“Aren’t you going back to work, dear?” asked the doctor’s wife from the room where she was lying with the blinds drawn.
“No!”
“Was anything the matter?”
“I had a row with Dick Boulton.”
“Oh,” said his wife. “I hope you didn’t lose your temper, Henry.”
“No,” said the doctor.
“Remember, that he who ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city,” said his wife. She was a Christian Scientist. Her Bible, her copy of Science and Health and her Quarterly were on a table beside her bed in the darkened room.
Her husband did not answer. He was sitting on his bed now, cleaning a shotgun. He pushed the magazine full of the heavy yellow shells and pumped them out again. They were scattered on the bed.
“Henry,” his wife called. Then paused a moment. “Henry!”
“Yes,” the doctor said.
“You didn’t say anything to Boulton to anger him, did you?”
“No,” said the doctor.
“What was the trouble about, dear?”
“Nothing much.”
“Tell me, Henry. Please don’t try and keep anything from me. What was the trouble about?”
“Well, Dick owes me a lot of money for pulling his squaw through pneumonia and I guess he wanted a row so he wouldn’t have to take it out in work.”
His wife was silent. The doctor wiped his gun carefully with a rag. He pushed the shells back in against the spring of the magazine. He sat with the gun on his knees. He was very fond of it. Then he heard his wife’s voice from the darkened room.
“Dear, I don’t think, I really don’t think that anyone would really do a thing like that.”
“No?” the doctor said.
“No. I can’t really believe that anyone would do a thing of that sort intentionally.”
The doctor stood up and put the shotgun in the corner behind the dresser.
“Are you going out, dear?” his wife said.
“I think I’ll go for a walk,” the doctor said.
“If you see Nick, dear, will you tell him his mother wants to see him?” his wife said.
The doctor went out on the porch. The screen door slammed behind him. He heard his wife catch her breath when the door slammed.
“Sorry,” he said, outside her window with the blinds drawn.
“It’s all right, dear,” she said.
He walked in the heat out the gate and along the path into the hemlock woods. It was cool in the woods even on such a hot day. He found Nick sitting with his back against a tree, reading.
“Your mother wants you to come and see her,” the doctor said.
“I want to go with you,” Nick said.
His father looked down at him.
“All right. Come on, then,” his father said. “Give me the book; I’ll put it in my pocket.”
“I know where there’s black squirrels, Daddy,” Nick said.
“All right,” said his father. “Let’s go there.”
Ten Indians
After one Fourth of July, Nick, driving home late from town in the big wagon with Joe Garner and his family, passed nine drunken Indians along the road. He remembered there were nine because Joe Garner, driving along in the dusk, pulled up the horses, jumped down into the road and dragged an Indian out of the wheel rut. The Indian had been asleep, face down in the sand. Joe dragged him into the bushes and got back on the wagon box.
“That makes nine of them,” Joe said, “just between here and the edge of town.”
“Them Indians,” said Mrs. Garner.
Nick was on the back seat with the two Garner boys. He was looking out from the back seat to see the Indian where Joe had dragged him alongside of the road.
“Was it Billy Tabeshaw?” Carl asked.
“No.”
“His pants looked mighty like Billy.”
“All Indians wear the same kind of pants.”
“I didn’t see him at all,” Frank said. “Pa was down into the road and back up again before I seen a thing. I thought he was killing a snake.”
“Plenty of Indians’ll kill snakes tonight, I guess,” Joe Garner said.
“Them Indians,” said Mrs. Garner.
They drove along. The road turned off the main highway and went up into the hills. It was hard pulling for the horses and the boys got down and walked. The road was sandy. Nick looked back from the top of the hill by the schoolhouse. He saw the lights of Petoskey and, off across Little Traverse Bay, the lights of Harbor Springs. They climbed back in the wagon again.