第27章 THE FIREMEN'S TOURNAMENT(2)

Oh, put it somewhere. Maybe we can work it off on the country people. Mrs. Filkins, your coffee smells PERfectly grand!

Perfectly grand. Do you think we'll have spoons enough?"The Tournament prizes are exhibited in the windows of the leading furniture emporium at the corner of Main and Center, each with a card attached bearing the name of the donor in distinctly legible characters. Old man Hagerman has been mowing all the rag-weed and cuckle-burrs along the line of march, and the lawns have had an unusual amount of shaving and sprinkling. Out near the end of Center Street, the grandstand has been going up, tiers of seats rising from each curb line. The street has been rolled and sprinkled and scraped until it is in fine condition for a running track. Why don't you pick up that pebble and throw it over into the lot? Suppose some runner should slip on that stone and fall and hurt himself, you'd be to blame.

The day before the Tournament, they hang the banner:

"WELCOME VOLUNTEER FIREMEN"

from Case's drugstore across to the Furniture Emporium. Along the line of march you may see the man of the house up on a step-ladder against the front porch, with his hands full of drapery and his mouth full of tacks. His wife is backing toward the geranium bed to get a good view, cocking her head on one side.

" How 'v vif?" he asks as well as he can for the tacks.

"Little higher. Oh, not so much. Down a little. Whope! that's . . . . Oh, plague take the firemen! Just look at that! Mercy!

Mercy!"

The man of the house can't turn his head.

"Oh, I wouldn't have had it happen for I don't know what! Ts! Ts!

Ts! That lovely silverleaf geranium that Mrs. Pritchard give me a slip of. Broke right off! Oh, my! My! My! Do you s'pose it'd grow if I was to stick it into the ground just as it is with all them buds on it?"The man of the house lets one end of the drapery go and empties his mouth of tacks into his disengaged hand.

"I don't know. Ow! jabbed right into my gum! But I can tell you this: If you think I'm going to stick up on this ladder all morning while you carry on about some fool old geranium that you can just as well fuss with when I'm gone, why, you're mighty much mistaken.""Well, you needn't take my head off. I feel awful about that geranium.""Well, why don't you look where you're going? Is this right?""Yes, I told you. I wish now I'd done it myself. I can't ask you to do a thing about the house but there's a row raised right away."People that don't want to go to the trouble of tacking up these alphabet flags on the edge of the veranda eaves (it takes fourteen of them to spell "WELCOME FIREMEN"), say they think a handsome flag -- a really handsome one, not one of these twenty-five centers -is as pretty and rich looking a decoration as a body can put up.

Tents are raised in the vacant lots along Center Street, and counters knocked together for the sale of ice-cold lemonade, lemo, lemo, lemo, made in the shade, with a spade, by an old maid, lemo, lemo. Here y' are now, gents, gitch nice cool drink, on'y five a glass. There is even the hook for the ice-cream candy man to throw the taffy over when he pulls it. I like to watch him. It makes me dribble at the mouth to think about it.

The man that sells the squawking toys and the rubber balloons on sticks is in town. All he can say is:," Fi' cent." He will blow up the balloons tomorrow morning. The men with the black-velvet covered shields, all stuck full of "souvenirs," are here, and the men with the little canes. I guess we'll have a big crowd if it doesn't rain. What does the paper say about the weather?

The boys have been playing a new game for some time past, but it is only this evening that you notice it. The way of it is this:

You take an express-wagon - it has to have real wheels: these sawed-out wheels are too baby - and you tie a long rope to the tongue and fix loops on the rope, so that the boys can put each a loop over his shoulder. (You want a good many boys.) And you get big, long, thick pieces of rag and you take and tie them so as to make a big, big, long piece, about as long as from here to 'way over there. And you lay this in the wagon, kind of in folds like.

Then you go up to where they water the horses and two of you go at the back end of the wagon and the rest put the loops over their shoulders, and one boy says, "Are you ready ?" and he has a Fourth of July pistol and he shoots off a cap. And when you hear that, you run like the dickens and the two boys behind the wagon let out the hose (the big, long, thick piece of rag) and fix it so it lies about straight on the ground. And when you have run as far as the hose will reach, the boy with the Fourth of July pistol says:

"Twenty-eight and two-fifths," and that's the game. And the kids don't like for big folks to stand and watch them, because they always make fun so.

In other towns they have Boys' Companies organized strictly for Tournament purposes. There was talk of having one here. Mat.

King, the assistant chief, was all for having one so that we could compete in what he calls "the juveline contests," but it fell through somehow.

Along about sun-up you hear the big farm-wagons clattering into town, chairs in the wagon bed, and Paw, and Maw, and Mary Elizabeth, and Martin Luther, and all the family, clean down to Teedy, the baby. He's named after Theodore Roosevelt, and they have the letter home now, framed and hanging up over the organ.