The Forbidden Trail | Page 2

and pugnacious than Ernie, who followed her shortly over the fence.
Ernest was Roger's age and he looked so much like Elsa that a stranger might have thought them to be twins.
He landed with a thud. "Where'd you get the teeter-tauter, Roger?" he cried.
"Don't you see, you old ninny? I heaved up the plank Papa put down for the walk to the clothes-reel, and the barrel, I sort-of--now I kind of borrowed that out of the Sauters' barn. I guess they wouldn't care. I left a penny on the barn floor to pay for it. It's the strongest barrel I most ever saw. You go on the other end and Charley and I'll stay here. Elschen, you can be candlestick."
"I ain't going to be candlestick very long, I ain't. Not for you old boys," said Elsa, climbing, however, to the place assigned her, where the board balanced on the barrel.
The children see-sawed amicably for perhaps five minutes when Roger roared--
"Hey! All of you get off! I got to fix this better."
"I'm not agoing to move," replied Elsa.
"I ain't agoing to move," agreed Charley.
"Come on, you girls, get off," cried Ernie. "What you going to do, Roger?"
"I'll show you! If you girls don't get off, I'll dump you," suiting action to words, as he tilted the plank sidewise. Elsa got a real bump, from the barrel to the ground. Charley's end of the see-saw was on the ground so she scrambled up laughing. Not so Elschen. She was red with anger. She flew at Roger and slapped him in the face.
Roger turned white, and struck back, the blow catching Elsa in the stomach. She doubled up and roared. Roger's voice rose above hers.
"I'll kill you next time! I'll kill you, you low down old German pig, you."
Slow moving little Ernie ran to put his arm round Elsa.
"Don't you hit my sister again, Rog Moore!"
Roger jumped up and down and kicked the barrel. "You get out of my yard! I hate you all!"
"Not me, Roger?" cried Charley, anxiously, running up to take his hand.
Curiously enough even in his blind passion, the boy clung to the childish fingers, the while he continued to kick the barrel and to roar,
"I'll kill you, Elsa!"
The screen door clicked and Mrs. Moore hurried down the back steps. She was very tall and slender, with Roger's blue eyes and a mass of red hair piled high on her head. She carried one of Roger's stockings with a darning ball in the toe in her left hand and the thimble gleamed on the middle finger of her right hand as she put it on Roger's shoulder.
"Roger! Roger! You're rousing the whole neighborhood!"
Roger struck the slender hand from his shoulder. "I hate you too. Let me alone!"
Mrs. Moore turned to the others. "Children, take Charley over in your yard for a little while. Roger is being a very bad boy and I must punish him."
Roger hung back, still roaring, but his mother dragged him into the kitchen. Here she sat down in a rocker and attempted to pull him into her lap, but he would have none of her. He threw himself sobbing on the floor and Mrs. Moore sat looking at him sadly.
"I don't know what we're going to do about your temper, Roger. This is the third spell you've had this week. I don't see why the children play with you. Some day you will murder some one, I'm afraid. I used to have a temper when I was a child but I'm certain it was nothing like yours. One thing I'm sure of, I never struck my dear mother. Thank heaven, I haven't that regret."
Roger wept on.
"I've tried whipping and I've tried scolding. Perhaps I'm the wrong mother for you--" A long pause, during which Roger's slender body did not cease to writhe in sobs. Then his mother continued: "Poor little Elschen, that was an awful knock you gave her! I shall have to apologize to Mrs. Wolf again. She's always sweet about your badness."
She began work on the stocking once more. Roger's sobs lessened and his mother rose to wet a towel-end and bathe his face. But when she returned from the sink, the child was asleep, his head pillowed on his arm. It was thus that his temper storms always ended. Mrs. Moore had observed that when she had whipped him for one of his explosions, he always slept much longer than when she merely allowed him to sob himself quiet. So though his father still advocated whipping, she had concluded that whipping led only to further nerve exhaustion and she had stopped that form of punishment.
Half an hour later Roger rolled over on his back and stared for a moment wide eyed, at the ceiling. Then he got up quickly and running over to his