but before he could determine whether he was being deliberately inspected by the family the ordeal was over as they went into dinner mr winslow taking in aunt emma like a small boy accompanying the school principal ruth had the chance to whisper my hawk be good please believe i'm not responsible it's all aunt emma's doing this dreadfully stately Family dinner. Don't let her pull of you. I'm frightened a death and... Yes, Phil, I'm coming. The warning did not seem justified in view of the attractive table. Candles, cut glass, a mound of flowers on a beveled mirror, silvery linen, and grapefruit with champagne.

Carl was on one side of Aunt Emma, but she seemed more interested in Mr. Winslow at the end of the table, and on the other side, Carl had a safe companion in her. in Olive Donalavi. Across from him was Florence Crowden, Bill and Ruth, Ruth shimmering in a gown of yellow satin, which broke the curve of her fine, flushed shoulder

only by a narrow band. The conversation played with people. Florence Crowden told to applause and laughter of an exploratory visit to the college of the city of New York and her discovery of a strange race, young Jews mostly who went to college to study, and had no sense of the normal,

ability of making fraternities. Such outsiders, she said. Can't you imagine the sort of a party they'd have? They'd all stand around to discuss psychology and dissecting puppies in Greek roots. Phil, I think it would be a lovely punishment for you to have to join them, to work in a laboratory all day and wear a celluloid collar.

Ah, I know their sort. Greasy grinds, we used to call them. There were plenty of them in Yale, condescended Phil. "'Maybe they do wear cellulet collars, if they do, because they're poor,' protested Ruth. "'My dear child,' sniffed Aunt Emma, "'with collars only twenty-five cents apiece. Don't be silly.' Mr. Winslow declared, with portly tintedity,

"'Why, I am, my collars don't cause me but fifteen, Mason, dear, let's not discuss it at dinner. Tell me, all of you, the scandal I've missed by going to California.' which reminds me. Did I tell you I saw that miserable Amy Bustlin? You remember that married the porter or the superintendent or something in her father's factory? I saw her and her husband at Pasadena,

and they seemed to be happy. Of course, Amy would put the best face she could on it, but they must have been miserably unhappy, such a sad affair, and she could have married quite decently. What do you mean by decently? demanded Ruth. Carl was startled. He had once asked Ruth the same question

about the same phrase. Aunt Emma revolved like a gun turret, getting Ruth's range and remarked calmly. My dear child, you know quite well what I mean. Don't, I beg you, bring any socialistic problems to dinner till you have really learned something about them. Now, I want to hear all the nice scandals I have missed. There were not many she had missed, but she kept the conversation sternly to discussions of people whose names Carl had never heard.

Again, he was obviously an outsider, still ignoring Carl and Emma demanded of Ruth and Phil, sitting together opposite her. Tell me about the good times you children have been having, Ruthie, and I'm so glad that Phil and you finally went to the William Turringer's and your letter about the Bo Arts Festival was charming, Ruthie. I quite envied you and Phil. The dragon continued talking to Ruth while Carl listened in the intricacies of his chatter to Olive. I hope you haven't been giving all your time and beauty sleep doing too much of that settlement work, Ruthie,

and heaven only knows what germs you will get there. Of course, I should be first to praise any work for the poor, ungrateful and shiftless, though they're. are. What with my committees in the Truegate Temperance home for young working girls, it's all very well to be sympathetic with them, but when it comes to a settlement house and heaven knows I have given them all the counsel and suggestions I could, though some of the professional settlement workers are as pert as they can be, and I really do believe some of them think they are trying to end poverty entirely, just as though the

The Lord would have sent poverty into the world if he didn't have a pretty good reason for it. You will remember the Bible says, the poor you always have with you, and as Florence Barkley says in her novels, which may seem a little sentimental, but they are of such good moral effect. You can't supersede the scriptures even in the most charming social circles. To say nothing of the blessings of poverty, I'm sure they're much happier than. and we are with our honorous duties. I'm sure that any of these ragamuffin,

anarchist and socialists and anti-militans, want to take over my committees, they are welcome if they'll take over the miserable headaches and worried hours they give me, trying to do something for the poor. They won't even be clean, but even in model tenements, they will put coal and bathtubs.

And so I do hope you haven't just been wearing a, yourself to the bone, working for ungrateful, dirty little children, Ruthie. No, auntie, dear, I've been quite as discreet as any Winslow should be. You see, I'm selfish, too, aren't I, Carl? Oh, very. Aunt Emma seemed to remember then that some sort of a man whose species she didn't quite know sat next to her.

She glanced to Carl again, gave him up as an error in social judgment, and went on. No, Ruthie, not selfish so much as thoughtless about the duties of a family-like ours. And I was always the first to say that with the Winslow's are as fine a stock as a Trugate's. And I am going to see that you go out more the rest of this year, Ruthie. I want you and Phil to plan right now to attend the charity league dances next season. You must learn to concentrate your attention. Auntie dear, please leave my wickedness till the next time we...

My dear child, now that I have the chance to get all of us together, I'm sure Mr. Erickson will pardon the rest of us our little family discussion. I want to take you and Master Phil to task together. You are both of you negligent of social duties. Duties they are, Ruthie, for man was not born to serve alone. Though Phil is far better than you, with your queer habits and heaven only knows where you got them neither your father nor your dear sainted mother was slack or selfish dear auntie let's admit that i'm a black sheep with a little black bustle and a habit of budding all sorts of ash cans and let phil go on his social way rejoicing ruth was jaunty but her face was strained and she bit her lip with staccato nervousness when she was not speaking karl ventured to face the dragon

Miss Winslow, I'm sure Ruth has been better than you think. She has been learning all these fiendishly complicated new dances. You know, a poor businessman like myself finds them. Yes, said Aunt Emma. I am sure she will always remember that she is a Winslow and must carry on the family traditions, but sometimes I'm afraid she gets under bad influences because of her good nature.

She said it loudly. she looked Carl in the eye. The whole table stopped talking. Carl felt like a tramp who has kicked a chain bulldog and discovers that the chain is broken. He wanted to be good, not make a scene. He noticed with intent indignation that Phil was grinning. He planned to get Phil off in a corner,

not necessarily a dark corner and beat him. He wanted to telegraph Ruth dared not. He realized in a quarter of a second that he must have been disgusted, by the family and did not like it. Everyone seemed to be waiting for him to speak, awkwardly said, wondering all the while if she meant what her tone said she meant,

by bad influences. Yes, but just going to say, I believe settlement work is a good influence. Please don't discuss, Ruth was groaning when Aunt Emma sternly interrupted. It is good if you to take up the cudgels, Mr. Erickson, and please don't misjudge me. Of course I realize that I am only a silly old woman, and that my passion, to see the Winslow's keep to their fine standards is old-fashioned,

but you see it is a hobby of mine that I've devoted years to, and you who haven't known the Winslow's so very long, her manner was almost courteous. Yes, that's so, Carl mumbled agreeably. just as she dropped the courtesy and went on. You can't judge, in fact. This is nothing personal, you know. I don't suppose it's possible for Westerners to have any idea how precious family ideals are to Easterners.

Of course, we're probably silly about them, and it's splendid your wheatlands and not caring who your grandfather was, but to make up for those things, we do have to protect what we have to protect what we have. gained through the generations." Carl longed to stand up, to defy them all, to cry, If you mean that you think Ruth has to be protected against me, have the decency to say

so. Yet he kept his voice gentle. But why be narrowed to just a few families in one's interests? Now this settlement... One isn't narrowed. There are plenty of good families for Ruth to consider when it comes time for my little girl. to consider alliances at all. Aunt Emma coldly stated.

I will shut up, he told himself. I will shut up. I'll see this dinner through and then never come near this house again. He tried to look casual as though the conversation was safely finished, but Aunt Emma was waiting for him to go on. In the general stillness,

her corsets creaked with belligerent attention. He played with his fork in a, well, if that's how you feel about it, Perhaps it would be better not to discuss it any further. My dear madam, manner growing every second more flushed, embarrassed, sick, angry, trying harder every second to look unconcerned. Odd Emma hawked a delicate and ladylike hawk in her patrician throat, perfectory to a new attack.

Carl knew he would be tempted to retort brutally. Then from the door of the dining room, whippered the high voice of an excited child. "'Oh, Mama, oh, cousin Ruthie, nurse says Hawk Erickson is here. I want to see him.' Everyone turned toward a boy of five or six, round as a baby chicken in his fuzzy miniature pajamas, protectingly holding a cotton monkey under his arms,

sturdy and shy and defiant. "'Why, Arthur, why my son?' "'Oh, the darling baby from the table.' "'Come here, Arthur. "'And let's hear your troubles before nurse nabs, you old son,' said Phil, not at all condescendingly, rising from the table, holding out his arms. Oh, no, jigs just let me go. I want to see Hawk Erickson. Is that Hawk Erickson? demanded the son of Aunt Emma, pointing at Carl. Yes, sweetheart, said Ruth softly, proudly.

Running madly about the end of the table, Arthur jumped at Carl's lap. Carl swung him up and inquired, What is it, old man? Are you Hawk Erickson? At your command, Captain. Aunt Emma rose and said masterfully, "'Come, little son, now you've seen Mr. Erickson. It's up to Betty again, up to Betty. Oh, no, please don't, Mama. I've never seen an aviator before, none all my life.

And you promised me, cross your heart. At Pasadena you did, I could see one.' Arthur's face showed signs of imminent badness. "'Well, you may stay for a while, then,' said Aunt Emma, weekly unconscious that her sway had departed from her, while the rest of the table grinned except Carl, who was absorbed in Arthur's ecstasy. I'm going to be an aviator, too.

I think an aviator is braver than anybody. I'd rather be an aviator than a general or a policeman or anybody. I got a picture of you on my scrapbook. You got a funny hat like cousin Bobby wears when he plays football in it. Should I get the picture of my scrapbook? Honest. Will he give me another? Aunt Emma made one.

One more attempt to coax Arthur up to bed, but His Majesty refused and she compromised by scolding his nurse and sending up for his dressing-gown, a small blue dressing-gown on which yellow ducks and white bunny rabbits paraded proudly. Like our blue bowl, Carl commented to Ruth. Not till after coffee in a drawing-room would Arthur consent to go to bed. This real head of the Emma Wilson family was far too much absorbed in making Carl tell of his long races and why does a flying machine fly what's a wind pressure why does wind shove up why is the wings curved why does it want to catch the wind the others listened including aunt emma car went home early ruth had the opportunity to confide hawk dear i can't tell you how i shamed i am of my family for enduring anybody so rude and opinionated as aunt emma but it's all right now isn't it no no don't kiss me but dear dreams hawk

Phil's voice from behind shouted, Oh, Erickson, to second. Carl was not at all pleased. He remembered that Phil had listened with obvious amusement to his agonized attempt to turn Aunt Emma's attacks, said Phil while Ruth disappeared. Which way are you going? Walk to the subway with you.

You win, old man. I admire your nerve for facing Aunt Emma. What I wanted to say, I hope to thunder you don't think I was in any way responsible for Mrs. Winslow's linking me and Ruth the way they did. Oh, you understand, I admire you, like the devil for knowing what you want and going after it. I suppose you'll have to convince Ruth yet, but by Joe, you've convinced me. Glad you had Arthur for an ally. They don't make Kitty seem better. God, if I could have a son like that. I turn off here.

Good luck, Erickson. Thanks a lot, Phil. Thanks. Good night, Carl. End of Chapter 36th. Chapter 37 of Trail of the Hawk. This Labor Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 37. Long Beach on the first hot Sunday of May when motorists come out from New York,

half ready to open asphalt hearts, to sea and sky, Carl's first sight of it, save from an airplane, and he was mad happy to find. and real shore so near the city. Ruth and he were picnicking, vulgar and unashamed among the dunes at the end of the long boardwalk, like the beer-drinking pickle-eating parties of fishermen and the family groups with red tablecloths,

great basket lunches, and colored Sunday supplements. Ruth declared that she preferred them to the elegant loungers who were showing off new motorcoats on the boardwalk, but Carl and she had withdrawn a bit from the crowd, and in the dunes had made a nest, with a book and a magazine and a box of chocolates and Carl's collapsible lunch kit.

Not New York only, but all of Ruth's relatives were forgot. Aunt Emma True Great Winslow was a myth of the dragon haunted past. Here all was fresh, color and free spaces looking to open sea. Behind the dunes with her tragedies of pale grass revealed the sharp undershadowed green of marshes. green of marshes, and an inland bay that was blue as bluing a startling blue, bordered by the emerald marshes, to one side of far, not troubling their peace, were the crimson roofs of fantastic houses, like chalets and California missions and villas of the Riviera, with gables and turrets

of red tiles. Before their feet was the cream-colored beach, marked by ridges of driftwood, mixed with small glistening shells, long ranks of pale yellow seaweed, and the delicate wrinkles in the sand that were the tracks of receding waves. The breakers left the beach wet and shining for a moment, like plates of raw-colored copper, making one cry out with its flashing beauty. Then, at last, the ice lifted to unbroken blue water. Nothing between them and Europe save rolling waves in wave-pressed like white plumes.

The sea was of a diaphimus blue that shaded through a bold steel blue and a lucent blue. Enameled to a rich ultramarine, which absorbed and healed. The office-worn mine. The sails of tacking sloops were a blossom, seagull swooped, a tall surf fisherman in a red flannel shirt, and shiny black hip boots, drove out into the water, and cast with a long curve of his line. Cumulus clouds whose pure white was shaded with a delicious golden tone were baronial above and out on the skyline steamers raced by.

Round them was the warm intimacy of the dune sands, beyond was infinite space, calling to them to be big and unafraid. Talking, falling into silence, touched with the mystery of sun and sea. They confessed youth's excited wonder about the world, Carl sitting cross-legged, rubbing his ankles, a springy figure in blue flannel and a daring tie, while Ruth in deep rose linen, her throat bright and bare, lay with her chin in her hands, a flush beneath the gentle brown of her cheeks, her white-clad ankles crossed under her skirt, slender against the gray sand, thoughtful of eye, lost in happiness.

Someday, Carl was musing, your children and mine will say, you certainly lived in the most marvelous age in the world. Think of it. They talk about the romance of the Crusades and the Romans and all that, but think of the miracles we've seen already. And we're only kids, aviation and the automobile and wireless and moving pictures and electric locomotives and electric cooking, and the use of radium and the x-ray,

and the linotype, and the submarine and labor movement, the IWW, the syndication, and all that. not that I know anything about the labor movement, but I suppose it's the most important of all. And Metlakov and Erlake, oh yes, and a good share of the development of the electric light and telephone and the phonograph. Golly, in just a few years.

Yes, Ruth added, the Montessori system of education, that's what I think is the most important. See that sailboat hawk? Like a lily. And the late afternoon gold on those marshes. I think this salt breeze blows away all the bad ruth. Oh, don't forget the attempts to cure cancer and consumption.

So many big things starting right now while we're sitting here. Lord, what an age. Romance? Why, there's more romance than a wireless spark. Think of it. Little lonely wallowing steamer at night out in the dark, slamming out a radio like 40,000 tigers spitting, and a man getting it here on Long Island.

more romance than in all the galleons that ever sailed the purple tropics, which they mostly ain't purple, but dirty green. Anything's possible now. World cools off. All right. We'll move on some other planet. It gets me going. Don't have to believe in ferries to give the imagination a job today.

Glad I've been an aviator. Gives me some place in it all anyway. I'm glad, too, Hawk. Terribly glad. The sun was crimsoning the wind grew chilly. The beach was scattered with campfires. Their own little fires settled into compact live coals, which in the dark of the dune hollow spread over a million bits of quartz,

a glow through which requited the antique sea fleas. Carl's cigarette had the fragrance that comes only from being impregnated with the smoke of an outdoor fire. The waves were lyric, and a group at the next next day. fire crooned old black Joe, the two lovers curled in her nest, hand moved towards hand. Ruth whispered, It's sweet to be with all these people and fires. Will I really learn not to be, supercilious?

Honey, you, supercilious, democracy? Oh, the dickens, let's not talk about theories anymore, but just about us. Her hand tight-coiled as a snail-shell was closed in his. "'Your hand is asleep in my hand's arms,' he whispered. "'The ball of his thumb pressed her thumb, and he whispered once more. "'See?' "'Now our hands are kissing each other we. "'We must watch them better.

"'Your thumb is like a fairy.' "'Again his thumb hardened with file and wrench and steering-wheel, touched hers. "'It was startling like a kiss of real lips. "'Lightly, she returned the finger kiss, answering differently. "'Our hands are mad. silly hands to think that Long Beach is a tropical jungle. You aren't angry at them? No.

He cradled her head on his shoulder. His hand gripped her arm till she cried, You hurt me! He kissed her cheek. She drew back as far as she could. Her hand against his chest held him away for a minute. Her defense suddenly collapsed, and she was relaxed and throbbing in his arms.

He slipped his fingers under her chin and turned up her face till he could kiss her lips. He had not known the lips of man and woman could be so long, so stirring. Yet at first he was disappointed. This was, after all, but a touch. Just a touch as finger against finger. But her lips grew more intense against his,

returning and taking the kiss, both of them giving and receiving it once. Wondering at himself for it, Carl thought of other things. He was amazed that while their lips were hot together, he worried as to what train Ruth ought to take after dinner. Yet with such thoughts conferring he was in an ecstasy beyond sorrow, praying that to her as to him.

There was no pain but instead a rapture in the sting of her lips, as her teeth cut a little into them, a kiss, thing that to polite novels sketch as a second's unbodied bliss, how human it was, with teeth and lips to consider common as eating. And divine is martyrdom. His lips were saying to her lips too vast and extravagant for a plain young man to venture upon in words. Lady to you I chant by reverence and faith everlasting in such unearthly music. As the angels use when with lambent wings they salute the marching dawn. Such lyric tributes and an emotion too subtle to fit into any words whatever, his lips were saying. Then she was drawing back, rending the kiss and crying,

You're almost smothering me! With his arms easily about her, but with her weight against his shoulder, they and their love veiled from the basket parties by the darkness, he said crumingly, See my arms are a little house for you, just as my hand was a little house for your hand once. arms of the walls and your head and mine together are the roof. I love the little house. No.

Say I love you. No. Say it. No. Please. Oh, Hawk, dear, I couldn't even if... Just now, I do want to say it, but I want to be fair. I am terribly happy to be in the house of Hawk's arms.

I'm not afraid of it. Even out here in the dark dunes. which Aunt Emma wouldn't somehow approve. But I do want to be fair to you, and I'm afraid I'm not when I let you love me this way. I don't want to hurt you ever. Perhaps it's egotistical for me, but I'm afraid you would be hurt if I let you kiss me,

and then afterward I decided I didn't love you at all. But can't you someday? I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure I know what love is. I'm not sure it's love that makes me happy, as I really am when you kiss me. Perhaps I'm just curious and experimenting. I was quite conscious when you kissed me then,

quite conscious and curious, and once I caught myself wondering for a half-second, what train we'd take. I was ashamed of that. But I wasn't ashamed of taking metal notes and learning what these kisses that we mentioned so glibly really are. Just experimenting, you see?

and if you are too serious about our kiss, it wouldn't be at all fair to you. I'm glad you're frank, blessed, and I guess I understand pretty well how you feel, but, after all, I'm fairly simple about such things. Blessed, blessed, I don't really know a thing, but I love you. His arms were savage again. He kissed her, kissed her lips, kissed the hollow of her throat.

Then he lifted her from the ground, and would not set her down till she had kissed him back. "'You frighten me a lot, then,' she said. "'Did the child want to impress Ruth with his mighty strength?' "'Well, she shall be impressed, Ock, I do hope. I do hate myself for not knowing my mind. I will try not to experiment.

I want you to be happy. I do want to be honest with you, if I am honest with you. Will you try not to be too impatient till I do know just what I want?' well i'm sick of the modern lover i talk and talk about love it seems as though we lost the power to be simple like the old ballads or weren't the ballad people really simple either you say you are so i think you will have to run away with me but not till after dinner come the moon was rising swinging hands they trumped towards the boardwalk the crunch of their feet in the sand was the rhythmic spell of a magician which she broke when she sighed Should I have let you kiss me out there in the wild? Will you expect me after it? Princess, you're all the respect there is in the world.

It seems so strange. We were absorbed in war and electricity, and then... Love is war and electricity, or else it's dull, and I don't think we two will ever get dull. If you do decide, you can love me. We'll wander, cabin and Rockies with forty mountains for our gardens fence, and an eagle for our suburban train. And South Sea Island silhouetted its sunset.

Look, that moon, I always imagine it so clearly when I hear Hawaiian singers on the Victrola and a Hawaiian beach with fireflies in the jungle behind the phosphorescent sea in front of and native girls dancing in garlands. Yes, in Paris Boulevard, the mysterious castle in the Austrian mountains, with a hidden treasure in dark, secret dungeons, and heavy iron armor, and then bing, a brand new prairie town in Saskatchewan or Dakota,

with brand new sunlight on the fresh pine shacks, and beyond the town the plains with brand new grass rolling. But seriously, Hawk, would you want to go to all those places if you were married? Would you practically? You know, even rich globetrotters go to the same sorts of places, mostly, and we wouldn't even be rich, would we? No, just comfortable, maybe $5,000 a year. Well, would you really want to keep on going and take your wife,

or would you settle down like the rest and spend money so you could keep in shape to make money to spend to keep in shape? Seriously, I would keep going if I had the right girl to go with me. It would be mighty important which one, though, I guess. And by that I mean you. Once when I quit flying, I thought that maybe I'd stop wandering and settle down,

maybe even marry a gerolium kind of a girl, but I was meant to hike for the hiking sake, only not alone anymore, I need you. We'd go and go, no limit. And we wouldn't just go places either. We'd be different things. We'd be Connecticut farmers one year

and run a mine in Mexico the next. And loaf in Paris, next. We had the money. Sometimes you almost tempt me to like you. Like me now. No, not now, but here's the boardwalk. Where's those steps? Oh, yes. Gee, I hate to leave the water without having a hand to swim. Wish we'd had one. Derry to go waiting. Oh, ought I, too. Do you think waiting would be silly and nice? Of course you ought. Come on. Don't you remember how the sand feels between your toes?

The moon brooded upon the lulled waves and questioned among the ridges of driftwood for pearly shells. The pools left by the waves were enticing. Ruth retreated into the shelter of the boardwalk and came shyly out, clutching her skirts, her feet and ankles silver in the night. The sand does feel good, but it's getting colder and colder.

She wailed as she cautiously advanced into the water. I'll think of punishment for you. You're not only caused me to be cold, but you've made me abominably self-conscious. Don't be self-conscious, blessed. We are just children exploring. He splashed out, coat off, trousers rolled up to the knees above his thin, muscular legs, galloping along the edge of the water like a large puppy,

while she danced after him. They were still to the persuasive beauty of the night. Music from the topad jeweled hotels far down the beach wove itself into the peace on land and sea. A fish lying on shore was turned by the moon into ivory with carbon scales. Before them reaching to the ancient towers of England and France and the islands of the sea was the whispering water, a tenderness that understood everything,

made allowance for everything in her and in himself, Folded swings around him as he scanned her and stood like a slender statue of silver. Dark hair moon brightened, white arms holding her skirts, white legs round, which the spent waves sparkled with unworldly fire. He waded over to her and timidly kissed the edge of her hair. She rubbed her cheek against his. Now we must run, she said. She quickly turned back to the shadow of the boardwalk,

to draw on her stockings and shoes, leaning on the sand like the supple maid of the ballads which she had been envying. They tramped along the boardwalk, with heels clicking like cast nets, conscious that the world was hushed in a night's old enchantment. As they had answered to companionship

with the humble picnic parties among the dunes, so now they found it amusing to dine among the semi-great and semi-motorist at the NASA. Ruth had a distinct pleasure when T. Wintler, horse fancier, aviation enthusiast, president of the First State Bank of Sacramento, came up, reminded Carl of their acquaintanceship at the Oakland-Bercly Arrow Meet, and begged Ruth and Carl to join him,

his wife and Senator Leifert for coffee. As they waited for their train, quiet with laughter, Ruth remarked, It was jolly to play with the personages. You haven't seen much of the frivolous side of me. It's pretty important. You don't know how much soul. satisfaction I get out of dancing all night and playing tennis with flannelofs and eating

Moroyous glaciers and chatting in a box at the opera till I spoil the entire evening for all the German music lovers and talking to all the nice doggies from the tennis and racket club whenever I get invited to Piping Rock or Meadowbrook or any other country club that has ancestors I want you to take a warning did you really miss Piping Rock or Middoughbock or any other country club that has ancestors. I want you to take a warning. Did you really miss piping rock much today? No, but I might tomorrow, and I might get horribly bored in our cabin in the Rockies and hate the stony old peaks, and long for tea and scandal in the corner at the Brits. Then we'd hike on to San Francisco, have tea at the St. Francis or the Fairmont or the palace,

then beat it for your Hawaii and fireflies in the bush. perhaps but suppose just suppose we were married and suppose the tour-car didn't go so awfully well and we had to be poor and couldn't go running away but had to stick in one beastly city flat and economize it's all very well to talk of working things out together but think of not being able to have decent clothes and going to the movies every night When I see some of the girls who used to be so pretty and gay, and they went and married poor men, now they are so worn and tired, bedraggled, and perambulatorness, and they worry about bitties and furnace and cabbages,

and their hair is just scratched together with the dubbust hats, I'd rather be an idle rich. If we get stuck like that, I'd sell out and we'd hike to the mountain, cabin anyway, say go up in the Santa Lucia's and keep wild bees, and probably get stung in the maybe subtle senses of the word, and I'd have to cook and wash. That would be fun as fun, but to have to do it? Ruth, honey, let's not worry about it now anyway. I don't believe there's much danger, and don't let's spoil this bully day. It's been sweet. I won't croak anymore.

There's the train coming. End of Chapter 37. Chapter 38 of Trail of the Hawk. This Labor Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 38. While the New York June grew hotter and hotter and stickier and stickier,

while the crowds crammed together in the subway and a jam, as unlovely as a pile of tomato cans and a public dump heap, grew pale in the damp heat. Carl labored in his office, and almost every evening called on Ruth, who was waiting for the first of July, when she was to go to cousin Pat and Curse in the Berkshires, Carl tried to bring her coolness.

He ate only poached eggs on toast or soup and salad for dinner, that he might not be torpid. He gave her moss roses with drops of water like dew on these stems. They set out on the box stoop. and unfriendly New York Street, adopting for a time the frank neighborliness of a village, and exclaimed over every breeze. They talked about the charm of forty degrees below zero, that is, sometimes. Their favorite topic was themselves.

She still insisted that she was not in love with him. Who did that the idea of being engaged? She might someday go off and get married to someone, but engaged? Never. She finally agreed that they were engaged to be engaged to be engaged. One night, when they sought the windy house top, she twisted his arms about her and almost went to sleep, with her hair smooth beneath his chin.

He sat motionless till his arms ached with the strain, till her shoulders seemed to stick into his like a bar of iron, glad that she trusted him enough to doze into a warm slumber in the familiarity of his arms. Yet he dared not kiss her throat, as he had done at Long Beach. As lovers do, Carl had thought intently of her warning that she did not care for clothes, dancing, country clubs. Ruth would have been caressingly surprised had she known the thought

and worried consciousness he gave to the problem of planning parties for her. Ideas were always popping up in the midst of his work, and never giving him rest till he had noted them down on memo papers. He carried them about on the backs of envelopes, such notes as these. Join country club, take R. Dances there? Baskets of fruit for R. Invite Mason W. Lunch. Organized teritor NY2SF.

Newspaper men on tour, probably Forbes. Remember Walter's new altitude, 16,954. R to Astor roof. Rim, Country, C. He did get a card to the a Peacewater's Country Club and take Ruth to a dance there. She seemed to know every other member and danced eloquently. He took her to the Josiah Bagby's for dinner to the first night of a summer musical comedy.

But he was still the stranger in New York, and parties are not to be had by tipping waiters and buying tickets. Half of the half-dozen affairs which they attended were of her inspiration. He was invited to go yachting at Larchmont, motoring, swimming on Long Island, with friends of herself and her brothers. One evening that strikes into Carl's memory of those days of the Pais du Tondre is the evening on which Phil Donalabi

insisted on celebrating a Yale baseball victory by taking them to dinner in the oak room of the Ritz Carlson. Under whose alabaster lights among the cosmopolities, they dined elaborately and smoked slim imported cigarettes, The thin music of violins took them into the lonely gray groves of the land of wandering tunes, till Phil began to talk, disclosing to them, a devotion to beauty, a satirical sense of humor, and a final acceptance of Carl as his friend. A hundred other parties Carl planned while dining alone at inferior restaurants.

A hundred times he took ten-cent dessert instead of an exciting fifteen-cent strawberry shortcake to save money for those parties. Out of such soared thoughts of nickel coins is spilt a love enduring and even tolerable before breakfast coffee. Yet always to him their real life was in simple jaunts out of doors, arranged without considering other people. Her father seemed glad of that. He once said to Carl, giving him a cigar, "'You children, had better not let Aunt Emma know that you are enjoying yourselves as you want to. How was the automobile business doing? It would be pleasant to relate that Carl was inspired by love

to put so much of that celebrated American quality punch into his work that the tour car was sweeping the market, or to picture with quietly falling tears the pathos of his business failure at the time when he most needed money. As a matter of fact, the Turacar affairs were going as in real life, Most businesses go just fairly well. A few cars were sold. There were prospects of other sales.

The Van Zale Corporation neither planned to drop the tour of car, nor elected our young hero as vice-president of the corporation. In June, Gertrude Cowles and her mother left for Gerolman. Carl had, since Christmas, seen them about once a month. Gertie had at first represented an unhappy old friend to whom he had to be kind. then as she seemed never to be able to give up the desire to see him tied down, rather by her affection or by his work. Carl game to regard her as an irritating foe of the freedom which he prized,

the more because of the increasing bondage of the office. The last stage was pure indifference to her. Gertie was either a chance for simple sweetness which he failed to take, or she was a peril which he had escaped, according to one's view of her. But in any case, he had missed or escaped her as a romantic hero-escape fire, flood, and plot. She meant nothing to him, never could again. Life had flowed past her as except in novels with plots. Most lives do flow past temporary and fortuitous points of interest.

Gertie was farther from him now than those dancing Hawaiian girls whom Ruth and he had hoped some day to see. yet by her reaching out for his liberty Gertie had made him prize Ruth The 1st of July 1913 Ruth left for Pattencurs Country House and Berkshires near Pitfield Carl wrote her every day he told her apropos of

Tura cars and roof gardens and aviation records and Sunday motorcycling with Bobby Winslow that he loved her he even made at the end of his letters the old-fashioned lines of crosses to represent kisses Whenever he hinted how much he missed her, how much he wanted to feel her startle in his arms. He wondered what she would read out of it,

wondered if she would put the letter under her pillow. She answered every other day with friendly letters droll in her descriptions of the people she met. His call of love she did not answer directly, but she admitted she missed their playtimes, and once she wrote him, late on a cold Berkshire night, with a black rain and wind like a baying bloodhound.

It is so still in my room and so wild outside that I am frightened. I have tried to make myself smart in a blue silk dressing gown and a tawish-laced breakfast cap, and I will write neatly with a quill pen from the Mayfair. But just the same, I am a lonely baby, and I want you here to comfort me. Would you be too shocked to come? I would put a Navajo blanket on my bed

and a paper-machet turkish dagger and head of Othello over my bed and pretend it was a cozy corner. That is, of course, if they still have paper-machie ornaments. I suppose they still have in Harlem and Brooklyn. We would sit very quietly in two wicker chairs on either side of my fireplace and listen to the swollen brook and ravine just below my window. But with no hawk here, the wind keeps wailing that pan is dead,

that there won't ever again be any sunshine in the valley, dear. It really isn't safe to be writing like this. After reading it, you will suppose that it's just you that I am lonely for. But of course, I'd be glad for Phil or Puggy Kruin, or your nice, solemn Walter McManus, or any suitor who would make foolish noises and hide me from the wind's haunting. Now I will seal this up and not send you. it in the morning. Your playmate Ruth. Here is one small kiss on the forehead, but remember,

it is just because of the wind and rain. Resumably she did mail the letter. At least you received it. He carried her letters in his side pocket of his coat till the envelopes were worn at the edges, nearly covered with smudged pencil notes about things he wanted to keep in mind, and would, of course, have kept in mind without making notes. He kept finding new meanings in her letters. He wanted them to indicate that she loved him. And any ambiguous phrase signified, successively, that she loved, laughed at,

loathed, and loved him. Once he got up from bed to take another look at her letter and see whether she had said, I hope you had a dear good time at the Explores Club dinner, or, I hope you had a good time dear. Carl was entirely

sincere in his worried investigation of her state of mind. He knew that both Ruth and he, had the instability as well as the initiative of a vagabond. So quickly could either of them break Love's Alliance, if bored. Carl himself, being anything but bored, was as faithfully devoted

as the least enterprising of moral young men. He forgot Gertie, did not write to Istranash, the artist, and when the Van Zale office got a new telephone girl, a tall, languorous brunette, with shadowy eyes and fine cheeks. He did not even smile at her. But, was Ruth so bound? She still refused to admit even that she could fall in love.

He knew that Ruth and he were not romantic characters, but everyday people with a tendency to quarrel and demand and be slack. He knew that even if the rose dream came true, there would be drab spots on it. And now that she was away with Lennox and Polo to absorb her, could the ghost ignorant Carl Erickson that he privately knew himself to be, retain her interest. Late in July, he received an invitation to spend a weekend,

Friday to Tuesday with Ruth, at the Patten Currs. End of Chapter 38. Chapter 39 of Trail of the Hawk. This Libra Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Bendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 39. The brief trip to the Brookshires was longer than,

any he had taken these nine months. He looked forward, amidimately to the journey, remembering details of travel, such trivial touches as the overbrass-washed-bowls of the Pullman Sleeper, and how, when the water is running out, the inside of the bowl is covered with a whitish film of water, which swiftly peels off. He recalled the cracked white paint

of a steamer's ventilator, the abruptly stopping... of the foghorn. the vast smoky roof of a Philadelphia train shed clamorous with the train bells of a strange town giving a sense of mystery to the travelers stepping from the car for a moment to stretch his legs an ugly junction station platform with resin oozing from the heavy planks in the spring sun the polished pinnacle of the s s panama he expected keen joy in new fields and hills yet all the way north he was trying to hold the train back In a few minutes now he would see Ruth, and at this hour he did not even know definitely that he liked her. He could not visualize her. He could see the sleeve of her blue corduroy jacket.

Her eyes he could not see. She was a stranger. Had he idealized her? He was apologetic for this unflattering doubt. But of what sort was she? The train was stopping at her station. with rattling windows and a despairing ground of wheels. Carl seized his overnight bag and suitcase with fictitious enthusiasm. He was in a panic, emerging from the safe, impersonal train upon the

platform, he saw her. She was waving to him from a one-seated phaeton, come along to meet him, and she was the adorable, the perfect comrade. He thought jubilantly as he strode along the platform. She's wonderful. Love her should say I do. When they drove under the elms past white cottages in the village green, while they were talking so lightly and properly that none of the New England gossips could be wounded in the sense of propriety. Carl was learning her anew.

She was an outdoor girl now in low, colored blouse, and white linen skirt. He rejoiced in her modulating laugh, the contrast of blue eyes and dark brows under her Panama hat, her full dark hair. With a lock sun-drenched her bare throat, boistery brown, femininely smooth, the sweet, clean, fine-textured girl flesh, of the hollow of one shoulder, faintly to be seen in the shadow of her broad drooping collar, one hand with a curious ring of rose quartz and steel points, excitedly pounding a tattoo of greeting with whipping.

handle. Her spirited irreverances regarding the people they passed, chatter which showed the world transformed as though ruby glass, a Ruth radiant, understanding his comrade. She was all that he had believed during her absence, and doubted while he was coming to her. But he had no time to repent of his doubt now. So busy was he exulting to himself, slipping a hand under her arm. Love her, I should say I do. The carriage rolled out of town with the rhythmic creek of a country buggy, climbed a hill range by means of the black, oily, state road, and turned upon a sandy side road, a brook ran beside them.

Sunny fields alternated with woods-leaf-floored, quiet, holy, miraculous after the weary city. Below was a vista of downward sloping fields, divided by a creeper-covered stone walls. Then a sun-mashed valley, set with ponds like shining glass dishes on a green tablecloth. Beyond all, a long reach of hillsides

covered with unbroken fleecy forests, like Green Down. So much unspoiled country, and yet there's people herded in subways, complained Carl. They drove along a level road lined with wild raspberry bushes and full of a thin jade light from the shading maples.

They gossiped of the patancers and the Berkshires, of the difference between the professional English weekender and the American who still has something of the naive provincial delight of going visiting, of New York and the Dunaways, but their talk lulled to a nervous hush. It seemed to him that a great voice cried from the clouds. It is beside Ruth. that you are sitting, Ruth whose arm you feel.

In silence he caught her left hand. As he slowly drew back her hand and the reins with it, to stop the ambling horse, the two children stared straight at each other, hungry, tremendously afraid. Their kiss not only their lips, but their spirits met without one reserve. A straining, long kiss, as though they were forcing their lips into one body of living flame, a kiss in which his eyes were blind to the enchantment of the jade light about them.

His ears deaf to brook and rustling forest. All his senses were concentrated on the close warmth of her misty lips, the curve of her young shoulder, her woman's sweetness and longing. Then his senses forgot even her lips and floated off into a blurred trance of bodiless happiness, the kiss of Nirvana. No foreign thought or trains or people or the future

came now to drag him to earth. It was the most devoted, most sacred moment he had known. As he became again conscious of lips and cheek and brave shoulders and of her widespread fingers gripping his upper arm, She was slowly breaking the spell of the kiss, but again and again she kissed him, hasty, savage tokens of rejoicing possession. She cried, I do know now, I do love you.

Blessed. In silence they stared into the woods while her fingers smoothed his knuckles. Her eyes were faint with tears in the magic jade light. I didn't know a kiss could be like that. She marveled presently. I would have believed selfish ruth couldn't give all of herself. Yes, it was the whole universe.

Oh, dear, I wasn't experimenting that time. I'm glad, glad. To know I can really love, not just curiosity. I've wanted you so all day I thought four o'clock would ever come. Oh, darling, my dear, dear hawk. I don't even know for sure I'd like you when you came. Sometimes I wanted terribly to have your silly, foolish, childish, pale hair on my breast, such hair, ladies' hair.

But sometimes I didn't want to see you at all, and I was frightened at the thought of your coming. And I fussed around in the house till Mrs. Pat laughed at me and accused me of being in love. And I denied it. And she was right. "'Blessed, I was scared to death all the way up here. "'I didn't think you could be as wonderful as I knew you were. "'That sounds mixed, but—'

"'Blessed, blessed, blessed, you really love me? "'You really love me? "'It's hard to believe I've actually heard you say it, "'and I love you so completely. "'Everything. "'I love you. "'That is such an adorable spot to kiss just below your ear,' she said. "'Darling, keep me safe in the little house of arms,

"'where there's only room for you and me, "'no room for offices or Aunt Emmas. "'But now we must hurry on. "'If a wagon had been coming along the road?' "'As they entered the Rhododemond Lyme-Drive of the Peyton Kerr place, "'Carle remembered a detail, not important, but usual.' "'Oh, yes,' he said, "'I've forgotten to propose.' "'Need-you proposals sound like.

contracts and all those other dull forms not like that kiss see there's Pat Kerr Jr. waving at us can you just make him out there on the upper balcony he's a darling his child with ash-colored hair cut Dutch down I wonder if you didn't look like him when you were a boy with your light hair not a chance I was a grubby kid made noises gee what a bully place in the house will you marry marry me? Yes, I will. It is a dear place. Mrs. Pat is when? Always fussing over it. She plants narcissus and crocuses in the woods, so you find them growing wild. I like those awnings against the white walls. May I consider that we are engaged then, Miss Winslow? Engaged for the next

marriage? Oh, no, not engaged, dear. Don't you know it's one of my principles? But look, Not to be engaged, Hawk. Everybody brings the cunning old jokes out of the mothballs when you're engaged. I'll marry you, but... Marry me next month, August. Nope. September? Nope.

Please, Ruthie. Ah, yes, September. Nice month. September is autumn, harvest moon and apples to swipe. Come on, September. Well, perhaps September. We'll see. Oh, Hawk, dear.

Can you conceive of us actually sitting? here and solemnly discussing being married, us, the babes in the woods, and I've only known you three days or so, seems to me. Well, as I was saying, perhaps I'll marry you in September. It frightens me to think of it, frightens me, and awes me, and amazes me, and to death all at wants. That is, I shall marry you unless you take to wearing pearl-gray derbies or white evening ties with black edging, or kill Mason in a duel, or do something equally disgraceful, but engaged I will not be, and we'll put the money for a diamond ring into a big Davenport. Are we going to be dreadfully poor?

Oh, not pawn shop poor. I made Vin Zyle boost my salary last week, and with my tour-car stock I'm getting a little over $4,000 a year. Is that lots or little? well it will give us a decent apartment and a nearly decent maid i guess and if the tour-car keeps going we can beat it off for a year wandering after maybe three four years i hope so here we are that's mrs pat waiting for us the pattencour house set near the top of the highest hill in the range of the berkshars stood out white against the slope of crisp green and old manor house of long lines and solid beams, with striped awnings of red and white, and in front of brick terrace with basket chairs, a swinging couch, and a wicker-tee table, already welcoming spread with a service of Royal Dalton. From the terrace one saw miles of valley and hills and villages strung on rambling river.

The valley was a golden bowl filled with a piece of afternoon, a world of sun and listening woods. On the terrace waited a woman of 35, of clever face a bit worn in the edges, carefully coffered hair, and careless white blouse with a tweed walking skirt. She was gracefully holding out her hand, greeting Carl. It's terribly good if you to come clear out into our wilderness. She was interrupted by the bouncing appearance of a stocky, handsome, red-faced, full-chin, curly black-haired man of forty,

in riding breeches and boots and a silk shirt, with him an exciting small boy in rompers. Pat and Kerr, senior and junior. Here you are, senior, observantly remarked. Glad to see you, Erickson. You and Ruthie have been a deuce of a time coming up from town, holding hands along the road, eh? Lord these aviators.

Pat. Animal. Protested Mrs. Kerr and Ruth simultaneously. All right, I'll be good. Saw you fly at Nassau Boulevard, Erickson. turned my horn loose and hooted till they thought I was a militant. Like Ruthie here. Lord, what flying, what flying. I'd like to see you, race Winterman, Verdins, Ruthie.

Will you show Mr. Erickson where his room is? Oh, has poor old Pat got to go and drag a servant away from reading? Town topics, hey? I will, Pat, said Ruth. Oh, well, Daddy, cried Pat Jr. No, my son. I guess maybe Ruthie had better do it. There's a certain look in her eyes.

Balchick! Salamander! Ruth and Carl passed through the wide colonial hall with mahogany tables and portraits of the curves and the sort of Colonel Patton. At the far end was an open door and a glimpse of an old-fashioned garden, radiant with Hollyhocks and Canterbury bells, it was a world of utter content.

As they climbed the curving stairs, Ruth tucked her arm in his saying, now do you see why i won't be engaged pat cur is the best chum in the world yet he finds even a possible engagement wildly humorous like mothers-in-law or poets or falling on your ear but gee ruth are you going to marry me you little child my little boy hawk of course i'm going to marry you do you think i would miss my chance of a cabin in the rockies my famous hawk what everybody cheered at nassau Boulevard? She opened the door of his room, with her deferential, "'Thigh Chambers, my Lord.'

"'Come down quickly,' she said. "'We mustn't miss a moment of these days. I am frank with you about how glad I am to have you here. You must be good to me. You will prize my love, a little, won't you?' Before he could answer, she had run away. After half-homecomings and false homecomings, the adventurer had really come home.

He inspected the gracious room, its chintz hangings, four-poster bed, low-wicker chair by the fireplace, fresh Cherokee roses on the mantle, a room of cheerfulness and open space. He stared into the woods where a cool light lay on moss and fern. He did not need to remember Ruth's kisses, for each breath of hilltop air,

each emerald of moss, each shining mahogany surface in the room, repeated to him, that he had found the grail, whose other name is love. Saturday they loafed over breakfast, the sun licking the treetops and the ravine outside the windows, and they motored with the curds to Lennox, returning through the darkness.

Till midnight they talked on the terrace. They loafed again the next morning, and let the fresh air dissolve the office grime which had been coating his spirit. They were so startingly original as to be simple-hearted country lovers. In the afternoon, declining Kerr's offer of a car, and rambled off on bicycles. From a rise they saw water gleaming among the trees.

The sullen green of pines set off the silvery green of barley, and an orchard climbed the next rise. The smoky shadow of another hill range promised long, cool forest roads. Crows were flying overhead. Going where they would, the aviator and the girl, who read psychology, modern lovers, stood hand in hand as though the age. of machinery were a myth as though he were a piping minstrel and shea shepherdess before them was the open road and all around them the hum of bees a close listless heat held

Monday afternoon even on the hilltop the clay tennis court was baking the worn bricks of the terrace reflected a furnace glow the curs had disappeared for a nap Carl lounging with Ruth on the swinging couch in the shade thought of the the slaves in New York offices and tenements. Then because he would himself be back in an office next day, he let the glare of the valley, soothe him with its wholesome heat. Certainly would like a swim, he remarked. Couldn't we bike down to Fisher's Pond or maybe take the ford? Let's, but there's no bathhouse. Put a bathing suit under your dress, sun will dry it in no time after the swim.

As you command, my liege, and she ran into change. They motored down to Fisher's Pond, which is a lake, and stopped in a natural wooded opening, like a dim-lighted green room. From it stretched the enameled lake, the further side reflecting unbroken woods.

The nearer water edge was exquisite in its cleanliness. They saw perch fantastically floating over the pale sand bottom, among scattered reeds whose watery green stalks were like the thin columns of a dancing hall for small fishes. The surface of the leg sat iny as the palm of a girl's hand, broken the tiniest of ripples against white quartz pebbles on the hot shore, cool, flashing, golden sanded, the lake coaxed them out of their forest room. A lot like the Minnesota lakes, only smaller, said Carl.

I'm going right in. About ready for a swim, come on. I'm afraid. She suddenly plumped on the earth and hugged her skirts about her ankles. Why, blessed, what are you scared of? No sharks here. And no undertow, nice white sand. Oh, Hawk, I was silly.

I felt I was such an independent modern woman, uh, uh, and I aren't. I've always said it was silly for girls to swim in a woman's bathing suit. Skirts are so cumbersome. So I put on a boy's bathing suit under my dress, and I'm terribly embarrassed. Why, blessed. Well, I guess you'll have to decide. His voice was somewhat shaky. A awful scared of Carl.

Yes, I thought I wouldn't be with you, but I'm self-conscious as can be. Well, gee, I don't know, of course. Well, I'll jump in, and you can decide. He peeled off his white flannels and stood in his blue bathing suit, not statue-like, not very brown now, but trim wasted, shapely armed, wonderful clean of neck and jaw. With a wee, he dashed into the water and swam out, overhand. As he turned over and glanced back, his heart caught to see her standing on the creamy sand,

a shy, elfin figure, a boy's bathing suit of black wool, a woman and slim boy in one, silken-throated and graceful limbed, curiously smaller than when dressed. Her white skirt and blouse lay tumbled about her ankles. She raised rosy arms to hide her flushed face in her eyes, as she cried, Don't look! He obediently swam on with a tenderness more poignant than longing. He heard her splashing behind him and turned again to see her racing through the water.

Those soft yet not narrow shoulders rose and fell sturdily under the wet black wool. Her eyes shone, and she was all comrade. boy, save for her dripping splendid hair, singing, Come on, lazy! She headed across the pond, he swam beside her, reveling in the well-being of cool water and warm air, till they reached the solemn shade beneath the trees on the other side

and floated in the dark, still water, splashing idle hands, gazing into forest hollows, spying upon the brisk business of squirrels among the acorns. Back at the Greenwood room, Ruth wrapped her sailor blouse about her, and they squatted like unself-conscious children on the beach. While from a field a distant locust fiddled his August fandango, and in flame-colored pride an orio went by. Fresh sky, sunfish like tropic shells in the translucent water, arching reeds, dipping their olive green points in the water, wavelets,

rushing against a gray neglected rowboat. and beside him, Ruth. Musingly, they built a castle of sand, an hour of understanding so complete that it made the heart melancholy. When he sighed, Gingley, come on, blessed, we're dry now. It seemed that they could never again

know such rapt tranquility. Yet they did, for that evening, when they stood on the terrace, trying to forget that he must leave her and go back to the lonely city in the morning, When the mist reached chilly tentacles up from the valley, they kissed a shy goodbye, and Carl knew that life's real adventure is not adventuring, but finding the playmate with whom to quest life's meaning.

End of Chapter 39, Chapter 40 of Trial of the Hawk. The Sleeper Fox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti. Trill of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 40. After six festival months of married life in April or May 1914, the happy Mrs. Carl Erickson did not have many modern theories of marriage in general, though it was her theory that she had such theories. Like a majority of intelligent men and women, Ruth was in her rebellion against the canonical marriage of slipper warning and obedience,

emphatic but vague. She was a precise opinion regarding certain details of marriage, but in general, as inconsistent as her library. It is a human characteristic to be belligerently sure as to whether one prefers plush or a tan upholstery on car seats, but not to consider rather government ownership of railroads will improve upholstering. To know with certainty of perception that it is a bore to have one's husband laugh at one's pet economy of matches or sure.

string or ice, but to be blandly willing to leave all theories of polygamy, polandry, monogamy, and varietism to the clever Russian Jews. As regards details, Ruth definitely did want a bedroom of her own, a desire which her mother would have regarded as somehow immodest. She definitely did want shaving and hairbrushing kept in the background. She did not want Carl, the lover to drift into Carl the husband. She did not want him to lose touch with other people, and she wanted to keep the spice of madness, which from the first had seasoned her comradeship. These things she delightfully had in May 1914. They were largely due to her own initiative, Carl's drifting theories of social

structure, concerned for the most part the wages of workmen and the ridiculousness of class distinctions. Reared in the farming district, the amateur college, the garage, the garage, and the Raj and the hangar. He had not, despite imagination, devoted two seconds to such details as the question of whether there was freedom and repose. Not to speak of a variety of taste as regards opening windows and sleeping diagonally across the bed in having separate bedrooms. Much though he had been persuaded to read of modern fiction. His race still believed that marriage bells and roses were the proper portions of marriage to think about. It was due to Ruth, too, that they had so amiable a flat.

Carl had been made careless of surroundings by years of hotels and furnished rooms. There was less real significance for him in the beauty of his first home than in the fact that they too had a bathroom of their own, that he no longer had to go, clad in a drab bathrobe, laden with shaving materials and a towel and talcum powder, and a broken hand mirror and a toothbrush, like a perambulating drugstore toilet counter, down a boarding-house hall

to that modified hall bedroom with a tin tub, which his doctor-landlord had called a bathroom. Pictures, it must be admitted. Give a room an air pleasant it is to sit in large chairs by fireplaces and feel yourself a landed gentleman. But nothing filled Carl with a more delicate and truly spiritual satisfaction than having a porcelain tub, plenty of hot water,

and the privilege of leaving his shaving brush in the Erikson bathroom, with a fair certainty of finding it there when he wanted to shave in a hurry. But careless of surroundings or not, Carl was stirred when on their return from honeymooning in the Adirondacks, he carried Ruth over the threshold, and they stood together in the living room of their home. It was a room to live in and laugh in.

The woodwork was white enameled, the walls covered with gray Japanese paper. There were no portires between living room and dining room, and small hall, so that the three rooms, with their light-reflecting walls, gave an effect of spaciousness to rather a cramped and old-fashioned apartment. There were not many pictures and no bric-a-brac, yet the rooms were not bare, but clean and trim and distinguished. with the large Davenport and the wing chair, chintz cushioned brown willow chairs, and Ruth's upright piano, excellent mahogany, and a few good rugs. There were only two or three vases,

and they genuinely intended for holding flowers. And there was a bare mantelpiece that rested the eyes over the fuzzy, clean gas log. The pictures were chosen because they led the imagination on, etchings and color prints, largely by unknown artists. like windows looking on delightful country. The chairs assembled naturally in groups, the whole unit of three rooms, suggested people talking. It was home, first and last,

though it was one cell in one layer of a seven-story building. On a street walled in with such buildings in a city which lined up more than 300 of such streets from its southern tip to its northern limit along the Hudson, and threw in a couple of million people in Brooklyn and the Bronx. They lived in the 90s between Broadway and Riverside Drive, a few blocks from the Winslow House in distance,

but one generation away in matter of decoration. The apartment house itself was completely old-fashioned, with an intermittent elevator run by an intermittent negro youth, who gave most of his time to the telephone switchboard and mysterious duties in the basement, also with a downstairs hall that was narrow and carpeted and lined with offensively dark wood, but they could see the Hudson from their living room,

on the sixth floor at the back of the house. The agent assured them that, probably not till the end of time, would there be anything but low private houses between them and the river? They were not haunted by Aunt Emma Trugate Winslow, and Ruth, who had long been oppressed by late Victorian Brickaback

and American Louis XIV's Furniture. so successfully adopted elimination as the keynote that there was not one piece of furniture bought for the purpose of indicating that Mr. and Mrs. Carl Erickson were well to do. She dared to tell friends who, before the wedding, inquired what she wanted, that checks were welcome and need not be monogrammed. Even Aunt Emma had been willing to send a check, provided they were properly married at St. George's Church.

Consequently, there are six sons. rooms showed a remarkable absence of such usual wedding presence as Prince of the smugly, smiling, and euphoric Mona Lisa, three muffin stands in three degrees of Marquetti, three electro-royalists, four punch bowls, three sets of almond dishes, a pair of bird carvers that did not carve, a bust of Dante in new art marble, or a deluxe set of de Mosupon translated by a worthy lady with a French lexicon. Instead, they bought what they wanted, rather an important thing to do, but like most importances, thoroughly worthwhile.

The living room was their own. Carl's bedroom was white and simple, though spotty with aviation metals and silver cups, and monoplanes sketchily rendered in gold, and signed photographs of aviators. Ruth's bedroom was also plain and white and dull Japanese gray, a simple room with that simplicity of hand embroidery, real lace, and fine linen appreciated by exclamatory women friends. She taught Carl to say, Dog, instead of dog, for dog.

Wata, instead of water, for water. Whether she was more correct in her pronunciation or not, does not matter. New York, said Dog. And it amused him just then to be very, Eastern. She taught him the theory of house lighting. Carl had no financial objection to unshaded incandescent bulbs glowing from the ceiling, but he came to like the shaded electric bulbs which Ruth installed in the living room. When she introduced four candles as sole lighting of the dining room table, however, he grumbled loudly, had his inability to see what he was eating. She retired to

a bedroom and he hopefully went out to get a cigar. At the cigar counter, he repented of all the unkind things he had ever done or could possibly do and return to eat humble pie and eat it by candlelight. Inside of two weeks, one of the things which Carl had always known was that the harmonious candlelight brought them closer together at dinner. The teaching in this period of adjustments was not all on Ruth's part. It was due to Carl's insistence that she tried to discover what her theological beliefs really were. She admitted that only at twilight vespers with a gale of violins in an arch roof did she really worship in church. She did not believe that priests and ministers who seem to be ordinary men as regards earthly things had any extraordinary knowledge of the

mysteries of heaven. Yet she took it. for granted that she was a good Christian. She rarely disagreed with the Dunlubbies who were Catholics, or her Aunt Emma who regarded anything but high church episcopalianism as bad form, or her brother Mason, who was an uneasy Unitarian or Carl, who was an unaggressive agnostic. Of the four, it was Carl who seemed to have the greatest interest in religions. He blurred out such monologues as, I wonder if it isn't pure egotism that makes a person believe that the religion he is born to is the best. My country, my religion, my wife, my business. We think that whatever is ours is necessarily sacred, or in other words, that we are gods.

And then we call it faith and patriotism. The Hindu or the Christian is equally ready to prove to you, and mind you, he may be a wise old man with a beard, that his national religion is obviously the only one. Find out what you yourself really do think, and if you turn out a sun-worshipper or a hard-shell Baptist, why good luck. If you don't think for yourself, then you're admitting that your theory of happiness

is the old dog asleep in the sun. And maybe he is happier than a student. But I think you like to experiment with life. His arguments were neither original nor especially logical. They were largely given to him, by Bone Stillman, Professor Frazier, and chance paragraphs in stray radical magazines. But to Ruth, politely reared in a house with three maids, where it was as tactless to discuss God as to discuss sex. His deferencees seemed terrifyingly new. She was not the first who had

complacently gone to church after reading Bernard Shaw, but she did try to follow Carl's loose reasoning to find out what she thought and what the spiritual fashions of her neighborhood made her think, she thought. The process gave her many anxious hours of alternating impatience with fixed religious dogmas and loneliness for the comfortable refuge of a personal God whose yearning had spoken to her in the Gregorian chant. She could never get herself to read more than two chapters of any book on the subject, nor did she get much light from the conversation. One set of people supposed that Christianity had so entirely despaired from intelligence circles that it was not worth discussion. Another set supposed that no one but cranks ever thought of doubting the essentials of Christianity,

and that therefore it was not worth discussion. And to a few superb women who she knew their religion was too sweet a reality to be subjected to the noisy chatter of discussion. Gradually, Ruth forgot to think often of the matter, but it was always in the back of her mind. They were happy, Carl and Ruth. To their flats came such of Ruth's friends as she kept because she liked them for themselves, with a fantastic assortment of personages and awkward rovers, whom the ex-aviator knew. The Erickson's made an institution of the bruncheon, breakfast luncheon, at which coffee and eggs and deviled kidneys a table of auction bridge,

and a davenport of talk and a wing share of Sunday papers were to be had on Sunday morning from 10 to 1. At Bruncheon, Walter McMonys told to Florence Coordin his experiences in exploring Southern Greenland by airplane with the Shillis Banning acquisition. At Brunchin, Bobby Winslow, now an intern, talked baseball with Carl. Ed Brunchin, Phil Donnellavy,

regarded cynically all the people he did not know and played Piquet in a corner with Ruth's father. Carl and Ruth joined the Peacewater's Country Club, and in the spring of 1914, went there nearly every Sunday afternoon for tennis and a dance. Carl refused golf, however. He always repeated a shabby joke about the shame of taking advantage of such a tiny ball. He seemed content to stick to office, home, and tennis court. It was Ruth who planned their weekend trips, proposed at 8 a.m. Sunday,

and began at two that afternoon. They explored the tangled rocks and woods of Lloyd's next. on Long Island, sleeping in an abandoned shack, curled together like kittens. They swooped on a Dutch village in New Jersey, spent the night with an old farmer, and attended the Dutch Reformed Church. They tramped from New Haven to Hartford over Easter. Carl was always ready for their gypsy journeys. He responded to Ruth's visions of foaming South Sea Isles,

but he rarely sketched such pictures of himself. He had given all of himself to joy in Ruth. Like many men called adventurers, he was ready for anything, but content with anything. It was Ruth who was finding new voyages. She kept up her settlement work, and progressed to an active interest in the woman's trade union league, and took part in picketing during a Panama hat worker strike. She may have had more curiosity than principal, but she did badger policeman pluckily. She was studying Italian, the Montessori method. Cooking? She taught new dishes to her maid.

She adopted a careless suggestion of Carl and violently increased the maid's salary, thereby shaking the rock-ribbed foundations of Upper West Side Society. In nothing did she find greater satisfaction than in being neither the bride nor the little woman, nor any like degrading thing which recently married girls are by their sentimental spinster friends expected to be.

She did not whisper the intimate details of her honeymoon to other young married women. She did not run about quantity and tenly telling of her difficulty with household work. When a purring baby-talking acquaintance gurgled, how did the Ruthie bride spend her morning? Did she cook some little dainty for her husband? Nothing, boucho? I'm sure.

In reply, Ruth pleasantly observed. Not a chance. The Ruthie bride cursed out the janitor for not shooting up a dainty cabbage in a dumb waiter, and then counted up her husband's cigarette coupons and skipped right down to the premium parlors with him and got him a pair of pale blue Boston garters and a cunning granite-ware stewpan and then sponged lunch off Olive Donalovie,

but nothing bourgeois. Such experience told to Carl he found diverting. He seemed in the spring of 1914 to want no others. End of Chapter 40. Chapter 41 of the Trail of the Hawk. This Lever Fox recording is in the public domain. recording by Mike Vindetti Mike Vindetti.com

Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis Chapter 41 The apparently satisfactory development of the tour car in the late spring of 1914 was the result of an un-economic expenditure of energy on the part of Carl personally he followed by letter

the trail of every amateur aviator, every motoring big game hunter. He never let up for an afternoon. Van Zale had lost interest in the whole matter. Whenever Carl thought of how much the development of the tour car business depended upon himself, he was uneasy about the future, and bent more closely over his desk. On his way home, swaying on a subway strap, his pleasant sensation of returning to Ruth was interrupted by worry in regard to things he might have done at the office, nights he dreamed of lists of prospects. Late in May,

he was disturbed for several days by headaches, lassitude nausea. He lied to Ruth. Guess I have eaten something at lunch that was a little off. You know what these restaurants are? He admitted, however, that he felt like a symptom. He stuck to the office, though his chief emotion about life and business

was that he wished to go off somewhere and lie down, die gently. Directly after a Sunday brunchon, at which he was silent and looked washed out. He went to bed with typhoid fever. For six weeks he was ill. He seemed daily to lose more of the boyishness which all his life had made him want to dance in the sun.

That loss was to Ruth like a snickering hobgoblin attending the specter of death. Staying by him constantly, forgetting, in the intensity of her care, even to want credit for virtue, taking one splash at her tired eyes with boric acid and dashing back to his bed. She mourned and mourned for her lost boy, while she hid her fear and kept her blouses fresh,

and her hair well quified and mothered the stern man who lay so dreadfully still in the bed. He was not shaved every day. He had a pale beard under his hollow cheeks. Even when he was out of delirium, even when he was comparatively strong, He never said anything gaily foolish for the sake of being young and noisy with her. During convalescence, Carl was so wearily gentle that she hoped the little boy she loved was coming back to dwell in him, but the hawk's wings seemed broken.

For the first time, Carl was afraid of life. He sat and worried, going over the possibilities of the Turricar, and the positions he might get if the Turricar failed. He was willing to loaf by the way. window all day, his eyes on a narrow blood-red stripe, and her Navajo blanket on his knees, along which he incessantly ran a fingernail back and forth, back and forth, for whole quarter-hours while she read aloud from Kipling and London and Conrad, hoping to rekindle the spirit of daring. One sweet drop was in their cup of iron. As woodland playmates, they could never have known such intimacy

as hovered about them, when she rested her head lightly. against his knees, and they watched the Hudson, the storms and flurries of light on its waves, the windy clouds and the procession of barges, the beetle-like ferries, and the great steamers for Albany. They talked in half sentences, understanding the rest, tough in winter. Might be a good trip. Carl's hand was always demanding her thick hair, but he stroked it gently. The coarse, wholesome vigor was so. strain from him. Part even of his slang went with his, his G, was not explosive. He took to

watching her like a solemn baby. When she moved about the room, thus she found the little boy Carl again, laughed full-throated, and secretly cried over him, as his sternness passed into a wistful obedience. He was not quite the same impudent boy whose naughtiness she had loved, but the good child who came in his place, did trust her so, depended upon her so. When Carl was strong enough, they went for three weeks to Point Pleasant on the Jersey coast, where the pines and breakers from the open sea yield his weakness and his multitudinous worries. They even swam once, and Carl played at learning two new dances, strangely called the fox trot and the Lulu Fado. Their hotel was a vast bar on all porches, white flannels,

and handsome young Jews chatting tremendously with young Jewesses, but its ballroom floor was smooth, and Ruth had lacked music and excitement for so long that she danced every night, and conducted an amiable flirtation with a mysterious young man of Harvard accent, Jewish features, fine brown eyes, and tortoise-shell rimmed eyeglasses,

while Carl looked on, a contented wallflower. They came back to town with ocean breeze and pine scent in their throats, and sea-sparkle in their eyes, and Carl promptly tied himself to the office desk as though sickness and recovery had never given him a vision of play. Ruth had not taken the point pleasant dances seriously, but as day on day she stifled in a half-darkened flat that summer, she sometimes sobbed at the thought of the moon path on the sea,

the reflection of lights on the ballroom floor, the wave-like swish of music mad feet. The flat was hot, dead, The summer heat was unrelenting as bedclothes drawn over the head and lashed down. Flies in sneering circles mocked the listless hand she flipped at them. Too hot to wear many clothes, yet hating the disorder of a flimsy negligee. She panted it by a window, while the venomous sun glared on tin roofs, and a few feet away snarled the ceaseless brer of a steam riveter.

That was creating new flats. to shut off her view of the Hudson. In the lava-paved backyard was the insistent, file-like voice of the janitor's son who kept piping, Hey, Billy! Hey, Billy! He's got a girl.

Billy got a girl. Hey, Billy! She imagined herself going down and slaughtering him. Vividly saw herself waiting for the elevator, venturing into the hot sepulchre of the back area way, and there becoming too languid to complete a task of ridding the world of the dear child. She was horrified to discover what she had been imagining,

and presently imagined it all over again. Two blocks across from her, seen through the rising walls of the new apartment houses, were the drab windows of a group of rundown tenements, which broke this sleek respectability of the well-to-do quarter. In those windows, Ruth observed form-looking idle women, not very clean, who had nothing to do after they had completed half an hour of slovenly housework in the morning. They watched their neighbors breathlessly. They peered out with the petty, virtual and curiosity of the workless at whatever passed in the streets below them.

Fifty times a day, they could be seen to lean far out on their fire escapes and follow with slowly craning necks and unblinking eyes the passing of something, Ice wagons, Undertaker's wagons, Oly Clow men, Ruth surmised, the rest of the time, ragged hair and greasy of wrapper,

gum-chewing and yawning, they rested their unlovely stomachs on discolored sofa cushions on the windowsills, and waited for something to appear. Two blocks away they were. Yet to Ruth, they seemed to be in the room with her, claiming her as one of their sisterhood,

For now, she was a useless woman, as they were. She raged with the thought that she might grow to be like them in every respect. She, Ruth Winslow. She wondered if any of them were Norwegians named Erickson. With a fascination of dread, she watched them as closely as they watched the world, with the hypnotization of unspeakable hopelessness. She had to find her work. something for which the world needed her,

lest she be left here, useless and unhappy in a flat. In her kitchen she was merely an intruder on the efficient maid, and there was no nursery. She sat apprehensionally on the edge of a chair, hating the women at the windows, hating the dull, persistent flies, hating the wetness of her forehead and the dampness of her palm, repenting of her hate and hating again,

and taking another cold bath to be fresh for the homecoming of Carl, the tired man whom she had to mother and whom of all the world. She did not hate. Even on the many cool days when the streets in the flat became tolerable and the vulture women of the tenements

ceased to exist for her, Ruth was not much interested, whether she went out or someone came to see her. Everyone she knew, except the Dunloughby's, and a few others, was out of town, and she was tired of Olive done all of his mirth and shallow gossip. After her days with Carl in the valley of the shadow, Olive was to her a stranger, giggling about strange people.

Phil was rather better. He occasionally came in for tea, poked about, stared at the color prints, and said cryptic things about feminism and playing squash. Her settlement house classes were closed for the summer. She brooded over the settlement work and accused, herself of caring less for people than for the sensation of being charitable. She wondered if she was a hypocrite. Then she would take another cold bath to be fresh for the homecoming of Carl, the tired man whom she had to mother, and toward whom, of all the world's energies, she knew

that she was not hypocritical. This is not the story of Ruth Winslow, but of Carl Erickson. Yet Ruth's stifling days are a part of it, for her unhappiness meant as much to him as it did to her. In the swelter of his office, overlooking, motor-hooting gasoline-reaking Broadway, he was aware that Ruth was in the flat, buried alive. He made plans for her going away, but she refused to desert him. He tried to arrange for a week more of holiday for them both. He could not. He came to understand that he was now completely.

completely a prisoner of business. He was in a rut, both sides of which were hedged with back work that had piled up on him. He had no desire, no ambition, no interest, except in Ruth, and in making the Torricar pay. The Torricar company had never paid expenses as yet. How much longer would old Van Zale be satisfied with millions to come in the future? Perhaps. Carl even took work home with him. Though for Ruth's sake, he wanted to go out and play. It really was for her sake. He himself liked to play, but the disease of perpetual overwork had hold on him. He was glad to have her desert him for an evening now and then, and go out to the Peacewater's Country Club for a dance with Phil and Olive Dunluby. She felt guilty when she came home and found

him still making calculations, but she hummed waltzes while she put on a thin blue silk, dressing gown and took down her hair. I can't stand this grubby shut in prison, she finally snatched up him on an evening when he would not go to the first night of a roof garden. He snarled back. You don't have to. Why don't you go with your blooming fillin' olive? Of course, I don't ever want to go myself.

See here, my friend, you have been taking advantage for a long time now of the fact that you were ill. I'm not going to be your nurse indefinitely. She slammed her bedroom door. Later she came stalking out, very dignified, and left the flat. He pretended not to see her. But as soon as the elevator door clanged and the rumbling old car had begun to carry her down away from him,

the flat was noisy with her absence. She came home eagerly sorry to find an eagerly sorry, Carl. Then while they cried together and he kissed her lips, they made a compact that no matter for what reason or through whose fault they might quarrel, they would always settle it before either went to bed. But they were uncomfortably polite for two days, and obviously were so afraid that they might quarrel, that they were both prepared to quarrel.

Carl had been back at work for less than one month, but he hoped the Turricar was giving enough promise now of positive success to permit him to play during the evening. He rented a Venzale car for part-time, planned weekend trips, hope they could spend. Then the whole world exploded. Just at the time when the investigation of Twilight Sleep indicated that the world might become civilized, the powers plunged into a war whose reason no man has yet discovered. Carr read the headlines on the morning of August 5, 1914,

with a delusion of not reading news, but history, with himself in the history book. 10,000 books record the Great War and how bitterly Europe realized it. This is to record that Carl, like most Americans, did not comprehend it, even when recruits for the Kaiser marched down Broadway with German and American flags intertwined, even when his business was threatened.

It was too big for his imagination. Every noon he bought himself half a dozen newspaper extras and hurried down to the bulletin boards on the Times and Herald building. He pretended that he was a character in one of the fantastic novels about a world war. When he saw such items as Russians invading Prussia, Japs will enter war, airplane and submarine attacks, English cruiser. Rats, he said, I'm dreaming.

There could be a war like that. We're too civilized. I can prove the whole thing's impossible. In the world puzzle, nothing confused Carl more than the question of socialism. He had known as a final fact that the alliance of French and German socialist workmen made war between the two nations absolutely impossible, and his knowledge was proven ignorance, his faith folly. He tentatively bought a socialist magazine or two to find some explanation and found only greater confusion on the part of the scholars and leaders of the party.

They too did not understand how it had all happened. They stood amid the ruins of international socialism, sorrowing. If their faith was darkened, how much more so was Carl's vague, untutored optimism about world brotherhood? He had two courses, to discard socialism as a failure, or to stand by it as a course of action which was logical,

but had not, as yet, been able to accomplish its end. He decided to stand by it. He could not see himself plunging into the unutterable pessimism of believing that all of mankind were such beastly fools that, after this, one great sin. They could not repent and turn from tribal murder. And what other remedy was there? If socialism had not prevented the war, neither had monarchy or bureaucracy, bourgeois peace movements, nor the church. With the whole world at war, Carl thought chiefly of his own business. He was not abnormal. The press was filled with bewildered

queries as to what would happen to America. For two weeks the automobile business seemed dead, save for a grim activity in war trucks. Van Zyle called in Carl and shook his head over the future of the tour car, now that all luxuries were threatened. But the Middle West promised a huge crop and prosperity. The east followed, then slowly the south, despite the closed outlet for its cotton crop. Within a few weeks, all sorts of motor cars were selling well. especially expensive cars. It was apparent that automobiles were no longer merely luxuries. There was even a promise of greater trade than ever.

So rapidly were all the cars of war-waring nations being destroyed. But once Van Zyle had considered the possibility of letting go his tour-car interest in order to be safe, he seemed always to be considering it. Carl read fate in Van Zale's abstract manner. And if Van Zale withdrew Carl's own stock would be worthless. but he stuck to his work with something of a boy's frightened stubbornness and something of a man's quiet sternness. Fear was never far from him.

In an airplane he had never been grateful-flightened. He could himself, by his own efforts. Fight the wind. But how could he steer a world war or a world industry? He tried to conceal his anxiety from Ruth, but she guessed it. She said one evening, Sometimes I think we two are unusual because we really want to be free And then a thing like this war comes in our bread and butter

And little pink cakes are in danger And I realize we're not free at all And we're just like the rest prisoners Depended on how much the job brings and how fast the subway runs Oh sweetheart we mustn't forget to be just mad No matter how serious things become standing very close to him, she put her head on his shoulder. Sure mustn't. Must stick by each other all the more

when the world takes a run and jumps on us. Indeed we will. Unsparingly, the war's cosmic idiocy continued, and Carl crawled along the edge of a business precipice, looking down. He became so accustomed to it that he began to enjoy the view, the old Carl with the enthusiasm which had served him for that undefying quality called courage, began to come to life again, laughing. Let a darned old business bust if she's going to. Only it refused to bust.

It kept on trembling while Carl became nervous again, then gaily defiant, then nervous again, till the alternation of groom and bravado disgusted him and made Ruth wonder whether he was an office slave or a freebooter, as he happened to be both at the time. It was hard for him to be either convincingly. She accused him of vacillating, he retorted, the suspense kept them both raw. To add to their difficulties of adjustment to each other and to the egomad world, Ruth's sense of established amenities was shocked by the appearance of Carl's pioneering past

as revealed in the lively but vulgar person of Martin, Dukhara. Carl's former aviation mechanic. Martin Dockerel was lanky and awkward as ever. He still wrote postcards to his aunt in Fall River, and admired Berlisk Shoal choruses, but he no longer played the mouth organ publicly, for he had become so well to do as to be respectable, as foreign agent for the Des Moines Auto Truck Company.

He had toured Europe, selling war trucks or low-east, as the English called them, first to the Balkan states, then to Italy, Russia, and Turkey. He was for a time detailed, to the New York office. It did not occur either to him or to Carl, that he was not welcome to drop in any time often as possible to slap Carl on the back, loudly recollect the time when he had got drunk

and fought with policemen from San Antonio, or to spend a whole evening belligerently discussing the idea of war or types of motor trucks when Ruth wistfully wanted Carl to herself. Martin supposed, because she smiled, that she was interested as Carl in his theories about airplane scouting and war. Ruth knew that most of Carl's life

had been devoted to things quite outside her own sphere of action, but she had known it without feeling it. His talk with Martin showed her how sufficient his life had been without her. She began to worry least he go back to aviation. So began their serious quarrels. There were not many of them,

and they were forgotten out of existence in a day or two, but there were at least three pitched battles during which both of them believed that this ended everything. They quarreled always about the same thing which had intimidated them before. The need of quarrelling through apropos of this every detail of life came up. Ruth's conformities, her fear that he would fly again, her fear that the wavering job was making him indecisive.

And Martin Dockerel kept coming, as an excellent starting point for discussion. Ruth did not dislike Martin's roughness, but when the ex-mechanic discovered that he was making more money than was Carl and asked Carl in her presence, if he'd like a loan, then she hated Martin, and would give no reason. She became unable to see him as anything but a bore,

an unpleasant service, whose friendship with Carl indicated that her husband, too, was an outsider, believing that she was superbly holding herself in, she asked Carl if there was not some way of tactfully suggesting to Martin that he'd come to the flat only once in two weeks instead of two or three times a week. Carl was angry. She said furiously what she really thought and retired to Aunt Emma's for the evening. When she returned, she expected to find Carl as repentant as herself.

Unfortunately, that same Carl who had declared that it was pure egotism, to regard one's own religion or country as necessarily sacred, regarded his own friends as sacred, a noble faith which is an important cause of political graft. He was ramping about the living room, waiting for a fight, and he got it. The moment of indiscretion, the inevitable time when believing themselves fearlessly frank,

they exchanged every memory of an injury. Ruth pointed out that Carl had, disliked Florence Cruden as much as she disliked Martin. She renewed her accusation that he was vacillating, scoffed at Walter McManus, whom she really liked, Gertie Cowles, whom she had never met, and even hesitantly Carl's farmer relatives. And Carl was equally unpleasant. At her last thrust he called her a thin-blooded New Yorker and slammed his bedroom door.

They had broken their pledge not to go to bed on a quarrel. He was gone before she came out to breakfast in the morning. In the evening they were perilously polite again. Martin Dockerel appeared and, while Ruth listened, Carl revealed how savagely his mind had turned overnight to a longing for such raw adventuring as she could never share. He feverishly confessed that he had for many weeks wavered between hating the whole war and wanting to enlist in the British air corps,

to get life's supreme sensation, scouting 10,000 feet in the air, while dozens of batteries fired at him, a nose-to-earth voluplane, the thinking, Carl, the playmate Carl that Ruth knew, was masked as the foolhardy adventurer, and as one who not merely talking, but might really do the thing he pictured, and Martin Dockerel seemed so dreadfully to take it for granted that Carl might go.

Carl's high note of madness dropped to a matter-of-fact chatter about a kind of wandering, which shut her out as completely as the project of war. I don't know, said he, but what the biggest fun in chasing around the country is to get up from a pile of lumber, where you've pounded your ear all night and get that funny railroad smell of greasy waste, and then throw your feet for a handout and sneak on a blonde, and go hiking off to some town you've never heard of, with every breaky and constable out there after you.

That's living. When Martin was gone, Carl glanced at her. She stiffened and pretended to be absorbed in a magazine. He took from the mess of papers and letters that lived in his inside coat pocket, a war map. He had clipped from a newspaper and drew tactical lines on it. From his room, he brought a small book. he had bought that day. He studied it intently.

Ruth managed to see that the title of the book was Airplane and Air Scouting in the European armies. She sprang up and cried, Hawk! Why are you eating that? Why shouldn't I read it? You don't mean to you... Oh, no, I don't suppose I have the nerve to go in and list now. You've already pointed that out to me. I've been getting cold feet.

But why do you shut me out? Why do you? Oh, good Lord. Have we got to go all over this again? We've gone over it and over it and over it till I'm sick of telling you it isn't true. I'm very sorry, Hawk. Thank you for making it clear to me that I'm a typical silly wife.

And thank you for showing me I'm a clumsy brute. You've done it quite often now. Of course, it doesn't mean anything that I've given up aviation. Oh, don't be melodramatic. Or, if you must, don't fail to tell me that I've ruined your life. Very well, I won't say anything, then, Ruth. Don't look at me like that hark, so hard studying me.

Can't you understand? Haven't you any perception? Can't you understand how hard it is for me to come to you like this? After last night and try? Very nice of you, he said grimly. With one cry of, Oh! She ran into her bedroom.

He could hear her sobbing. He could feel her agony dragging him to her. But no woman's arms could drag his anger this time to let it ache again. For once he definitely did not want to go to her,

so futile to make-up and quarrel, make-up and quarrel. He was impatient about her distant sobs expressed so clearly a wordless demand that he come to her make peace. Hell. He croaked. Jerked his topcoat from its nail and left the flat. 11 o'clock of a chilly November evening.

End of Chapter 41. Chapter 42 of Trail of the Hawk. This Lieber Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti.com. Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 42. Dizzy with all the problems of life. he did not notice where he went. He walked blocks, took a trolley car, got off to buy a strong cigar, took the next trolley that came along, was carried across the 59th Street Bridge to Long Island. At the eighth or tenth stop he hurried out of the car, just as it was starting again. He wondered why he had been such a fool as to leave in the dark street, of flat-faced wooden houses with dooryards of trampled earth and general air of poverty,

goats and lunch pails. He tramped on, a sullen and youthless man. Presently, he was in shaggy open country. He was frightened by his desertion of Ruth, but he did not want to go back, nor even telephone to her. He had to diagram where and what and why he was, determine what he was to do. He disregarded the war as a cause of trouble. Had there been no extra business pressure caused by the war, there would have been some other focus for their misunderstandings. They would have quarreled over clothes and aviation, Aunt Emma and Martin Dockerel, poverty and dancing, quite the same. Walking steadily with long periods, when he did not think, but stared at the dusty stars or the shaky, ill-lighted old houses.

He aligned her every fault, unhappily rehearsed every quarrel in which he had been to blame. His lips moving, as he emphasized the righteous retorts, he was almost certain he had made. It was not hard to find faults in her. Any two people who have spent more than two days together already have the material for a lifelong feud in traits which at first were amusing or admirable, Ruth, petty manners, of which Carl had been proud,

he now cited his snobbish affection. He did not spare his reverence, his passion, his soul. fondness. He mutilated his soul like a hermit. He recalled her pleasure in giving him jolly surprises in writing unexpected notes addressed to him at the office as fussy discontent over normal life. He regarded her excitement over dances as evidence that she was so dependent on country club society that he would have to spend the rest of his life, dredging for her. He wanted to flee. He saw the whole world as a country club society. He would have to spend the rest of his life, trudging for her. He wanted to flee. He saw the conspiracy of secret, sinister powers that are concealed from the child, but to the man are

gradually revealed by a pitiless and never-ending succession of misfortunes. He would never be footless again. His land of heart's desire would be the office. But the ache of disappointment grew dull. He was stunned. He did not know what had happened, did not even know precisely how he came to be walking here. Now and then he remembered and knew that he had sharply left Ruth. Ruth, his dear girl, remembered that she was

not at hand, ready to explain with love's lips the somber puzzles of life. He was frightened again, and beginning to be angry with himself for having been angry with Ruth. He had walked many miles. Brown fields came up at him through

the paling darkness. A signboard showed that he was a few miles from Maniola. Leaving the coming dawn uplift him. He tramped into Maniola, with a half plan of going on to the nearby Hampstead Plains Air Aviation Field to see if there was any early morning flying.

It would be bullied to see a machine again. At a lunch wagon he ordered buckwheat cakes and coffee, sitting on a high stool before a seven-inch shelf attached to the wall, facing an array of saltcasters and ketchup bottles, and one of those colored glass windows with a portrait of Washington, which give to all lunch wagons their air of sober refinement. Carl ate solemnly, meditatively. It did not seem to him,

and a noble setting for his grief, but he was depressed when he came out to a drab for a light of day that made the street seem hopeless and unrested after the night. The shops were becoming visible, gray and july and, chilly, like a just-awaken janitor and slippers, suspenders, and tousled hair. The pavement was wet. Carl crossed the street, stared at the flying speckled cover of a magazine six months old, that lay in a shop window, lighted by one incandescent. He gloomily planned to go back and have another cup of coffee on the shelf before Washington's glossy but benign face.

But he looked down the street, and all the sky was becoming a delicate and luminous blue. He trotted off toward Hampstead planes. The aviation field was almost abandoned. Most of the ambitious line of hangers were empty now, with faded grass thick before the great doors, that no one ever opened. A recent fire had destroyed a group of five hangers. He found one door open,

and three sleepy youngsters in sweaters and khaki trousers, bringing out a monoplane. Carl watched them start, bobbed his chin to the music of the motor, saw the machine canter down the field, and ascend from the dawn to the glory of day. The rising sun picked out the lines of the Uniclo's framework and hovered on the silvery wing surface.

The machine circled the field at 200 feet elevation, smoothly, peacefully, and peace beyond understanding came to Carl. He studied the flight. Hmm, good and steady. Banks a little sharp, but very thorough. First rate. I believe I could get more speed out of her if I were flying, like to try. Wonderingly he realized that he did not want to fly, that only his lips said like to try.

He was almost as much an outsider to aviation as though he had never flown. He discovered that he was telling Ruth this fact in an imaginary conversation, was commenting for her on dawn sky and the planes before him and his alienation from exploits in which she could not share. The monoled plane landed with a clean pole plane. The aviator and his mechanics were wheeling it toward the hangar. They glanced at him uninterrestedly. Carl understood that.

To them, he was a typical bystander, here where he once starred. The aviators stared again. Let go of the machine, walked over, exclaiming, "'Say, aren't you Hawk Erickson?' "'This is an honor. I heard you were somewhere in New York.' just missed you at the aerol club one night wanted to ask you about the bagby hydro want you come in and have some coffee and sinkers with us proud to have you my name is barry thanks be glad to while the youngsters were admiring him hearing of the giants of earlier days while they were drinking inspiration from this veteran of twenty-nine they were in turn inspiring karl by their faith in him he had been humble they made him trust him

himself, not egotistically, but with a feeling that he did matter, that it was worthwhile to be in tune with life. Yet all the while he knew that he wanted to be by himself, because he could thus be with the spirit of Ruth, and he knew subconsciously that he was going to hurry back to Mineola and telephone her. As the dog trotted down the road, he noted the old Dutch houses for her, picked out the spot where he had once had a canvas hanger, fancied himself telling her those days. He did not remember that this hangar he had known Istra, Ishtra, the artist whose name he scarce recalled.

Istra was an incident. Ruth was the meaning of his life. And the solution of his problems came all at once, when suddenly it was given to him to understand what that problem was. Ruth and he had to be up and away immediately. Go anyplace, do anything, so long as they followed new trails and followed them together.

He knew positively after his lonely night that he could not be happy without her as comrade in the freedom he craved, and he also knew that they had not done the one thing for which their marriage existed. They were not just a man and a woman. They were a man and a woman who had promised to find new horizons for each other. However much he believed in the sanctity of love's children, Carl also believed that merely to be married and breed casual children and die is a sort of suspended energy, which has no conceivable place in this overall complex and unwieldy world. He had no clear nor ringing message, but he did have just then an overpowering conviction that Ruth and he,

not everyone, but Ruth and he, at least, had a vocation in keeping clear of vocations. and that they must fulfill it. Over the telephone, he said, Ruth dear, I'll be right there. Walked all night, got straightened out now. I'm in Mineola. It's all right with me now. Blessed, I want frightfully much to make it all right with you.

I'll be there in about an hour. She answered yes, so noncommittedly that he was smitten by the fact that he had yet to win forgiveness for his frenzy in leaving her, that he must break the shell, of resentment, which would increase her after a whole night's brooding between sullen walls. On the train, unconscious of its uproar, he was bespelled by his new love. During a few moments of their lives, ordinary real people, people real as a toothbrush, do actually transcend

the coarsely physical aspects of sex and feeding, and do approximate to the unwavering glow of romantic heroes. Carl was no more a romantic hero lover, than as a celebrated aviator. He had been a hero adventurer. He was a human being. He was not even admirable, except as all people are admirable, from the ashman to the king.

There had been nothing exemplary in his struggle to find adjustment with his wife. He had been bad in his impatience, just as he had been good in his boyish affection. In both, he had been human. Even now, when without reserve if he gave himself up to love, he was aware that he would ascend, not on godlike pinions,

but by a jerky, old apartment house elevator, to make peace with a vexed girl, who was also a human being, with a digestive system and prejudices, yet with a joy that encompassed all the beauty of banners and saluting swords, romantic towers, and a fugitive queen, a joy transcending trains and elevators and prejudices. Carl knew that human girl as the symbol of man's yearning for union with the divine. He desired happiness for her with a devotion, great as the passion in Galadadad's heart when all night he knelt before the high altar. He came slowly up to their apartment house, if it were only possible for Ruth to trust him now. Mingled with his painfully clear remembrance of all the sweet things Ruth was and had done, was a tragic astonishment that

he, the same he who was all hers now, could possibly have turned impatiently from her sobs. Yet it would have been for good, if only she would trust him. Not till he left the elevator on their floor did he comprehend that Ruth might not be awaiting him, might have gone. He looked irresolutely at the grill of the elevator shut on the black shaft. She was here when I telephoned. He waited. Perhaps she would peep out to see if it was he who would come up in the elevator. She did not dip here.

He walked the endless distance of ten feet to the door, unlocked it, labeled across the tiny hall into the living room. She was there. She stood supporting herself by the back of the Davenport. Her eyes red-edged and doubtful, her face tightened, expressing an enemy or dread or shy longing. He held out his hands like a prisoner, beseeching royal mercy.

She in turn threw out her arms. He could not say one word. The clumsy sign called words could not tell his emotion. He ran to her, and she welcomed his arms. He held her, abandoned himself utterly to her kiss. His hard-driving mind relaxed, relaxed was her body in his arms. He knew, not merely with his mind, but with the vaster powers that drive mind and emotion and body,

that Ruth, in her disheveled dressing-gown, was the glorious lover to whom he had been hastening this past hour. All the love which civilization had tried to turn into normal married life had escaped, efficiency's pruning hook, and had flowered. It's all right with me now, she said. So wonderful. All right. I wanted to explain. Had to be by myself, find out.

Must have seemed so unspeakably. Oh, don't, don't explain. Our kiss explained. While they talked on the Davenport together, reaching out again and again for the hands, that now really were there. Ruth agreed with Carl, that they must be up and away,

not wait till it should be too late. She too saw how many lovers plan under the June honeymoon to sail away after a year or two, to and see the great world and when they weary die, know that it will still be a year or two before they can flee to the Helsian Isles. But she did insist that they planned practically, and it was she who wondered, but what would happen if everyone went skipping off like us?

Who'd bear the children and keep the fields plowed to feed the ones that ran away? Gully cried Carl. wish that were the worst problem we had, maybe a thousand years from now, when everyone is so artistic that they want to write books, it will be hard to get enough drudges, but now look at any office

with the clerks tolling away day after day, even the unmarried ones, look at all the young fathers of families giving up everything they want to do to support children who'll do the same thing right over again with their children, always handing on the torch of life, but never getting any light from it.

People don't run away from slavery often enough, and so they don't ever get to do real work either. But, sweetheart, what if we should have children someday? You know, of course we haven't been ready for them yet, but someday they might come anyhow, and how could we wander round? Oh, probably they will come some day, and then we'll take our dose of drudgery like the rest.

There's nothing in our dear civilization punishes as it does begetting children. For poisoning food by adulterating it, you may get fined $50, but if you have children, they call it a miracle as it is, and then they get busy and condemn you to a lifetime of being scared by the boss.

Oh, darling, please don't blame it on me. I didn't mean to get so oratorical blessed. But it does make me mad the way the state punishes one for being willing to work and have children. Perhaps if enough of us run away from nice normal grinding. We'll start people wondering just why they should go on toiling to produce a lot of booze and clothes and things that nobody needs.

Perhaps, my hawk, don't you think, though, that we might be bored in our Rocky Mountain cabin if we were there for months and months? Yes, I suppose so, Carl mused. The rebellion against stuffy marriage has to be a whole lot wider than some little detail like. changing from city to country. Probably for some people the happiest thing it'd be to live in a Bohemian flat and have parties and for some to live in the

suburbs and get the Mrs. elected president of the Village Improvement Society. For us I believe it's change and keep going. Yes I'd think so hawk my hawk I lay awake nearly all night last night realizing that we are one not because of a a wedding ceremony, but because we can understand each other's make-believes and seriousness. I knew that no matter what happened, we had to try again. I saw last night by myself that it was not a question of finding out whose fault a quarrel was, that it wasn't anybody's fault, but just conditions, and we'll change them. We won't be afraid to be free. We won't, Lord, life's wonderful. Yes, when I think of how sweet life can be, so wonderfully sweet,

I know that all the prophets must love human beings. Oh, so terribly, no matter how sad they are about the petty things that lives are wasted over, but I'm not a prophet. I'm a girl that's awfully much in love. Darling, I want you to hold me close. Three months later in February 19, Ruth and Carl sailed for Buenos Aires America's new export market. Carl was the Argentine Republic Manager for the Van Zyel Motor Corporation, possessed of an important salary, a possibility of large commissions, all hopes like comets. Their happiness seemed a thing enchanted.

They had not quarreled again. The SS Sangreal for Buenos Aires in Rio had sailed from snow into summer. Ruth and Carl watched dials of palms turn to fantasy, carved of ebony in rose and garnet sunset waters, and the vast sky lap out in stars. Carl was quoting Kipling. The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass, and the deuce knows what we may do,

but we're back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the out-trail. We're down-haul, down on the old trail, the trail that is always new. Anyway, he commented, Duce only knows what we'll do after Argentine. And I don't care, do you? Her clasping hand answered as he went on.

Oh, say blessed, I forgot to look in the directory before we left, New York, to see if there wasn't a society for the spread of madness among the respectable. It might have sent us out as missionaries. There's a flying fish, and tomorrow I won't have to watch clerks punch a time clock and you can hear a sailor shifting the ventilators and there's a little star perched on the foremast singing but the big thing is that you're here beside me and we're going how bully it is to be living if you don't have to give up living in order to make a living the end of chapter 42 end of trail of the hawk by sinclair lewis