Read The Man in the Tree Online
Authors: Damon Knight
The Man in the Tree (3 page)
Cooley started up the stairs. "And Mayor Hilbert's been on the phone
seven times
!" she called after him.
"Tell'm go shit in his hat," said Cooley, and staggered into the bedroom.
Gus Hilbert came around at four that afternoon, when Cooley was up and
dressed. Hilbert was a big man, popeyed and balding; he ran the town's
one movie theater, in which, until her retirement a few years ago, his
wife Ethel had played the Golden Wurlitzer organ.
He found Cooley at the kitchen table eating bacon and eggs. The chief
had shaved, and looked a little better, but he still looked like a man
who had been on a three-day drunk.
Hilbert dropped his hat on the table and sat down. "Tom, you through
making a fool of yourself now?"
Cooley looked at him and said nothing.
"You know by now that kid's gone. Hitched a ride somewhere, he's out of
the state."
"By now," said Cooley.
"Even if he wasn't, he's a juvenile. What was you going to do if you
found him, beat him up? Shoot him with that damn gun?"
"He killed my boy, Gus."
Hiibert said after a moment, "How's Ellen?"
"Okay. She's asleep upstairs. Doc Phillips gave her something."
"I know what a knock this is for you, Tom, and Ellen too, but you can't
take the damn law in your own hands, and I can't let you do it. Now
what I want to know is, have you given it up? Because if you haven't,
I've got to take your badge."
"Think you're man enough?" Cooley asked, and put down his fork.
"Now, Tom, don't be that way."
"You can have the goddamn badge any time you want it," Cooley said. He
got up and threw his plate into the sink. The scared faces of two young
children appeared in the doorway and then vanished. "You kids stay the
hell out of here!" Cooley shouted.
"Tom, are you coming back to work? That's all I'm asking. There was an
armed robbery at the Idle Hour Monday night, I had to call in the sheriff,
and there's some vandalism up at the junior high school."
"Yeah, I'm coming back to work. What the hell else can I do?"
"Okay. Get some rest first. God, you look awful."
The following afternoon, just after lunch time, Cooley got out of his car
in front of the Andersons' house and stood looking it over. It was a white
one-story house with wood siding and a shake roof, behind a picket fence
and a big maple tree. Unraked leaves were all over the yard. At the end
of the driveway was a garage; through the open doors he could see
workbenches and stacks of lumber. He climbed the porch steps, looking
at the scratches on the paint, and rang the bell.
After a moment the door opened. "Afternoon, Miz Anderson," Cooley
said. "Like to come in and talk to you, if you don't mind." She was pale,
and her eyes were pink-rimmed.
"Yes, come in," she said. She led him into the living room. "Mr. Cooley,
I want you to know we're terribly sorry about what happened."
"Appreciate that," Cooley said. He put his hat on his knee and took out
a dog-eared notebook.
"My husband and I were at your house Tuesday night, but Mrs. Williams
told us you were out of town. She said your wife was ill. I hope she's
feeling better?"
"Sure. She'll be all right. Now about your boy -- haven't heard from him,
I suppose?"
"No. Nothing."
"Any idea where he might of gone?"
"No. I've racked my brains."
"Some relative, maybe?"
She shook her head. "We don't have any family in Oregon. I have a sister
in Iowa, and Don's brother lives in Utah."
"Mind giving me their addresses?"
After a moment Mrs. Anderson said, "I don't see any point in it. They
never met Gene -- he doesn't know where they are."
"Might help anyway -- you never know."
When she remained silent, Cooley said, "What about the boy -- what does
he like to do? Any hobbies?"
"He likes to draw. And reading -- he likes to read."
"Got a recent photo of him?"
She shook her head slowly. "No."
"Well, an old one, then -- whatever you got. You must have some pictures."
"They're put away," she said. "I don't know where they are."
Chief Cooley closed his notebook. "This ain't the right attitude, Miz
Anderson," he said. "I'm just trying to do my job."
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Well, thanks a hell of a lot for nothing," Cooley told her, and put on
his hat. "I can find my way out."
When Donald Anderson came home that night, she told him about Cooley's
visit.
"Why didn't you give him the pictures?" Anderson asked. "What are you
afraid of?"
"I don't know. I don't trust that man."
"Well, I don't like him either, but he's trying to find Gene. What can
he do to him? He's just a boy -- it must of been an accident. The worst
that could happen, they'd send him to a home for a year."
Mrs. Anderson closed her eyes. "I hope he's safe," she said. "And I hope
Chief Cooley doesn't find him, ever."
On the Sunday after the funeral, Cooley drove past the Methodist Church
and saw Donald Anderson's gray Chevy pickup in the parking lot. He kept
on going, drove through the quiet neighborhood where the Andersons lived,
and parked in the alley. The air was crisp and cool; threads of blue
smoke rose from chimneys toward an overcast sky. There was no sound
except for the lonesome barking of a dog up the hill.
Cooley jimmied open a basement window and let himself down into the musty
darkness. He found the stairs, climbed them, opened the door into the
kitchen. The pendulum clock on the wall was ticking quietly. There was
a rich fragrance in the room; he felt the oven door, and it was warm. A
gray cat came from somewhere, looked at him with slitted eyes and made
a querulous sound.
There were two doors in the back of the kitchen; one led to the narrow
screened porch. Cooley opened the other and went in, followed by the
cat. This room was obviously newer than the rest of the house; the walls
and ceiling were covered with Fir-tex, a gray, pulpy material made from
wood fibers. The room was cold, and the air had a lifeless smell. There
was a narrow metal bed, some bookshelves, a bureau, a wooden desk, an easy
chair, and a floor lamp. A model airplane hung from the ceiling. Games
and puzzles were stacked on the bookshelves. The bare floor and the
woodwork were painted dark blue.
The cat watched him as he opened desk drawers one by one and sorted
through the papers inside. Most of them were drawings in pencil and ink;
some were partly ink, partly crayon. There was a clutter of ink bottles,
pens, brushes, erasers, rulers; some baseball cards with a rubber
band around them; gum wrappers, dice, a stamp album; glue, string,
paperclips. He put everything back and closed the drawers.
In the closet he found a gray windbreaker, a yellow slicker and hood,
galoshes, a pair of shoes neatly lined up with the laces tied. In the
corner there was a tall stack of magazines, mostly "Boy's Life." Bile
rose in Cooley's throat. They had kept the kid's room and all his stuff
waiting for him, because they thought he was coming back.
Cooley thought about Paul's room at home. He had cleaned it all out,
the baseball bat and mitt, the piles of dirty socks, trading cards,
the clothing, the cigarettes hidden in the back of the drawer. He didn't
want anything to remind him. He had closed the door oft the empty room.
The other two, the girls, were not much good; he had never wanted
wanted girls. It was Paul he had counted on, his firstborn, awkward and
eager. All that life and energy now was nothing but a lump of meat in
a box with dirt shoveled over it.
The cat followed him out, and he shut the door. Beyond the kitchen was
the living-dining room -- a table with an embroidered cloth, an oil
space heater emitting a cheerful warmth, a sofa, chairs. The walls were
plaster painted with gray calsomine, powdery to the touch. The first
of the three doors opened into a room crowded with a brass bed, a desk,
a green metal filing cabinet. The room smelled of stale cigars.
The next was the bathroom. The third was a woman's bedroom, with a
flowered quilt on the bed, a dressing table and chiffonier. Cooley went
through the drawers, feeling under stacks of stockings, underwear, folded
clothing. In the third drawer his fingers struck something hard. He drew
out a leather jewel case and a stack of photo albums.
The cat climbed on the bed to watch him. He turned the pages of the
first album: snapshots of the Andersons with their arms around each
other in front of what looked like a 1928 Ford sedan. Mrs. Anderson's
hair was bobbed, and she wore a cloche hat. The Andersons at the beach,
with four other people, waving at the camera. Pictures of houses.
The next album was baby pictures, all of the same child, fat-cheeked and
bright-eyed, patent-leather shoes on his feet and a knitted cap on his
head. Under this there was a stack of matted enlargements, and as soon
as he felt that one of them was in a metal frame, Cooley knew. He pulled
it out: it was a picture of the kid in his first suit, gawky and shy,
probably taken not more than a year or two ago.
Cooley wrapped the picture and the jewel box in a pillowcase, put everything
else back where he had found it. On the way home he looked into the
jewel box -- a few garnet rings and pendants that looked old, some junk
necklaces and earrings, a gold two-and-a-half dollar piece. He kept the
coin and threw the rest of the jewelry into a ravine. Let them wonder.
Chapter Three
Trees
Reach up in darkness
Fingers tasting water
Secret drinkers
Light
Filters up their trunks
Their itchy toes
Dabble in the sun
--Gene Anderson
Five miles from Dog River, up an old logging road, there was a hunting
lodge, formerly the property of Dr. C.B. Landecker, who gave it to the Boy
Scouts in 1938. The lodge consisted of a large living room, a primitive
kitchen and pantry, and two small bedrooms downstairs; upstairs there
was a loft full of camp beds and cots. In the clearing behind the house
there were two outbuildings in an advanced state of disrepair, a well,
a barbecue pit, a clothesline, and a heap of old lumber, the remains of
a third outbuilding, which the Scouts had been using for firewood. There
were recent tire-marks in the soft ground when Gene came into the clearing
at twilight, but the building was empty and dark. He felt the lock with
his fingers, turned it and went in.
Vague shapes of furniture loomed in the darkness; there was a stale
smell. Gene felt his way into one of the bedrooms, took two blankets
and carried them outside. Under the sagging porch he cleared away a few
rocks and tin cans; spread his blankets, and rolled himself up in them
for the night.
Out in the deep darkness there were howls, cries of anguish, with long
silent intervals between them. Even in his refuge, there were mysterious
and alarming sounds -- skitterings of tiny legs, crunches, clicks. The
apples he had eaten on his way through the orchards were a hard lump in
his stomach. He knew that he would lie awake all night and be tired in
the morning; in the middle of this thought, he fell asleep.
In the morning, the clearing was empty and silent. Gene went into
the house again and looked around. In the kitchen and pantry he found
some useful things, a pot and a skillet, a knife, fork, and spoon, a
can-opener, a can of pork and beans, a box of matches, a salt-shaker and
half a box of crackers. He copied the pot and skillet, for fear they would
be missed; the rest of the things he simply took. He rolled everything
up in the blankets and tied them together with a clothesline. Then he
slipped out of the house and into the trees, following a little stream.
In the hills above the river, the trees stand shoulder to shoulder,
more than a hundred feet tall and five hundred years old: Douglas fir,
western hemlock, red cedar, Ponderosa pine, Oregon white oak. Some
of them were full-grown in 1579, when Sir Francis Drake sailed up the
Pacific coast looking for a northwest passage. Where the land is level,
the trees stand by themselves in a brown gloom, but on the slopes and
in the narrow valleys they are surrounded by an anarchy of underbrush,
hazel and mazzard cherry, bracken fern, trailing blackberry.
Before noon Gene Anderson had found the place he wanted, in a thick
stand of fir and oak on a hillside so steep that no one would think
of climbing it. Halfway up the hill, entirely screened by tall firs,
stood a giant oak. Its trunk was more than two feet across, gray and
fissured like an elephant's body; the thick branches curved out knobby
and strong to support the crown fifty feet overhead.
Gene ate his pork and beans on the hillside, then rolled everything up
in the blankets again and hid them under a log. He went back to the Boy
Scout camp; the clearing was deserted except for a few sparrows pecking
around the kitchen door.
In one of the outbuildings he found a hammer and some nails, a hatchet,
a saw, a pick, and a little shovel. He wrapped these in a tarpaulin and
carried them back to his hillside. By that time it was late afternoon,
and it was dark under the trees. He ate pork and beans again, spread
the tarpaulin under the log and slept there wrapped in his blankets.
The next day he went back to the camp and sorted out pieces of usable
lumber from the pile in the clearing; He carried these up to the hillside
and went back for more. Exhausted, he slept again under the log.
Early the next morning he climbed to the fork of the old oak, pulled up
lumber with the clothesline and began to build his house. He notched the
limbs to make the floor level, and braced it underneath with pieces cut
from two-by-fours. By nightfall he had the framing up and the floor laid,
and he slept there that night, under the tarpaulin, in a cold drizzle
of rain.
The house took shape as he had seen it in his mind: eight feet square,
eight feet high at one end and seven feet at the other, with a sloping
shed roof. He covered the roof with a tarpaulin and nailed it down around
the edges. The only opening was a narrow door, hinged at the top with
shoe leather. Along one side he made his bed of fir branches; on another
wall he put up shelves for his belongings, and on the third wall, the one
opposite the door, a wider shelf that could serve as a desk or workbench.
On Monday he went down to the Boy Scout camp again. No one was there,
but he saw fresh tire-marks in the road, and that made him uneasy. He
determined to get everything he needed in this one trip and not come
back again.
seven times
!" she called after him.
"Tell'm go shit in his hat," said Cooley, and staggered into the bedroom.
Gus Hilbert came around at four that afternoon, when Cooley was up and
dressed. Hilbert was a big man, popeyed and balding; he ran the town's
one movie theater, in which, until her retirement a few years ago, his
wife Ethel had played the Golden Wurlitzer organ.
He found Cooley at the kitchen table eating bacon and eggs. The chief
had shaved, and looked a little better, but he still looked like a man
who had been on a three-day drunk.
Hilbert dropped his hat on the table and sat down. "Tom, you through
making a fool of yourself now?"
Cooley looked at him and said nothing.
"You know by now that kid's gone. Hitched a ride somewhere, he's out of
the state."
"By now," said Cooley.
"Even if he wasn't, he's a juvenile. What was you going to do if you
found him, beat him up? Shoot him with that damn gun?"
"He killed my boy, Gus."
Hiibert said after a moment, "How's Ellen?"
"Okay. She's asleep upstairs. Doc Phillips gave her something."
"I know what a knock this is for you, Tom, and Ellen too, but you can't
take the damn law in your own hands, and I can't let you do it. Now
what I want to know is, have you given it up? Because if you haven't,
I've got to take your badge."
"Think you're man enough?" Cooley asked, and put down his fork.
"Now, Tom, don't be that way."
"You can have the goddamn badge any time you want it," Cooley said. He
got up and threw his plate into the sink. The scared faces of two young
children appeared in the doorway and then vanished. "You kids stay the
hell out of here!" Cooley shouted.
"Tom, are you coming back to work? That's all I'm asking. There was an
armed robbery at the Idle Hour Monday night, I had to call in the sheriff,
and there's some vandalism up at the junior high school."
"Yeah, I'm coming back to work. What the hell else can I do?"
"Okay. Get some rest first. God, you look awful."
The following afternoon, just after lunch time, Cooley got out of his car
in front of the Andersons' house and stood looking it over. It was a white
one-story house with wood siding and a shake roof, behind a picket fence
and a big maple tree. Unraked leaves were all over the yard. At the end
of the driveway was a garage; through the open doors he could see
workbenches and stacks of lumber. He climbed the porch steps, looking
at the scratches on the paint, and rang the bell.
After a moment the door opened. "Afternoon, Miz Anderson," Cooley
said. "Like to come in and talk to you, if you don't mind." She was pale,
and her eyes were pink-rimmed.
"Yes, come in," she said. She led him into the living room. "Mr. Cooley,
I want you to know we're terribly sorry about what happened."
"Appreciate that," Cooley said. He put his hat on his knee and took out
a dog-eared notebook.
"My husband and I were at your house Tuesday night, but Mrs. Williams
told us you were out of town. She said your wife was ill. I hope she's
feeling better?"
"Sure. She'll be all right. Now about your boy -- haven't heard from him,
I suppose?"
"No. Nothing."
"Any idea where he might of gone?"
"No. I've racked my brains."
"Some relative, maybe?"
She shook her head. "We don't have any family in Oregon. I have a sister
in Iowa, and Don's brother lives in Utah."
"Mind giving me their addresses?"
After a moment Mrs. Anderson said, "I don't see any point in it. They
never met Gene -- he doesn't know where they are."
"Might help anyway -- you never know."
When she remained silent, Cooley said, "What about the boy -- what does
he like to do? Any hobbies?"
"He likes to draw. And reading -- he likes to read."
"Got a recent photo of him?"
She shook her head slowly. "No."
"Well, an old one, then -- whatever you got. You must have some pictures."
"They're put away," she said. "I don't know where they are."
Chief Cooley closed his notebook. "This ain't the right attitude, Miz
Anderson," he said. "I'm just trying to do my job."
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Well, thanks a hell of a lot for nothing," Cooley told her, and put on
his hat. "I can find my way out."
When Donald Anderson came home that night, she told him about Cooley's
visit.
"Why didn't you give him the pictures?" Anderson asked. "What are you
afraid of?"
"I don't know. I don't trust that man."
"Well, I don't like him either, but he's trying to find Gene. What can
he do to him? He's just a boy -- it must of been an accident. The worst
that could happen, they'd send him to a home for a year."
Mrs. Anderson closed her eyes. "I hope he's safe," she said. "And I hope
Chief Cooley doesn't find him, ever."
On the Sunday after the funeral, Cooley drove past the Methodist Church
and saw Donald Anderson's gray Chevy pickup in the parking lot. He kept
on going, drove through the quiet neighborhood where the Andersons lived,
and parked in the alley. The air was crisp and cool; threads of blue
smoke rose from chimneys toward an overcast sky. There was no sound
except for the lonesome barking of a dog up the hill.
Cooley jimmied open a basement window and let himself down into the musty
darkness. He found the stairs, climbed them, opened the door into the
kitchen. The pendulum clock on the wall was ticking quietly. There was
a rich fragrance in the room; he felt the oven door, and it was warm. A
gray cat came from somewhere, looked at him with slitted eyes and made
a querulous sound.
There were two doors in the back of the kitchen; one led to the narrow
screened porch. Cooley opened the other and went in, followed by the
cat. This room was obviously newer than the rest of the house; the walls
and ceiling were covered with Fir-tex, a gray, pulpy material made from
wood fibers. The room was cold, and the air had a lifeless smell. There
was a narrow metal bed, some bookshelves, a bureau, a wooden desk, an easy
chair, and a floor lamp. A model airplane hung from the ceiling. Games
and puzzles were stacked on the bookshelves. The bare floor and the
woodwork were painted dark blue.
The cat watched him as he opened desk drawers one by one and sorted
through the papers inside. Most of them were drawings in pencil and ink;
some were partly ink, partly crayon. There was a clutter of ink bottles,
pens, brushes, erasers, rulers; some baseball cards with a rubber
band around them; gum wrappers, dice, a stamp album; glue, string,
paperclips. He put everything back and closed the drawers.
In the closet he found a gray windbreaker, a yellow slicker and hood,
galoshes, a pair of shoes neatly lined up with the laces tied. In the
corner there was a tall stack of magazines, mostly "Boy's Life." Bile
rose in Cooley's throat. They had kept the kid's room and all his stuff
waiting for him, because they thought he was coming back.
Cooley thought about Paul's room at home. He had cleaned it all out,
the baseball bat and mitt, the piles of dirty socks, trading cards,
the clothing, the cigarettes hidden in the back of the drawer. He didn't
want anything to remind him. He had closed the door oft the empty room.
The other two, the girls, were not much good; he had never wanted
wanted girls. It was Paul he had counted on, his firstborn, awkward and
eager. All that life and energy now was nothing but a lump of meat in
a box with dirt shoveled over it.
The cat followed him out, and he shut the door. Beyond the kitchen was
the living-dining room -- a table with an embroidered cloth, an oil
space heater emitting a cheerful warmth, a sofa, chairs. The walls were
plaster painted with gray calsomine, powdery to the touch. The first
of the three doors opened into a room crowded with a brass bed, a desk,
a green metal filing cabinet. The room smelled of stale cigars.
The next was the bathroom. The third was a woman's bedroom, with a
flowered quilt on the bed, a dressing table and chiffonier. Cooley went
through the drawers, feeling under stacks of stockings, underwear, folded
clothing. In the third drawer his fingers struck something hard. He drew
out a leather jewel case and a stack of photo albums.
The cat climbed on the bed to watch him. He turned the pages of the
first album: snapshots of the Andersons with their arms around each
other in front of what looked like a 1928 Ford sedan. Mrs. Anderson's
hair was bobbed, and she wore a cloche hat. The Andersons at the beach,
with four other people, waving at the camera. Pictures of houses.
The next album was baby pictures, all of the same child, fat-cheeked and
bright-eyed, patent-leather shoes on his feet and a knitted cap on his
head. Under this there was a stack of matted enlargements, and as soon
as he felt that one of them was in a metal frame, Cooley knew. He pulled
it out: it was a picture of the kid in his first suit, gawky and shy,
probably taken not more than a year or two ago.
Cooley wrapped the picture and the jewel box in a pillowcase, put everything
else back where he had found it. On the way home he looked into the
jewel box -- a few garnet rings and pendants that looked old, some junk
necklaces and earrings, a gold two-and-a-half dollar piece. He kept the
coin and threw the rest of the jewelry into a ravine. Let them wonder.
Chapter Three
Trees
Reach up in darkness
Fingers tasting water
Secret drinkers
Light
Filters up their trunks
Their itchy toes
Dabble in the sun
--Gene Anderson
Five miles from Dog River, up an old logging road, there was a hunting
lodge, formerly the property of Dr. C.B. Landecker, who gave it to the Boy
Scouts in 1938. The lodge consisted of a large living room, a primitive
kitchen and pantry, and two small bedrooms downstairs; upstairs there
was a loft full of camp beds and cots. In the clearing behind the house
there were two outbuildings in an advanced state of disrepair, a well,
a barbecue pit, a clothesline, and a heap of old lumber, the remains of
a third outbuilding, which the Scouts had been using for firewood. There
were recent tire-marks in the soft ground when Gene came into the clearing
at twilight, but the building was empty and dark. He felt the lock with
his fingers, turned it and went in.
Vague shapes of furniture loomed in the darkness; there was a stale
smell. Gene felt his way into one of the bedrooms, took two blankets
and carried them outside. Under the sagging porch he cleared away a few
rocks and tin cans; spread his blankets, and rolled himself up in them
for the night.
Out in the deep darkness there were howls, cries of anguish, with long
silent intervals between them. Even in his refuge, there were mysterious
and alarming sounds -- skitterings of tiny legs, crunches, clicks. The
apples he had eaten on his way through the orchards were a hard lump in
his stomach. He knew that he would lie awake all night and be tired in
the morning; in the middle of this thought, he fell asleep.
In the morning, the clearing was empty and silent. Gene went into
the house again and looked around. In the kitchen and pantry he found
some useful things, a pot and a skillet, a knife, fork, and spoon, a
can-opener, a can of pork and beans, a box of matches, a salt-shaker and
half a box of crackers. He copied the pot and skillet, for fear they would
be missed; the rest of the things he simply took. He rolled everything
up in the blankets and tied them together with a clothesline. Then he
slipped out of the house and into the trees, following a little stream.
In the hills above the river, the trees stand shoulder to shoulder,
more than a hundred feet tall and five hundred years old: Douglas fir,
western hemlock, red cedar, Ponderosa pine, Oregon white oak. Some
of them were full-grown in 1579, when Sir Francis Drake sailed up the
Pacific coast looking for a northwest passage. Where the land is level,
the trees stand by themselves in a brown gloom, but on the slopes and
in the narrow valleys they are surrounded by an anarchy of underbrush,
hazel and mazzard cherry, bracken fern, trailing blackberry.
Before noon Gene Anderson had found the place he wanted, in a thick
stand of fir and oak on a hillside so steep that no one would think
of climbing it. Halfway up the hill, entirely screened by tall firs,
stood a giant oak. Its trunk was more than two feet across, gray and
fissured like an elephant's body; the thick branches curved out knobby
and strong to support the crown fifty feet overhead.
Gene ate his pork and beans on the hillside, then rolled everything up
in the blankets again and hid them under a log. He went back to the Boy
Scout camp; the clearing was deserted except for a few sparrows pecking
around the kitchen door.
In one of the outbuildings he found a hammer and some nails, a hatchet,
a saw, a pick, and a little shovel. He wrapped these in a tarpaulin and
carried them back to his hillside. By that time it was late afternoon,
and it was dark under the trees. He ate pork and beans again, spread
the tarpaulin under the log and slept there wrapped in his blankets.
The next day he went back to the camp and sorted out pieces of usable
lumber from the pile in the clearing; He carried these up to the hillside
and went back for more. Exhausted, he slept again under the log.
Early the next morning he climbed to the fork of the old oak, pulled up
lumber with the clothesline and began to build his house. He notched the
limbs to make the floor level, and braced it underneath with pieces cut
from two-by-fours. By nightfall he had the framing up and the floor laid,
and he slept there that night, under the tarpaulin, in a cold drizzle
of rain.
The house took shape as he had seen it in his mind: eight feet square,
eight feet high at one end and seven feet at the other, with a sloping
shed roof. He covered the roof with a tarpaulin and nailed it down around
the edges. The only opening was a narrow door, hinged at the top with
shoe leather. Along one side he made his bed of fir branches; on another
wall he put up shelves for his belongings, and on the third wall, the one
opposite the door, a wider shelf that could serve as a desk or workbench.
On Monday he went down to the Boy Scout camp again. No one was there,
but he saw fresh tire-marks in the road, and that made him uneasy. He
determined to get everything he needed in this one trip and not come
back again.
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